I agree, I am guilty. I am definitely one of those folks that read the newspaper or watch TV and make comments like “When I was younger, kids never acted that way. You did not hear about all these shootings.” And “Corporate America was filled with ethical, honest managers.” And “All these kids on drugs, it’s horrible – not like in the good old days.”

Well, this week I came across this book at a yard sale and it piqued my curiosity. It is by Otto L. Bettmann and entitled “The Good Old Days – They Were Terrible!” Hmmm, what did Otto know that I did not?

Since crime is one of the things that bother me most, I went to the chapter on that subject. Yikes! I did not like what I read there. Seems that in the period from the 1860s through the 1890s, the crime rate rose 445 percent against a population rise of 170 percent. Reference was made, of course, to the West where there were a lot of gun-happy folk. But I also learned that New York was known as the world’s center of crime with an extravagant toll of murders, assaults and robberies. One of the statements from George Templeton Strong, who lived in the Gramercy Park area of NYC, noted that most of his friends were investing in revolvers and carrying them at night due to the huge increase in street crime.

I thought I’d turn to another thing that infuriates me: the rich getting richer in today’s corporate world. In the chapter called “Work”, I see a picture with a huge octopus, his tentacles wrapped around bundles. At the top it reads “Corporate Greed - All for Ourselves Nothing for the Public.” Each tentacle has the name of a particular railroad and the workers are standing forlornly nearby.

The caption is “Railroad Monopoly takes control of New York wharves, depriving freight handlers of work that brought them 17 cents an hour - $10 for a 7 day week.” The chapters also cover working conditions and accidents. Long before OSHA put in safety features on machines and required companies to watch out for their employees’ well-being, there were numerous accidents, leaving workers maimed or killed by the horrific conditions.

Well, I’ve been proven wrong on these issues, but surely the problem of drugs in today’s society is much worse than back when… I turned to the chapter called “Drug Addiction” to learn more. It begins by saying that the American drug addiction problem has a longer history than most suspect. Opium use had become a national habit as early as 1840, and there was an estimated 100,000 addicts in 1868 with importation increasing from 24,000 to 146,000 pounds over the previous 28 years. Jane Adams describes a group of vagrant Chicago youngsters huddled in an abandoned building to seek relief from their wretched life in the euphoria of drugs. She went on to say that they stole from their parents, pawned their clothes and shoes, did any desperate thing to get the dope. At that time opium was sold by drugstores. Even infants were exposed to the dangers of drugs. No mother of the 1880s would be caught without Winslow’s Baby Syrup or Kopp’s Baby Friend. Both of these were liberally spiked with morphine!

Cocaine wine was freely sold as a sedative and the Bayer pharmaceutical firm gave the world aspirin and also developed heroin, marketed as a cough medicine.

I am getting quite an education. But surely, the schools were better. Children wanted to learn and teachers were dedicated back then, right? The chapter on Education nearly did me in! Turns out that the Little Red Schoolhouse was not so charming after all. The great educator, Alvin Johnson, recalled his own school days in the 1880s and said “We expected to learn nothing in school and we were not disappointed.” Teachers were poorly paid and given minimal respect and the turnover was very high. Also, because of children being used in farm labor, the school year barely lasted twelve weeks. City schools were not any better and many teachers confessed that the best they could do was “maintain order.” Many boys were compelled to work all day to help support the family and then came to night school, exhausted and hungry. The New York Commissioner of Education frankly admitted in 1871 that thousands of children leave school without being able to read and write.

Of course, I did not grow up in the 1890s, but perhaps my time in the 1950s and 60s was not so hot after all. My daughters accuse me of growing up in ‘a bubble’, protected and isolated from the real world. After reading this book, I am beginning to think they are right.

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