GoKawiil1920s Los Angeles
One hundred years ago, on September 26, 1929, President Herbert Hoover gathered a group of social scientists at the White House. He asked them to begin research on the most detailed report ever produced on the state of the nation. Four years later, running more than 1,500 pages long, Recent Social Trends was published, offering an unusually granular look at life in the mid-1920s.
The document is almost entirely forgotten. But today, for America’s 250th birthday, I’m blowing the cobwebs off this sucker and taking readers inside its yellowed pages for a look back at what life was like in the U.S. exactly 100 years ago, when the U.S. was celebrating its sesquicentennial anniversary.
Yes, this is the actual cover of the not-so-electrically entitled volume “Recent Social Trends,” from which most of this article—and all of its pretty yellow charts—are made.
In some ways, the Americas of 2026 and 1926 are eerily similar. In both cases, the country is celebrating a major birthday in the midst of a rising stock market and widespread fears of “technological unemployment” (mechanical power then vs. AI now); giddy wealth is coiled with economic anxiety; technology has transformed the way that people get information, mind-wiring us to a global cacophony of far-flung emotions (radio then vs. social media now); and after years of record-high immigrant entry to the U.S., the government has choked the migrant stream to a trickle.
In other ways, the America of 1926 was another world—practically another planet. Roughly half of the U.S. still counted as rural, and tens of millions of Americans had no indoor plumbing or electricity. Thick smoke from oil lamps filled their homes, and they emptied their bladders and bowels in old-fashioned chamber pots. Women had only voted in two presidential elections. Millions of children still worked for pay. Of the nation’s 27 million households, only 11 million had a phonograph, to listen to music, or a car. The first movie with sound would not come out for another year.
Life is much better in 2026. We live healthier, richer, and longer lives, with better medicine and more self-determination. But if I do my job well in the next few sections, you’ll see both the progress we’ve made in the last 100 years and the progress we haven’t made. Many anxieties that feel electrically charged in the present moment about work, family, and individuality are echoes of our ancestors’ fears. They felt all of our feelings. They just happened to poop in chamber pots.
Life is long, and it’s getting longer. Someone born in 1850 and dying in the 1920s saw average life expectancy at birth increase by 50 percent in her lifetime.
1. The Average American in 1926
Before we dive into the world of 1926, let’s get into character.
... continue reading