Category: Future
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Coming Era of Vegetable Supremacy (article on human population trends)
In 1921, a University of Wisconsin professor predicted that circa 2021, people would look back a century in time to that era’s immigration as the cause of America’s decline. E. A. Ross, professor of sociology in the University of Wisconsin, with his study of the immigration problem in which he says: “Not until the twenty-first […]
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The Germans of Tomorrow
A 1921 article by Charles J. Rosebault predicted German youth would depart from their “obedience and reverence” of the past and could very well pave the pathway to world peace. Hate to break it to you… The German youth, trained and drilled in obedience and reverence, has finally revolted against the mismanagement of the seignors. As might […]
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The Future of the Novel
A 1921 article predicted novels would move towards action and adventure. That happened… eventually. While the biggest novels of recent decades have been action-heavy, perhaps the least action-heavy classic ever — Ulysses by James Joyce — was published only the next year. This is the age of the airplane, the wireless telegraph, of radium, of […]
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A World Ruled From the Air
Three 1920 predictions by the British Air Ministry’s Cuthbert Hicks about the future speed, carrying capacity, and military influence of aircraft — two predictions proved wild underestimates, while a third proved a wild overestimate. At the moment the fastest officially recognized speed attained by aircraft is one hundred and eighty-seven miles an hour — three miles […]
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The First Woman President
Weeks after women gained the right to vote, a satirical column predicted a future female president since “Millions of us men will be compelled to vote for her with the threat of losing our home-brewed meals if we don’t.” In 1920, the country was still 12 years away from its first elected female senator, Hattie Wyatt Caraway of […]
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America’s Unwritten Novels
The mostly-forgotten novelist Coningsby Dawson, speculated in 1920 that America would have difficulty producing great novels moving forward. “I believe American novelists as a class to be the most unobservant and the least local in their affections. When I say local, I use that term in its best sense. Hardy and Kipling and Tolstoy and […]
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The Anti-Wilson ‘Mania’
Woodrow Wilson was unpopular near his presidency’s end, but how would he be remembered by history? This 1920 article predicted he’d be remembered well. By 2017, a C-SPAN survey of historians ranked him the 11th-best president. The 1920 article noted that Wilson was hated by many during his own lifetime, just like Washington and Lincoln… […]
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The Next War
In 1920, Harvard government professor Albert Bushnell Hart accurately predicted Germany and Italy might launch another world war. His prediction that it may occur within five years was a bit pessimistic — it actually took 19. When you turn to Eastern Europe and Western Asia, the patient has taken not ether but hasheesh [sic], and […]
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Heavens a Hippodrome and All the Actors Airplanes
In 1919, some predicted that the future realm of acting would be not the stage nor the screen, but the sky with airplanes. This is the key to the great Futurist drama. The Sardous, Gus Thomases, Ibsens, Sam Shipmans and Barries of the future will write for a stage whose wings will be Arcturus and […]
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Future of the Democratic Party
Politics in 1919 was similar to 2019: a president had just suffered a devastating setback as his opposing party regained control of the House of Representatives. But the chair of the president’s party in 1919 aimed for a spirit of more bipartisanship, while it’s hard to think of any olive branches Trump has extended to House Democrats thus […]
SundayMagazine.org 