From butchers to businessmen

In the early 1900s, Cape Girardeau was a small town of fewer than 5,000 people. But most of those people worked in back-breaking jobs that would make the modern-day office worker whimper.

They were farmers, blacksmiths, dish-washers, butchers and wood-cutters. It was hard work for skimpy pay -- people made anywhere from $1 to $3 a day, according to Dr. Frank Nickell, director of the Southeast Missouri Regional History Center at Southeast Missouri State University.

"People made a living with a skill or profession that came from experience," Nickell said. "They grew up in it, had a father who did that or they went to work with someone who did that."

Most people didn't even finish high school in 1900, said Bruce Domazlicky, director of the Center for Economic and Business Research at Southeast.

"That meant the jobs had to be much more physical, such as working at a farm or a factory," he said.

Surrounded by farms

Nickell said the town of Cape Girardeau was surrounded by small farms where people eked out a living.

"There were no big farms and just a few plantations," he said.

In 1900 there were seven dentists, all of whom worked on teeth in individual shops, Nickell said. Now, there are 70 or 80. There were 19 doctors then. Now there are nearly 400.

The city had nine restaurants in 1900.

Wages were about $1 a day. The more skilled the worker was, the better the wages were. At most, a skilled worker could look forward to making $3 a day.

There were six hardware stores in 1900.

"They were all small and specialized," Nickell said. "They were the ones where people came to buy parts and bolts and nails and things. They were buying things to build things by hand."

The city had 10 hotels in 1900, employing women who made the beds, cleaned and did the laundry. Many women in town did laundry, which was much more difficult than throwing a load in the Maytag.

There were 27 grocery stores then. But they were more difficult for people -- who didn't have automobiles -- to get to.

"They couldn't jump into a car and run to Wal-Mart," Nickell said. "These were neighborhood grocery stores. People had to go to them every day. There was no electricity. Leftovers wouldn't keep."

The six bakeries were no mere doughnut shops. Bread was baked by hand in extremely hot ovens.

"There were a lot of people who worked in little shops like that," Nickell said. "They did sort of general tasks, they took out the trash, whatever they could find."

The city's five butchers arose early, killing and butchering animals for the day's meat supply.

"Butchering is not an easy task," Nickell said. "There were a lot of injuries. It was difficult, hard physical labor."

He said people did these kinds of jobs for little money. "Very few people went off to get professional training. You would work with a blacksmith until you learned how to do it and then you did it."

And all of the work -- even in jobs that still exist today -- was hard. Many have been made easier by technology.

"A lot of it was hands-on, physical labor," he said. "The good old days were not necessarily that good."

Agricultural business

Domazlicky said agriculture was a much bigger player in those days. Some 40-50 percent of the population worked on farms.

Slowly, farming became less of a way of life. In 1950, there were 2,378 farms in the county, 226 fewer than five years before.

After World War II, manufacturing became a much more dominant player.

The eight largest firms in the mid-1950s were International Shoe Co., Marquette Cement Manufacturing Co., Himmelberger-Harrison Manufacturing Co., Superior Electric Co., Davis Electric Co., Lowenbaum Manufacturing Co., Missourian Printing Co. and Cagleco Sports Wear. They accounted for 2,647 employees, as compared with 1,009 for the other area firms.

"Manufacturing was quite big and growing," Domazlicky said. "And of course you have the same type of service professions you have now: banking, doctors, lawyers and office workers. But those were a much smaller part of the economy."

Today, advances in technology have led to less physically demanding jobs.

"That's a big change," Domazlicky said. "Even if people work in factories today, they're much more automated. They don't have to be on their feet all the time doing heavy lifting."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137