I woke up this morning somewhat pensive and reflective. Laying in bed for a while my mind drifted to the past, the long ago past when America was 100 years younger. What was life like back in 1909? What were the milestones that defined that era and how would it bring us closer to where we are today? More importantly, what have we learned since then and what clues are embedded in a time where we were developing as an industrial nation.
As historians and educators have said for centuries, "History repeats itself." What, then can we see as history has unfolded over the last 100 years and where do we go from here? As once the fastest growing nation economically, technologically and educationally, we have morphed in ways that may seem staggering while we have also declined in these same areas of growth while other countries are gaining on us, surpassing us at warp speed.
These thoughts propelled me to take a look back at the year 1909 for academics and look at life in America in a simpler time, where less was more; where life was far different than it is now. The evolution of society in America has changed by leaps and bounds and has brought us to a crossroads of existence frought with unease, insecurity, financial fears, social and political divides.
For so many of us, the uncertainty of our futures lies in decades of change, technology replacing once needed man power, outsourcing of most industries, once thriving US manufacturing and downsizing everywhere we turn.
Let's take a look at life in 1909, just for the heck of it. So much has happened in the last 100 years it boggles the mind.
The Model T Ford or the "Tin Lizzie" first rolled off the assembly line.
THE YEAR 1909 - Some statistics from a century ago:
A postage stamp was 2 cents.
Radio and Vaudeville were all the rage.
Pittsburgh won the World Series.
From 1909 to 2009 world population soared from 1.7 billion to 6.4 billion.
The average life expectancy was 47 years!
Only 14 % of homes had bath tubs.
Only 8% of homes had telephones.
There were only 8,000 automobiles with only 144 miles of paved roads.
Maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
Tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.
Average wage was 22 cents an hour.
The average worker earned between $200 and $400 per year.
More than 95% of births took place at home.
90 % of all doctors had NO college education.
Eggs cost 14 cents a dozen.
Coffee was 15 cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a MONTH and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo!
The five leading causes of death were: Pneumonia & Influenza, Tuberculosis, Diarrhea, Heart disease and Stroke.
OTHER FACTS FROM 1909
The American flag had only 45 stars.
The population of Las Vegas was only 30!
There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write!
Only 6 % of all Americans had a high school education.
Marijuana, heroin and morphine were all over the counter at your local drugstore and were known to be medicinal and "perfect guardians of health!"
There were only 230 reported murders in the entire country!
NONE OF THE FOLLOWING HAD BEEN INVENTED YET:
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, ice tea, zippers, tinkertoys, toasters, band-aids, hair dryers, traffic lights, Wheaties, blenders, bread slicers, bubble gum, Penicillin, sunglasses, ballpoint pens, Monopoly, trampolines, shopping carts, nylon stockings, duct tape, Tupperware, bikinis, disposable diapers, kitty litter, Velcro and milk cartons. The list goes on and on...
1909 EVENTS THAT MADE THE HEADLINES:
* German Researcher Paul Enrich found a cure for syphilis.
* Shackleton's expedition reported finding the magnetic South Pole.
* The NAACP was founded. (Nat'l Assoc. for the Advancement of Colored People)
* Construction on the Titantic had begun.
* The Roman Catholic Church named Joan of Arc a saint.
* The first credit union in the US was established.
* President William Taft took over the reins of government from Teddy Roosevelt.
POPULAR BOOKS
"The Wonderful World of OZ," by Frank Baum
"Call of the Wild," by Jack London
LEISURE TIME for most Americans was spent in family get-togethers, baseball, picnics and long Sunday drives, mostly by horse and buggy. Most evenings, families gathered for sing-alongs around the piano.
***
Times sure have changed. Can we even imagine how they will change over the next 100 years?!
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Comments
Somehow I'm comforted by the fact that the Wizrd of Oz sticks out!
"LEISURE TIME for most Americans was spent in family get-togethers, baseball, picnics and long Sunday drives, mostly by horse and buggy. Most evenings, families gathered for sing-alongs around the piano."
Because that was a time when families, friends and communities were all working for the common good of man and not worrying about voting for America's next idol star or texting while driving down an expressway doing 87 miles an hour. Life was about others, no self!
Great post
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Rated and very enjoyable to read. No, we haven't come so far have we Cath?
It’s funny. I know everyone, just like me, "wish we could return to the simpler days,” but when I look at your statistics, not me. Those days were not simple by any means. No way in hell.
I’ve learned to love my A/C car too much, ice tea, sunglasses and the fact that doctors were most times veterinarians or received their doc status from OJT is even scarrier than the docs today.
As much as we complain about the woes we have, I like living beyond 47 years. Hell, in 1909 my grave would even look old by now. That in itself is a sobering thought.
I’ll be thinking twice before making that comment again. We may live in a complex world, but it's a far better world than they had in 1909.
And to add a little more sobriety, we would be facing WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq. Somethings, it seems, we never seem to learn from history.
Awesome post Cathy. Thank you.
Ok, enough of my bad attitude: let's not forget where women were, most of the time, in 1909!
Roger, yes! Love the Wizard of OZ, book, movie, plays, the whole nine yards of it's fanciful and meaningful messages.
MAWB - Thanks and yes, it's crazy how far we came from the horse and buggy days! And..."lions, tigers and bears!" "Oh my!"
Mr. Mustard - Thanks! Yes, we are sure showing the love for the Wizard of OZ today!
RonP01 - So true! An organization that has stood the test of time!
gmgaston - Another basic truism! Family, friends, community, is still so sorely needed for the intrinsic values that we long for as humans.
Greg - Yeah, some synchronosity there, buddy!
Trig - Thanks darlin'!
Robin - Thanks and a big ditto there! xo
Lea - You are most welcome and thanks!
It just amazes me how much as changed and how much more will change during our lifetimes. Staggers my mind. xo
Owl_Says_Who - I do not perceive any bad attitide. Right on, Owl. There are ways of looking at everything and I was not trying to say that the good old days are better than our current status quo. I am just stupified over the overwheming changes over the past century and those to come. Thanks for poking your cute little beak into this discussion of sorts.
I am grateful for this forum in real time, 2009, that offers such diversity and generous dialogue. You're all appreciated so much.
Still, it's hard not to say that it is an incredible time to be alive. Just the advancement I've seen in my short life have been beyond believe. We as humans are capable of such accomplishments, yet still murder, rape and maim each other in such horrible ways. Yes, it is truly sobering.
I always wanted to be born then, so by the thirties and forties, I would be out clubbing.
Very interesting as usual,
Rated.
Also, thank you for this post.
Michael Rogers - Thanks, Michael for your comment and wisdom.
Thoth - Born in any era, you were destined to be a party animal, right?!
OWL - You are so lucky to have had a grand dad that told you stories of his lifetime for you to savor and share with family and friends. Post it!
Ren Lady - You are very welcome! Thx!
LadyMiko - Seriously! But then big pharma wouldn't make the big bucks manufacturing chemical drugs for public consumption. God forbid we should reap the fruits of planet earth and find positive use from natural, organic, medicinal plants to cure what ails us!
One thing that stuck out at me was the leading causes of death;
"The five leading causes of death were: Pneumonia & Influenza, Tuberculosis, Diarrhea, Heart disease and Stroke."
In most parts of the world, those are STILL the leading causes of death.
Otoh, re-reading - Most evenings, families gathered for sing-alongs around the piano. Not so realistic - what % of families could afford pianos? In my family there would have been farm chores, house chores, food chores, endless kid chores (birth control was primitive, rare and, in most places, illegal) and then fall into bed dead tired so you could be up before the sun to do it all over again.
Faith - Thanks much and I do concur! If only we could blend the best of both eras what an idyllic existence we'd have today.
Phaedo - Great comment and very understandable. Would love to hear more of your impressions of WWII! That would make a great post!
Procopius - Wow. ain't that the truth! I do perceive, we are, however, in for some cataclismic changes over the next 100 years, especially technologically and in the melding of class structure. Thanks for your thought provoking comment.
Note: The Leisure Time statement was part of my research of that year and not of my own initiating...however, having said that...let me say first, as corny as this will sound to some, my family grew up surrounded by music, a mother who played the piano daily and we did sing around the piano quite a bit, tho not daily. Music and large doses of it, were a daily course. TV was always very limited but music was a plenty. I am so grateful for that exposure and still immerse myself in that ilk as often as possible and daily. Maybe it is just a very musically inclined sort, but another quick story to share on this subject, even amazes me still. My youngest daughter, 20 and her very musical, rock singer boyfriend, were over at my house about 3 weeks ago. He plays piano/keyboard, guitar and drums. Oh yeah, I have written posts about his band, recently...
Anyway, our seldom used piano in the living room, as all my kids are grown and gone, is eye candy to him and when he's over he always sits down to play for an hour or more. This occasion, daughter and I sat near him, singing along while he played songs from his new CD (coming soon!). This went on for an hour and a half and was absolutely wonderful and yes, rare, unless you are a musician, I suppose. It made me more appreciative of the strong musical foundation given to us by our parents and that I have kept the importance of music in my daily life. I do believe there is always time for music, if that is your bent. I can even play it in the background while I type away on this post, prefer it to TV most of the day, play it for my grandkids when they are with me (we even sing and dance) and into the evenings to soothe the weary soul after a long day of working or whatever. "I've got the music in me!"
But to your point, there are a lot of other things that can fill a day; one's individual priorities and preferences and long work days, so I understand what you are conveying. Sure do appreciate your perspective and comment very much.
Also, this made me think of that great PBS reality series, "1900 House" and its successors (Pioneer House, Colonial House, etc) in which people live as if they were in the year (and place) assigned. Fascinating viewing.
I guess I don’t think of the family singing around the piano in the same way as “music”. In the same way, the family hanging out at the kitchen table with a beer is not the same as “conversation” even though everyone’s talking. In my family (of birth, not my own) both would sound a lot like bullfrogs croaking, be as musical and have as much meaning.
There was plenty of music in my own home as I was raising my children. I could go on forever about my kids and music. (No. Seriously. for.freaking.ever.) When my oldest two got serious about studying music, luckily, as it turns out, we did not have space or funds for a piano. I say luckily because it gave us the chance to learn that one of the girls had been born to play the violin and the other to play the flute. And though those instruments were their specialties, they were not exclusive. One or the other of them became skilled to some degree in cello, trombone, bass, drums, sax, guitar and piano. As far as I remember now. There could have been more.
I have had the (probably) unique experience of hours long concerts of a Saint Saens violin concerto “accompanied” by Led Zeppelin at full volume as my daughter practiced for her 11th grade recital. (Is it obvious that she was playing SS live and LZ was blasting from her boom box?) When she would get to a difficult spot in the concerto, she would lower the volume on the boom box, work out the violin problem, and crank LZ back up when she was ready to move on.
So, yes, I understand better now. There was a wide range of music in my home, too Just no groups standing around the piano, singing. :)
(My own attempts at singing along have always been met with cries of horror from the children. Maybe that colors my attitude, too!)
In a geography quiz sponsored by the National Geographic Society and given to more than 3,000 adults age 18 to 24 years old in nine countries, Americans displayed an embarrassing ignorance. Out of 56 questions -- the same given to each of the nine countries participating -- test-takers from the United States averaged 23 correct answers. The score gave the United States a grade of D and put us second to last in the ranking, just inching past Mexico. Sweden topped the list with an average of 40 correct answers.
You might conclude from our abysmal score that the questions were terribly difficult, involving the location of some obscure river or dying inland sea. Not quite. When given an unlabeled map of the Middle East and Asia, only 12 to 14 percent of the American respondents were able to find any one of the following countries: Afghanistan, Israel, Iran or Iraq. We may soon be engaged in a war with a nation that a large majority of available recruits can't find on a map. Good thing our bombs are smart.
And the news gets worse. The attacks on the World Trade Center apparently didn't spark enough curiousity for nearly half of these young adults to bother with the buildings' location. Forty-nine percent of the American respondents failed to properly identify New York on a map of the United States where the state boundaries were outlined. And, on a map of the world, 11 percent of the Americans couldn't pinpoint the United States.
Set between two great oceans, our country has historically leaned toward insularity. But the results of this geography suggest that while Americans are not uneducable, they just don't seem to care enough to understand the world around them.
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At some point we got an electronic keyboard. Both girls were also competitive swimmers and at the top of the academic scale. There's only so much time! The idea of owning real piano never came on the horizon again. Since they lived in the band rooms at any school they attended, they always had access to a piano. (I wonder if it mattered at all that I am not a huge fan of piano music.)
Now, in their 30's, #1 plays in two community orchestras in the LA area and #2 teaches flute privately. Both were accepted to respectable music performance college programs but decided not to major in music.
Like I said. For. Freaking. Ever. And I haven't even touched on Boy and music. Maybe I'll use my own blog for the music story this weekend. (The Immortal Dog - or as Boy called her tonight, The Dog Who Won't Die - sure isn't going to keep the blog going.)
Your adults kids sound so musically gifted and that's awesome! I am in awe of your daughter who plays the trombone! My girls don't play instruments any longer and only the youngest is actively involved in music theater and majoring in dance at CalArts in Valencia. I took cello in the fifth grade and it was really tough! I would love to read a post by you so please keep me in the loop. I'll get you on my fave list so I will be notified when you do post a new one. My older daughters are in their mid-thirties! Sounds like we have some things in common. Even music, on various levels. Just not the effin piano! Got it! ;)
Thanks for this, Cathy.
Monte
Or,
the other day. I love looking back.
Instead of cranking the Tin-Lizzie?
We blokes are dizzy from "progress."
Soon?
Maybe we will be less cranky id we look deeply.
Are we making progress
or,
driving headfirst with a ipod, cell phone, and headed for the proverbial cliff. The same arrogant money-grabbers who make the messes are deluded. They will solve Nothing. Maybe buy a Ox? I listened to some old Amish spirituals in my truck. The lyrics won't hurt you. The old hymn -song was melodious. The words went:`If you want to be on the road to Paradise you stay behind the oxen and keep being honest.
You/me plow ahead.
Times change rapidly.
A Plutocrat may know?
Nature can't be fooled!
Thanks. If Ya were a Chinese immigrant who comes to American to live the American Dream?
They best buy a dictionary?
They best look up tutti- fruity!
Now I feel like a piece of taffy!
Well. Maybe after Easter we will feel more confident that these snobbish pundits are loons who will lose their teeth from gorging on the Easter Bunny. I heard Clinton's gang had $240.00 steak in Vegas. Maybe on Yom Kippur in the future the Reaper will makes things clear to greedy thugs who chose to sell their dull dud souls.
In the past the belief was:`The Accountant that matters is not a celestial Santa. At some future Date there will be Breaking News! Everything has not spoken about deed of good/evils. Judgement.
It's a personal journey. I read that.
A person can choose to be the fool.
Consider Immortality. Wager? No!
Great researched post. good keeper!
No Grim Reaper? Good night Wild day!
MJwycha - thanks very much for coming by to see this!