Nostalgia - What Was It Really Like in the Good Old Days?

Introduction

I originally started this list over a decade ago after hearing certain conservative talk show hosts talking about how great the "good old days" were, in comparison to the Clinton era presidency. I felt the claims they made (such as how cheap everything was, how much easier daily life was, how our government was more efficient, and fellow citizens were more trustworthy) were a bit exaggerated. The original list supplemented an online textbook that I wrote for my US Geography class.

Over time I have updated the list as I came across new items and I posted it at a couple of times blogs I used to write. Well, now I wanted to update it even more, so here it is on Hubpages! -- Alan

Comparing Dollars Over Time

In this Hubpage, I use the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to compare US currency values from past time periods. This is one of the most conservative approaches, meaning it estimates the smallest changes over time. Most other techniques would show a much larger amount for past dollar values when compared to today (i.e., the past would be much more expensive)..

Click here to see seven different ways how high these numbers could go with other approaches.

The USA in the Early 1900s

The Great Heat Wave of 1896 - (audio) - Can natural disasters change history and influence politics? This New York City event claimed nearly 1300 lives and shaped early 20th Century America.

1900 - 95% of births were at home
- 98% of meals were eaten at home (compared to only 50% by 2010) [more...]

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 USA IN 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,

The World in the Early 1900s in Color Photos

A fascinating look at 66 Colorized Photos taken around the world in the early 1900s. Click this link:

http://acidcow.com/pics/9671-early-1900s-in-color-66-pics.html

The USA in the 1920s

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 was not necessarily all that terrible. A look at what life was like before Social Security was created.

The USA in the Mid-1900s

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.

Real Estate

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.

Travel

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.

Automobiles

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.

Health

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

The USA (and UK) in the Late 1900s

Within many of our lifetimes ... but so much has changed!

The Way We Were: Britain at the Start of the Seventies - (audio) - while not the US, the doom and gloom in the UK in the early 1970s probably had their correlates here, as well.
22 Everyday Things that became Obsolete in the 21st century - Not all of these are obsolete, as yet, but an interesting list nonetheless.
The Internet? Bah! - Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn't, and will never be, nirvana - a 1995 Newsweek article about why the Internet will never achieve the claims by its advocates. - AND - A video from 1994 in which NBC's Today Show hosts ask "What is the Internet?" - Yes, not too long ago in a land not that far away, there was no Internet...

How Technology Has Changed in Just 10 Years (2001-2011)

SOURCE: September 2001 Was a Long Time Ago in the World of Technology - By Harry McCracken | Sunday, September 11, 2011 -- There is more in the original article.

... stuff that didn’t exist in September 2001 which I can barely remember life without: