The fact that the proverb was still in use seems to indicate that chicken was still percieved as a luxury good at this time? Today nobody says "a chicken in every pot", presumably because chicken is cheap.
I googled a bit and found "Management of Young Chicks" by P.H. Jacobs, from 1888, which says[1] "A half-pound chick sells at $1.50 per pound ... A three-quarter chcik sells at $1 per pound. ... A 1.5 pound chick sells at 50 cents per pound ... A pound chick sells at 75 cents."
Meanwhile the price of round steak in 1890 was apparently 12.3 cents/pound.[2] So at least at this point, chicken seems to have been more expensive than beef.
By the 1930s the prices of beef and chicken seems to have been about equal [3,4]. This makes sense, because apparently the 1920s was the breakthrough time in the chicken industry, seeing both the discovery of Vitamin D (allowing keeping chickens in confinement all year, and letting chickens thrive during winter), and also the first broilers (chickens bread specifically for meat rather than egg production). [5]
So the time when the Hoover campaign made the slogan about "a chicken in every pot" also seems to be just about the time when chicken prices had started to come down and making that feasible. But people were still eating much less chicken than pork or beef [6]; presumably people had still not changed their perception of chicken into an everyday food.
I googled a bit and found "Management of Young Chicks" by P.H. Jacobs, from 1888, which says[1] "A half-pound chick sells at $1.50 per pound ... A three-quarter chcik sells at $1 per pound. ... A 1.5 pound chick sells at 50 cents per pound ... A pound chick sells at 75 cents."
Meanwhile the price of round steak in 1890 was apparently 12.3 cents/pound.[2] So at least at this point, chicken seems to have been more expensive than beef.
By the 1930s the prices of beef and chicken seems to have been about equal [3,4]. This makes sense, because apparently the 1920s was the breakthrough time in the chicken industry, seeing both the discovery of Vitamin D (allowing keeping chickens in confinement all year, and letting chickens thrive during winter), and also the first broilers (chickens bread specifically for meat rather than egg production). [5]
So the time when the Hoover campaign made the slogan about "a chicken in every pot" also seems to be just about the time when chicken prices had started to come down and making that feasible. But people were still eating much less chicken than pork or beef [6]; presumably people had still not changed their perception of chicken into an everyday food.
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=XitDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA24&lpg=P...
[2] http://www.library.yale.edu/thecitycourse/Census_PDFs/USA_Hi...
[3] https://books.google.ca/books?redir_esc=y&id=jzfJ6tNmTvsC&q=...
[4] http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/30sfood.html
[5] http://www.thehappychickencoop.com/a-history-of-chickens/
[6] http://freakonomics.com/2010/12/09/beef-or-chicken-a-look-at...