Only the rich could afford the new sources of energy. They had gas light and the first electric lights. The wealthy were very few and very rich and led conspicuously different lives from all the rest. The income and energy gap, which is still wide, was much wider in the early 1900s. A few people controlled most of the available energy either as owners or executives in the burgeoning railroads and new utilities, or in their personal lives. They had private railway cars, yachts, and the first automobiles. They also had the first coal furnaces for central heating.

Even among the rich, most of the energy was still muscle energy in the early years of this century. Horses pulled their carriages (for example, Alfred Vanderbilt had a team of beautifully matched greys to pull his sporting coach in 1910), and servants, who did the manual labor, slept in tiny bedrooms that filled the top floors of huge houses. The rest of the people led far simpler and more exhausting lives. Professionals, doctors, lawyers, and middling merchants—relatively few in number—had horses and buggies, one to a family. Their wives had "help," but the housewife herself still worked hard at household tasks. Beyond them were the great mass of farmers, artisans, factory workers, small