Who ever does? Old-school SF is full of people zooming around in spaceships or settling on Mars, while using slide rules and expecting women to stay home and make babies. It’s easier to imagine new machines than new morals and habits–maybe because in real life, it’s easier to adopt new machines than new morals and habits.
Oh I dunno, depending on how you look at it (and whom you talk to) you’d think Mexico was very actively trying to enter the US. 
I offer you the current La Femme Nikita, Maggie Q…,
In other words, they will not be taught Latin.:mad:
To more accurately break down all of the claims the author makes…
- 350 to 500 million people in America - Not yet, but close. Partial credit.
- Central and South American nations join the Union - No.
- Americans will be taller - Yes.
- Americans will live longer - Yes.
- More people will live in the suburbs - Yes.
- The city house will be no more - No.
- Building in blocks will be illegal - No.
- Commuting from the suburbs will take a few minutes - No.
- Fares will cost a penny - Not even when inflation is adjusted for.
- Hot or cold air will be turned on from spigots to regulate the temperature of a house - We have centralized climate control, but not in the way envisioned. Partial credit.
- Houses will have no chimneys - No, though modern fireplaces are more aesthetic than utilitarian, so partial credit.
- No mosquitoes nor flies - No.
- Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishments similar to bakeries - Yes.
- They will purchase materials cheaply at wholesale - Yes.
- And sell them for less than the price of cooking at home - No.
- Food will be delivered by car or by pneumatic tubes - Yes on cars, no on tubes.
- Dishes will be packed and returned to the restaurant - No.
- Said facilities will use electronics - Yes.
- Utensils will be washed in antimicrobial chemicals - Yes.
- Having one’s own cook and cooking at home will be a luxury - Yes on cooks, no on home cooking.
- Exposing food for sale to open air will be illegal - No.
- Refrigeration will keep food fresh for long periods - Yes.
- All mass transit will be elevated or in subways - No.
- Cities will be free from noise - No.
- Photographs will be transmitted worldwide - Yes.
- Color photography will be widespread - Yes.
- Trains will travel 150 mph - Yes.
- New York to San Francisco will take a day and a night by train - No, it takes Amtrak 3 days to make the trip.
- Trains will not be coal-fueled - Yes.
- Cars will be artificially cooled - Yes.
- Cars will cost less than horses - No.
- Farmers will own motorized equipment - Yes.
- They will be operated by one-pound motors - No.
- Children will ride motorized sleighs in winter - No.
- Horses in harnesses will be rare - Yes.
- Everybody will walk ten miles - No.
- Exercise will be mandated in schools - Yes.
- New York to England will take two days by boat - No.
- Transatlantic hovercraft will be in operation - No.
- Ships will submerge to avoid bad weather - No.
- Airships will be used as weapons of war and science - Yes on science, no on war.
- Motorized artillery and flying warships will exist - Yes.
- They will be capable of launching projectiles to destroy entire cities - Yes.
- Said artillery will travel as fast as trains - Yes.
- Bomb-proof fortifications will be built - Yes.
- Submarines will wreak havoc on enemy navies - Yes.
- Aerial photography will aid in warfare - Yes.
- No wild animals - No.
- Rats and mice will be extinct - No.
- Horses will be extinct - No.
- Cattle and sheep will have no horns - No.
- They will be slower than fattened hogs - No.
- Animals will be manipulated to grow more meat, wool, etc. and their organs will atrophy - Livestock yields have been increased through hormone treatments, but not to this extent. Partial credit.
- Images will be transmitted instantly around the world - Yes.
- Telephone access will exist worldwide - Yes.
- Switchboard operators will be obsolete - Yes.
- Live theater will be viewable in the home - Yes.
- Music will be reproduced by self-playing instruments - No, sound reproduction has evolved in a different way.
- Cities will have publicly-funded symphonies - Yes.
- New instruments will be invented - Yes.
- Free university education for all - No.
- National universities will be established - No.
- Simplified English grammar not based on Latin - No.
- Poor students will be given free board, clothing, and books - Partial credit, if you consider Pell grants and student loans to count.
- Children will be provided with free eyeglasses, dentistry, and medical care - Partial credit, as this is true in some countries but not yet in America.
- Poor students will have access to free transit to school and free lunches - Yes.
- Poor children will be taken on school vacations around the world - No.
- Schools will emphasize etiquette and housekeeping - No.
- Purchases will be delivered by pneumatic tubes - No.
- Vegetables will be grown in electrically-heated gardens - No, greenhouse and hothouse growing is more efficient.
- Strawberries as large as apples, peas as large as beets, etc. - Technically possible, but they lack flavor and are undesireable. Partial credit.
- Sugarcane will be the primary source of sugar - No.
- Rubber will be produced domestically from milkweed - No.
- Plants will be resistant to microbes - Partial credit due to GM crops.
- Drugs will neither be swallowed or injected - No.
- It will be possible to examine internal organs without cutting open the body - Yes, in most cases.
- “Rays of invisible light” will make this examination possible - The x-ray had already been discovered when this article was written. Partial credit.
So, by my count, out of 77 distinct predictions the author makes, he gets 35 correct.
Make that 36.
No one actually does it, because air travel is faster, but it might be technically possible. It’s about 5300km from NYC to Liverpool, and the Boeing JetFoil (a passenger hydrofoil, which is basically what he described) has a cruising speed of 43 knots (~80kph). That could yield a transit time of less than 3 days. The problem is hauling enough fuel–the JetFoil would need to carry 8 times its standard fuel capacity to make the trip without refueling.
Oddly, under the same heading, he predicts that “fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house”. That bit fits services like UPS and FedEx well enough…but if he thought everyone would have tube deliveries, why would it be necessary?
“He will also grow large gardens under glass.” That sounds like a greenhouse to me, but that’s no great prediction, since greenhouses and conservatories had already been around for a long time. The rest of it is bogus, as you said.
Is anyone else having a hard time reading the original article?
Doggone it, that thing is TINY type.
No trouble in Firefox, at least. Clicking it zooms in substantially, and if that isn’t enough, hitting control-plus zooms more.
Not everything came to pass, but by and large their predictions were mostly reasonable, at least. There was nothing clearly and patently absurd, like men walking on the surface of the Moon.
Northern Piper beat me to the Ski-Doos…!
Perhaps not in the USA, though these are the goals or systems in place in other countries.
I believe the UK has free university, as do several nordic countries. University where I live is subsidized by the government resulting in relatively low tuition, and three-year technical programs only cost a couple of hundred dollars a year.
State-funded (or provincial) universities and colleges have been established as well, so I’d give him partial credit on that one.
Yes on war too. Airships were used as bombers in WW I
And they’re particularly cute, aren’t they!
That may be the case, but I count it as a no because the author was making predictions about the world of 2000, not the world of 1915.
I’d say partial credit. Construction requirements in many suburbs and exurbs are exactly as he describes.
It’s fascinating to see the huge gap in understanding between the technological, where he was pretty strong, and the natural/biological, where he was completely idiotic. People understood the fundamentals of life and biology, it was silly to believe that we could or would eliminate “pest” species or that pigs could outrun horses, oranges would grow in Philly, etc.
I think in this writer’s mind they were the same thing. He believed that the technology would advance to the point where it could stamp out these species. By positing the elimination of mice, etc., he was simply overestimating the ability of advances in hygiene, etc. that technology had brought to that point.
Using slide rules is an example of forgetting to account for new machines, not new morals…
Pity about the pnuematic tubes though.