In the south, into the early 1900s boys didn't often get shoes until they were considered men, 16-18 years old. Only rich folk's kids wore shoes. Adults from poorer families often only wore shoes in the winter. Or going to formal settings like church. This saved wear and tear on what was a very expensive item. Shoes were handed down, resoled and patched. Girls in poor families might never get shoes. Barefoot and pregnant wasn't so much a rural stereotype as simply a fact of life.

This lasted well into the 60s in pockets of poverty. America, and Kennedy in particular, was appalled by the third-world poverty of Appalachians, rural Alabama, Mississippi.

Rural folks, contrary to the mythology from Disney, were often sickly and weak. One of the reasons for this was the lack of shoes and the resulting parasitism.

Interesting reading about the rural US in the 30s that shows how important shoes are:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1395801/

Quote:
These unsettling thoughts were vividly brought out when I saw pictures of a round worm crawling out of the nose of a little girl, already bloated from combined hookworm, chronic malaria, and malnutrition. Her mother, in her thirties, stood by her side. She was haggard and looked to be in her sixties. Both were barefooted. Walker Evans and James Agee captured similar images of the rural South in their poetic prose and photographic classic, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” Nearly a fourth of rural Southerners, black and white alike, had the vicious and lethal combination of all three diseases: hookworm, chronic malaria, and malnutrition.


Shoes are far more than just a handy way of avoiding thorns or staying warm. They save lives and protect the vitality of populations. It has been far less than 100 years that they have been nearly universal in the US. Like universally safe food and water they are recent arrivals on the scene.