Q: What was the thought behind the line "it's 1900 and the times are going to change"?
A: thinking about time and changes over the course of 10s or even 100s of years into the future. certainly there must have already been a feeling in 1900 that times were going to change, with rapidly developing new technologies. sound recordings, video, radio, cars, many more things. it's similar to the feeling we've been having ever since, with telephones, computers, planes, ai, many more things. By placing this in 1900, it's giving you an alternate view of the same story from an earlier point in time, and it also gives you the listener the sensation of actually being in the future, as you are listening to it more than 100 years later. so it hopefully rings especially true that times did change and indeed still are