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Friday, March 3, 2017

A Favorite Column on the Census -- 1930 #9


On the 1930 census, column 9 asked if the household had a radio set. I checked my Falk family as I already had a notebook showing all the children and grandchildren of Ludwig Falk that I could find in the 1930 census.

I was surprised at how few of the group had radios.
Here are some statistics:
Of the descendants of Ludwig and Anna Louisa (Boehm) Falk that I found, there were 7 children and 59 grandchildren in 44 households. There were only 13 of these households who had radios, or less than 30%.

Radios are something we take for granted now, less than 90 years later. Most households today have more than one radio and a radio is listed as a suggested item for an emergency kit. When I thought about this further I remembered that in most of Western Oregon, rural locations did not get electric power until the mid-1930s. It would be probable that other rural areas would also be affected with the lack of electricity. Since many of the Falk family members lived in rural locations, this might help explain why radios did not show up on the 1930 census. I wonder how many had radios by the 1940 census. There is no way for me to answer that question.

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