The Florence tribune., 1900-01-27
THEY DIDN'T HAVE IN 1900.
Some of Last Century's inventions We
 Should be Thankful For.
LFrom the Kansas City star.l

The people who lived at the begin 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 is 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 heating were equally beyond their ken. They had no cheap clothing, nor any expensive, comfortable house furniture such as may be bought now adays.
 They were 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 unknown 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 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 pie lures, was to arrive in the distant fu- ture.
 Note the vehicles that pass by you to-day. The omaibus, the horse car, the trolley car, the ambulance, the police patrol, the express wagon, the furniture van, the delivery wagon delivering 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 tall building, a metal pipe, an iron rail, gas jet, an elevator or sent 8 telegram or touched an electric button, or heard the steam whistle of factory, | or spoken through 8 telephone, or looked though pane of glass six feet l square. Look into the shop window. | Hardly an object in many of them could be even named by citizen who 1 died in 1900, could be come back and behold them.
 Such man never in his life saw a 1 sewing machine, nor lawn mower, i nor typewriter, nor copying press, nor steel pen, nor a piece of plotting paper, nor a revolver, nor brsech- loading gun, nor friction match, nor an envelope, nor rubber shoe, nor any article made from the gum of the rubber tree.
 A workingman in 1900 labored from sunrise to sunset, and earned, if skilled workman, from third to half of what he is now paid for working ten hours. Then he might be in- prisoned 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 a pauper basis.
 One hundred years ago the Missis- sippi, from the mouth of Red river to the Lake of the Woods, was geogra- phically 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 undiscove cred 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.
 The entire population of the union
 was about the same as that of the
 state of New York in 1900. Its area
 was not much in excess of 800, ,00C
 square miles and it's organic law had
 no provision for acquiring foreign
 territories, for holding colonial de.
 pendencies nor for the incorpora
 tion of alien communities.