Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/499

 CHAPTER XXXIV SOCIAL LIFE AND INDUSTRIES Isolation of Many Communities — Deprivations Suffered — Houses — Food — Dress — Household Implements — Schools and Churches — Amusements — Unity op Feeling — Treatment of Disease — Versatility of the Pioneer — Development of Character — Farming — Mining — Manufacturing. There are many persons now living, whose recollection goes back into the period which we are now considering. They have a just appreciation of the situation and circum- stances imder which the inhabitants of this part of the state lived up to this time. To those of the younger generation, however, it is a very difficult matter to reconstruct con- ditions of life that prevailed in many parts of Southeast Missouri. It is especially true of those towns and villages which were sit- uated at a distance from the river. They presented, in many respects, a scene of pi-imi- tive life that is almost beyond the compre- hension of those who did not actually live that life. When we consider that such towns as Greenville in "Wayne county. Poplar Bluff in Butler county, Kennett in Dunklin county, and Frederiektown in Madison coimty, were situated at great distances from the river; that there were no railroads reaching them, and that the roads which formed the sole means of travel for their inhabitants were, in many cases and at many times, almost im- passable, we see something of the hard con- ditions of life in many of these places. It is true that in all of them stores were opened with considerable stocks of goods, and that communication was kept up more or less reg- ularly with the towns on the river, but in spite of this fact, these and similarly situated places were in a state of what seems today very great isolation. There are great numbers of people who can remember when their homes were at a distance of twenty-five to one hundred miles from the nearest town, and when the annual, or semi-annual visit to the town was the occasion of the only real shopping expedition that the women of the family made dur- ing the entire year. All the manufac- tured articles, with the exception of the simplest, including cloth, tools, household implements, and furniture, such supplies of food as were not grown on the place itself, were brought from these distant towns in wagon or on horse-back over indifferent roads. This situation led to some customs which seem peculiar to those of the present day. The pi'ices of many things were inordinately high, as compared with the prices now. This was true of such a small tiling as the match, and it was no unusual thing for the house- hold to be entirely without matches, and to depend upon the flint and steel, or upon a 439