“Everyone was very polite and gentlemanly and would not accept anything they hadn’t earned. People wouldn’t understand that today.”
How True! How Sad (your final sentence).
The kids of today would ether suffer horribly or turn to crime and slowly be eliminated because they are so used to expecting everything.
A few years back the son of a friend was whining to his dad that he wanted $5 for something. I told him that I had $15 worth of cans in the back of my truck if he wanted them. He turned his nose up at them because he didn’t want to deal with them.