14 Century-Old Environmental Predictions: Where Are They Now?
In the December 1900 issue of Ladies Home Journal, John Elfreth Watkins put together a collection of predictions for the future of the United States and the world by the end of the 20th century. In “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years”, Watkins surveyed a group of “the wisest and most careful men in our greatest institutions of science and learning” about “will have been wrought in his own field of investigation before the dawn of 2001.
Some of the predictions are uncannily accurate, yet others are more than a little wide of the mark. We’ve cherry-picked 14 enviro-related predictions and coupled them with a brief analysis of what actually happened. Enjoy.
1. Prediction: “Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. Farmers will own automobile hay-wagons, automobile truck-wagons, plows, harrows and hay-rakes. A one-pound motor in one of these vehicles will do the work of a pair of horses or more. Children will ride in automobile sleighs in winter. Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known. There will be, as already exist today, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers. The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today.”
What happened: Partially true. Generally speaking, horses cost less than new cars, excepting show and race horses. However, the gist of the prediction rings true. Cars, trucks, and buses have all-but replaced the horse in American society as a means of transportation and performing work.
2. Prediction: “There Will Be No Street Cars in Our Large Cities. All hurry traffic will be below or high above ground when brought within city limits. In most cities it will be confined to broad subways or tunnels, well lighted and well ventilated, or to high trestles with “moving-sidewalk” stairways leading to the top. These underground or overhead streets will teem with capacious automobile passenger coaches and freight with cushioned wheels. Subways or trestles will be reserved for express trains. Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises.”
What happened: Most cities in the U.S. dismantled their street car networks or converted the tracks to light rail in the middle of the 20th century. New Orleans and Toronto still run their streetcars networks along essentially the same principle and layout as they did 100 years ago, while cities like Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have rebuilt their streetcars into light rail networks.
3. Prediction: “Trains will run two miles a minute, normally; express trains one hundred and fifty miles an hour. To go from New York to San Francisco will take a day and a night by fast express. There will be cigar-shaped electric locomotives hauling long trains of cars. Cars will, like houses, be artificially cooled. Along the railroads there will be no smoke, no cinders, because coal will neither be carried nor burned. There will be no stops for water. Passengers will travel through hot or dusty country regions with windows down.”
What happened: The top operating speed on France’s renowned high-speed TGV is 186 miles per hour. Which is actually closer to three miles a minute. Under special test conditions a TGV trainset has reached 320 mph. High-speed rail systems have proliferated in Europe and parts of Asia, but the U.S. has lagged. The only high speed train in the U.S., The Acela Express, which runs from Boston to Washington D.C. and points between runs at speeds up to 150 mph. Unfortunately, there is no “fast express” from New York To San francisco. In stead of taking “a day and a night” as suggested by Watkins, the trip would take you somewhere between 70 and 80 hours. Assuming a likely layover in D.C. or Chicago, we’re talking closer to three and half days. But they are cooled and they don’t run on coal. The trains do not need to stop for water, but they will often need to stop and give priority to a passing freight train one of the big four railroads who still own the vast majority of the tracks in the U.S.
4. Prediction: “There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods. Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the earth.”
What happened: Actually, “Air-ships” compete quite well with surface cars and water vessels for passenger and freight traffic. High-volume passenger air travel is often only competitive because of generous government subsidies, as airlines in the U.S. and elsewhere are well-known for going bankrupt because of the tenuousness of the industry. Air travel has still made very little mark on the short and medium length trips that automobiles and rail have dominated in. Air-ships, however, are indeed maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. And as the events of September 11, 2001 indicate, air-ships are also used as deadly war-vessels by non-military actors, too.
5. Prediction: “No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insect screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated. Boards of health will have destroyed all mosquito haunts and breeding-grounds, drained all stagnant pools, filled in all swamp-lands, and chemically treated all still-water streams. The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly.”
What happened: Umm, no. An estimated 1.5 million people die every year from Malaria, a disease transmitted to humans exclusively by mosquitoes.
6. Prediction: “Black, Blue and Green Roses. Roses will be as large as cabbage heads. Violets will grow to the size of orchids. A pansy will be as large in diameter as a sunflower. A century ago the pansy measured but half an inch across its face. There will be black, blue and green roses. It will be possible to grow any flower in any color and to transfer the perfume of a scented flower to another which is odorless. Then may the pansy be given the perfume of the violet.”
What happened: The hybridization of flowers can produce virtually any flower in any color. As Michael Pollan so eloquently wrote in Second Nature, “Not that the modern rose lacks for novelty—indeed, novelty is a big part of their problem. Twentieth-century capitalism discovered the rose and decided what it needed after several millennia of successful cultivation was a full-tilt program of R&D, innovation, market research, positioning, and advertising. As gardeners are fond of pointing out, the modern rose industry appears to have modeled itself after Detroit. Each year it introduces a handful of ‘exciting’ new models, many of them in improbable neon and metallic shades better suited to a four-door than a flower…”Continued…
Brilliant post Tim – Watkins was both eerily accurate and amazingly optimistic. I wonder what he’d have made of the mess we’ve created in some areas of ‘progress’?
“Coal is not directly used for heating and cooking any more in the U.S.” Wrong. I know of plenty of people in Western Maryland and the surrounding coal mining areas who have coal-burning furnaces in their homes. It’s messy, but it’s still in use.
I partially agree to the wars shortening the population census, but do not leave out the thousands of babies that would have been born had they not been aborted!
Glenn- Thanks for your insight. And Karen, you make a valid argument.
We’re right about in the middle of that 350 to 500 million population prediction for the US and its possessions, once you remember that in 1900 the Philippines were a US possession. Add Puerto Rico’s 4 million and the Philippines’ 80 million to our 305 million, plus the scattered small possessions like Guam, and you’re pushing 400 million.
14) Central plants will supply this cool air and heat to city houses in the same way as now our gas or electricity is furnished.
Most large cities like New York, Chicago, and even Detroit have municipal systems, usually controlled by the power companies that deliver hot steam that is used to heat the boilers of larger buildings. The steam (in Detroit at least) is mostly surplus from power plants and the incinerator, and in some cases produced by small facilities specifically for heating.
Tim,
Care to make some predictions for the next 100 years?
Ooh, I was waiting for someone to ask me that. Sounds like fodder for a New Year’s post. I have a few things in mind, but I haven’t really worked through them yet.
I have tertiary syphilis.
Boy we sure have come a long way?