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As the title says, why is there a "one" before "hundred", before "thousand", and so on, but not before "ten"?
This seems shared between some languages, including Chinese (10 = 十 = ten, 100 = 一百 = one hundred), but not others, like French (10 = dix = ten, 100 = cent = hundred).
The simplest explanation, which does not really delve into linguistics at all, is that "ten" is not a unit that you use in multiples. That is, "20" is not spoken of as "two-tens", "50" is not spoken of as "five-tens". Thus there is no need for the disambiguation of specifying "one ten". (French seems to have decided that if you don't specify a count, "one" is assumed, as you don't say "un cent", "un mille", "un milliard", etc.)
This may not be quite the answer you were looking for, but the reason is because English has special words for twenty, thirty and so on. There is no such equivalent for hundred or thousand or even dozen which leaves us with saying two thousand or four dozen.
The similarity to Chinese is probably a complete coincidence. My gut feeling as to why this is like it is in English is that, in some strange sense, "hundred" is more like "dozen"... not a number, per se, but a (dimensionless) unit of measure.
From the Wikipedia page on dimensionless quantities:
"Units of amount such as the dozen and the gross are also dimensionless."
Just to set the record straight.
2 * 6 = 12 When choosing to write it out, you would write "two times six equals twelve" not "two times six equals dozen." You could say "two time six equals a dozen" but now you have an article in there. If you feel comfortable calling that a number, so be it. I was just pointing out that it may be misleading to consider dozen the same kind of number as twelve much like a six isn't the same "kind" of "number" as six or 6.