"Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.”
~ A 1905 pharmacist
With thanks to J. Mark (Kingbossdaddy) Davis, we travel back in time to the year 1905 to see if things really were that much different.
First of all, as bad a shape as everyone tells us we are in today (take a look around next time you’re at the mall), the average life expectancy today in the U.S. is mid-seventies, depending on your sex, compared to being only 47 a hundred years ago.
Other notable differences:
• Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub. (maybe dying at 47 wasn’t such a bad thing).
• Only eight percent of the homes had a telephone (today, that number is 50 percent and falling), and 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, but it probably seemed like more because the maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
• 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 (so if you made that call from Denver to NYC you had to work 50 hours to pay for it). The income for professionals was a little better. A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 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 14 cents a dozen. Coffee was 15 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.
• The five leading causes of death in the U.S. were: 1) pneumonia and influenza; 2) tuberculosis; 3) diarrhea; 4) heart disease; and 5) stroke.
• The population of Las Vegas, Nev., was only 30.
• Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn’t been invented yet.
• Two out of every 10 U.S. adults couldn’t read or write, and only six percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
• Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores (obviously, our ancestors had more self-control).
• 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. in 1905. To give that some perspective, today, we have three and a half times as many people but our number of homicides is 67 times higher at over 15,000 a year.
• College football was popular in 1905, but had also become increasingly violent, with 18 deaths in the game that year, causing President Roosevelt to seriously consider banning the sport. Instead, a new governing body was formed the following year called the NCAA, which attempted to make the game safer through new rules and sanctions. They began by taking away the “flying wedge” formation as well as the practice of teammates dragging ball-carrying players forward. They made up for these losses by legalizing the forward pass.