Its hard for us to realize how much things have changed from the beginning of the last century to now. The population of the planet Earth in the year 1900 was 1.6 Billion people. China alone had 1.2 Billion people in 1995 only a little short of the entire world population in 1900. In 1998 the world population was estimated to be 5.9 billion. Today (2004) the population is estimated to be 6.3 Billion by the end of the year with it reaching over 9 Billion by 2050.

Crowds

Aside from the immense resources required to support this huge population, will the sheer weight of humanity effect the Earth? The forests on Earth are shrinking and they went from 15 billion acres in 1900 to 8 billion acres in 1998. There is some disagreement on this figure and it goes as high as 9.8 billion acres.

The life expectancy in 1900 for the U.S. was 48.23 years for white males and 32.5 years for all other males while white females faired better at 51.8 years with all other females averaging 35 years. This changed in 2000 to 74.8 years for white males and 68.3 for all other males while white females averaged 80 years of age and all other females averaged 75 years of age. The most dramatic age gains may be yet to come.

Infant mortality has decreased dramatically. In 1900 the rate in the U.S. was 149 per thousand live births while in 2003 the rate dropped to 6.75 per thousand. In India it was 232 per thousand live births in 1900 now it is 59.5 per thousand live births.

No one had a computer in their home, or anywhere else for that matter. Only about one person in nine even had a bath tub at the turn of the century.

The following statistics apply to the United States:

Workers were not making a lot of money in 1900, the average wage fell between $400 - $500 per year. The south paid less than the north for unskilled workers. If you were a woman working in a shop you could expect to make $250 - $300 per year. Only 20% of females worked.

Cars in New York City

There wasn't much chance of getting run over by a car since there were only a little under 14,000 cars in the whole country. One out of eight people were below the poverty level.

You had a problem finding a phone if you wanted to make a call because only one in thirteen homes had a phone. A long distance call from Denver to New York City would have cost you about $11.00 for three minutes in a period where you were only making $8.60 a week.

When you bought food you paid 4 cents for a pound of sugar, 24 cents for a pound of butter and 14 cents for a dozen eggs. You now pay approximately 10 X that amount for the same food staples.

Everyone tends to think that 1900 was more violent than now but the homicide rate in 1900 was about 1.5 per 100,000 of population and in 2001 it was about 7 per 100,000.

Plastics have taken over the world since 1900. We went from zero plastic in products to plastics used in almost everything to varying extents. As was said in the movie The Graduate, plastics is the future. New types of cement and steel have allowed us to build buildings that are way higher than anything built in 1900 or before. We went from no aircraft to flights to the moon and this was in only about 70 years. We just launched a scram jet that flew over 5000 mph. The field of medicine has seen tremendous advances. We went from doctor diagnosis and maybe a crude X-ray that gave you a dangerous dose of radiation to CAT scans, sulphur drugs to miracle drugs. We unfortunately went from explosives and bullets to nuclear weapons, biological weapons and chemical weapons.

Tall Buildings

The last hundred years or so have seen tremendous progress and more killing than the world has ever known. Lets hope that the next hundred will see even more progress and more civilized actions by all of us.