I realize that no one here is old enough to have personal experience with this question but I wonder if back in the day before safety razors were around what the straight razor learning process was like?

Today we hear that it takes a minimum of 100 shaves before you are decent and that it's OK to use a safety razor to touch up while learning.

Did the average guy just learning to shave just have lousy shaves for a long time or did they just go to the barber shop for shaves along the way?

In our lifetimes shaving has never been hard even if you started out with a DE. Straights are a different beast.

Maybe that's why there were so many beards when straight razors were the only game in town?