INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS 55 



clothes, coonskin caps and shoes made from boot- 

 tops, to Congress gaiters, patent leather shoes, 

 " Prince Albert " or black long frock coats and 

 silk hats for these were my Sunday and party 

 garments when I reached the age of twenty-one. 

 In the same generation the farmers gave up the 

 ox-cart and farm wagon and began to ride in top 

 carriages which cost from $125 to $175. We 

 were not unlike other fortunate peoples, settled in 

 a district of unbounded natural resources which 

 required relatively little skill to transform into 

 articles of use and luxury. 



But some of this transformation demanded both 

 skill and hard work. Did you ever pull flax? 

 Linum usitatissimum? That word may be a jaw- 

 breaker but be assured it is not half so hard for 

 jaws as pulling flax was for my back! Just about 

 the time we ceased to raise flax a machine was 

 invented for pulling it. Of course we could have 

 cut it with the grain cradle but the fibre would have 

 then been too short for use. The little sheaves 

 of flax were threshed in the early fall by beating 

 them on a large flat stone tilted at about an angle 

 f 35 degrees; afterward the threshed material 

 was spread one to two inches thick in well-ordered 

 swaths on the grass of some meadow. In from 



