1900 Predictions for the Year 2000
Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900
Prediction
#1: There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America and
its possessions by the lapse of another century. Nicaragua will ask for
admission to our Union after the completion of the great canal. Mexico will be
next. Europe, seeking more territory to the south of us, will cause many of the
South and Central American republics to be voted into the Union by their own
people.”
Prediction
#2: The American will be taller by from one to two inches. His increase of
stature will result from better health, due to vast reforms in medicine,
sanitation, food and athletics. He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five
as at present – for he will reside in the suburbs. The city house will
practically be no more. Building in blocks will be illegal. The trip from
suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the
fare.
Prediction
#3: Gymnastics will begin in the nursery, where toys and games will be designed
to strengthen the muscles. Exercise will be compulsory in the schools. Every
school, college and community will have a complete gymnasium. All cities will
have public gymnasiums. A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch
will be regarded as a weakling.
Prediction
#4: 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.
Prediction
#5: 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.
Prediction
#6: 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.
