people complain that things are dead; in others there seems to be too 

 much society. Generally there are two or three parties a month during 

 the fall and winter, and a few picnics during the spring and summer. 

 Most of these parties are held in the homes. The Sunday evening church 

 service is also a time for the young people to get together and these 

 evening services are usually better attended than the morning services. 

 Dancing and card-playing are frowned on in the country and are rarely 

 indulged in, but in the towns a livelier pace is set. For the married 

 women in the country the opportunities for meeting friends are, as usual, 

 limited. 



Amusements and Recreation 



Aside from the parties and the picnics and the buggy rides and the 

 games played at school, there are few recreations in the country. Of 

 baseball, football, basket-ball, amateur theatricals, there is nothing. In 

 the towns some baseball is played and moving picture shows are popular, 

 Trenton and Milan have picture shows most of the year and Humboldt 

 has two or three. Each of them is well patronized. The investigator 

 dropped in twice and each time counted over two hundred present, 

 including many children. The shows themselves are harmless, although 

 the themes are often inane. In the smaller towns the shows come in for 

 shorter periods, from a month to one or two nights, depending upon the 

 amount of patronage. 



Fraternal Organizations 



Table XII shows the membership and the number of lodges of the 

 different fraternal organizations in Gibson County. 



TABLE XII.— MEMBERSHIP AND ATTENDANCE OF FRATERNAL 



ORDERS 



X f 1 V Total 



., No Member- \°/^V- °- Monthly 



N--» Lodges ship Meet,ng ^„^,„j. 



^ ance 



Odd Fellows 12 855 32 730 



Masons 15 712 16 288 



M. W. A 16 808 25 380 



K. of P 4 240 10 190 



W. ofW 14 1,067 20 500 



Elks 1 125 



Eastern Star 4 142 5 96 



Total 66 3,949 110 2,184 



Average attendance per meeting, 19.8. 



It is to be noted that nearly half the membership is in orders in which 

 insurance is an important feature, and these orders are the most largely 



27 



