What A Difference A Century Makes

The other day I was reading the obituary of a woman who had just died at the age of 103 and the first thought that came to my mind were the changes she had witnessed in her lifetime. So I went back and looked at something I had in my files titled….”The Year was 1904.” Just listen to some numbers and statistics from a little more than a century ago:

· Only 14% of homes in the US had a bathtub.
· Only 8% had a telephone.
· A 3-minute call from Denver to New York cost $11.
· There were only 8,000 cars in the US and 144 miles of paved roads
for them to travel on.
· The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 MPH.
· Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California.
· The population of Las Vegas was 30.
· The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.
· The average wage in the US was 22 cents an hour and the average worker made between $200-400 per year.
· More than 95% of all births took place at home.
· 90% of all American physicians had no college education but instead attended medical schools, many of which were criticized by the government and press as being “substandard.”
· Sugar cost 4 cents per pound…eggs were 14 cents a dozen.
· Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
· Only 6% of all Americans had graduated high school.
· There were only 230 reported murders in the entire country.
· The five leading causes of death were Pneumonia and Influenza,
Tuberculosis, Diarrhea, Heart Disease and Stroke.
· Marijuana, heroin and morphine were all available over the
counter at drugstores.

That was 1904….can you imagine what life will be like 103 years from now?