*Posted on 02/22/2016 11:03:58 AM PST by SeekAndFind
This Atlantic story reveals how Americans lived 100 years ago. (HT Warren Smith) By the standards of a middle-class American today, that lifestyle was poor, inconvenient, dreary, and dangerous. (Only a few years later – in 1924 – the 16-year-old son of a sitting U.S. president would die of an infected blister that the boy got on his toe while playing tennis on the White House grounds.)
So here’s a question that I’ve asked in one form or another on earlier occasions, but that is so probing that I ask it again: What is the minimum amount of money that you would demand in exchange for your going back to live even as John D. Rockefeller lived in 1916? 21.7 million 2016 dollars (which are about one million 1916 dollars)? Would that do it? What about a billion 2016 – or 1916 – dollars? Would this sizable sum of dollars be enough to enable you to purchase a quantity of high-quality 1916 goods and services that would at least make you indifferent between living in 1916 America and living (on your current income) in 2016 America?
Think about it. Hard. Carefully.
If you were a 1916 American billionaire you could, of course, afford prime real-estate. You could afford a home on 5th Avenue or one overlooking the Pacific Ocean or one on your own tropical island somewhere (or all three). But when you travelled from your Manhattan digs to your west-coast palace, it would take a few days, and if you made that trip during the summer months, you’d likely not have air-conditioning in your private railroad car.
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And while you might have air-conditioning in your New York home, many of the friends’ homes that you visit – as well as restaurants and business offices that you frequent – were not air-conditioned. In the winter, many were also poorly heated by today’s standards.
To travel to Europe took you several days. To get to foreign lands beyond Europe took you even longer.
Might you want to deliver a package or letter overnight from New York City to someone in Los Angeles? Sorry. Impossible.
You could neither listen to radio (the first commercial radio broadcast occurred in 1920) nor watch television. You could, however, afford the state-of-the-art phonograph of the era. (It wasn’t stereo, though. And – I feel certain – even today’s vinylphiles would prefer listening to music played off of a modern compact disc to listening to music played off of a 1916 phonograph record.) Obviously, you could not download music.
There really wasn’t very much in the way of movies for you to watch, even though you could afford to build your own home movie theater.
Your telephone was attached to a wall. You could not use it to Skype.
Your luxury limo was far more likely to break down while you were being chauffeured about town than is your car today to break down while you are driving yourself to your yoga class. While broken down and waiting patiently in the back seat for your chauffeur to finish fixing your limo, you could not telephone anyone to inform that person that you’ll be late for your meeting.
Even when in residence at your Manhattan home, if you had a hankering for some Thai red curry or Vindaloo chicken or Vietnamese Pho or a falafel, you were out of luck: even in the unlikely event that you even knew of such exquisite dishes, your chef likely had no idea how to prepare them, and New York’s restaurant scene had yet to feature such exotic fare. And while you might have had the money in 1916 to afford to supply yourself with a daily bowlful of blueberries at your New York home in January, even for mighty-rich you the expense was likely not worthwhile.
Your wi-fi connection was painfully slow – oh, wait, right: it didn’t exist. No matter, because you had neither computer nor access to the Internet. (My gosh, there weren’t even any blogs for you to read!)
Even the best medical care back then was horrid by today’s standards: it was much more painful and much less effective. (Remember young Coolidge.) Antibiotics weren’t available. Erectile dysfunction? Bipolar disorder? Live with ailments such as these. That was your only option.
You (if you are a woman) or (if you are a man) your wife and, in either case, your daughter and your sister had a much higher chance of dying as a result of giving birth than is the case today. The child herself or himself was much less likely to survive infancy than is the typical American newborn today.
Dental care wasn’t any better. Your money didn’t buy you a toothbrush with vibrating bristles. (You could, however, afford the very finest dentures.)
Despite your vanity, you couldn’t have purchased contact lenses, reliable hair restoration, or modern, safe breast augmentation. And forget about liposuction to vacuum away the results of your having dined on far too many cream-sauce-covered terrapin.
Birth control was primitive: it was less reliable and far more disruptive of pleasure than are any of the many inexpensive and widely available birth-control methods of today.
Of course, you adore precious-weacious little Rover, but your riches probably could not buy for Rover veterinary care of the sort that is routine in every burgh throughout the land today.
You were completely cut off from the cultural richness that globalization has spawned over the past century. There was no American-inspired, British-generated rock’n’roll played on electric guitars. And no reggae. Jazz was still a toddler, with only few recordings of it.
You could afford to buy the finest Swiss watches and clocks, but even they couldn’t keep time as accurately as does a cheap Timex today (not to mention the accuracy of the time kept by your smartphone).
…….
Honestly, I wouldn’t be remotely tempted to quit the 2016 me so that I could be a one-billion-dollar-richer me in 1916. This fact means that, by 1916 standards, I am today more than a billionaire. It means, at least given my preferences, I am today materially richer than was John D. Rockefeller in 1916. And if, as I think is true, my preferences here are not unusual, then nearly every middle-class American today is richer than was America’s richest man a mere 100 years ago.
Define "Quality of life."
I'd say King Solomon had a much higher quality of life--as did Daniel Boone, Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, Bill Hickok, and even the poor schmuck who lost a leg to a Civil War musket ball.
People had people--not facespace "friends." People knew how to work, and why they worked. They made something of this nation. Welfare Willy? Not so much.
Yup. If I had the choice, I'd happily flush my smartphone. An electronic leash comes with the job, however - and not just in my line of work.
I meant liberal in the sense of sophomoric thinking. It’s fairly horrifying that he actually has the background he has and yet thinks so immaturely.
My husband waxes nostalgic about earlier days but I wouldn’t choose any other time to be born. I like modern technology.
My childhood was idyllic, I had all of what I needed and a lot of what I wanted. My mother was almost always at home, my dad came home at 4. We played in the neighborhood until dinner time and in the summer all day, sometimes into the night.
If I had a choice, I'd go back to 1916.
At least back then people spoke with each other face to face. There was a real sense of community. Neighbors helped each other.As to all the new gadgets, they gave everyone the "I have to have it yesterday" attitude. No one stops to smell the roses anymore.
I tend to agree
Ridiculous article, which also has such a weird sense of priorities, along with the usual whiff of cultural superiority. Like, ‘cause life had to be so bleak and dreary without round-the-clock American Idol, Big Gulp drinks, and internet porn. Good grief.
I have a big collection of my family’s postcards, which cover the 1906-1928 era, and their written messages certainly reflect a more vibrant, more social, more fulfilling kind of cultural life than what tends to be the norm in these dysfunctional times. Steamboat cruises, county fairs, neighborhood gatherings, hayrides, church socials, etc. And who says 1916 was devoid of entertainment? Nickelodeons, vaudeville, pulp-magazines, horse-races, baseball games, and admittedly a few short years later, radio and jazz-bands.
People nowadays don’t seem to remotely have any concept of American cultural life before the blasted hippie era.
I don’t know - if he takes a baggie of coke down to the high end sorority house....
In 1916, World War I was in full fury... millions dead, wounded and maimed, USA would be drawn into the conflict a year later. In less than a year of fighting 110,000+ American young men were dead. Many from the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 20 million worldwide and 500K in the U.S. My great-grandmother and great-uncle among it victims... she was 42, he was 19.
In 1916 the federal income tax became effective... the beginning of the end of the Republic as founded... for when government has first claim to your labor, it became our master and we the servants. 180 opposite from the Founders vision.
Couldn’t pay me enough to live back then.
I am a Viet Nam vet, the wounds I got would have cost me at least one leg back then (probably my life).
I now live in a very remote area; 2 years ago I had to hike out six miles in deep snow just to get my rabies shots (truck was broke down).
I am not sure if they even could treat a bite from a rabid fox back then.
All the gimmedats complain about not having enough of the good life now days, back then they would have just been dead.
There are a lot of things I don’t like about the early 21’st century, but a lot more that I wouldn’t like about the early 20’th century.
I like having my propane stove, I like having nice soft toilet paper (and a warm place to sh#t), I like having a phone that always works, even though it is just a landline (no cell service up here).
I’d give an awful lot to have a society with more beauty and less coarseness all over.
I would miss the variety of easily gotten food available in any season.
When I was stationed in England 1973-1976 in certain ways it felt like stepping back in time. In those days the Blokes (British) lagged far behind the U.S. in the heating and plumbing areas.
Our place had indoor plumbing, but no heat. There were only 4 electrical outlets in the entire house. No phone. We had a TV and the broadcast quality was superior to American TV of the era.
Ah, the good ole days.
terrible article - the writer must be an idiot.
They made rifles, knives, and fishing reels. Woman were around so what else do I need?
My eight year old son saw a row of books in my father’s library and asked what they were. “They’re encyclopedias.”
“What do you do with them?”
“You can look stuff up with.”
“Why didn’t he use Google or Wikipedia?”
“That didn’t exist when I was your age.”
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