# Life in 1915 vs. today: What are the differences? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 24, 2001, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-in-1915-vs-today-what-are-the-differences/69948 "2001-06-24T05:57:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2001, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-in-1915-vs-today-what-are-the-differences/69948/41 "2001-06-27T17:49:38Z")
I agree that technology would be the easiest thing to adjust to, but that social changes would be hardest. I suspect the hardest thing she’d have to get used to is the sheer number of senior citizens, and the comfort in which many live long retirements. In 1915, the average life expectancy was probably around 55 or so (I’m guessing), and only rarely did people get that gold watch and a significant life beyond their working years. Next, as has been suggested already, would be the simple connectedness of the world in both communication and transportation, as well as in the global perspective that has gone along with it. In 1915, it was far easier to think of wars and famines and so forth in other countries as being on the far side of moon, for all they meant to her, instead of being in her face on TV and the Internet. I think she’d be able to adjust to the idea that humans had been to the Moon, but the view of Earth looking back from it would be jarring. The concept of being able to go anywhere in the world in a day’s travel or less, for only a few days’ pay, would also be difficult for someone raised in a world where simple trans-Atlantic crossings for immigrants were one-way, once-in-a-lifetime events. The OP selected 1915, and that’s oddly appropriate. For an American at the time, WW1 looked like just another in a long string of European territorial squabbles that the US was able to smugly avoid (she’d have thought differently a yar later). The idea that a war could be truly global, involving anyone that the combatants wanted to have involved, and inflicting permanent mass destruction, would have been paralyzingly terrifying. ---
**Author:** ![phartizan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba8739/32.png) [@phartizan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phartizan)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2001, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-in-1915-vs-today-what-are-the-differences/69948/42 "2001-06-27T18:02:25Z")
She might hate some things most people think are good. Um, racial equality. Maybe she’d even be anti-feminist (having been brought up that way: “In my day, women stayed at home.”) What about food? Sure, it’s more convenient, but who knows how much taste we’ve sacrificed for convenience. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2001, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-in-1915-vs-today-what-are-the-differences/69948/43 "2001-06-28T15:10:57Z")
Many of you seem to assume that you’ll be constantly shocking this young woman with the decadence of the modern day world. Undoubtedly, some of you will be shocked in turn when you take her on her first trip to the store and she asks where she can buy some cocaine or opium; substances which were as openly sold and consumed in 1915 as beer is today. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2001, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-in-1915-vs-today-what-are-the-differences/69948/44 "2001-06-28T17:12:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by phartizan \* > \*\*She might hate some things most people think are good. Um, racial equality. Maybe she’d even be anti-feminist (having been brought up that way: “In my day, women stayed at home.”) Possibly, but I doubt it. In her time, suffragism was a strong social movement, and was understood even then to be only a specific battle in a long-term war for equal rights and responsibilities for women. She wouldn’t be shocked that the struggle had continued to advance to its current point. My suspicion (no cites available) is that suffrage had a strong majority support among the women of the time, whether they’d admit it to their men or not, and the rest of it would naturally follow. Society’s structure may have changed a lot since then, but people haven’t, I don’t believe. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2001, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-in-1915-vs-today-what-are-the-differences/69948/45 "2001-06-28T17:43:23Z")
> [@](#): > > _ **Hometownboy** said:_ > But our 1915 lady would not be totally surprised by color. Inexpensive 4-color printing dates back to the 1880s… True. And, thinking about it, I now remember seeing pictures of turn-of-the-twentieth-century wagons and so on, covered in painted advertisements. I guess I was trying to point to the ubiquity of _disposablr_ colour printing around us, at least in urban North America: magazines, brochures, boxes, wrappers… _packaging_. I was reading **Hometownboy** ’s reply and I suddenly thought, “Plastic! She’d be new to plastic!” …and then I read **MrVisible** ’s reply. I suspect that much of the colour around us was made more affordable by plastic-based techniques, such as the full-colour photographic printing on vehicle wraps\*. \*A vehicle wrap is where they cover a vehicle such as a bus in an adhesive vinyl wrap that bears an advertisement. Around Toronto a lot of the _commuter-train cars_ are wrapped in 2008 Olympic Bid promotions. ---
**Author:** ![phartizan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba8739/32.png) [@phartizan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phartizan)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2001, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-in-1915-vs-today-what-are-the-differences/69948/46 "2001-06-28T17:51:20Z")
_Originally posted by ElvisL1ves_ > [@](#): > > **In her time, suffragism was a strong social movement, and was understood even then to be only a specific battle in a long-term war for equal rights and responsibilities for women.** No argument there. > [@](#): > > **She wouldn’t be shocked that the struggle had continued to advance to its current point. My suspicion (no cites available) is that suffrage had a strong majority support among the women of the time, whether they’d admit it to their men or not, and the rest of it would naturally follow. Society’s structure may have changed a lot since then, but people haven’t, I don’t believe.** I disagree. Not that I can claim to have any better insight into what wymmyn were thinking 90 years ago, but [he continues fearlessly, crunchin’ on eggs whereon angels fear to tread] my point is that she wouldn’t necessarily like it. Maybe my view is twisted by a couple of women friends who can’t tear themselves away from loser husbands. As to what she’d think of today’s prices, it also depends on her own psychology–or maybe how much $ she has to spend: [Time Well Spent](http://www.dallasfed.org/htm/pubs/pdfs/anreport/arpt97.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2001, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-in-1915-vs-today-what-are-the-differences/69948/47 "2001-06-30T04:05:07Z")
She’d probably be surprised by the scarcity of animals and the abundance of old people. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/life-in-1915-vs-today-what-are-the-differences/69948.md?page=2)