Josephine Daskam Baconwas an author know for her adventure serials that featured female protagonists . But in 1929 , she took a falling out from her regular fable writing and skid on her futurist goggles for an article in Century magazine title “ In Nineteen Seventy - Nine . ” Bacon imagined just how much progress adult female will have made fifty age hence — and whether her granddaughter would be able-bodied to “ have it all ” as some people here in the future might say .
In the article , Bacon looks back at the generations of women that had come before her and pokes a morsel of fun at the Hartford Woman ’s Friday Club , who in 1878 resolve that “ electricity was too uncertain and dangerous to be put to any practical use of goods and services . ”
These women , Bacon explain , can be forgive for not appreciating some aspect of the technical revolution that was to do .
A genesis to which telephones and bathtubs were luxuries , which had never ridden in an motorcar , to say nothing of an aeroplane , nor seen a moving picture , nor hear a radio concert , must be pardon for its incredulity .
For many women at the twist of the 20th 100 , applied science was interwoven into what it entail to be a women’s rightist . Many utilized technology as a force for their cause — whether it was propagate their messagethrough radiocommunication , driving cars despiteridicule from men , or even imagining the meal - in - a - pill as a slap-up liberator from thedrudgery of the kitchen .
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But many younger woman of the era were frustrated and ostracize by their mothers and grandmothers who did n’t empathise how certain technologies could play any role in the life of the modal char .
My nan , if any one had secernate her that her granddaughter could take her choice of lead below in a submarine or sailing above in an plane , would have answer , “ Do n’t be foolish ! ” She simply could n’t conceive it . But she be intimate whether I was going down , down to Hell or up , up to Heaven , and when and how and why . Oh , yes , she knew all about that ! She could believe anything in that line , with perfect ease .
Bacon insisted that her grandchild would be different , and that no one will bat an eye when a vernal cleaning lady of 1979 “ expects to visit Mars or Venus . ” The woman who grew up in the 1920s would n’t be surprised at all , because they ’d already seen such radical modification .
Because I ’ve seen the machine and the tenner - ray and the airplane and the radio and the television born and develop and commercialized . You ca n’t stagger me .
Every generation seems to believe that they ’re special and that engineering is being develop at anincreasingly speedy tempo . And for Bacon , writing in 1929 , it ’s well-heeled to see why she felt up the same way . Her female parent and grandmother had small to luff to in the manner of technical progress , she argued . And thus , societal progress was even harder for them to ideate .
This explains why vaticination in 1929 is bound to be unlike from divination in 1879 . We do n’t look into our tenderness or register one-time books or go into trance , to preach , nowadays . We observe what is being done , and labour the approximation further . In the case of science , this is a piddling dull : you simply say , “ More electricity ! More Ra ! More mote ! ” You ca n’t go wrong .
Bacon had the proper mental rejection that engineering science alone was n’t live on to fix everyone ’s trouble . But she understood that this corporate ability to see into the hereafter influenced the real humanity .
Once manhood pushed past the unfitness to properly foresee change — technical or otherwise — then women would begin to see real social progress , Bacon insist . The char of the year 1979 would have many options , specially when it came to thing like working outdoors of the home .
And so I feel secure in forestall , before the next fifty year , an readjustment between the cleaning woman , her man , her child and her job . She may do this by splice betimes , rearing her children , and tackling her job later in lifetime , as many women have done . She may do it by combining job and nestling too soon in living , helped by kitchenettes , day nurseries , shorter working hours and gamey pay , as many are doing to - day . She may have all job and no children , as she has sure as shooting a right to do , if she favor this ; or no line of work and all children , which some adult female will always opt .
So how will the working fair sex of 1979 get to her job ? By flying machine , of course of study .
That she will fell to her chore in a plane we can not well doubt , but we shall be goosy if we assume that she will therefore wear upon an flyer ’s costume , because the motor veils and goggles and enwrap coats of my girlhood have long lie in on the dust heap , and I have see women in eve garb and women in washup courtship driving cars with equal ease .
Motor caul and goggles to drive a car ? Before the days of windshield these were indeed necessary , as you could see from the1910 photobelow .
But Bacon accurately predicted that just because aeroplane will be usual , does n’t intend ground transit will go away entirely :
Nor do I consider that the streets will be gage - grown , as some one suggested to me as the one certain prophecy . I think back too well that increase military service on the elevated road left the street cars and buses fuller , that subways run into the elevated roads still crowded , that motors , doubled and redoubled again , saw the metro still jammed . No , the most the airplanes can do is to ease the traffic a small , and unfold the accidents over a wider surface .
Bacon described all kinds of shiny , futuristic things that would come to decease by the year 1979 . But she always get the article back to changes that many male futurist author of the time were ignoring . Bacon even hypothesise what women of tomorrow might think of faith .
And her religion ? for sure it is secure to take over that she will stay on to spring up less and less interested in what she may do when this life is ended , and more and more concerned with what she can accomplish while she is hold out it !
Bacon ’s prescience truly reflect at the closing of the article . She get to inquire about the life sentence that her granddaughter will have , and what fabric successfulness will play . Will she be happy to only continue to work longer and harder hours , acquiring more and more things ?
Yesterday , as soon as everybody had a bathing tub - vat and an machine and a radio set , he worked a little harder , so that to - day he has six bathtubs and two automobiles — and another wireless set ! Will my granddaughter think of nothing more original than to carry three time as many jobs as her mother carried ?
I can not believe this . Even now some of us are ask , “ after successfulness — what ? ” Even now we are deplorably realizing that the goodness of an automobile depends largely upon where you go in it and what you do after you get there , and that sanitary bathymetry may be the means of American lifetime , but can hardly be expect to play the destruction of it . If we can see this , we , who still posture in the trace of that enceinte war which shake so many social foundations and shatter so many naïve ideals sure enough our grandchild will see it even exculpated and turn down to keep work so that more and more people may jump prosperously from a bath - bathtub to an automobile — and then jump back again !
Sadly , we ’re still necessitate ourselves the same questions about just what we ’re work toward here almost a C later . The leisure society that we were promisednever arrived . In fact , we ’re work out as severely as ever to maintain a mainstream American standard of live comparable to postwar story .
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“ After prosperity , what ? ” may have been the question of a more affirmative age . But most Americans are still work for that prosperity part . Even for Bacon — who was write in early 1929 , just before the stock market clangoring of October — she still had the Great Depression and World War II yet to amount .
Images : Josephine Daskam Bacon in an undated photo from theLibrary of Congress ; Scanned back of the January 1929 issue of Century magazine ; Woman and her wiener on the seat of an automobile circa 1910 viaLibrary of Congress
airplanesCarsfeminismtransportation
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