Originally Posted by
ndbiker
Most likely until they knew all the details they would probably consider that our society had gotten considerably richer (they would be right). In 1909 people either didn't travel or were fairly wealthy. The wealthy were able to afford the trains, riverboats, horses, carriages, servants, and the newly emerging form of transportation automobiles that allowed them to live away from the masses. They would probably think that America was as close to a paradise as they could imagine. Even the poor have vehicles and can get just about anywhere in the country in days. We don't see the sewage, we have lights whenever we need them, everyone has education etc. The amazing thing about this is that it is ubiquitous, (nearly) everyone has this not just the rich. Around the turn of the 20C someone had said that science had invented nearly everything that could be invented. A hundred years later that scientist would be left speechless. Living in walkable neighborhoods is a good thing but I doubt our ancestors given the opportunity would decline our current mobility.
You may not realize it, but this is a unique viewpoint, although it's certainly common in our local time and place.
But equating
mobility with dirty and dangerous machines that require an enormously expensive infrastructure is not a universally held value. Throughout history, and in much of the world today, people have had a different idea of mobility all together. Thank goodness many people are now beginning to rethink the (temporarily) popular notion that automobiles can be equated with mobility.