Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1900-01-04
WHAT THEY DIDN'T HAVE IN 1900
Some of the Closing Century's inven-
IlonS for which Mankind should
be Thankful.


be Thankful.
The people who lived at the begin
ming of the nineteenth century had
no railroads. 10 telegraphs and no
newspapers worth mentioning. They
were ignorant of the sewing machine
and had no conception of the tele-
phone. They knew nothing of the
great variety OF modern electrical in
ventIons which have go much to do
with what is now regarded as ordi-
: nary comfort.
They possessed no lucifer matches,
no bicycles and no comfortable stoves
They knew not how to heat their
houses III winter, for furnaces and
steam heating were equally beyond
their ken. They had no cheap cloth
ing, nor any expensive, comfortable
house furniture such as may be
bought nowadays.
They were restricted almost to such
articles of diet as were produced il
the Immediate locality. Canned foods
they were ignorant OF and preserved
foods of any kind were almost IN
known to them.
They had never had their photo
graphs taken, and did not dream that
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 the floor
as are nowadays in use, and wall pa
pers were yet to be thought of. They
mad neither envelopes for letters nor
| adhesive postage stamps Modern
plumbing was yet to be. The age of
illumination, with It's multitude of
patented processes for producing and
multiplying pictures, was to arrive in
the distant future
Note the vehicles that pass by you
today. The omnibus, the horse car,
the trolley car. zoe ambulance, the
| police patrol, the express wagon, the
furniture van, the delivery wagon of
tbs department store, the newspaper
wagon delivering papers to crowd
of boys. the coal cart, the push cart
of tbs nation vender, the steam fire
engine, he hose cart, the automobile,
the baGsome, all crested sinUa 1900.
Nobody 100 years ago had ever
seeo a tail building, q metal water
pipe, an iron rail-, gas JET, an elsVe-
tor, or sent telegram or touched an
slectrie button, or heard a steam
whistle Of factory, or spoken thro
p sslsphone, or looked through q
pane Of glass fix feet square. Look
INTO the shop windows. Hardly an
object in many of them could be even
named by citizsn who died in 1880,
could he come back and behold them.
Such a man never in his life saw &
sewing machine, nor lawn mower.
nor type writer, nor a copying
press, nor steel pen, nor a piece of
blottlDg paper, nor revolver, nor a
breech-loading gun, nor a friction
match, nor a rubber shoe, nor any
article made from the gum of the
rubber tree.
One hundred years ago the MISSES
ippi, from the mouth of the Red river
to the Lake of the Woods, was geo.
graphically the western frontier of
the United States. Historically the
pioneers OF Ohio and the Northwest,
srn territory and the unborn states Of
Iodiana and Illinois were defending
the deeIivity of the Appalachian
mountains and disappearing in the
forests whose solitude extended from
Fort Dearborn to Nstchez.
Beyond the Mississippi to the Paci-
fic WAS an undiscovered country, uu-
der the dominion of France, England
Mexico AID Spain; mysterious re-
gion OF unexoiored deserts, of illimit-
able prairies and plains; of nameless
rivers and colossal mountain ranges
St. Louis, New Orleans and Pensa-
cola were foreign towns and the name
of Chicago was not written on the
map.