What a Difference 100 Years Make!

drobbins · 04-18-2008, 11:51 AM

I came across this in another forum and thought it interesting enough to share. I am glad I live in this day and age!

The year is 1907.
One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some of the U.S. Statistics for the Year 1907:
************************************

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

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 $2000 per year,
A dentist made $2,500 per year,
A veterinarian $1,500 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 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 UH ??
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
hadn't been invented yet.

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

Two out of every 10 U.S. adults couldn't 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 pharmacists
Said, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind,
regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian
of health."

There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A. !

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Steve_Pannell · 04-18-2008, 12:05 PM

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

A lot of people must have been following their pharmacist's advice.

RichP · 04-19-2008, 11:05 AM

Quote:

Two out of every 10 U.S. adults couldn't read or write.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

andrew markworthy · 04-19-2008, 12:12 PM

Quote:

Two out of every 10 U.S. adults couldn't read or write.

Today, about 20% of the US population (same goes for the UK population, BTW) is functionally illiterate. There are various definitions of this, but in essence, being functionally illiterate means having a reading ability at or below that of an average eight-year old. If you do a readibility measure of many of the more popular newspapers, you'll find they are aimed at someone with a reading age of about eight years (albeit with a few words that you hope most eight year-olds don't possess). This is not coincidence.

Quote:

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

This is roughly accurate (it depends to some extent on which part of the USA you're considering), but it's worth adding that life expectancy is one of the most misunderstood of statistics. The figure refers to the age at which half of a birth cohort (i.e. people born in the same block of time) have died. A low life expectancy implies to many people that people didn't grow old in times past. This isn't quite true. A very large proportion of the people who died before 47 died during birth, infancy, or early childhood. If you survived childhood and adolescence, your life expectancy in the 1900s was 'only' about seven years less than today. In fact, the older the person you consider the less the difference between the remaining life expectancy of someone in 1900 and someone today. And if you want a pause for thought - even today, outside the developed world most people die before their fifth birthday.

Quote:

Ninety percent of all U.S. doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!

It probably made little difference. Many historians reckon that until the 20th century, medical doctors (even the qualified ones) overall did more harm than leaving the patient untreated or reliant on folk remedies.

Holadem · 04-19-2008, 01:07 PM

Quote:

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower !

Not sure why this deserved an exclamation point? The Eiffel Tower remains a structure of respectable size.

Quote:

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 $2000 per year,
A dentist made $2,500 per year,
A veterinarian $1,500 per year,
And a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

This is a huge pet peeve of mine: People citing utterly meaningless non-inflation adjusted numbers like they are supposed to mean something

--
H

Brandon_T · 04-19-2008, 01:32 PM

He didn't say it meant something, obviously inflation is a huge factor, but just the though of making .22 an hour is pretty amazing, no matter how little things cost, considering that is close to what a North Korean makes now. Its just fun numbers to look at. You know, interesting and fun.

Carl Johnson · 04-19-2008, 04:10 PM

I wonder what things will be like 100 years from now. Will a guy like me be earning a working class wage of $4000 an hour while thinking about how he could have bought a whole months worth of groceries back in the day for less than a candy bar currently costs, or will the world's financial system be completely overhauled?

drobbins · 04-19-2008, 06:15 PM

Quote:

Its just fun numbers to look at. You know, interesting and fun.

Thats the way I was looking at it. Looking back at how it was and wondering how it will be in the next 100 years.

Bryan X · 04-19-2008, 06:42 PM

Sometimes "experts" have trouble even predicting what will happen in the next 10 years. I remember back in 1990 reading an issue of Time magazine which was devoted to the comming Millenium. A lot of the issue dealt with what things would be like in the year 2000. Funny thing was, they completely missed the one thing that has come to dominate our lives-- the Internet. Not once in their predictions of technology did they even come close to envisioning the Internet. It's kind of fun to look back on those predictions and see how wrong they generally were.

Steve_Pannell · 04-19-2008, 06:50 PM

I'm still waiting on flying cars and all we get is soaring gas prices!

RobertR · 04-19-2008, 09:30 PM

Quote:

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

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
A dentist made $2,500 per year,
A veterinarian $1,500 per year,
And a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
This is a huge pet peeve of mine: People citing utterly meaningless non-inflation adjusted numbers like they are supposed to mean something

Well, the rather large difference between what the average worker made back then and a mechanical engineer has meaning to me (being the latter).

That would translate into several hundred thousand per year in today's dollars.

Bryan X · 04-20-2008, 11:00 PM

Where did you get your real wage number of "several hundred thousand", Robert? I checked out the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website which has a calculator for comparing real dollars. It only goes back to 1913, but should be somewhat close to 1907. $5,000 in 1913 is the equivalent of just under $105,000 in 2007 dollars.

For $5,000 in 1907 to be worth even just $200,000 in 2007, that $5,000 in 1907 would have had to "grown" to $9,550 by 1913. I'd guess prices didn't nearly double between 1907 and 1913.

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