Pfeiffer Country

Book excerpt: "Paul Pfeiffer left his comfortable life in Saint Louis, Missouri. He left his prosperous business along the mighty Mississippi: the information super-highway of his day. Fancy restaurants would no longer be a part of his life. He would no longer entertain the elite of a great metropolis. He left all of that behind when he moved to the bottomlands of Eastern Arkansas in 1902. If he did so to make a difference in the lives of thousands of poor farmers, then he made the mark he intended. Pfeiffer came to own much of Clay County, Arkansas. He joined a much-disliked strata of American society: landowners whose 'sharecroppers' were often helpless to improve their lot, or that of their children. But Paul Pfeiffer did make a difference in the lives of those who paid him in-kind to work his land. He eschewed the usual cycle of poverty for his workers, eventually giving them the land they worked. He was a soul who lived--and fashioned the lives of others--several generations 'ahead of his time.'"-- Back cover.