If you were the age you are now but it was the year 1909, what would your occupation be?

Robber Baron.

Deceased.

id work in a bar Shanghai-ing people

Corpse.

If I had the same personality, I’d be one of those sassy women fighting for the right to vote or some other social cause.

Wench!

Realistically? If I weren’t dead, I’d be the live-in grandma helping to look after the house and kids. I wouldn’t have had a career at all. If I’d managed to do anything beyond the purely domestic, I’d probably be writing little articles for ladies’ journals or a series of morality tales for children because those things were popular then. Ugh. Not much to live for.

At least I would have been well read and self-taught and probably would have felt stifled all my life. If I’d been lucky enough to have an advanced education, I might have been a career rebel, probably in academe.

Well, I’m in college now. That wouldn’t be the case if I were a 21-year-old female in 1909. So I’d probably be a housewife.

What would a 20 year old Black girl be doing then?

@Facade :( at least times have changed for the better in that respect

Still attending college.
But I guess I wouldn’t be studying computer information systems. Perhaps somewhere in the “business” realm. Accounting or something of that nature.

Or maybe I’d have signed up to work for Uncle Sam.

I would probably be some sort of transcriber. I love the mere act of writing, but nowadays with computers and technology there is no need for people with masterful penmanship…

I’d probably be a teacher or lecturer on a HBCU campus. Or in Paris doing cabaret/vaudeville/music hall.

@Facade, it depends. My maternal great-grandmother, for instance, was dirt poor from some country bumpkin part of Arkansas, clever, but not book smart, v.v. light-skinned and considered pretty, so she was what was known as a “fancy lady”. Ahem. My understanding was that she’d rather had done that and made more money than be some white family’s domestic. But other black folks, for example, Miles Davis’ father, who was a wealthy dentist, were much better off. Yes, Miles Davis grew up not just middle-class, but rich. In Kansas. There were many middle-class people in the professions, mainly serving other black people. There were small business owners, artisans, farmers, teachers, cops; the whole gamut of jobs. It’s just that they were harder jobs to get, they paid less than what white people got for the same work in a lot of cases, and everything was segregated. If you were educated, like the Delany Sisters, you had more freedom.

I agree, the art of caligraphy these days is something our children will barely know.

My kids went to a Rudolph Steiner school, where they had to do all their writing, all the way from the beginning through 12th grade, in calligraphy, with a fountain pen. I think they are both glad they did.

@saraaaaaa Yes they have :)
@aprilsimnel Great info. My own mother picked cotton and cleaned houses for the Whites in her town. I’m fairly certain I’d be doing something similar.

I’ll be a gangster/silent film actor

@jamielynn2328, I think calligraphers are still getting hired for their art. I still see beautiful calligraphy in greeting cards and posters, on hand-addressed invitations, and other places, and it is not the work of a computer. I think beautiful script will outlast computers.

@Jeruba I do fill out cards, invitations, thank you cards etc.. for my family. I just love letters and words. I’m a nerd for it.

I’d be a brothel madam. Seriously, in Laramie, WY that would be the best job for a dame like me. Aside from the fact that I think owning a brothel is a pretty lucrative way to go…

@Les – My great-grandma would completely agree!

@teh_kvlt_liberal, considering what actors made in those days, yeah, you’d be both! ;)

Teacher

I would be a Land Surveyor getting my knuckles scraped, and probably very ornery, lonesome and mean.

I’d probably be a housewife.

Ideally, though, I’d be part of a Jazz group or researching stuff like Marie Curie. :D

I probably would have loved to work in an apothecary, as well.

I’m pretty sure I’d be a farmer.

@petethepothead I’d be a farmer’s wife. wait a minute, I already am. :)

I would be a pioneer in the making of motion pictures. If only I were able to know what I know today, the possibilities of what I could create is unimaginable.

Crazy town drunk.

I’d be a musician playing in the finest halls.

Very imaginative question, @jonsblond. Definitely a GQ for you.

@AlenaD if you were living in New Zealand in 1909, you would not need to be fighting for voting rights for women. New Zealand was the first country in the world to grant women the vote in 1893.

I love NZ even more now. :)

@AlenaD me too

@AlenaD & @jonsblond :)

Gag man in silent films.

A lamplighter.

An Indian scout.

@dannyc Haven’t seen you around lately. Good to have you back!

I’d be doing nearly the same thing as I’m doing now, except the computer. I would be taking care of grandkids occasionally, making needlepoint and quilt gifts for people.

I’d probably be a Federal Marshall enforcing law and order all over the wild west.

I would chisel this answer in marble and say that i have not got a clue.
Or wait, i would be stone-chiseler.

@Ivan In the year 1909 you would die at the age of 20?

A school teacher or an accountant or a traveling musician.

A bluesman fingerpicking my guitar and blowing in my harp. Singing about how my baby done me wrong and selling my soul to the devil. I’d be dead by 27 because a jealous husband poisoned my whiskey after I slept with his wife.

I’m in IT now so that’s out, unless this is a steampunk version of 1909 which would be cool. Yeah I’ll be a Difference Engine Analyst !!

Or you could be working with Marconi!

I guess at 23 years old I would likely be a house wife. However, there was recently a TV programme on the BBC called Casualty 1909 and, although, as a general rule, I hate hospital dramas ie: Casualty (the up to date version) and Holby City, I was fascinated by it. I actually thought that if I was alive back then I would have enjoyed being a nurse.

Assuming I had survived my birth—something that would have been unlikely to happen, had the circumstances been the same—I probably would have been a schoolteacher, and possibly even a college professor.

Oh, and I would be talking about how I barely escaped the big earthquake in San Francisco.

Probably dead from a home childbirth.

I’ve been thinking about the answer to this all day. If I had my current skills, I’d probably be a translator or some sort of academic. Actually I’d probably be one of the most educated people around, at a time when most people didn’t even go to school at all. I’m assuming my musical skills would be useless, as there were better musicians back then and nobody would like to hear what I play. And my little knowledge on today’s technology would make me one of the world’s leading inventors.

But I assume your question asks what if I had been born at that time (eg in 1872) and grew up like everybody else? Well my grandfather was slightly younger than that and he was a farmer. He learnt the alphabet, having spent 3 whole years at school, which at the time was a great feat (it was 3 times longer than any of his brothers stayed at school). Of course girls didn’t even bother. Overall studying was considered a waste of time, a luxury for the rich. When my dad decided to go to university, his father’s attitude was typical of that mentality: “what are you going to do with all these letters? They won’t help your plants grow faster, or put food on the table. Now go fetch some firewood!”

My grandfather was physically strong, and worked many hours a day, his whole life. He was known to be the hardest worker around, often digging a whole field twice as fast as his helpers, and could do all sorts of things like carry enormous weights for miles, and punch an ox unconscious. I guess if I’d grown in the same environment, I would have developed my body more and become something similar. I may have preferred to become a sailor though, or at least a fisherman. I don’t think I’d like farming as much. It’s a life I could never imagine, but I guess they couldn’t imagine ours either.

Lessee… 22y/o middle-class worker, with my current inclinations? I’d probably be in an office somewhere. I like journalism, see. Should reality actually factor in, I’d probably be working in a store.