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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 than 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.
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.
The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was 30.
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.
Coca Cola contained cocaine. 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."
Eighteen percent of households in the US had at least one full-time servant or domestic.
There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire US.
--
What do you think it will be like in 2103?
But, if you want to know what working conditions were really like, have a listen to a speech by Theodore Roosevelt from the 1912 presidential election at http:**//www.albany.edu/history/LaborAudio/troosevelt1912-288.ram.
The average life expectancy in the US is twenty-five.
California sunk into the ocean in 2093.
The tallest structure in the world is your apartment building (no room to build out, had to start building up).
More than 95 percent of all births in the US never take place.
The five leading causes of death in the US are:
1. Homicide
2. Malignant Carcinoma & Melanoma
3. HIV / AIDS
4. Other VDs
5. Heat Stroke (environmental shelfing brings temps to around 150º F in equatorial regions).
The American Flag is disbanded in 2026 because "enlightened" people realize that 'flags are just a means of enforcing unnatural divisions and controlling people.'
Las Vegas, Nevada is uninhabitable (due to neuclear testing gone awry).
High School is replaced by 'practical efficiency' schooling--a cast system is established to deteremine what a person would be good at doing. Education is replaced by wrote memorization. Critical thinking is discouraged.
Jordan
lawman
The five leading causes of death in the US were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
Today (Year 2000) the top five causes of death
(excluding accidental injuries) are:
1. Heart disease (moving up in the world!)
2. Malignant neoplasms
3. Cerebro-vascular (fancy term for stroke?)
4. Chronic Low Respiratory Disease
5. Diabetes Mellitus
Pneumonia/Influenza dropped to #6... Tuberculosis and Diarrhea seem to have dropped entirely out of the Top 10. But hey, having three of the previous top 5 stay in the top 6 is almost surprising. Some things never change.
I vote for heart disease and malignant neoplasms to keep a strong showing through the next 100 years, with diabetes continuing to rise on the charts unless we make some *serious* changes in our dietary habits....
The diet doesn't help either, though. That is triggering the adult form of it at a phenominal rate especially with baby boomers hitting the age it most commonly occurs at.
If I had the money and know how, I think I would invest in a whole line of insulin products. Insulin pops for kids. Insulin "candy". Insulin drinks. You could make a fortune.
...triggering the adult form of it at a phenominal rate...
Increasingly among teens and young adults even. It's not just the baby boomers... I believe it was on my way to last London PubCon that I had an extended layover in Seattle on the same day a huge study of obesity and "adult onset" diabetes in the US was released. It was on the front page of every paper I picked up, even USA "Would you like a pie chart with that?" Today.
Basically, over half of the US is seriously overweight, and "adult onset" (type II) diabetes is becoming a "teen onset" phenomenon. Both largely because of our dietary habits.
So, it all adds up to give diabetes and heart disease good odds to stay in the Top 5 causes of death in the US.
Which, I guess, is better than diarrhea and malnutrition taking their place... but it doesn't make much difference which column you're marked in after you become one of the statistics, does it? ;)
