- 1900 - 95% of births were at home
- 1905 - 100 workers a day died on the job due to poor working conditions
- 1905 - Recessions/depressions were commonplace, about every 10 years in the late 1800s and early 1900s
- 1905 - Child labor in US factories was commonplace; there were no laws against it
- 1907 - Infant mortality = 9.99% (about 10% of all children died at before they reached 1 year of age)
- 1907 - Life expectancy - for Men = 45.6 years - for Women = 49.9 years
--- i.e., most of the people who were the same age as you were dead by the time you were 50 years old - 1907 - Biggest causes of death: #1 = pneumonia and flu, #2 = tuberculosis, #3 = heart disease, #4 = diarrhea (a different sources flipped #3 and #4, and had #5 = stroke)
- 1907 - Chicago completes first (and only) modern sewage system in the US
- 1908 - Philadelphia completes first (and only) clean water system in the US
- 1906 - First radio voice broadcast from a US based station to specially equipped ships in the Atlantic ocean. Radio would not become fairly common until a decade or two after this (depending on how you define "common").
- 1905 - Icehouses were commonly used to store perishable food and as suppliers of blocks of ice for home ice boxes.
- THE YEAR 1907
- Only 14% of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.
- Only 8% of the homes had a telephone.
- A 3 minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11 ($250.33 in 2007 based on CPI)
- 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 only 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 US was 22 Cents per hour ($5.01 in 2007 based on CPI).
- The average U.S. Worker made between $200 and $400 per year. ($4552 and $9104 in 2007 based on CPI)
- A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 ($45,520) per year, a dentist made $2,500 ($56,900) per year, a veterinarian $1,500 ($34,140) per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 ($113,800) per year. (in 2007 dollars based on the CPI)
- More than 95% of all births in the U.S. took place at home.
- 90% 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. (91 cents a pound in 2007 CPI)
- Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. ($3.19 a dozen in 2007 CPI)
- Coffee was fifteen cents a pound. ($3.41 cents a pound in 2007 CPI)
- 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 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% 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.'
- There were about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S - Consumer Price Index (CPI) based currency value conversions are among the most conservative ways to adjust currency values over time. Click here to see how high these numbers could go with other approaches.
- 1921-27 - First vaccines for Diptheria, Whooping cough and Tuberculosis
- 1927 - Home refrigerators start coming into widespread use for first time, although home delivery of block ice for ice boxes continued until about 1960
- 1926 - NBC radio broadcasting company founded; 1927 - CBS radio founded (but no TV until the late 1930s)
- Also checkout: Life Before Social Security - by Richard Paul - audio interview on Morning Edition, March 30, 2005 · Many believe that Social Security helped eliminate poverty among the elderly. But existence without the program wasn't necessarily all that terrible. A look at what life was like before Social Security was created.
Home electronics
- In the early 1960s, the color TV was a new marvel. A good one cost around $400 in 1965, which was a princely sum (worth about $2,300 in current dollars). Still, RCA's annual unit sales rose from 90,000 in 1959 to more than 1 million five years later.
- By 2003, flat-screen plasma TVs are the object of many desires. A 42-inch Sony cost $6,000 at Best Buy recently, and aficionados can pay twice that for bigger screens with more bells and whistles. A 50-inch model from Samsung cost $8,000 -- nearly four times as much as those early color TVs.
- By 2007 a 42" flat screen TV cost lest that $1000 on sale.
- There was no Internet, of course, until the 1970s and 1980s.
- According to the National Association of Realtors, the median price of a U.S. house in 1968 was $20,100. In 2003, it was about $170,000. Using inflation-adjusted dollars, that's a 60 percent increase.
- In the early 1960s, a four-bedroom house in one middle-class New Jersey suburb sold for $19,000. In 2002, the same house sold for more than 20 times that figure.
- In the 1960s, a family was said to be "rich" if they bought a home for $50,000, which converts to $265,000 in 2003 dollars -- far below the modern norm in many leafy suburbs on the East or West coasts.
- In the 1960s, the jet engine opened up previously unheard of travel possibilities. Americans started flying to Europe in ever-rising numbers. By 2003, Paris is passé. To be well-traveled means to have visited exotic locations. Scads of companies now sell cruises to Antarctica. Departing from the tip of South America, rates begin at around $3,500, plus the cost of getting there.
- Fewer than 4,000 people a year visited the Galapagos Islands in the 1960s. By 2003, Darwin's favorite archipelago attracts more than 60,000 guests annually, at costs ranging from a few thousand dollars to $35,000 or more for a chartered private yacht.
- Even Mt. Everest -- defined as the most remote place on earth before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed it in 1953 -- has had more than 1,200 people reach its peak. One "elite trek" costs about $6,000 to get to the base camp, plus equipment to make the ascent. In 2007, over 500 people climbed Mt Everest, a record year.
- In the 1960s, many upper-middle-class motorists aspired to own elegant sedans. The 1965 Lincoln Continental had a sticker price of $6,166, about $36,000 in current dollars. The Continental is no longer produced, but a good substitute might be the Lexus LS-430. Manufacturer's suggested retail price in 2003: $55,700, before options.
- 1945 - First major antibiotic, Penicillin, becomes widely available
- 1945 - First flu vaccine introduced
- 1957 - Life expectancy - for Men = 66.4 years - for Women = 72.7 years by 2007 - Me = 75.5 years, Women = 80.7 years
- 1957 - Infant mortality = 2.63% (similar to or worse than many of the less developed countries in Asia and Latin America today) by 2007 = 0.637% (or 6.37 deaths within the first year of life per 1000 live births; 41 countries have lower/better rates than the US)
- 1957 - Biggest causes of death: #1 = heart disease, #2 = cancer, #3 = stroke, #4 = accidents (similar to today)
- 1960 - 97% of births are in hospitals
- 1965 - Medicare and Medicaid signed into law
Some of my sources:
Most of the 2003 numbers above came from The Cost of the Good Life (CNN, 9/12/03)
Some of the numbers above come from an article in AARP Bulletin, June 2007, p.39
Also checkout: Are You Worse Off than Mom & Dad (CNN, 9/12/03)
The 1907 list was sent to the Planet (Planners Network) email list by Dick Klosterman of www.whatifinc.biz on 16 June 2008.
