Every once in a while this nonsense pops up on my social media feed. Here's Charles Mann's (1) response.
He adds:The average 1910 home was <1000 sq ft, water-borne disease caused ~10% of US deaths, most Americans couldn't afford steak (they ate boiling beef, salt pork, sausages, mutton, organ meat, etc), a big % of food was non-local and transported by trains, pkg'd food was exploding...
— π²ππππππ π². πΌπππ (@CharlesCMann) November 5, 2026
"people were skinny but not healthy--malnutrition was widespread, millions had chronic, low-grade infections and parasites (e.g., hookworm), average heights were 2-3" shorter than now or more, infant mortality was high, average life expectancy was 50 yrs, etc., etc."
Also, read The Good Old Days: They Were Terrible! by Otto Bettmann.
It's also true that for some Americans, mostly black, this was not a possible life. No antibiotics, and for those homes without electricity, women spent their days keeping stoves hot and doing washing. For the transformational aspect of electrification read the first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, the man who brought electrification to the Texas Hill Country in the 1930s.
Along the same lines, for those of us who grew up in the newly established suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s our idea of "normal" is actually quite "abnormal" viewed in the full span of American history. The widespread prosperity of those times was unthinkable in earlier eras and other aspects unthinkable today.
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(1) THC highly recommends Mann's books 1491 and 1493 on the pre- and post-Columbus western hemisphere.
