The year was 1905 and my grandfather was 5 years old. He died not long ago, but he and I had some great conversations about the world in the last century. Today’s surroundings are a great deal different.

I hear people talking about how tough it is today and how the economy is really having an impact on their quality of life. That’s very true for most of us, but the following information was sent to me and caused me to reflect on how tough business and living was when he was a young boy.

This is a little mind-boggling to think about in 2009. What a difference he saw over the course of his lifetime: The life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years old. Only 14 percent of the homes in the country had a bathtub. Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.

There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S. and only 144 miles of paved roads. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million people, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

The average wage in the country was 22 cents per hour. The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 dollars per year. A good accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year, a dentist $2,500, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000.

More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at home. Ninety percent of all U.S. doctors had no college education. Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as substandard.

Sugar cost four cents a pound, and eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason. You can imagine the response for a law like that today. The six leading causes of death in the U.S. were pneumonia, influenza, tuberculosis, diarrhea, heart disease and stroke.

The American flag had 45 stars; Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadn’t been admitted to the Union yet. The population of Las Vegas was only 30 people.

Crossword puzzles, canned root beer and iced tea hadn’t been invented yet. Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

A real shocker to some would be that marijuana, heroin and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstore. Back then pharmacist said, “Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.” That’s a shocker!

Eighteen percent of households in the U.S. had at least one full-time servant or domestic help. There were about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.

There are so many other things that just boggle the mind when it come to how much different we have things today. I can scan and send this column by e-mail in seconds and send it to friends all over the world with the push of a button.

One of the really telling quotes of the day is from Elliot M. Estes, who was president of General Motors from 1974-1981, “If something has been done a particular way for 15 or 20 years, it’s a pretty good sign, in these changing times, that it is being done the wrong way.”

Even a century earlier, change and progress were big issues. Consider this quote from an 1833 issue of the Atlantic Journal: “The world is too big for us. There is too much going on, too many crimes, too much violence and excitement. Try as you will, you get behind in the race, in spite of yourself. It’s an incessant strain, to keep pace. … And still, you lose ground. Science empties its discoveries on you so fast that you stagger beneath them in hopeless bewilderment. The political world is news seen so rapidly you’re out of breath trying to keep pace with who’s in and who’s out. Everything is high pressure. Human nature can’t endure much more!”

• Steve Densley is president of the Provo-Orem Chamber of Commerce.