Richmond - Chapter 13

Richmond – Chapter 13
The First World War and a Return to Normalcy

I think that today the rationing is almost unimaginable to my students. I found it interesting though that the book gave a little more background information about what took place and why. While researching at the archives last summer I ran across a lot of information about tattle talers when it came to rationing. It was so funny. They were all ratting each other out. It does seem though in the chapter that most Kansans pulled together to fight for the cause during WWI.

The fact that more than 5,500 people in Kansas died of the flu epidemic was fascinating in 1918. I ran across a tidbit in my research for my paper that went along with this. Schools and churches in Parsons were closed because of the outbreak.

As always the miners were a point of interest. While we really do not have any mining to speak of in Labette County, we are just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Cherokee and Crawford county where there was a lot of mining. Last year we took our students to Big Brutus and we talked about mining. I didn’t quite know what to tell them about it. This book gave me some more background to talk to them about.