That's extraordinarily disingenuous of you. The expectation of the day was CERTAINLY NOT that the dollars they were accepting in 1913 would be lose more than 90% of their value in less than 90 years.
they could have simply asked their grandparents, as a similar phenomenon described the previous ninety years. inflation in the united states is generally recognised to have been greater from 1913 to 1999, but not by as much as the often-disputed '90%' figure would have you believe. (probably it was about twice as great in the 20th century as the 19th century, though i'm saying that offhand without looking at the best data.)
You're saying this without access to
any factual data. It's simply not true. The US Dollar prior to 1913 did have it's ups and downs, but the general trend over the prior century was deflationary, if only very mildly. It would be tricky to have an inflating currency that wasn't just on a bi-metal standard, the currency was
actually the metal. Try and imagine the world before 1913, for the most part paper money didn't really exist. All those old Westerns showing thieves robbing banks and getting away with paper money were
wrong. A dollar was (and legally still is, look it up) a defined weight in gold, while coins were made of the silver itself. Paper money was
rare.