(The following editorial was originally published in the Concord Daily Monitor on Dec. 27, 1949.)
Fifty years ago there were only 45 states and the population of this country was about half what it is now. The ownership of automobiles did not exceed 8,000 and the airplane had not yet been invented. One could go to Europe for $50 first class, or $24 steerage. Roast beef cost eight cents a pound, eight-year-old whiskey $1 a quart. Stenographers earned $7 a week. The government was spending $530 million a year, or $40,000,000 less than it took in. Its revenues were a third from tariffs and there was no income tax.
This is the week we think back 50 years because we are about to start upon the second half of the twentieth century. It is in the coming 50 years that this country will decide whether it will remain a nation of free men or put the state ahead of the dignity of men.
It is good that we do think back once in a while, for we have been acting as though we never did, as though history can tell us nothing about what is good and what is bad. Yet, in 1900, the country was prosperous, on a low price level. It was out of the depression of the ’90s. It had won the Spanish war, and was still having trouble with the insurrecting Philippines. There were 107 lynchings, but the number was the lowest ever. (There is about one lynching a year today.)
Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona had not been admitted to the family of states but were still territories. Los Angeles had a population of about 100,000, a little bigger than Manchester. Men’s night shirts cost 29 cents, and women could buy corset covers for 14 cents, underskirts for 29 cents and drawers for 9 cents. A tailor-made men’s suit cost $15.
Theodore Roosevelt was governor of New York, and he warned the country that the trusts were growing powerful. That was the beginning of the rumblings which have seen the last 50 years project government into one function after another, with the name of Roosevelt a symbol of the socialism which has changed our way.
Sam Gompers was the big name in organized labor. But Gompers did not believe that unions should participate in politics. Unions had one purpose only, to act as bargaining agents. The word socialism was more dreadful to the American ear than is communist today.
Fifty years. Two world wars. The greatest depression of all time. A world revolution which has shaken every land on earth. The theory of relativity, with its offspring the atom bomb, and on the eve of the second half of this century a new theory of gravitation. (Einstein beat Roger Babson of New Boston to this one.)
Fifty years. Socialism in command on this earth. The Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence forgotten. Life expectancy increased by 50 percent. Human flight faster than the speed of sound. Communications even faster. But human liberty has almost disappeared.
Five decades of science, and five decades of destruction.