THE PAST AND FUTURE – A Comparison of the Two Centuries

Wonder if the Twentieth will keep up with the Nineteenth

[Welland Tribune, 15 September 1905]

• The nineteenth century received the horse and bequeathed the automobile.

• It received the dirt road and bequeathed the railroad.

• It received the sail boat and bequeathed the ocean liner.

• It received the fireplace and bequeathed the steam and gas range.

• It received the staircase and bequeathed the elevator and escalator.

• It received the hand printing press and bequeathed the Hoe cylinder.

• It received hand-set type and bequeathed the linotype.

• It received the goosequill and bequeathed the typewriter.

• It received the painter’s brush and bequeathed lithography, the camera and color photography.

• It received ordinary light and bequeathed the Roentgen ray.

• It received gun-powder and bequeathed nitro-glycerine.

• It received the flintlock and bequeathed the automatic Maxim.

• It received the tallow dip and bequeathed the arc light.

• It received the beacon light signal and bequeathed the telephone and wireless telepathy.

• It received wood and stone buildings and bequeathed twenty-storey steel structures.

• It received letters sent by a personal messenger and bequeathed a world’s postal union.

• It received the medieval city, a collection of buildings huddled within walls for safety and bequeathed the modern city, lighted, paved, sewered and provided with five-cent transportation.

• It received a world without free public schools and left no civilized country without them.

• It received a world in which men voted only in America, and left them voting in every civilized country.

• It received a world without a voting woman, and left it with some measure of woman suffrage in nearly every civilized country and full suffrage in a large section of the earth’s surface.

• Is the twentieth century going in for breaking after this style? If so, it will have to hustle.

• But, really at times it seems as if the twentieth century would usefully employ itself in just utilizing the discoveries of the nineteenth.

• Steam heat, gas ranges, elevators, bath tubs and other nice things are in the world. Why not make them available for everybody?

• Then there is the land. That has always been in the world. Why not make that available for everybody?

• The nineteenth century discovered the kindergarten.

• The twentieth could usefully make it available for all children.

• It discovered the Roentgen ray, but lots of people can’t afford to pay for just plain, ordinary sunlight in their houses.

• The inventors are a very wonderful class of gentlemen-women, too, now-a-days-but it really seems as if the twentieth century didn’t need them so much as some plain, practical people to utilize what they’d done already.

• And then, again, it sometimes seems as if the little, young twentieth century had all it could do to manage the problems which the nineteenth bequeathed along with its blessings.

• The nineteenth century discovered how to make people live in perpendicular layers instead of beside each other on the ground, as they used to, and bequeathed the problem of congested population.

• It discovered the ocean liner and bequeathed the steerage.

• It took the weaving out of the hands of women and sent her to the factory.

• It discovered how to make things by steam, and bequeathed trusts, unions, strikes, lockouts and child labor.

• It did away with the slave and the serf and bequeathed the proletarian.

• It discovered the automatic Maxim and bequeathed imperialism.

• The nineteenth century yelped gleefully over the attainment of political rights.

• The twentieth century sees wearily that political rights are only a step on the road to economic rights.