1909

rie'smom

<font color=green>"Always let your conscience be y
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Sep 13, 2005
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My brother sent this and I thought it was interesting:

THE YEAR 1909

The average life expectancy was 47 years.

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 wage in 1909 was 22 cents per hour.

The average 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.

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 ice 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.

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'

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. !
 
Thanks for sharing this! I find these things so interesting. It is insane to see how things have changed in America in such a short amount of time.
 
Hmm.. Only 9 years before my mom was born..

Some of those things listed still apply to the Amish..;)
 

My father was born in 1912 and died in 2002. He lived more than twice as long as the life expectancy. It is so interesting to me to think about all the amazing things he experienced in his life.
 
Thanks for sharing this! I find these things so interesting. It is insane to see how things have changed in America in such a short amount of time.

You're welcome!

Makes me wonder what life will be like 2109!
 
The average life expectancy was 47 years.
This is a often-mentioned but very misleading statistic. Very few people died around 47 years of age in 1909. The issue is that while that was the average, the variance for life expectancy back then was prodigious. Many people lived to "ripe old ages" -- not quite as old as folks regularly live to today, but much higher than 47 years. The reason why the average is so low, though, is because so many people (mainly poor folks, and/or immigrant groups) died young. The disparity between the life expectancy for different groups within society was substantial, and reflected many other disparities between such groups, i.e., nutrition, health care, working conditions, etc.

So that takes nothing away from the great advancements that we've made -- it just clarifies that those advancements didn't a thirty year increase in longevity, but rather included a much more modest increase in longevity, and the extension of many advantages of our wonderful society to those who were unable to benefit from those advantages a hundred years ago. Still a very important and worthy accomplishment!
 
Makes me wonder what life will be like 2109!

THAT is an excellent question! The comparison should be interesting, to say the least!
 
Interesting list. It has been around for awhile. A quick google search shows the same list for 1905,1906,1907 and 1908
 
This is an intriguing e-mail and life has certainly changed a lot in the past 100 years, but I doubt all the listed claims are true. This e-mail gets repeated so often (just Google the thing) that folks often assume it is completely factual. I went poking around the Internet after reading it, and this is some of what I found.

Here's an interesting post on a trucking forum (that unfortunately is also not sourced), but nevertheless...
http://www.expeditersonline.com/forum/loading-dock/38782-1909.html

Re: 1909
Not all true...

gas for cars were usually sold by the coal dealers in the towns and cities and the blacksmith in rural areas. By 1912 gas stations appeared on the scene.

There were over 140,000 cars on the road by 1909, Ford's production numbers for 1908 - the first year of the model T was over 10,000 cars alone with about 43,000 cars being produced for the 1908 production year by the majors.

In Detroit alone, there were over 200 miles of paved roads. In 1909 they used Concrete for the first time on Woodward ave, between 6 and 7 mile road. Most of it is still there, under 8 feet of other paving material and it is slightly pink. Other material used was brick, cobble and Macadam.

The crossword puzzle was created in 1890 by some Italian dude.

Canned beer was 'invented' in 1909 but not marketed until 1935, while some consider kegged beer in metal kegs as canned beer, others will dispute that the keg is not an individual package - kegged beer came in 1880's by the way.

Iced tea has been around a long time, the colonists made it before the US was a country. They even had ice cream then.

The average wage depended on your age and job. Many of the common work was about 18 cents an hour in the factories (Ford paid from 15 cents to buck an hour in 1909) but laborers made less while miners in some mines (copper) made a lot more.

Professionals didn't really crest the $2000 a year mark, unless they were really really good, engineers started at $800 if they landed a good job.

The graduation rate was much higher than 6%, which at that time meant that we had a dumb society. The Detroit Public school records of 1908 put the graduation somewhere about 70% because of the need for mandatory education. In 1910, they tripled the funding for truancy reform and enforcement.

There were more than 4300 murders in the US in 1909. ...


I find some of the "1909" e-mail's claims to be slightly unbelievable, for instance, the one about doctors...90%? Really?!? 90% had no college education?...
I have been able to investigate a few of the statements, like the one about iced tea...

Here's a story from the Stash Tea Company's website (backed up in other resources):
http://www.stashtea.com/facts.htm
By 1904 the United States was ready for the world to see her development at the St. Louis World's Fair. Trade exhibitors from around the world brought their products to America's first World's Fair. One such merchant was Richard Blechynden, a tea plantation owner. Originally, he had planned to give away free samples of hot tea to fair visitors. But when a heat wave hit, no one was interested. To save his investment of time and travel, he dumped a load of ice into the brewed tea and served the first "iced tea". It was (along with the Egyptian fan dancer) the hit of the Fair.

and the one about murders...
from http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/glance/tables/hmrttab.htm
Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice lists a 1909 murder rate of 4.2 per 100,000 which means, with a national population of approximately 90,000,000 (according to the Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/), that there were over 3000 murders that year.

And the one about cars...
There were 312,000 registered motor vehicles in the United States with cars making up the majority of that number.
http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/1027_motor_vehicle_registrations.html

Some various sourced 1909 facts are available through the U.S. Census Bureau's "Facts for Features" on the Indianapolis Speedway's 100th Anniversary seen here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS164082+24-Mar-2009+PRN20090324

agnes!
 
My father was born in 1912 and died in 2002. He lived more than twice as long as the life expectancy. It is so interesting to me to think about all the amazing things he experienced in his life.

Hmmm.... as one would say,.... "fascinating". My grandmother was born a year later and died a year later than your father.....

And up to about 20 or so years ago, a family could survive off one income rather than the forced 2-income households of today.
 
Funny thing is when I tell people on the net that I live in Idaho that's the image they have in their heads ..... :rotfl2:
 












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