It went something like this:

A farmboy was hired on to pick corn. The farmer offered to pay him a ear of corn the first day, doubling it each day until all the corn was picked. 2 ears the second day, 4 ears, then 8 ears.

The young boy agreed and by the time 30 days had passed, he owned the whole crop and probably the whole farm.

This was told back when I was a kid, so I decided to do some figuring to see just how that all played out, in 1965 terms.

If we continue this doubling pattern for 30 days, at the end, you would have a total of 5,368,709 ears of corn.

On average, an ear of corn weighs around 0.3 to 0.5 pounds, depending on the variety and size of the corn. So for this exercise let’s say each ear weighs 0.4 pounds.

The yield would have been 1074 tons of corn. The average price of a ton of corn in 1965 was approximately $68.35 or $73,408 for the farm-boy’s efforts.

$2,447 per day for picking corn or $244.70 per hour for 10 hours a day. Not a bad wage I’d say for 1965 or 2023 either.