The Ancient World of 1853

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 1, 1914

“The Ancient World of 1853”

This is the title of an article in the Standard of Dec. 6, 1913, by Dean Shailer Mathews. He contrasts the conditions which existed in the world in the year in which this Baptist publication was started with conditions which exist today. This comparison shows some of the many changes which have been made during the last sixty years. With slight omissions we quote the statement entire:—

California was the only State west of the Missouri in 1853. Indians and buffaloes possessed the plains; the continent was crossed by trails, gold had just been found in California; and forests still covered vast stretches of Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

Short railroad lines were beginning to be combined into systems in 1853. Americans were beginning to put postage stamps on letters, and were organizing their first clearing houses.

Slavery was guarded by the Constitution in 1853. Men still thought they could keep a balance between free States and slave States, and Kansas had not begun to “bleed.”

There were no ironclads in 1853. Nations could still afford frequent wars, cannon and muskets were loaded through the muzzle, granite forts were impregnable, and Christian nations were fighting each other for a chance to take up the white man’s burden.

Pestilences were regarded as unavoidable dispensations of providence in 1853. Bacteria were unknown or unconquered, and doctors prescribed “blue pills.”

Japan and China had not been “opened” in 1853. India had not mutinied, foreign missions were feeble, uniform Sunday school lessons were not invented, Chautauqua was to wait twenty years to be founded, the first Y. M. C. A. in America had been established two years, and university settlements had not been dreamed of.

Science was only beginning to be recognized in colleges, there were few professors of history, fewer gymnasiums, no intercollegiate athletics, and a college of five hundred students was enormous.

Wages were low in 1853. Labor was just learning to organize; there were no trusts, few millionaires, and no anxiety over interstate commerce except in slaves.

Men wore shawls in 1853, children wore pantalets, and women wore hoop skirts.

Houses were warmed by air-tight stoves in 1853. Anthracite coal was a curiosity, wood was burned on locomotives, and the first oil well had not been bored in Pennsylvania.

Baseball was “three-old cat” in 1853. Athletics were all but unknown; 2:40 was an undreamed-of speed for trotting horses, and the chief dissipations of New England were lyceums and singing schools.

They had been telegraphing not quite ten years in 1853, and had used reapers, sewing machines, and rotary presses for even a shorter time, while farmers still cut grass with scythes, raked hay by hand, and hauled it in with oxen.

They had no telephones in 1853; no electric lights, no electric cars, no bicycles, no automobiles, no talking machines, no kodaks, no Pullman cars, no limited trains, and few bathrooms.

Maine had just passed the first State prohibition law in 1853. Women before the law were still classed with infants and idiots, had little opportunity for higher education, and had no right to vote.