Manual Jobs that have disappeared. Railroad Crossing Watchman.
This is the Out Our Way cartoon from April 21, 1923, courtesy of Reddit's 100 Years Ago sub.
The thing that surprises me here is that it never occurred to me that there were human manned railroad crossings, but as this photo shows, they existed into the 1940s at least:
Railroad crossing, Beaumont, Texas, May 1943.
Indeed, in looking it up, it seems like the modern type of crossing with the lowering arms came about in the 1950s. An earlier automatic type called a "wig wag" was patented in 1909, but it must not have had universal use.
By Richamos - I took the picture with my own camera, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6347827
This brings up a number of interesting things, including that signals just weren't what they now are. This likely explains why railroad crossing accidents were seemingly so common, such as this one, which was discussed in the Casper Daily Tribune about an April 20, 1923 accident.
But another matter, while the world is seemingly getting safer, there's less of a role for humans in it.
We've discussed this before, but automation is eliminating jobs, and has been, for a century. Crossing guard attendants probably filled that job for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons likely was that some of the occupants of that position simply were suited for a job with pretty much no skills whatsoever, and were fine with a long day to themselves. Where are they now? Some of them are unemployed and unemployable.
And with the arrival of AI, this will rapidly expand into the white collar and professional world. We're making a world we literally can't live in.
