HISTORY OF WEST VIRGINIA
and interests of community life, and it shows how they were the stimuli for the development of the various phases of early community life and community institutions: such as schools, mills, mines, banks, churches, railroads, streets, and government. It shows also how under the hard conditions of pioneer life, isolated from civilization, the various interests received only partial satisfaction.
The fascinating story of local development from the standpoint teaches its own lesson. It enables one to understand from concrete examples that society has advanced only by slow, blind groping movements — with long halts and many struggles due to ignorance, stupidity and prejudice, and that "it is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things." The story of each town is one of interesting development: from the primitive and the provincial to the modern and metropolitan from a sleepy condition of mere subsistance and isolation to a life of productive business and communication with the entire world; from trail and pack horse to railway and express train; from an old log house built as you please and surrounded by mud and broken glass to a modern house built by permission of town council, and approached by sidewalk put in by command of the town council, for the general good, — perhaps at first against the strong opposition of individual citizens; from corner smoke-befogged grocery with chairs and whittling material furnished to the evening loafers' club to an orderly business house where loafers are discouraged inside by lack of chairs and outside by rows of sharp barbs and spikes; from the daily jam of the old postoffice after the daily mail hack arrived to the modern office with iron rails to keep the people in orderly line; from the muddy roads of a rural village to the paved streets of a city kept clean by a street cleaning force; from single, poorly organized schools to a system of graded schools with proper supervision and inspection and culminating in a modern high school; from volunteer bucket brigade to an efficiently trained fire department; from indiscriminate giving and lending to an efficient, intelligent organized charity; from the old wasteful Anglo-Saxon method of working the roads to the modern plan of road construction and repair under the supervision and direction of an efficient engineer; from unsanitary springs and wells to the modern system of water works and water purification; from the old individualistic method of garbage disposal by throwing in the streets to the sanitary compulsory method of disposing of garbage by city expense and city authority; from pill vendors and quacks to a respectable medical profession from uncontrolled unsanitation to the sanitary control of modern boards of health, and to medical inspection in the schools; a development from drift and laissez faire to intelligent direction.
The story of each phase of development is instructive and educative. It would certainly be an excellent thing for the development of historical science in America if teachers in our public schools would cultivate the historical spirit of their pupils with special reference to the local environment. Something more than local history can be drawn from such sources.
A multitude of historical associations gather around every old town and hamlet in the land. West Virginia and other states of the Ohio Valley are especially rich in them. There are local legends and traditions, household tales, stories told by grandfathers and grandmothers, incidents remembered by "the oldest inhabitant." But above all in importance are the old documents and manuscript records of the first settlers, the early pioneers, the founders of our towns, and the captains of industries. Here are sources of information more authentic than tradition and yet often entirely neglected. If teachers would simply make a few extracts from these unpublished records, they would soon have sufficient material in their hands for elucidating local history to their
