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Sun 1 Oct, 2006 11:48 am
Subject: 1906
?? THE YEAR 1906??
This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine!
The year is 1906. One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some of the U.S. statistics for the Year 1906:
************************************
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 $2000 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 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
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." ( Shocking? DUH! )
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.A. !
Now I forwarded this from someone else without typing
it myself, and sent it to you and others all over the United States,
possibly the world, in a matter of seconds!
Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.
IT STAGGERS THE MIND, EH.... ?
Interesting stuff, edgar. I was particularly struck by the average life expectancy rate -- 47 years!!! Man, that's right back to what it was in the Middle Ages. The seemingly low average income doesn't mean much: prices were commensurately low. And almost 20 percent of the population could afford to have "at least one full-time servant." Except for the sub-standard medical care, things weren't really all that bad 100 years ago.
Bullshit--"the good ol' days" is always a myth. The most common form of propulsion for commercial traffic in cities was still the horse. The presene of horse manure in the streets meant that the incidence of all childhood diseases was off the chart, and disease in general found a vector in the flies which proliferated to a degree we would find incomprehensible. Urban private stables and public livery stables were a vector for tuberculosis.
You could expect, unless you were very wealthy, and even then you needed to be very lucky, to see one third to half of your children die before attaining adulthood.
Good old days my achin' @ss.
Good old days my achin' @ss.
I believe I was the first in my family to be born in a hospital and delivered by a Doc. On the other hand, the local Doc would come to visit us sick kids and then sit in the kitchen having a brandy with my grandfather before getting in his horse drawn buggy and heading back to town (he was the only jew in the county)
This is why I rarely complain about money.
The average person had to work more than 1/2 hour just for a dozen eggs. That would be like some making about $2.80 an hour today. That what one of those professional types made an hour back then.
I've got it really good.
Thank goodness Diarrhea is no longer the 3rd leading cause of death!
Nobody was actually saying "good old days." What I meant to imply was that things were neither better nor worse than they are today. There are always trade-offs. Medical care was horrible. If you got sick, you could expect to die. People of color (including the indigenous Indians) had virtually no rights whatever. In many Southern states inter-racial marriage was against the law and Indians didn't yet have the right to vote. No aguments there. On the other hand, the pace of life was a lot slower (some people might find this a drawback) and the absence of such things as SSTs and nuclear warheads meant we didn't realy give a flying f**k what all the Tsar in Russia was planning to do. It'd take him a month or more to get Russian troops over here. Sure, the ominpresence of horses meant horseshite everywhere, with the attendant problem of disease-carrying horseflies. No argument about that. On the other hand, the absence of internal combustion engines meant a significantly lowered level of air and water pollution. You'll notice that cancer is not one of the leading causes of death in that chart.
As I said, it's a trade-off, just like all of life is. I don't think people were better off 100 years ago. I also don't think they were any worse off or any unhappier than today's generations.
I was not promoting either period as superior. Just thought it interesting the differences between then and now.
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