The reader will recognize, of course, that I have so far in mind only the better element of the population, the least of the evils and some of the advantages resulting from such industrial and social conditions. There were, however, quite different and more serious results than any {XX} yet noted arising from this system of society. While those disposed to activity and inclined to honorable pursuits might enjoy certain advantages from the system, on the other hand, it fostered man's natural inclination to idleness and love of ease that comes of idleness; and fostered jealousy and bitterness against those more industrious and successful. In such a class the system led to ignorance, irreligion, and criminal tendencies; constituting them a dangerous element in the community. It was doubtless this class the Prophet Joseph had in mind when he said soon after his first arrival in western Missouri: "Our reflections were great, coming as we had from a highly cultivated state of society in the East, and standing now upon the confines or western limits of the United States, and looking into the vast wilderness of those that sat in darkness. How natural it was to observe the degradation, leanness of intellect, ferocity and jealousy of a people that were nearly a century behind the times, and to feel for those who roamed about without the benefit of civilization, refinement, or religion!" Many of the positions in the higher walks of life, in western Missouri, were sought by the unworthy, the corruptible and the vicious--men who sought all the advantages of the southern ideals of life without possessing the refining virtues which for generations in the older states of the south made some of the evils of the social system that obtained there at least tolerable. Such were the Brazeales, the Wilsons, the Hunters, the Kavanaughs, the Likens, the Loveladys, the McCartys, the McCoys, the Pixleys, the Simsons, the Silvers, the Westons, the Gilliams, the Birches, the Blacks, the Bogarts, the Clarks, the Liveseys, and the Penistons. Another circumstance which influenced somewhat the character of western Missouri's population in the early decades of the nineteenth century, was the fact that these sections of the state constituted part of the frontiers of the United States, and here had gravitated a more or less lawless class which sought the security of proximity to the boundary lines of the United States, from whose confines they could make their escape in the event of being hard pressed for violations of law in the older states whence they had come, or in their new habitat. Such were the Lovels, the Hawkins, the Heatherleys and many others.