From: clough@texas.net   
      
   Bass Guitar God wrote:   
   > It's my understanding that the East and the West were two VERY different   
   > worlds, with the east being industrialized with cars and modern conveniences,   
   > while the Old West was stuck like in the last century with horses and   
   outhouses   
   > and such.   
      
   It was a frontier, and geography makes the frontier. It's much to broad   
   to say the the East was industrialized. There were industrial centers,   
   but there were very rural areas in the east, horses, outhouses and all.   
      
   But yes, life on frontiers tends toward the primitive. Often the very   
   primitive. And a good bit of the lifestyle in various parts of the old   
   west depended on where the people in that area had come from in the "old   
   states." Texas was primarily populated by people from the old southern   
   states. Rural life in the old south was often quite primitive, and they   
   carried that style with them. It affected how vigorously they sought   
   "conveniences." Folks going west from the northern states were more   
   likely to be looking to build a community and to bring with them what   
   they had known.   
      
   Mechanized travel and more genteel horse-drawn travel depended upon good   
   roads and considerable expenditure. The farther west you went, the   
   greater the distances between settlements. For one example, cattle   
   drives north continued from Texas until the railroads finally ran down   
   from the north. That changed everything, even the breed of cattle. When   
   the long-legged longhorns went out, the more productive "American"   
   cattle required more care, as well as being unable to walk to Kansas.   
   That mean containing them in fenced pastures and keeping hands to care   
   for them. And more permanent hands who had more stake in community.   
      
   But as far as the 20th century West being stuck in the 19th. I'm happy   
   to say that, in many ways it's true. But automobiles came to the west as   
   soon as they were being made in the east. But, when your work is cattle,   
   your way of working them is horseback. Still is largely, on real ranch   
   operations, even with four-wheelers.   
      
   But the worlds weren't all that different, at least not to the extent   
   that people couldn't move comfortably between them. Retired gunmen could   
   become New York newspapermen, and Captain Jack Hays of the old Rangers   
   became a real estate mogul, in San Francisco, I believe.   
      
      
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
                         clough@texas.net   
   "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)