hen the weaving-loom was the piano in the home, and all
the women carded, spun and wove. The table-garden, the care of the
house, the preparation of the meals and the making of the covering and
the clothes were in the women's division of the labor. The families
usually were large and every member a producer. To the girls fell shares
of the mother's work. The boys helped in the fields, chopped the wood
and rounded up the stock, that at times wandered far into the mountains.
There were bells on the cows, on the sheep and even the hogs, and the
boys soon learned to distinguish ownerships by the delicate differences
in the browsing "tong" in the tone of the bells.

Residents of the valley sold to the outside world the live stock they
raised, and poultry and feathers and furs, and tar and resin from the
pines on the mountaintops. They purchased tea, coffee and sugar, a few
household and farm conveniences, and little else. The balance of the
trade was heavily in their favor and they were prosperous and happy.

They had no labor problems. They recognized without collective
bargaining the eight-hour shift--"eight hours agin dinner and eight
hours after hit; ef hit don't rain;" as one old mountaineer, living
there to-day, interpreted the phrase, "A day's work."

Even when the home of the mountaineer was a one- or two-room cabin,
accommodations for any stranger could be provided, and if he wished to
remain, work could be found for him. They observed without thought of
inconvenience the Colonial idea of "bundling."

When the stranger proved worthy there would be a log-rolling and a space
of ground cleared for him to till, and a log-raising in which the
community joined, and made a merry occasion of it, to give him a home.
The way was easy for his ownership of the land and the cabin. Prices for
cleared land, around the middle of the last century, ranged from
twenty-five cents to five dollars an acre.

In the valley the father never talked to the son of the dignity of
labor. Much was to be done and everyone labored and thought of it as but
the proper use of the sunlight of a day.

Their life was primitive, rugged, but contented. Deer and bears were in
the mountains, and wild turkeys were to be found in large flocks, while
the cry of wolves added zest to the whine of a winter wind.

A cook-stove was an unknown luxury, and the women prepared their meals
in the open fireplace. The men cut their small grain with a reap-hook
and t