The Year 1905

Oxypomona · August 25, 2005, 1:58pm

Maybe this will boggle your mind, I know it did mine! The year is 1905, one hundred years ago.

What a difference a century makes!

Here are some of the U.S. statistics for 1905:

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:

Pneumonia and influenza
Tuberculosis
Diarrhea
Heart disease
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.

emeraldkity4 · August 25, 2005, 2:16pm

In 1905 my house was five years old.

bandit_TX · August 25, 2005, 6:49pm

My bandsaw was brand new.

timely · August 25, 2005, 7:46pm

I remember my grandmother telling me about a trip her dad took the family on by auto in about 1920. They drove from rural W. Texas to California, then to Yellowstone, and back south to Texas.

I said, “That’s really surprising to me that there roads going to all those places back then!”

She said, “Oh, there was roads!..not paved roads, but roads.”

She also talked about her dad killing a deer before they went and her mom cooking and canning the deer meat since they had to take their own food (no McDonald’s back then!). At night they pulled off the road and camped.

people · August 25, 2005, 8:10pm

Those are incredible facts - seems society’s accelerator pedal is floored!

Spiker · August 25, 2005, 8:51pm

In 1905 our house was a pool hall !

bandit_TX · August 25, 2005, 11:32pm

This was told by my grandfather during a newspaper interview. It’s about his many years running a country store on US 67 in east Texas.

I believe the way opened in 1923, we opened a little store and stores at Bassett, Texas in 1924 and have been on said highway 47 years. It was a narrow road and part of it had not been asphalted in 1924. I furnished gravel trucks to said road between Bassett and Sulphur River. When I first opened up they were Model T Fords mostly and carried 1 1/4 yard [of gravel]. There was a plank bridge over Sulphur River at that time. The bridge caught fire one weekend one time and the traffic had to turn at Maud and go by Douglassville and back to Naples. It was a good highway and a way of earning a living for lots of little merchants which is a thing of the past now. I had $500 to go into business with and am enclosing a picture of my first store. Cars were just coming in style and my wife and I had all the business we could take care of. We had the only service store between Maud and Naples. Mr. W.O. Bryan put me in a little 5 gallon pump and a 3 barrel Lubestir and gave me credit for 250 gallons of gas and 30 gallons of oil and told me when he comes back with more gas for me to have the money. He was a fine man and gave me some sound advice. Also Mr. Bob Cargile had a wholesale grocery in Mt. Pleasant and also at Naples, he gave me credit for $50 in groceries. He was a fine man and I bought from him as long as he was in business. 

Forty seven years brings about lots of changes. I have sold lots of new tires for $5 each and many gallons of gas for 13 cents. It is lonesome for me now. I had lots of people from Dallas and Little Rock that came by once a month to once a year and always stopped with us. We always had big crowds over the holidays. But all good things come to an end some time. I just thank the good Lord that it lasted until my children were educated and my pension was started.

The hiway past his store had just been replaced by an interstate several miles away, effectively ending his business. He retired at 85.

My dad wrote this one about his childhood in the depression in a country store.

The Peddler’s Wagon.
During the depression starting with the stock market crash in 1929, the task of feeding one’s family became difficult. Although we made it better than many, Dad and Mom used every means at their command to keep the store from going under. Most of the customers had little or no money, competition was tough, profit margin almost non-existent, and losses on credit accounts were staggering. Then, in the early and mid 1930’s, the peddler’s wagon came into being again. It certainly wasn’t a new idea, having existed here and in Europe for several hundred years. It was called a wagon (a hold over from earlier times when horse drawn wagons were used) but was, in fact, a small store built on an early 30’s flat bed Ford truck. Dad built it himself… It was stocked with the most frequently used essential items that people needed–flour, coffee, sugar, salt, lard, thread, needles, can goods and a sack or two of feed. The chicken coop tied to the back and the egg box inside were for barter payments–the same as at the store. A regular route was established along all the country roads from Simms to near Dekalb and New Boston, usually following the mail routes. Two or three days a week, we took the wagon and left early, stopping at every house. We took orders for the next trip for anything we didn’t have. My brother Boyce did a lot of the driving, with Mom and I along. Dad sometimes went with the rest of us at the store. I was the chief chicken catcher and egg-counter.

I still have my granddad’s brass National cash register and the old oak stool he sat on. He had a 6th grade education, but sent every one of his kids to college. US senators and college presidents sat in his store to chat and get his views. He opened every New Year’s Day because “the way you start the year is the way you will finish it” and work was important. I still have his credit books with hundred’s of write offs. When someone had hard times, he didn’t believe in making it worse. He almost always gave them credit again. He and my grandmother were unique in putting their children first, a tradition that has continued in our family.

Mr.B · August 26, 2005, 10:23am

When my mother was a little girl, her dad worked on wall street. He would come home after the bell and the kids would sit at the dinning room table stamping and writing dates on the days documents and then he would bring them back down to the stock market that night. I had seven aunts and an uncle who all remember doing this task. Can you imagine a seven and eight year old handling these documents every night.

joev · August 26, 2005, 3:42pm

In 1905 my great grandfather was in processing at Ellis Island with 5 kids and a wife in tow! That was also 3 years before the last time the Cubs have won the World Series.

The Year 1905

CONNECT WITH US