100 Years Ago

[Morgan]

George Cathcart may remember this era, but I'm too young so I can't vouch for the veracity of any of the statistics [Morgan]

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Turn the Clock back to 1905


The year is 1905. One hundred years ago!
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some of the U.S. statistics for the Year 1905:
The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. 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 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. (Wish they still were.)
With a mere 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 U.S. was 22 cents per hour. [I didn't know
they had Wal-Mart back then.]
The average U.S. 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 U.S. took place at home.
Ninety percent 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 by 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 in the U.S. 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 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 U.S. adults couldn't read or write. (Not sure we
have improved on this one.)
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 pharmacist 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!)
Eighteen percent of households in the U.S. had at least one full-time
servant or domestic help.
There were about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.

[Christi V.]

Oh my.!! I guess we can only imagine what it would have been like back then!!

[jack maloney]

The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents per hour.

The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

Nice post, Morgan. But one small nitpick: I can't get some of the data to compute. If my arithmetic still works, the "average" 22c per hour x 40 hours per week x 52 weeks adds up to more than $450 per year. And a lot of folks worked more than 40 hours a week!

[Mike Watters]

Nice post, Morgan. But one small nitpick: I can't get some of the data to compute. If my arithmetic still works, the "average" 22c per hour x 40 hours per week x 52 weeks adds up to more than $450 per year. And a lot of folks worked more than 40 hours a week!

I'm working it out to be $457.60. Maybe he took off a week for vacation?

Also depends on exactly what number we're talking about. Average worker's annual income or Average per capita annual income. The latter includes everybody not actually working so it shows reductions during times of extreme unemployment.

mkw

[Mike Watters]

Course - before anybody gets too excited about those 14 cent per dozen eggs... I'm pretty sure he's talking about the chicken-type and not the camping-type.


More to the point - if the typical worker was getting 22 cents per hour and the eggs were 14 cents... I'm glad the price of eggs didn't go up as much as the wages did. Even if the AVERAGE was the minimum wage - eggs would be nearly $4 a dozen now! I guess if farmers had to go poking around the coop under chickens to find them - maybe they WOULD cost that now...

mkw

[Donna D.]

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg
yolks for shampoo.

scratch, scratch, itch, itch

[Morgan]

Nice post, Morgan. But one small nitpick: I can't get some of the data to compute. If my arithmetic still works, the "average" 22c per hour x 40 hours per week x 52 weeks adds up to more than $450 per year. And a lot of folks worked more than 40 hours a week!

Jack,

I don't know where the numbers came from, but even when I was growing up in the 1940s few people were paid by the hour. Many people worked for a daily wage and you're right, most worked much longer than 40 hours. The bottom line is that the 40 hour work week started much later. Agricultural workers were usually paid by the production unit (i.e., 50¢ per hundred pounds of cotton picked).

[Donna D.]

Remember the story about the ax cutter? There was this old guy who had a big delivery, so hired someone he had heard was a good worker. They started chopping on a big pile of logs early in the morning. The old guy was shocked when the temp worker stopped every hour for 5 minutes... and that continued throughout the day ... plus took a whole half hour for lunch! Old guy figured he would get as much work out of him for that day as he could and then let him go. At the end of the day, the old guy was looking at the two stacks of logs that were cut, and couldn't believe his eyes... The stack for the temp guy was bigger! He asked the temp guy how he did it, when he had taken so many breaks. The temp guy just smiled and said, "Well, every time I took a break, I sharpened my ax."

[Morgan]

Good one, Donna D.

But you forgot to tell us the moral of the story.

[Chester Taje]

From my point of view--------Haste makes waste

[Frederick L. Simson]

PBS aired a good program made in London by the BBC called The 1900 House that told much of this story. I have the show on video cassette.

[Time K]

Video Cassette? That wasn't mentioned in Morgan's 1905 stats!

IF The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents per hour. AND The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

What were the domestics getting paid by the 18% of households that employed them?

[Donna D.]

Good one, Donna D.

But you forgot to tell us the moral of the story.

Things are not always as they seem

ummmm, What you think you see, is in fact not

There are two sides to every situation

and many more...pick one

[jack maloney]

Dunno about 100 years ago. But I recall a few prices from the '50s and '60s. My first job out of college paid $94 a week. Gasoline was 17c a gallon. A carton of Camels was under $2. My first house cost $24,000. You could feed a family of 4 on $30 a week. I bought a new Austin Healey Sprite for $1500 including shipping from England. My first new Volvo cost $3200. On the down side, those 1960s cars needed a tuneup every 5,000 miles, new tires every 30,000 miles, and were junkers after 60,000 miles.

[Renee K.]

My mother was born just before the 20th century (11-1900). Marriage was really the only logical choice for any woman. When she did leave that enterprise, she was a professional cook usually paid about a dollar a day and B&R. (8day week) This was in logging and construction camps and was better than what the Blacks working in the White House got!
I followed in food service, beginning in 1950 at $.75-1.00 for a 48 hr week. Take home was $37.10. I then bought my own cigs (at $1 a carton) and paid $35 a month B&R. That was much better than today on SS even if I didn't smoke.
They always said that "crime does not pay", but today I see that it bought a lot more for some people that we call business people and politicians!
It seems odd to me, today, that most people don't believe children should work at all when most of the farm kids of my era were driving a tractor at age ten before they ever thought of driving a car!
All and all it was a GREAT century and I am glad I was here. I just hope that people will work towards making this very new one even greater, but it is going to take WORK from everyone on the planet.