It can be hard to imagine what life was like in 1925. Odds are, none of us were around to see it. We’ve read The Great Gatsby, but after all, that’s fiction. We imagine flapper girls and gangsters, old-timey automobiles, and the stock market crash. But generally, most of us have the sense that life was generally harder to live back then. There was no television, no internet, no texting, and no chickenpox vaccine. I don’t know about you, but my life would be drastically different without those inventions, and perhaps for the worse. I couldn’t have the job I have now (I probably couldn’t have really any job, since I’m a woman) and I probably would have lost a bunch of friends to preventable diseases. For those reasons, I’ll take 2025 over 1925.

But what are the things that were easier back then? Are there any ways that our lifestyles have declined since then, or has it only been uphill in the last century?