The year is 1910 One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes! Here are some

[activa8tr]

The year is 1910
One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some statistics for the Year 1910:

************ ********* ************

The average life expectancy for men was 47 years.

Fuel for this car was sold in drug stores only.

Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower !

The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour.

The average US 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 took place at HOME.

Ninety percent of all 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.

The Five leading causes of death were:

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

The American flag had 45 stars.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was only 30!

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented yet.

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

Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write and

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 had at least one full-time servant or domestic
help.

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


I am now going to forward this to someone else without typing it myself.
From there, it will be sent to others all over the WORLD - all in a matter of
seconds!

Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.

IT STAGGERS THE MIND

[cali]

1. Why does it stagger the mind?

[TwilightGardener]

3. Ladies washing their hair once a month does stagger my mind.

Gross.

[pipi_k]

13. I feel all itchy, myself...

But really, a few hundred years or so back, it was common for people to have only three baths in their entire lives...

at birth

when they got married

when they died



Now I'm double itchy...

[TwilightGardener]

18. Speaking of itchy, one must have been very well acquainted with

lice and fleas and ticks. Yuck.

[pipi_k]

27. I suspect that people of all classes were...

Equal opportunity scratching... :7



Also, I read that it was pretty common for even the rich to have dirt and filth under their finger and toe nails.


OK, can you imagine...hot summer days...heavy silks and brocades...sweating like horses and no soap and water used on the, er, smellier parts...

Those "Romance" novels about life during Medieval days...they don't sound so romantic anymore...

:puke:

[nadinbrzezinski]

43. Yes, that was a common problem

[enough]

15. Well, to MY mind, that life-expectancy number is staggering.

Think of what a difference that would make in everybody's expectations of (and for) life.

Maybe it's just staggering because I'm so old (66) that 100 years ago does not seem very long for such huge changes.

I remember when we used to run out into the yard every time an airplane went over, it was that unusual. And we weren't out in the wilderness, just in the country not far west of Philadelphia.

[surrealAmerican]

23. That number is likely the average from birth, and ...

... reflects the rather high rate of infant mortality at the time. Men who survived past their childhood tended to live rather longer than 47 years.

[truedelphi]

30. Very good point.

And here in Lake County, way back in 1810, The Native Americans lived to be 95 or 100.

They made pools under trees for their fish farms, wove incredible baskets, and in general lived a good life. Plenty of wild game - quail, and other birds, plus fish, rabbit, deer, elk, bear.

Then someone named Sutter discovered gold, and the end was nigh for a lifestyle.

By the eighteen nineties, there was a bounty on their heads. White people could make ten bucks for shooting an "Injun."

[enough]

47. Hey thanks to 3 DUers for clarifying this. I see the what y'all are saying and

I am no longer staggered.

[SoCalDem]

66. and the number of young women who died in childbirth

:(

[Spike89]

31. It is amazing, but misleading

Averages can really fool people. The huge jump in life expectancy was mostly made up by improved infant mortality. Think of it in terms of a typical farm family back then. Say they had 5 pregnancies, but only 3 children survived until they were more than a year old. Even if all three of those children lived to 80, the average lifespan of the 5 kids would be about 48.

Even in 1910, if you survived into your late 40s or 50s (past childbirthing for women and the most dangerous jobs for men) you could expect to live almost as long as people do today.

It is impressive that so many fewer babies die at birth, but there has really only been incremental improvements in healthcare/lifespan otherwise.

[spotbird]

79. How much did antibiotics contribute

to life expectancy?

[monmouth]

2. My mother was born in 1910. Wow, thanks for posting..n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. So was mine. In Leeds, England.

[Touchdown]

37. My Grandpa too. He's still alive. He reaches 100 in September.

He came down with Alzheimer's recently and we had to put him in a nursing home, so here's hoping he makes it to September!

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

52. Dad was three years away. Mom, five. -nt

[izquierdista]

4. Another factoid

How about the price of housing in 1910? Take a look here: http://www.thevictorianhouse.com/ebooks/southwest1003.htm

[activa8tr]

8. Good one! Thanks!

Real Estate agents and banks ruined the housing market, making it so inflated for all of us.

[cutlassmama]

5. The "no bathtub" thing is disgusting.

[BrklynLiberal]

7. I think there were a lot of "bath houses" at the time ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathhouse_Row

http://www.ohiostatepress.org/books/Complete%20PDFs/Williams%20Washing/02.pdf
Public baths in urban America 1840-1920

[activa8tr]

9. For children? NO! there was a bucket

and a coal or wood stove to put hot water in...sponge baths...

Our obsession with cleanliness, probably great for health, was not so much an issue back then.

People used bowls daily with a teakettle of how water to shave wash face, neck and arms up to elbow.

Men wore beards, or shaved in the same bowl after their family had washed face and arms-to-elbow...

Coal miners, farmers, and other outside workers looked "dirty" as a proud sign of their being a working man.

[BrklynLiberal]

10. True. The bathhouses may have been only an urban phenomenon

[activa8tr]

26. The majority of Americans lived on farms back then...only a few

large cities on the East Coast and Midwest...even the "suburbs" were agricultural towns where a few more educated people and shop-owners went to the big cities on trains to work.

[TwilightGardener]

12. The smell must have been horrendous. Srsly, I had to follow a little old lady

around the supermarket yesterday (just kept running into her in every aisle), and she about knocked me over with BO. Can't imagine people not scrubbing their pits and crotches every day, no deodorant, same underwear, Sears catalog as TP...I love history, but I'm mostly glad for the times we live in.

[activa8tr]

24. Your great grandparents were like that lady...

And your grandparents were conceived by people like this, and your parents might have ...

Think about it... what year were your grandparents born in?

[TwilightGardener]

28. They were all born between 1906 and 1919, or thereabouts.

I will say my grandmas and grandpas never smelled like BO--just perfume and BenGay and cigars and mothballs and Dapper Dan or whatever hair tonic men used back in the day.

[activa8tr]

34. My 75 year old sister is now a Great Grandma.. but she showers any

day she will see her great grandchildren! And probably 4-5 times a week in general anyway.

[Hekate]

73. Not any of my grandparents, thanks. They were all born in the 1880s...

Mom told me her dad believed his whole life that it was unnecessary and possibly unhealthy to have a tub-bath more than once a week. When I said "yuck" she said he was very clean, as he bathed at the bathroom sink every day.

Housewives a century ago worked hard physically to keep everything going. Laundry all by itself was very arduous, and could easily take the whole day, even with a hand-powered washing machine with wringer. It was no wonder a wife would want a hired girl if she could afford one.

The most wonderful innovation of the 20th century had to have been making the electric washing machine available and readily affordable. Not the automobile -- the washing machine. It is so easy for us now to put off doing the laundry until the last shirt, then do all the loads one after the other, tossing them in the dryer. How convenient to decide to freshen up the blankets off the beds -- imagine how seldom you would want to do it if it meant wringing out a wet heavy blanket by hand or by feeding it into a hand-cranked wringer. Very few of us have a legitimate excuse any more for wearing dirty or smelly clothing.

(I think the little old lady referenced in the post you responded to has some sort of problem, either homelessness or slipping mental faculties.)

Hekate

[WolverineDG]

11. they had tubs

just not the ceramic tubs we use today. their tubs were made of wood & hauled in on Saturday nights. Turn your nose up at only washing once a week & your hair once a month, but when you've got to haul water & heat it instead of just turning on a tap, bathing is something you can't do everyday.

dg

[virgogal]

21. Disgusting? There are millions of people in the world that don't have

bathtubs now.

[csziggy]

22. My Mom grew up in a house with no indoor plumbing

Central Alabama 1920-30. She and her brothers paid for a bathroom to be installed in their parents' house after WWII. At the same time they had the house wired for electricity. They took baths in a tub on the back porch when it was warm enough, sponge baths inside when it was not.

[jwirr]

25. There was also a metal tub that you sat in with your legs hanging

over the edge. No modern bathtubs and running water. Edited to say it was the same tub they did the laundry in. There were also long ones you could stretch out your legs in.

[Name removed]

61. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BrklynLiberal]

6. No corporate farms, women couldn't vote, less cancer, more "consumption"

Trains were able to get you almost anywhere, no income tax, no minimumn wage, sweatshops, no 5 day workweeks, no paid vacations, no paid sick days, no unions, more family farmers, no commercial dog food, no safe water, no interstate highways, no safe septic systems for waste, no TV, no Radio, not a lot of electric lights, no fast food.

Guess progress has its good points and it s bad points..

[DBoon]

20. sounds like a republican utopia

Is the the world Glen Beck wants to bring back?

[jwirr]

33. Add no indoor toilets to the no septic systems. Little outhouses.

[bdamomma]

67. but they lived with it or without it all and I bet they were happier too.

now they are saying the pharmaceutical companies are making incredible money off people who pop pills just to cope.

[Uncle Joe]

14. I wonder if there was a causality between these two?

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.!

Thanks for the thread, activa

[activa8tr]

19. Well, I love the concept, a "fix" at the drug store for $1 or less

for all of us, drug of choice.

But there were no cars, no paved freeways, no widespread gangs in cities, no sales of automatic rifles in the millions.

I bet there were a lot of women who died at the hand of their husband and never were reported. Not to mention a few million rapes.

[Uncle Joe]

29. I agree regarding the likely underreporting of domestic violence, but there

were gangs, the Mafia coming here in the late 19th century.

Of course those gangs, multiplied, were greatly enriched and violence escalated during Prohibition so I imagine the same held true for drugs as alcohol, at least to some extent.

[activa8tr]

36. That immigration was limited to a few cities in the Northeast, largely and

the big boost for the Mafia was prohibition in the 20's !

Italians and Irish had little control of major service industries when they first arrived. They worked hard, mostly at shit jobs.

[Spike89]

40. The murder statistics are pretty shaky

There was obviously no FBI and no government tracking of murder statistics. I daresay that the rate of unreported murders would be as shocking a figure as most of the other statistics from that time. I have no way of knowing, but I'm guessing the actual number wasn't terribly far from the per capita numbers of today. Lynchings, spousal murder, even gang killings were routinely covered up.

[activa8tr]

58. Agree, and in rural America, few murders would be discovered. Lots of

places to hide the body.

[jwirr]

38. And many died of having one baby after another because there

was no birth control.

[malaise]

17. Nice thread

Rec

[d_r]

32. my Grandmother was born in 1910

[Dr Morbius]

35. Hmm. Eggs have gotten cheaper.

Eggs were $.14 a dozen, and the average US wage was $.22 an hour. What's the average wage today, over $10.00 an hour, surely, and eggs are less than a buck a dozen. Sugar then was $.04 a pound, and now is about $2.00 a pound, so it's just about as expensive today as it was then in terms of labor needed to buy it. But eggs are cheaper. Hmm.

[TwilightGardener]

39. Factory chickens, now. Stacked up and bred to lay eggs like crazy.

[4_TN_TITANS]

63. That caught my attention too....

In those days backyard flocks were everywere, why would eggs be so expensive? That price must have been a big city price.

[Touchdown]

41. I'm willingto bet that 200 murder number is white murders only.

back then... Why report when black people get killed/lynched? or Irish, Indian, Italian, Asian, hispanic... etc.?

And amazing that the snake oil/cure alls were all the rage back then when Doctors went to poorly educating schools or just made shit up, like the Heroine thing. Infant circumcision was starting to be pushed by these uneducated doctors at this time for "cleanliness" ... bath time once a week (check), claimed to have cured "Tuberculosis" (check), and hospital births were starting to be sold to the public (check). Amazing in 2010, we can have a thread about that where some people "trust doctors over random internet guy", when this is the time and how the practice got started, and much of those same ridiculous claims are still believed.

[JustinL]

55. yes, the murder numer is utter rubbish

From page 277 of the 1916 edition of The World Almanac:

The average number of murders in the United States annually during the twenty years from 1885 to 1904 was 6,597. In 1896 the murders reached high-water mark, 10,662, and in 1895 there were 10,500.

For 1912 the Census Bureau reported the number of homicides in the registration area of the United States--63.2 per cent of the total population--as 3,954 and in 1913 as 4,567.

According to the Schaffer Library of Drug Policy, the homicide rate per 100,000 population in 1910 was 4.6. This compares to a rate of 5.5 reported by the Census Bureau for 2005.

[old mark]

75. I think that would be "respectable" white people - no immigrants, Jews,

Irish, leftists, Indians, blacks or Chinese, nor gang members or people who "vanished".
The police were pretty much a uniformed gang all their own, the press and politicians were either drunken bufoons or criminals (BIG change there, huh?).
Cities had child prostitutes on the streets, and gangs of homeless kids making a living however they could. There were neighborhoods in many cities where the police would not go at all, and often the unknowing would venture there and never be found again. The "middle class" was hardly even a dream, the poor were extremely poor and the rich ran everything.


mark

[nadinbrzezinski]

42. Let me add a few

the working day in some places was still fourteen hours a day\ seven days a week. Vacation? You kid me.

Children still worked in the mines and at a few factories, as well as dangerous occupations.

Organizing a union was criminal in many a places... and strikes were broken with police and at times guard units.

Though public school was mandatory, in theory... well you covered that well with literacy rates.

The most dangerous job in the United States was ... MINING... some things really do not change.

Oh and there was no minimum wage to be seen anywhere and employers believed that paying workers a good wage led to drinking and betting and other non-christian behaviors.

Yep, some things have changed, and a few would luuuvee to return to this state of things.

[ejbrush]

44. I plugged the money numbers into an inflation calculator...

And the numbers aren't too far off from today. Food costs were higher, housing was cheaper, common labor wages were lower, and the professional wages were suprisingly close. http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

[roamer65]

48. Gold has done well.

A common 1910 $20 gold piece is now worth around $1300-$1500.

The inflation calc says something worth $20 in 1910 would cost $454 now.

[raouldukelives]

56. As have tobacco baseball cards

You could have picked up a few a Honus Wagner baseball cards in 1910. Last I heard one sold for 2.2 million.

[Boojatta]

45. "Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help."

That reminds me of this thread.

[jimlup]

46. The nucleus of the ATOM was UNKNOWN except to Rutherford who hadn't published yet

Rutherford didn't publish his famous paper on the deflection of alpha particles by the nucleus until 1911! The progress that has been made in atomic/nuclear/particle physics in the last 100 years is truly remarkable.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

49. The Indianapolis Speedway was ONE year old.

The first Indy 500 was one year away.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

50. The Coca-Cola Company was incorporated.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

51. Albert Einstein was in the process of developing the General Theory of Relativity.

It would become ready in two years. The Special Theory of Relativity (which dealt only with constant-velocity movement) had been finished five years prior.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

53. The seventh World Series was held. The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Chicago Cubs.

Who had won just two years prior, but hey, no biggie, another win would come quickly, right? Right?

[Beacool]

54. I love history and I would have loved to have time traveled.

But as some have mentioned, the lack of indoor plumbing and general hygiene would have driven me batty. It would be terrible not to be able to bathe on a daily basis. I'm well aware that millions of people still don't have running water, but back then it was the majority of the world.

;(

[bdamomma]

68. me too, a time machine to go back just to see what it was like.

and then come back to present day, and see how far we have come. Progress has its good points and bad. No DU back then! (a sad fact)

[Beacool]

69. Yep, you said it!!!

:-)

[Art_from_Ark]

57. The American flag had 46 stars in 1910

The 46th state, Oklahoma, had been admitted 3 years earlier, in 1907.

[activa8tr]

59. Very true! So maybe some of these facts are a little off-base...I didn't

check them all.

[Posteritatis]

64. Those 144 miles of paved roads maybe meant it took awhile for the news to spread? (nt)

[blindpig]

60. Another difference:

There was a vibrant workers movement in this country. Communists, socialists and anarchists fought, and sometimes died, for some of the things which we have taken for granted, at least until recently. The 40 hour week, unemployment insurance, support for the elderly, the right to organize the workplace, these were some of the 'outrageous' demands of those 'radicals'. It took another quarter century and a collapse of capitalism for those demands to be realized. The post WWII resurgence of capitalism and the concomitant Red Scare hounded those people from the public stage, progress slowed and now has reversed. The crushingly dominant position of Capital in our society is now about back where it was 100 years ago. What does that tell ya?

[activa8tr]

62. Labor Unions!!! The folks that brought you the "weekend"!!

[bdamomma]

65. but I bet they were happy.

[Tx4obama]

70. Kick n/t

[Hardrada]

71. I had no idea of some of this. My grandparents born

in the 1890's were in the 6% graduating from high school (the Lutheran equivalent, an Academy). I had thought HS was more widepsread. Now I understand the rather small numbers in the old HS yearbooks! The working classes dropped out after Confirmation or grade school.

[Hekate]

74. My grandma went to teacher's college and became a teacher, but grandpa had an 8th grade education

All my grandparents were born in the 1880s. Both of my grandfathers had an 8th grade education, which was sufficient to enter the work force and, if you were smart and hardworking, make a good living for a family over time, which they both did. Grandpa C joined the Navy and became an officer; later he traveled as a salesman for the Gas Company. Grandpa W had his own Ford dealership, and later a Realty Company that he partnered in with grandma. All their kids graduated high school and many went on to college -- changing times.

I think most working class young people a century ago were expected to join the work force fairly early and contribute their salary to the family. IIRC, universal high school education that was actually required by law was *in part* a mechanism for reducing the competition in the labor force by lengthening childhood dependency.

As time went on, high school was looked on more and more as a necessary prelude to adult life, and teenagers were expected to be non-adults. Strange, isn't it, when so very many teenagers today find school such a bad fit that they drop out anyway, without the skills to find a meaningful entry level job that they can work their way up in? And that society hasn't seemed to figure out a way to accommodate this adolescent restlessness with apprenticeship programs that will help them to do so?

Hekate

[Hardrada]

77. My grandfather and one of his older brothers became dentists.

What happened is that my great-grandfather came over from Norway.After some really superhuman effort got a farm of 700+ acres which was a huge farm for 1890. So second generation went into the professions or married college teachers. A fast rise in social status since great grandather came ove with hope and determination. The farm remained in our family until about ten years ago. You know I don't notice a lot of people from my sort of background posting on DU.

As to high schools, we have some special programs at ours for students not interested in college and who want to have some marketable skills.

[Hardrada]

72. And yet this was the world of Mark Twain, Henry James, Jack London

and Charles Ives! And, earlier on, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.

[Massacure]

76. Two statistics conflict

If the average wage was 22 cents an hour, that equates to $457 a year based on the 2080 hour work year. That doesn't fall in between the statistic of the worker making 200 to 400 dollars a year.

[iris27]

80. I saw that too...I was thinking maybe seasonal labor?

14 hour days in the fields during harvest, but nothing during the winter?

[Sparkly]

78. Women couldn't vote!!!!!

That's a big one.

The social progress -- on race, gender, and more -- matters much more to me than the rest.

(The rate of deaths in childbirth was a big one, too -- my daughter and I probably both would have died, back then.)