Rainy, muddy conditions in early spring of 1903 caused a number of problems that interfered with the usual routines for many New City families and for rural residents of the nearby area. News reports were replete with accounts of difficulties in maneuvering through the mud. A more-or-less typical case was reported in the March 10, 1903, issue of The Carthage Press. It happened on Main Street at 6th Street a short distance due south of the square:
 

“Mrs. D.S. Kessler, who lives seven miles to the south, came into town today with a marketing of eggs. She drove the family s 20-year-old mule which she had to whack over the back at nearly every step in order to get here before noon. After the eggs were sold, the mule started west on 5th Street at so smart a canter that the woman began to scream. A man tried to flag the outfit at Main Street and the mule turned sharply up the street car track, throwing Mrs. Kessler out at a tangent and slid her, face down, almost across Main Street in that loblolly which can better understood than described just now. Up she jumped, the mud blinding her and dripping from her extended fingers and clothes, as if a bucket of paint had been poured over her. She was led into the Richardson Grocery store, where the bookkeeper Miss Mollie Lake washed her and borrowed for her a dress from Mrs. W.D. Arnold and hung her wet garments up to a stove to dry.”
 

There must have been more to the story but available files provide no clues regarding the resulting effects upon the life of Mrs. Kessler or her family or, for that matter, with her troublesome mule.

Her experience may have been but an illustrative glimpse of the difficulties involved in the daily lives of Carthage residents during that era, which even so was being greeted as a time of enlightenment, highlighted by significant industrial expansion, a burgeoning economy and significant improvements in the quality of entertainment and use of leisure time resulting from American ingenuity that was producing many startling inventions, from mechanical sewing machines and washing machines as well as new sources of motive power that soon would make major increases in the speed of productivity in both farm and factory.
 

In keeping with changing times, there was a growing emphasis upon education as indicated by calls for larger and more convenient school buildings and higher educational requirements for teaching personnel.
 

The local economy also was receiving major transfusions from the lead and zinc mining growth in the nearby communities to the west and south, particularly including Carterville, Prosperity, Webb City and the Alba area.
 

The burst of commercial activity also produced more investments in impressive public, commercial and professional buildings, as well as residential structures. Much of the profit from the mining operations was initially banked and/or invested in Carthage, which also experienced its own boom, focused upon growth of retail business activity.
 

Most of the business buildings on the Carthage square were being fully utilized at all levels, from underground to second and third-floor levels. Carthage also was gaining recognition as a center of entertainment, artistic c reativity and cultural quality.
 

There was an accompanying aura of community pride that grew from and in return added its own strength to the upward, forward movement of the economy.