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What a difference a century makes . . . .
* The average life expectancy in the US was forty-seven.
* Only 14 Percent of the homes in the US 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 US 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
residents,
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 US was 22 cents an 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 the 95 percent of all births in the US took place at home.
* Ninety percent of all US physicians had no college education.
Instead, they attended 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 cost 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 prohibiting poor people from entering the
country for any reason, either as travelers or immigrants.
* The five leading causes of death in the US 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.
* Drive-by shootings in which teenage boys galloped down the
street on horses and started randomly shooting at houses,
carriages, or anything else that caught their fancy-were an
ongoing
problem in Denver and other cities in the West.
* The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was 30. The remote
desert
community was inhabited by only a handful of ranchers and
their
families.
* Plutonium, insulin, and antibiotics hadn’t been discovered yet.
Scotch tape, crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea
hadn’t
been invented.
* There were no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. One in ten US
adults couldn’t read or write. Only 6 percent of all Americans
had
graduated from high school.
* Some medical authorities warned that professional
seamstresses
were
apt to become sexually aroused by the steady rhythm, hour
after
hour,
of the sewing machine’s foot pedals. They recommended
slipping
bromide — which was thought to diminish sexual desire — into
the
women’s drinking water.
* Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the
counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist,
“Heroin
clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates
the
stomach and the bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of
health.”
* Punch-card data processing had recently been developed, and
early predecessors of the modern computer were used for the
first
time by the government to help compile the 1900 census.
* Eighteen percent of households in the US had at least one
full-time
servant or domestic.
* There were about 230 reported murders in the US annually.