Think life was so much simpler 100 years ago? Take a look at the following and you may just change your mind.
- The average life expectancy in the United States was forty-seven years.
- Only 14 percent of homes in the United States had a bathtub.
- Only 8 percent of 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 ten mph.
- Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the twenty-first 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 an hour. The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year. A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1500 and $4000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year
- More than 95 percent of all births in the United States took place at home.
- 90 percent of all U.S. physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard."
- Most women washed their hair only once a month and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
- The leading causes of death in the U.S. were pneumonia and influenza.
- The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet.
- Drive-by-shootings— in which teenage boys galloped down the street on horses and started randomly shooting at houses, carriages or anything else that caught their fancy — were an ongoing problem in Denver and other cities in the West.
- The population of Las Vegas, NV was 30. The remote desert community was inhabited by only a handful of ranchers and their families.
- Plutonium, insulin and antibiotics hadn't been discovered. Scotch tape, crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't yet been invented.
- One in 10 U.S. adults couldn't read or write. Only six percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
- Marijuana, heroin and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores.
" Coca Cola contained cocaine instead of caffeine.
- Eighteen percent of households in the United States had at least one full-time servant or domestic.
- There were about 230 reported murders in the U.S. annually.
