Category: Development
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3,000 Planes a Month
America is the leader in aviation technology today, and has been for decades. But that was not the case in 1918, even though the Wright Brothers who hailed from Ohio had invented the airplane only a few years before. As this May 1918 article explained, the U.S. had some major catching up to do upon entering […]
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World’s Scientists in Life-and-Death Race
“These pictures are six months old,” says a quote from an army officer to begin this 1918 article, “so the devices they show are, of course, perfectly obsolete.” World War I sparked a massive technological boom, a silver lining to an otherwise horrific blemish on humanity’s history. That would come to be true of World […]
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Has the Power of Public Opinion Waned?
Was the power of public opinion on American politics declining in 1918? Job E. Hedges, former Republican candidate for New York governor, said yes and blamed it on political primaries: With the increase in our population, the average citizen is necessarily unable to have before him all the facts from which to draw his conclusions […]
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Keeping Civil Disputes Out of the Courts
“A reform that may be widely extended” proved prescient. In this article, New York City Municipal Court Justice Edgar J. Lauer detailed the growing trend of settling legislation out of court, which helps keeps costs down and help prevent the judicial system from getting too overloaded. By the 21st century, 97 percent of civil cases […]
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Where Women Supplant Men Because of War
Among the jobs which were women were filling in for men in larger numbers as a result of World War I: streetcar conductors, subway guards, elevator runners, firefighters, munition works, the felt hat industry, radium plating, and wagon drivers. As a man, I would gladly volunteer for even the most unjust war to avoid an […]
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Immigration Tide May Turn from West to East
As this 1917 article correctly predicted, many European immigrants to the U.S. later moved back to Europe after the conclusion of World War I. By some estimates, that number was almost one-third of European immigrants to America. However, “relatively few” German-Americans returned back to Germany. Immigration Tide May Turn From West to East: Millions of […]
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Enter America as Chief Fur Trader
World War I had unexpected effects on the fur market, not least because of… the invention of the submarine?! “American buyers and American furs no longer play the parts they formerly did in England. The submarine is one of the chief reasons. It has caused a scarcity of ocean freight space and a big jump […]
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Artistic Instinct of Negroes Should Be Developed
This 1917 article lamented the lack of flourishing culture in the African-American community. The Harlem Renaissance would start a mere year later in 1918, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Led by such figures as Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, and Richard Wright, the period would produce an explosion of literature, music, and art from the African-American […]
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Farmers Buy Forty Per Cent. of Motor Cars
The urban population has surged from 29.5 percent in 1880 to 46.3 percent in 1910. The Census Bureau estimates that cities contain 62.7 percent of the U.S. population today. A major change in rural life came with the development and popularity of the car. In 1917, the top two states by number of cars per […]
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Tremendous Cost of War to the United States
Federal expenditures multiplied more than 10-fold after America entered World War I. Even then, though, the drastically increased spending was still far less when adjusted for inflation than the federal government spends today. The 1917 spending was about $10.73 billion, which would be about $205.3 billion today. But this fiscal year will spend about $4.14 trillion, or […]
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