Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/557

CHAPTER XXX S the pioneer period began to give way to the advancing tide of immigration coming into the Mississippi Valley with the progress of railroad extension, Iowa experienced many of the advantages of incoming capital and gladly welcomed the luxuries brought by material progress.

But among the new settlers there were regrets over the innovations which banished in some degree the universal hospitality of the early days of common poverty, when every cabin was a house of entertainment for the white-top wagon loaded with “new comers,” men, women, and bright-eyed, bare-footed children seeking new homes.

Before turning to the dark days of the Civil War, which even then was beginning to seem slowly gathering in the not distant future, we may take a backward glance at the log-cabin era which will linger in the memory of the gray-haired few who were of that generation.

The early settlements in Iowa were largely made by men and women with little of worldly possessions beyond youth, health, industrious habits and a determination to better their condition in a new country where most of the people were similarly situated.

It was not from the well-to-do classes that the pioneers set forth on their westward journeys, to explore new and unknown countries. The middle-aged man with a family, who from some misfortune had found it a hard struggle in the East to accumulate any surplus over bare subsistence could not endure the thought that his sons must be left with only an inheritance of industry; that his daughters must serve as servants in the families of strangers; that the long years of toil for a frugal living must go on among his descendants through the succeeding generations. [Vol. 1]