You are the age you are now, but the year is 1911. What is your occupation?

Let’s see…I’m a 22-year-old female. I’m probably knocked up, with one toddler running around already, getting ready to milk the cows in the morning. Right? Or is that like 1700?

Do you remember my answer? Well, at my age, I would still be a grandma, 1911 or 1811 or 2011.

@sliceswiththings, that depends. Do you live in the city or the country? You’d probably be working in a factory, actually.

1911, eh? I’m a 21 year old male.

Ideally, I’d be testing out John Moses Browning’s (pbuh) latest brainchild.

Realistically, I’d probably be a farm boy or a factory worker. If I had my current personality and interests (only in a 1911 context), I’d totally join the fledgling US Navy.

@YARNLADY I do believe I mentioned you would be a great grandma. If I didn’t, I’m mentioning it now. =)

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard In the 1911 Fluther Utopia maybe YOU knocked me up!

Usually I’m in the country. We don’t even have old abandoned factory buildings in my town, so I’m not sure what I’d be doing if not chopping wood and milking cows.

@YARNLADY How do you think your Grandma role would differ?

@sliceswiththings, my bad. But do be sure and keep little Esther, Florence, Myfanwy, and Clarence well-fed while I’m off imperializing shit.

Probably an old maid. There is no way some guy from 1911 would put up with my crap.
Profession would probably be nanny or tutor.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I’ll do my best, but as the oldest Lionel often sneaks worms into their sandwiches! Good heavens, what a nuisance! Don’t forget to bring home six yards of calico for the new curtains, dear.

I am 23 and I would probably be an engaged teacher. Though I’m sure many would be questioning my sanity.

@Pandora, implying you aren’t actually my 1911 mistress. I do have a thing for studious, liberated women.

@sliceswiththings, certainly, my dear. And if you promise to have dinner made in a timely fashion upon my return from my exploits, I may just read a bit of Kipling to you before bedtime!

The steampunk enthusiast, shameless flirt, as well as the historian in me smiles upon this thread :D

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I shall make up a nice figgy pudding which I will throw in your face upon glimpsing @Pandora‘s elderberry lipstick upon your collar.

God, I’d probably have been locked up in an asylum for failing to just go along with things.

legal secretary

I’m 56 and I’d probably be a grandma, married to a farmer. My grandma was the area midwife in 1911 between having 11!! of her own so I think I’d do that. Gawd, how I’d miss my running water,etc.

@faye Running water? What’s that? I believe none of us know what you’re talking about :)
I spend a few weeks each summer with no running water or electricity and I quite like it. I think I’d be fine.

Probably the same (medical radiography), but I would only have about 10 years left to live before I contracted some sort of nasty cancer. There was no radiation protection back then, and practitioners used to look directly into the beam rather than at a secondary image, so they used to get cataracts. They also used to use their own hand as a dose indicator, so tumours of the hand were also very common.

@sliceswiththings, blah, I never was one for figgy pudding anyway. This is America. We eat soft custard here!

@MyNewtBoobs, 1911 wasn’t quite that repressive. If you just held off for 10 or so years, you’d fit in perfectly in the 20’s!

In actuality, my paternal great-great (however many times grandfather) Luigi the guy with the killer ‘stache was retired in New York by 1911-ish after a long career in the Italian Army, immigrating to the US, and doing stuff that made him rich. God bless America.
My maternal great great (whatever) grandfather whom I don’t have a picture of was playing a weird new style of music down in the bayou with his fellow Cajuns, Creoles, Acadians, and even blacks. If I were contemporary to either of these wild ancestors of mine, I’d likely be slapping on a guitar or hiding mafia ties during this time!

History kicks ass.

@FireMadeFlesh, wow, that’s really interesting!

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard You may be underestimating how much I don’t go along with things, and how much trouble that has gotten me into now.

@MyNewtBoobs, well, this time period wasn’t without it’s total weirdos, so I think you may have survived, if you were at least somewhat careful. I guess I have a lot of confidence in you.

I’m 27, so I would probably be a factory worker with several kids and blackened lungs.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I was not careful, I was more “hellraiser” than anything else.

@MyNewtBoobs, okay, I surrender. But I won’t turn you in to the constable, I swear.

I would end up working at an insurance office which is used as a front for opium selling. Here’s how I figure:

I’m an unmarried 25 year old living with my partner. In 1911 that would mean I should be a married 25 year old living with my partner (and since we don’t have kids it’s going around town that I’m barren). No occupation, because he is supposed to work while I cook. Which is terrible, because he’s our cook.

But I’m me, and if I’m angry about the crap females go through now, then I’m even angrier in 1911! So perhaps I would rebel by staying unmarried and living with my male partner. Then if I want a job (so that he will stay home and cook) then I must work for whoever will take a disreputable harlot such as myself. Considering that I’m educated and a competent typist (and at this time, huge numbers of women were typists, and entering the world of office work for the first time), I would be looking for office work. With my combination of office skills and disreputableness, only the disreputable opium seller would hire me for honest work… in exchange for me turning a blind eye to anything I might overhear.

I would likely be an immigrant, or the son of immigrants. Given the stuff that my ancestors were doing around then, I would probably be a tradesman – unless I’m recalling the fambly tree incorrectly, the last few generations had metalworkers. Or maybe a North Beach shopkeeper, like my great uncle. Odds are good that I’m married (probably to the daughter of a family friend, given that the Italians mostly stuck together), but only recently.

I certainly wouldn’t mind helping @Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard with the gun testing.

Wait a second, 1911: I’m one hell of a suffragette. I was obsessed with this movement and these women in 6th grade when I learned about it, and even asked my parents to drive many hours our of our way on a trip to take me to Seneca Falls, NY. History books would be rewritten to talk about Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and most importantly, Ms. Sliceswiththings.

@Nullo, cool. and I’m sorry to say, but John Moses Browning (pbuh) only has room for one disciple! >:-(

@sliceswiththings your efforts would not be in vain, because 9 years later, the 19th Amendment would be ratified. …and just barely, if it were not for the behest of a certain legislator’s (in my home state) mother.

Pharmacist. They dealt with some freaky things then.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard And not just on any day 9 year later…on my birthday! That would have been the best birthday ever.

I’d be on a make-shift platform in town square trying to resurrect Millerism.

Chief enginner on the build of RMS Titanic. I’d be sure to let everyone know that she is not unsinkable.

@sliceswiththings, that would have been pretty cool, actually.

@shpadoinkle_sue, you’d probably be familiar with bottles like this and this in that case. These are from my personal collection. The first one reads “The Great Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp Root Kidney, Liver, and Bladder Remedy.” The second one says “Dr. King’s New Discovery for Consumption.”

Despite the fact that the Pure Food and Drugs Act was signed by TR way back in 1906, patent medicines still enjoyed some popularity in 1911. In fact, Dr. King’s New Discovery line would, if I remember correctly, maintain popularity into the 20’s, along with a few other brands of patent medicines and remedies.

@kenmc, 1843 came and went without a hitch, bro. Get with the times!

…hey, this thread is helping me recall and retain information from my past history classes. Hell yeah!

@ucme Cool! I forgot about that, that’s another distinct event of the 1910s.

@sliceswiththings Grandmas have changed very little over time. There are always grandkids to take care of, followed by great grandkids (at least in my family), and household chores such as making meals, washing dishes and clothes, making and mending clothes, and I do all of these things.

The main difference might be in the appliances that I have to help me, but most of them have been around for over 100 years anyway. I have a treadle sewing machine that still works as good as new. I actually prefer to sew by hand.

I know how to use a wood burning stove, even though gas stoves have been around for over 100 years. When I was young, we lived in a house on a farm with a wood burning stove. I also know how to cook over a fire. I know how to grow my own food and raise chickens and other farm animals.

I know how to make toast without a toaster, and make popcorn in a kettle over the fireplace. I know how to wash clothes without a clothes washing machine. I have used an old fashioned wash board, and I have also used a hand operated wringer. I hung clothes to dry on a line through most of my teenage years.

I know how to teach children to read and write and do arithmetic, which I have done with two generations of children so far. There is nothing my grandmother did that I cannot do.

@YARNLADY Great answer! Those lucky little 1911 kiddos!
But you didn’t say anything about sculpting porcelain dolls.

@sliceswiththings Nope, our dolls were made out of cloth, like Raggedy Ann and Andy, Calico cats and Gingham dogs, and yarn dolls.

1911, and my house would be brand spanking new, as it was built in 1911, and I would not have the expenses I do with its upkeep. If I still inherited the same amount of money I did from relatives, I would probably not be working, as I would have more than enough to live on. I would travel by steamboat to New Orleans and back on a regular basis, just because I could.

My family was still in Europe in 1911, both sides. They didn’t come over until 1929–1930. My great-grandfather did come to the US to work for a period, bought land, went back to get his family and was drafted into the Austrian army. The land was lost to unpaid taxes.

Re my answer above : ”enginner” !?! Apparently in 1911 spelling was not a priority &..... it has to be said, those old typewriters were highly susceptible to glaring typos. Phew, wormed my way outta that one.

A scientist, running laboratory experiments on earthlings in my cloaked space ship.

Probably a housewife, and a pretty “old” one, at that. However, I’d be working with @sliceswiththings on the woman’s suffragette movement and doing all sorts of other unladylike things, too. Later on, I’d run a speakeasy/brothel. ;)

@ragingloli me too… Or I would be a fiction writer.

At age 66, I could very well be dead! My dad would have been 6 living on a farm and my mom 1 year old.

@perspicacious in 1911 Legal Secretaries were all men honey. Women did not even have the vote, and law was not a door that was open to them, I’m afraid.
bunny, (the paralegal/legal secretary)

For me, I orriginate from a working class family, so would not have had any of the opportunities I was blessed with in this life, so at the age of 46 I would be married with children maybe but occupation wise I would have spent my life, as many girls did in my social class, in service. So I would have maybe started in the kitchen of one of our beautiful grand houses here in town, and with many years of hard work, maybe even worked my way up to lady’s maid? before leaving service to marry.
huggles honeys xx

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Hmmm! So does that mean you would be Master of the Home? Oh, well a girl has got to do what a girl has got to do. The kids won’t stay small forever. LOL

@bunnygrl I’m an attorney and was thinking that was probably the closest I would get back then. It looks like here in the USA women did not enter that position until the men left for WWI. That would have been around 1917/18 Are you in the USA?

I would be a mother to about 15 children (thank you Margaret Sanger) and a grandmother to at least twice as many and be charged with keeping the home fires burning.

I’d probaly be dead….people back then didn’t often live to be as old as me. :O

I am a finish carpenter building Craftsman bungalows—in a Gibson Girl dress- XD

@perspicacious I’m in the UK, honey. We didn’t even get the vote here till 1928. While at Uni, working on my MA, I studied Social and Economic History, and discovered things that were enough to make a modern girls hair stand on end. I thought I knew (through history classes at school) something of how harsh life was for the poorer classes in victorian times, but my coursework was a real eye opener. I remember talking to my Grandmother about it, about the sheer brutality of life lived below a certain level of society, of how life really was considered very cheap if you were poor. Literally, with babies being born with no future but to starve. My Grandmother was born in the mid 20’s and saw more than her share of inequalities. An example, She won a scholarship when she was 13, to a private girls school. All her father had to pay for were her uniform and books, and he told her if she’d been a boy they would have managed somehow, but because she was a girl, well what was the use. Her place was to work till she married and had children. That was life and she should get used to it, she was told. She left school at 13 and went to work, full time, to help the family. I can’t even imagine how that must have hurt her. It clearly still did when she told me about it nearly 60 years later. I still have such a pain inside when I think about her being hurt so badly. I remember her telling me once that kids nowadays think they’re poor if they don’t have the latest trainers, “in my day” she said “if you were poor sometimes you went to bed hungry.”

Here we are a hundred years on from 2011 and still there are parts of the world where children are born to starve, where sometimes very young girls die giving birth, where opportunities are still linked to money. Yes, in the west we’ve moved on, to where poorer students can, through hard work, get access to University, to far better careers than before, but, here in the UK at least, Uni fees are again being driven up so far that poorer students face a choice of studying, and ending up with a huge debt when they finish their courses, or fighting for an ever shrinking pool of jobs being spread over an ever increasing population, thanks to our last PM’s policy of mass immigration. We really are a very small island and services are being stretched to breaking point. How much longer, I wonder till the workhouses are back? We live in frightening times, and youngsters now don’t even have the same chances I had as a teenager some 30 years ago.

At the age I am now 100 years ago, I’d almost surely be unemployed—i.e., six feet under.

I would probably be pickin’ cotton or a mammy to some plantation owners’ chilren.

I would have died in 1867 from a ruptured appendix. Gee, what a bummer.

I would like to be a draftsman helping to design the new stadium for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

I’d likely be a bachelor as my wife would have never left Argentina in the first place.

I would hope to be one of the few white guys I know to be happy about the first International Women’s Day and the incorporation of the NAACP.

Despite now living in New York, I’d still be cheering on my hometown Boston Red Sox as Smokey Joe sets records.

And I’d be amazed that Orville Wright set a new flight record the day before my 40th birthday.

I’m 29 now, but I would have probably died at the age of 22 due to septicemia back then. If somehow I managed to survive, I would probably be a nurse as I am now, though it would be much different.

I’d likely be a housewife or a retired school teacher, rallying my daughters and granddaughters to join the movement; and I’d probably sit on the back porch each night, look at the stars and have a nip or two. All that assumes I made it through childbirth and the rigors of life on farm.

Have any of you suffragettes considered that you might not have had an upbringing that was conducive to such things? You might not even want it.

@Nullo, my upbringing/background is completely aberrant to the person I am now. My answer above assumed that I’d have the same type of wiring and mindset to propel me beyond my socio-economic status, the teachings of my parents, etc., and that I would be able to discern and engage in a larger world. Speculation, of course; but I’m sticking to my story.

I think I answered this question the first time round but I guess I would have been a nurse (at least I hope that’s what I would have been).

My first consideration to this question was whether I would even have survived the US Civil War and the Spanish American War. Considering that my hypothetical birth year would have been 1853, there’s no way that I would have been involved in a war that started when I was nominally seven years old and continued until I was eleven. So that’s not a consideration. The Spanish American War, starting in 1898, would have occurred after I had attained any kind of useful age in the military (unless I were already an officer), so even if I served I probably would have survived that conflict.

So if I had lived in 1911 and I weren’t already dead or dying of old age and age-related complications (at age 57), then I’d probably be in exactly the same business that I’m now engaged in, working, in fact, with some of the same equipment. Power boiler technology has modernized a lot in the last hundred years, but we still build the same fire-breathing animals now that we built then. The difference is that the materials and methods of construction have changed a lot, and these things are now real monsters compared to what they were then.

I would disguise myself as a man so I could be a miner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’d most likely be a farmer and part time leather craftsman.

I would be living in the same house that I live in now, with the exception of having to go out to the outhouse instead of the bathroom. (The bathroom was added in the 1930’s)
I would probably be doing much the same things as I do now, cooking cleaning, caring for children.
I would sew and knit, just like now. The differences would be that I would probably have to hitch up the buggy to visit friends and relatives outside of my small rural town. I would probably walk to town to go to the store instead of driving as I sometimes do now. I would tend the chickens and the pig in the back yard.
I have a hand water pump in my kitchen! Aren’t I the lucky one? A nice big wood/coal stove in the kitchen and another in the sitting room.
I could manage, really.

I’d be in Oklahoma, probably extremely poor and unemployed.

It would be interesting to hear this question with the addition of the influence of your family background.
If your family were immigrants, where would they have been?

hmmm, 16 yr old female… probably just waiting around at home to get married and learning to cook and sew….
boring….

Obviously I’d be a slave lol.

@Blackberry – What country do you live in?

Here in America the Emancipation Proclamation put an end to slavery (at least legally) in 1863. That’s 48 years prior to 1911.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I’d probably be uttering nonsense about how we were actually in the post apocolypse and we’re being ruled by the devil and blah blah blah.

@YoBob I was being sarcastic, although I’d probably have some shitty menial job lol.

@Blackberry i lol’d

Apparently I’ve already been pegged as a house husband by @hobbitsubculture, but at least back then basically all the pots and pans were cast iron. And I’m sure she’d still let me go hunting, particularly if I brought back something delicious and fried it up.

I’d probably be the person coming up with the idea of the Victory Garden. Screw waiting around until WW II.

Same thing I’m doing now – raising my kid and helping my hubby manage his flooring business.

Let’s see…well, I’m 19 right now. I think most of my grandparents were still in Norway/Germany at this time, or were right about to immigrate, so it very well could be that I would be a first generation immigrant/American. Considering that my interests and personality would still be the same, I would be interested in writing and could have a hard time getting published. I might even have to publish under a male pseudonym. Other than that, I might be working in a factory and could also be married with a kid or two already.

@meagan It’s interesting you mention Oklahoma. My Grandad was born in Indian Territory in the middle 1800’s and my Mother was born in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma in 1912, Bokchito, Oklahoma.

The exact same as it is today: SAHHSM (Stay at Home Home Schooling Mom). With the exception that I would be residing on one of my family’s dairy farms and thankfully there would be a lot less traffic and no chain restaurants in my village.

Probably the same as I do today. Work in some plant, do whatever it is you have to do, then retire at 51. Same as today.

@YoBob As I recall, the Emancipation Proclamation only banned slavery in the seceded states, which had already agreed to ignore the Federal government. It was, in essence, an empty document whose sole purpose was to add a more palatable flavor to the War of Secession.
But then, I could be wrong.

@Nullo you are correct. The Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery.

@Nullo It only banned private citizens from enslaving others. The government is exempt. No shock that bigger, more organized prisons were built shortly after, eh?

@incendiary_dan it was exactly what @Nullo said. Sorry it sorta goes off topic, but it is such an important part of history; I think it is necessary to clarify. ”... Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-In-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for supressing said rebellion, do, on this 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the first day above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States the following, to wit:

“Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Palquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Morthhampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

“And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Palquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Morthhampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued…”

http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/Lincoln/emancipate.html

I would be the same thing i am now, a writer and artist. :)

@bkcunningham Thank you honey, I hadn’t read this before, am off to check out your link <hugs> xx

GA everybody, <hugs> xx

My bad, I was thinking of the Amendment to the Constitution. You know, the legal document that holds up in courts.

@Nullo I’m assuming my parents would be similar to who they are now, and thus they would have taught me that women’s rights are worth fighting for.

I would almost certainly have followed my father into the printing trade.

@Nullo I can’t imagine I’d ever be satisfied with being considered a lesser human being, in any time period.

@YARNLADY I’m Chahta, going to Tahlequah (Cherokee Nation Capital) for school this fall. My Family is from Oklahoma, around Broken Bow. Nice to see another Native on Fluther :)

If I were doing the 1911 equivalent I suppose it would be Telegraph engineer.
If that were not available in my area I suppose I’d be a ditch digger there’s plenty of ditches around here I don’t want the 2011 me getting flooded out!

@augustlan * shrugs * Fortunately, we’re not here to debate either actual history (rather than what made it into the public consciousness), nor Nature vs. Nurture and the ramifications thereof.

@Nullo, you are quite right about the Emancipation Proclamation only freeing the slaves in the succeeded states. It was at it’s very roots a tool used to cause economic and political damage to the south. Also, as has been pointed out it did not really free the slaves. It remains, however, as a symbolic marker of the end of the dying institution.

However, that aside, my point was that in 1911 slavery was (at least in theory) a thing of the past.

@Nullo Well __now__ we are. Are you suggesting that my parents would not have had an influence over me in 1911?

@sliceswiththings I can’t say; I don’t know your parents. But consider: they too would have grown up under different circumstances. We are, in part, the sum of our experiences.
Obviously, the status quo changes; you might very well have ended up the way that you’re thinking that you would have. Enough people did, or else Rice would have never made Secretary of State, and Ginsburg wouldn’t have ever seen the bench. But you? You might have been raised to be a good housewife. Like the future, the speculated past is largely unknowable.

chimney sweep.

I asked my partner this question and he says he would have been a career soldier. He would probably have served in the Boer War and, if he survived, would be retired from active duty by now.

Farmer support staff.