Mohave County miner., 1900-02-03
They Didn't Have in 1900.


ming of the nineteenth century had no
railroads, no telegraphs and no news
papers worth mentioning. They were
ignorant of the sewing machine and
had no conception of the telephone
They knew nothing of the great variety
of modern electrical inventions which
have so much TO do with what i now
regarded AS ordinary comfort.
They possessed no lucifer matches,
no bicycles, no comfortable stoves.
They knew not how to heat their houses
in winter, for furnaces and steam heat
ing we're equally beyond their ken.
They had no cheap clothing, nor any
expensive. comfortable house furni-
ture such as may be bought nowadays.
They we're restricted almost to such
articles of diet as were produced in
the immediate locality. Canned foods
they were ignorant of and preserved
foods of any kind were almost un-
known to them.
They had never had their photo
graphs taken, and did not dream the
sun could be made to come down and
make pictures more perfect than any
artist could produce.
They had never seen a steamboat;
they had no such carpets on their
floors as are nowadays in use, and wall
paper was yet to be thought of. They
had neither envelopes nor letters nor
adhesive postage stamps. Modern
plumbing was yet to be. The age of
illumination, with its multitude of pat
ented processes and multiplying pic
lures, was to arrive in the distant fu-
ture.
Note the vehicles that pass by you
today. The omnibus, the horse car,
the trolly car, the ambulance, the po-
lice patrol, the express wagon, the
furniture van, the delivery wagon de-
livering papers to crowd of boys, the
coal cart, the push cart of the notion
vender, the steam fire engine, the horse
cart, the automobile, all created since
1900.
Nobody 100 years ago had ever seen
a tall building, a metal pipe, an iron
rail, gas jet, an elevator, or sent a tel
egram or touched an electric button,
or heard the steam whistle of a factory,
or spoken through a telephone, or
looked through a pane of glass six feet
square. Look into the shop window.
Hardly an object in many of them
could be even named by citizen who
died in 1900, could he come back and
behold them.
Such man never in his life ever
saw sewing machine, nor a lawn
mower, nor typewriter, nor a copying
press, nor steel pen, nor piece of
blotting paper, nor revolver, nor a
breechloading gun, nor a friction
match, nor an envelop, nor a rubber
shoe, nor any article made from the
gum of rubber tree.
A workingman in 1900 labored from
sunrise to sunset, and earned, il
skilled workman, from third to half
of what he is now paid for working ten
hours. Then he might be imprisoned
for debt; now he cannot be. Then he
had not the benefit of lien law; now
he has that benefit. In 1900 there were
no free schools, except such as were
supported by churches or charity, or
| were on pauper basis.
One hundred years ago the Missis-
sippi, from the mouth of Red river to
the Lake of the Woods, was geograph-
ically the western frontier of the
United States. Historically the pion-
eers of Ohio and the northwestern ter
ritory and the unborn states of Indiana
and Illinois were descending the de
clivity of the Appalachian mountains
and disappearing in the forests whose
solitude extended from Fort Dearborn
to Natchez.
Beyond the Mississippi to the Pacific
was an undiscovered country, under
the dominion of France, England,
Mexico and Spain; mysterious region
of unexplored desert, of illimitable
prairies and plains; of nameless rivers
and colossal mountain ranges. st.
Louis, New Orleans and Pensacola
were foreign towns and the name of
Chicago was not written on the map.