100 Years Ago in America

Just something very interesting that I have found and thought I would share, sounds like a completely different world!


Here are some of the U.S. statistics for the Year 1906 (Was published in 2006 I guess):

100 years ago in America:

The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.

Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.

There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California.

With a mere 1.4 million people, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!

The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents per hour.

The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at home.

Ninety percent of all U.S. doctors had no college education. Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard."

Sugar cost four cents a pound.

Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.

Five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:

1. Pneumonia and influenza 2. Tuberculosis 3. Diarrhea 4. Heart disease 5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars.

Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea had not been invented yet.

There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.

Two out of every 10 U.S. adults could not read or write.

Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then the pharmacist said, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health."

Eighteen percent of households in the U.S. had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.

There were about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.


Source


Since 2006 we have the rise of Facebook, Twitter, Smartphones and basically, the rise of super quick information between people that can be made viral in an 'instant', compared to the late 20th century. How do you think the world will look like in 2106? Is it even possible to imagine our existence?


EDIT: Sorry mods for posting it in the Gray area, I wasn't sure on where should I post it.

The US in 2111
..........crickets chirping

Originally posted by jcord
The US in 2111
..........crickets chirping

..........The Peoples Republic of North America......?

Second line.

Haven't you heard? The US is slated for rewilding. We tried to condition you with Life After People and The Road.

Originally posted by Hugues de Payens

Originally posted by jcord
The US in 2111
..........crickets chirping

..........The Peoples Republic of North America......?

Second line.

Federal Reserve did not yet exist !

Some banks issued currency.

reply to post by Shuye

A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.

$11.00 by itself, may not seem like much. It becomes much more, after you factor in that it took Average Joe about 50 hours of work, to earn that $11.00.

The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents per hour.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

After reading this one, I can't stop myself from thinking about drag racing.
Imagine the first car to top out at 35MPH.
The 3 other vehicles in town can only go 25.
Ha!! Eat my dust suckers. I can go 35

Don't forget other events in 1906

April 18 – San Francisco earthquake (estimated magnitude 7.8) on the San Andreas Fault destroys much of San Francisco, California, USA, killing at least 3,000, with 225,000–300,000 left homeless, and $350 million in damages.

en.wikipedia.org...

Events not in America

January 31 – Ecuador-Colombia earthquake (8.8 on the Moment magnitude scale) and associated tsunami.
March 10 – Courrières mine disaster: an explosion in a coal mine in France kills 1,060.
April 7 – Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples.
August 16 – A magnitude 8.2 earthquake in Valparaíso, Chile leaves approximately 20,000 dead.
September 18 – A typhoon and tsunami kill an estimated 10,000 in Hong Kong.

en.wikipedia.org...

And to think the U.S. GDP was over twice that of the nearest nation.

See page 16 and 17, www.nber.org...

Most people lived on farms, around 90% of the population, and there was no refrigeration, so most meat was freshly slaughtered (or it had to be salted for preservation), by the people who raised the animals that they killed in order to eat meat.

Money wasn't nearly as important to standards of living. Most people were fairly self sufficient. They grew their own food, and built a great deal of most of their assets.

All clothes were custom made, purchase of clothes in pre-made styles didn't develop until after WW I. It was the U.S. government who came up with the idea of producing clothes with standard styles in order to clothe the army. Once again the U.S. gov made a huge contribution to the world economy.

1910: Law school tuition was around $170 when the average person made $460 a year.

Same school & program today is $47,500 with the average American salary around $41,000.

source

Originally posted by poet1b

And to think the U.S. GDP was over twice that of the nearest nation.

See page 16 and 17, www.nber.org...

Most people lived on farms, around 90% of the population, and there was no refrigeration, so most meat was freshly slaughtered (or it had to be salted for preservation), by the people who raised the animals that they killed in order to eat meat.

Money wasn't nearly as important to standards of living. Most people were fairly self sufficient. They grew their own food, and built a great deal of most of their assets.

All clothes were custom made, purchase of clothes in pre-made styles didn't develop until after WW I. It was the U.S. government who came up with the idea of producing clothes with standard styles in order to clothe the army. Once again the U.S. gov made a huge contribution to the world economy.

They had clothing markets 100 of years ago and you saying there was no military uniform before the usa? You know how that sounds right?

Towards the end of the 17th century Swedish king Karl XI started to reform his army. He brought in new equipment, new tactics and new formations. Transforming the northern country into a military state much like 18th century Prussia. Karl XI also introduced Sweden's, and possibly the world's, first standard issue army uniform in 1693.

en.m.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by jcord


I think I truly laughed for the first time today. You might not know this, but you provided a young, stressed out, and deathly frightened college student with his first laugh of the day. Bless you.

reply to post by Shuye

Being a bit dirty myself, I do have to admire the bathtub percentage back then. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

reply to post by jcord

I think you'll find Cockroaches can take way more radioactivity than mere crickets. Just sayin'...




Apologies. Gratuitous use of a Fat Freddy's Cat reference. (I think thats where it came from?)

Originally posted by TheOneElectric
reply to post by jcord

 

I think I truly laughed for the first time today. You might not know this, but you provided a young, stressed out, and deathly frightened college student with his first laugh of the day. Bless you.

not for noth'n,

but what are you "deathly frightened" of?

and do you think someone in college a hundred years ago would have had similar "fears".

academics aside of course.

who was President back then anyway?

reply to post by xuenchen


I'm was afraid of the future, I was afraid of not being able to get into a good law school.

I was afraid that what I was doing was putting me on a path of stress. I was afraid my future beyond this day would be study study study work work work 70 years old...enjoy some retirement money and then die. Hell, I was afraid of even being able to get a job in the next five years.

I've decided that I don't want to do that, and I'm not going to be that. I'm not going to give up school or my aspirations for law school, but I'm definitely not going to let what I do as a profession define me or eat up my life. One is not what they "do", we are so much more than that. We are beautiful creatures that should not bind ourselves in the only place where the bindings matter (the mind). We should at least be free within our minds, free to feel happy and light as a feather each and every day. I've decided to take this new viewpoint, of true freedom. When my mind synchronized with this new idea in addition to the amount of work that I put in, freedom will flow.

Anyways, getting away from the hippie language:

To a certain extent, yes, University students were worried. However, they were worried more so about disappointing their legacies. University students mostly came from money back then, and the ones that didn't were mostly worried about keeping a job that could afford them an education. Job wise, I don't think that they were worried, not like we are today. Their futures were full of possibilities (So are ours, but we must be creative in how we go about looking).

As for the President...
William Taft
I don't really know much about the fellow.

reply to post by Shuye


Life seemed terrible in 1911...but hey it worked for them

The U.S. in 2111?

Either "The Book of Eli" or "The Road". I don't know if things will be as bad as those two, but I don't expect them to be exactly great.

My Dad was born in 1890's. He told me lots of stories about life back then. I have to be happy about all the modern conveniences we have: toilets, showers, refrigerators, CH&AC. We have access to more goods and services and better housing, but has the character of America improved or declined?
Working for what you had was virtue - now getting the most for the least is the smart thing.
My folks never owed a cent on any thing. They even build a house debt free. We are snowed under by bills.
Dad was critical of TV. We didn't get one right away and then he monitored it carefully. I still prefer computer and radio, but some people can veg-out in front of a TV for years.
We sat and ate dinner together, even talked. Dad read to me often and we all gardened together. We had no generation gap back then.
We had many natural remedies and medical care was reasonable.
We had strong families, strong character, a strong sense of who we were and why we were here. I don't see that much any more.
Are the perks worth the deterioration they produced??

I wonder if they were happier even though they lived in relative adversity. Unfortunately happiness levels were not measured until recently in the USA and so no comparison is available.
www.sciencedaily.com...

Truly amazing article. I would absolutely love to go 100 years into the past (pre-WW1) and live life there. Being surrounded with all the modern things of today (internet, convenience, oppression from the rich, etc), it would be hard to imagine what it was like back then.

about half the things you listed there have changed because of INFLATION.
interesting list btw.