THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA'S COUNTRY STORE
Hesseltine, William B.
The Spirit Of America's Country Store PILLS, PETTICOATS, AND PLOWS: THE SOUTHERN COUNTRY STORE, by Thomas D. Clark. Bobbs-Merrill. $3.50. Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine THE country store was...
...The storekeepers sold these goods on credit, taking a crop lien, marking up prices 100 per cent, and waxing relatively fat on the poverty of their customers...
...The book is as interesting as a century-old newspaper, and it is as significant for what's written between the lines as for what's on them...
...It was the agency bringing the outside world to isolated communities...
...Not dull economics nor solemn history, the book captures the spirit—and almost the odors—of the country store...
...There is a wealth of anecdote, a sparkling rural wit, and an insight into the significance of the country store in Southern life...
...Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine THE country store was the most powerful institution in the South from Appomatox to the World War...
...Its jumbled counters held everything from postage stamps to patent medicines, from corsets to plowshares, from shapeless brogans to peppermint candy, chewing tobacco, kerosene, and coffin linings...
...Professor Clark, of the University of Kentucky, has gathered the account books, journals, and day books from hundreds of stores and has distilled from this material a nostalgic account of these rural emporiums of general merchandise...
...The store was the community forum—center of informal debates on politics, agriculture, and religion...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 30
