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The Future

1. Your Life Ten Years From Today (Coronet, October, 1955)

The sun will heat your house, a jet engine will power your two cars--and atomic radiation will preserve food in a kitchen that disappears.

By Leo Cherne, as told to Ray Joseph

Would you like to know what life in the U.S. will be like in 1965?

For one thing, you will be working only four days a week, probably at a guaranteed annual wage.
There will be spectacular new anti-TB drugs, but one child in ten will spend time in a mental institution.

You will have been through another depression, but not a bad one.

Juvenile delinquency and marital infedelity will increase, and one of every three marriages will end in divorce.

You will fly from New York to London in five hours, man-made satellites will circle the earth--and world war will have been eliminated!

This is no wild prognostication but a scientific forecast by Leo Cherne, famed economist and Executive Director of the Research Institute of America. Mr. Cherne, leading expert in the new science of prediction based on patters of action, has been uncannily right in the past.

Twelve years ago, toward the close of World War II, he wrote a book, called "The Rest of Your Life," in which he foretold what would probably happen in the post-war period. Amazingly, 74 per cent of his predictions have already come true. Only 13 per cent have proved incorrect. The rest are still not definitely settled.

Coronet asked Mr. Cherne and his organization--which spends ,000,000 annually researching the facts of yesterday and today for projection into the future--to predict what life will be like in 1965.

Some of their forecasts will please you. Others will shock you. But they will be helpful in planning your life for the next ten years. Here, according to the Institute's report, is your world of 1965:

STANDARD OF LIVING. Your standard of living, ten years from now, will be higher than you dare dream. If yours is a factory job, you will work a maximum of four days a week. Many offices will operate on the same schedule. And there will be a shift in holiday observance dates so that all except Christmas and New Year's will fall on Mondays.

You will probably be living in a hosue heated and lighted by the sun, for solar houses should be beyond the experimental stage in 1965. Its refrigeration and air conditioning--the latter will be as general as today's central heating--will work by the same sun power.

By 1965, practically all parts for new houses will come from prefabrication sources, put together on the site. houses will be more functional through greater use of lighter-weight furniture, soil-resistant silicone finishes, easy-to-care-for plywoods, plastics and quick-drying veneers.

In many of them, living, dining and cooking areas will be combined into one total functional space--and built-in cooking units with sliding doors will be so cleverly designed that they will all but disappear when not in use.

Automatic eyes will close doors and windows as temperatures and weather change. And automatic regulation of humidity, light, and control against virus and bacteria will start appearing in many homes.

Yet, with all these new devices, you'll do more things yourself in 1965. Thanks to packaged kits, most people will do their own roofing, plumbing, electrical work--and accept it as routine. You'll even be able to rent a portable plastic swimming pool for the back yard.

Frozen foods of practically all kinds will be in widespread use. Plastic cans--so that you can see the food as you buy--will be common. Pre-cooked meats will be general.

New microwave cooking methods, in which the cooking is done with an electronic tube, will be in use. Foods cooked this way will maintain more of their nutritive elements.

WORK CONDITIONS AND PAY. If you do as well in the next ten years as you have done in the past ten, your income will be up 20 per cent in terms of stable dollars. You may get part of this in the form of a shorter work week or more job security, however. For by 1965, probably seven out of ten factory employees under collective bargaining will have some form of guaranteed annual wage.

Your chances of being under a pension plan will increase; and your average state unemployment compensation benefits will probably be a third larger.

You are more likely to work outside a city than in, especially if you are in chemicals, electronics or aircraft, which, in that order, will continue to be among our fastest growing industries.

Your tools, whether in office or factory, will be more automatic. But don't expect automation--the use of machines to operate other machines--everywhere. If you do clerical or secretarial work, you'll have to take special courses to learn how to run increasingly complex business machines.

Your boss will be easier to get along with. He'll probably not be an owner but will more likely be hired to manage by shareholders.

If you are not a memeber of a union now, the chances are better than ever that you will be by 1965. White collar workers will also be joining in increasing numbers. The last great unorganized group by then will be independent salesmen.

Union leaders will speak for workers on industry control boards as directors now represent stock-holders. Strikes will be rare. Unions will offer more medical and child care, discount-house type canteens, social services.

PERSONAL WEALTH AND OPPORTUNITIES. Your savings will probably be two per cent larger than the seven per cent now saved by the average U.S. family. But if you now pay yearly in Federal income taxes, you'll probably pay at least in 1965. And you will pay at least more in state income and personal city taxes.

Automation won't cut prices you'll pay for most items you use. Rather, it will keep price increases smaller than they'd advance if vast progress were not to be made in this area. This will be a major factor in creating the prosperity all America will be enjoying by 1965.

There will be almost nothing you won't buy on the installment plan. You'll consider it pay-as-you-use instead of "going into hock."

TRANSPORTATION AND TRAVEL. There will be some 81,000,000 vehicles on the road in 1965, in contrast to today's 59,000,000. Trend studies show you'll have more toll roads like the Pennsylvania Turnpike and New York Thruway, more Freeways like those in Los Angeles. But, though Mr. Cherne hopes he's wrong, there is currently no sign of any carefully planned, borad-scale national highway improvement progress that will be both adequate and acceptable to Congress. This, incidentally may be one of our most serious problems.

The automotive projections are not all pessimistic, however. You'll have your first chance to run your car on coal and vegetable derivatives at about one-third of what it now costs you to buy gasoline. And we'll be using two kinds of new cars in 1965--one a city car for in-town; and the other for highway cruising--a faster, larger, more luxurious car than the one of today.

The city car will be made five feet shorter than present Ford and Chevrolet sedans by lopping off the elongated hood and trunk. The 60-h.p. engine will be under the floor or in the rear, and the fenders will probably be made of dent-resistant plastic. The first models will be true hard-top convertibles, changeable in a few minutes.

The deluxe open-road car will probably be about 20 feet long, powered by a gas turbine, little brother of the jet engine. This engine will weigh less than half of present-day car engines and will burn anything from avaition gasoline to household oil.

By 1965, there will be far greater use of conveyor belt systems to help alleviate pedestrial and automotive congestion.

All travel, especially international, will increase. If by now you have done even a small amount of traveling, the chances are even that by 1965, you will have been to Europe. You'll be able to take off from london and in approximately five hours' flying time be in New York.

Jet-propelled planes will be used on all long flights; propellor-driven planes for shorter journeys.

By 1975, 200-passenger airliners will make the Washington to Paris flight in little more than three hours at 1,200 miles an hour. The plane for in-between distances may turn out to be the first practical flying saucer, carrying 100 passengers at 600 miles-per-hour speeds.

ENTERTAINMENT. Your entertainment will be centered at home. You'll probably have two color television sets, which would cost under each. The pay-as-you-watch system, averaging $1 a night charged on your telephone bill, will be a standard supplementary service. Most TV shows will have been previously photographed on special tape which will reproduce sound, sight and color with a quality virtually identical to a live performance.

You may see some live pick-ups from Europe but there are no signs of global TV in the next decade.

Your TV set will probably work from a thin wall screen, controlled from a small box on a table--and will be easily moved about the house.

You'll be able to buy a wristwatch radio at your corner drugstore for about .

HEALTH. You'll live longer. By 1965, average male life expectancy will have increased to 70 years, women to 75. There will be an extraordinary percentage of reasonably healthy people in their 80s and 90s. Our youth will grow taller as a result of eating better food, having more recreation, less childhood disease, a better-balanced diet.

But, though we will be physically more healthy, we will be subject to greater suffering from nervous and emotional disturbances due to the increased strain and tensions of 1965's faster and more complicated pace. This will produce more psychosomatic ills such as asthma, allergies, ulcers, heart troubles, stomach difficulties.

In ten years, one child in every ten can be expected to spend some time in a mental institution.

THE FAMILY. The 1965 family will be larger, with couples marrying earlier. Here's the probablility patters: In 1890, the average girl married at 22; men at 26. By 1940, it was 21.2 for women, 24.6 for men. Now it's 20 and 23. By 1965, the projection shows, it will be 19 for girls and 22 for men.

Youngsters reared in a family of three children can count on having four of their own--for the small family trend has reversed. By 1965 our population will have reached 188,000,000.

Your children will have a higher education than you. Despite this, however, there will be a steady increase in juvenile delinquency. This will also tear away at the roots on which young people can build a stable marital relationship.

At the rate we've been going, by 1965 one out of every three marriages will end in divorce, though the absence of war can bring this down. There will, however, be a growing pattern of marital infidelity by both husbands and wives. Monogamy will still dominate, but increasingly will be honored in the breach. Pills for birth control will be widely used.

THE WORLD. By 1965 you can expect atomic energy to be in actual use at some big industrial plants and in at least one trans-Atlantic vessel. Atomic radiation will be employed in new ways to preserve food more effectively; to extend the life and durability of fabrics, metals and equipment; and for sterilization.

But, surprising as it now seems, by 1965 scientists will be more excited about trying to harness energy from the sun as their next big forward step. Some, in fact, say that all signs indicate that employing solar energy will have more effect on your life than atomic energy.

Technology will develop new uses for such materials as wood, steel and aluminum.

Growing trees, for example, will be injected with hormones, radioactive materials and various chemicals to pre-season wood, give it fire resistant qualities, and even stain it in desired colors.

Coal, instead of being used primarily for fuel, will become a basic source for new raw materials. It will be used to make clothing rot-resistant and to produce spectacular new anti-TB drugs.

Within ten years, the first man-made space satellites will be a reality, providing an island in space from which we will be able to look back on the world. It will be another ten years more--about 1975--before trips to the moon will be attempted.

The most profound change to take place in the world will be the elimination of world war. This will be caused by fear of government leaders everywhere of global destruction by the ultimate weapons. You will have peace--although the Communists will continue to threaten free nations by means short of war.

By 1965, the U.S. will have come successfully through a depression in which 6,000,000 will have been unemployed. But the effect will have been insignificant in contrast to the great depression of the 1930s, which we'll look back upon as a national tragedy from which certain beneficial results flowed.

Such will be the world of 1965, as Leo Cherne and his Research Institute experts picture it.

So here is a suggestion: cut out this article. Write your own notes on the margins. Then put it away with your valuable papers; wait ten years, and do a re-check.

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My Name, You Friendly Store Owner

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