Our continuing investigation of progress since 1910 must begin with a benchmark look at life in 1910.
This is primarily a look at life in the United States, though the conditions in other countries were by and large far more difficult. As you may recall, my interest began with a throwaway line from Piketty (see here for my first column in this series), when Piketty wrote “… just as in 1910. Basically, all the middle class managed to get its hands on was a few crumbs.”
In 1969, the editors of Time-Life books published a six-volume set of books, each one covering a decade between 1900 and 1960. Later editions added decades for the 1960s and 1970s, and I’ve seen one version that goes back to the 1870s as well.
The first book (1900-1910) from the first edition offers a wonderful narrative of the dramatic changes during this era of distinct progress, noting that in 1900 there were only 45 states, fewer than 150 miles of paved highway in the entire country, a population of 76 million (about 1/5th of today), and an average worker’s pay of 22 cents an hour. How many people owned a telephone? 18 out of 1000. How big was California? The state ranked #21 in terms of population, right behind Mississippi.
To be fair, these are stats for the year 1900, not 1910. Nevertheless, the 1900-1910 book highlights these key aspects of the decade.
Child Labor. We often forget that child labor wasn’t just legal in the early 1900s. It was common, normal, widely practiced and accepted. The turn of century was an era dominated by men, often incorrectly simplified as White men. The reality of the time was that dominant group was a narrow minority: Native-born, of Northern European ethnicity, Protestant, and male. We often forget to add “adult” to the description, but one-sixth of all workers were children. It wasn’t until federal legislation was passed in 1916 that the tide turned against forcing children, with their nimble fingers, to work for wages.
Small towns. Six out of ten Americans resided in small towns. These were places with fewer than 2500 citizens. These 45 million people were rural, if not exactly agricultural. That is, while the raw number of agricultural “workers” was 11.68 million in the year 1900, an equal number of rural workers supported them as small-town merchants, butchers, blacksmiths, and so on. This represented a peak of rural living, which was in the process of a dramatic surge in farming productivity thanks to tractors and irrigation.
The absolute population of American farmers peaked in 1910 at 11.77 million, collapsing to just 3 million six decades later (hat tip to OurWorldinData). In contrast, the number of industrial labors, many in small-town workshops, rose from 16 to 29 million during the 1910s. Of course, the decline of farmers relative to the total US population was even sharper. More than one in ten Americans worked in agriculture in 1910, whereas there are fewer than one in a hundred today. The point is that the small town economy was built to support farmers, and it is completely different now, lingering as an exurb, a residential community that serves the city.
Consumers Rule. The early 20th century was revolutionized by a singular personality named Richard W. Sears whose mail-order Sears catalogs began with a jewelry shop co-founded in 1887 with A.C. Roebuck. So what was the revolution?