This circulated the internet in 2004 as a "one hundred years ago" in various forms. I know some of the statements in this version are correct. Anybody out there know any that aren't?
Here are some statistics and facts for 1904:
The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years. Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub. Only 8 percent of the 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 10 mph Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, 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 an hour The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year. A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 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. physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard." Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound. Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo. Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the 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 5. Stroke 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 30!!! Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented. There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day. Two of 10 U.S. adults couldn't read or write. Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated high school. Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health." Eighteen percent of households in the U.S had at least one full-time servant or domestic. There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.
A friend of mine is an officer in the naval reserve.
A few weeks ago, he was attending a conference that included admirals in both the US and the French navies. At a cocktail reception, my friend found himself in a small group that included an admiral from each of the two navies.
The French admiral started complaining that whereas Europeans learned many languages, Americans only learned English.
He then asked. "Why is it that we have to speak English in these conferences rather than you have to speak French?"
Without even hesitating, the American admiral replied. "Maybe it is because we arranged it so that you did not have to learn to speak German."
GeoBandy has a post up, "Sunday Site-seeing Drive", which he's analogizing to the old custom of the family going out for a Sunday Drive... a collection of unconnected links to unrelated blogs. Not the "big guys" that everybody knows, just some blogs that for some reason he thought might be worth looking at. It's a weird assortment, but it's a nice idea, especially for a Sunday afternoon, when there's ususally not much going on.
An Irishman moves into a tiny hamlet in County Cork, walks into the pub and promptly orders three beers. The bartender raises his eyebrows, but serves the man three beers, which he drinks quietly at a table, alone. An hour later, the man has finished the three beers and orders three more.This happens yet again. The next evening the man again orders and Drinks three beers at a time, several times. Soon the entire town is whispering about the Man Who Orders Three Beers. Finally, a week later, the bartender broaches the subject on behalf of the town. "I don't mean to pry, but folks around here are wondering why you always order three beers?" "Tis odd, isn't it?" the man replies, "You see, I have two brothers, and one went to America, and the other to Australia. We promised each other that we would always order an extra two beers whenever we drank as a way of keeping up the family bond." The bartender and the whole town was pleased with this answer, and soon the Man Who Orders Three Beers became a local celebrity and source of pride to the hamlet, even to the extent that out-of-towners would come to watch him drink. Then, one day, the man comes in and orders only two beers. The Bartender pours them with a heavy heart. This continues for the rest of the evening: he orders only two beers. The word flies around town. Prayers are offered for the soul of one of the brothers. The next day, the bartender says to the man, "Folks around here, me first of all, want to offer condolences to you for the death of your brother. You know -- the two beers and all..." The man ponders this for a moment, then replies, "You'll be happy to hear that my two brothers are alive and well. It's just that I, meself, Have decided to give up drinking for Lent."
I see an old friend is back in the area. Years ago a bunch of us worked a small press "magazine" in Northeast Ohio. Several of us are blogging now, some more intermittently than others, and all separately. Back then it took several people to get anything readable out. To cut and paste you actually used a scissors or x-acto and glue, working with printed copy. You had to dummy up galleys, run proofs, get it printed, deliver it to distribution points...with a blog, one of us can put out in a day as much content as three of us could have gotten out in a week. I'm not sure that's a good thing, but I'm not sure it's a bad thing, either.
Anyway, he's just up and started a new blog of his own, hundred meter freestyle. I'll tell you this: when B.S. (I swear, as far as I know, those are his real initials!) starts writing, you never know what you're going to get.
The management at GeoBandy appears to have launched a one-blog campaign to get everybody on both sides to look at Social Security rationally, arguing that "if you are smarter than my toaster, you can figure out that there is a problem with Social Security."
Good luck! I'm afraid you're going to find out that your toaster probably ranks in the top third of the population in intelligence.
In honor of President's Day, Kathleen Parker wrote a grim piece about America's loss of historical perspective, and growing ignorance of history. Grim, except for the upbeat message of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Guild. It really is worth reading in its entirety, but here are some of the grimmer paragraphs:
Tests, surveys and studies further confirm America’s increasing ignorance. A test of high school seniors, for example, found that only one in ten was proficient in American history. A survey of fourth graders found that seven of ten thought the original 13 colonies included Illinois, Texas and California.
Six of ten couldn’t say why the Pilgrims came to America. Only seven percent of fourth graders could name “an important event” that took place in Philadelphia in 1776. When seniors at the nation’s top 55 universities were asked to name America’s victorious general at the Battle of Yorktown, only 34 percent named George Washington.
These depressing statistics, which Mount Vernon executive director James Rees rattles off with thinly disguised ennui, shouldn’t be surprising considering that Washington today receives one-tenth the coverage in textbooks that he received 30 years ago. Rees tells of one textbook that offers fewer than 50 lines of text about Washington, but 213 about Marilyn Monroe.
Meanwhile, the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington, a reproduction of which used to hang in nearly every American classroom, is long gone. As is the historical background and context critical to future generations’ conduct of the nation’s business.
213 lines of text about Marilyn Monroe, and 50 about George Washington.
Historian Marcus Cunliffe observed that history had not been kind to Washington. A century had been spent turning him into some kind of marble monument, and the next century spent in trying to reduce the monument to rubble. One extreme or the other. It's too bad. Because neither version does justice to the man who, viewed as a man, is surely one of the greates figures of world history. When James Thomas Flexner reduced his magnificent four-volume biography of Washington to a single volume, to try to make it more accessible to the average American reader, he subtitled it "The Indispensable Man." It is no overstatement.
Without George Washington, it is unlikely that the American Revolution would have resulted in independence. Without George Washington, the Constitution would certainly never have been ratified. And without George Washington, the new nation would most likely not have survived its infancy.
It has been fashionable for some years now to belittle Washington's military ability. "He lost more battles than he won,and won the war only because the British got tired of it." Probably both true statements. But the first is true mainly because most of the major battles were fought early in the war. In the latter part of the war, the fact is that Washington's veteran Continental Army troops were a match for the British regulars, and the British avoided battle whenever possible. And the British got tired of the war because they could not bring it to an end. Why? Because of the generalship of George Washington.
Washington understood the British, and he knew that as long as he had an army in the field, the British had not won the war, no matter how many cities they occupied. As Colonel of the Virginia militia, Washington had fought alongside the very British officers who were his opponents in the Revolutionary War. At Braddock's disastrous defeat in the French and Indian war, where Washington's hastily arranged and stubborn rearguard action was credited with saving Braddock's army, the colonel commanding the advance party was Thomas Gage. The same Thomas Gage who would later assume command of the British forces during the Revolution.
Washington was no strategic genius, and noone knew it better than he. The famous letter in which he doubted that he would be "equal to the task" wasn't an exercise in posturing. At 43, Washington was very objectively honest with himself about himself. He also surely believed, honestly and correctly, that he was better suited for the job than John Hancock, the other most likely candidate.
Washington understood battlefield tactics and he had a sheer genius for logistics. Twice he caused his entire army to disappear, literally, overnight. After the disastrous Battle of Long Island, using local sailors and fisherman and an armada of small boats, he extricated the army over water, leaving the stunned British to renew their attack against his empty camps the next morning. And, in 1781, he pulled his army out of New York and marched it all the way to Virginia before the British knew he had decamped. Once in Virginia, with a French fleet to keep the British from evacuating by sea, he laid siege to Yorktown and forced the surrender of Cornwallis' trapped army.
He never made the same mistake twice, and he learned as he went, and by the midpoint of the war at places like Brandywine and Monmouth Courthouse his Continentals had both stood firm against heavy British assaults in pitched battle, and driven British regulars from the field before them.
At the end of the war, as the officers of the unpaid army were preparing to march on Philadelphia and demand that Congress make good on its promises, Washington appeared uninvited and told them in no uncertain terms that there would be no march on Philadelphia, that the army would disband. The soldiers went home, trusting Washington to deal with Congress for them. The Europeans stood in utter amazement when, instead of declaring himself king, he sent the army home and surrendered his commission as commanding general to congress, establishing the American custom by which no general has ever siezed power in this nation.
As it became apparent that the Articles of Confederation were a failure, and the Confederation degenerating into a gaggle of disunited and bickering states, delegates gatherd to discuss changes. They immediately decided, to have Washington preside, to meet in secret, and to devise an entirely new government. None of them had any such authority from their states. What emerged was the Constitution of the United States, a document both eloquent in its simplicity and monumental in its vision, featuring a relatively strong executive branch with a single man at its head. That arrangement would never have been acceptable but for the fact that all knew that man would be Washington.
The later writings of both the founders themselves and the political leaders throughout the states make it clear that few really believed there would ever be another "President". Most assumed Washington would serve for life, and either designate a successor in a sort of quasi-monarchy, or hold things together long enough for the states to figure out a new arrangement. Just as he had stunned the world by surrendering his commission, Washington stunned the world by not running for a third term, forcing the federal government to actually establish a precedent for peaceful electoral succession while he was still alive. He was keenly aware of the importance of that act.
Washington was one of the few Founders who understood how important the federal government would be to the survival of the United States. Most leaders of the day considered the Federal Goverment almost irrelevant, the real power being in the states. John Jay resigned as chief justice to become Governor of New York. And Washington may have been instrumental in placing John Marshall, a fellow Virginian, in the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as a counterbalance to Thomas Jefferson, whom Washington knew during his second term was conspiring with Aaron Burr to create a political party in order to subvert the federal intent of the constitution and sieze control of the national government, turning it into a sort of bigger state government.
Long before the revolution, Washington was probably the first of the tidewater plantation owners to realize the need to shed economic dependence on the "factor" system which transported wealth from America back to Britain. He set up his own forge and workshops for the manufacture of goods like clothing and pottery, creating tiny models of future American industry. He invented the round threshing barn, a working reproduction of which is operated at Mount Vernon today. The conventional view is that Washington married his money. Mount Vernon was a third-rate plantation when he inherited it, unexpectedly, upon the early death of his beloved older bbrother. To be sure, Martha Custis was a propertied widow, and it could be said that Washington "married well". But he made most of his money in land speculation.
The truth is, without any expectation of an inheritance because of the application of primogeniture, Washington had to learn a trade. He became a part-time soldier, and a full-time surveyor, and was as much frontiersman as Virginia aristocrat. He made long journeys into the wilderness of Virginia's western holdings, and bought vast tracts of land far from civilization, which later made him very wealthy. Washington was well known to frontiersmen and settlers along the Ohio River. He loved to dance, he could, when he so chose, drink and curse with the best (or worst) of them, and he loved to play cards. For money. He kept meticulous accounts, and he always collected...and paid promptly.
In so many ways, Washington truly was the father of his country. And so much more important to the history of the United States, and the world, than was Marilyn Monroe. It's sad, really. People don't know what they're missing in failing to get to know him.
