I think the article and the book tend to forget the terrible living conditions in cities back then, and instead psychologize them.
More than half of people in big American cities lived overcrowded -- that is, >2 people in a room, INCLUDING KITCHENS! Many rented just a bed for half a day! They slept, and the other half the other person, who worked in night shift, slept on it.
In big cities, the traffic in the streets, with horse carriages riding on cobble stone, and cars, started at 6:00 and lasted till midnight. Steam locomotives made a lot of noise and smoke. That's cortisol, lower immunity, more other consequences.
And bear in mind, not everyone had electricity, not to speak of central heating. You had lots of chimneys everywhere. Not everyone had sewer, tap water and so on. I guess, a good deal of these people migrated to cities from more quiet places, and since there was no notion of harmful environment.
We tend to be surprised why modernism got so much traction, and even the best architects hated cities (e.g. Frank Lloyd Wright, who wrote something like "a city plan is a fibrosis"), but the reasons were everywhere, real and brutal.
So I'm pretty sure the reason for people being nervous, is quite physical, not "people were scared", as you may conclude from the article (although this is not explicitly stated).
[EDIT] Forgot about the social environment. When you move to a big city as an adult, without the college/university to give you social fabric, you're quite lonely. And in big cities this fabric was getting thinner with urbanization. And you're short on money, can afford only a bed, and count every cent. I think it's a more serious reason to get neurotic than times changing too rapidly.
We were also completely coked out of our mind. An issue oddly ignored by the article given they literally mentioned Coca Cola and so are presumably aware of its history. It wasn't until 1903 that Coca Cola removed cocaine from its recipe, but its use and abuse was absolutely widespread everywhere. People were using it recreationally, people no less than Thomas Edison remarked that it (in Vin Mariani [1]) "helped him stay awake." Popes were using it, generals were using, factor owners were pumping their laborers with it to maximize productivity, and much more. It wasn't restricted until 1914 and then defacto banned in 1922.
That's already going to increase anxiety dramatically amongst users, let alone the rest of society walking around in extremely crowded cities where a sizable chunk of the population was completely coked out of their minds at any given moment.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_Mariani
Saying everyone was 'coked out of our mind' seems a bit far fetched. Yeah there were niche products using coke and consuming/exporting it was legal, but historic production numbers from the period are a small percentage of modern production numbers even considering the populations were lower.
Cocaine exports then vs. now: early 20th century legal exports at their peak(1921 - 30 tons) were roughly 1/20 to 1/30 of current illicit production.
At the time most coca production was for local consumption, far less was aimed at the international recreational market.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037687169...
Not to say there were not other drugs on the market, like Morphine
It wasn't niche. In the US cocaine was available just about everywhere - pharmacies, grocery stores, mail order, being used (in high quantities) in dozens of beverages, and so on. [1] By the time of its effective prohibition it was seen by many as the largest health crisis in existence.
I suspect the numbers you're citing are subject to a large number of biases - different demand/utilization in different areas, considering mass without purity, poor recording keeping and/or off the book deals, and so on.
[1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8473543/
Again saying everyone was using a ton of coke back then, doesn't really line up with reality. Yes it was sold openly in pharmacies until 1914, and seen as a problem. Estimates from the time (1900) show 200,000 people (~0.3% of a ~76 million population) were regular addicted users. Compared with 2020's numbers: 6 around 6 million Americans use cocaine on a regular basis (1.8 percent).
Way more people are using it now than then.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8473543/ https://recovery.org/cocaine/history
The problem you run into with stuff like this is poor sources. For instance, I don't think the 200k addicted users passes the sniff test (pun intended?) or even close. Consider that there were hundreds of various commercial concoctions nationwide, including Coca Cola, including it in ever larger quantities. There were factories plying their laborers with it, recreational use, medical use, and more. And then there was also a nationwide frenzy against it, all over a supposed 0.3% addiction rate, and in an era before the magnifying effects of the internet? To say nothing of a seemingly large proportion of famous names of the time admitting to using cocaine in various forms? This really does not pass the sniff test.
The source for the 200k/0.3% claim is a lengthy chain that eventually leads to this [1] book which then makes that claim by simply stating that the American Pharmaceutical Association said so, in 1902. A primary source for that, so far as I can find, does not exist, and my web fu is pretty decent. So if we just assume that this was said, how was this measured? And were the ulterior motivations? For instance cocaine's widespread usage in tonics and various pharmaceuticals would obviously create a major interest in a pharmaceutical trade group greatly downplaying its negative effects (including addiction) as much as possible. The 'safe and effective' of a different time.
The book also mentions that the primary addicts were "middle class genteel women." And so if that number was ever stated, I expect it was simply representing the group that actively sought treatment for addiction, which is obviously not exactly meaningful. Note also that you're comparing a potentially lowballed figure of addiction to a potentially highballed figure of usage.
[1] - https://archive.org/details/hepcatsnarcspipe0000jonn/page/25...
Demand / Use are the key metrics, not availability.
If you have those numbers, then you have a point.
On the other hand 7up used to have lithium in it. (though that was later in the 20s)
I always wondered why WW1 started. Maybe they were coked up?
WW1 started (among other things) because the "superpowers" in Europe had been arming each other for quite a while in fear of aggression from the other superpowers (not completely unreasonable, given the wars of the previous century). This, in turn, forced the other superpowers to invest more in armaments and army. To top it off, they made treaties of alliance/military intervention (the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente).
The assassination of the archduke was like flipping a light switch in a house saturated with gas. Austria declares war to Serbia, which is defended by Russia, so Germany has to declare war to Russia; Germany expects France to join Russia so they declare war to France, but their battle plans to conquer France require passing through Belgium. The UK needs Belgium to remain neutral, so they declare war to Germany... and so on. Once the wheels are in motion, and everyone is ready for war, war just happens - whether coke is there or not.
Yeah but if they'd been smoking weed they would have said yeah whatever - I'll have a look at it tomorrow, when Franz Ferdinand got assassinated.
Even if the ruling class was high off their tits on whatever substance probably had little to do with anything. Most likely the drug that had the most influence was, and still is, the lust for power.
Something similar happened during WW2 I guess
cf. Amphetamine use/distribution in World War II[0][1][2]
[0] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/preview-world-war-speed/433...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_and_culture_of_substit...
[2] https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1127...
Not sure how accurate this is but there’s a book on how Adolf/Nazi’s were experimenting with hard drugs at that time.
https://www.amazon.ca/Blitzed-Norman-Whiteside-Shaun-Ohler/d...
They say Hitler was very charismatic, inspiring and a great public speaker. I seriously wonder how much drugs he was on at the time and how much that boosted and projected his own confidence (and then subsequently inspired all of his fellow countrymen Germans)?
That is the canonical schoolbook explanation of ww1, but I don't like how it frames the war as almost inevitable. Notably the Austro-German alliance was only fully formalized during the July Crisis when Germany offered unconditional support for Austrian war ambitions. While Austria and Germany were part of Triple Alliance, it alone would have not made German entry to war inevitable, as evidenced by Italy (the third member of Triple Alliance).
With Germany having major role in both modern drug history (e.g. Merck with morphine and cocaine, Bayer with Heroin) and their decisive role in the beginning of WW1, I think it is legitimate to ask if substance abuse had role in the hawkishness of German leadership.
Quick Google indicates that there is no strong evidence for Wilhem II themselves using significant amount of drugs, but less is known about the other high officials and generals.
Kinda like today. Europe is rearming in response to perceived risks from Russia. Then the “when you have a hammer…” effect: once capabilities exist, actors start seeing situations where using them seems rational—procurement begets posture, posture begets use-cases.
While I can't say I'm completely calm about the situation in Europe, it is very different from the onset of any of the two world wars. Europe is mostly united against the external enemy Russia, and the few countries that aren't 100% on the train is too small to really make any difference.
What a generous use of the word "perceived".
There certainly are similarities. On the other hand, we Europeans have tried to appease Russia for two decades, and it did not make it a less belligerent neighbor.
>I always wondered why WW1 started.
For a war to start, you need 3 things: materiel, political support, popular support. In 1914 both the Central Powers and the Entente had all 3 criteria satisfied. The war ended when the Central Powers ran out of popular support for the war.
A man called Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry.
Baldrick!
One can make an excellent argument that WWI started because Germany's last Kaiser - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_II - was a narcissistic, blundering man-child.
(Not to say that any other nation's leaders were models of wisdom and responsibility.)
Where else might we find narcissistic, man-children elevated to dangerous levels of authority?!? (most likely that was your point)
I saw a fascinating documentary addressing the fact that the 3 primary leaders of the belligerents in WWI were competitive cousins - amazing that Nicky, George and Little Willi all knew one another as children! And yes, the analysis was that Wilhelm felt excluded and was never very mature - sorry I don't remember the documentary title but there is a summary of the facts here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwone/cousins_...
It's estimated that more people today use amphetamines than people used cocaine in 1910
Is that including legal prescriptions or just recreational use?
Because taking a once daily extended release 25mg Adderall is very different from taking recreational amphetamines or cocaine.
Just taking America as example, 1910 has 92 million people Vs 345 million or so today. Also with modern means of transportation + spread/speed of manufacturing of illegal drugs + capture of the political class by corporations including pharmaceuticals are sufficient reasons for that statistic to be not surprising at all.
I just read this to my wife and she spit out her coffee. You nailed it with the anxiety point.
> Many rented just a bed for half a day! They slept, and the other half the other person, who worked in night shift, slept on it.
This is not unheard of for south Asian immigrants in European cities, which typically do hard, low paid work (car cleaners, gig economy delivery "partners" etc).
All that for what ? So people can order take away in Berlin from a place that's 10 minutes away from them by bike, because they clubbed too hard last night. And the profit finds its way to America (doordash owns Wolt).
> All that for what ? So people can order take away in Berlin from a place that's 10 minutes away from them by bike, because they clubbed too hard last night. And the profit finds its way to America (doordash owns Wolt).
But at least people are getting paid right? The alternative is people staying in their hometown and not making any money.
I'm not so sure about that. Accepting the existence of such working conditions for marginal (if not questionable) benefits lowers the working conditions for everyone, and in a system with social benefits & free healthcare it could arguably be net negative in total.
Regarding unemployment in people's hometowns, unfortunately this is not a problem that can be solved with shitty jobs. Even if xxx people find a shitty job, there will be 100*xxx people left over.
Everyone talks about unemployment when what we should be talking about is the inability to get seed capital or expertise to start a business, and given you actually get one started the casting of value moats by hyperscaled firms that bring the taint of diversified, hyper-optimization, and consequent elevation of the barriers to entry for everyone else.
We all want to talk the investor/capitalist game, but nobody wants to recognize the fact the world we're in Washington built on much greater levels of competition, less consolidation, and more fiscal risk/insecurity. .arguably, in capitalism, it seems to me that the velocity of money is most important, and we've got massive amounts of it bottlenecked at the top of the pyramid instead of at the bottom where the actual organic distributed optimizers are.
Yes, I forgot to add this. I saw some shocking examples from Honk Kong, I think, where immigrants rent just a bed-cell.
Not unheard of here in Australia either.
Not unheard of = incredibly rare.
Bullshit. At list in Germany. Here, the state benefits are so high, that the majority of illegal immigrants and "refugees" can have a comfortable life and procreate without having to think about feeding their offsprings, whereas the domestic population must pay ever increasing taxes to enable their lifestyle.
As I'm sure you're aware, German parents get 200-300€ per child (Kinderzuschlag). And then tax reductions.
That said, if we want less immigrants maybe we could stop helping the US and Israel with their wars in the middle east or coups in Africa ?
It's exactly 250 € per child. If you are sustaining your life expenses yourself, it's just a small fraction of your tax money you get back. Fake asylum seekrs don't pay anything, hey just get support and procreate. They are a financial net negative for the society.
The system as is is encouraging the wrong kind of children, where children are assets for non-working, and a liability for working people.
First thing I would do to fix this is to remove child support handouts in cash. I would make it a tax credit instead, so only people who do productive work and pay taxes would get tax benefits.
“Get government benefits and mooch off the dole” just doesn’t sound like a realistic portrayal of an asylum seeker, whether real or just for economic opportunity. Germany might be different, but I know in America all our immigrants are crazy hardworking.
In America everyone is crazy hardworking period, because there is zero socialism.
Here (EU) in many countries it is possible to not work and survive, with varying levels of compromise
> In America everyone is crazy hardworking period, because there is zero socialism.
Spoken like a true European who has never lived in the United States
You are not wrong there, but let me remind you that Germany has had a fertility rate lower than replacement since 1970. I don't think disincentivising anyone would be the way to go.
> the wrong kind of children
this is a disturbing phrase
Don’t believe all the bullshit you read in your racist echo chamber. You look really foolish when you repewt it in public.
And bear in mind, not everyone had electricity, not to speak of central heating. You had lots of chimneys everywhere.
LMAO is this most houses where I live in New Zealand. Smoke coming out of chimneys for people to keep warm, often burning coal. They have electricity of course but it's too expensive to heat their houses.
In remote Alaska it's the same way (though more commonly with wood than coal). When the temperature gets low enough, the smoke doesn't rise either, so air quality in villages (and even cities like Fairbanks sometimes) can get pretty terrible waiting for a storm to come flush it away.
It’s a matter of degree. It all adds up. Surely you’ve heard of the great smog in London? That’s an extreme example but all major cities had appalling air pollution. Bad air alone killed untold numbers of people every year.
Christchurch has smog every winter.
But yeah, just pointing out how backward my country is. Maybe we'll reach 1940s US smog levels eventually.