100 Years Ago, before USA was OECD

Emailed from my mother in the Ozarks.  Great grandfather Freeland bought her property in 1908, then bought a used printing press and started a newspaper (Taney County Republican).

At the times William Freeland wrote his daily news columns, here is what the USA was like.  Today, more people have electricity in the non-OECD than in the USA during my parents childhood.

Here are some statistics for the Year 1910:

************ ********* ************

The average life expectancy for men was 47 years.

Fuel for a car was sold in drug stores only.

Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower 

The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour.

The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian

between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME.

... more

Employer Diligence Lesson: Users are Liars

Short important lesson on starting your own recycling company.

We have 36 employees.  We started with one truck driver / CEO / Accountant (me).  At the beginning, 0% of our workforce was on drugs. Then, along the way, we rode through a period when the Vermont unemployment rate was below 4%, and we were still growing and not a high-paying company.

A certain number of unemployed people are toxic.  Sorry, that's not heartless.  It's just a given. Drug users tend to get fired and come looking for work elsewhere.  If you are soft and "close one eye", they will wind up destroying your company and taking the other eight or ten jobs with them.

We are now at the point where we have "grown ups" in every department, people who don't have a monkey on their backs and who care about riff-raff getting into the place.  Recycling and scrap businesses are still seen as a low barrier to entry, and we have to be wary.

But it all boils down to this:  Not all liars are users, but virtually all users are liars.  The more you become good at lying, the more pathological you become at it.  I tried to stay friends with the drug crowd who were my friends after high school.  But the temperature of the lying was rising.