How much is "1-2 cents worth" of yeast in an old recipe?
I have no idea about historic yeast prices or measuring units, but there are typical ranges for yeast, and you are pretty flexible on the amount you use. 

In bakers' percentages, 2% is a standard (for traditional wet yeast). You use more for rich doughs and short rises, and less for long rises. Your recipe is quite rich and short raised, so my gut feeling would be to start with 5% for the first batch and adjust in the next batch if needed. 5% of half a pound is 11,34 g, which converts to 3,8 g of dry yeast. 

You could in principle chuck in the whole 7 g package as Cynetta suggests, but that gets into the range where you get the side effects of too quickly fermented yeast, which consist of off tastes due to ammonia and thiols. You might like that taste (many people whose grandmas baked on the "more is more" principle are accustomed to it), in which case just go for it. Else stay with the lower amount, and give it time to rise well (probably blubb, if it is as liquid as I imagine it from the recipe). 

As a side note, you might want to reduce the eggs - home laid eggs in 1922 weren't the 55 g sold nowadays as a standard. Three instead of four would give you a more authentic taste.