Predictions about 2025 from 1925
Some wild; some funny, some...well...
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This is a riff on an Akron Beacon Journal article by Mark J. Price from 30 December 2024.
The future of the past—what our forbears thought the world would look like—is an amusing pastime, but it also informs us what they thought was important then. Often, some of their prophecies are completely off target, while others come closer to the mark. But predicting the future a century away is a safe game, since, well, we won’t be around to see it…maybe.
Beauty is skin deep
The future looked ugly to an American psychologist, author and eugenicist. According to him, homely, dull people were having more children than beautiful, intelligent people in 1925.
If we keep progressing in the wrong direction, as we have been doing, American beauty is bound to decline and there won’t be a good-looking girl to be found 100 years from now…However, this lack is not apparent yet, especially here in Brooklyn.
Albert E. Wiggam, Brooklyn, New York
I see plenty of beautiful girls around, don’t you?
Advanced aging
A British 1902 Nobel laureate in medicine told an audience that life expectancy would continue to increase because of scientific advances.
That miraculous progress will not stop…A great scientist at the Pasteur Institute in París has said that in 100 years’ time, man should live to the age of 150. Why not?…A famous American doctor has suggested to me that we should all be immortal. Who can tell what scientific investigation may bring? No one can say how long we may live when we are free from the ravages of germs.
Sir Ronald Ross, London, England
Rise of the superpowers
The author of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds foretold a new world order for 2025. Speaking at a dinner gathering, he predicted that global power would rest with confederations of people instead of independent countries.
In a hundred years, there will not be numerous nations, but only three great masses of people—the United States of America, the United States of Europe and China.
H. G. Wells, Hotel Cecil, London
Wells’ future world looked like Oceania, Eurasia, and East Asia from George Orwell’s 1984.
A global government
An Irish physicist and chemist expected a Utopian society for those lucky to be alive in 2025. In a 1925 book, he offered examples.
The earth will be under one government, and one language will be written and understood, or even spoken, all over the globe. There will still be different races and perhaps allied nations, but travel and commerce will be free and unfettered, and calamities will be alleviated and dangers met by the united forces of all mankind.
Efficiency until death comes like sunset, and is met without pain and without reluctance. There will be no death from disease, and almost any sort of injury will be curable.
New fabrics will no doubt be invented, combining the warmth of fur with the softness and flexibility of silk and the strength of linen. Dress will be light, so that half a dozen changes of costume can be carried in a handbag, and will be so designed that each change will involve no more inconvenience than does the removal of a raincoat.
E.E. Fournier d’Albe, Quo Vadimus? Some Glimpses of the Future.
Hitting the pubs a little hard, there, Doc?
The future of yesterday
A British scientist expected the 21st century to offer television machines, breakfast tubes, automatic sleep beds, wireless banking, moving sidewalks and one-piece suits made of artificial felt. A few more ideas included:
A very useful service will be the radio alarm clock. Signals will be sent out at frequent intervals on different wavelengths, say, between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. every morning; and setting the alarm clock to catch the signal at the desired time will avoid any risk of over-sleeping. House and public clocks and even watches will be synchronized by signals sent several times daily, and we shall then know the right time instead of finding a variation of minutes all over a small city.
Women, owing to their accelerated development, will compete on equal terms with men in all branches of scientific research, resulting in faster progressive developments for health, comfort and speed of thought and life. Many of the new discoveries of the future will doubtless be entirely due to the sex at present referred to as ‘fair’ — a term they will scorn in days of real equality.
The air traveler will walk into a comfortable and well appointed waiting room in the center of the city. An elevator will take him up to the roof where he will step direct into a roomy and really comfortable airplane cabin. There will be no bumping over a hilly airdrome, but the machine, mounted on a turntable, will be shot off into the air by catapults and travel through space at over 300 miles an hour.
Archibald M. Low, The Future.
Well, there’s the atomic timepiece, and women are treated more equally now than in the 1920s, but roomy and comfortable airplane cabins are only in the movies for most of us, though 300 MPH would be slow for most modern airliners.
A taste of the tropics
A Johns Hopkins University instructor warned that the United States would face a food shortage in 100 years, and the nation would have to find additional sources of food to feed all those mouths. He predicted that the U.S. population would reach 200 million by 2025. In 1925, it was only 115 million. As 2025 dawned, it was 345 million, give or take.
This new food supply must be either found in the tropics or provided by processes for making artificial food from organic substances…The latter would not be practical unless the cost of chemical processes were rendered much cheaper than they are at present.
Lowell J. Reed, at a Williamstown, Massachusetts conference
Modern grocery stores, starting in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee (which Reed may not have heard of), carry tropical fruit and lots of processed food…much to the horror of RFK Jr and many others.
New York in 2025
The associate editor of Science and Invention magazine predicted that 21st century skyscrapers would climb ever higher, easily doubling the height of the 792-foot, 6o-story Woolworth Building, the world’s tallest edifice in his time. Airplanes, airships, and other flying devices would darken the New York sky. Commuters would travel at least 100 miles to the city via compact and inexpensive “air flivvers.” New York also would offer local subways and long-distance subways. He also expected the Big Apple to have triple- and quadruple-decked streets to accommodate the heavy traffic.
The lower level of future city streets will be occupied by motor trucks, while the level above this will be occupied by lighter vehicles, such as pleasure cars…The sidewalks, some moving type, in the next twenty-five to fifty years, will doubtless be built above the motor vehicle street level and be arranged inside of arcades within the building themselves.
This will not only enclose the sidewalks at least overhead, as an insurance against rain and snow, but this arrangement will provide much better show window display facilities for stores.
H. Winfield Secor
Um…maybe freeways, but moving sidewalks? Not that many, and certainly not in the Big Apple.
The city by the bay
A historian predicted that San Francisco would be the world’s greatest city by 2025. As Asian countries gained clout, the Pacific Ocean would overtake the Atlantic Ocean as the great commercial sea. New York would play second fiddle to San Francisco and Oakland, California. He guessed that the Bay Area would boast a population of at least 15 million by 2025. It’s actually closer to half that at 7.7 million.
She will be the greatest port of the greatest sea…She will be in direct communication with two-thirds of the world’s population.
Rowell Stratian
While the Pacific part may be accurate, Long Beach gets more commercial traffic and fewer homeless encampments.
Divine inspiration
Dr. A.R. Wentz, a professor at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, anticipated these advances by 2025:
Researchers would find a substitute for sleep. Its chief ingredient would probably be acid sodium phosphate.
Chemistry would produce synthetic foods, making them chiefly out of nitrogen from the atmosphere.
People would use a pocket-sized apparatus for communications to see and hear each other without being in the same room.
There would be world peace, a common world currency and universal free trade.
Well, one out of four ain’t bad.
Great expectations
The Weekly Scotsman in Edinburgh made these prophecies:
The books of A.D. 2025 will probably be printed on nickel leaves, so light and thin that a single volume will contain 30,000 pages, and the pages will be more flexible and durable than paper.
The work of the house will be reduced to a negligible quantity by a hundred electrical devices, not a few of which are in use today, from opening the door or removing a meal to cleaning the boots, and the automatic cooking of a six-course dinner.
In the world of manufacture, the change will be just as revolutionary. Where we have today a score of machines, one will then suffice. According to Mr. [Thomas] Edison, a century hence we shall put cloth, thread, buttons, and so on into one end of a machine, and from the other end draw suits, complete to the last stitch, and ready folded for delivery.
In spirit, maybe. In substance…not so much…unless we grant that metal e-book readers are still books. Six-course dinners? Most of our clothing still comes from sweatshops.
The end of poverty
The president of the Child Welfare Committee of America held that if society made a concerted effort, poverty would be abolished by 2025. The continued advancement of widow pensions and child welfare laws would help achieve that goal. Eliminating juvenile poverty would allow us to next address adult poverty.
There should be no pauper child in this country, and no able-bodied child should be anywhere except in its home…The children—our future citizens—need, and are entitled to, not charity, but a chance.
Sophie Irene Loeb
Sadly, no.
Some Humor from 1925
Horse-drawn vehicles are fast disappearing from our streets, but jackass-driven automobiles will still be with us 100 years from now.
The daily and hourly progress of madness and folly and wickedness will at least make a fine narrative in history. But probably the people of the future will have so many follies of their own that they will not care for ours in 2025.
Now a scientist declares there will be nothing to laugh about 100 years hence. We suppose that means 100 years from now there will be no bowlegged girls in short skirts or skinny shanked men in golf togs.
Those who fear overpopulation a century from now cannot appreciate the potential of moonshine.
We are now celebrating the 100th anniversary of the invention of the detachable collar. Judging from the popularity of divorce, 100 years from now, they will celebrate the invention of the detachable marriage yoke.
A Quote from the First Gentleman of 2025
The Susanville, California paper, the Lassen Advocate, published this in 1925:
It was in the year 2025. The United States had just elected its first woman president. “Don’t you feel that your home life will be ruined?” the Inquiring Reporter asked her husband. “My only regret,” he said with a sigh, “is that I have but one wife to give to my country.”
Wishful Democratic Party thinking in 2025, I’m afraid.
For Better or Verse
And, finally, a poem submitted for an 8th Grade class assignment at Franklin School in Wausau, Wisconsin in1925.
THE WORLD IN 2025
How will the world look a century from now? I have seen it in crystalized glass.
The marvelous wonders which men will perform In a hundred years to pass.
The radio then will be nothing but play. The movies will cease to exist.
If people could see things a century from now, They’d lament at the joys they had missed.
In a century hence the airplanes and such Will be had by the poorest of beings.
Science will scorn them as we scorn the chaise And, instead, invent wonderful things.
The folks in a century will know what’s on Mars. They’ll send messages up to the moon.
The cars of today will be laughed at by them. They’ll make fun of our soaring balloons.
There will be wonderful machines, tonics and herbs, Which will cure almost any disease.
There will be wonder foods — and beverages, too, Which will outdo our coffees and teas.
In a century from now, the hard-working wife Will have nothing to do but rest.
For her work will be done in a few minutes’ time If simply a button is pressed.
The men in the factories won’t have much to do. They will just superintend their machine.
When they think of men laboring as some do today They will wonder why we were so “green.”
This is all I can see in my crystalized glass Of the old world in one hundred years.
But I hope I’m not living a century from now For my dullness would move me to tears.
Vivian Gaulke
Well, a Vivian Gaulke Shope passed away in Wisconsin in 2011 at 101, so if that’s her, she didn’t get all her wishes.
The Past Not Taken: Three Novellas
One of the most annoying things about predicting the future is the closer the future gets to being the present, the more urgent making the correct predictions about it now becomes.
A young man just starting his academic career helps a friend with a predicted issue, one that will come around in about seven months.
And Finally...
On 28 June:
1914: Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, assassinates the Archduke Ferdinand, Crown Prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sofie in Sarajevo, Serbia. The murders set off a chain of events that would lead to a global holocaust that cost the lives of over 10 million people, would bring down four empires (including Austria-Hungary), and bring another almost to its knees.
1919: German officials sign the Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany, also known as the Versailles Treaty, in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, France, officially ending the conflict triggered by the assassination in Sarajevo. Unwittingly, the treaty signed in Versailles would be the fuel that would ignite another, far worse holocaust in just twenty years.
And today is INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY, an observation created by Derek Arnold, who was tired of reading emails and messages written in capital letters. Don’t see IT THAT MUCH ANYMORE, THOUGH.
I've read The Past Not Taken. Excellent book.