This is one of those "historical" background stories that float around the Internet and genealogy lists from time to time without anyone fact checking them.
The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47-years.
Actually, 49.2 years at the beginning of the century. High incidence of infant mortality affected that. If you lived to adulthood, you would live on average more than a decade longer than 49.2 years.
Only 8% of U.S. homes had a telephone. (A 3-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11.00!)
A telephone call over that distance was not possible in 1902. Before the invention of the vacuum tube amplifier in 1906, the maximum long distance call was about 1,500 miles. AT&T's long distance network did not reach Denver until 1911.
There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S. and only 144 miles of paved roads.
An absurdly low number of miles, even in 1902. One square mile of a downtown urban area alone would contain, on average, a grid of 24 miles of paved roads (do the math: there would be 12 miles of north-south streets, and 12 miles of east-west streets, if each street were separated by one block, and there were 12 blocks in a mile).
Cities of 30,000+ population in 1902 contained, on average, 113.3 miles of paved road.
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