It looks like the garage replaced/displaced the al fresco loo aka outhouse! We tend to forget how much modern sanitation has done for our comfort and life-spans. Cholera was a real killer well into the 1900s.
Posted on 04/24/2017 6:52:02 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
i suppose it depends on your lifestyle and point of view
That didn't start until the grandchildren of John D. Rockefeller. John D. and his son John D. Jr were very religious and required Bible reading and practical lessons in thrift for their children. It was the "greatest generation" group -- David, John III, Nelson, Laurence and Winthrop -- who started the globalism and "Rockefeller Republican" crapola.
It looks like the garage replaced/displaced the al fresco loo aka outhouse! We tend to forget how much modern sanitation has done for our comfort and life-spans. Cholera was a real killer well into the 1900s.
Rich = not having to go to work, not techno garbage.
Sure. And at the same time Capitalism has reshaped society in several levels. Less poverty means less ‘need’ for men for women and other distortions we are seeing now. The 60’s revolution only happened because of capitalism.
I that a Corvette in the 1916 pic?
I = Is
Electricity! Power for lights, cooking, refrigeration etc.
Air conditioning is a miracle!
Medical advances allowing you to live a longer better life.
Eyeglasses, lasik.
TV and radio entertainment in your home. Music, dance, comedy, drama, sports, video games.
Phone to talk to anyone in the world.
The internet! Information of all sorts at your fingertips.
You look at the photos from way back and you see people’s faces with the look of hard living.
Actually, this article made me realize I’d be rather happy to live with the means of John D. Rockefeller in 1916. Almost all of the examples of modern progress the author cites I could easily live without. The medical risks would be of concern, of course, but people of that era just had to accept what they could not change.... same goes for us now.
Yep! Retro-electrifying a house was a cinch; retro-plumbing was second-mortgage territory.
It helps to read the article.
Just to be clear I do not deny the material gains at all.
I would have been dead at age 30 in 1916, as I got appendicitis at that age and would have died from it.
One of my children as saved by modern medical care, he would not have made it out of Mom had we not had modern medicine.
I never would have met my wife in 1916, though we lived only 20 odd miles apart. Our social spheres would not have mixed or crossed paths in 1916.
If you want to be educated today, information is so cheap and readily available you can become very educated for very little money. Almost all of the areas of interest to me would have been sharply circumscribed in 1916, just due to the limitations in accessing information.
Nonetheless I do not think you can ignore the cultural impact. We live in a time when we can listen to any type of music. Want to hear various versions of Handle’s “Royal Water Music”? well the 1953 Berlin harmonic version is on YouTube, as well as around 5 other recognized classic versions, all different, all free. How has it become then that “Bitch better have my money” and Lady GAGA various gay songs have become what folks listen to? By any measure the music of today is degraded, yet good music of any generation is at your fingertips for free but overwhelmingly ignored.
On any topic of intellectual interest there is an unlimited library at your disposal online, we should be in a golden age of intellectual discourse. Yet what is the big area of University study: how many genders are there, queer theory and how many ways can you denounce western civilization. It is as if the savages have taken over these institutions and are aping what they saw, without any understanding of what it was all really about.
Feminism has been a disaster for both men and women. The numbers of middle aged miserable women is huge in any urban or suburban area. The patriarchy had some defects, but based on simply observation, the alternative of a free for all has been disaster for around 50% of women. Equally disastrous for the ex-husbands, men who never got married, never had kids and the kids of divorced families. While there is great pain in the loss of a child, I find the modern emotional misery I see for large segments of populations as equally troublesome.
The same can be said of human dignity. I am old enough to recall men born in 1900 and they all had a quiet dignity to them (at least in the 1970s) which for the most part seems to be lacking today. Not just middle and upper middle class, but working class folks as well. Simply stated they were better men in terms of everything that is important than a lot of the folks today. Not only attitude, but an appalling number of young men, while able to use modern technology, have no knowledge of how it works, it is like magic to them and they lack the curiosity to try (in fairness the complexity makes it a lot harder). Worse they cannot fix any of these modern contrivances and nor even maintain or understand 1916 technology (such as fix a simple engine, toilet plumbing, basic electrical wiring, carpentry).
One has to wonder if the technological world we have can be preserved in a culture such as ours is headed. I work in high tech. The average age of engineers where I work in in the late 40s to early 50s, with a hole below age 38 to age 23. if this continues we are destined to become like Brazil or even worse, end up like Rome circa 476.
It is a very mixed basket.
Peanut butter has been around since the late 19th Century:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_butter
Regards,
I could give a frig about Rockefeller or what any fella has really.
Hope they enjoyed it while they had it or what’s the point of having it?
What makes the modern times better is you can choose to live like its anytime period you want.
If you want to live without modern technology then go right ahead.
Myself i like the internet..well, what i consider the good parts of the internet.
Its wild to be able to almost instantly go from listening to music from 1800’s to listening to listening to Blues from the 1920’s to listening to a Jack Benny program form the 40’s to watching a movie from the 50’s.
Or, to watch a how to video that shows you how to fix the fridge or fix the roof or make Maple Syrup or whatever!
Not only can you map a trip out but you can find where the closest Walmart, or fast food joint, or garage or Public Library is in any town on your way!
I like having lots of food choices,too.
Still i enjoy the simple things in life.
Going camping and living basic.
Enjoying a starry night or a campfire.
I still enjoy “doing nothing”
Sitting on a porch swing.
Enjoy listening to birds or the sound kids playing.
I can live without Air conditioning or Cable TV or even a telephone (except for work or an emergency)
Visit the mega estates in Rhode Island to see how the ultra rich lived. The mansions were stone, I have to believe they were not very temperature controlled. Poor lighting, electronics, etc. I do believe we live better than the richest of rich back at the turn of the century.
There are many places on Earth where ordinary Americans can bed pretty much anything they want to, however none of these places are in America.
You just can't believe how cautious I am, driving that 1/4 mile from the school to the house. lol
There is one simple statement that can be made about life a century ago, life and life choices were SIMPLER than they are today! Note that I do not equate simpler with better, just with the fact that the choices (decision tree) then were much fewer than in modern times.
Take the example of communicating one-on-one in 1900. Disregarding the ridiculous (smoke signals, heliograph etc.), you had the US Mail, personal-courier, telephone or telegraph. That decision tree was reduced by distance and consequent costs to the point of only mail and telegraph being practical. Now, we have what seems to be an almost infinite ability to reach out to someone, limited only by shared technology. How long ago was the query “Do you skype” a nonsensical jumble of words?
FYI: This is by no means an unmitigated blessing! I, personally, am convinced that many people would be innately happier with fewer required decisions rather than more. There is a psychological burden in the making choices and the more important they are the larger the burden.
A straight-forward example of the changes from a century ago; the matter of retirement! A century ago, the concept of ‘retirement’ did not exist for all practical consideration. You worked until you died and that was generally at an age we now consider to be middle age, 50s-to-60s. If you did out-live your working life, you lived with your descendants or died quickly in poverty. Thus the ‘planning’ needed for that end-stage of life was zero.
Now, oy vey, have we got headaches. Where do you put retirement money or do you spend it on your kids instead? Do you even bother to be married before the kids? Should the money go into stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs or Uncle Murray’s investment club which might be better than Uncle Sam’s MyIra. The decision matrix on just that single topic more resembles a plate of cooked spaghetti but much less tasteful!
While the article points out the disadvantages I still would like to live in that era if I had that kind of money. Certainly a more interesting time.
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