My mother's childhood prayer reflects the death rate of children in the 1920s

 "Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

If I should die before I wake

I pray the Lord my Soul to Take"

This would be a prayer given by children throughout the 1920s when they went to bed at night.

It was a fairly universal prayer.

So, death was both real and near for children then unlike now in very deep ways.

It's one reason people were so religious because children and adults then were dying like flies mostly of things they didn't understand at all because most people ( a majority then) had not even finished High School (let alone grade school) for many people.

Even in the 1950s when I grew up not finishing Grade school or High School was pretty normal especially between my ages zero to 12 years of age watching adults around me.

It made people very superstitious and scared and paranoid a lot more than now. Now I would say it's drugs that make people paranoid now. But then it was ignorance and alcohol that made people paranoid before the 1960s.

People were afraid not to go to church because they knew they might drop dead any day at any age. So, this made people much more fearful and ignorant and paranoid than now here in the U.S.