My colleague and I are researching the origin of the town common and he came up with this list of expenses from a surveyor in 1911. This screen capture is taken from the Annual Report of that year. You may notice the expenses went over budget.
Historic boundaries and conservation efforts.
That's around $2900 of today's money. Also, noting that Charlie Brown was one of the surveyors helpers.
And W. M. Chaplin did the records research. Charlie Chaplin's dyslexic brother?
The guy providing the stones gets 50% more than the surveyor, and that CAD fellow; Man, he scored taking almost the entire project budget.
Even in 1911 engineers were trying to estimate survey budgets? 😏
I want to know: Did the surveyor get paid for the extra work, or did he have to eat the extra?
No, it's probably amount of time spent. I doubt 110 years ago that a surveyor was a highly paid individual. We are far more productive than 40 years ago let alone 110 years ago, yet we don't charge really for that advanced productivity. That's why Smith introduced the bill to make the 32 hour week standard with no reduction in pay.