A New Refrigerator for Two Nickels a Day!

"Good reason to buy a new refrigerator," was the adline for a Central Hudson advertisement featuring a Beacon family, Mrs. Ralph Morse and her three children .... Mother Betty Morse had her hands full with one-year-old twins Billy and Betty, and two-year old Priscilla when the Central Hudson photographer arrived at her apartment on Davis Street to shoot the scene in February of 1938. It was all part of an campaign to promote Central Hudson's "Meter-Ice Plan" of the 1930s, whereby the electric customer could replace his old ice box with a new modern electric refrigerator for only two nickels a day!

The plan worked like this: you picked out any new refrigerator from any local appliance dealer (the Morse family had a new "Westinghouse" from Beacon Main Street plumbers, A.C. Smith & Co.); a meter box was installed on or near the refrigerator in which you placed two nickels each day to pay off the refrigerator. A representative from the electric company would come once a month to collect the coins and credit your account. When your payments were completed, Central Hudson removed the box and the Westinghouse (or whatever brand) refrigerator was yours free and clear. Typically, these appliances in that era cost between $100 and $150, so you were dropping nickels daily for three or four years!

But what happened if you forgot, or were a nickel short one day? The power cut off and you were left with a glorified icebox with maybe 1000 payments left on it. Central Hudson soon after got out of the appliance-selling business, and these nickel boxes disappeared with the return of prosperous times. But the nickel scheme is an interesting sidelight to creative business strategies and consumerism during the Depression.