Predictions for the next 100 years by Ladies Home Journal

Ladies Home Journal Predictions for the next 100 years

In the December 1900, issue of women’s magazine “Ladies Home Journal” published an article by John Elfreth Watkins Jr. “What might happen in the next hundred years.” The article predicted life 100 years into the future. Ladies Home Journal did shed light on what was important to the everyday reader. What their worries and concerns were, and how the future would be a better place for them. This post contains the article of John Elfreth Watkins Jr. and vintage covers of the magazine. Although these prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible, yet they have come from the most learned and conservative minds in America.

1st prediction
Five Hundred Million People. 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.

2nd
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. Buildings in blocks will be illegal. The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minute only. A penny will pay the fare.

3rd prediction
There will be No C, X, or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expression condensed ideas and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.

4th
Hot and Cold Air from Spigots. Hot or cold air will be turned on from spigots to regulate the temperature of a house as we now turn on hot or cold water from spigots to regulate the temperature of the bath. Central plants will supply this cool air and heat to the city house in the same way as now our gas or electricity is furnished. Rising early to build the furnace fire will be a task of the olden times. Homes will have no chimneys, because no smoke will be created within their walls.

5th
No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insects screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated. Boards of health will have destroyed all mosquito haunts and breeding-grounds, drained all the stagnant pools, filled in all swamp-lands, and chemically treated all still-water streams. The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly.

Ladies Home Journal Predictions for the next 100 years

6th
Ready-cooked Meals will be Bought from establishments similar to our bakeries of to-day. They will purchase materials in tremendous wholesale quantities and sell the cooked foods at a price mush lower than the cost of individual cooking. Food will be served hot or cold to private houses in pneumatic tubes or automobile wagons. The meal being over, the dishes used will be packed and return to the cooking establishments where they will be washed. Such wholesale cookery will be one in the electric laboratories rather than in kitchens. These laboratories will be equipped with electric stoves and all sorts of electric devices, such as coffee-grinders, meat-saws, potato-mashers, lemons squeezers, dish-washers, dish-dryers and the like. All such utensils will be washed in chemicals fatal to disease microbes, Having one’s own cook and purchasing one’s own food will be an extravagance.

7th
No Foods will be exposed. Storekeepers who expose food to air breathed out by patrons or to the atmosphere of the busy streets will be arrested with those who sell stale or adulterated produce. Liquid-air refrigerators will keep great quantities of food fresh for long intervals.

8th
Coal will no be used for Heating or Cooling. It will be scarce, but not entirely exhausted. The earth’s hard coal will last until the year 2050 or 2100; its soft-coal mines will last until 220 or 2300. Meanwhile both kinds of coal will become more and more expensive. Man will have found electricity manufactured by water-power to be much cheaper. Every river of creek with any suitable fall will be equipped with water-motors, turning dynamos, making electricity. Along with seacoast will be numerous reservoirs continually filled by waves and tides wading in. Out of these the water will be constantly falling over revolving wheels. All of our restless waters, fresh and salt, will thus be harnessed to do the work which Niagara is doing today: making electricity for heat, light and fuel.

9th
There will be no Street Cars in Our Large Cities. All hurry traffic will be below or high above ground when brough within city limits. In most cities will be confined to broad subways or tunnels, well lighted and well ventilated or to high trestles with “moving-sidewalks” stairways leading to the top. These underground or overhead streets will teem with capacious automobile passengers coaches and freight wagons, with cushioned wheels. Subways or trestles will be reserved for express trains. Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises.

10th
Photographs will be Telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later. Even to-day photo photographs are being telegraphed over short distances. Photographs will reproduce all of Nature’s colors.

11th
Trains one Hundred and Fifty miles an Hour. trains will run two miles a minute, normally; express trains one hundred and fifty miles an hour. to go from New Your 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 with the railroads there will be now smoke, no cinders because coal will eight be carried nor burned. There will be no stops for water. Passengers will travel through hot or dusty country regions with the windows down.

12th
Automobiles will be Cheaper than Horses are to-day. 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 to-day, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers. The horse is harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is to-day.

13th
Everybody will Walk Ten Miles. 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.

14th
To England in Two days. like those of the sleigh. these runners will be very Fast electric ships, crossing the ocean at more than a mile a minute, will go from New York to Liverpool in two days. The bodies of these ships will be built above the waves. They will be supported upon runners, some what buoyant. Upon their undersides will be apertures expelling jets of are. In this way a film of will be kept between them and the water’s surface. This film, together with the small surface of the runners, will reduce friction against the waves beneath and the air above. Shops with cabins artificially cooled with be entirely fire-proof. In storm they will dive below the water and there await fair weather.

15th
There will be Air-Ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods. Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the earth.

16th
Aerial War-Ship and Forts on Wheels. Giant guns will shoot twenty-five miles or more and will hurl anywhere within such a radius shells exploding and destroying whole cities. Such guns will be aimed by aid of compasses when used on land or sea, and telescopes when directed from great heights. Fleets of air-ships hiding themselves with dense, smoky mists, thrown off by themselves as they move, will float over cities, fortifications, camps or fleets. They will surprise foes below by hurling upon them deadly thunderbolts. These aerial war-ships will necessitate bomb-proof forts, protected by great steel plates over their tops as well as at their sides. Hugh forts on wheels will dash across open spaces at the speed of express trains of to-day. They will make what are now known as cavalry charges. Great automobile plows will dig deep entrenchments as fast as soldiers can occupy them. Rifles will use silent cartridges. Submarine boats submerged for days will be capable of wiping a while navy off the face of the deep. Balloons and flying machines will carry telescopes of one-hundred mile vision with camera attachments, photographing an enemy withing that radius. These photographs, as distinct and enlarged as if taken from across the street, will be lowered to the commanding officer in charge of troops below.

17th
There will be no wild animals except in menageries. Rats and mice will have been exterminated. The horse will have become practically extinct. A few of high breed will be kept by the rich for racing, hunting and exercise. The automobile will have driven out the horse. Cattle and sheep will have no horns. They will be unable to run faster than the fattened hog of to-day. A century ago the wild hog could outrun a horse. Food animals will be bred to expend practically all their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool and other by-products. Horns, bones, muscles and lungs will have been neglected.

18th
Man will see around the world. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought withing focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span. American audience in their theaters will view upon high curtains before them the coronations of kings of Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient. The instruments bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place. Thus the guns of a distance battle will be heard to boom when seen to blaze and thus the lips of a remote actor of singer will be heard to utter words of music when seen to move.

19th
Telephones Around the World. Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We well be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn. By an automatically signal they will connect with an circuit in their locality without the intervention of a “hello girl.”

20th
Grand Opera will be Telephoned to private homes, and will sound as harmonious as though enjoyed from a theater box. Automatic instruments reproducing original airs exactly will being the best music to the families of the untalented. Great musicians gathered in one inclosure in New York will, by manipulated electric keys, produce at the same time music from instruments arranged in theaters or halls in San Fransisco or New Orleans, for instance. This will great bands and orchestras give long-distance concerts. In great cities there will be public opera-houses who’s singer and musicians are paid from funds endowed by philanthropists and by the government. The piano will be capable of changing its tone from cheerful to sad. Many devices will add to the emotional effect of music.

21st
How Children Will be Taught. A university education will be free to every man and woman. Several great national university will have been established. Children will study a simple English grammar adapted to simplified English, and not copied after the Latin. Time will be saved by grouping like studies. Poor students will be given free board, free clothing and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses. Medical inspectors regularly visiting the public schools will furnish poor children free eyeglasses, free dentistry and free medical attention of every kind. The very poor will, when necessary, get free rides to and from school and free lunched between sessions In vacation time poor children will be taken on trips to various parts of the worlds. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools.

22nd
Store Purchases by Tube. Pneumatic tubes, instead of stores wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. These tubes will collect, deliver and transport mail over certain distance, perhaps for hundreds of miles. the will at first connect with the private houses of the wealthy; then with all homes. Great business establishments will extend them to stations, similar to our branch posy-offices of to-day, whence fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house.

23rd
Vegetables Grown by Electric. Winter will be turned into summer and night into day by the farmer. In cold weather he will place heat-conducting electric wires under the soil of his garden and thus warm his growing plants. He will also grow large gardens under glass. At night his vegetables will be bathed in powerful electric light serving, like sunlight, to hasten their growth. Electric currents applied to the soil will make valuable plants grow larger and faster and will kill troublesome weeds. Rays of colored light will hasten the growth of many plants. Electricity applied to garden seeds will make them sprout and develop unusually early.

24th
Oranges will grow in Philadelphia. fast-flying refrigerators on land and sea will bring delicious fruits from the tropics and southern temperate zone within a few days. The farmers of South America, South Africa, Australia and the South Sea Islands, whose seasons are directly opposite to ours, will this supply us in the winter with fresh simmer foods which cannon be grown here. Scientists will have discovered how to raise here many fruits now confined to mush hotter or colder climates. Delicious oranges will be grown in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Cantaloupes and other summer fruits will be of such a hard nature that they can be stored through the winter as potatoes are now.

25th
Strawberries large as Apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren for the Christmas dinners a hundred years hence. Raspberries and blackberries will be as large. One will suffice for the fruit course of each person. Strawberries and cranberries and currants will be as large as oranges. One cantaloupe will supply an entire family. Melons, cherries, grapes, plumbs, apples, pears, peaches and all berries will be seedless. Figs will be cultivated over the entire United States.

26th
Peas as Large as beets. Peas and beans will be as large as beets are to-day. Sugar cane will produce twice as much sugar as the sugar beet now does. Cane will once more be the chief source of our sugar supply. The milkweed will have been developed into a rubber plant. Cheap native rubber will be harvested by machinery all over this country. Plants will be made proof against microbes just as readily as man is to-day against smallpox. The soil will be kept enriched by plants which take their nutrition from the air and giver fertilizer to the earth.

27th
Black, Blue and Green Roses. Roses will be as large as cabbage heads. Violets will grow to the size of orchids. A pansy will be as large in diameter as a sunflower. A century ago the pansy measure but a half an inch across its face. There will be black, blue and green roses. It will be possible to grow any flower in any color and to transfer the perfume of an scented flower to another which is odor less. Then may the pansy be given the perfume of the violet.

28th
Few Drugs will be Swallowed or taken into the stomach unless needed for the direct treatment of that organ itself. Drugs needed by the lung, for instance, will be applied directly to those organs through the skin and flesh. They will be carried with the electric current applied without pain to the outside skin of the body. Microscopes will lay base the vital organs, through the living flesh, of men and animals. The living body will to all medical purposes be transparent. Not only will it be possible for a physician to actually see a living, throbbing heart inside the chest, but he will be able to magnify and photography any part of it. This work will be done with rays of invisible light.

Ladies Home Journal Predictions for the next 100 years

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