Lost in Time

When I talk about history with students, often one of the hardest things for them to grasp is how different everyday life is in the past. This sounds pretty simple when written out like that — of course life is different in the past! But as we continue to discuss events in 1918, imagine an average day. How do people structure their day? What are they excited for, or worried about? What are they talking about with their neighbors? What have they got in their pockets?

While searching newspapers for something completely unrelated, I stumbled upon a "Lost & Found" column in the classified section of The Washington Post on Feb 2, 1918. What could I learn about normal life in 1918 from this column?

A Young Woman and Twenty Dollars

The very first entry features a 16 year old girl who had lost $20 on the way home from work. I'm always fascinated by the changing value of money, and this inflation calculator says that $20 would be worth $349.68 today. Wow! That's a lot of money for a teen.

While we don't know what her occupation was, it's likely that she wasn't new to the workforce. In the Progressive Era, child labor was a huge problem, and federal efforts to regulate or restrict it kept failing. In 1916, Congress passed a law meant to combat child labor by banning interstate sales of goods produced through child labor, but in 1918, that law was ruled unconstitutional. It wouldn't be until 1938's Fair Labor Standards Act that child labor was fully banned.

Losing Big Time

How do you lose a radiator?? For reference, it probably looked something like this:

Source: Model T Ford Club of America

That person must have been really absent-minded to lose a huge and heavy object like that!

Words, Words, Words

While these classified ads range from the amusing to the mundane, it's useful to note how the messages are worded. This one caught my eye in particular. Friends who do first-person interpretation of historical characters have told me before how hard it is to improvise in character. Especially the further back you go, the more that casual vernacular has changed.

Another Person's Treasure

It's also interesting to see the seemingly mundane things people have lost and are trying to find. That said, I've lost things that I've knit and was devastated afterwards! Cultural theorists like Erving Goffman have said that objects help us to create and perform identities. So the knitter might place value on their knitting bag because it helps them to assert their identity in one way or another.

The gold pencil also interests me, because I'm so used to pencils being made out of wood or occasionally plastic. It might have looked like this:

Source: Vintage Pen Catalog

Looking at these lost objects, and speculating about their owners, helps us to understand the attitudes and habits of the past. In turn, that helps us to better understand the causes, effects, and significances of major events. It also helps to humanize those living in the past -- it makes history more real.

What do you have in your pockets or bag? What could we learn about you by looking at those things?

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