Looking At The 1800S: Miracle Century; Telephones, Trolleys And Sweing Machines; 100 Years Of Invention

The article from which the following excerpts were taken appeared in The Seattle Daily Times on Dec. 30, 1899. We thought you'd enjoy seeing how our predecessors marked the last turn of a century. -------------------------------

This miracle century has long since broken the record. To look backward over the achievements of the past hundred years in this country and compare our condition and position in the year 1800 with that in which we find ourselves at the beginning of the year 1900 makes it plain that it is no brag nor vaunt nor empty boast to affirm that this portion of the human race at least has advanced further in civilization than in the six thousand years which preceded. It has been essentially a century of invention. Before he died, Benjamin Franklin gave expression to the unique wish that he could be allowed to sleep for a century and then wake up to see what progress had been made during his slumber. Certainly the awakening would be surprising enough to him.

The people who lived at the beginning of the nineteenth century had no railroads, no telegraphs and no newspapers worth mentioning. They were ignorant of the sewing machine, and had no conception of the telephone. Of course 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 and 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 nowadays.

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 photographs taken, and did not dream that the sun could be made to come down and make pictures far 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 wallpapers were yet to be thought of. They had neither envelopes for letters nor adhesive postage stamps. Modern plumbing was yet to be. The age of illustration, with its multitude of patented processes for producing and multiplying pictures, was to arrive in the distant future.

A CENTURY ON WHEELS

Note the vehicles that pass by yon today. The omnibus, the horse car, the trolley car, the ambulance, the police-patrol, the express wagon, the furniture van, the delivery wagon of the department store, the newspaper wagon delivering papers to a crowd of boys, the coal cart, the push cart of the notion vendor, the steam fire engine, the hose cart, the automobile, the hansom, all created since 1800.

Nobody one hundred years ago had ever seen a tall building, a metal water pipe, an iron rail, a gas jet, an elevator, or sent a telegram, 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 6 feet square.

Such a man never in his life saw a sewing machine, nor a lawn mower, nor a typewriter, nor a copying press, nor a steel pen, nor a piece of blotting paper, nor a revolver, nor a breech-loading gun, nor a friction match, nor an envelope, nor a rubber shoe, nor any article made from the gum of the rubber tree. But why call the long roll?

FROM LINEMAN TO ENGINEER

Could a man of the last century come back and read down the "wants" column of a great morning newspaper, he would find it utterly impossible to understand the expressions he would meet in every line. The district messenger, the telegraph operator, the "lineman," the stenographer, the typewriter, the "saleslady," the car driver, the gripman, the conductor, the brakeman, the bookkeeper, the street sweeper, the paver, the pork packer, the electrician, the elevator boy, the engineer and the fireman, and the hosts of others whose trades and occupations are so well-known to us, would be men concerning whose daily life he would not be able to form the faintest conception.

Whether skilled or unskilled, the workman of the last century then fell into one of three classes, for he was neither a free man, an indentured servant or a slave.

"Indentured servants" were to be found everywhere. As a class, they were made up of paupers, criminals, debtors and redemptioners. That the community should be burdened with the maintenance of men too lazy, too incompetent or too vicious to work was thought to be out of all reason. Overseers of the poor were, therefore, empowered to sell paupers, and sheriffs to dispose of criminals for such sums as would relieve the state from all expense. Thus a man who stole fourteen deer skins was given thirty-nine lashes on his back and sold to service for eight years. A wretch who could not pay his jail fees was sold for three years.

But the condition of the free laborer was not to be envied. His house was meaner, his food coarser, his clothing was of commoner stuff, his wages lower and his hours of daily labor far longer than those of the men who in our time perform like service. Down to the opening of the present century a farm hand was paid $3 a month. A strong boy could be had for $1 a month. Women who went out of service received $10 a year. Typesetters were given $1 a day, and carpenters 10 pence an hour.

A woman by hard work at the spinning wheel could make 12 cents in a day. The hours of work were from sunrise to sunset, and as the sun rose later and set earlier in winter than in summer, wages in December were one-third less than in July. On such pittances it was only by the strictest economy that a mechanic could keep his children from starvation and himself from jail. In the face of these facts we may well be thankful that our lot has fallen in a better time - in a land which does indeed flow with milk and honey.

A workingman in 1800 labored from sunrise to sunset, and earned, if a skilled workman, from a third to a half of what he is now paid for working 10 hours. Then he might be imprisoned for debt; now he cannot be. Then he had not the benefit of a lien law: now he has that benefit. Cheaper methods of manufacture, better means of transportation, enable him to wear finer clothes, and eat better food than his predecessor did in 1800. Now he sends his children to a public school. In 1800 there were no free schools except such as were supported by churches or charity, or were on a pauper basis. A hundred new occupations open to him, and to his children as many new ways of earning a livelihood, and raised him from a drudge to the status of a man. . . .

A NATION EXPANDED

One hundred years ago the Mississippi from the mouth of Red River to the Lake of the Woods, was geographically the Western frontier of the United States . . .

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 800,000 square miles, and its organic law had no provisions for acquiring foreign territory, for holding colonial dependencies, nor for the incorporation of alien communities . . .

In less than one hundred years the untrodden wilderness of 1800, ten times greater in extent than France, has become the abode of thirty million people residing in twenty-four states and three territories, sending forty-eight Senators to the National Congress, with agricultural productions that control the food markets of the whole civilized world.

SCIENTIFIC ADVANCES

It has been science's greatest century. The application of physical laws to human ailments enabled Laenned, the great French physician, to discover a new method of differentiating the various lung affections by tapping the chest and listening to the interrupted air currents coursing through the respiratory tubes.

The clinical thermometer was subsequently employed to mark the ominous rise of temperature more accurately than by the mere feel and count of the hurrying pulse wave. Medicines which could not be tolerated by an irritable stomach were insinuated by hollow needle and graduated syringe under the skin, and thus, although taking a longer way around, became the surer way home.

The discovery of general anaesthesia, whereby the most severe surgical operations were made absolutely painless, revolutionized all the older methods of preparation for the dreaded ordeals. Now the patient, instead of being strapped to the table, breathes a vapor, numbs agony in peaceful sleep and awakes to exclaim in delightful surprise: "O, Pain, where is thy victory? O, Blade, where is thy sting?". . .

By the adoption on the microbe theory of wound infection and the intelligent prevention of the entrance of poisonous germs in exposed tissues, an entirely new method of procedure was instituted, which has resulted in the saving of countless lives and in the performance of numerous operations which were impossible before. Now the abdominal and chest cavities, instead of being forbidden grounds for operative venture, are virtually surgical thoroughfares, and the daring blade and skilled hand snatch victory from the hitherto hidden entrenchments of death.

Following in the lines of these triumphs comes Roentgen, with his wonderful ray, opening a new pathway of light through solid flesh, lifting the veil from the hitherto invisible and outlining the bony skeleton in all its appalling nakedness. So great are the promises of this discovery that we are only just beginning to catch glimpses here and there of the far-reaching significance of its future revelations. A more comprehensive knowledge of the origin of disease which followed the discovery of specific germs as causative elements enabled general medicine to take its wonted place also in the grand vanguard of victorious progress. It is only within the past few years that we have learned that the majority of the communicable diseases depend for their propagation upon a specially characteristic seed, or germ, for each. In the category of these relations of cause and effect we number cholera, typhoid, typhus, malarial and yellow fevers, pulmonary consumption, crysipelas, diphtheria, the plague, and many other similar affections. The practical application of these valuable discoveries is manifested in the marvelous growth of preventive medicine, which is the bulwark of public health, and the consequent safety and happiness of the people.

It would be interesting to go on enumerating the practical advantages that progressive humanity has gained since 1800. But it is impossible to give space to all the blessings achieved. A timely ending to the list is this:

Twelve millions of the human family have recently raised their hands to heaven in thanksgiving to their God for the coming of the warriors bearing the arms and banners of the Great Republic. Selah.