1 50 12 https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/f88a55ac5816b5506e80d1655642c300.pdf b766c34efe9f7a8746971fd57a6ae9fe PDF Text Text �REMEMBRANCE, REUNION AND REVIVAL: CELEBRATING A DECADE OF APPALACHIAN STUDIES Proceedings Of The Tenth Annual Appalachian Studies Conference Edited By HELEN ROSEBERRY Managing Editor JANE SHOOK �The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From 1973 to 2004, its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program, Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press. www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Original copyright © 1988 by the Appalachian Consortium Press. ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-3668-9 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-3670-2 Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press www.uncpress.org �Table of Contents INTRODUCTION, Helen Roseberry I. II. APPALACHIAN WOMEN AUTHORS Interviews With Harriette Arnow: Looking Beyond The Dollmaker, Sandra L. Ballard EVALUATING APPALACHIAN STUDIES Regionalism and Revitalization: Towards a Comparative Perspective on Appalachian Studies, Rkhard Blaustein 1 3 14 The "Brier Sermon" Signpost in Appalachian Studies, Ricky Cox Appalachian Educational Research in the National Context: Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going, AlanJ.DeYoung III. IV. V VI. VII. 21 29 PARTNERING FOR RESEARCH Partnering with the Indigenous: Teaming with the Marshall Family to Study Old Regular Baptists, Howard Dorgan 50 REEVALUATDMG WOMEN'S ROLES From: "Fotched-on" Women to the New Feminism: A Review of Women in Social Service Delivery for Women in Appalachia, Karen Tice and Albie Pabon 57 POETRY READING Yearning Toward Home and Its Traditions, Bennie Lee Sinclair 68 UNIVERSALITY IN LITERATURE R'lyeh in Appalachia: Lovecraft's Influence on Fred Chappell's Dagon, Amy Tipton Gray 73 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND REDEVELOPMENT The Rayon Mills in Elizabethton, Tennessee: A Case Study of Appalachian Economic Development, 1926-1970, MarieTedesco 80 �VIII „ INSTRUCTION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Process Instruction in Appalachian Studies - A Case Example Using Education in Appalachians Central Highlands, MarkESohn Chapels in the Mountains, Marc Sherrod 91 95 IX. COVERLET WEAVING Origins of the Handicraft Revival in the Southern Mountains, Curtis Wood and Joan Greene 108 X. APPALACHIA: CONTRASTS AND SIMILARITIES A Look at Regional Patterns in the Southern Highlands, Paul E. Lovingood, Jr. and Robert E. Reiman 115 �1987 PROGRAM COMMITTEE Helen Roseberry, Chair Doyle Bickers Barry Buxton Richard Dillingham Howard Dorgan Wilburn Hayden Roberta Herrin Parks Lanier Gerald Roberts �This page intentionally left blank �Introduction Prologizing the Tenth Anniversary of the Appalachian Studies Conference, appropriately titled, "Remembrance, Reunion and Revival: Celebrating A Decade of Appalachian Studies," Dr. Carl Ross, who had chaired the previous Conference program, stated in his Introduction in its Proceedings, "The Appalachian Studies Association was formed in 1977 by scholars, teachers, and regional activists who believed that a shared community of ideas and interests had been and would continue to be important for those writing, researching and teaching about things Appalachian." As he edited those Proceedings, Ross could not have realized that he would be making those same remarks just a few months later to kick-off the 1987 Conference. Even as he drove onto the East Tennessee State University campus the afternoon of March 27,1987 to register for the Conference, he could not have realized the timeliness of those remarks written just months before, to the evening ahead. 'The first Appalachian Studies Conference was held at Berea, Kentucky in March of 1978." Ross found himself delivering an impromptu keynote address to nearly three-hundred Conference registrants during its 1987 opening night banquet, reminding them that prior to the organization of the Association, ".. .much of the attention and much of the effort to change came from outside the region." His perspicuous and adroit remarks, prompted by a lastminute cancellation by the scheduled speaker, were delivered in the true essence of the theme. 'The Association was organized to bring together scholars and citizens within the region. I think we more fully realize how dynamic Appalachian society has always been," Ross continued, reflecting on ".. .a simpler past when neighbors cared for each other." With an energy reminiscent of that of the First Conference, Ross, appropriately enough during a year in which we had chosen to look back, stepped from behind the podium and concluded, "We are all in it together. If we work together and try to understand each other and each other's goals, maybe we will be the better for it." Carl Ross received a standing ovation. For he had set the tone for the 1987 Conference. The warm, sunny weather was remindful of the First Conference, and many of those who had met together that first time and actively worked to shape the format of the Conference as we know it now, had come to reminisce, to share fresh ideas, to listen. Like the First Conference, this Conference brought forth explorations of a variety of issues, and included, as Sam Gray so aptly stated in his introduction in the 1985 Proceedings,".. .certain ideas, issues and positions that were 1 �to become the durable content of each annual Appalachian Studies Conference." The tone of the 1987 Conference is reflected in the papers included in this publication. They are exponents of both the quality and diversity of the Conference. Editorial and budgetary constraints dictated the inclusion of only a representative sampling of those presented. Through the first decade of its existence the Appalachian Studies Conference managed to accomplish the goals set forth at its initial meeting in Berea, Kentucky in 1978. As the second decade begins, those goals will function as any good foundation will. And as Carl Ross stated,".. .maybe we will be the better for it. Helen Roseberry, Chair 1987 Program Committee" 2 �APPALACHIAN WOMEN AUTHORS Convenor: Grace Edwards, Radford University Interviews With Harriette Arnow: Looking Beyond The Dollmaker Sandra L. Ballard, University of Tennessee Harriette Amow's Assessment of Appalachian Role In America's Industrial Development Ted Couillard, Georgia Southwestern College Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: A Mountain Passage Louis D. Silver!, Assumption College What Is The Place of Mary Noailles Murfree Today? Allison R. Ensor, University of Tennessee Interviews With Harriette Simpson Arnow: Looking Beyond The Dollmaker Sandra L. Ballard Harriette Simpson Arnow is much more than the author of a single novel, though most of us think of The Dollmaker when we think of her, especially since the 1984 ABC television film with Jane Fonda. When Arnow commented on the film version of her novel, she said worse films have been made of "many greater books" ('Writing and Region"). The Dollmaker was an award-winning novel in 1954. Saturday Review's national critics' poll voted it the best novel of the year, and also in 1954, Arnow's story of Gertie Nevels' family was runner-up to Faulkner's A Fable for the National Book Award. In 1971, Joyce Carol Gates acknowledged The Dollmaker as "our most unpretentious American masterpiece" (2). But as the title of my presentation suggests, we can learn much about Arnow by looking beyond The Dollmaker, as worthy as it is of attention. We should look at her writings before and after The Dollmaker to understand the scope of her work. Harriette Arnow wrote other novels as well as non-fiction "social histories," short stories, and essays which have appeared in such publications as Southern Review, Esquire, Atlantk Monthly, Saturday Review, and The Nation. When I first met Harriette Arnow in June of 1985 in Morehead, Kentucky, I was fortunate enough to have a brief interview with her after her address to the Appalachian Writers' Association. Since then, in the course of my research on Arnow, I have discovered a number of articles based on interviews that 3 �reveal a fascinating picture of the writer who worried that people were trying to ride her to fame "on Jane Fonda's coattails" (Williams B5). When people asked her when she wrote "the Book," meaning The Dollmaker, she liked to ask, "which book?" Arnow wanted people to know that she had written more than one novel. It is the purpose of this presentation to inform you or remind you of her other work as a short story writer, novelist, social historian, and essayist, as well as to share some first-hand observations and anecdotes reported by those who interviewed her. Such information should give texture and dimension to your image of Harriette Simpson Arnow as a writer. When I met Harriette Arnow in June of 1985 at Morehead, I also met John Hynn and his wife Carole Thompson, Arnow's friends from Detroit who had driven her to Morehead for the weekend. John Flynn, a newspaper reporter, was a friend of both the Arnows; Harriette Arnow's husband, Harold, had also been a reporter, and he usually traveled with her, but I learned that evening that Harold Arnow had died of a stroke in February of 1985. From Hynn and Thompson, I learned much of what I'm sharing with you this morning. John Hynn has since written a manuscript about that trip with Harriette Arnow, and he sent me a copy, though it remains unpublished. Besides answering many of my questions, after Arnow's talk, Hynn asked her if Toney Frazier and I could accompany them back to her room. She agreed, though reluctantly because, as she said to John Hynn in a loud aside, "we can't have a drink in the room with these young people around." When she had been assured that it would be all right, she answered my questions about The Dollmaker and other literature over a glass of Old Grandad. When I told her I had begun working on a book about her, she looked straight at me with her penetrating blue eyes and wanted to know why. She said that I should study "something else, like Ulysses, not the Greek one," she said, "the one by that Irish fella." I should write something to help her understand that book. When I protested that there were many books about Joyce but only one about her and I didn't think that one did her justice, she stopped and smiled. She knew the Twayne series book I meant, and she agreed with me. She was obviously tired, so after a while we got up to leave. She repeated that she didn't know why anyone would want to write about her; she encouraged me to write something of my own. As Arnow told many who asked how she got started as a writer, she did a daring thing in 1934. She left teaching, a career her mother had insisted on, and moved to Cincinnati. She said "it was a short move from Louisville to Cincinnati, but a long, long one in my life" (Address to Appalachian Writers Association). She made up her mind to write and to read the great English and European novels she had missed. She said, "I'd only stop when I had to take some kind of odd job to pay for rent and of course, paper, typewriter ribbons, and postage" (Address to AWA). Her family was scandalized when she moved—a young single woman moving to a big city, living alone, writing. She took a furnished room near the Cincinnati Public Library. 4 �Even though it was the Depression, she was "young and quick," she said, and "could always get a job at something" (Hudson). She said the best-paying job was waitressing "in a good place with tips," a place with short hours and "plenty of busboys" so there was no heavy lifting (Hudson). She also worked as a typist, as a cashier, and as a clerk in the book department of a department store, but she preferred being a waitress because that job left more time for writing (Hudson). She described that period of her life as "a great time," when "more fiction was being published than non-fiction" though "the reverse is true today," she noted (Address to AWA). She went to the library to read reviews in the New York Times and other papers because she "couldn't afford the book page or anything." She remembered that "many of the reviews were given over to what was called 'the proletarian writing,'" which was "usually highly praised." With the help of dictionaries, she learned about "the proletariate" and, she said, "I thought of the poor I had met in the hills and I couldn't consider them as members of the proletariate, proletarians; they were all individuals to me, as were characters in my imagination" (Address to AWA). And certainly that view is responsible in large part for Arnow's reputation as a fiction writer— she does create memorable characters who are individuals. More than one interviewer observed that listening to Harriette Arnow talk about her characters was like being invited into an imaginary world where the characters were her neighbors. In fact, she admitted that sometimes she knew them >fbetter than anyone, even Harold" and that people in her head were "more alive" than people she knew (Kotlowitz 22). When asked which writers influenced her, she said that she read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Sidgrid Undset, Zola, Flaubert, and many others when she first moved to Cincinnati, and that they influenced her in at least one way— "length. I want to put it all in—and my novels are all too long" (Miller 95). She claimed to have been influenced by Thomas Hardy, too, "his use of background," she said, and by Milton's prose (Miller 95). She said she wanted "to be able to write the same kind of sentences Milton used in Aceopaqitica and other essays. He begins and gradually rises." They made her think of "a wave when the tide's coming in, and they hit you just like a hard wave." She didn't think she could write "a real Miltonic sentence" (Miller 95). But readers who pay attention to the hard-hitting concluding sentences of her stories and novels can see particular examples which demonstrate this technique in Arnow's own prose. Harriette Simpson wrote short stories in the 1930s and had several published: one called "Marigolds and Mules," in Kosmos in 1934; another titled " A Mess of Pork," in The New Talent in 1935. Kosmos and The New Talent were little literary magazines which, she said, "paid in nothing except the glory you felt of the published story and free copies of the magazine" (Hudson). In 1936 she sold a story to the prestigious Southern Review (1 Winter 1936 522-7), when Robert Perm Warren was its editor: "I was so proud when he ac5 �cepted this story and paid $25...It on top of the world" (Hudson). The story was 'Washerwoman's Day," which became her most anthologized story. Warren, Purser, and Brooks included it in their textbook anthology An Approach to Literature (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1939,1952); Brooks and Warren also anthologized it in a collection of stories from the Southern Review (Anthology of Stories from the Southern Review. Ed. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren. Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1953). More recently, in 1979, Arnow's story "Fra Lippi and Me" was published in the Georgia Review (33(Winter 1979) 867-75), and eighteen unpublished short stories remain in the Arnow Special Collection at the University of Kentucky. Her short stories led to her trying a longer report, her first novel, Mountain Path. She was working on that when she got a letter from Harold Strauss, editor of a New York publishing company called Co vici, which also published the work of John Steinbeck. The editor had read one of her stories in a magazine and wanted to know if she had anything longer. She sent him what she had of Mountain Path. She said, "It wasn't finished. It was mostly just a collection of characters" (Hudson). But to her surprise, he liked it and told her to get some action in it and make a novel. She remembered, "Oh, I stopped working completely and did nothing but write on that novel" (Hudson). She explained, "I quit my job and took most of my scanty savings and laid in a great deal of condensed milk and oatmeal and bread and did nothing but write until I had what I thought was a novel" (Kotlowitz 22). Arnow said that when the editor told her to put in action, she "put in every kind of action you could: moonshining, murder, romance" (Silberman 3). She was 28 years old when her first novel was published in 1936. Mountain Path is the story of Louisa Sheridan, a young woman who, like Harriette Simpson, had taken a teaching job in backwoods Kentucky because she didn't have the money to continue in school. Though the main character had Harriette Simpson's middle name—Louisa—and though her mother complained, "Everybody will think you fell in love with a moonshiner down here," she explained that the book is not "autobiographical" (Miller 91). Arnow told her friend John Hynn, "Was I on top of the world, except Momma was furious...She wrote and said, trWhy don't you write about nice people?'" (Flynn 25). Fortunately, the critics were more pleased with Mountain Path than her mother. Arnow said, "It's a wonder I didn't burst open like the frog in the fable. I was so puffed with pride and glory when I read the reviews, especially the one in the New York Times. All the reviews were surprisingly good for the first novel..." (Address to AWA). But she didn't make much money with this novel, "only a few hundred dollars," she told Hynn, because she signed a contract with a clause that limited her royalties. She said, "(Mountain Path) sold fairly well, but I was dumb. I didn't have an agent. I made only five cents on some of the copies instead of full royalties" (Hynn 26). In addition to writing those short stories and her first novel, she also 6 �worked for the Federal Writers Project, where she met Harold Arnow in 1938. She told Flynn that when she went to work for Roosevelf s WPA Writer's Project, writing guides to Ohio, Harold was one of her editors. It was, she said, "the first and only time anyone told (her) what to write" (Flynn 27). She claimed that Harold was more predisposed to marriage than she was: "I was in no humor to get married," she said. "I thought it would be the end of my writing. But he was wild to get married," and Harold wanted "all the things that men want, like a place in the country." But she wished they had found a place with electricity, one closer to town. She said to Flynn, "Why it suddenly hit me that I should marry this man, who seemed to have all the virtues, I do not know" (Flynn 27). It seems she both asked and answered her own question. Years later, their affection for each other was evident. During an interview at home in 1983, when Harold left the house to collect wood for the fireplace, she worried aloud about his arthritis and observed that "managing a husband was nothing like managing a character;" then, when she left the room, Harold Arnow fretted about his wife's chain smoking (KotlowitzlS). The Arnows married in 1939 and bought a farm on Little Indian Creek on the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River ("Personal Recollections" 14). In a piece called "Personal Recollections," published in Appalachian Heritage, she described their farm as a ftbeautiful place with steep hills for timber and a valley for crops" (14). The Arnows planned to live there and write and practice subsistence farming. However, she soon realized there was no time for anything except subsistence. She said, "We cooked and heated with coal, used kerosene lights, and water from a hard-water spring" (Tersonal Recollections" 14). She "gardened, canned, jellied, preserved, pickled, churned, (and) grew chickens,... and through it all struggled against soot and coal dust" (14). They called their home there the "Submarginal Manor." She said she did "practically no writing, though Hunter's Horn was in (her) head" (14). And she felt particularly frustrated because a publisher, Macmillan, wanted to see a novel manuscript—Covici-Freide, publisher of Mountain Path, had gone out of business (14). The Arnows lived on their farm near Keno, Kentucky, for about five years, from 1939-1944. She said that she "despised the life" but 'loved the place and the people." She "not only learned much, but in trying to do what the hill people did with ease," she said, "admiration grew with understanding," and she explained what happened to that place in an essay she wrote for The Nation in 1970—an essay entitled "Progress Reached Our Valley" ("Personal Recollections" 14). However, she did not confide to many about everything that had happened to them while living there on that farm. Flynn says that "seldom did she discuss the death of her babies," though there are two small graves beside her husband's and now her own in Kentucky. She told Flynn that she "was just no good at child bearing," that their first child, a son, was stillborn, and 7 �that their third child, a daughter, died a few hours after birth (18). In between, in 1941, their daughter Marcella had been born healthy, though Arnow often worried about her, especially since they lived in such an isolated place. When Marcella was nearly three years old, she became ill with a high fever and "quivered as though she might go into convulsions" (Flynn 18). Arnow was there alone with her because Harold was at work in Detroit. She told Flynn, "I carried her (Marcella) up the hill, so muddy I couldn't have gotten her out any other way, and got a ride in a coal truck, which took her to Burnside. There she was doctored" (18). Readers of The Dollmaker no doubt recall that unforgettable opening scene in which Gertie Nevels carries her three-year-old child Amos by muleback to the highway, where she stops a car to take them into town to a doctor. But before they can travel to town, Gertie must use her carving knife to open her son's windpipe so that he can breathe. When Flynn asked if there were a connection between Marcella and Amos, between Gertie and herself, Arnow replied, "I couldn't have cut into Marcella's throat... I don't think" (19). But few acquainted with Arnow could doubt that she was as tough as Gertie. Determined to prevent the recurrence of such an emergency, Arnow said she "stayed in Burnside and made arrangements to rent the upstairs of a home, then went back to the farm and sold the heating stove and the cattle" (Flynn 19). Harold Arnow had hoped to return to the farm and had not been eager to leave in the first place. But "the Government told him to get a job that in some way would help the country." He found a job as a newspaper reporter in Detroit. Arnow remembered that ffhe came back once, only once, during the year or more" before she took Marcella to Burnside and then went to join him (Flynn 17). In Detroit, living in wartime housing, she finished writing her second novel, Hunter's Horn. She had become one of the immigrants that she would write about in her third novel. By then, her daughter was more than seven, and she also had a two-year-old son, Thomas. She had already published two stories from the novel manuscript. In July of 1942, Esquire, had published "The Two Deer Hunters" (74-5,96). Knowing that Esquire, at that time, would not be interested in a story by a woman, she had signed it "H.L. Simpson" and slyly sent alsong a picture of her brother-in-law. She smiled mischieviously when she told Kotiowitz, "It worried me a little, that big lie, but I thought if they wanted a story, let them have it. So I did" (24). It was Harriette Arnow's way of getting back at the male-dominated publishing industry. The Atlantic Monthly had also published a story from the manuscript of her second novel, a story titled "The Hunter" and signed "H. Arnow." She honored her husband Harold by naming him as the co-author of the piece. Because he could read her handwriting, Harold Arnow willingly assumed, for nearly forty-five years, many of the traditional duties of a writer's spouse; he was his wife's typist, editor, friend, and best listener (Kotlowitz 18). Most who knew Harriette Arnow agreed that without her husband, Harold, much of her 8 �writing would have never reached a publisher, for the business of typing, corresponding, and copy-editing took too much time away from her writing. In 1983, Harold Arnow whispered to a reporter that "Harriette doesn't care if she gets the publicity or not, but I like to see her get it" (Kotlowitz 18). And in 1949 she did receive publicity for Hunter's Horn. Her story of a poor Kentucky family and their struggles to survive while the father, Nunnley Ballew, neglects them and his land to pursue relentlessly a red fox called King Devil was a best seller. It was offered as a Fiction Book Club selection and named by the New York Times Book Review as one of the year's ten best novels. It also won best novel of the year in 1949 in the Saturday Review national critics' poll, in a year when it was competing with Orwell's 1964. During several interviews, Arnow revealed that she had taken Hunter's Horn through many revisions. She said that she "wrote the beginning of Hunter's Horn (the first chapter) 17 or 18 times, that she "was trying to tell too much" ("Ahead of Her Time" 7). She described the writing style she aspired to in this novel as one that was "not wordy, a narrative with no adverbs and few adjectives" (Flynn 45). She explained: "Language, if you use it right, doesn't need an adverb. Like, "He yelled angrily, Get out of here!" If he yelled, of course he was angry" (Flynn 45). Though she was living in Detroit when she wrote Hunter's Horn, she drew on her first-hand knowledge of people she had known in Pulaski County, Kentucky. And in her own opinion, expressed to Flynn and others, in Hunter's Horn she had created a richer, more human cast of characters than in TheDollmaker. "Some have said it is a better book than The Dollmaker. I believe it is," she said (Flynn 42). Occasionally, she would skirt the question about which was her favorite book by remarking, "it would be like saying one of my children was my favorite child. When I'm writing a book it's my favorite" (Bright & Girard 12). In her old age, however, she had taken to defending Hunter's Horn as her best book (Flynn 40-1). Understandably, I think, she was unhappy that the popularity of The Dollmaker caused the public to perceive her as a one-book author. But Flynn explained that it was more than that: as a result of various publishing agreements she had entered into, "rights to her books had been tied in knots, preventing Mountain Path, Hunter's Horn, and The Dollmaker from being printed in trilogy form" (41). She had admired the writings of Conrad Richter, particularly his trilogy (The Trees, The Fields, and The Town) in which he recorded the pioneer migration across the Allegheny Mountains, as she had written of the migration from the Appalachians to the northern cities (Flynn 41). She did not live to see the University Press of Kentucky untie the tangle of publication agreements so that readers now can have her trilogy as a matched set of books on their shelves, but she would have been pleased. Flynn claims that "more than the money she never made, more even than the fame that never came her way, she was most aggrieved that the young people who asked her questions about Gertie Nevels, who was from Ballew, 9 �Kentucky, had not been introduced to Nunn Ballew, from Hunter's Horn" (41). He reports that "by her own measurement of a great novel—'one where the reader lives with the characters, like Fathers and Sons' —Hunter's Horn was a greater achievement than her most famous work" (The Dollmaker) (Flynn 42). Even before The Dollmaker was so well received in 1954, Arnow had begun work on a non-fiction project, a history book titled Seedtime on the Cumberland, which was published in 1960. This non-fiction book, which she had researched for roughly 20 years, reconstructs the transitional years of early exploration and settlement from 1780 to 1803 along the Cumberland River in southern Kentucky and middle Tennessee. Arnow's view of history makes the time and place very real. She explained that "times and places were mingled in (her) head. The past was part of the present, close as the red cedar water bucket in the kitchen... Two things tied all time together... the land and the Cumberland" ("Foreword" xii). In 1961, Arnow's Seedtime Comes to the Cumberland received an award of merit, announced in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly, which cited it for "meticulous documentation, painstaking research, and colorful writing" (299). Also in 1961, Arnow won recognition from the Tenessee Historical Quarterly for her article "The Pioneer Farmer and His Crops in the Cumberland Region;" she was awarded the Moore Memorial Award for the best article of 1960 in the Quarterly. When a storyteller as talented as Harriette Simpson Arnow turns to history, history comes alive. Three years later, in 1963, Harriette Arnow's second non-fiction book, Flowering of the Cumberland, was published. She explained that it covered the same time period, so it was not a "sequel," but rather "a companion piece" ("Introduction" xi). Having already written of the pioneer as an individual, a lonely explorer or solitary settler, she turned next in Flowering of the Cumberland to "the pioneer as a member of society" (xi). Her prose in these works is often as captivating as in her fiction. In 1977, she wrote a third non-fiction book, Old Burnside. It is partly a history of her hometown of Burnside, Kentucky, and partly a personal reminiscence of her family and her growing up, written for the Kentucky Bicentennial Bookshelf. She complained that what started out as a history turned out, at the insistence of her editors, to be a more personal, biographical work than she had planned. She said it turned out to be "one of those awful I, I, I books." When she talked about her next novel, The Weedkiller's Daughter, published in 1970, Arnow acknowledged that it had not been a critical or a popular success, though she reported that she got letters from readers who told her it was the best book she had ever written. This novel, set in a Detroit suburb in the mid-1960s, focuses on the Schnitzer family: a father obsessed with killing weeds and destroying nature; his cold superficial wife; his militant young son; and his daughter, Susie, a rebellious teenager with a social conscience. Though Gertie Nevels makes an appearance as a character called "the Primitive," Arnow explained she had abandoned Kentucky materials when 10 �she resumed fiction writing at least partly because she had never wanted to be labeled as a writer who had concerns exclusively with one area or ideology. She said, "I don't like to be labeled, but there's nothing I can do about it" ("Ahead of Her Time" 7). She could rattle off a list of "labels" with which she had been tagged: a realist, a naturalist, an Appalachian writer, a regionalist, feminist, Marxist, even a transcendentalist writer. Arnow preferred to be called simply "a writer," she said. She pointed out that Hunter's Horn and The Dollmaker had both been translated in many languages, so they must have more than regional appeal ("Ahead of Her Time" 7). She chose to address a different set of problems in her fiction to make it harder to be "pigeonholed." Arnow and her husband had moved to a 40-acre farm outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan after the war, around 1949. They didn't like the idea of living in "suburbia," like the Schnitzers in her novel; they said they lived in "exurbia." One interviewer who visited them there described the inside, where books lined the walls of every room except the kitchen, "where magazines from Connoisseur to The Nation were strewn on the living room coffee table, where stacks of newspapers were "piled high against one wall." The Arnows had nicknamed their place "Bedlam" (Kotlowitz 15). Kotlowitz described Arnow's study as a small room where all the furniture is built to her size, small, like a miniature dollhouse. 'When she (wrote), she (sat) on a child's wooden chair which (was) no more than a foot off the ground, her spiral notebook cradled on her knees. When she (typed),... she (sat) on an antiquated wooden milk crate turned on its side." The room has a hanging light and a raw concrete floor, and she said it reminded her of "a gangster's den." But she liked it. She explained how she drew the curtains so no one could see in and turned her hearing aid off so she couldn't hear anyone knocking. That way, nothing disturbed her when she was trying to write (Kotlowitz 15). In 1983, she admitted that she was working on another book, though she only called it "a long manuscript," and when asked what it was about, she usually said "it's about people." But when she was at the University of Tennessee in 1984, she went a bit further to say "it is set in 1861 and '62, in the same south central part of Kentucky" as some of her other writing. She explained, "Kentucky is part of the Union, and Tennessee is part of the Confederacy," but she said she didn't dwell much on battles ("Writing and Region"). She told John Flynn before she died that she had completed over seven hundred pages of this manuscript and that it needed to be revised. So then, for her last two novels, one published in 1974, entitled The Kentucky Trace: A Novel of the American Revolution, and the other as yet unpublished, but about the American Civil War, Harriette Arnow had turned back to her knowledge of Kentucky and United States history. Certainly she was disappointed in the unenthusiastic response Kentucky Trace received, though she hardly ever mentioned the novel in interviews. She said that Kentucky had never reviewed many of her books and that she had fewer letters 11 �from readers in Kentucky than from any other state. Even though she received the state's highest award for the arts, the Milner Award, in 1983, and was honored by Berea with an outstanding alumni award that same year, the attention came, she thought, because of the Fonda film. She said, "It kind of hurts" (Kotlowitz 18). Arnow went to Kentucky annually to visit family and friends and to teach at Hindman Settlement School. It was at Hindman that she fell sick with pneumonia in 1985. She was taken to the University of Kentucky hospital where she felt "incarcerated, imprisoned" with a nurse who hated her: the nurse had taken her cigarettes. Soon she was well enough to transfer to the University of Michigan hospital and then home, where a nurse and a housekeeper came by daily. On March 22,1986 she died in her sleep. She had once said that when she died, she wanted her ashes scattered on the grave of Ronald Reagan, but that, sad to say, he'd probably outlive her (Hynn). On May 16,1986, her ashes were buried at Keno, Kentucky. But her writing, of course, has a life of its own. The writer whose imagination and talent gave us The Dollmaker, also gave us four other novels—Mountain Path, Hunter's Horn, Weedkiller's Daughter, and Kentucky Trace. WORKS CITED "Ahead of Her Time."77ie Berea Alumnus, July-August 1983,5-7. Arnow, Harriette Simpson. Address to Appalachian Writers Association. Lecture given at Morehead State University at Morehead, Kentucky, 29 June 1985 __ "Fra Lippi and Me "Georgia Review, 33 (Winter 1979), 867-75. __ "The Hunter." Atlantic Monthly, 174 (Nov.1944), 79-84. (published as Harriette L. Simpson) "Marigolds and Mules." Kosmos, 3 (August-Sept. 1934), 3 _ (published as Harriette Simpson). "A Mess of Pork. "The New Talent, 1 (Oct.-Dec. 1935,4-11. __ "Personal Recollections. "Appalachian Heritage, 1 (Fall 1973), 11-15. "The Pioneer Farmer and His Crops in the Cumberland Region." Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 19:4 (Dec. 1960), 291-327. __ "Progress Reached Char Valley." 211 (28 Dec. 1970), 684-7. (published under H.L. Simpson). "The Two Hunters." Esquire, 18 (July 1941), 74-5,96. (published as Harriette L. Simpson). 'Washerwoman's Day." Southern Review, I (Winter 1936), 522-7. 12 �__ "Writing and Region." Lecture given at University of Tennessee-Knoxville, 19 July 1984. Baer, Barbara. "Hamette Arnow's Chronicles of Destruction," Nation, 222 (31 Jan. 1976), 117-20. Bright, Sallie and Annabel Girard. "Imagination Has Served Author Well." Advocate-Messenger (Danville, Ky.) 3 Oct. 1983,1,12. "Historical News and Notices." Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 20 (Sept. 1961), 299. Hudson, Patricia L. Unpublished interview with Hamette Simpson Arnow at Hindman Settlement School. Hindman, Ky., 6 August 1982. Kotlowitz, Alex. "At 75, Full Speed Ahead." Detroit News, 4 Dec. 1983,14+. Miller, Danny. Interview: Hamette Arnow." MELUS, 9 (Summer 1982), 83-97. Gates, Joyce Carol. "An American Tragedy." New York Times Book Review, 24 Jan. 1971.2,12. Silberman, Eve. "Hamette Arnow: Ann Arbor's Most Acclaimed Novelist, Author of The Dollmaker, Shuns the Literary Scene." Ann Arbor Observer, March 1980,3+. Williams, Shirley. "Author of "Dollmaker" Comes Home to High Praise." Louisville Courier- Journal, 3 Oct. 1983.B5. 13 �EVALUATING APPALACHIAN STUDIES Convenor: Barry Buxton, Appalachian Consortium Regionalism and Revitalization: Towards A Comparative Perspective on Appalachian Studies Richard Blaustein, East Tennessee State University The "Brier Sermon" Signpost in Appalachian Studies Ricky Cox, Radford University Appalachia: A Case Study With A Look Back Rogers McAvoy, West Virginia University Appalachian Educational Research in the National Context: Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going Alan J. DeYoung, University of Kentucky Regionalism and Revitalization: Towards a Comparative Perspective on Appalachian Studies by Richard Blaustein All of us have our own particular frames of reference, key terms and concepts which help us make sense out of the blooming, buzzing confusion of human experience. For myself, the concepts of cultural revitalization, nativism and psychosocial homeostasis have great intellectual appeal and explanatory power. I will never forget how fascinating I found anthropologist James Moone/s account of the Ghost Dance Movement among the Plains Indians in the 1890's while still an undergraduate at Brooklyn College nearly twenty-five years ago. It is only very recently, however, that I have attempted to apply these models and concepts to an intellectual and social movement with which all of us are familiar and to which all of us in this session are affiliated, that is to say, the Appalachian Studies Movement itself. Can the Appalachian Studies movement be classified as a bona fide revitalization movement? Does the application of the terminology of revitalization movement theory to the Appalachian Studies movement give us greater insight into our own personal and collective attitudes and behavior, or does it represent the imposition of an alien conceptual framework upon a social and cultural phenomenon which above all needs to be better understood in its own terms? As you can plainly see, I am anticipating the sorts of arguments which can easily emerge when one attempts to be objective and analytical about issues 14 �which also command a great deal of personal and emotional involvement. As we know, the Appalachian Studies Movement is in part an attempt to further interdisciplinary communication and cooperation between scholars drawn from a variety of academic disciplines, but it is also very much a cultural and social movement which seeks to improve the quality of life of the people of the Appalachians, particularly self-images and self-perceptions which are at best ambiguous. Accepting the precaution that no single theory or model can totally explain a phenomenon as complex as the Appalachian Studies movement, I will now proceed to discuss some fundamental features of nativistic revitalization movement theory and attempt to apply them to our own history and situation. When we review anthropologist Ralph Linton's classic article Nativistic Movements" (American Anthropologist, XLV, 1943), we find that he succinctly defines a nativistic movement as "any conscious, organized attempt on the part of a society's members to revive or perpetuate selected aspects of its culture." Inherent, then in the concept of the nativistic (or revitalistic) movement is the idea that the nativistic response occurs in reaction to the perceived deterioration of an existing social and cultural order which is meaningful to its adherents. As Linton explicitly states, return to the ideal past is a powerful motivating force in nativistic movements, but in practical terms, this return must inevitably be selected and symbolic rather than total and literal: "What really happens in all nativistic movements is that certain current or remembered elements of culture are selected for emphasis and given symbolic value." A precondition, then, of the nativistic revitalization movement is the partial assimilation or acculturation of the group in question into a larger, often more powerful and prestigious cultural and social system and the emergence of the need to offset the resulting loss of sense of identity and social identity by creating new cultural symbols and social institutions which refer to but do not and cannot actually replicate the pre-modern past. Can we find concrete examples of this in the Appalachian movement? Certainly, we can, and it would not be straining our model to state that the Appalachian Studies movement is, at least in part, a rational nativistic movement. Rather than restructuring itself through magical or supernatural means, the group in question revives and/or perpetuates "symbols of a period when the society was free or, in retrospect, happy or great... by keeping the past in mind, such elements help to re-establish and maintain the self-respect of the group's members in the face of adverse conditions. Also, "they provide the society's members with a fund of common knowledge and experience which is exclusively their own and which sets them off from the members of other societies... the culture elements selected for symbolic use are chosen realistically and with regard to the possibility of perpetuating them under current conditions." In the case of the Appalachian Studies movement, it is important to note that the impetus to revive or perpetuate selected features of the cultural heritage which symbolize the positive identity of the group not only comes 15 �from committed natives of the region but also from concerned newcomers and outsiders who have come to identify with Appalachia and its people. As we know from the works of Henry Shapiro and David Whisnant, "fotched-on women" and other well-meaning social and cultural reformers have played an undeniably influential role in the selective rediscovery and reinterpretation of the cultural past of the region. As Whisnant notes in All Things Native and Fine (1985), the so-called Appalachian folk revival was only part of a larger effort on the part of reformers to make mountain people bi-cultural: dulcimers and ballads were gracious accompaniments to a genteel, fundamentally middle-class American life-style; the revival aspect of the settlement schools and missionaries was essentially meant to cushion the full impact of industrial exploitation and total assimilation into the mainstream of American mass society and culture. Nominally an expression of Appalachian cultural autonomy, the Appalachian folk revival movement is more accurately described as a transcultural movement which still continues to bring together natives and newcomers within the context of new social groupings and institutions (notably folk festivals and folk schools), united by common interest in regional issues (rather than kinship or common regional background) serving as the focus of collective identity and solidarity. As we know, though, tension and conflict between native and "fotched-on" proponents of Appalachian cultural identity are real and not completely resolved factors in the Appalachian Studies movement as it has developed. It is primarily for this reason that I fall short of defining the Appalachian Studies Movement as a completely bona fide example of a nativistic movement, though the nativistic element is real. However, Anthony EC. Wallace's definition of a revitalization movement as a "deliberate, conscious, organized effort on the part of members of a society to create a more satisfactory culture" comes somewhat closer to explaining these particular historical developments within a general theory of sociocultural dynamics. Essentially Wallace's model of the process of cultural revitalization can be seen as a specific derivative of general systems theory. Through the comparative analysis of many revitalistic movements Wallace has isolated an irreversible series of developmental phases which characterize the revitalistic process regardless of local cultural differences; he attributes this generic uniformity to the underlying psychological and emotional attributes which all human beings share in common. All human beings seek to satisfy biological, emotional and intellectual drives, preserve a sense of meaningful connection with the natural and social worlds around them, through the particular cultural systems they have internalized. Breakdown in the effectiveness of these internalized cultural systems results in stress, which can either lead to anomie (depersonalization and disorientation) or else provide the motivation for the reinterpretation, redefinition and ideally the reorganization of the group. While many anthropologists in the past have concentrated on magically and supernaturally oriented revitalization movements, more recently we have seen more 16 �attention to rational movements, particularly those which involve the establishment of legal-rational voluntary associations which represent collective compensation for the sensed deterioration of older social and cultural patterns. Israeli social historian S.N. Eisenstadt (1968) presents the following general model of response to social change: In each process of change we may distinguish among: 1) the initial impetus to change and its locus in the given groups of society or in its environment; 2) the extent to which it undermines any given institutional pattern; 3) the new possibilities which are opened up by the impetus to change; and 4) the extent to which there develops within each group some ability to reorganize its social and cultural life. The industrialization of the Southern Appalachians and the concurrent deterioration of the old subsistence-oriented life-style has essentially provided the background for the development of the Appalachian movement. In an idealized, selective, symbolic form, the old subsistence culture contrasts violently with the literate, industrialized corporate-dominated world to which modern Appalachians are compelled to adjust and adapt themselves. The development of regionally-oriented organizations helps to ease the trauma of all-out assimilation, not only for modern mountaineers but also for their counterparts in other rapidly changing societies. As the social anthropologist Robert T. Anderson has noted: trWhere societies are experiencing rapid social change, formal voluntary associations typically are found." In industrial societies which are emerging from premechanical agrarian conditions, there is a need for institutions larger than the family but smaller than the state, possessing a legal-rational structure, including formal (rather than traditional) membership, charters, voting rights, etc. The revitalistic aspect of voluntary associations stems from their capacity to reduce the identity-destroying stress which comes from the breakdown or disappearance of traditional community patterns. Through ethnic or regional associations or clubs, displaced people can recreate an approximation of their old society and thus selectively preserve at least a generalized sense of distinctive group identity. As Anderson comments, "an important function of voluntary associations is their capacity at times to maintain a stable base for traditionalists resident in a non-traditional milieu." (AA, 'Voluntary Associations in History," 1971:217). Such associations provide enclaves of stability for people grappling with the strains and conflicts of modernization and biculturalism. As Loyal Jones has noted in his introduction to Minstrel of the Appalachians: The Story ofBascom Lamar Lunsford (Appalachian Consortium Press, 1984),".. .if we are to benefit from the culture that spawned us, we must carry it into new times and places." Lunsford himself was an excellent example of the revitalistic leader who understood the necessity of creating new social settings for the old culture. Rather than turn17 �ing his back on the realities of modern life, he selectively balanced tradition and innovation in his folk festivals. As Loyal Jones comments: Bascom Lunsford found a way to strengthen the old traditions and use them to put people at ease about their place and culture at a time when most of the messages about Appalachia were negative. . .He helped create an atmosphere in which the folk traditions could flourish and thus where the regional people could flourish because they had regained a sense of pride. That is a work more of us should be about (1984:ix). Clogging teams and classes, bluegrass and oldtime music festivals, quilters organizations are vehicles through which modern Appalachians are able to express their identification with the regional culture without completely rejecting modern corporate and bureaucratic life; again, since such new organizations are based on common interest rather than the traditional bonds of kinship and physical proximity, they make it possible for natives and newcomers to create new social networks which are only selectively traditional in cultural content. Thus from the raw materials of Southern mountain culture are created the symbolic bonds which tie together new trans-ethnic and transregional support groups. This applies not only to the Appalachian folk revival but possibly to the Appalachian Studies movement itself. Again, parallels can be found in other rapidly changing regional revitalization movements. Certainly, the development of alliances between native and outside intellectual and artistic leaders can be a natural and possibly even predictable reaction against the cultural, social and economic hegemony of the centralizing, standardizing, elitists who gravitate to capital cities. Appalachia itself may not currently be the most fashionable regional alternative to urban elitism (French Louisiana appears to have assumed that role in the 1980's will Appalachia be rediscovered again, and when will we see hillbilly equivalents of K-Paul Prudhomme, blackened redfish and Cajun Spice potato chips filling the need of the mainstream for color, flavor and roots?), but if the past is a reliable guide to the future, we can safely predict that modern people will continue to need the emotional security and stability which gives rise to regional revitalization movements not only here but throughout much of the contemporary world. Central to all of these movements is the idea of the idealized homeplace, the magical kingdom in which humanity is in balance with nature, unsullied by the pressures of modern corporate industrial life. The ceremonies, rituals and artforms which provide the cultural focus of regional revitalization movements enable their participants to retreat, at least temporarily, into a realm in which there is stability, order and harmony. As Yi-Fu Tuan notes in his conclusion to Tonophilia (means "love of place" in Greek), 18 �Human beings have persistently searched for the ideal environment. How it looks varies from one culture to another but in essence it seems to draw on two antipodal images: the garden of innocence and the cosmos. The fruits of the earth provide security as also does the harmony of the stars which offers, in addition, grandeur. So we move from one to the other; from the shade under the baobab to the magic circle under heaven; from home to purlic square, from suburb to city; from a seaside holiday to the enjoyment of the sophisticated arts, seeking for a point of equilibrium which is not of this world. (1974:248). It is the search to regain the safe and good place which motivates many people involved in Appalachian Studies and comparable movements. Obviously, this is not merely a physical place we are talking about, but a state of being and feeling at home with supportive others, attaining what the anthropologist Francis L.K. Hsu refers to as "psychosocial homeostasis." Just as all living beings seek to preserve and perpetuate themselves, so do all human beings seek to attain psychosocial homeostasis through contact with the persons, things, places and cultural practices towards which they feel intimate emotional attachment and involvement. It is through these intimate emotional attachments that we derive psychological and emotional stability and well-being. Changes which threaten these relationships threaten our own sense of self, and consequently Hsu believes that we can best understand the dynamics of cultural change and stability by examining the particular social and cultural symbols upon which individual and collective identity is based: All peoples will offer greater resistance to change in relationships and other elements in their society and culture most relevant to the maintenance of psychosocial homeostasis than in other relationships and elements. They will offer greater resistance to change in those areas because they have invested strong affect, but not where they are mere role players or spectators. (1971:36) My own research in this regard has focused primarily on music, but clearly we can see the search for the good, safe place expressing itself in many other forms, genres and media, including scholarly research and criticism. Indeed, the establishment and perpetuation of an institution like the Appalachian Studies Conference itself could be considered a regionally oriented expression of what is actually a universal human drive. As I said at the beginning of this essay, no single theory or model can ever completely explain a phenomenon as complex as the Appalachian Studies Movement. I do hope, however, that some of the ideas I have presented here will help to encourage further considerations of the need for a comparative perspective in Appalachian Studies. 19 �NOTES Anderson, Robert T, "Voluntary Associations in History," American Anthropologist, vol. 73, no. 1, 1971. Eisenstadt, S.N. (ed.), Comparative Perspectives on Social Change, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1968. Hsu, Francis L.K., "Psychosocial Homeostasis and Jen: Conceptual Tools For Advancing Psychological Anthropology." American Anthropologist, vol. 73, no. 1,1971. Jones, Loyal, Minstrel of the Appalachians: The Story of Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1984. Linton, Ralph, "Nativistic Movements," American Anthropologist, vol. 45, no. 2,1943. Tuan, Yi-Fu, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1974. Wallace, Anthony F.C, "Revitalization Movements: Some Theoretical Considerations For Their Comparative Study," Amerkan Anthropologist, vol. 58, no. 2,1956. 20 �The "Brier Sermon/1 Signpost in Appalachian Studies by Ricky Cox When I transferred from a community college to Radford University three years ago, I didn't know that there was such a thing as an Appalachian Studies Program there or anywhere else. But since then, Appalachian Studies has become possibly the single most important element in my education, though not in the sense that I would choose for myself a career founded on it. But the realization that there is no life work here for me in no way detracts from the value of the experiences Appalachian Studies has brought to me, for while these experiences cannot guarantee the prosperity of my future, they certify the value of my past. That may not sound like much, and some might think that I, and others like me, have been spending our time and money buying back things that were ours to start with. Maybe so, and I will come back to this topic, the past, a little later. But for now, bear with me as I suggest to you that this is a ransom worth paying. In doing so I wish to discuss, in a very unstructured way, the role of the Appalachian Studies Conference in bringing together parties who wish to traffic in this business. And finally, I would like to tie this all together through discussion of selected ideas from a poem by Jim Wayne Miller, entitled, "Brier Sermon-You Must Be Born Again." While I find this piece well-suited to my purpose, I did not actively choose it; it volunteered. Not long after enrolling at Radford, I became acquainted with Dr. Grace Toney Edwards, Chair of the Appalachian Studies Program there. We talked at length about Appalachian related issues of current concern to me. One day she gave me a copy of "Brier Sermon-You Must Be Born Again," with several passages highlighted. I read in those few lines a clear, concise expression of my own worries and concerns. Since then "Brier Sermon" has turned up over and over in classroom materials and in informal discussions and each time I find myself mentally underlining something new. At each fork and turn in the road, it tells the traveller where he has been and where he is going, linking the way back with the way ahead. It marks each direction clearly, yet binds them into one unbroken passage, reminding us constantly, like a signpost, that all roads are somehow connected, and that wherever we would go, we can get there from here. Many of you will be familiar with this piece either alone, or as a part of the volume of poetry in which it appears, The Mountains Have Come Closer. It is a long poem, so I will not read it to you, but I will give you, at least, the setting of "Brier Sermon-You Must Be Born Again." Do not worry if you are not 21 �familiar with this work for once you have heard the Brier's message you will, I think discover that, like Dorothy Gale of Kansas, you knew it all along. The book, The Mountains Have Come Closer, is divided into three parts, the third of which is called simply, "Brier Sermon." In it we see, through the eyes of a narrator, a man who leaves the mountains to find work in a big city. He finds himself trapped in a stereotyped mold outside of which he cannot be accepted by mainstream America. We see this man, a Brier he is called by the sophisticated city dwellers, back home, moving about in his own world, seeing it attacked and despoiled from without, and corroded and neglected from within. We come to know the Brier as a sensitive, thoughtful man, but we do not hear him speak until the last poem in this part three. This poem is "Brier Sermon-You Must Be Born Again," and it begins with this introduction: "One Friday night the Brier felt called to preach. So Saturday morning, early, he appeared on a street corner in town and started preaching, walking up and down the sidewalk...He took as his text, 'You Must Be Born Again'"(Miller 52). This theme, you must be born again, is repeated constantly throughout the poem, or sermon, and I jump to the final pages of the Brier's message to pull out his definition of that idea. "What's it like - being born again?/ It's going back to what you were before/ without losing what you've since become" (Miller 63). Here in two lines is the essence of what Appalachian Studies may offer to natives of the region especially, but also to anyone else who is looking for pieces of themselves lost or misplaced along the road to somewhere else. One of the first things the Brier talks about in relation to this theme is education. He tells a story about two families, the Johnsons and the Browns, who represent two extremes of what we commonly think of as being educated. Asked to dig up some cedar trees, the Johnson boys base their refusal on an old superstition. "Get old Jim Brown and Tom Brown," they say. "They're educated, don't believe in nothin" (Miller 52). Writers sometimes set up exaggerated contrasts to make a point, but in this case the polarization is not inconsistent with real attitudes about what it means to be "educated." The uneducated Johnson boys are bound by superstition and conduct themselves in accordance with traditions and beliefs that defy rational explanation. The educated Browns don't accept anything on the basis of faith alone. They exemplify the educational ideal that one should accept only what one can verify for himself. Inherited experience of the past has no place in their lives. Somehow, we have come to tolerate the idea that, like Jim and Tom Brown, we must first shed off the past like the skin of a snake before we can fully participate in the future. The process is regrettable, but inevitable as the values and basic assumptions of rural society must topple in the face of scholarship and inquiry. Is it strange, then, that many Appalachians in colleges and universities have difficulty making connections between experiences of the past and expectations for the future? Pressured by active persuasion at school and passive acceptance at home, the will to question and resist is easily pushed aside by more immediate concerns. It is a hard fight to 22 �fight, yet many do it, finally achieving a balance that is workable, though it may entail a complicated and sometimes stressful game of role playing. Too many, though, cannot deal with a dual identity and reject one position or the other. Sadly, this firm choice is less satisfactory than indecision. Denying ourselves the sense of place offered by home ties, or the intellectual adrenalin of pursuits attached to, or dependent upon, formal education may result in resentment of the people and ideals that force us to choose. We may become cynical, and like the Brown boys, find that we "don't believe in nothin." The Brier would have us seek a middle ground. He says, "Well, I'm educated, but not like the Brown boys./ There's something I believe in:/ You must be born again" (Miller 53). His definition of being born again is especially pertinent to education: "If s going back to what you were before/ without losing what you've since become" (Miller 63). To do that, we need connections, bridges, between past and present. We can have them, make them. They can start out as little foot paths cut in a high school folklore project and grow into a network that crosses the country. These are roads and bridges built of thought and emotion, and unlike their counterparts of steel and asphalt, they thrive on heavy traffic. They can stretch and expand until they become mental interstates that traverse time and space. We as individuals can build and maintain these roads, and at journey's end each must necessarily turn up his own lane or hollow. But there is a need for guides and explorers who would mark the way for the less adventuresome. That need has been, and is being met by Appalachian Studies Programs. Again, these roads are of value only when they pass by personal landmarks, but there is a need for a coordinating organization through which individuals can share ideas and accomplishments, and draw strength from others who share their concerns. There are obstacles that the individual cannot always overcome, such as the educational dilemma pointed to by the Brier. There are rivers fed by stereotype and public opinion that are not easily bridged, and I suggest to you that the Appalachian Studies Conference fulfills its brightest hopes and finest purpose in serving as a ferry between shores of differing ideals. I suggest to you also that the masters of this craft must maintain friendly relations with both sides of any stream it may cross, yet not ally itself too closely with either. I suggest also that the passengers on this craft must not let it be obsoleted by shoddy toll bridges thrown up by either side, whose builders exact some price in exchange for passage. This is a tall order, I know, but it is not a call to arms. It is a description of what is, as much as it is a vision of what should be. And it is an outline for being as much as it is a plan for doing. In fact, I really don't know what the Appalachian Studies Conference does beyond putting on this meeting, which I have come to see as sort of a company picnic for the maintenance crews of those roads I was talking about a while ago. Do not take me wrong. I know that much hard work is being done every day, but I am speaking from the perspective that doing is an outgrowth of being and therefore secondary to it. 23 �Being is of first importance and the value of the Appalachian Studies Conference lies in who and what it is. It has been suggested to me that the Appalachian Studies Conference is unique among organizations of similar scope and intent in that its membership includes both scholars and artists, thinkers and feelers. We have them gathered here in the same room, and in many cases, in the same person. The value of this fortunate circumstance is related to the important idea of making connections. Those who embody both types become living connections between the academic and the aesthetic. Because their work is thoughtful in both a creative and a critical sense they can apply broader insights to either kind of project. In drawing upon the past as a resource they are better able to realize the need to be selective in choosing which elements of it should be brought out into the sunlight and which should be left to fade into obscurity. The Brier illustrates this need in the form of a question: Say you were going on a trip knowing you wouldn't ever be coming back and all you'd ever have of that place you knew, that place where you'd always lived was what you could take with you. You'd want to think what to take along what would travel well what you'd really need and wouldn't need. Fm telling you, every day you're leaving a place you won't be coming back to ever. What are you going to leave behind? What are you taking with you? Don't run off and leave the best part of yourself. (Miller 59) This process of selection and occasional resorting of cultural baggage is not an easy one, but it can be worthwhile. Many of the best examples of Appalachian scholarship and creativity attest to a compromise on the part of the author that allows him or her to draw strength and material from experiences that predate becoming "educated," yet do so more effectively through the enhanced fluency of phrase and clarity of thought that may be the finest things a formal education has to offer. While these people do not pine for the good old days, they remember the past and recognize it as a part of today, and as a part of them, wherever they go, whatever they do. They make connections and build bridges. Some will call this respect for the past a crutch. They say it is nostalgia with a necktie on, masquerading as scholarship. They say that backward people want to live in the past because the future is bleak or frightening. I couldn't say whether or not this is so, but I do know that even when the fu24 �ture holds only promise, there is value in looking back. The Brier talks about it in his sermon. "Our foreparents left us a very fine inheritance,/ but we don't believe it" (Miller 53). "We're ashamed to live in our father's house./ We think if s too old-fashioned" (Miller 53). Now where would this inheritance be found? Not in the bank or the top bureau drawer. If s in the past. If sin the words and wants and dreams of our mothers and fathers and grandparents. Think about those little hilltop cemeteries scattered through the mountains and think about going there at odd intervals, maybe in the rain. Remember to turn off your lights and try not to get your feet wet. Take a minute when it's time to leave because you're blocked in anyway. Take a minute and look at the names you see there. Look at the dates. They are two inches apart, yet a lifetime lies between them. Wonder about these people. Wonder what they wondered about. Make connections. On your way down the hill, pick up a rock and put in in your pocket and carry it home with you. Now maybe you are thinking, "This is nice, but we need direction for the future, not a map of the past." That is true, and recognition of that need is reflected in the theme of this meeting. Along with remembrance and reunion, there is revival, a gathering of strength and purpose for what is to come. And like the organizers of the conference, the Brier is aware of the need for continuity, for a connection between past, present, and future. He warns his sidewalk congregation: But you don't have to live in the past. You can't, even if you try. You don't have to talk old-fashioned, dress old-fashioned. You don't have to live the way your foreparents lived. But if you don't know about them if you don't love them if you don't respect them you're not going anywhere. You don't have to think ridge-to-ridge, the way they did. You can think ocean-to-ocean. (Miller 55) Before ending, I want to return to the Brier's original topic, education, for three reasons. First, I know that many people involved with Appalachian Studies are associated in some way with formal education. Second, I want to suggest that we in Appalachia are not the only ones guilty of the sin of forgetfulness, especially in the field of education. And third, I want to satisfy a personal penchant for connectedness. The first of these reasons is self-explanatory. The second recalls an assumption I spoke of a while ago. The notion that being educated demands that we reject our personal history is closely related to the idea that our 25 �collective history is not an essential element of education. Many of us have come to equate progress with technology and material gain and have drawn the false conclusion that since we have more than did our predecessors in these respects, then we must be more intelligent. We become disdainful of the wisdom of the past, thinking that it no longer applies. The Liberal Arts give the lie to the assumption that each generation is unique in its thought and motivation and is possessed of a finer insight than were the thinkers of the past. History and literature can teach us that human nature remains constant regardless of change in the human condition. We are no more at risk as a people who reject two hundred years of cultural heritage than we are as a nation who neglects two thousand years of Western Civilization. And I suggest to you that if we manage to turn ourselves around, Appalachia will find itself standing out in front instead of racing to catch up, for we already possess the quality most needed to make sense of our lives and our world. That characteristic is the desire and need to see connections between concepts and ideas and to put abstract things into concrete terms. In an essay entitled "A Mirror for Appalachia" Jim Wayne Miller discusses this quality at length along with the Appalachian tendency to respond more quickly to feelings than to ideas. He quotes Jack Weller who said, "The problem is that our educational system is based on ideas, not feelings." Miller then asks, 'That is the problem, but whose problem is it, ultimately" (450)? This is a thought provoking question and I want to apply it specifically to the concept of connectedness. I think that some of you will share my belief that the ability to make connections of all types must be the chief benefit of a Liberal Arts education. To perceive some pattern in the infinite diversity of the world is to make it a friendlier, less confusing place. It should be an advantage, then, to have this habit of making connections already in place, and I suggest to you that if there is one quality attributed to Appalachians by critics and proponents alike, it is a preoccupation, some would say an obsession, with connections. I offer two examples. The first is the sometimes derided recognition of extended kinship. Friend and foe alike have hung all kinds of interpretations on the emphasis Appalachians place on genealogy, but if nothing else, it is a clear demonstration of the need to establish and maintain connections. The second example I would refer you to is speech. The media delight in mocking the picturesque speech of the mountaineer and some people seem to equate a reliance on simile and metaphor with the inability to grasp complex or abstract notions. While this is not necessarily a lie, neither is it necessarily the truth. Rather than indicating that a speaker or writer has fallen short of comprehension, an appropriate analogy may demonstrate that he has gone a step further and related the idea to something already within his range of experience. I would even suggest to you that judicious use of concrete images in exploring abstract ideas is nothing short of homespun scholarship. Without benefit or burden of page number and copyright, the 26 �speaker refers his audience to a chapter in their common experience and says, in effect, "Do not take my word for it. Let me refer you to a better authority. My source is experience and life itself." If we would heed the Brier's message we would have as a resource not only the incomplete volume of our own lives, but also the great reference library that is the past. I make here a final point about the value of "Brier Sermon-You Must Be Born Again." Not only do the Brier and his creator, Jim Wayne Miller, give direction on this road, they travel along with us as well in that this poem and many others by this author exemplify the use of these sometimes neglected resources. The Brier Sermon is rich in metaphor: You must be born again; live in your father's house; and, you can be old wine in a new bottle. My favorite is addressed to young hot rodders. The Brier tells how he sees them flat on their backs, "looking up into the guts and gears of America," and thinks to himself: I'd like to open up your heads just like you raise the hood or go into a gearbox. I'd like to re-wire your heads and gap your spark plugs and re-set your timing. Because you can get off your back you can have a new view you can get behind the wheel of America. You can sit in the smooth upholstered seats of power and listen to the music playing. (Miller 57-58) Now, metaphors about roses have their place, but ifs hard to beat the smooth upholstered seats of power. I want to end now, as I started, with a personal note. I am a machinist by trade and I like my work. I continued at it part time while attending college and was at first frustrated by my inability to make any connection between what seemed like two entirely different worlds. In my second year at Radford I took a course in Appalachian Folklore. On the syllabus for that course was a list of "opportunities." At first I thought this was just a tonguein-cheek way to say requirements. I will say now that the folklore project done as a part of that class was truly an opportunity. I did my project on machines in folklore, and for the first time was able to make connections between iron and steel and paper and pen. I interviewed people around home who share my passion for machinery and looked through scholarly articles and books concerning industrialization. While the result is no more than average as such things go, I see it as the best thing I did in my entire time at Radford because it gave me the chance to make connections and build bridges between different parts of my life and thereby feel better about each of them. I do not know that everyone would benefit from a similar experience, but I am grateful that 27 �Appalachian Studies provided me with that wonderful opportunity. I want to thank, also, Jim Wayne Miller and the many others like him who show us that the road runs in two directions. WORKS CITED Miller, Jim Wayne. "A Mirror for Appalachia." Voices From the Hills. Eds. Robert J. Higgs and Ambrose N. Manning. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1975. "BrierSermon-YouMustBeBornAgain." The Mountains Have Come Closer. Boone, North Carolina: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1980. 28 �Educational Research in the National Context Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going by Alan J. DeYoung Research and scholarship on educational issues and trends in Appalachia, at least that performed by educators themselves and specifically targeted at regional concerns, has been virtually non-existent. Thus, to the question about where Appalachian educational research has been, the easy answer must be "nowhere". Sue h an assessment should not be taken as an indictment of the quality of regional scholarship. As I will argue shortly, regional and rural educational issues in Appalachia and elsewhere have received little specific attention throughout the history of American education. And the lack of concern shown by educational researchers towards Appalachian educational issues and problems in actuality indicates more about the political nature of school reform in the U.S., and the conceptual inadequacies which have historically undergirded educational research community pursuits, than it does about the quality and/or integrity of regional writers. The Urban Focus of Nineteenth Century American Education Rather than dwelling in this essay on the important Appalachian education topics and questions not pursued by professional educators, I would like to frame my discussion of this phenomenon within the larger underdevelopment of rural schooling scholarship in the U.S. During the past two decades, a number of educational historians have become quite interested in America's clearly urban bias in questions of educational research and policy. As several of them note, most of the late nineteenth century school reform literature focused on ways of coordinating and administering education in urban environments. Virtually all leaders of the common school movement during this period were urban school superintendents whose careers essentially depended upon the bureaucratization and professionalization of urban education (Perkinson, 1968; Tyack and Hansot, 1982). Models of rural education in fact became the primary enemy of many nineteenth century school reformers, who argued that the politics, inefficiency, and uncoordinated curricular characteristics of rural schools could never serve as a model for the institutionalization of public education in the U.S. Be29 �cause America's cities were quickly becoming inundated with hordes of new immigrants, because the new technologies emerging in the workplace demanded the teaching of different types of vocational skills, and because advances in the "science" of administration clearly showed the inefficiency of parent control of educational policy, proponents of schooling structures and procedures which had worked earlier in rural settings were quickly outflanked in America's major cities by school superintendents who argued that they had a better way. Eventually, supporters of autonomous rural schools outside of America's urban areas also suffered defeat during the late nineteenth century as urban reformers with their calls for more efficient schooling systematically infiltrated state departments of public education and pressed for sweeping reforms in the way schools were organized, staffed, and supervised. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most Americans and their leaders had become convinced of two things. First, that the country's future lay in its continued urbanization and industrialization. And second, that America's emerging institutional leaders (including school administrators) could and/or would solve whatever technical and social problems emerged from future urban and economic development. For many American educators, the educational problem of the twentieth century was an urban problem. As educational reformers like John Dewey and I.W. Howerth argued, progress in education depended upon the recreation of community in America's urban areas for the multitude of children who had never experienced its many benefits. While the old rural villages in America would supposedly continue to decline in the face of the advances in science and industrialization, the practical, moral, and applied experiences of community vocational and moral life which rural living earlier provided children needed to be incorporated and in fact made central in the mission of twentieth century city schools (Perkinson, 1968). On the other hand, rural schools themselves were found inadequate by various spokespersons favoring the "new" education by the turn of the century. "Administrative progressives" found rural schools poorly organized and inefficiently administered and curricular progressives found the haphazard focus on works of Western civilization not vocationally or scientifically sound enough for the future roles rural students might play in whatever community and national contexts they might end up in. Educational Research and Educational Policy in the Early TwentiethCentury By current standards, most of the policy discussions and decisions regarding small and rural schools of the early twentieth century were not guided by empirical research, but came as the result of convictions state 30 �departments of education had about making rural districts more professional, efficient, and in many cases vocationally relevant (Rosenfeld and Sher, 1977). In many ways, developments in rural vocational educational policy mirrored those of agricultural policy during this century. As several authors suggest, the "Country Life" movement of the early twentieth century articulated the restoration of declining rural life in the U.S. via scientifically enhancing agricultural practices among American farmers and making rural schools more vocationally relevant to the emerging industrial needs of the United States. Through demonstration projects and "technical assistance" to public school curriculum developers, U. S. Department of Agriculture Extension Agents (among others) had an important influence on rural public schools throughout the twentieth century, and especially after the passage of the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 (Grantham, 1983; Greenwood, 1982). Perhaps the earliest forms of what scholars would now recognize as educational research on specific rural schooling problems were the "school surveys" of the early twentieth century. These statistical profiles were typically utilized by educational reformers to "improve" rural schools by first documenting their comparatively inferior status, and then helping to bring them under the control of state superintendents of education (Tyack, 1974). Many progressive educators during this period called for and achieved reform in the professional training of teachers and school consolidation, the latter innovation which would ostensibly allow for more efficient utilization of financial resources and age grading of students (DeYoung and Boyd, 1987; Tyack and Hansot, 1982). Small schools in particular were often targeted for reform throughout the early twentieth century, not necessarily because they were shown deficient pedagogically, but because they were assumed to be less intellectually stimulating environments and certainly were less desirable administratively and financially. (the) movement to take control of the rural common school away from the local community and to turn it over to the professionals was part of a more general organizational revolution in American education in which laymen lost much of their direct control over the schools. In the cities school men pioneered new bureaucratic patterns of educational organization. They (also) sought to "free education from politics" by coercing rural communities to consolidate schools. From 1910 to 1960 the number of one room schools declined from approximately 200,000 to 20,000. (Tyack, 1974 p.25) In addition to school surveys, three other types of educational research were prominent during the first fifty years of the twentieth century. The first of these focused upon ways of actually making schools more administrative31 �ly efficient and bureaucratic as desired by state and district superintendents. Relatedly, quasi-empirical accounts of innovative techniques in cost-effective materials and supervision practices were sponsored by educational professionals convinced that the future of school improvement lay in improved management techniques (Callahan, 1962). And finally, the field of eugenics had an interest in rural school populations of several small isolated regions of the U.S., particularly Appalachia. The majority of scholars writing in this area were convinced that many rural schools were heavily populated by cognitively deficient children whose parents had not been smart enough or fortunate enough to leave the decaying countryside for the more lucrative and stimulating environments of America's cities. Because many rural children scored poorly on early standardized tests of ability, such data were typically cited as further evidence that not only were many of America's rural residents lacking in intelligence, but that rural life patterns not "upgraded" by the intervention of outside influences would continue to erode in the future (e.g. Hirsch, 1928; Key, 1932; Silver and DeYoung, 1985). School and Community Studies in the "Non-professional" Literature As this review so far indicates, empirical educational research into the particular problems and needs of America's small and rural schools well into the twentieth century was sparse and ideologically motivated, since the development of American education as a whole was built upon the assumption that schools of the future would and should continue to become larger, more efficient, and more vocationally relevant. To be sure, some rural educators were convinced early in the century that inequality and discrimination existed in particular regions of the country. However, their calls for national research and compensatory educational policies were continually rebuffed by federal legislators unwilling to interfere with state and local control of public education (Ravitch, 1983). On the other hand, there have been several types of informative studies on issues, problems, and strengths of rural schools which originated outside of the educational research community but which have anticipated some of the current interest in rural and Appalachian education. In particular, the field of community studies became prominent in the 1930s and 1940s, and more academic interpretations of the centrality of the public school in the lives of continuing rural communities have been intimately detailed by a variety of social historians and community sociologists (e.g. Lynd and Lynd, 1937; Warner and Lunt, 1941). More recently (and with a more sympathetic orientation) Peshkin has focused on the importance of small town schools for community identity (Peshkin 1978; Peshkin 1982). As well, the potential of local rural schools to help rebuild and/or enhance disappearing community cohesiveness has been illustrated and advocated by Eliot Wigginton, who is 32 �also specifically interested in Appalachian education (Puckett, 1986; Wigginton, 1985). Of late, a number of educational historians have also been particularly interested in re-telling the battle of school consolidation as seen from the perspective of local populations. Fuller, for example, has provided an excellent discussion of local citizen efforts in a number of mid-western states to resist and/or modify national forces of school consolidation early in the twentieth century. Importantly, debates over strengths, weaknesses, problems and solutions to those problems discussed in much of the early school consolidation literature are still central to current discourse on school reform in rural education. In a sense then, the significance and importance of the rural school in American community life has been well recognized and researched by sociologists and historians for decades, but only recently has surfaced among educational researchers unfortunately unfamiliar with the legacy of these debates. The Current Status of Rural Educational Research Current interest in the specific problems and possibilities of rural education seems to have come about for at least four types of reasons. Initially, it has become apparent to educational policy makers that even though significant out-migration from farms and small towns has occurred during the past century, such trends have slowed greatly during the past two decades, and in some cases have been reversed (Beale, 1975; Sher, 1981). Thus, all rural schools and their particular problems will not be completely disappearing in the foreseeable future. In addition, concern over equality of educational opportunity in rural areas became an important issue in the 1970s, and a growing body of literature suggests that problems of minority and special needs rural students have frequently not been adequately met by urban based models of service delivery (Helge, 1981; Massey and Crosby, 1983). As well, much of the current national interest in "effective schooling" has questioned the conventional wisdom that bigger schools and more centralized staffing patterns are always desirable (Goodlad, 1984; Sher, 1986). And finally, the current interest in improving rural education as an aid to stimulating local economic development within a number of states seems related to more concerted efforts among such states to upgrade rural schools (Rosenfeld, 1983; DeYoung and Boyd, 1987). The current generation of scholarship on the particular issues and problems of rural education in the U.S. was ushered in by the work of Jonathan Sher and several of his colleagues in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Perhaps the landmark book on the overlooked importance of rural education and the lack of relevant scholarship in this area was Sher's edited collection of 1977. Suggestively entitled Education in Rural America: A Reasesssment of Convention33 �al Wisdom, the book's major accomplishment was not primarily to document all that is known about the strengths and weaknesses of rural schools, but instead to show that policy makers and researchers actually knew very little about rural education in the U.S., due to the "urbanization of rural schools" perspectives suggested so far in this essay. Other chapters of the Sher book (which included educational dynamics in some Appalachian states) focused upon and illustrated several fallacies of the "conventional wisdom" about rural schools by: documenting the myth of economy, efficiency and equality supposedly brought to rural regions of the country by school consolidation and centralization efforts; examining both the conceptual weaknesses and benefits associated with small schools in rural regions of the country; and questioning the desirability of equating increased financial support of local public schools with the erosion of local autonomy in school decision making. In addition, several case studies illustrating the politics of school reform and the importance of understanding class conflict in rural educational issues were included. The scholarship which has most recently emerged specifically on ruralness and the particular concerns of rural communities and educators can be put into four interrelated categories. These include: an interest in the status of minority and handicapped children in rural regions of the U.S.; research and commentary about ongoing financial, curricular, and staffing problems many small schools are facing today in an educational environment driven by the needs of metropolitan school districts; general attempts to conceptually and/or empirically define or construct research agendas for rural and small school education based on literature reviews and or surveys of rural educators; and several attempts to discuss educational reform in the context of community economic development. Equality of Educational Opportunity in Rural America A slow-to-develop nationally relevant motivation behind renewed interest in rural schooling in the United States has been the re-discovery of poverty and inequality in many rural regions of the country, particularly Appalachia. The early "Children of Crisis" series by Robert Coles, for example, graphically and eloquently portrayed lives of disadvantaged black, chicano, indian and white children in the deep south, among migrant farm populations, and in the mining regions of the United States (Coles, 1967; 1970; 1972). As well, Michael Harrington's provocative essay on The Other America (1962), and David Looff's book Appalachia's Children (1971) also suggested that many rural as well as urban children lacked fundamental opportunities in this country. Bridging the gap between poverty and the public school in the national literature however received much less early attention in rural America than it did in urban areas. For example, "activist" teacher memoirs of degrading educational conditions in the public schools of the 1960s by authors like Den34 �nison (1969), Herndon (1968), Kohl (1967) and Kozol (1967) were all urban chronicles. With the possible exception of Conroy's The Water is Wide (1972), tales of rural school deprivation never captured much national attention. According to some, most of the quality educational research on issues and problems in rural schooling has been done by educational anthropologists interested in the particular problems of educating various black, migrant, hispanic, and/or indian populations primarily in the south, southwest or Alaska. Typically, much of this work was done under the framework of understanding culturally different populations rather than aspects of ruralness per se, yet observations and analyses found in these works seem still the most useful for understanding many of the dynamics of school and community relationships in rural America (e.g. Precourt, 1982; Wax, Wax and Dumont, 1964; Spindler, 1977). Shirley Brice Heath (1983), for example, has studied and written on communication patterns and community life among two rural piedmont communities in the Carolinas. Based on her extensive fieldwork in these settings, she argued that compared to children from "townspeople" families, children she studied varied greatly with regard to the activities and language skills needed to succeed in school. For one of her communities, she argued, The sequence of habits Trackton children develop in learning language, telling stories, making metaphors, and seeing patterns across items and events do not fit the developmental patterns of either linguistic or cognitive growth reported in the literature on mainstream children, (p. 343) Perhaps the only state which has historically addressed problems of ethnic communities and rural issues in education has been Alaska. For example, Earnhardt (1977; 1982) edited two volumes on "Cross-Cultural Issues in Alaskan Education" which contained descriptions, critiques and analyses of existing and developing educational programs there. As well, Kleinfeld (1972) published an important study on teacher effectiveness variables with Eskimo and indian secondary school students. According to some, Alaska's early recognition that it would never be populous or urban has led to growing patterns of local control and administrative decentralization, and to more serious attention to educational policy issues attendant to ruralness, isolation, and economic development than has been the case in the rest of the country (Hecht, 1981). While much of the best scholarship on rural educational conditions has dealt extensively with self-contained minority populations in the U.S. and/or their problematic contact with the majority culture, more recent literature on rural education issues has focused on the defacto discrimination of rural minorities viz. compensatory programs which urban minorities are claimed 35 �to enjoy (e.g., De La Garza, 1979; Fratoe, 1978). Many of the current rural education activists have seemingly been attracted to this area by what they perceive to be the inequality of educational opportunity afforded handicapped populations in rural schools (Helge, 1981; Huebner, Cummings and McLesky, 1985). Central to most of their discussions is the purported inability of some rural schools to deliver special services for the handicapped and/or other special need student populations due to state and federal funding formulas which make diagnosis and intervention strategies difficult. That is, while mandated state and federal programs for special needs children in metropolitan districts can at least be moderately successful when schools share or rotate specialists, isolated rural districts frequently cannot share resources nearly as effectively. Typically, scholarship on this theme then takes one of two forms, either discussions of staffing needs and problems and/or calls for creative funding to better facilitate the needs of rural special populations (e.g., Huebner and Huberty, 1984; Trenary, 1980). Issues in the Staffing, Administration and Funding of Rural Schools Much current policy research and policy debate among rural education scholars focuses on staffing, administrative, and financing problems of rural schools in the U.S. For example, a number of authors have discussed the difficulty of attracting, training, and rewarding rural school teachers. In general, these studies suggest that teachers choosing to teach in rural areas have somewhat different occupational interests, perceive characteristics of their teaching situations somewhat differently, and may need different types of occupational incentives to keep them on the job than do teachers in metropolitan areas (e.g., Mathes and Carlson, 1986; Reed and Busby 1985). Some of this literature either documents or persuasively argues that the rural school teacher may need much more awareness of school/community relationships and either more general curricular preparation and/or a second specialization in small school districts and/or schools (Gjelten, 1978; Horn etal, 1985; Nachtigal, 1980). There is also great concern in parts of the rural personnel preparation literature for the lack of interest many teacher training institutions place on rural school teacher education (Horn, 1983; Muse, 1977). Discussions of providing equality of educational opportunity to economically disadvantaged populations and special needs students also typically turn to funding and administrative problems in the rural school literature. As a number of researchers have pointed out, school expenditures and resources in many rural school districts have different patterns than in metropolitan districts. For example, because many rural districts contain disproportionate numbers of economically disadvantaged students and have fewer local resources for education, funding formulas for rural school districts are frequently complicated, and the subject of continuing national and state 36 �departments of education debate. For example, in some states per pupil expenditures for instruction in rural districts have been shown to be lower than expenditures in metropolitan districts (DeYoung, 1985a; Rosenfeld, 1981), while costs for transportation and capital outlay have been much higher (Guthrie, 1979; Thompkins, 1977). Studies attempting to statistically document best ways of financing economically disadvantaged rural schools indicate that their diversity makes such general questions very difficult to answer in economic terms (Butler and Monk, 1985; Guthrie, 1979). For example, Rosenfeld (1981) argues that most research on rural schools, patterns of rural student achievement and educational opportunity have been performed at the school district level. However, while districts in some primarily rural states follow county boundaries, in other states school districts are based on townships, and in others both types of districts exist. Noting that comprehensive educational research at the school building level has yet to be performed, he argues that at best we need to know much more about school building dynamics before sound rural school policies can be implemented. In the meantime, he finds it ironic that because some rural school districts cannot meet state and federal guidelines in some programmatic areas, they typically find consolidation into bigger units a necessary fact of life even though the surrounding community may feel that the existing school arrangement promotes their view of educational excellence. Linking the conceptual and empirical discussions of ffbest ways" to finance rural school programs have been administrative and political struggles throughout this century. Among school administrators and state departments of education, the rural school problem during this period often focused on the composition, scale, and funding of "intermediate units (Cooper and Fitzwater, 1954). Significantly, the issue of ruralness seems entwined with "problems of smallness in American education is suggested by Rosenfeld: Size, of course, has implications for the number of programs and courses that can be supported in an area. It is also a major determinant of qualification for federal programs and inclusion in federal data gathering efforts. Many federal programs are targeted at population centers so that they may reach the maximum number of recipients. Consequently, many rural schools, districts and counties are too small to be funded. (1981, p.4) No discussion of the rural education literature would be complete without some overview of the school size debate which has historically and is currently a major theme in most if not all of the rural education literature. As indicated previously, the conventional wisdom among school administrators has been that bigger school units were almost always to be desired. Bigger schools, the claim has typically been, provide for more teacher specialization, course diversity, and cost effective supervision and materials 37 �acquisition. Perhaps the last important effort to prove that larger (secondary) schools were better schools was accomplished by James Conant in 1959. According to that work, more educative high schools were those whose graduating class had at least 100 students. However, many rural citizen groups, rural school spokespersons, and several national authorities have renewed their critique of the lfbigger is better" theme. While the century-long effort to consolidate most rural public schools became a real possibility after improved road construction in the 1940s and 1950s, the energy crisis of the 1970s and ever-present poor winter weather conditions in many states put limits on total school consolidation. Practically speaking, a number of studies have suggested that transportation and administration costs in many rural regions of the country tend to mitigate against school consolidation beyond a certain point. Similarly, just as some states have begun to accept the limitations of school consolidation in terms of cost effectiveness, several important studies have suggested the pedagogical limitations of large schools (e.g., Goodlad, 1984). Some authors, for example, have questioned the data used in the Conant study and his interpretation of them (Sher and Tompkins, 1977). Others contend that while there may be most effective minimum school sizes, there is probably a maximum one too (Goodlad, 1984). Barker and Gump (1964), for example, demonstrated that smaller schools have students who engage more frequently as actors in the life of the school. In a more recent study, Lindsay (1982) found that students in smaller high schools were more satisfied with their schools and attended class more regularly than did their counterparts in larger institutions. At least two of the most eminent scholars in rural education have very specifically articulated what they claim are the pedagogical benefits of smallness. Faith Dunne (1977) points out that small classrooms with extensive community support and high teacher expectations and rapport have always been called for in the national literature on school reform. However, while her studies have found such attributes to be typical in rural schools, school administrators bent on consolidation during the past several decades have conveniently overlooked theses "pluses" in their efforts to centralize school curricula and staffing patterns. Bruce Barker (1986) has gone further than Dunne in arguing that many if not most of the new wave of proposed school reforms have been pioneered and proven in many rural schools in the U.S., despite the efforts of mainstream educational theory to abandon them throughout the years. In his overview of small schools literature, he argues that such schools are being rediscovered as models for effective schools, in terms of more individualized instruction, cross-age groupings, more supportive home-school relationships, peer tutoring, etc. As this brief overview hopefully suggests, perhaps the major battleline in the rural school literature still forms around community control versus appropriate school size. Proponents of school consolidation and centralization 38 �have argued that many rural communities are too poor and/or too small to give their children adequate education. Supporters of local control argue that community life depends on the local school as a community resource, and with the proper funding formulas and decentralization, can be made viable both for community and individual academic achievement. In order to document the latter claim, alternative community-based strategies of school improvement not necessarily consistent with state mandated centralization and consolidation reforms have been very visible in the literature. For example, Paul Nachtigal's edited collection (1982) summarized over a dozen grassroots and foundation-sponsored attempts to save and enhance many rural school programs in the U.S. This reader in rural school innovation described how different citizen groups utilized experimental programs, national diffusion networks, leadership training strategies, and community building efforts via public education. And besides the Foxfire experience already mentioned, two other attempts to articulate how school and community life should be jointly enhanced were authored by Gjelten (1978) and Olsen (1954). While most of the rural school advocates speak positively about the virtues of small town community life, there has also been some literature potentially unflattering to rural communities, particularly in Appalachia. In these states, school consolidation policies in economically disadvantaged districts have occasionally given rise to very powerful school superintendents, and they frequently have been charged with using school employment practices to enhance the status of their friends and relatives, rather than to improve educational opportunities for district children (Ogletree, 1977; Sher, 1983; Shrag, 1966). As well, it is typically among disadvantaged rural populations where objections to "secular humanism" as taught by "outsiders" with "blasphemous" textbooks have also been at least partially successful (Cummings, et. al., 1977; Page and Clelland, 1978). According to such sources, disputes between local and state constituents over rural educational policies focus not only on administrative issues, but also on a set of complex auricular questions, where teachers may be seen to represent a relatively cosmopolitan outside world juxtaposed against other community leaders whose status and authority lie in more conservative religious and traditional habits. Comprehensive Efforts to Construct an Educational Research Agenda Given that more objective educational research and scholarship on rural education is in essence less than a decade old, it should be no surprise that available works in this area are relatively obscure, lacking in focus, and relatively unsophisticated by contemporary standards. And this phenomenon has led to several interesting discussions of what we do and don't know about rural schools, each typically also containing proposals for remedying the situa39 �tion (e.g., Stevens 1985) Many have argued that an essential first step in understanding the status of rural schooling lies in better empirical data bases to help researchers and policy makers get some working notions of the nature of rural education. In addition to the historical oversight of rural schools in the U.S., another major stumbling block to understanding their operations seems to be their great diversity. According to Helge (1985): The diversity of rural school subcultures is significant. For example, the geographic range includes remote islands and deserts as well as small clustered communities; an economic range from stable classic farm communities to depressed lower socioeconomic settings and high growth "boom or bust" communities; and a range of population sparsity from one-room school districts to schools located in small clustered towns or surrounded by other small districts, (p.1-2) One of the main problems in discussions of rural school research and policy involves a lack of consensus about appropriate definitions of rural education. For example, the National School Board Association defines a district as rural if: it is located in a rural setting, or the student enrollment is 2,500 or less, or it's an intermediate or county unit that serves primarily rural units, or it encounters problems related to areas with population density of fewer than 1000 (residents) per square mile. On the other hand, the National Rural Development Institute defines a rural district as one where: ...the number of inhabitants is less than 150 per square mile or when located in counties with 60% of the population living in communities no larger than 5000 inhabitants. Districts with more than 10,000 students and/or in (SMSA's) as defined by the Census are not considered rural. Several ambitious studies have been mounted during the past five years in an effort to establish some baseline data on the form and functioning of rural and small schools (Dunne and Carlsen, 1981; Helge, 1985; Hubel and Barker, 1986; Rosenfeld, 1981). Purposes of these comprehensive surveys were all directed at looking for common themes as articulated by various school personnel which might be used to construct rural education research and policy agendas, given earlier oversight and the geographical and financial differences between many rural school districts. Importantly, there seemed some consensus about these themes across the studies. 40 �Perhaps the best of these surveys was the one completed by Dunne and Carlsen, in that its focus was upon the perceived strengths and weaknesses of rural education around the country as reported by over one thousand teachers, administrators and school board members. Their final report also included eight case studies of small and rural schools in various parts of the country. In general, this study did find that many small and rural schools were strongly supported by their local communities, even more so than the national average. As well, three of the four greatest problems identified with public education around the nation were viewed as non-problematic by respondents in the Dunne and Carlsen study, emphasizing once again the distinctiveness of the rural and small school experience in the U.S. On the other hand, their research did suggest that many small schools continuously wrestle with some of the staffing and financing themes expressed in virtually all of the other comprehensive looks at problems of contemporary rural education in America. Education and Rural Development Just as in national assessments of student performance, economic disadvantage has been found to be systematically related to student underachievement in rural America, and especially in Appalachia (Weaver, 1977; DeYoung, 1985b). However, an interesting theme in much of the domestic and international rural education literature is a systematic discussion of the role of rural schools in vocational training and stimulating and/or enhancing local economic growth. Both of these topics have historically been seen in this literature, with the latter of even more concern in recent work. One reason this appears to be the case seems to reside in the post-high school opportunities of rural youth, many of whom do not go on to college and instead have traditionally sought vocational programs either in their high schools or in regional vocational education centers. Interestingly, many of the most widely recognized names in the scholarship on rural education have been particularly interested in this area. Hobbs (1979), for example, has described how successful rural schools were in the early twentieth century in terms of exporting skilled labor to urban areas for their development. At the same time, he argues, educational programs useful to America's farmers helped them usher in the age of mechanized farming upon which modernization has depended. As Fratoe (1979) points out, state and federal governments have been particularly active agents in rural education during the twentieth century by sponsoring three types of training programs relevant to rural development. These include(d): career and vocational programs sponsored by the Office of Education, several types of CETA programs targeted for various unemployed minority populations in rural areas, and various school extension programs (like 4H) designed to focus on topics like agriculture and home economics frequently not part of the public school curriculum. 41 �Rosenfeld (1983) and Sher (1977), on the other hand, have been particularly interested in the decline of rural economies during the past decade, and have proposed new ways of trying to link public education to economic development. Rosenfeld, for example, argues that the two primary thrusts of occupational training during the past three decades currently have little utility in rural America. No longer, he suggests, can either vocational agriculture programs or industrial education efforts be productive in the countryside, because mechanization has replaced most agricultural opportunities in rural America, and the textile, apparel, and metal fabrication industries are increasingly leaving this country for overseas locations. Both Rosenfeld and Sher argue that the public school needs to become a site with specific economic development interests, in that the public school curriculum and/or its extracurricular focus should be on fostering local small business development projects in partnership with local business or independently. While noting the possible political difficulties of achieving such programs in some rural communities, they also point out successful examples, such as Wigginton's various Foxfire enterprises. Conclusion Most if not all of the scholars who work in the area of rural and small schools tend to agree on several perspectives of the field. They all tend to agree, for example, that rural education in America has been a stepchild to other aims and interests of professional educators and researchers alike. Importantly, they also typically claim that administrative, curricular, and staffing solutions to educational problems in metropolitan America may or may not have utility for rural education. The demographic, economic, administrative, vocational and community differences and needs existing in many rural regions of the country, it is argued, demand more particular attention by educational researchers and policy makers if rural schools are ever to achieve their full potential. Educational research on rural and small schools has been minimal and marginal, it has been argued, for several reasons. Historically, the hope and expectation among educational professionals was that the demise of rural America and its schools was inevitable for a modern America. Subsequently, it was assumed that advances in curriculum and instruction based on social and administrative science would lead to one best system of benefit to all American schools. And when full-blown educational research and development efforts became important during the past thirty years, funded research primarily focused on problems of urban school districts in the U.S. Currently, the consensus among growing numbers of educational researchers and policy makers is that rural education deserves more particular attention than it has historically received. This is necessary, they claim, be42 �cause we now know that rural areas of the country have different and divergent needs; that past state and federal mandates have hindered as well as helped improvement of rural schools; and because local, state and federal governments are increasingly seeking to upgrade rural schools in efforts to attract and promote economic development. For their part, educational researchers have begun to call for more and more sophisticated research on the particular issues and needs of rural schools. Noting that rural communities frequently find their schools more satisfactory than do metropolitan ones, and observing that smallness may facilitate rather than inhibit educational excellence, there seems to be renewed interest in the possibilities of rural and small schools as educational models. This renewed interest, if not expertise, is clearly documented in the increasing number of published articles on rural education in mainstream educational journals and the emergence of at least three new journals specifically related to rural education, including Research in Rural Education, The Journal of Small and Rural Schools, and The Rural Educator. As well, many states now have their own clearinghouses on rural education and research, joined recently by the federally funded Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools, located in Las Cruces, New Mexico, at New Mexico State University. With particular regard to the historical and future development of meaningful educational policy in Appalachia, however, it could be argued that the situation is more problematic than on the national level. Having been identified early as a backward area, much of Appalachian public schooling was the target of various reforms from outside the region (DeYoung and Boyd, 1986; Silver and DeYoung, 1985). And even the most prestigious and respected private schools in Appalachia have been "fetched on". Most settlement schools and later college programs were typically operated by outsiders dedicated either to importing liberal arts education or to developing folk schools whose pedagogical and curricular forms originated elsewhere (Whisnant, 1983). More recent efforts to "improve" Appalachian schools have typically pitted national compensatory education programs against the vested interests of local school superintendents. Forced to choose between accepting federal programs designed to improve supposedly inferior childrearing techniques of Appalachian poor and/or accepting the inevitability of the educational status quo within an educational arena governed by the politics of school hiring suggests a less than desirable future for many Appalachian communities. And if current educational reform efforts further remove compensatory and entitlement programs for the schools and replace local politicians with state ones, how local communities will benefit is still unclear. The rhetoric notwithstanding, current educational reforms dedicated to the raising of test scores and attendance rates is tied to state and national educational investment strategies rather than to local community needs or issues. 43 �If there is any hope of redressing urban-oriented school history and reform in AppalacWa, it probably resides with the potential success of current grassroots movements linking rural education and community development to the rural farm crisis in this country, and/or to other regional study and policy interested groups which attempt to frame issues like education in political terms. Just like activists in Appalachian studies who are concerned about the politics of land ownership, water quality and health, the politics of education and the politics of school reform will have to be identified more visibly as issues in Appalachia in the future. 'Where we are going" in Appalachian education depends upon the role local communities play in the future. Lack of attention, or depending on the insights of professionals and/or state and federal politicians, will probably give us more of the same. I hope this is not the path that will be followed. A more complete overview of the status of American rural education scholarship is available in the authors article entitled "The Status of American Rural Education Research: An Integrated Review and Commentary/' which is forthcoming in Review of Educational Research. REFERENCES Barker, B. (1986). The Advantages of Small Schools. Las Cruces, New Mexico: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and SmaU Schools. ERIC doc ED 265988. Barker, B. & Muse, I. (1983). Research findings on K-12 and 1-12 Rural School Districts in the United States. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Rural Education Association. Manhatten, Kansas, Oct 16-18. Eric doc. ED 234973. Barker, R. & Gump, P., (1964). Big School Small School. Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press. Barnhardt, R. (1977). 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Garden City, New York: Anchor Press. 49 �PARTNERING FOR RESEARCH Convenor: Howard Dorgan, Appalachian State University Partnering with the Indigenous: Teaming With The Marshall Family to Study Old Regular Baptists Howard Dorgan, Appalachian State University Darvin Marshall, Coeburn, Virginia Ganell Marshall, Coeburn, Virginia Partnering for Research in Appalachia Howard Dorgan I became acquainted with Darvin and Ganell Marshall in 1982. That year they provided me my first contact with Old Regular Baptists, an Appalachian religious faction staunchly preserving worship traditions dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Prior to this work with the Marshalls, my own knowledge of Old Regulars had come from the film, "In the Good Old Fashioned Way/'1 and from essays by Ron Short and John Wallhausser, 'We Believe in the Family and the Old Regular Baptist Church" and "I Can Almost See Heaven From Here.1 My own field research before the spring of 1982 had been with Missionary, Union, Primitive, Regular, and Free Will Baptists in the northwest corner of North Carolina.3 In April, 1982,1 decided to devote the following summer to an examination of "Homecoming" traditions in the mountains of North Carolina. Preparatory for this project, I approached the news bureau at Appalachian State University to suggest a news release on my plans, one which would include an announcement that I wanted invitations to a number of these annual events. The article was written, and it ran in several small newspapers and specialty publications of the region, including the High Country Magazine*, a newsprint journal servicing the Southern Appalachian tourist trade. A copy of this article made its way to Florida where a sister of Darvin Marshall saw it. She in turn phoned Darvin at his home on Sandy Ridge, just north of Coeburn, Virginia. This serendipitous set of circumstances engendered a series of other actions that ultimately propelled me into a study of the Old Regular Baptists of Appalachia. 50 �About the Marshalls and Sandy Ridge Darvin and Ganell Marshall live on Virginia's Route 654, approximately two hundred yards from the Sandy Ridge Old Regular Baptist Church, the fellowship with which Darvin's late father had been affiliated. In 1982 Darvin and Ganell regularly attended the services of this church, although neither was then, or is now, a member of this or any other Old Regular fellowship. Nevertheless, over the years Darvin had developed a deep fondness for the small church and a profound love and respect for the "Old Time Way" traditions of this Baptist sect. He feels strongly that the customs, beliefs, and values of this faith should be documented, having inherited this attitude from his father who once helped a wandering scholar interested in Old Regular lined singing.5 One morning I was in my office at Appalachian State University when I received a call from Darvin. Would I like to visit some Old Regular Baptist churches, he asked. My answer was quick and in the affirmative. Darvin immediately sent me the published minutes of the 1981 annual meeting of the Union Association of Old Regulars, and at the same time invited me to attend a service at the Sandy Ridge church. As it turned out, however, the first Old Regular fellowship I visited was Bethany in Kingsport, Tennessee. Information supplied in those '81 minutes enabled me to contact Elder Foster Mullins, assistant moderator of that congregation, with whom I arranged that first visit. Later I traveled to Sandy Ridge, witnessed a service at that church, met Elder Raymond Smith (then the moderator of the Sandy Ridge fellowship, and an individual who has become strongly supportive of my research), stayed for a fellowship meal in what was once a two-room schoolhouse, but which has become the Sandy Ridge Community Center, and established my acquaintance with Darvin and his family. Since that time, the Marshalls and I have traveled over much of the Central Appalachian Plateau, visiting numerous Old Regular churches, with Darvin serving as my guide and contact, and with Ganell providing assistance in understanding Old Regular women and the Old Regular home and family. Sandy Ridge lies about seven miles due north of Coeburn, in Wise County. It is a beautiful area that so far displays—in any highly visible way—only minimal scarring from strip mining. The ugly cuts are there. In fact one particularly unattractive one exists about a mile below the Marshall's home. However, most of the stripped areas on this and surrounding ridges can be seen only if one gets off the main roads, and Appalachian nature is kind, quickly camouflaging many of the rude gashes. Still, the numerous harms of strip mining are felt on 'The Ridge," not the least of which is the problem of altered water flows and acidic run-offs. The Marshall's own water has become partially contaminated as the result of stripping on the ridge above their house. One of the best known residents of Sandy Ridge is Ralph Stanley, wide51 �ly recognized for his Blue Grass picking and singing. With a late brother this native musician recorded a number of albums of Appalachian folk tunes and is now a frequent guest on such respected traditional music programs as "Austin City Limits." Other residents of this ridge tend to be from a sturdy, yeoman farmer heritage, most of Scotch-Irish descent, and many representing families that have occupied this land for a number of generations. Marshalls, for example, have been in southwest Virginia since the late seventeen hundreds, initially possessing land granted for service in the Revolutionary War. Unfortunately many of the present occupants of the ridge inherited their holdings with the mineral rights already sold to coal companies, transactions that have victimized several generations of these ridge dwellers. A good portion of the present owners of this land now work for the coal companies, as miners, haulers, large machinery operators, etc. Darvin Marshall spent his last working years in a bank in Coeburn, a job from which he took early retirement because of a major heart attack. Ganell has always been a housewife, but now she also works the craft fair business, selling corn-shuck dolls that she makes in the basement of her home. Both of the Marshalls possess a deep appreciation for their cultural heritage, and they have adopted Appalachian studies somewhat as a hobby. In the process they have also adopted my research. The result has been a partnership which has assisted my entrance into the semiclosed world of Old Regularism. This paper examines some obvious advantages of partnering with the indigenous for Old Regular research and focuses on the particular contributions of the Marshalls to this specific study. Contributions of the Marshalls The advantages of working with someone like the Marshalls in the study of Old Regulars are numerous, not the least of which is the fact that these churches are very difficult to locate without someone familiar with the region as your guide. Not only are the buildings often tucked away from main roads, but they are remarkably inconspicuous. Seldom will they have steeples or other architectural features, such as stained glass windows, to identify them clearly as houses of worship. In addition, the familiar church marquee, announcing a minister and schedule of services, is not a feature of Old Regular meeting houses. Furthermore, large signs are traditionally not characteristic of these churches, either down on the road or on the front of the building. There usually is a sign, but only a very modest one that announces the name of the church and the year it was founded. One result of all this is that a wouldbe visitor to an Old Regular church frequently has to park his or her car on the side of the road and walk right up in front of the respective meeting house before being certain of the building's identity. 52 �Darvin and I have now located fifteen associations of Old Regular churches: New Salem (the mother of them all), Union (the second oldest, but first in total number of fellowships), Thornton Union, two Indian Bottom groups, two Mountain Associations, Sardis, Old Friendship, Friendship, Philadelphia, Northern New Salem, Mud River, Bethel, and Mountain Liberty (the most recently formed of the lot). There may be a sixteenth group, the Kyova Association, which once flourished in West Virginia; but neither Darvin or I have been able to establish that this cluster still exists, at least as true Old Regular fellowships. A seventeenth group, the Cumberland Association, once operated in the Wise County region of Virginia, but these churches abandoned7 their affiliation with Old Regularism. Darvin has mapped the general boundaries of eight of these associations and is making rapid progress in locating the individual churches within each of these clusters. This research is of course valuable to me, and its worth is increased several fold when Darvin is able to guide me through a maze of narrow mountain roads directly to a respective church. Early in my field work, I learned that it was no easy matter to find a particular meeting house simply by following directions given by the fellowship's moderator or clerk. Most researchers who have worked extensively with indigenous Appalachians realize that these people tend to give directions not by road numbers and highway signs, but by natural geographical features of the land-ridges, hollows, creeks, rivers, bottoms, forks, etc. I have often been amused at the close of Old Regular services when visiting elders give their "appointments," announcements during which the meeting Sundays of their home churches are given, along with directions to the respective houses of worship. What one usually hears are recitations of strings of geographical features, each appended to an identifying ablative (Caney Ridge, Turkey Creek, Cedar Bottom, Bent Branch, Rocky Fork), all followed by the apparently obligatory conclusion, "You can't miss it." Needless to say, I found that I could frequently "miss it," unless the Marshalls were showing the way or actually driving me to the spot. Locating a church, however, is obviously just the first step: The researcher must meet the people, become accepted as a nonthreatening and friendly agent, and learn how to talk to the various elements in the fellowship. Again the Marshalls have often made the difference between success and failure, giving my work an aura of acceptability and providing information critical to determining viable strategies of approach. Wherever we go Darvin works the crowd before and after the service, speaking enthusiastically to church leaders about my study, selling the idea that Old Regularism must be documented. In addition, he collects information applicable to other visitations—types of services scheduled, location of churches, names of contact persons, and the like. In a very real sense, Darvin and Ganell have become participating partners in my research and must eventually share in any triumphs arising from it. Ganell's role in all of this has centered on providing me a better under53 �standing of the Old Regular woman and the Old Regular family. After one of my early presentations on gender roles in Old Regularism, Pat Beaver warned that I might never capture the true essence of the Old Regular woman without a female assistant who could relate to these matrons. To a large degree, Ganell has become that assistant, helping me appreciate better the feminine point of view within Old Regularism. In particular, she has persistently warned me about moving toward stereotypes when discussing some of the restrictions placed upon the appearance and behavior of these women. I have had somewhat of a tendency to do that when examining restrictions concerning Old Regular women's hair, dress, participation in worship, and voice in church governance; but Ganell is always there to pull me back from generalizations that become too sweeping. It is just too easy for an outsider to see these Old Regular women solely in terms of their uncut hair, their emotional shouting in services, their modest dress styles, their voiceless position in church politics, their subservient or nonexistent role in liturgical functions, and their standback-and-wait attentiveness to males during after-service fellowship meals. The subtle ways in which they exert themselves in home, community, and church are more difficult to see and understand, but Ganell has frequently focused my attention on these less obvious female wieldings of power and influence. Both Darvin and Ganell have read the notes I have written after each visitation and the several essays I have authored about Old Regulars, and their careful scrutinizations of these materials have provided a valuable check on any possible inaccuracies and misinterpretations. In this process they haven't tried to move me toward unrealistically positive attitudes, just as they haven't exposed me only to the more modern associations and fellowships. Old Regular theology constitutes a particularly difficult area for total understanding, primarily because there is so little of the faith's doctrine that has been expressed in precise creedal form. Each association publishes its articles of faith in its annual minutes, but these statements are sketchy in character and leave wide areas for interpretation. There is no Old Regular document that delineates the faith theology in as complete an exposition, for example, as the Philadelphia Confession did for eighteenth century Regular Baptists, and many Old Regular elders struggle as much in expressing the secf s precise beliefs as do outsiders. An individual article of faith becomes clearer, however, when one understands the historical environments in which it was forged, including the countermovement to which it was a response. Therefore, during evenings spent in the Marshalls' home, Darvin and I have wandered widely over both the historical and theological developments of Old Regularism. Doctrinal understandings gained during these sessions have later been tested in discussions with such Old Regular leaders as Elder Edwin May, Moderator of the Sardis Association. During theological discussions Ganell stands to the side, saying that the exposition of doctrine is Darvin's "gift." However, I think I see in her actions 54 �in this regard simply a deference to the traditional male role in debating doctrinal matters. Still, Darvin does know his Bible, and is usually able to identify the scripture used in justification of Old Regular theology. The Marshalls not only have helped me in knowing about Old Regulars, but they also have contributed heavily to my understanding of the entire cultural and geographical environment within which Old Regularism exists. The long drives from Sandy Ridge to churches in Kentucky or other areas of Virginia have provided opportunity for discussions of mining in Appalachia; the ethnography of the people; the nomenclature of ridges, creeks, and bottoms; politics of coal; education in the mountains; identification of Appalachian values; and a host of similar topics. In addition, these hours of travel have often been spent in examinations of the Appalachian image, with both Darvin and Ganell expressing their concerns for the stereotypes generally associated with this image. They enjoy speaking against the tendency in mass media— and in some Appalachian scholarship—to concentrate on the bleak scenes of economic decay in the old mining camps, the suggestions of cultural and educational backwardness, the Hatfield and McCoy depictions of social mores, the Deliverance images of Appalachian character, and the "snakehandling-is-the-mode" generalizations about Appalachian religious traditions. Concerns such as these no doubt stand behind Ganell's insistence that I look beyond the surface eccentricities of Old Regularism (women not being allowed to cut their hair) to the deeper values and precepts of the faith. Darvin, on the other hand, hopes I will see beauty, virtue, and strength of character in the denomination's tenacious preservations of customs and beliefs, history wed to a spiritual mission. Concluding Observations I might have been able to establish contact with Old Regularism without the assistance of Darvin and Ganell, but I would have been forced to move more slowly than I have been able to do as a result of their help. In addition, I am certain that I would not have felt as confident in my analyses had I not formed this partnership for research. Therefore, I view this linking with the Marshalls as having been an essential element of any success experienced in this project. There are dangers in such methods: Scholarly objectivity could become subverted by friendships, conclusions that might offend could be avoided, exposure to the phenomenon being studied could become highly selective, and general emotional contact with subject matter could become intensified. These are problems faced by every student of humanity and human institutions, since we form bonds so quickly; but this same closeness and empathic identification can endow the investigator with special sensitivities needed for total understanding. My partnership with the Marshalls has, by my percep55 �tion, certainly aided my search for understanding ENDNOTES 1. Appalshop Films, Whitesburg, Kentucky, 1973. 2. Southern Exposure, IV (No. 3), 60-65; Katallasete, (Springl983), 2-10. 3. See Howard Dorgan, Giving Glory to God in Appalachia: Worship Practices of Six Baptist Subdenominations (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1987). 4. 'Homecoming/1 High Country Magazine, April 21,1982. 5. I received this story from Darvin Marshall, but I have no details concerning the event. 6. "The Stanley Brothers of Vkginia," Vols. I-IV (Floyd.Virginia: Produced by Country Records, 1976). 7. The Cumberland Association once corresponded with the Mountain Liberty Association, Minutes of the Mountain Liberty Association, 1973 (Published by the Association, 1973), 5. 8. After a presentation on Old Regular gender roles, presented at the Women's Studies Sandwich Seminar, Appalachian State University, 1986. 9. Interview, Abingdon, Virginia, Feb. 15,1985. 56 �REEVALUATING WOMEN'S ROLES Convenor: Malinda Crutchfield, Appalachian Consortium From: "Fotched-On" Women To The New Feminism: A Review of Women in Social Service Delivery for Women in Appalachia Karen Tice, Western Carolina University Albie Pabon, Western Carolina University Gender and Class: The Social Reality of Low Income Appalachian Mothers Judith Ivy Rene, University of Tennessee Coalmining Women In Appalachia Carolyn Doyle, Radford University Can The Means Make The Ends Meet? The Personal Context Of Work In The Lives Of Watauga County Craf tswomen Deborah J. Thompson, Appalachian State University Polarities and Consciousness: The Distinctive Class/Gender Consciousness of Appalachian Coalminers and Their Wives Michael Yarrow, Ithaca College Ruth Yarrow, Beckley, West Virginia From "Fotched-on Women" to the New Feminist Practice: Women and Social Work in Appalachia by Karen W. Tice and Albie Pabon "To live among people in a model home, to show them by example the advantages of cleanness, neatness, and order, and to inspire them to use pure language and lead pure Christian lives will be our effort, hoping thereby to elevate and uplift them." Settlement House Worker, 1901 (quoted in Whisnant, 1983:29). "You are really just pioneering in this thing. That's what keeps me going." Director of a Battered Woman's Program in Appalachia, 1987. Historically, women were a major force in the early social uplift enterprises in Appalachia. Today, they continue their catalytic roles in ch^llenging community and family norms in the region. This paper will examine continuities and change in the experiences of women social activists in Appalachia. Attention will be given to comparison between women's involvement in the early settlement house movement and women involved in 57 �today's efforts around issues involving battered women and rape. Whether the ideological underpinnings of these mobilization efforts, past and present, have been conservative or progressive has been a matter of considerable debate. In his study of the politics of culture in Appalachia, All That is Native and Fine, David Whisnant has extensively critiqued the work of women in early uplift efforts, whom he terms the "fotched-on women," e.g., women from outside Appalachia who were motivated by cultural and revivalistic values to uplift the mountain people. He characterizes women settlement school leaders such as Katherine Petit and May Stone as agents of modernization who imported mass "culture" to the mountains in the form of manners, dress, eating habits, home decoration, and breeding (Whisnant, 1983:45). Surely the South during the period 1870 to 1930 was no progressive paradise for activist women. Yet Whisnant downplays the significant challenges that movement women of this era raised to traditional conceptions of women's sphere. With morality as the initial root and continued impetus for their social change efforts, women succeeded in broadening women's participation in community life in the rural mountains by their involvement in settlement schools, missionary societies, and the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Participation in such organizations provided a forum for training women as organizers and for legitimating women's activism in shaping society. Although limited in political vision by their class positions and by a hostile environment and rigid in perpetuating a constricted definition of women's proper role, "fotched-on women," nonetheless, provided a legacy and history for today's rural women activists in Appalachia. In the name of God, family, temperance, literature, health, and tradition, women set out in large numbers to expand their housekeeping role for the inner sanctum of the home to the community. With their beginnings in missionary societies, in groups such as the W.C.T.U. with 800,000 members and the general federation of women's clubs with one million members, in settlement houses and schools, and in suffrage societies, women's visibility and social consciousness were intensified. Their range of issues, strategies, and philosophies was diverse, often in response to the local climate in which mobilization was occurring. Women contributed to the development of Sunday schools, initiated prison reforms, child labor reforms, sanitation improvements, compulsory education, and struggled to reduce adult illiteracy. Under the protective canopy of spreading the social gospel and protecting the Christian middle class home, women learned many of the essential organizing skills from lobbying to recruitment that helped to loosen the confining shackles of traditional conceptions of southern womanhood. As Sallie Sims Gotten, a leader in the North Carolina women's club movement summed up, "the new force in modern civilization is educated, Christianized, organized womanhood" (quoted in Scott, 1984:164). 58 �Unlike the work of their urban counterparts, much of the early efforts of women in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky concentrated on establishing craft-oriented industries such as Mrs. Vanderbilt's craft sales cooperative in Asheville and Frances Goodrich's craft cooperative, also in North Carolina. Along with cooking instruction, sewing lessons, the importance of washing and putting away the dishes, and music classes, an awareness of the larger ravages of rapid industrialization was sowed. As Alice Kessler-Harris (1981:115) points out, "settlement workers out of necessity turned from demonstrating virtue to actively participating in social and political life." She observes that "to remedy poverty, activist women had to deal with unemployment; to promote cleanliness they had to confront discriminatory plans for sewage conditions that sapped energy and destroyed morale" (p. 115). A comment by Frances Willard, leader of the W.C.T.U., in a speech in Atlanta in 1890 reveals the radical potential such reform efforts implied. Acknowledging that labor unions were the hope of the future and urging upon industry a consideration of profit sharing, Willard said, "If this is to teach socialism, then let it be so" (quoted in Scott, 1984:208). Similarly, the president of the Tennessee League of Women Voters remarked that "some good souls are pleased to call our ideas socialistic, yet every clear thinking, right feeling, and high minded man and woman should consecrate his best talents to the gradual reorganization of society, national and international" (quoted in Scott, 227). In North Carolina, women were demanding a survey of the working conditions of women in the textile mills. As Scott (p. 205) sums up, "Even the fragmentary evidence here... is enough to make clear that women had their own voice, though possibly its tone concealed its substance." Whisnant's critique of the role of "fotched-on" women in Appalachia primarily consists of their avoidance of the issue of the class inequities of industrialization in the southern mountains. Instead, they artificially laid on a definition of social change as a matter of niceties, manners, morals, or a "politics of politeness." As Whisnant states, "Culture (as the women defined it in limited and romantic terms) became a diversion, a substitute for engaging with political and economic forces, processes, and institutions that were altering the entire basis of individual identity and social organization in the mountains" (p. 15). He adds that "Thus to this day there are a thousand people who know that mountaineers weave coverlets and sing ballads for every one who knows that millions of them have been industrial workers and have organized unions and picketed the state and national capitals" (p. J3). Yet to so reduce women's work in the settlement schools, the W.C.T.U., and women's clubs as "depoliticized not iustm,c^)Btent1?yt in method of reform" (Whisnfmtj, pA&tf810^^ l^6ie^fi^S^ple>atres of women's movement work as well as the constraints imposed by rigidj^ender roles . As KesslerHarris (p. 114) ^ints out in the case of f^^ ''the sense of collective feminine values as an active force for achieving social change cannot be 59 �minimized.11 Additionally, the legitimation of women's active participation in shaping community and social life was assured. As the W.C.T.U. proclaimed, "women will bless and brighten every place she enters and she will enter every place" (quoted in Kessler-Harris, p. 113). Such early activities not only provided outlets for women to use their voices, learn organizing skills, extend values of the home into the world of men but also served as a diving board for women to plunge into struggles for social and economic justice. Today, the work of battered women advocates in Appalachia continues the legacy of confronting the social order, often hampered as their historical counterparts were by the established order, along with new tightrope balancing acts required by professionalization pressures, lack of funding, and community defensiveness. Roots of the Battered Women's Movement The battered women's movement developed in a social climate filled with self-help projects, feminist organizing, and challenges to the idea that chastisement was needed to keep women in line. The feminist movement provided a platform and an atmosphere for asking questions about women's rights to control their bodies and lives without self-blame. The feminist movement provided the impetus for alerting social consciousness to gender oppression and provided an opportunity for women to gain organizing skills useful for establishing programs for battered women. The first shelters in the United States were established in large metropolitan areas, drawing upon the energy and expertise of feminist-based networks. "In St. Paul, Minnesota in 1971, one of the earliest shelters in the United States, Women Advocates, grew out of a consciousness-raising group" (Schechter, 1982:33). "Transition House in Cambridge, Massachusetts was started by two former battered women and two former members of Cell 16, one of Boston's early radical feminist groups" (Schechter, p. 34). These early prototypes would serve as blueprints for later programs and many of their innovations in structure, content, and analysis would shape the tone, style, and practice of later programs. Their spirit of innovation and an ongoing process of defining and specifying feminist praxis continue today. A multiplicity of ideologies characterized the early movement organizers in their explanations of the oppression and subordination of women and in their solutions to violence against women. Many believed that equality could be achieved with men by reforming existing institutions and systems. More radical feminists saw battering as stemming from unequal power relations within the home and believed that only through profound transformations in the political and social arena would violence against women end (Schechter, pp. 45-51). Feminist practice tenets often included an emphasis on consensual 60 �decision-making rather than upon voting, a commitment to politicizing the personal, and the importance of women's culture for political change and struggle. Many battered women's organizations felt that it was paramount to preserve an autonomous women's space, separate from male control and influence. Location of the program, however, became an important determinant of program politics as the movement spread. In more rural and conservative communities, feminism was synonymous with "home-breakers," lesbians, and subversives undermining the American Way. Often, there were fewer allies to choose from pre-established feminist groups; consequently, modification of more urban-based feminist politics occurred. After 1976, hundreds of programs were established with CETA funds as well as with volunteer resources. Many strains erupted as programs faced numerous pressures and dilemmas and struggled to uphold vague vestiges of feminist praxis. They addressed many questions. How to gain funding without extolling a tax on autonomy? How strong a commitment should be made to hiring formerly battered women? How important are professional credentials for staff? How strongly must programs adhere to a commitment to a social change model as opposed to a mental health frame of reference? How do organizations cope with the daily pressures caused by problems of financial survival? What roles should advisory and governing boards play and who should be represented on these boards? How do organizations develop consistent politics while responding to crisis calls and dealing with local power structures? How do feminist and egalitarian values relate to status and salary matters? How committed to racial and ethnic diversity among staffmembers should a program be? How do programs gain and how far do they go to win community legitimacy? How do they deal with competition among programs for limited resources? Is there allegiance to a model of staff as helpers and experts and to battered women as clients? Is battering to be explained by a family pathology model or one that stresses the oppression of women? Is the clinical terminology "family violence" or the feminist terminology 'Mattered women" to be the organization's calling card? What process and structure best support movement goals? These questions still reflect the growing pains and on-going struggles of today's organizations. Flexibility has been and will continue to be essential for the survival of women's organizations. Many programs have had to recontextualize program pojitics to convince skeptical communities of the need for their services. Women's Advocates was asked to change its name to something less inflammatory (Schechter, p. 63). In rural areas, especially, the need to become embedded within the community fabric has necessitated new protective strategies. For what works in New York City, Boston, and Chicago cannot be imported directly to the rural southern mountains. Thus some of the problems which confronted early southern women activists and "fotched-on" women can be discerned in today's Appalachian battered women's advocates. In order to explore the dynamics of region and locale on the structure 61 �and politics of women activist organizations, we have interviewed workers in four battered women's programs in four different rural Appalachian communities. Battered-Women's Programs in Appalachia Today In 1978, at the zenith of the development of movement based programs, a three-county joint effort was initiated to establish a "place where physically abused women could hide" in one rural section of the Appalachian mountain region. Two of the current programs we interviewed re-emerged in 1984 and 1985 out of this initial effort. A post-mortem analysis of this original effort, conducted by one of the early program organizers, highlights many of the tensions and strains that programs continue to confront today in rural Appalachia. The initial organizing effort was conducted by professional social service providers described as "a board of women dedicated to a philosophy that the program would not have the normal hierarchical structure nor would it be run like men" would run it. Leadership was suspect and it was subtly discouraged. The board utilized a collaborative management model; decision-making was by consensus. A "coordinator" was hired and "she was the glue that held it all together." The coordinator later left because of board troubles. When a president of the board became the new coordinator, old and new tensions flared. The relationship between the board and staff continued to be at the root of problems. According to the post-mortem analyst, "It was like hiring your employer and telling him what to do." Men were brought onto the board for leadership purposes. Other strains noted in the report included the observation that battered women were resistant to asking for help from professionals, and were intimidated by "helpers who don't sound like us." The report also notes that "volunteers were outsiders and transients who didn't know what was going on here. There is sometimes an ethnocentric desire to raise the locals up to our standards." Ambivalent feelings about power and authority, inadequate models for women's roles within the organization, blurred areas of responsibility, paranoia of strong leadership, lack of job descriptions, consensus decisionmaking as an inefficient method taking too much time and energy, county rivalries, and funding crises were all perceived as eroding feelings of success and leading to insecurity and a sense of impermanency. The tri-county unit slowly eroded and was dismantled by 1982. As the report summed up, "Our goals were set during a time of easy money and radical change. The political and social climate has since changed." The impact of such climatic changes on women's practice styles is the focus of the following sections. 62 �Overview of Individual Programs Each of the four programs we interviewed began operations in the period of 1982 to 1985. These start-up dates tell us much about organizational experience and organizational politics. The women's movement was at a lower ebb then than in 1978. The lack of feminist networks in most rural Appalachian counties helped to shape the development and philosophy of these programs. Four interrelated factors help to account for what shape the programs took: boards, staffing, approaches to the community, and feminist connections. A strong relation exists between the rural context and the dimensions of organizational politics both within programs and within communities. The dominant force in the establishment and maintenance of each of the battered-women's programs we examined has come from professional and community service providers. Each program began with small state grants and funding efforts. One program, for instance, conducted a raffle for an afghan and made $133.00. The director reports, "My mom won it; she was encouraged to buy so many tickets." Another program began with a $13,000.00 grant and hired a part-time director for $7,500 who worked full-time to get things going. Each of these programs began by offering telephone crisis services and provided shelter by working with local motels or renting a house. Today three of them own or rent a shelter facility while one continues to provide shelter at a local motel. Annual operating budgets range today from $60,000 to $114,000. Funding sources include federal, state, and local monies as well as foundations and fundraisers. Programs have conducted dances, fashion shows, golf tournaments, and phone-athons in search of additional funds. The funding climate is only one of the great difficulties activist women face in Appalachia. Only $450,000 was allocated for battered-women's services for the state as a whole in the locality studied. In contrast, Massachusetts allocated $8300,000 to services for battered women the same year. This funding disparity constricts the political vision of rural programs as energy is directed to maintaining basic skeletal services. Paid staff ranges from two and 2/3 to four. All programs rely heavily on volunteers to provide services with most of the programs reporting a core of eight volunteers. Small budgets and small staffs, along with the rural environments of the programs, shape their political missions. Politics from Within: Structure and Internal Dynamics Board composition is often a key indicator of organizational politics. Each of the women's programs surveyed had men on their boards. Two of them had male board chairs. One program stated that it seeks a balance with no more than 50% males at a time. Only one program had an ex-battered 63 �woman represented on the board; the same program was also the only one with an active service volunteer on the board. In women's service organizations we have been familiar with outside the mountains, men have not been on boards since board membership is viewed as an important opportunity to promote women's leadership. Additionally, several of the programs emphasized the need for boards to possess "social polish." As one program director stated, "We need to be business-minded as an agency and look to people in the community who have power and influence and who can get to those people with money." Another said, ffWe needed the protection; especially at first, I got threatening phone calls at home." Since in these programs boards determine policy, board composition is an important influence on program politics. The program staff we interviewed talked extensively about board activities. "It's like a Chinese fire drill. The board doesn't know what it needs until it happens." Boards often make policy under duress. trWe are all starting out green. We can get better attendance from our women. Our board has done lots of soulsearching about hierarchy, power, control." Tensions erupt over director-board relations, board representation, and political strategy. Issues of personnel policy are often the most contested terrains. In each of the programs surveyed, an informal interpretation of board-written policy exists among staffers. All programs described board-staff relations as amicable but as one program director put it, "We haven't come to any real crunch yet." The hiring of staff is a decision ultimately made by boards with varying degrees of input from staff. Board-staff disagreements over hiring have occurred in two of the programs. Three of the programs report that professional degrees for staffmembers are somewhat important but not the sole criterion. Most of the staff in each of the organizations have professional degrees. Out of twelve total staff members in the four programs, only five were from the communities served. One of the programs accounted for three of the five "locals." One of the programs serving a large population of Native Americans had no Native American staffmembers. As one staffer put it, "We have never had such a foreign crowd around here. Yet none of us were summer residents. We moved here and got right into the community and thaf s made all the difference." One program director noted that the "rapid Northern clip" of one staffer was an issue for the local community. Problems from Outside: The Quicksand of Funding, Community Legitimacy, and Feminist Commitment Each of the programs we studied share a similar philosophical approach to their local communities. This approach can be characterized as cautious and low key. "Our focus has been to be friendly but to chip away slowly." "It's a small town and we often see them socially." The extensive comments of one 64 �director reveal the particular difficulties and constraints women activists face in small, rural communities: "We play the game. We don't step on toes. We all have to live together, but there comes a point when you have to take a stance. Especially in a community like this, we work within the system. We are safe if we have a good relationship with the community. If we are a thorn in the side of the male population, we endanger our women. We are a business and very political. We walk the fence. If you bristle lots of people, then you can't bring up issues again for three or four years." Another reports that they "work hard to dispel the image that we are militant man-hating lesbians. There are people who would love to hang that label on us." Despite their cautious approaches, these programs still rock the boat. Some of the tensions that have erupted include neighbors protesting the location of a shelter on their street. "These neighbors were the same people who originally donated blankets and sheets. Now they yell, 'We don't want white trash here.'" Other issues include ruffled feathers at the courthouse, cases involving abusers who have power and status in the community, and competition with mainstream agencies over turf. One program staffer described her conflict with agency directors as "arm wrestling with two male directors." Each of the programs sees their rural contexts as posing special problems for their survival and work. Transportation, lack of phones, a lesser tax base for funding than in metropolitan areas, and the lack of political clout and voting constituency statewide given the low populations of the counties served were some of the problems mentioned. Additionally, underemployment and unemployment in the localities were discussed. One of the counties served had a medium income of only $6,000 in 1987. Strong desire on the part of many local women to stay put because of regional ties and allegiance to the land was also perceived as a special factor influencing service options. Program directors mentioned problems of isolation, especially during their start-up phase. One program consulted battered-women workers in an urban program for advice in setting up 24-hour crisis coverage. Reports the director: "They told me they were using an answering service. We don't have anything like that here." Other constraints mentioned were the trial courts and the problem of not being able to generate as many client statistics as urban programs for funding. Speaking of their rural location, one program staffer said, "I see our location as a blessing and a hindrance." Lack of anonymity is one such mixed blessing. Each of the programs has carefully cultivated community credibility. Some have taken referrals for service not related to their mission in order to cement relationships within the community. Another has baked cookies for the police department as a peace offering to smooth out a problematic situation. All of the programs have invested much time and energy in strategizing to win community support and in responding to legitimation crises. Without an extensive women's constituency and a strong feminist base 65 �of support, community approval is essential to program survival. The strong need to gain and maintain community support has tended to soften the feminist thrust of these programs and it has resulted in some distancing from the feminist movement. In response to questions regarding feelings toward the women's movement, many of the staff members were concerned about the "prolesbian" stances associated with feminism. They perceive that an emphasis on such issues would be polarizing in their communities. One program director states, Tm not from any feminist theory background. Consensus theory doesn't work for me." In each of the programs, concern was expressed over "feminist tactics." As one worker said, Tm not an activist. My approach is different than marching. To continue to make change within the system, we can't be pushy. We have to be tactful." Another states, "We have to be low-key here. I have to choose my issues; we are further behind in this community. We are the only thing for women. We are leaders yet we can't change the world here—just educate them that there is a different way. In sum, workers in these agencies tend to agree: "We don't take a radical feminist stance." Summary In a less than ideal environment given the lack of a funding base and an inability to gather support from alliances with other feminist groups due to their absence —battered-women's programs in rural Appalachia nonetheless produce a significant ideological challenge to male violence and help to shape institutional responses to battered women. With their entry in local organizations such as Rotary Clubs, these programs, as Schechter (1982:320) points out for programs elsewhere, have "raised a symbol for freeing women from brutality that has captured the attention of a far wider network than feminist." As with early women organizers in the South, the obstacles and contradictions movement women face must be considered. The fact that the strategies for change may differ from "Take Back the Night" marches in large cities to fashion shows in rural communities does not undermine the fact that both are effectively challenging the status quo of male privilege. As Schechter (p. 320) points out, "the battered women movement has effectively used models built upon moral persuasion, consciousness-raising, and public education. The movement took the facts of women's daily lives, politically reinterpreted them, and insisted upon concrete changes." In the tradition of early organizing women, today's counterparts continue in their adaptations to the local climate. Many of the problems that plague rural-based programs are no strangers to urban programs nor to the feminist movement. Amidst a backdrop of fiscal cutbacks and reactionary backlash, the role of men in the movement, leadership dilemmas, the importance of expediency, and the correct process and tactics for change are ongoing questions for women involved in social 66 �change activities. As Schechter (p. 291) has stated, 'To take on the tasks ahead, the battered women movement needs to strengthen itself internally. The organization must develop visions of the future, clarify why they want to move in these directions, and devise concrete plans for getting there. Individual programs need to devote significant energy in solving organizational problems and clarifying structure and process." The politics of women's organizations do not remain static nor are they clear-cut. Their process of development is evolutionary. As with the early women organizers in Appalachia, the labels of "conservative" or "progressive" cannot be easily affixed. REFERENCES Kessler-Harris, Alice. Women Have Always Worked. NY: Feminist Press, 1981. Schechter, Susan. Women and Male Violence: The Visions and Struggles of the Battered Women's Movement. Boston: South End Press, 1982. Scott, Anne. Making the Invisible Women Visible. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984. Sullivan, Gail. "Cooptation of Alternative Services: The Battered Women's Movement as a Case Study." Catalyst: A Socialist Journal of the Social Services. Volume IV, 2 (1982): 39-58. Tierney, Kathleen. "The Battered Women's Movement and the Creation of the Wife Beating Problem." Social Problems. Volume 29,3 (February) 1982: 207-20. Whisnant, David. All That Is Native and Fine. Chapel HU1: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. 67 �POETRY READING Convenor: Roberta Herrin, East Tennessee State University "The Women of Brasstown" Bettie Sellers, Young Harris College Yearning Toward Home and Its Traditions Bennie Lee Sinclair, Cleveland, South Carolina October Duck Rita S. Quillen, East Tennessee State University Selected Works From Watauga Draw Down Don Johnson, East Tenneessee State University Yearning Toward Home and Its Traditions The idea of "home" is central to Appalachian culture, whether we refer to the region as "home," or the individual house as "home." Our churches have "homecomings," our families have reunions at the Someplace." In South Carolina, the upstate Craig family has an annual gathering on the shore of Lake Keowee-Toxaway, on a point closest to the ancestral home now inundated by nuclear power plant lake waters. Today such fthomesickness" takes many unique forms in our mountains. Families who sold their land to follow the job market find themselves unable to buy back into their native region, land prices having escalated to be affordable only to "outlanders." Much of the poetry that I write deals with the theme of yearning toward home and its traditions. Decoration Day This first Sunday in June, this green first Sabbath of June, has long been designated for the cleaning of graves. Each program is the same: everyone brings rake, hoe, some flowers, and, after preaching, climbs this stubbled hill to find wiregrass and weeds have taken ground since June's first Sunday past; wild vines and briars choke the rose and dahlia left of last year's tending. Each pilgrim as of age assumes his role: the old kneed deeply in ancestral 68 �dust, upending spiny threats upon their own sure home, while those of lesser urgency resolve themselves unmossing faded elegiacs. It is the young who take no part. Escaping one by one to ride the afternoon, they do not hear the gentle chime of hand-tool hitting rock; this knelling for green bones as well as brittle. The Mourning Man (My Father-in-law At Sixty-Three) When he was a boy in north Georgia an old horse faltered and lay, unmissed, until fur drifted back to him in tufts, out of dried carcass. Now, it is he who breaks, clogging a city. Even his wife is thinning, in her own way. Sitting before the screen, she no longer eats, or laughs at fresh spring bodies leaping for him off vases; out of the magazines. And so he studies how we young propose ourselves without shame, and at night he examines his dream that we scavenge what he has shed, stringing it out on our clotheslines. If he ran stripped and alone, girls would collect like moths at the windows, needing his light, but afraid. Panting, he sprawls among the dark hedges. He knows rats nest in what he cannot save. In the mornings, when she turns, her wasted rib-cage sings for him like the faery breast-bone. He suspects she is a harp no craftsman could ever create; her hair the perfect weave for its strings. Sewers vibrate as clever rodents fight 69 �for each strand. The bus ceases to stop in front of the store where he worked now curling back from the sidewalk, out of business. Somewhere under the concrete pungent fields he once knew are unable to heave loose. Whenever she moves, her music is deafening. And he waits, each day an elegy. "Why the Last Reunion Was" To have his woodbin filled after standing empty so long made the old man whistle and hum; and having his sons back home at last he peeled his sweaters and cleansed himself by their fire proud as Abraham of his own all sleeping now by the fire he tended before he would rest stoking the chimney's shared song out of joy as it whistled and roared through other abandoned nests of sweeps or wren into frame as dry as his own denied such warmth too long. Threnody At Bobby Garren's Cafe not much has changed: the dishes, chipped and crazed, rest in a 1940*8 cabinet above a rusted R.C. cooler, the jukebox sings; and I am seven again on a barstool beside my daddy, waitresses hovering, his black hair, blue eyes, pale skin 70 �irresistable as Stardust. Close by, outside the dusky glass it waits, a foreshortening that will distort span, intent, and reasonsingbut here, the runaway is safe. Not much has changed. The jukebox sings. Fire Out of Hand A middle-aged woman stokes the backyard garbage can of left-overs, bills due, trends, and once she has seen them to ash wanders back into the house unaware of the power of flame to consume out of what has been. A scrap, a spark, some wind... fire out of hand! If only she'd look out the window but with the children gone her lawn seems incredibly vast, a reach she'd rather not dream upon as she climbs the stairs to her room to nap what time till he's home, her diminishing husband. And up the neglected path it comes, a crackle and snap, an aurora so hungry for death her heart from its sleep world warns herYes! Vie struggle, we break, we change but some things are ever the same, worth our sorrow: this garden, these flowers, spring. his love as needful as yours 71 �in this stand against age and pain if only you'd look outside outside outside yourself- an inferno scaling the backporch steps, the trellis, igniting the frenzied wasps' nests their dying unobserved as her own heart's breath she has not listened to for years asleep, adrift, alone; and perhaps she will not now awake until it has come down the hall, blocked all exits. Fire out of hand. The Evangelist Each summer, the alien evangelist comes to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Sometimes, he is from Memphis; sometimes, from Tucson; but always his skill is superior. Bennie Lee Sinclair, poet laureate of South Carolina, lives in the mountains near Cleveland with her husband, potter Don Lewis. 72 �UNIVERSALITY IN LITERATURE Convenor: Parks Larder, Radford University Crimes Against Nature: The Image of The Mountaineer In Deliverance Rodger Cunningham, Sue Bennett College R'lyeh In Appalachia: Lovecraffs Influence On Fred Chappell's Dagon Amy Upton Gray, Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute Teaching Jesse Stuart's "Dawn Of Remembered Spring" Danny L. Miller, Northern Kentucky University Post Modern Appalachian Fiction Nancy C. Joyner, Western Carolina University Rlyeh in Appalachia: Lovecraffs Influence on Fred Chappell's Dagon by Amy Tipton Gray Throughout most of his career Fred Chappell has suffered the fate of the prophet who stays in and in his case, writes about his own land. While his early novels in particular have enjoyed success overseas, and have earned him such honors as the 1971 Prix de Meilleurs des Lettres Etrangeres (awarded for Dagon) recognition in his own country has been slow in coming (Ragan 3738). In fact, only his most recent novel, I Am One Of You Forever, published over twenty years after his first, has received any sort of general critical acclaim. The same is not true of his poetry, which has attracted a wider and more appreciative audience and for which he has been the recipient of many awards, including the 1985 Bollinger Prize. It would be easy to assume, then, that Chappell's success as a poet names him a failure as a novelist. This is most emphatically not the case. For it is in Chappell's first three novels that themes of his poetry are first explored, and many of the problems in his early writing (prose as well as poetry) are worked out. Moreover, Dagon is clearly the pivotal work in Chappell's early corpus. It embodies both the culmination and resolution of Chappell's early difficulties, and points the way to the superior work that will follow. But in addition to suffering from Chappell's characteristic experiments with theme and style, Dagon has consistently been either dismissed or misinterpreted because of the writer's use of names and incantations taken from the Cthulhu mythos invented by H.P. Lovecraft. Such misapprehension must be cleared up before the novel can be appreciated for 73 �what it is: something more significant than just one more story about the reappearance of Lovecraf f s mythical continent R'Lyeh, couched in this case in just one more of Chappell's difficult and unappealing first novels. It is easy to discern the reasons for the unpopularity of Chappell's early work, especially Dagon. For Chappell "is an experimental novelist, a designation he himself has acknowledged" (Ragan 38). To use his own term, he is "a writer of the arabesque." Quillen quotes Chappell's definition of such a writer as one who "is less concerned with delivering basic narrative materials than with manipulating these materials in an idiosyncratic manner." A writer of the arabesque provides "a satisfactory narrative outline" and "then manipulates the elements so that the train of his narrative becomes of secondary importance" (Quillen 42-43). Most readers who are not interested in postmodernist theory and who buy books precisely because what they want is a good ride on that narrative train, find little in this technique to recommend. And when combined with unsympathetic and unappealing characters, abstruse symbolism and obscure allegory, and an unrelenting exposition of the dark side of human nature, the novel of the arabesque is practically a surefire failure. Which critically, of course, Chappell's first three novels were. Dagon was called by one critic "another horse from the dilapidated stable of the Southern Gothic novel" (Buitenhuis). Another wrote, "There is nothing here to commend it to libraries" (Cohen). It was accused of being both a gothic retread and an unprofitable reworking of the Lovecraftian vein. A summary of the plot quickly demonstrates why Dagon has suffered these epithets. The novel opens with a quotation that proves indecipherable to anyone who is not familiar with the work of Lovecraft: "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn " A prolonged search will eventually lead to "The Call of Cthulhu," which yields this unhelpful translation: "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming" (140). After passing that arcane beginning, the reader pushes on to learn that, true to Chappell's then favorite form, the basic plot of the novel is simple to outline— once it has been unearthed. Peter Leland, a minister, inherits an old house and decides to take a leave of absence from his ministry to write a book titled Remnant Pagan Forces In American Puritanism, a topic inspired by William Bradford's account of the Merry Mount (Mount Dagon) incident. Once he and his wife Sheila have moved in, Peter discovers a horde of old documents stored in the house, documents that are filled with words such as "Shoggoth." "Pnakotic," tfNyarlath," and "Nephreu" (which, as the only word not found in Lovecraft's stories, may well be Chappell's own contribution to the pantheon). He also discovers his neighbor Mina Morgan, with whom he immediately becomes erotically obsessed. As Peter falls more and more under the spell of both Mina and the old papers, he begins to personify one of the major themes of Chappell's early work, the struggle between will and appetite. Eventually, appetite is victorious. Peter, angered by Sheila's insistence that he kill a snake (what else?), kills his wife instead and moves in with Mina, who ensures the triumph of ap74 �petite by drugging him with sex and moonshine until he becomes devoid of will, both literally and figuratively impotent. At this point the Lovecraftian elements of the story take on a new twist Mina finds a new man to serve as an acolyte of sorts; they pour Peter into his car and take him to the seaport town of Gordon (perhaps Chappell's pun on the famous frozen fish company). There she hires two whores, and the four of them proceed to tattoo Peter's entire body while simultaneously reducing him to a child-like state. When the tattooing is finished, Mina has Peter taken to an altar where he is sacrificed before a maimed and truncated fertility deity Dagon. But Peter maintains his identity throughout the encounter, welcomes his sacrificial death instead of fighting it, and after dying gains a profound and detached understanding of the universe. He is transformed into Leviathan, the cosmic fish (perhaps the only aquatic being to escape Lovecraft), and settles into eternity: "joyfully bellowing, he wallowed and sported upon the rich darkness that flows between the stars" (Dagon 177).l In the face of such evidence, it is easy to see why many have believed that Dagon should as a matter of course be subsumed into the Lovecraftian genre, especially since Lovecraft himself "encouraged other writers to write stories in his framework" (DeCamp 331). However, although Chappell and Lovecraft employed the same set of entities, both the purpose to which each put these creatures and the effect each was trying to achieve were widely disparate. Furthermore, while it can be said that critics such as S.T. Joshi (whose area of expertise is Lovecraft criticism) are correct in stating that "Chappell's Dagon... [strives] not to imitate slavishly Lovecraff s own plots," it cannot be asserted, as Joshi goes on to do, that Chappell sought "to elaborate on [Lovecraft's] ideas" (Joshi 25). Lovecraft, an admirer of Poe and the eighteenth century, sought to revitalize horror fiction and bring it out of the disreputable corner of American letters in which it had so long sat. While he did not accomplish this goal, he did succeed in both redefining the genre and influencing the generation of writers who succeeded him (which included Robert E Howard and Stephen King). Lovecraff s genius was two-fold. First, he "firmly attached the emotion of spectral dread to such concepts as outer space...and alien beings," transferring "the focus of supernatural" anxiety "from man and his little world and his gods, to the stars and the black and unplumbed gulfs of ...space" (Lieber 290-292). Second, he created a pantheon of monsters who, unlike any found in any horror story written up to that time, were absolutely indifferent to mankind. These powerful fish-beings had fallen to earth from somewhere in space to rule the planet from R'lyeh, the continent that sank beneath the sea upon their eventual overthrow. All but oblivious to the existence of that piti1 This is as good a point as any to note that despite its lack of success when it was first released in 1968, Dagon has recently been reissued and now graces the shelves of grocery stores and K-Marts. One can only speculate what its reappearance has to say about the changes the past two decades have wrought in American popular culture. 75 �f ul animal man, they were concerned only with using the priests and priestesses of their ancient cult to regain their former kingdom. The invention of these viscoid creatures marks a major development in the world of science fiction. Before Lovecraft, even monsters from outer space had deliberate, personal reasons for wreaking havoc on the earth. Lovecraft, however, understood that true horror lies in the meaningless, pointless attack, in the fear peculiar to the twentieth century: the fear of being destroyed by something that cannot even be said to be uncaring, something that does not know or even think it is important to know who its victim is. But the monsters of the mythos served another purpose in Lovecraft's fiction. Lovecraft believed that "the cosmos" was neither "basically inimicable" nor "beneficial to man" (Mosig 105). To this end he employed his creatures as metaphors for a dispassionate universe. Lovecraft, "a mechanistic materialist," saw man as merely another tiny accident in a universe full of tiny accidents, perpetually the victim of forces he neither understands nor controls. From this belief comes "the source of terror in Lovecraft's tales" (Joshi 20). The grotesque beings of the mythos highlight what their creator perceives to be man's insignificance in a "universe revealed by materialistic science" to be a "purposeless soulless place" (Leiber 293). That most men would go mad if they were forced to face the true nature of reality is a matter of no great concern to Lovecraft. One should simply accept the fact that philosophy is an illusion, that human action is unimportant, and carry on. Most critics, either knowing little or nothing of Lovecraft's philosophy or being unwilling to accept it, have focused on the creatures themselves rather than on the function they were designed to serve. Some critics have even gone so far as to impose their own religious beliefs, specifically traditional Christian doctrine, on a fictional system that patently did not support such interpretation* There is no redemption, not even existential, in the ethos upon which Lovecraft based his work. Furthermore, Lovecraff s style, which even his devotees sometimes have difficulty admiring, has also contributed to the misinterpretation of his work. His admiration for Poe and the eighteenth century (which has been well documented) gave him his literary voice, a voice that does not speak in accents pleasing to the twentieth century ear. Unlike Chappell, he was no experimenter; he found nothing in the new to be recommended. Instead he strove to reproduce in his works a "style... in vogue in the Romantic era much used by Poe and his Gothic predecessors" (Faig). In this he succeeded; so much so that in many ways his work provides an almost faultless reproduction of the gothic style. His writing is verbose, difficult, inflated, and full of lurid, polychrome adjectives. His stories are set in mysterious old houses (the American version of the crumbling castle) by the sea; his plots overflow with violence and terror. His characters are flat. All motivation is exterior. And the plot invariably builds to a "terminal climax" by means of "confirmation rather than revelation" (Lieber 297). 76 �Chappell, on the other hand, consistently has been praised for the clarity of his prose and the beauty of his descriptions. The motivation of his characters is interior; it is the war man fights against himself that fascinates Chappell. While he too has a fondness for old houses, his settings usually serve an allegorical purpose, unlike the mansions of Lovecraft, which function only as dilapidated props. Moreover, it is ironic that the difficulties in Chappell's works have come about because of his enthusiasm for experiment, while Lovecraft's stories suffer from that author's attempts to recreate the style of an age long past. Thus it is neither archaic diction, nor a slavish adherence to the gothic, that has caused Dagon's troubles. For in addition to suffering from the troubles that typically hound experimental novels, the book has consistently resisted classification. Despite its setting, it certainly could not be called an Appalachian novel, for its characters not to mention its plot do not fall into the patterns outlined by Gratis Williams, Isabel D. Harris and others. In addition, Chappell, by choosing a fictional mythos upon which to pin his narrative, effectively cut off his novel from a group of its contemporaries to which it could have easily belonged. Gardner's Grendel, Updike's Centaur, Earth's Chimera and even Mailer's Ancient Evenings, to name a few, all are based on reinterpretation of traditional mythologies. The key word, of course, is traditional; because of Cthulhu and company, Dagon was labeled, understandably science fiction. And with equal immediacy, it was dismissed as not being worthy of serious study. The original idea for Dagon came not from Lovecraft, however, but from William Bradford. As Chappell puts it, "I discovered a literal event in Bradford's History of the Plymouth Colony which seemed to me to be metaphorically true of our own times. To drag Bradford's reported event into the present I posited a secret religious cult which had survived unseen for two centuries" (Chappell "Six Propositions"). And the cult of Cthulhu, of which Dagon is a deity, is the cult that for better or worse came to Chappell's mind. But Chappell used Lovecraff s mythos not because he sought to write a horror story, but because he saw it as a powerful metaphor for man's interior struggle against evil (will against appetite), a struggle that must be manifested in the material world. Balanced between Calvin and Camus, Chappell believes that each individual is responsible for making sense of original sin (defined as a set of conditions existing before the characters come on the scene) in his own terms. Darkness triumphs only when man refuses to recognize the limitations with which he has no choice but to live, and refuses to work within those limitations. Unlike Lovecraft, Chappell does not believe philosophy is a comforting illusion maintained in the teeth of a meaningless existence. For this reason, Chappell went against all advice and refused to remove the final scene, in which Peter becomes Leviathan, from the novel. He could not, he said, "accept the triumph of evil that way in the world," and could not end Dagon without an attempt "to alleviate the agony of it" (Ragan 45). 77 �The final evidence that Chappell is neither thrashing out another southern gothic nor reworking Lovecraft lies in the definition of the romance as set out by Richard Chase in The American Novel and Its Tradition. Chase states that the characters in a romance "will on the whole be shown in ideal relation. .. they will share emotions only after they have become abstract or symbolic." When such characters do "become profoundly involved in some way," as Peter Leland does with Mina, they can only experience "a deep, narrow, and obsessive involvement." All moves towards abstraction and idealism. And as it is "less committed to the immediate rendition of reality" than other types of works, "the romance will more freely veer toward mythic allegorical and symbolistic forms" (Chase 13). What better description can be found of Dagon, or indeed, of Chappell's early work as a whole? It is clear that Chappell's Dagon should not be catalogued with the works of L. P. Lovecraft. While Chappell employs the names and incantations invented by Lovecraft in the rituals performed for the god Dagon, he does so with a purpose that goes far beyond Lovecraf f s original intent. Chappell, unconcerned with intensifying the horror factor, imbues these figures with a symbolic power not found in the original stories for which they were created. In doing so Chappell dislodges his readers from their comfortable assumptions about reality and forces them to face what is darkest in themselves. From Lovecraft's perspective, man was merely a minuscule victim of forces beyond his cognizance; self-knowledge was of no help in deflecting the violence perpetuated by an amoral cosmos. To this end he used the characters from the Cthulhu mythos to give a new form to the horror story, for in his work, the terror comes from outside man's experience from external, indifferent beings rather than from within man's own being. This is not true of Chappell, who believes that man, torn between will and appetite, can only resolve that struggle through self-knowledge; this is also the only means by which he can come to a resolution about the nature of the world and his place in it. In Chappell's cosmos conflict arises from each person's inner struggle to balance the opposing forces that beset us all. In Lovecraft's world, these forces are unimportant; one man's inner conflict means nothing when placed beside the devastation that can be on humanity by ancient forces, manifested in weird creatures beyond its ken. In short, Lovecraft's lexicon does not include the concept of hope; there is no escape from Cthulhu. But Chappell, through Peter and Leviathan, has shown us the way out ofR'lyeh. 78 �WORKS CITED Chappell, Fred. Dagon. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968. "Six Propositions About Literature and History." NewLiterary History, 1 (Spring 1970): 513-522. de Camp, L. Sprague. Lovecraft: A Biography. Garden Qty, New YorkDoubleday, 1975. Faig, Kenneth W. Jr., and S.T. Joshi. "H.P. Lovecraft: His life andWork." In H.P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Literary Criticism. Ed. S.T. Joshi. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1980. Lieber, Fritz, Jr. "A Literary Copernicus." The Acolyte, Fall 1944. Rpt and revised in Something About Cats and Other Pieces by H.P. Lovecraft. Ed. August Derleth. Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1949; reprinted 1971 by arrangement with Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.: 290-303. Lovecraft, H.P. "The Call of Cthulhu." Weird Tales, Feb. 1928. Rpt. in The Dunwich Horror and Others: The Best Supernatural Stories of H.P. Lovecraft. Ed. August Derleth. Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1963: 130-159. Mosig, Dirk W. "H.P. Lovecraft: Myth-Maker." In I Miti di Cthulhu .Eds. August Derleth et al. [Italy]: n.p.:n.p., 1976. Rpt. in Whispers, Dec. 1976; copyright Stuart David Schiff. Revised and rpt. in TheMiskatonic, Feb. 1976, copyright Dirk W. Mosig. Rpt. inH.P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Literary Criticism. Ed. S.T. Joshi. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1980: 186-190. Quillen, Rita S. "Looking For Native Ground: The Appalachian Poetry of Fred Chappell and Jim Wayne Miller." Appalachian Heritage, No. 2 (Spring 1980): 42-55. Ragan, David Paul. "Chappell, Fred." Dictionary of Literary Biography.Vol. 6 of American Novelists Since World War II Second Series. Ed.JamesE.Kibler,Jr. Detroit: Gale Research Company Book Tower, 1980: 36-48. 79 �ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND REDEVELOPMENT Convenor: Tom Shannon, Radford University The Rayon Mills in Elizabethton, Tennessee: A Case Study of Appalachian Economic Development, 1926-1970 Marie Tedesco, East Tennessee State University Norma Thomas, East Tennessee State University Regional Redevelopment Strategies: The Comparative Case of Catalonia, Spain Glenn Mitchell Warren Wilson College Deck The Hills: Christmas Tree Farms and Economic Development in the High Country of Avery County, North Carolina Elizabeth C Stevens, Appalachian State University Iransylvania Goodpasture and The Industrialization of Smyth County, Virginia Glenna Home Graves, Appalachian Center, University of Kentucky The Rayon Plants In Elizabethton, Tennessee: A Case Study of Appalachian Economic Development, 1920-1985 Marie Tedesco In August 1925 local newspapers carried the announcement that J.P. Bemberg Company, Barmen, Germany was to construct a plant in Elizabethton, Tennessee for the manufacture of "artificial silk," or rayon as it came to be called. Bemberg, an affiliate of Vereinigte Glanzstoff Fabriken (VGF), Elberfeld, Germany, was one of the world's leading manufacturers of rayon. Because the recently enacted (1922) Fordney-McCumber Tariff had included rayon as one of the protected "infant industries," imported rayon was too expensive for the average consumer. The German firm thus sought to avoid this high tariff by making rayon in the United States. Groundbreaking for the plant occurred in September 1925, and approximately 13 months later, in October 1926, the American Bemberg factory began production of rayon by the cuprammonium process. Two years later a companion plant, American Glanzstoff, also operated by VGF, began production of rayon by the viscose process.1 Establishment of the rayon factories in Elizabethton raises a number of questions. Why did one of the world's leading manufacturers of rayon choose Elizabethton, a small town of 2746 located in rural Carter County in East 80 �Tennessee, for the site of two of its factories? How did civic and business leaders react to the Germans7 plans? Over the years, how have the plants affected the economy of Elizabethton and Carter County? What does the experience of the plants in Elizabethton reveal about Appalachian economic development? It is the intent of this paper to analyze these questions, paying special attention to the economic impact of the plants on Elizabethton and Carter County. A number of factors convinced VGF to locate two of its plants in Elizabethton. The availability and purity of the water supply, availability of copper reserves (for the cuprammonium process) in southwest Virginia and east Tennessee, the promise of cheap labor, and community economic concessions convinced the German corporation to locate its cuprammonium plant in Elizabethton. The same factors, together with the prospect of obtaining a cheap source of cellulose through purchase of cotton linters from Georgia and North Carolina textile mills, convinced VGF to locate the viscose-process Glanzstoff factory in Elizabethton. Elizabethton's civic leaders were only too glad to have the factories locate in their town. Like civic leaders in other declining rural areas of the South, those in Elizabethton were infected with the spirit and ethos of the lfNew Era. This 1920s emotional boosterism led Elizabethton's civic leaders—as well as those from nearby Johnson City—to court the German industrialists. Visions of a burgeoning, prosperous, metropolitan Elizabethton of 150,000 people encouraged these leaders to make numerous concessions to VGF, first for the Bemberg plant, and then for the Glanzstoff factory. These concessions are too numerous to detail in their entirety, but explication of the major ones will be sufficient to demonstrate that in essence civic leaders agreed to allow the plants to exploit the area's resources and its workers. One of VGF's primary concerns was exemption from city and county property tax. Carter County granted both Bemberg and Glanzstoff ten-year exemption from paying county property tax. City officials, for their part, in 1925 agreed not to extend the corporate limits so as to include Bemberg. But in the event such extension did occur then Bemberg would be exempt from taxation for ten years. Two years later the Elizabethton and Johnson City chambers of commerce (hereafter referred to as the chambers) agreed to try to convince the state legislature to remove the Glanzstoff plant from within Elizabethton city limits. Apparently, the chambers succeeded because it was not until 1943 that the plant properties themselves were taxed. Prior to that time, the plants paid city tax on other properties they owned which lay within Elizabethton corporate limits.4 Other major concessions revolved around water—200 gallons of which were needed to manufacture one pound of rayon. The chambers agreed to pay the lesser of $10,000 or one-half the cost of erecting a filtration plant for Bemberg's use. Further, the chambers agreed to construct a water main from the Mountain Spring Water Company to the plant, and to guarantee that Bemberg would pay only $300 per year for water for the succeeding 25 years after 81 �the plant began operation. In addition, the chambers secured permission for Bemberg to use the waters of the Watauga River. Subsequently, the chambers consented to construct two new reservoirs in Elizabethton for city water service, and to allow Glanzstoff to use all water not needed by the city. Allowing the exploitation of natural resources, however, apparently was not the only concession the chambers made to the plants. In his 1949 study of Elizabethton, John Fred Holly contended that civic leaders presented corporate representatives a document which stated that they would never have to pay workers more than $10 per week. Other sources concede that the promise of an abundant, cheap supply of labor attracted the German industrialists, but no other source mentions this document shown to Holly by E.G. Alexander, city manager in 1925, and a member of both the Elizabethton Chamber of Commerce and the committee which negotiated to bring the plants to Elizabethton.6 At any rate, it seems clear that civic leaders willingly, indeed anxiously, participated in the exploitation of the region's human and natural resources. The wooing of Bemberg and Glanzstoff fits a model of neocolonial exploitation of Appalachia. In this case the civic leaders of Elizabethton and Johnson City themselves participated in, and arranged for, exploitation by a foreign corporation* No doubt local leaders willingly participated in this exploitation because Elizabethton and Carter County were in an area plagued by labor surpluses. Easily accessible timber resources, for example, had been depleted, causing local manufacturing concerns which had depended on timber to go out of business. Agriculture in the county always had been tenuous at best. There thus existed a sizeable supplv of unskilled and semiskilled labor which could be employed in the factories? For Elizabethton and Carter County the rayon plants fulfilled the role of a "pioneer industry." In his study of postWorld War II industrial development in the southeast, Merrill L. Johnson defined a pioneer industry as one which first exposes a labor force to the industrial work place. Although there were some industrial firms in Elizabethton and Carter County prior to the establishment of the rayon plants, industrial employment was insignificant. Carter County in 1919 had 889 wage earners. By 1924 that number had declined to 742. The rayon factories became the first large scale industrial employer in the county and city.9 In accordance with Johnson's model, the rayon factories did bridge the gap between agricultural and industrial culture in Elizabethton and Carter County, the factories provided employment in a region which possessed an excess supply of lowskilled labor. But there was a major difference between the Johnson model and the Elizabethton situation. Typically, industries which demand little skill—cotton textiles, for example—fulfill the role of pioneers. Rayon manufacture, however, demands considerable skill. As Jack Blicksilver explained in his article on man-made fibers, the chemical preparation of 82 �viscose rayon demands scrupulous control of time, temperature and humidity. Moreover, the reaction between chemicals—ripened alkali cellulose and carbon bisulfide—must proceed at the proper pace else the resultant product will be useless.1 It is testimony to the skills of Elizabethton and Carter County workers that they quickly learned the techniques necessary for rayon manufacture. On October 28, 1926 the American Bemberg factory began producing cuprammonium rayon at the rate of 7,000 pounds per day. When, two years later, in September, 1928, American Glanzstoff began making viscose rayon, employment at the two plants topped 3,000. By the end of 1928, Bemberg, after losing $131,224 the previous year, turned a profit of $619,153.n Industrialists, civic leaders and workers alike thus were confident that both plants would be a successful part of the community for years to come. But even before the stock market crash and the ensuing Great Depression caused widespread despair about the state of the American economy and the future of the rayon plants, two strikes which lasted from March through May 1929, engendered much bitterness and resentment on the part of the workers toward Bemberg and Glanzstoff. It is not the intent of this paper, however, to analyze the strike, especially since it has been well-documented, most recently by Jacquelyn D. Hall in the September 1986 issue of the Journal of American History. Suffice it to say that the struggle over low pay and long hours waged by the then predominantly female labor force, for many left a legacy of bitterness and distrust. The civic and business leaders of Elizabethton, along with the governor of Tennessee, cooperated with the industrialists, led by the plants' president, Arthur Mothwurf to put down the strike and to deny the workers redress of their grievances.1 The strike of course cost the plants lost production, and the workers lost wages. But before the workers or the plants could fully recover from the effects of the strike, the American economy went into a tailspin, beginning in October of 1929. During the ensuing depression, the plants stayed afloat, 'though there were cutbacks in wages and employment. For the years 193139 the mean number of workers employed at the factories was 3294, with the lowest number of 2491 employed in 1932, and the highest of 4588 employed in 1939. Total payrolls bottomed out in 1932 ($2,761,595), while average annual wages and salaries bottomed out in 1934 at $1,000. During this same period net sales and pounds of rayon produced fluctuated until 1939, when they began a steady ascent through the war years.1 Reduced production at the plants, and reduced payrolls, naturally had an adverse effect on Elizabethton and Carter County. Retail sales in the county, for example, declined steadily from 1929 through 1933. Plant payrolls, meanwhile, began to turn upward in 1932.14 During this same period of time, available statistics for American Bemberg show that after earning a net profit of $619,153 in 1928, Bembeig lost $499,832 in 1929, $482,498 in 1931, $603,619 in 1933, and $493,650 in 1934. In 1936 Bemberg again realized a net profit, this 83 �time of $598,161. From then through the end of the depression in 1939, Bemberg made a profit. It is interesting to note, however, that from 1933 through 1941 Bemberg and Glanzstoff (as of 1934 North American Rayon) stocks reported dividends.1 L ocally, one major casualty of the depression was the demise of Watauga Development Corporation (Wfc>C), a realty company which had been organized in 1925 by Elizabethton business leaders and Bemberg interests for the purpose of selling houses and/or land to plant employees. WDC overextended itself in the period immediately following the announcement of Bemberg's locating in Elizabethton. To finance land purchased at boom prices of $500 and more per acre, WDC borrowed money, and bought real estate on time at 6% interest. But WDC never was able to sell as much land or as many houses as it had hoped to because many plant employees chose either to commute from their rural homes, or to build in rural areas near their kin. By the time the depression hit, WDCs assets were tied up in unimproved farm land, and it was forced into bankruptcy. The lands were taken over by the mortgage holder, while the houses were taken over by the plants under a second mortgage.1 The demands of World War II necessitated increased production, and hence payrolls and employment also increased. Until that happened, assessment of the plants7 economic impact on Elizabethton and Carter County is mixed-even when taking into account the Great Depression. As a foreign corporation profits went overseas to Algemeene Kunstzijde Unie N.V. (AKU), the Dutch company formed by VGF and another Dutch firm, N.V. Nederlandsche Kunstzijde Fabriek in 1929. There's not much evidence that the plants were concerned with putting money back into the community. But in the early 1930s Bemberg and Glanzstoff/North American did spend a great deal of money fighting suits which challenged the ten-year county and perpetual city tax exemptions earlier granted the factories. Carter County and Elizabethton lost considerable tax revenues because of these exemptions. Lost revenues (estimated by Holly to be at least $2,600,000) contributed to the city government being near bankruptcy in 1943. In that year the state legislature passed a law which allowed Elizabethton to collect taxes from Bemberg and North American.18 It is true, of course, that the plants were directly responsible for Elizabethton's population jumping from 2,746 in 1920 to 8,044 in 1930 and 8,516 in 1940. Moreover, the rayon factories provided thousands of jobs—even during the depths of the Great Depression. From 1931 through 1947, plant payrolls approached $115,000,000. Significantly Pearson's correlations between plant payrolls and retail sales in Carter County point to the strength of the relationship between the prosperity of the plants and that of the community as a whole.19 After the war, however, there were significant changes for Bemberg and North American. As early as 1942 the Office of Alien Property (OAP) had in84 �itiated an investigation of AKU's ownership of American Bemberg, North American Rayon and American Enko, looking toward a vesting of enemy owned (German) interests in these companies. Cooperation of the Dutch government in exile was sought, primarily because of the importance of AKU to the Dutch economy. OAP was ready to vest in 1944, but on the advice of the State Department delayed action, in anticipation of a future settlement with the Dutch. Finally, on August 7,1947, AKU and the OAP came to an agreement which provided that the Dutch corporation waive all claim to shares of outstanding stock which it or its affiliates owned in Bemberg and North American, together with working capital, assets, and all of AKU's interests in patents, trademarks and other industrial property of the two companies. The companies remained under government control until their purchase by Beaunit Mills, Inc., a New York corporation, in December, 1948.20 At the time Beaunit bought the plants, Bemberg concentrated production on "Bemberg" rayon yarn, from which triple sheer rayon doth used in women's clothing was made. North American produced viscose yarn, most of which was sold to the rayon woven goods industry, with some being sold to tire companies. Financially, both companies were in good condition, and both dominated the economy of Elizabethton and Carter County. As of 1949 the plants were still by far Elizabethton's and Carter County's largest employers. Bemberg employed 2100 workers, while North American employed 3900.21 Beginning in 1949, though, the plants entered into a long period of decline. In part this decline can be attributed to an overall decline in the growth in the South of such traditional low-wage industries as textiles (if rayon production is categorized with textiles).22 But decline can be attributed more to trends in the synthetic fiber market. Although manmade fibers in general continued to make substantial gains during the 1950s, there were changes in what types of fibers made the gains. Cellulosics—including rayon—lost their hegemony of the man-made fiber industry, while the noncellulosics gained. During the 1958 recession production of cellulosics was sharply curtailed, resulting in lost revenues for even the largest manufacturers. The chief beneficiary of these changes was nylon; the major loser, rayon.23 Thus, the Elizabethton plants, producers of rayon only, faced a new economic reality in which the market for their product was shrinking. Beaunit thus switched part of the Bemberg plant to the manufacture of polyester, and part of the North American plant to nylon. Although in many instances interf iber competition was among divisions of the same company (as was true with DuPont and American Viscose, for example), the desire to get the competitive edge for the future and not be stuck with money-losing products frequently led companies into ill-fated ventures. This is what happened to Beaunit. In the early 1960s the company entered into an agreement with El Paso Natural Gas Company to finance a "nylon 6" plant at Etowah, Tennessee. Blicksilver observed that for Beaunit the venture 85 �was "in the nature of hedging their bet, should they guess wrong in their major emphasis on rayon."25 As it turned out, the joint venture was a disaster for Beaunit. Prior to October 1,1966 when the nylon plant became operational, Beaunit deferred joint venture costs as preproduction expenses. Once the plant became operational, this could not be done, and as a result Beaunit incurred significant losses.2 Other factors contributed to Beaunifs—and hence Bemberg's and North American's—woes. Increased domestic production of polyester, brought on by previous high profits, increased foreign competition, and reduction of the amount of polyester used in synthetic blends, reduced the price of polyester from 84 cents per pound in July 1966 to 58 cents per pound in May 1967. A 1967 strike by three major tire companies which decreased demand for tire rayon further hurt the Elizabethton factories.27 With all its troubles, Beaunit shareholders in 1967 approved a merger which resulted in the company's becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of El Paso Natural Gas Company. By that time employment at the plants had declined to 3500—down substantially from the 6000 of 1949.28 As the plants declined, though, other industries moved into Elizabethton, and the economy of the area diversified. In 1947 only 308 persons were employed in industries other than rayon manufacture, but in 1969 that number had increased to 1032, and by 1973 to 164029 In some respects, then, the decline of the plants helped produce a healthier, more diversified economy for Elizabethton and Carter County. No longer was the region so dependent on a single employer. Bemberg, however, could not survive. In the early 1970s it was sold to an investment group, and for a few years thereafter operated as Bemberg Industries, Inc. In 1976 Bemberg filed for bankruptcy. North American made it through the troubled 1970s, first as a division of Beaunit, then, after 1976, as the property of TA Associates, the investment group which bought Beaunit from El Paso Company. By 1985, however, the outlook was bleak for North American. To save the company, employees voted in favor of an Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP), and in December 1985 North American became an employee-owned company. The evolution of the company has thus been curious. From a factory owned by a foreign company concerned with circumventing high American tariffs, and maximizing profits by employing "cheap, native labor," North American has become an ESOP plant determined to save itself in an era when many American factories are finding it difficult to survive. The situation in Elizabethton, then, has turned out quite differently from that in many other Appalachian communities where companies have exploited the natural resources and the workers, and then abandoned the community. At least in part, North American and Elizabethton have escaped that fate. 86 �ENDNOTES 1. John Fred Holly, "Elizabethton, Tennessee: A Case Study of Southern Industrialization," diss., dark University, 1949, pp. 121-22; James A. Hodges, "Challenge to the New South: The Great Textile Strike in Elizabeth ton, Tennessee, 1929," Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 23(1964), 343-44; Frank Merritt, Inter History of Carter County, 1865-1980 (Homecoming '86 Heritage Project, 1986), p. 241; and Herman Robinson, "Monday 25th Anniversary of Bemberg," Elizabethton Star (ES), October 28,1951, p. 3-8. The cuprammonium process uses a copper/ammonium solution for dissolving cellulose, while the viscose process uses lye and a compound of carbon and sulfur to convert the cellulose into a soluble compound. See Robert E. Hussey and Philip C Scherer, "The Rayon Industry in the South," in Chemical Progress in the South, ed., J.E. Mills (New York: The Chemical Foundation, 1930), p. 136. On the development of the viscose process also consult Jack Blicksilver, "Man-Made Fibers. A Growth Industry for the Diversifying South," Textile History Review, 3(January 1962), 5-7. On the Fordney-McCumber Tariff see: George H. Soule, Prosperity Decade. From War to Depression: 1917-1929 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1947), p. 131; and Frank W. Taussig, Some Aspects of the Tariff Question. An Examination of the Development of American Industries Under Protection (New York: AMS Press, 1971), pp. 426-27. 2. Holly, "Elizabethton," pp. 126-28; and Frank Bohn, 'Tennessee's New Silkworm—Industrial Germany Comes to America," Review of Reviews, 78(October 1928), p. 368. The viscose process produced more rayon, and thus used more cellulose. There was a need, then, for a cheap source of cellulose, other than wood pulp. 3. On "New Era" boosterism of the 1920s in the South, see James C Cobb, Industrialism and Southern Society, 1877-1984 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1984), pp. 32-34; and Elaine A. Brownell, The Urban Ethos in the South, 1920-1930 (Baton Rouge, LA: Lousiana State University Press, 1975). A comparable movement took place in the 1950s and 1960s, this time involving more organized state directed efforts to attract industry to the South. See Cobb, The Setting of the South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial Development, 1936-1980 (Baton Rouge, LA: Lousiana State University Press, 1982). 4. Holly, "Elizabethton," pp. 124-25,129,131-32. For the plants' payment of taxes on properties owned see "Rayon Plants Pay City Tax," ES, June 8,1939,.p. 1. 5 . Holly, "Elizabethton," pp. 126-27,133. 6 . Ibid, p. 134. Among the other sources which discuss the importance of the plants having a readily available supply of cheap labor are: Hodges, "Challenge to the New South," 345-46; Bohn, 'Tennessee's New Silkworm," p. 368; A.J. Buttrey, 'Salvation in Tennessee: The Clergy and the Textile Strikers," The World Tomorrow, 12 (October 1924), p. 396; Tom Tippett, When Southern Labor Stirs (New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1930), pp. 56-57; and Jacquelyn D. Hall, "Disorderly Women: Gender and Labor Militancy in the Appalachian South," Journal of American History, 73 (September 1986), 359. 87 �7. On the colonialism theory as it applies to Appalachia consult Helen M. Lewis and Edward E. Knipe, "The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case/' in Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case, edsv Helen M. Lewis and Donald Asians (Boone, NC: The Appalachian Consortium Press, 1978); Richard B. Drake, 'Jack and Clio in Appalachia: Comments on Regional Historiography," Appalachian Notes, First Quarter (1976), 1-8; and Ronald Eller, Miners,. Mttlhands, and Mountaineers. Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930 (Knoxville,TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1982), xxv-xxvi. In regard to foreign ownership, the Elizabethton plants-and American rayon plants in general—differed from textile plants in the South. As late as the 1920s, for example, 80-90% of Southern spindles were Southern owned. By contrast, the American rayon industry was dominated by foreign ownership because the technology for rayon manufacture was European and British in origin. On Southern textile ownership see Gavin Wright, Old South. New South. Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War (New York: Basic Books, 1986), p.131. On rayon consult Blicksilver, "Man-Made Fibers," 20. 9. Johnson, 'Postwar Industrial Development in the Southeast and the Pioneer Role of LaborItensive Industry," Economic Geography, 61 (January 1985), 50; Holly, "Elizabethton," pp. 118-19. 10. Johnson, "Postwar Industrial Development," 50. On pages 50-51 Johnson cites a study by Neal G. Lineback which also is applicable to the establishment of the rayon plants in Elizabethton. Lineback found in his study of low wage firms in Tennessee that these companies had a catalytic effect on industrial development by raising the skill levels of the population and introducing the labor force to factory employment. Lineback s work is "Low Wage Industrialization and Town Size in Rural Appalachia/' Southeastern Geographer, 12(1972), 1-13. For information on the skill needed to make rayon see Blicksilver, "Man-Made Fibers," 23-24. 11. American Bemberg Annual Report for Year Ending 1927 (hereafter cited as Annual Report), pp. 12; Annual Report 1928, p. 1. 12. On the 1929 strikes see Tippett, When Southern Labor Stirs, pp. 54-75; Hall, "Disorderly Women," 354-82; F. Ray Marshall, Labor in the South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 105-07; Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years. A History of the American Worker 1920-1933 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1960), pp. 14-20; Hodges, "Great Textile Strike," 343-57; Sherwood Anderson, "Elizabethton," Nation, 128(May 1,1929), pp. 526-27; Margaret Bowen, "10.64 a Week: Testimony by a Textile Striker at Elizabethton," New Republic, 59 (May 29,1929), 41-43; E.J. Eberling, 'Strikes Among Textile Workers in the Southern States," Current History, (30 June 1929), pp. 450-53; "Strike doses Plant," ES. (March 14,1929), p. 1; and 'Strikers at Plant Form Local Union," ES, (March 14,1929), p. 1. 13. Bemberg alone lost approximately 15,000 pounds of production per day for the duration of the strikes. While Bemberg earned a net profit of $619,153 for 1928, it lost $499,832 for 1929. See Annual Report, 1928 and 1929. For payroll and production figures through the depression years see Holly, "Elizabethton," pp. 232,285. Moody's Manual of Investments (hereafter referred to as Moody's), 1930-39, provided comparative income statistics for American Bemberg and North American Rayon. The 1932 and 1933 Moody's didnot list American Glanzstoff separately: for those years only statistics for Bemberg are available. 14. Holly, "Elizabethton," pp. 232,285. 15. For Bemberg profits see Annual Reports, 1929-39. Moody's 1933-41 provides data on Bemberg and North American stock dividends. As mentioned, the 1932 and 1933 Moody's did not list American Glanzstoff separately: only Bemberg was listed for those years. 88 �16. Holly, "Elizabethton," p. 151. Two articles in the ES, February 5,1929, pp. 1 and 6, discuss WDC's activities, specifically, allegations that new employees were being forced to rent houses built by WDC It appears that WDC in essence was succeeded by River View Realty Co., a subsidiary of Bernberg and North American. Bemberg owned one-third interest, while North American owned the balance. See Moody's, 1947, p. 687; and 1949, p. 2337. 17. Moody's, 1949, p. 2337-2338. The stock of Bemberg and Glanzstoff was transferred to AKU. See Annual Report. Office of Alien Property. Department of Justice (hereafter referred to as OAP Report). For Fiscal Year Ended June 30,1948 (Washington, D.C.: House Document no. 89,81st Congress, 1st Session, p. 35.) 18. Holly, "Elizabethton," pp. 137-38. 19. See Ibid, p. 156 for Elizabethton's population, 1890-1940, and p. 202 for retail sales in Elizabethton, 1931-47. Correlation coefficients were obtained through use of SPSSX "Pearson Correlation" program. Coefficients for retail sales, Carter County, and total rayon plant payrolls, 1931-47; and number employed at the plants and retail sales, Carter County, 1931-47, were .9919 and .9952 respectively. 20. OAP Report, pp. 34-37. 21. For the financial status of the plants see Ibid., pp. 37-39, and Moody's, 1949, pp. 2337-38. For numbers employed at the plants in 1949 consult Directory of Tennessee Industries (Tennessee State Planning Commission, 1949), p. 41. For a brief history of Beaunit see "Brief History of Beaunit Mills, Inc.," Watauga Spinnerette, 27(May 1950), pp. 12-13. The 1949 Annual Report for Beaunit details what types of rayon the plants produced. 22. Wright, Old South. New South, pp. 263-64. 23. Blicksilver, "Man-Made Fibers," 16-17. 24. Beaunit Mills Annual Report for 1959 (hereafter cited as Beaunit Annual Report), pp. 6-8; Beaunit Annual Report, 1956, np. 25. Blicksilver, "Man-Made Fibers," 17; Beaunit Annual Report, 1966. p. 2; and Moody's Public Utility Manual (hereafter cited as Moody's PUM), pp. 1506,1513. 26. Beaunit Annual Report, p. 2. 27. Ibid. Blicksilver, "Man-Made Fibers," 16-18, discusses trends in the synthetic fibers markets. 28. Beaunit Annual Report, 1967, p. 2, and Moody's, 1968, p. 742. For numbers employed at the plants from 1949 through 1967 see Directory of Tennessee Industries and Tennessee Directory of Manufacturers (Tennessee State Planning Commission). 29. For numbers employed in Carter County and Elizabethton, again consult Directory of Tennessee Industries and Tennessee Directory of Manufacturers. 89 �30. On the sale of Bemberg and Beaunit see Joe Ledford, "Beaunit Sold; Most Operations to Continue/' Johnson City Press-Chronicle (JCPQ, December 16,1976, p. 1; "Fire Sad Ending for Story of Once Thriving Industry," /CPC, November 9,1981, p. 6; Moody's PUM, 1977, p. 667 ("El Paso Company"); Ibid, 1976, p. 650 (also "El Paso Company." El Paso Natural Gas Co. had become a subsidiary of El Paso Co.); and "Beaunit Sold," Wall St. Journal December 16,1976, p. 4. For information on North American becoming an ESOP company see ES, February 23,1986, p. 1; and NAR Spinnerette, January 1987, pp. 1-3. References to 1920s and 1930s Elizabethton Star articles were provided by Norma Thomas, Archivist, Archives of Appalachia, East Tennessee State University. The author thanks Ms. Thomas for her help. 90 �INSTRUCTION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Convenor: Phyllis Bickers Community, Kinship and Communication: Teaching In Appalachia Ardeth M. Deay, West Virginia University Susan Day-Peroots, West Virginia University Process Instruction in Appalachian Studies—A Case Example Using Education in Appalachia's Central Highlands Mark R Sohn, Pikeville College The "Si-Godlin" Language Arts Education of Appalachian Schools Thomas doer, Furman University Student Paper Competition Winner Process Instruction in Appalachian Studies: A Case Example Using Education in Appalachians Central Highlands by Mark F. Sohn Introduction Education in Appalachia's Central Highlands is the result of a decade of concern about Appalachian studies at Pikeville College. The College started to consider its Appalachian mission ten years ago and with this book—to use a term from the conference theme—celebrates Appalachian studies. In particular, this book celebrates student research. It is a culmination of research papers from a Pikeville College course, Appalachian Education. It is a historical and current analysis of education in the central highlands of Appalachia—Eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia and the western tip of Virginia. This paper will present the theory of education that supports the development of a cognitive-process approach to Appalachian studies. It will then present the book as a case example. A focus of the paper will be on research findings. 91 �There are two styles of education: process and product. With product instruction, the teacher pursues a specific preplanned course. Educational outcomes are well-known in advance and the student may follow a rigid path to achieve course or behavorial objectives. Outcomes are measured against pre-established objectives. The student participates in product instruction by attempting to meet teacher-established expectations. Process instruction, the focus of this paper, requires creative, involved and critical participation on the part of the student. Learning outcomes are less specific. Learning processes, however, are known in advance, tending to include research, discovery, discussion, writing and experimentation. The student acts on his environment and gets involved with content in a personal way. The student's environment and the student's objectives are central to the educational experience. The student may become physically, socially and emotionally involved in the subject matter. None of this is new— educators and theorists have debated process and product instruction since the beginning of time. Here is a review of the theory. Educational theorists Piaget, Montessori, Bruner and Asubal are cognitive process theorists. The application of process instruction to Appalachian studies is obvious. But for those teachers who like to work from a textbook or for those teachers who like to know in advance the learning outcomes, any movement from a prescribed course of instruction is difficult. If, on the other hand, one applies Carl Rogers' concept of "teacher as facilitator," then student interests become central to the educational process and the environment, the community, the family, the local church, all become sources of information. The teacher is no longer an expert, but a consultant, an interested party. Piagetian theory suggests that the student should be active in manipulating materials and constructing ideas. Experience, says Piaget, facilitates growth. Appalachian topics and people are ideal for the student to interview, photograph, experience and write about. The interview itself offers a trial and error forum from which students can demonstrate their skills and at the same time, gather information in an order and form which they direct. The learner becomes an inquirer, a doer, a maker, a force in the world. What impact my students have had! For Jerome Bruner, educational theorist, the ability to conceptualize, that is, to perceive and understand relationships, is paramount. In Appalachian studies, driving down the road, going to the library, checking a church record book, studying school annuals or yearbooks, all of these things force the student to see the relationships in their community. Ask them to relate their subject to local, state or national developments and you have a mind task. Bruner's discovery learning can be used as a curriculum development guide. Here the teacher and the student together arrange questions, resources and experiences that lead to active information processing. Appalachian studies provides an ideal forum for this learning process. 92 �Bruner breaks learning into three parts. He calls them the enactive, iconic and symbolic modes. Appalachian studies is a forum for learning in each of these modes. The enactive mode involves actions and events. The iconic mode occurs when the student uses images and pictures to represent the world. These images and pictures are in the mind and without action. In the symbolic mode, the student uses words or writing to express those thoughts developed in the enactive mode. As the growth of feelings, beliefs and values are a goal, this involved process is a growth medium. We teach Appalachian studies to teach pride, love and affection. Do this with enactive, iconic and symbolic modes. For David Asubal, learning must be "meaningful learning." Learning becomes meaningful with the use of advance organizers and integrative reconciliation. These concepts are easily applied to Appalachian studies. The advance organizer is the child's or student's background—his home, his community, his family, his church. These points of reference help build a structure for learning. These advance organizers are introductory statements. When the data are gathered, then the student can be encouraged to move to a higher level called integrative reconciliation. Here the student takes the virgin bits of information and puts them together. Data are compared, contrasted, integrated and reconciled. Conclusions and evaluations are drawn. Predictions are developed. This, of course, requires the cognitive ability Piaget calls formal operations. And while AsubaTs theories are normally applied to the junior high and high school levels, those of Maria Montessori are applied to preschoolers, but not limited to that category. Maria Montessori is a process instruction-oriented theorist because she recognizes sensitive periods, uses didactic materials and provides for developmental needs, such as orderliness. Her concepts merit application to junior high, high school or college Appalachian studies programs, specifically, sensitive periods for the individual and for the culture. It suggests that both individuals and cultures have particular times at which they are most suited for advancement, study and evaluation which lead to progress . In Appalachian studies, one uses artifacts—a la Montessori, these are didactic materials—to involve students physically in their culture. In my course, I have an artifacts night: Each student brings an object, an Appalachian object, to share with the class. Another process-oriented technique, old as the hills, is the Appalachian dinner. Here students act on their heritage, their health and their environment by preparing an Appalachian dish, writing the recipe and sharing the results with the class. A third and more scholarly approach to process instruction in Appalachian studies is the term paper. With ten short papers, all part of one long paper, students in Appalachian Education are guided through the term paper ethnographic research process. The ten short papers that lead up to one long paper are as follows: (1) a sample paper, a short two-page example of a paper on Appalachian studies, (2) inter93 �view questions, ten prepared questions, (3) a written interview taken from either a tape recording or notes of an interview, (4) topic and outline, ten headings, topic and outline for the final paper, (5) source list, name, phone number, address of interview subjects, must list primary sources and secondary sources, (6) five sample notecards, (7) ten sample footnotes, (8) appendix material, photos, graphs-fully labeled and numbered, (9) rough draft of final paper, (10) peer review. The peer review includes both a self-evaluation of the paper and a peer evaluation. These ten papers guide the students through the term paper writing process. This approach calls the student into personal reflection on his past and future. Education in Appalachia's Central Highlands was researched and written using this approach. This textbook is in keeping with the concept of process instruction because it is incomplete and in progress. It will always be in progress because as students add to it, they become a part of it. While it is complete, it is not complete: Each chapter has questions for further research and study . Students continue the process of collecting and sharing the Appalachian experience through their own term papers, their interviews and their peer reviews. The experience is didactic, interactive and integrative. It often compares Appalachian and non-Appalachian, today's experience with yesterday's, good with bad, urban with rural and rich with poor. Education in Appalachia's Central Highlands is a process text, incomplete and studentowned. Each chapter has questions to answer, terms to define, photos to take, poems to write, etc. Student-taken photos and student-written poetry illustrate the chapters. 94 �Chapels in the Mountains by Marc Sherrod During the first half of the 20th Century, the Presbyterian Church recognized the Appalachian region as fertile ground and as a worthy opportunity for sharing the Gospel with people in need of salvation. The establishment of churches for evangelism, schools for education, hospitals for healing, and orphanages for the homeless represented a growing Presbyterian influence and outreach in the region. In the Presbytery of Holston,1 which included four counties in western North Carolina and twelve counties in eastern Tennessee, this influence and outreach developed in large part out of the Presbytery's participation in the denomination-wide Home Missions movement. In 1915, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States formed the Synod of Appalachia.2 Not long after this, the concept of Home Missions had established itself within the denomination as a legitimate method for sharing the Gospel, especially to disadvantaged and to unreached people throughout the South and throughout the Appalachian region. During this portion of its history, missions were either "Foreign" or "Home" for the Presbyterian Church. The potential of Appalachia as a "great home mission field" helped to justify the creation of the Appalachian Synod, for the new Synod "would develop a deeper interest for missions on the part of the mountain people by putting responsibility upon them." 3 Both before and with the formation of this new Synod, the Presbyterian Church came to regard Appalachia as a ripe field, ready for the harvest. The denomination's Home Missions philosophy, then, became the principal means by which such a harvest would occur. The Home Missions movement in Holston Presbytery focused on three areas of Christian concern: evangelism, education and equipment.4 While the desire to bring about the salvation of souls remained a heavy emphasis of the Presbytery, so also did the Presbytery and its member churches seek to educate and to equip the people for engaging in the tasks of kingdom living. The establishment of schools and the sharing of material and monetary resources with people in the region fostered a unique Presbyterian presence which sought to minister to the whole person—mind, body, and spirit. One of the primary results of the Home Missions movement and its efforts at evangelism, education, and equipment in Holston Presbytery was the development and sponsorship by local churches of a chapel ministry. These chapels also known as Sunday School outposts, preaching stations or preaching points, mission schools or mission churches—became integrally identified 95 �with the success of Home Missions in the Presbytery. As a microcosm for the entire Home Missions movement within the Presbytery, the concept of chapel ministries sought to combine attempts to win souls for Christ with the desire to provide both educational opportunities and the necessary funds so that the local people might erect and maintain a physical facility for worship and for educational purposes. Essentially, the chapel was intended as an extension of the home or sponsoring church. Churches shared ministers and/or Sunday school workers with the chapel or chapels, and the home church governing body (the session) exercised oversight, supervision and leadership of the life and work at the chapel. People who attended a chapel were enrolled as members of the home church; the session, at least theoretically, shouldered primary responsibility for determining the nature and function of ministry at the chapel. While folks at the chapel maintained a separate identity from their fellow members at the church, this identity was simultaneously linked to the sponsoring congregation even as a child relates to his/her parent. Chapels appeared on the scene in Holston Presbytery during a time when transportation and communication in the region were limited, a reality which often necessitated that much religious and social activity center within the local community. Furthermore, these chapels helped to provide a Christian environment and a Presbyterian presence in some rather isolated and self-contained communities. The establishment of chapel ministries by a home congregation also revealed a unique understanding for how church growth could occur. One common strategy for church growth in other denominations has been to divide the membership of a local church and then to initiate a separate congregation. This second congregation would have no direct relationship to the original church. Presbyterians, however, in the first half of the 20th Century utilized the chapel ministry as a way to subsidize financially and to encourage grass roots support and participation in an unreached community. By employing this strategy for church growth, the home congregation could provide direct supervision and leadership for the new, developing ministry at the chapel. By 1926 in Avery County, North Carolina, four Presbyterian Churches had established chapel outpost ministries: the Banner Elk Presbyterian Church with a chapel later called Arbordale; the Pineola Presbyterian Church with a chapel in Linville; the Plumtree Presbyterian Church with four chapels — Slippery Hill, Buck Hill, Powder Mill, and Three Mile; and the Newland Presbyterian Church with the Blevins Creek Chapel and the Smokey Chapel. (Around 1945, the Fletcher's Chapel would be added as an outpost ministry of the Newland Church.) The chapels sponsored by all four of these churches rested within approximately a five mile radius of the home congregation. Today, the Arbordale Chapel of the Banner Elk Church is an independent Presbyterian congregation; the Livnille Chapel of the Pineola Church is no longer active; the Plumtree Church joined another Presbyterian denomination and 96 �the only chapel presently active is the Buckhill Church; 5 the Blevins Creek Chapel of the Newland Church is an independent church (the Blevins Creek Community Chapel), but it is no longer affiliated with the Presbyterian church; the former Smokey Chapel is now the Church of the Savior, a Lutheran-Episcopal Fellowship; the Fletcher's Chapel remains under the oversight of the Newland Church. The history and current status of these chapels in Avery County is in large measure a commentary on the work of the Home Missions Committee of Holston Presbytery and on its efforts in working with those churches under its jurisdiction. An examination of the chapel ministries sponsored by the Newland Presbyterian Church will be an attempt to address some of the following issues: Did Holston Presbytery's view of Home Missions change as changes such as improved roads and communications occurred within the bounds of Presbytery? Did the home church provide adequate oversight and supervision of these chapels? Did the theology and practice of the Home Missions movement encourage and instill a desire among the folk attending the chapels eventually to become self-supporting churches? Did the Christian influence and Presbyterian presence originally sought measure up to the expectations, hopes and prayers of the local churches involved and of the Presbytery? Minutes of the Holston Presbytery meetings from 1920-1958 indicate a strong zeal for evangelistic efforts to carry the Gospel to unreached people living in the backyard of Presbyterian churches. A Presbytery staff person, usually referred to as the Home Mission Superintendent, 6 supervised the work of Sunday School and chapel extension. The report of the Home Mission Committee at the April 1, 1929 meeting of the Presbytery at First Presbyterian Church, Johnson City points to the evangelistic flavor of the committee's labors: Within the bounds of Presbytery, there are between 10,000 and 150,000 souls having reached the age of responsibility, and yet without Christ.. .Their souls are precious and the Master wants to win them everyone . . .Souls are hungry for the bread of life . . . During the past five years the country and mountain churches and missions to which your committee has contributed some aid have made some remarkable advances. Five churches have been built, three manses have been provided in fields which had no manse, three teachers' cottages have been built, and three chapels have been provided.. .A number of new Sunday Schools have been organized, others have been greatly increased in enrollment and attendance; at present the enrollment in this group of churches and missions is about double that of their church membership. Five years ago there were no daily vacation Bible schools held in the Presbytery; last summer more than 25 such were held with a total 97 �enrollment of more than 1,500 Looking backward, we are impressed with the fact that these five years have been fruitful years in soul-winning in this group of churches and missions. In the group as a whole there were less than 2,000 members at the beginning of this period. During these five years more than 1,000 members have been received on profession of faith and nearly half as many by letter — this five year period has seen many changes at Banner Elk, which has been fittingly called by someone, the hub of the home mission work of Holston Presbytery... The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church also had a Home Mission Committee. In its report of 1931 to the Presbytery, this committee listed 310 outposts and unorganized preaching points 7 in existence across the denomination. In 1940, the Home Mission Committee of the Presbytery reported: "We have not reached the multitudes in our own Presbytery. The population of the 16 counties within the bounds of our Presbytery is approximately 350,000. The membership of all our churches is less than 8,000, and the Sunday School enrollment, is less than 10,000.8 And then in 1955: Our Committee is proud of the aggressive Home Mission spirit in most of the congregations. This is shown by increases in professions of faith, in giving and building programs— The Committee assisted in the support of twelve pastors, who preached in thirty churches and chapels. In almost every case the pastor has more to do than is possible for one man to get done . . . . the brightest prospects for the expansion of our Home Mission work in the Presbytery are through the organization of outpost Sunday Schools... If the local churches will organize and provide voluntary workers for these Sunday Schools, the Home Mission Committee will assist in building chapels, and will take over some of the support of the work when it becomes an organized church.9 During this same 40 year period of successful Home Mission efforts for the Presbytery, the Newland Presbyterian Church also demonstrated remarkable growth. Constituted a church by action of a commission appointed by Holston Presbytery on August 12,1917, the Newland Presbyterian Church itself was an "outpost" ministry, a new church development begun shortly after Avery County became the 100th North Carolina county in 1911. Newland was named the county seat and immediately Reverend Edgar Tufts l of Banner Elk and others made plans to erect a Presbyterian Church opposite the county courthouse of the town square. Beginning with 26 charter members, the Newland Church quickly grew to 66 on the Communicants Roll and 92 on the Sabbath School enrollment by 1929. By 1940, the membership roll included 160 people with 145 on the Sunday School roll and in 1951,214 on the mem98 �bership roll with no indication of the number on the Sunday School roll. ^ After nine years of existence as an organized church, the Newland congregation and its session found themselves the overseer of two chapel outpost ministries — one in the Blevins Creek community and the other just outside of Newland in the Smokey Valley. The Blevins Creek Chapel As with the Newland Presbyterian Church, the Blevins Creek Chapel was in part established through the pioneering evangelistic work of Reverend Edgar Tufts of Banner Elk. (Blevins Creek is located about mid-way between Newland and Banner Elk.) The original building was erected around 1914 with local people in the Blevins Creek community providing the labor and materials. Prior to 1914, Mr. Hiram Brooks expressed concern about the destitute condition of the Blevins Creek area to Reverend Tufts. Although he had many ministerial obligations in several places in Avery and Watauga Counties, Reverend Tufts tried to preach at Blevins Creek once per month. After two years, Mr. Brooks left the area and Mr. and Mrs. R.E. Piercy, Sunday School extension workers affiliated with the Committee for Religious Education of Richmond, Virginia took over the Sunday School ministry at Blevins Creek. Actively involved with the Sunday School programs at Blevins Creek, Smokey and the Newland Church, Mr. Piercy labored for over 15 years as a Sunday School extension worker in Avery County.12 He served as an elder in the Crossnore Church and later was elected to that same office at Newland. The first mention of the Blevins Creek Chapel in the sessional records of the Newland Presbyterian Church occurs on August 26,1917. "The session met at Blevins Creek School-house at 4:30 pm at close of service." Mr. Donald Brown was received as a member upon reaffirmation of faith. Although this meeting at Blevins Creek occurred two weeks after the Newland Church was constituted, it would be 22 years later on March 26,1939 before the session again would meet at Blevins Creek. At a meeting of Holston Presbytery held at Shull's Mill, North Carolina (September 13,1921), a petition for organization as a church was received from the Blevins Creek outpost. The action of the Presbytery on this petition is unclear, though presumably the petition was either denied or the members who attended the chapel never acted upon their request since Blevins Creek remained a chapel well into the 1980s. A school, in addition to a Sunday School, had apparently been established by 1917 at Blevins Creek, with Mr. and Mrs. Piercy serving as teachers. Mr. Walter Vance, whose wife's family (Mr. Morris Lee) donated the land for the Blevins Creek Chapel, remembers that from the outset education went hand in hand with church work: "the school's purpose was to educate people and to educate them towards Christ... to provide a school and a Christian at99 �mosphere for the people of the Blevins Creek area."1 Public education was only offered for three months out of the year, so the school at Blevins Creek supplemented apparently the 'secular' education of local youngsters while offering opportunities to share the Gospel and to provide instruction in the Christian faith. Mr. Vance and his wife recall hearing about the influence of Mormon missionary teams who passed through the area and they think that perhaps this Mormon presence had something to do with the desire of the Blevins Creek residents to erect a school/church building in their community. Sometime around 1951, a new building was constructed at Blevins Creek. The cost was $3,100 with a contribution of $600 received from the Home Mission Committee of Holston Presbytery. The session of the Newland Church and the Presbytery were actively involved in seeking financial support for the building of this new facility. At a session meeting on September 5,1952, appreciation was expressed to the Calvary Presbyterian Church of Johnson City and to Mr. Beeson, a Presbyterian layman, architect and chairman of the Home Mission Committee. They had been "instrumental in the physical and spiritual support given the Newland Presbyterian Church on building of new Blevins Creek Chapel." Despite the clear interest shown in this new building project, from 1917 till 1951, session minutes reveal only occasional references to the work transpiring at Blevins Creek. References include new member receptions, the need for the church to provide adequate insurance coverage, and enrollments in Sunday School and in Vacation Bible School. On May 1,1950, the session appointed Mr. Morris Lee as the Sunday School Superintendent at Blevins Creek. Other than Mr. Piercy, there is no indication that elders from the Newland Church had direct involvement in the ministry at this chapel. According to his daughter Mrs. Vance, Mr. Lee was elected an elder but his name does not appear at the outset of any session meeting when members in attendance were listed. On February 7, 1956, the clerk of session "was asked to write the Crossnore Church and Presbytery concerning the possibility of Crossnore assuming Blevins Creek as a chapel in the Crossnore field." It was reported on March 25 of that same year that "the Crossnore session voted to accept Blevins Creek as a part of the Crossnore Church and to sponsor services and request that all members join the Crossnore Church." While it is likely that Presbytery's Home Mission Committee agreed to this transfer, there is not any evidence of protest from any party concerned, including the folks at the Blevins Creek Chapel. Prior to the transfer of the chapel to the oversight and care of the Crossnore Church, ministers of the Newland Church preached at Blevins Creek on a somewhat irregular basis — sometimes on Saturday night, sometimes on Sunday afternoon or Sunday night. However, Mr. and Mrs. Vance recall with fondness many of the "preachers" who served the field at Blevins Creek, especially Reverend Frank Camp and his wife. During Reverend 100 �Camp's tenure, 14he provided the Sunday School literature for the chapel, apparently purchasing it himself. Such generosity was deeply appreciated by the folks at Blevins Creek, for it was a time, according to Mr. Vance, when we might receive "15tf— 2tf in the offering plate." It was a "good thing that they would help us—otherwise we never would have made it on our own without the support of Newland." The Smokey Chapel In some ways the history of the Smokey Chapel parallels that of the Blevins Creek Chapel. The Smokey Chapel began in a 'little shack of a church," according to Mrs. Viola Oaks, across the road from its present location about two miles outside of Newland on the 'Smokey straight/ In either 1923 or 1924, the building was dedicated.15 Reverend D.B. McLaughlin, pastor of the Newland Church from 19211926, was instrumental in helping to get the Smokey Chapel established. At one point in its history, the chapel was named Mac's (or Max's) chapel in honor of Reverend McLaughlin, but through common use the title Smokey Chapel came to be the accepted name. The Chapel is located in the Smokey Valley, hence the name. Reverend McLaughlin had friends in Johnson City who donated some of the materials for the chapel. Parts of an old church in Pineola were also used along with the labor of local people.16 The folks who attended the Smokey Chapel received the preaching services of the pastor at Newland about twice a month. Like Blevins Creek, the preaching schedule varied from minister to minister — sometimes on Saturday night, sometimes on Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon, or Sunday night. For a time while Reverend Camp was pastor, his wife led the Sunday School program at Smokey, perhaps in part at least, paralleling the role of Mr. and Mrs. Piercy at Blevins Creek. Though it is not clear precisely how he did it, Mr. Piercy also played an instrumental role in helping to establish the Sunday School program at Smokey. Following the pastorate of Reverend Saunders who succeeded Reverend Camp, Mrs. Viola Oaks superintended the Sunday School at Smokey. Around 1954, Mr. Oaks added on three Sunday School rooms to the original building. As with the Sunday School programs at the other chapels and at the Newland Church, numerical growth on the Sunday School rolls had been steadily increasing for a number of years. In large part through the efforts of Mr. D.R. Beeson of Johnson City, Holston Presbytery's Home Mission fund gave $5000.000 towards this building project. The money was channeled through the Newland session. For the most part during its history, however, financial resources were limited at the Smokey Chapel. According to Mr. Oaks, about "all we could swing were the expenses — oil, wood, electricity, Sunday School literature." There is no indication that anyone from the 101 �Smokey Chapel was ever elected to the office of elder. As with the Blevins Creek Chapel, several session meetings were held at Smokey, primarily to receive new members. Evidently, elders also attended the chapel at Smokey in order to assist with the administration of the sacraments. The first mention of the Smokey Chapel in the session minutes relates to the reception of new members. On March 28,1938, "the following were received into the church from Smokey Mission having been duly examined and baptized November 7, 1937, and expressing a desire to unite with our church." Interestingly, six months passed between the examination and baptism and the official reception and recognition of church membership.17 As spokespersons for their respective chapels, both the Vances and the Oaks indicated that there was a growing concern during the last decade or so of the chapels' relationship with the Newland Church that "a burden was being placed on the in-town church." About ten years after the Blevins Creek Chapel was "given" to the Crossnore Church for oversight and supervision, the Newland Church considered the possibility of selling the Smokey Chapel to one of several interested parties. In 1967, an agreement was reached with the Assembly of God for rental of the church, though Presbyterian services continued to be held there on an intermittent basis. On January 13,1972 the following motion appeared in the session records: Motion was made and passed that every member of Smokey Chapel be notified that if support, interest, and attendance is [sic] not what it should be by March, preaching services will be discontinued and the situation will be reviewed by the session as to the possibility of closing the Sunday School program. Concern again was expressed in April of 1975 about the "growing concern over the dormant state of the Smokey Chapel." On June 2, 1982, the building and property of the Smokey Chapel was deeded over to Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Oaks, with the stipulation that should it ever cease to be a church, that the trustees of the Presbytery of Concord would have first option at purchasing it. l Soon afterwards, the Smokey Chapel became a Lutheran congregation under the leadership of Reverend O.T. McRee. The Fletcher's Chapel The Fletcher's Chapel (also known as 'The Chapel" or as "the Church on Cow Camp Road") is located two miles from the Newland Presbyterian Church. It is named after Mr. Ragland Fletcher, a former member of the Newland Church and now a retired Presbyterian minister. Prior to WWII and before his ordination, Mr. Fletcher was an active Sunday School worker in that area of Avery County known as "Cow Camp," and he taught an afternoon Sun102 �day school class in various people's homes from 1939-1943. Shortly after the close of WWII, the present building was constructed with labor and materials supplied by folks in the local community. Preaching services were held fairly regularly (about twice a month), the pastor often alternating Sundays between Smokey Chapel and Fletcher's Chapel. According to the session meeting on January 12, 1939 "R.E. Piercy, Ronald Hughes and Ragland Fletcher were appointed as trustees of the church proposed at Cow Camp." The proposed church, later named after Mr. Fletcher, does not appear again in session minutes until June of 1949; "Reverend Crinkley discussed in detail the fine work being done in the three outposts, with respect to both church and Sunday School." Up until 1976, the pattern of sessional leadership and oversight for Fletcher's Chapel followed the course set at Blevins Creek and Smokey. Aside from Sunday School provided by Mr. Fletcher and an occasional session meeting at the Cow Camp Chapel to receive new members, there is no indication that any substantial direction was given to this outpost ministry by the elders of the Newland Church. Since 1976, however, at least one elder from Fletcher's Chapel has served on the session of the Newland Church. Mr. Ben Wise and Mrs. Gloria Wise presently serve on the session; Mr. Roger Wise, son of Ben Wise, served from 1976-1984. An annual Vacation Bible School is held jointly by Newland Church and Fletcher's Chapel, and for the past two years the chapel has hosted the event. Opportunities for mutual participation and fellowship between folks at the church and the chapel are offered, but usually the attendance at these events depends on the place — church, chapel or neutral site. Worship services are held each Sunday morning at the Chapel followed by Sunday School. Although it can be argued that Fletcher's Chapel did not really participate in the Presbyterian form of government until some of its "members" began serving as elders in 1976, there remained something attractive and unique about Presbyterian theology and practice. Reverend Fletcher commented, "I was always struck that they wanted a Presbyterian Church... instead of a Baptist or Holiness type of church ... they seemed to want more of an intellectual rather than an emotional approach to religion." Conclusions The 60 year history of chapel oversight by the Newland Presbyterian Church is clouded by the apparent lack of continuous and significant leadership given to these three chapels. Neither the Home Mission Committee of the Presbytery nor the elders of the Newland Church attempted to cultivate leadership qualities within folks attending these chapels, at least not until 1976. The relationships between the "parent" church and its "daughter" chapels were maintained primarily through a ministerial presence and 103 �through the faithful labors of Sunday School extension workers such as Mr. Piercy and Mr. Fletcher. On one occasion (October 2,1968) the session appointed a special committee to "review the Presbyterian Church and chapel situation in Avery County." The Women of the Church, a Presbyterian Women's organization at Newland, sometimes studied materials produced by the Home Mission Committee of the Presbytery or of the General Assembly as a way to inform themselves about the work transpiring with these outpost ministries. However, such attempts at increased understanding were few and far between. The Home Mission Committee of Holston Presbytery ceased to exist in 1956 and its work was assumed under the new name, Church Extension Committee. While the Presbytery records do not address the specifics of this change, this shift in emphasis from Home Mission to Church Extension signaled the closing of the "chapel outpost" movement as a way to "evangelize, educate and equip." Perhaps the Presbytery realized the peculiar pressures placed on a sponsoring church which found it difficult to oversee one or more chapel ministries. The parent/child relationship encouraged by the creation of chapel ministries fostered an unhealthy dependence by the "child-chapel" on the "parent-church." Some chapels, such as the Arbordale chapels of the Banner Elk Church, eventually became a self-supporting congregation. However, most of the chapels in Avery County, including those sponsored by the Newland Church, never reached an independent status — at least as a Presbyterian congregation. In all likelihood, they were never offered the opportunity to become self-sufficient, probably because of their relatively small size and the lack of potential for significant numerical growth in their respective communities. Evidently, there was a desire for a Presbyterian presence and influence among the folks within whose communities these chapels were started. However, recent history indicates that both the Smokey and Blevins Creek Chapels are no longer affiliated with the Presbyterian Church and people who traditionally attended these chapels continue to do so even after the chapel is no longer tied to a Presbyterian denomination. The principal loyalty appears to be to the chapel itself and not to the sponsoring church or denomination. Each of these three chapels has drawn its membership from families within the local, geographically specific neighborhood. While, as Reverend Fletcher notes, there is something very attractive about Presbyterianism to the people at Cow Camp, Fletcher's Chapel remains largely a family chapel and its identity is less associated with Presbyterianism than it is as, simply "the Chapel." The Fletcher's Chapel and possibly the other two former Presbyterian Chapels as well, suffers from a split over rural and town values. The Chapel is a country/rural congregation with an informal and relaxed understanding of what the church should be about. The church, on the other hand, serves people who come from a wider diversity of backgrounds and whose formal 104 �education levels are generally higher than those of people attending the chapel. The nature and function of ministry at the church engenders greater structure and formality within those who share in the life of its ministry. This deeply ingrained mindset of a split over rural/town values and ways of engaging in kingdom work seems to limit the future possibilities for togetherness and mutual growth between folks at the chapel and folks at the church. NOTES 1. The Presbyterian Church operates under a representative from the church government. There are four governing bodies: 1) the Session, composed of elders elected by the people, is the governing body for the local church; 2) the Presbytery; a collection of Presbyterian churches in a certain geographical area, exercises oversight of member churches within its boundaries; 3) the Synod is a regional unit composed of a collection of Presbyteries; and 4) the General Assembly is the national governing body for the entire denomination. 2. The Presbyterian Church in the United States, also known as the southern Presbyterian Church, split from the Presbyterian Church in 1861. The Synod of Appalachia covered the mountainous sections of four states: North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky. The Synod was dissolved by action of the General Assembly in 1971 (?). 3. Highways and Byways of Appalachia, E.M. Craig, ed., Kingsport Press: Kingsport, Tennessee, 1927, p. 14. 4. "Our Jerusalem," Walter Keys, ed., published by the Home Mission Committee of Holston Presbytery, 1926, p. 5. 5 Less than a decade ago the Plumtree Church joined the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, a denomination which split off from the former PCUS (now PCUSA following reunion of the northern and southern branches in 1983). The Buckhill Chapel (now a church) followed the parent Plumtree congregation in leaving the denomination. Present status of the other three chapels is unknown. The Frank Presbyterian Church, now a member church of the Presbyterian Church in America, yet another splinter group, possibly also began as an outpost ministry of the Plumtree Church. 6. Holston Presbytery meeting at the Newport Presbyterian Church in Newport, Tennessee, April 12,1937. Here, for the first and possibly only time, the head of the Home Mission Committee is referred to as an Evangelist-Superintendant. 7. Holston Presbytery meeting at the First Presbyterian Church of Jefferson City, Tennessee, April 20,1931, i.e. the Assembly's Home Mission report. 8. Holston Presbytery meeting at the Micaville Presbyterian Church of Micaville, North Carolina, April 22,1940. Interestingly, no mention in this report is made of Christians belonging to other denominations. The implication is that the Presbyterian Church is the only way! 9. Holston Presbytery meeting at Cold Spring Presbyterian Church of Bristol, Tennessee, January 18,1955. 105 �10. Edgar Tufts was a prolific Presbyterian minister who helped start numerous churches and other Christian agencies in the Banner Elk area. The present day Edgar Tufts Memorial Association includes Lees-McRae College, Cannon Memorial Hospital and Grandfather Home for Children. 11. It is difficult to determine how many if any of the members reported by the church actually attended one of the chapels. Sometime around 1940 or so, it appears that the session began to include as members folks in attendance at the chapels. However, since the registers were kept by hand and a form of short-hand was utilized, such claims are difficult to document. 12. See Women of the Church history as the history describes Mr. Piercy (no page numbers). 13. Interview with Mr. and Mrs. Walter Vance, November 10,1986. 14. Reverend Frank Camp pastored the Newland field from August 21,1927 until February 1, 1942. He was an evangelist, and one of the best loved ministers during the history of the church. 15. An addition has now been added to the unused old sanctuary. This new addition houses the sanctuary, fellowship hall, kitchen and church offices of the Church of the Savior, a LutheranEpiscopal Fellowship. 16. Information supplied by Mr. Theodore Oaks, October 28,1986. 17. Why did so much time pass between the baptism and the actual reception into church membership? Normally, at most a week or two might transpire between the action of the session in receiving a new member and the act of the church in affirming that personal decision for Christ in baptism. 18. The details on the controversy surrounding the transfer of the Smokey Chapel to the Lutheran Church are not dear. However, it apparently was a stormy time as personalities dashed and decisions were made about the Chapel's future. Primary Sources History of the Newland Presbyterian Church, ed. by Mrs. Frank Camp from 1917-1939 with an annual report submitted by the Women of the Church thereafter. Interviews with the following: 1. Reverend Ernest Wilson, retired Presbyterian minister, affectionately known as "missionary to Holston Presbytery" (October 8,1986). 2. Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Oaks of the Smokey Valley community (October 28,1986). 3. Mr. and Mrs. Walter Vance of the Blevins Creek community (November 10,1986). 4. Reverend Ragland Fletcher, retired Presbyterian minister from Newland and namesake of Fletcher's Chapel. 106 �5. Mrs. Ellen Wise of the Cow Camp community (November 19,1986). Minutes of the Holston Presbytery, 1920-1958. Minutes of the Session of the Newland Presbyterian Church, 1917-1986 (Books I-V). Publications of the Home Mission Committee of Holston Presbytery: "The Holston Presbyterian," a newsletter of the committee from 1951-1958. "Our Jerusalem," ed. by Walter Keys, Superintendent of the Home Mission Committee, 1926. Secondary Sources Highways and Byways of Appalachia, ed. by E.M. Craig, Kingsport Press: Kingsport, Tennessee, 1927. 107 �COVERLET WEAVING Convenor: Tyler Blethen, Mountain Heritage Center, Western Carolina University "New Threads In Old Patterns/* Slide-tape presentation Jan Davidson, Mountain Heritage Center, Western Carolina University Origins Of the Handicraft Revival In The Southern Mountains Curtis Wood, Mountain Heritage Center, Western Carolina University Joan Green, Special Collections, Western Carolina University The Impact Of The 1895-1935 Craft Revival On Coverlet Weaving in Southern Appalachia Christopher Bobbitt, Indiana University Origins of the Handicraft Revival in the Southern Mountains by Curtis Wood and Joan Greene The origins of the Southern Appalachian handicraft revival lie in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—a complex period in American history—a period that witnessed the many changes in lifestyle and attitude which accompanied an increasingly industrialized America. In the northeast families were leaving their farms and moving to the growing cities and towns; tenements continued to grow in cities such as New York, Chicago, and Boston as immigrants settled there. In many quarters there were growing concerns over the dehumanizing effects of the machine age and a desire to return to a simpler time, a time of a craftsman's pride in his workmanship. The progressive education movement was gaining momentum, and the followers of John Dewey expounded the theory that education is a social process and that the development of artistic abilities is a vital part of the educational process. The first colleges were being established for women, and as the role of women in American society continued to change, they became an effective force for social reform. The cities of the northeast, however, had no monopoly on change, and during the late nineteenth century events were transpiring which brought an era of rapid change to the Southern Appalachian mountains.1 Textile mills were moving south in search of cheap labor, and mountain families were moving into piedmont mill towns. The mountain regions were being opened by capitalists bent on exploiting the resources of the region. As improved transportation made remote areas more accessible, tourists were being drawn to the mountains by stories of the local color writers in newly108 �established magazines such as Harper's and Scribner's. Outsiders read stories of a land of haunting beauty inhabited by people who lacked educational advantages and the social amenities; people who were struggling to make a living on their mountainside farms; and people who, because of generations of mountain isolation, continued to live in the lifestyle of their ancestors. The culture of the southern mountain people was depicted as that of "pure" Americana, a simple, vital culture which had not been touched by the effects of industrialization but one which had been degraded by poverty. The result was the appearance in the mountain areas of social workers whose purpose was threefold: to provide education for mountain people; to encourage native handicrafts as a way of improving the mountain economy; and to nurture the traditional idealized rural life of (as William Frost said) "our contemporary ancestors." Many of the social workers were the products of the changing ideas and theories that were being advanced in the industrialized northeastern cities, and the implementation of those ideas and theories would result in the Southern Appalachian handicraft revival. The local color writers, however, had not prepared the newcomers for the realities of mountain life and culture, nor had they given them any insight into its traditions, complexities, or forms of expression. Instead, these potential social reformers were guided by perceptions of rural life, of honest labor, and a better world that were drawn from John Ruskin, William Morris, and their English and American followers and by the arts and crafts movement and social settlement experiences they had inspired. The ideas of Ruskin and Morris were in the mainstream of almost one hundred years of rebellion against the Industrial Revolution, and their teachings represent a late stage in this great social and cultural dialogue. Both were influenced by Thomas Carlyle, Karl Marx, Robert Owen, Charles Dickens, and many others, but what was most original in the writings of Ruskin and Morris were their aesthetic concerns—their focus on the creativity and beauty of work and its social and cultural significance. Ruskin had condemned the dehumanizing aspects of the industrial age which alienated the worker from his products and drove beauty and meaning from work and life. Morris had turned these ideas into action and had become both a leader and an example. He wrote: We ought to get to understand the value of intelligent work, the work of men's hands guided by their brains, and to take that, though it be rough, rather than the unintelligent work of machines or slaves though it be delicate;...to have a high standard of excellence in ware and not accent make-shifts for the real thing.... Morris set up craft workshops to revive dying crafts in an attempt to restore beauty and dignity to work. The arts and crafts movement with its love of that which was hand made and traditional was one result. Social settle109 �ments were another. In 1884 a handful of young Oxford University students opened a settlement house which they named Toynbee Hall in an industrial area of London. Their purpose was to serve the working poor by bringing beauty and learning into their lives, and Toynbee Hall served as an inspiration for the American social settlement movement. Stanton Coit and Jane Addams were among the first Americans to visit Toynbee Hall and were instrumental in the transition of the settlement idea from England to America. In 1887 Coit established in New York's Lower East Side what has "usually been called the first American social settlement;" by 1889 Jane Addams's famous Hull House was operating in Chicago's East Side. As the English social settlement idea spread through the urban areas of northeastern cities, it was adapted to American needs and also became a decidedly women's movement. The many women who became involved in the social settlement movement were women of dedication, of strong beliefs. They were the first generation of college women in a time when the question of higher education for women was being vigorously debated, and perhaps they felt that they had to prove their right to a higher education by doing something important. Perhaps settlement work was an answer to the feelings of restlessness and uselessness they were experiencing in a changing society which still offered few careers to educated women. But whatever their motivation, they were a group of idealists who believed that settlement houses could help solve the problems of urban and industrial America, and they "organized America's first concerted attack on urban poverty/ The workers who came to live in the settlement houses were a "diverse lot." They were engaged in various occupations— teachers, writers, artists— and while they were living at the settlement houses they "devoted their spare time to club and class work at the settlements." Nearly ninety percent had attended college; many had done graduate work and had studied abroad. They had studied economics, politics, and history; they "talked, argued, discussed. They debated Darwin's theories, talked about the role of women, a novel by Dickens, a Shakespearean play or one of Carlyle's books." They were young— the median age when they entered settlement work was twenty-five; they were enthusiastic; and they were committed to helping solve the "battle of the slums.116 The settlement houses were located in the middle of the worst neighborhoods, and their object was to educate the immigrants—not solely in the traditional sense of reading, writing, and arithmetic but as a means to social reform. As Lillian Wald, the founder of a settlement house on Henry Street in New York, stated: "Education in its broadest implication engages our attention first, last, and all the time." ihe American settlement movement, inspired by William Morris, immediately saw the value of crafts as a means to enrich the lives of the poor and to preserve the best of their traditional culture. Crafts classes served as a means of bringing the neighhborhood residents to the set110 �tlement houses where the educational process could be instituted; handicrafts were a source of social therapy as they brought people together, and they provided a source of pride as the workers were united with their finished products—products which were aesthetically pleasing. As Jane Addams said, 'The aim of the settlement houses was 'to preserve and keep whatever of value [the immigrants7 lives] contained/ and 'to bring them into contact with a better type of Americans/"7 This paternalistic note of bringing the poor into contact with their "betters" was one characteristic of the settlement movement. Whether at Toynbee Hall, in the slums of northeastern cities, or in the communities of the Southern Appalachians, one of the primary goals of social workers was to "uplift" the natives by imbuing them with the social workers' values. One method of attaining this objective was through the use of handicrafts which, they believed, if pursued diligently became exercises in character-building. An echo of Ruskin encouraging women to weave and spin in order to develop moral fiber can be heard in a statement by a social worker in the southern mountains: "In the younger women who were learning to weave and keeping at it, I could see the growth of character. Another characteristic of the settlement movement was the attitude of social workers toward rural life. Although they never advocated abandoning urban life in favor of returning to a rural village existence, there was a powerful romanticism in their view of country living. Programs were instituted wherein children from the cities were sent to summer camps in the country where they could escape the problems of industrial America if only for a short time. There was also a growing sentiment to establish settlements in the rural areas of the country—in places where the social workers could bring educational advantages to the natives and where the natives could maintain their rural lifestyle. As the Southern Appalachian mountains came into public focus, this appeared to be the perfect setting for rural settlements. Here was an area of poverty-stricken, uneducated people who would benefit from social contacts; who were in need of education; and who lived simple lives that were untouched by industrialization. And as the settlement idea had made the transition from England to the cities in the northeast, the transition was made once again—this time to the Southern Appalachian mountains. In order that the social workers might provide the needed educational opportunities there was the necessity of bringing the natives together in the sparsely settled mountain communities. The obvious way to encourage gatherings was through crafts work, and as the settlement workers in the urban areas had encouraged the native crafts of the immigrants, the social workers in the southern mountains encouraged the native crafts of the mountaineers. Through handicrafts both idealistic and practical goals could be achieved because, as David Whisnant stated in his All That Is Native and Fine: 111 �For reasons of their own, middle and upperclass people outside the region were acquiring a taste for traditional handicrafts.Mountaineers were among those who had the skills to satisfy that acquired taste and who were economically hard pressed enough to find the modest potential market attractive. Thus, through the sale of crafts the economic base of the mountaineers could be improved. This would enable them to remain in the mountains rather than migrate to the mill towns which, to the social workers, embodied all the ills of an industrialized society.1 Settlement schools and handicraft centers began springing up independent of each other throughout the Southern Appalachians during the 1890s and early 1900s. Handicrafts such as weaving, basketry, quilting, rug making, woodcarving, pottery, and leather and metal work were promoted. Markets for the sale of these products were established through the handicraft centers: at Berea College and the Hindman Settlement School in Kentucky; at the Pi Beta Phi Settlement School in Tennessee; at the Tallulah Falls Industrial School and the Mount Berry School in Georgia; and in the Asheville area of western North Carolina. The earliest of the rural settlements, those in the Asheville area, were the Log Cabin Settlement established by Susan Chester Lyman in Buncombe County and Allanstand Cottage Industries established by Prances Goodrich in Madison County.11 Born in New York, Lyman was an 1888 graduate of Vassar College and had also been a resident at Hull House. She came to the Asheville area around 1892 hoping to establish a settlement school, and according to Frank Roberson whose mother attended the school, Lyman's earliest attempts included needlework sessions each morning for the girls in the neighborhood. From this beginning Susan Chester Lyman expanded her efforts to include a coverlet weaving program in 1895 for the ladies in the community. At first orders were sold to friends in the North, but by the late 1890s Lyman had made an arrangement with the Asheville Exchange for Women's Work to sell handwoven goods on a commission basis at their salesroom on Court Square. Frances Goodrich, a social worker from New York, had been educated at the Yale Art School and in 1890 was assigned by the Presbyterian Home Missions to the station at Brittain's Cove in Buncombe County. There Goodrich discovered a tradition of coverlet weaving among the mountain women, and to her this suggested the idea of using weaving as a means of getting the women to come to the station and also as a way of sustaining their interest. Goodrich proceeded in the typical settlement house manner and proposed a weaving project for the women who were meeting at the mission once a week. By 1895 she had determined that weaving was a skill which could provide added income for the mountain weavers as coverlets were sent North for sale. In 1897 Goodrich was transferred to Allanstand in Madison County where she continued to encourage hand weaving among the women 112 �of the area and where she organized the Allanstand Cottage Industries to handle the marketing of the woven products. In her book, Mountain Homespun which was published in 1931, Goodrich stated her purposes for encouraging the mountain handicrafts: ...to save the old arts from extinction; to give paying work to women too far from market to find it for themselves; and, more important than all, to bring interest into their lives, the joy of making useful and beautiful things.13 Frances Goodrich and Susan Chester Lyman were only two of the social workers who brought the settlement idea to the Southern Appalachians. During the early 1900s crafts centers continued to appear throughout the mountain region, and the Southern Appalachian handicraft revival was underway. The social settlement movement which initiated the handicraft revival was many things to many people. It was a way of doing something useful and productive for a generation of college women who had not been accepted into a man's world of business and politics. It was a reaction against the effects of industrialization—a way of encouraging the continuation of a rustic lifestyle and a craftsman's pride in his workmanship. It was a way of bringing neighbors together in a social situation; a way of providing education in areas where schools were few and scattered; a way of adding cash to mountain family incomes. It was a preservation of old skills that were rapidly disappearing; it was a beginning. NOTES 1. Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951), pp. 59,133-135; Adolph E. Meyer, The Development of Education in the Twentieth Century (New York: PrenticeHaU, Inc., 1940), pp. 5-7; Edward H. Reisner, The Evolution of the Common School (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1930), p. 528; Allen F. Davis, Life and Legend of Jane Addams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 10-12. 2. Ronald D. Eller, Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930 (Knoxvffle: The University of Tennessee Press, 1982), pp. 121-122,125-126; Henry D. Shapiro, Appalachia On Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870-1920 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1978), pp. 5-6, 115; Ina and John J. Van Noppen, Western North Carolina Since the Civil War (Boone: North Carolina: The Appalachian Consortium Press, 1973), pp. 355-358; Victoria Byerly, Hard Times Cotton MUl Girls (New York: Cornell University, 1986), pp. 11-12,163; Ben F. Lemert, The Cotton Textile Industry of the Southern Appalachian Piedmont (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1933), pp. 33,48-49 113 �3. Ian Hepburn, "The Craftsman and Social Conscience: William Morris/1 Handwoven (September/October 1984): 26. 4. Allen F. Davis, Spearheads For Reform The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement 18901914 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 8-11; David E. Whisnant, All That Is Native & Fine (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1983), p. 21. 5. Cornelia Meigs, What Makes a College? A History of Bryn Mawr (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1956), pp. 2-3; Davis, Spearheads for Reform, pp. vii, 37-38. 6. Davis, Spearheads For Reform, pp. vii, 42-43; Davis, Life and Legend, p. 12; Meigs, p. 41. 7. Lillian D. Wald, Windows on Henry Street (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1934), p. 162; Charles A. and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1930), pp. 421-423; Whisnant, p. 45; Davis, Spearheads For Reform, p. vii. 8. Eileen Boris, Art and Labor (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), pp. 122-124; Frances Louisa Goodrich, Mountain Homespun (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931), p. 25. 9. Davis, Spearheads For Reform, p. 23; Wald, pp. 158-159; Whisnant, p. 23. 10. Whisnant. p. 66. 11. Idyl Dial Gray, ed., Azure-Lure (Asheville, North Carolina: Advocate Publishing Co., 1924), n.p.; Marjorie Shearin, Revival of Crafts in North Carolina. Raleigh: North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service, 1966) pp. 8-9,12; Allen H. Eaton, Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1937), pp. 70-72; Max West, "Revival of Handicrafts in America," Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 55 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904), pp. 1579-1580; Michael Frome, Strangers in High Places (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966), p. 235; "Educating the Boys and Girls of the Smokies," The Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Knoxville: Great Smoky Mountains Publishing Company, Inc., 1928), n.p.; Virginia Brackett Green, "Those Wonderful Years at the Settlement School," n.p., n.d., Courtesy of Arrowmont School, Gatlinburg, Tennessee. 12. Shapiro, p. 224; West, p. 1576; Interview, Frank Roberson, Asheville, North Carolina, 2 February 1987; "Questionnaire For Biographical Address Register," Vassar College, 19 May 1919; "Asheville Woman Disappears From Passenger Liner," Asheville Citizen, 25 January 1917, p. 1; James R. Reynolds to Jane Addams, 5 February 1893, in Jane Addams Papers, Peace Collection, Series 1, Supplement, Swathmore College. 13. Shapiro, p. 221; Shearin, p. 8; Goodrich, p. 25. 114 �APPALACfflA: CONTRASTS AND SIMILARITIES Convenor: Alvin E. Gerhardt, Rocky Mount Museum Appalachia North Ronald Sutherland, Universite, de Sherbrooke Velma Jean Carter Sutherland, Sherbrooke, Quebec A Look At Regional Patterns In The Southern Highlands Paul E. Lovingood, Jr., University of South Carolina Robert E. Reiman, Appalachian State University A Look at Regional Patterns in the Southern Highlands by Paul E. Lovingood and Robert E. Reiman Introduction The Southern Highlands as defined here consists of 156 counties in the seven-state area of Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. All but eight of the counties lie within the Appalachian Region as defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission, and the study area is generally referred to as The Appalachian Consortium Service Area (Figure 1). Researchers from many disciplines in their study of the spatial form of human society have failed to recognize the existence of distinct areal units within a larger regional framework. In regional analysis it is necessary to establish some degree of regional distinction from the overwhelming mass of areal differences. In so doing one can understand a given area adequately, distinguish it from others and gain insight into the basic spatial organization in which people live and, in fact, the patterns which they have helped create. These patterns may be single-factor or multi-factor in character. It is the purpose of this study, through the use of maps, to demonstrate the existence of many different regional patterns within the Southern Highlands. An attempt will be made to show the spatial patterns of various socioeconomic variables within the area, including but not limited to resources, agriculture, business, population and health care. This study will illustrate that analysis of socioeconomic data is not only incomplete but liable to serious error unless it is applied within a variety of regional frameworks. 115 �FIGURE 1 Examples of Single-Factor Regions Farm Types. Geographers and others have for many years attempted to delineate agricultural regions on the basis of production, sales, farm types, farm size, etc. As agriculture is basic to economic development, physical landscapes vary and man's adaptation to his environment changes through time and place; no two areas on the earth's surface are the same in terms of their agricultural patterns. The map, Regions Based on Farm Types, shows five different regions in the Southern Highlands (Figure 2). Although tobacco and beef cattle can be found throughout the entire study area, certain regional specialties become obvious through an analysis of this map and its accompanying regional data (Table 1). The names of the regions were derived by using those farm types 116 �accounting for five percent or more of the total farms within a given region (Table 1). Region 2, Beef/Tobacco/Cash Grain, contains the largest number of counties (85) and shows a dominance of beef cattie with tobacco ranking second and cash grain third. Region 3, Tobacco/Beef, is the second largest region with 51 counties. Tobacco is by far dominant in this region with beef cattie second. Region 1, Beef/Poultry, contains 13 counties most of which are in Georgia. Although beef cattle represents the highest percent of total farms in this region, there is a good balance between beef cattie and poultry production. Region 4, Beef/Tobacco/General Farming Livestock/Cash Grain/General Farming, Crops/Poultry, includes only four counties all located in the northern part of the study area. This represents an area of mixed REGIONS BflSED ON FRRM TYPES - 1982 FIGURE 2. 117 �agriculture with beef cattle, tobacco and general farming as the dominant activities. Region 5, Fruit/Beef/Tobacco/Horticultural Specialties/Vegetables and Melons, has only three counties which demonstrates a lack of "specialty farms" and a balanced agricultural economy throughout the study area. Business Employment. Employment in the various businesses depicts the overall character of the economy of an area. The map, Regions Based on Employment in Each SIC Class as a Percent of Total Employment, shows five different regions in the Southern Highlands (Figure 3). There is considerable variation in the regional pattern throughout the study area (Table 2). Such variation should be expected because of the great range in both physical and cultural conditions in the area. Region 1 consists of 58 counties and is located primarily in the southern part of the study area. In terms of employment (60 percent) it can truly be described as a manufacturing region. Retail trade and service employment TABLE 1 PERCENT OF TOTAL FARMS BY FARM TYPE IN EACH REGION-1982 FARM TYPES 1 2 REGIONS 4 5 Cash Grain 3.6 6.5 1.4 9.0 2.0 Tobacco 2.7 10.8 65.4 13.1 10.3 Potatoes, Peanuts and Other Field Crops 2.7 4.3 1.6 4.1 3.1 Vegetables and Melons 1.1 2.1 0.5 3.2 8.8 Fruit and Tree Nuts 1.2 2.3 0.4 1.8 30.5 Horticultural Specialties 0.6 1.3 0.4 1.8 9.9 General, Primarily Crops 1.9 3.4 2.1 5.0 1.9 General, Primarily Livestock 1.0 1.2 1.0 10.4 1.0 42.9 51.1 20.0 30.3 22.1 1.8 4.5 2.9 0.5 4.0 Poultry and Eggs 35.1 2.8 0.6 1.8 0.2 Animal Specialties 1.8 2.2 0.8 5.0 2.0 13 85 51 Beef Cattle Dairy Region Size (Counties) 118 �REGIONS BflSED ON EMPLOYMENT IN ERCH SIC CLRSS RS R PERCENT OF TOTRL EMPLOYMENT - 1982 FIGURE 3. support the manufactural employment. Region 2, the largest with 65 counties, is widely distributed throughout the study area. Employment here is more balanced with manufacturing, services and retail trade dominant but with important numbers in other categories. This could probably be described as the typical patterns of upland areas. Region 3 consists of only eight counties with over 50 percent of all employed persons engaged in tertiary activities. These are service centers but with significant employment in manufacturing. Region 4,23 counties, is unique in that 50 percent of its employment is in the primary activity of mining. The retail trade and services employment in large part supports the mining activities. This traditional coal-mining region lacks diversity in terms of employment. Region 5 contains only two counties at op119 �TABLE 2 PERCENT OF TOTAL EMPLOYMENT IN EACH REGION BY SIC CLASS - 1982 SIC CLASS 1 REGIONS 2 3 4 5 Agricultural Services, Forestry and Fisheries 0.3 0.3 0.1 0.1 0.2 Mining 0.6 2.5 5.5 50.4 0.0 3.8 5.3 3.5 2.1 32.0 60.0 31.5 17.8 4.8 27.5 Transportation, Communication, Electric, Gas and Sanitary Services 3.0 5.5 18.5 4.0 3.0 Wholesale Trade 3.7 6.6 3.2 4.3 5.2 14.6 20.8 24.9 16.9 13.4 2.7 5.5 3.7 3.0 3.7 11.5 21.9 22.1 14.3 15.0 0.3 0.0 23 2 Contract Construction Manufacturing Retail Trade Finance, Insurance and Real Estate Services Unclassified Region Size (Counties) 0.1 0.1 0.7 58 65 8 posite "poles" in terms of their location and are anomalies in terms of their employment pattern. These are "high growth" areas as indicated by their significant employment in contract construction. In addition there is much diversity of employment which is characteristic of counties where large urban populations prevail. Causes of Death. The map, Mortality Regions Based on Causes of Death, is used here to illustrate that regions may in fact exist with little or no significant differences between them (Figure 4). In the Southern Highlands there is little difference in the causes of death between sparsely populated rural counties as in Region 1 and the densely populated urban counties in Region 5 (Table 3). The percent of total deaths by cause for the most part does not vary more than about one percent between all five regions (Table 3). It is interesting to note that the percent of total deaths by cause, with one exception, is higher for all regions than the national average. The one exception is cirrhosis of the liver where three of the five regions are below the national average (Table 3). As would be expected the greatest number of deaths occur in those counties with higher populations (compare Figure 4 and Table 4). 120 �TABLE 3 PERCENT OF TOTAL DEATHS BY CAUSE PER REGION - 1980 Cause Infective & Parasitic Diseases 1 2 REGIONS 3 4 5 U.S. 0.9 0.8 0.8 1.0 1.1 0.76 Malignant Neoplasms 19.2 19.1 19.6 19.9 20.6 18.4 Ischemic Heart Disease 28.0 28.9 28.1 27.2 27.4 25.0 Other Cardiovascular Disease 21.1 21.1 21.1 22.1 21.6 18.7 Influenza & Pneumonia 2.5 2.8 2.9 2.9 2.9 2.4 Bronchitis, Emphysema Asthma 3.0 3.8 3.1 2.6 3.0 2.5 Cirrhosis of Liver 0.8 1.0 1.5 1.0 1.6 1.4 Motor Vehicle Accidents 3.9 3.4 3.0 3.1 2.7 2.4 Other External Causes 6.5 6.5 6.0 5.6 5.4 4.7 13.0 12.6 13.8 14.6 13.7 11.7 Deaths from Other Causes Total Deaths 8,806 15,366 15,028 Region Size (Counties) 68 51 26 6,851 14,196 5 6 Dominant Churches. In any overall regional analysis, religion is a strong element of cultural diversity. The map, Denominational Regions Based on Dominant Churches as a Percent of Total Churches, shows five regions with a general pattern of change from south to north (Figure 5). In this analysis any denomination having more than two percent of the total churches in the Southern Highlands was included. Region 1 with 80 counties is by far the largest and most dominated by one denomination (Table 5). Southern Baptist Churches account for slightly more than 50 percent of all churches and United Methodist is the only other denomination with more than five percent of the total. This pattern is found in most counties in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee. Region 2 consists of 15 counties that reflect a slight Southern Baptist dominance but have important groups of United Methodist, Church of God (Cleveland) and Churches of Christ. Region 3 has 38 counties where the 121 �MORTRLITY REGIONS BRSED ON CRUSES OF DEPTH - 1980 FIGURE 4. Southern Baptist dominance has been replaced by United Methodist. This region also has the largest group of Presbyterian Churches in the U.S. Region 3 appears to be transitional between the southern and northern counties. Region 4 is made up of 12 counties with a central and northwesterly orientation. This region is dominated by Southern Baptist Churches but has the largest number of Christian Churches and Churches of Christ. United Methodist and Churches of Christ are also important. Region 5 is the smallest with only 11 counties. In this region the Southern Baptist influence has almost disappeared and United Methodist and American Baptist in the USA 122 �TOTAL DEATHS BY CAUSE PER REGION - 1980 Cause Infective & Parasitic Diseases 1 REGIONS 2 3 4 5 81.6 127.5 122.1 68.0 157.1 Malignant Neoplasms 1693.2 2927.4 2943.2 1362.0 2928.0 Ischemic Heart Disease 2468.4 4447.2 4225.0 1864.0 3892.2 Other Cardiovascular Disease 1856.4 3243.6 3172.0 1514.0 3067.2 Infleunza & Pneumonia 224.4 433.5 436.8 198.0 406.2 Bronchitis, Emphysema, Asthma 265.2 675.2 473.2 180.0 430.2 74.8 153.0 221.0 67.0 228.0 Motor Vehicle Accidents 340.0 520.2 449.0 221.0 385.8 Other Eternal Causes 571.2 999.6 904.8 387.0 760.2 1149.2 1938.0 2080.0 1000.0 1941.0 8,806 15,366 15,028 6,851 14,196 68 51 26 5 6 Cirrhosis of Liver Deaths from Other Causes Total Deaths Region Size (Counties) are dominant. Churches of Christ, Presbyterian Church in the U.S. and Church of God (Cleveland) are also important. Multif actor Regions Multiple factor regions can be developed by using various combinations of similar or dissimilar data. The data used may measure many different attributes of an area or its people. It is through this procedure that geographers undertake a task not done holistically by other disciplines. In other words through regional analysis geographers are not just interested in the classification of regions but attempt to understand the region as a whole. The map, Multifactor Regions Based on 18 Socioeconomic Variables, gives an understanding of the spatial interaction of socioeconomic data by regions within the Southern Highlands (Figure 6). Here we see a mosaic of 123 �DENOMINflTIONflL REGIONS BRSED ON DOMINRNT CHURCHES RS R PERCENT OF TOTRL CHURCHES - 1980 FIGURE 5. regional characteristics, and many of our assumptions become more realistic when they are given this spatial dimension. We begin to see the answers to such questions as trWhat is the relationship between education and income?," 'What is the relationship between birth rate and the ability of the population to support itself?," "Where are those areas most in need of public assistance?," "What are the basic needs of the people?," etc. (Table 6). A close examination of the five regions presented here shows many relationships that are often considered singularly. It would seem that this ap- 124 �TABLE 5 PERCENT OF CHURCHES BY DOMINANT DENOMINATION IN EACH REGION - 1980 DENOMINATION 1 2 REGIONS 4 5 Southern Baptist 51.0 26.7 22.8 29.1 2.3 United Methodist 17.9 16.5 27.0 14.8 26.5 Church of God (Cleveland) 4.9 15.7 3.8 4.4 5.2 Churches of Christ 3.0 13.4 3.6 10.6 7.3 Presbyterian Church in the U.S. 3.3 2.4 6.6 3.8 6.0 Christian Churches & Churches of Christ 2.1 11 . 3.7 19.7 2.3 American Baptist Churches in the USA 0.0 2.2 0.8 0.0 22.7 17.9 22.0 31.6 17.6 27.8 80 15 38 12 1 1 Other Churches Region Size (Counties) proach adds knowledge about the form and functions of areas and should be beneficial in both urban and regional planning. For example, Region 1 contains about 44 percent of the counties in the Southern Highlands—those that lie scattered along the central northeast-southwest axis of the overall region. Here in the Blue Ridge Mountains and in the Ridge and Valley section there is heavy dependence on manufacturing employment and little on agriculture or mining. There are comparatively low ratios of people on welfare, people living below the poverty level, and people living without adequate housing (reflected by inadequate plumbing). The population is aging and there is a high proportion of females in the labor force. For planning purposes it can be surmised that while local government officials will need to be concerned with economic development, some additional effort will need to be exerted toward revitalization of the farm economy. Although furnishing additional facilities for elementary education will probably not become a problem, continuing education for adults will need to be made more available as well as child care for the high percentage of female workers in the labor force. Region 2, the least contiguous in the overall region, contains only about 10 percent of the counties in the Southern Highlands. Median home values are the highest among the five regions, yet there are still a number of homes 125 �MULTIFRCTOR REGIONS BRSED ON 18 SOCIOECONOMIC VRRIRBLES - 1980 FIGURE 6. without adequate plumbing; education levels are high and poverty levels lower than in three of the five regions. Because median ages are lower there may have to be more planning efforts in regard to the education of younger children. Region 3, with 19 percent of the counties, portrays clearly the results of economic diversification. High percentages of the labor force are in manufacturing and services (with a large proportion of employed females) and a low percentage in agriculture. Implications here are that people in this region sustain higher levels of living than do those in the other four regions. 126 �TABLE 6 AVERAGE VALUE BY REGIONS OF DATA USED IN MULTIFACTOR REGIONALIZATION SCHEME 1 REGIONS 3 4 5 3.0 12.1 2.1 0.5 11.0 10.3 13.7 Birth Rate 12.9 14.3 14.1 16.6 17.4 Median Age 32.1 29.4 30.9 28.3 28.1 Infant Mortality Rate 13.0 13.0 12.1 12.1 11.2 SIC CLASS Percent Black Population Percent of Families with Female Head Death Rate Per Capita Income Percent of Persons Below Poverty Level 4.1 11.8 11.9 9.0 7.9 8.7 9.2 8.6 6,549 7,114 8,381 6,425 4,732 15.6 14.0 12.3 23.1 37.0 Percent of Females Divorced 5.1 5.0 7.2 5.1 5.3 AFDC Recipients as a Percent of Total Population 1.8 2.6 2.7 5.6 o.O Percent of Labor Force in Agriculture, Forestry; Fisheries and Mining 4.7 8.5 1.9 25.5 13.8 Pet cent of Labor Force in Manufacturing 36.8 17.0 31.9 9.8 10.7 Females, 16 Years and Older as a Percent of the Labor Force 41.7 37.1 45.3 32.5 28.1 6.7 7.5 6.1 11.0 11.9 White Collar Workers, 16 Years and Older, as a Percent of the Labor Force 32.7 40.6 47.2 31.5 24.7 Median School Years Completed, 25 Years and Older 10.4 11.8 11.5 9.4 7.4 26,151 20,558 Unemployment Rate, 16 Years and Older Median Home Value 29,997 39,794 35,656 Percent of Housing Units Without Plumbing 6.2 5.1 2.1 Region Size (Counties) 69 1 6 30 127 11.6 2$ 24.3 12 �Region 4, with another 19 percent of the counties of the Southern Highlands (mostly in the "coal counties" of Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia), depicts the results of mining as a large employer of people, without concurrent emphasis on manufacturing and services employment. Also, home values are low (as in home quality), there is low utilization of females in the labor force and unemployment is high. In this region planners and other officials will need to focus their efforts on greater economic diversification, improvement of education, better delivery of social services, and the like. The 12 counties of Region 5, composing only 8 percent of 156 counties of the overall region, and bordering on Region 4, is the Southern Highlands real "disaster area." With one exception these counties are located on the Appalachian Plateau in Kentucky; home values, home quality, per capita income, and education are the lowest of the five regions. In addition, birth rates are high as are rates of unemployment, persons living below the poverty level and welfare recipients. It is obvious that social planning and economic development planning will have to be based on some new concepts if the levels of living in this sub-region are to be brought into line with those of even the next poorest area. Summary And Conclusions The whole idea of regionalization has to do with people's perceptions of place. In the broadest sense it is a frame of reference as to what a place or area is like. Once the character has been determined, the concept can be used in its simplest terms to demonstrate how seemingly unrelated elements of data can be used to portray the existence of and to analyze composite patterns in an area as complex as the Southern Highlands. Different regions exhibited in this paper have been derived by combining various qualities, attributes and/or properties in order to gain a better understanding as to how some areas within a larger region can be different from other areas within that same region. The use of this regionalization technique can hopefully lead to a greater understanding of the region and its people as regional differences can be delimited and then linked to differences in local governmental leadership styles. Hopefully, planning and decision-making that are based on regional understandings will be superior to that accomplished only by intuition. 128 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publications Description An account of the resource This collection contains digitized monographs and collections from the Appalachian Consortium Press. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Date Issued Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource. June 1, 2017 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource <a title="Digital Scholarship and Initiatives" href="http://library.appstate.edu/services/digital-scholarship-and-initiatives" target="_blank">Digital Scholarship and Initiatives</a> Publication URL https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636689/remembrance-reunion-and-revival/ Digital Publisher Digital Republication Appalachian State University Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Remembrance, Reunion and Revival Description An account of the resource <span>The proceedings from the 1987 Appalachian Studies Conference held at East Tennessee State University includes contributions by Sandra L. Ballard; Richard Blaustein; Ricky Cox; Alan J. DeYoung; Howard Dorgan; Karen Tice and Albie Pabon; Bennie Lee Sinclair; Amy Tipton Gray; Marie Tedesco; Mark F. Sohn; Marc Sherrod; Curtis Wood and Joan Greene; and Paul E. Lovingood and Robert E. Reiman.</span><br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=18h4S1q77gdiBwo92E__1lOpE2a3fih0l" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636689/remembrance-reunion-and-revival" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UNC Press Print on Demand</a> Subject The topic of the resource Appalachian Region--Congresses Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Roseberry, Helen Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988 Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Proceedings of the 10th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Conference proceedings Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/4633419/johnson-city.html Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant ||||osm Johnson City (Tenn.) Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1980s Multidisciplinary/ Appalachian Studies https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/ada50d407b1ec1d3ac3540a3b913b3cb.pdf 8d559ca78a965b3a8f73e6615fd3b25e PDF Text Text �Critical Essays In Appalachian Life And Culture Proceedings Of The Fifth Annual Appalachian Studies Conference Coordinating Editor Rick Simon Editors Grace Edwards Ron Eller Joan Moser Managing Editor Barry M. Buxton �The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From 1973 to 2004, its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program, Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press. www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Original copyright © 1982 by the Appalachian Consortium Press. ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-3681-8 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-3683-2 Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press www.uncpress.org �The appreciation of the Appalachian Consortium and the Appalachian Studies Conference is extended to Brad Jakubsen, Jacque Stewart and Gail Garner for their assistance in editorial and design considerations. �This page intentionally left blank �TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction, Rick Simon 1 Keynote Address: Education and Change, Sue Thrasher 7 I. Values and Political Economy Introduction, Rick Simon Harry Caudill and the Burden of Mountain Liberalism, RonaldDEller 21 Human Values and Resource Development in the Political Economy of Appalachia: A Synthesis of Two Regional Forums, Deborah Morentz Markley and Brady J. Deaton II. 19 30 Urban Minorities Introduction, Ronald Eller 45 Black Appalachian Migrants: The Issue of Dual Minority Status, William W. Philliber and Phillip J. Obermiller 47 Occupational and Employment Status of Appalachian Migrant Women, Virginia McCoy Watkins and Diana Gullett Trevino 54 III. Language and Literature of the Appalachian Region Introduction, Grace Toney Edwards 67 Generations: The Theme of Jim Wayne Miller's Dialogue With a Dead Man, Harold Branam 69 Kit Brandon's Choice, Parks Lanier 76 IV. Culture, Images and Change Introduction, Joan Moser 87 Appalachia in America's Future: Alternative Cultural Forms, Melinda Bollar Wagner 88 �Notes on Voluntary Service Networking and Community Building, Thomas Plant V. 98 Abstracts Renewable Energy for Appalachia Development, C. James Bier 107 The Need for a Descriptive Study of Appalachian Children's Language Development, Dina Blum - West 108 Floating Down the Stream of Time: An Appalachian Rural Community Confronting Mass Society, Tom Boyd 108 Appalachian Change: The Federal Involvement, Michael J. Bradshaw 109 Appalachian Serpent-Handlers in the Urban Midwest: A Test of a Satisfaction Hypothesis, Michael Carter and Kenneth Ambrose 109 Looking Back 110 Before Integration, Victoria A. Casey The Homemade Toys of Appalachia, Debbie Collins 110 Sherwood Anderson's Appalachian Years: An Overview, William T. Cornett Ill Tales of Power: A Community Perspective of the T.V.A., Richard Couto 112 Location Decisions of Appalachian Youth: A Case Study in a Rural Appalachian Community, Barbara Daniel 113 Land for East Kentucky's Development: An Inventory of Mountain Top Mining Sites, Douglas Dotterweich 113 Planning for Appalachia's Future: The Forest Service and Public Input, L. Sue Greer 114 The Nada Tunnel: Through Fact and Through the Imagination, Larry G. Meadows 115 Made in the Mountains: Folk Art and Traditional Handicraft, Laurel Norton 116 The Cherokee Religious Experience, Richard A. Humphrey 117 Toward a Theory of Appalachia in Advanced Capitalism, Stephen P. Legeay 119 �Ethnicization and Urban Appalachians, Martin N. Marger 119 Pine Mountain Boarding High School: A Unique Educational Community, 1930-49, Walter Oldendof 120 A Critique of Appalachian Sociolinguistics, Brenda CottrellPfatf 121 An Ethnography of Speaking in an Appalachian Community, George B. Ray 121 Oh, How I Want To Go Home: The Myth of Return and Ethnic Identification Among Appalachian Migrants to Urban Places, Terrence Russell 122 Women in Appalachian Education: An Initial Inquiry, Ruth Scott 122 New Ideas and New Cultural Experiments in Appalachia: A Historical Outline, Jewel L. Tabor 124 The World's Largest Pottery: Does Appalachia Hold Its Future? Jack Welch 125 The Blue Ridge Mountains: A Regional Ecology of Natural Hazards, Gene Wilhelm, Jr 126 Appalachia and the World's Fair, Michael J. McDonald and William Bruce Wheeler 126 Methods, Means and Materials for Teaching Appalachian Studies, Carolyn M. Hinson 127 Unraveling Folklore: The Thread of Appalachia, Joyce L. Graham 128 The Impact of Economic Development on Women: Women and the Welfare State in Southern Appalachia, Mary Anglin 129 The Richmond, Kentucky Solar Energy Community Assessment, /. Allen Singleton 129 �This page intentionally left blank �Introduction Rick Simon Appalachian Studies Conferences have been held every year since 1977. The 1982 conference was the first held under a new relationship with the Appalachian Consortium (AC), which will co-sponsor the annual meetings. One important result of the participation of the Appalachian Consortium will be the regular publication of the conference proceedings. As this volume marks a new beginning as the first of many to come,1 it is appropriate that this essay should speak to the nature of the Appalachian Studies Conference, as well as introduce this collection of papers from the 1982 conference. The goal of the conference is similar to that of other professional associations: a "shared community has been and will continue to be important for those writing, researching, and teaching about things Appalachian." But the objective of creating a community for those involved in Appalachian studies has a particular meaning. For that community is made up of many diverse elements, to be sure. The Appalachian Studies Conferences bring together the widest group of people, including faculty in the social sciences and the humanities, musicians, artists, film makers, social welfare practitioners, community workers, residents, and others. These people come from many different locations, have a diversity of personal histories and backgrounds, hold varying political beliefs, and have different reasons for being interested in Appalachia. There would seem no better example of that diversity than that this introduction should be written by someone who is by birth urban, northern, and Jewish; by training an economist; by experience an activist and Marxist; and, intellectually, one who is questioning the notions of an Appalachian regional consciousness and identity. It is safe to say that I constitute a minority of one within the Appalachian studies community.2 If my views regarding Appalachian studies may be unrepresentative, my attitude toward the Appalachian Studies Conference and its diversity will be shared more generally. The diversity of the Appalachian studies community has been both a source of strength and a problem, a source of creativity and divisiveness. The diverse formats included in the annual conference are illustrative. For example, at the 1982 conference there were literature readings, presentations of academic papers, a social with traditional music and square dancing, continuous showings of films, tape-slide shows, and other audiovisual teaching aids about Appalachian subjects. There was also run concurrently a workshop for primary and secondary teachers.3 A workshop for mental health workers was planned, but unfortunately did not draw a large enough participation to justify the running of the program itself. The 1982 conference also included an innovation in format which will be tried again 1 �in 1983. The program committee attempted to integrate artistic papers and scholarly contributions within a session organized around a topic. For example, the session on "Sexism in Work, Communities and Families," included a multimedia presentation of a short story entitled "Lovesick Blues;" the session "Mountain Music" included a film entitled "Anchored in Love," and the session "Land Use and Economic Development" was scheduled to include a poetry reading. Another interesting feature of the Appalachian Studies Conference format is its attempt to bring together community and academic participants. Although falling far short of the complete mixing of university and general communities, each annual conference has included a session focusing on a community problem presented by the residents themselves. In 1982, the Citizens for the Preservation of Floyd County, a group fighting the location of a high-voltage powerline designed to cross the county, enlightened and ignited the audience. These diverse activities offer combinations of interactions which other conferences do not approach. They reflect not only the diversity of participants but the diversity of interests of each participant as teacher, scholar, activist, resident, cultural consumer, and artist. In addition, this diversity provided the opportunity for uncommon informal contact between the participants. By its nature, this activity is hard to describe, but all agree it marks the ASC as something special. But the variety of activities has also led to, as John Stephenson has suggested, "a suprising degree of specialization and subspecialization, and a consequent fracturing of our attention."4 The 1982 conference reflects this as most sessions were organized around disciplines: cultural history, linguistics, religion, politics....Moreover, the divisions within Appalachian Studies, as within other regional studies groups, inevitably reflect political and methodological differences. The political differences ultimately concern beliefs as to the best strategies for change and where we want those changes to lead.5 But it is the methodological concerns which call forth the greatest debate among Appalachian Studies participants. The tension between the "hard" and "soft" academic disciplines has received the greatest attention.6 There is the related difference between those who view the proper role of the regional student as activist and those who urge an "objective" non-participant role.7 A final methodological difference is that between (what I refer to as) the globalists and the localists, those who analyze Appalachia as part of a larger social context and those who analyze Appalachia as unto itself.8 These differences will be of unequal importance in the 1980's. At least the goal of bridging the gap between the hard and soft, between the social scientists and humanists, is shared by all. The attempt made in 1982 to integrate the hard and the soft within sessions was modest but nonetheless an important beginning. The tension between the activists and the "academics" reflects real political differences and will not be so easily resolved.9 The tension between the globalists and the localists, which will be mirrored in an increased tension over political strategies, may well become the most debated issue in the 1980's. Despite the diversity of participation and the political and methodological dif2 �ferences and the demands these place on the ASC organizers, the annual conference seems to be surviving quite successfully. Stephenson believes that Appalachian Studies has become a community who, "while they maintain their differences in perspective, have shared much in this ten year conversation, and who want to share more as they work together in the future."10 There is an Appalachian scholars' community, and it receives its fullest, yet muted, expression in the Appalachian Studies Conference. Given the very real divisions within the Appalachian community, the obvious question is "what brings and holds this diverse group of people together?" First, there is our common interest in the territory we call Appalachia. There are as many boundary definitions of the region as there are problems in the eyes of conference participants. Nonetheless, whatever the particular approach of the Appalachian scholar, the common space and people are a cohesive force. Furthermore, there is a belief in a holistic method, one which does not separate subject matter by disciplines, even as there is a tension between the social sciences and the humanities. For example, my own work might be considered too economic determinist within the Appalachian Studies community, yet would not be considered "economics" by that profession. Regional studies, by its nature, encourages one to think in holistic, not disciplinary terms. In the 1982 conference, although some sessions were organized along disciplinary lines, others were organized around topics and included presentations from individuals in different disciplines. For example, the session called "Appalachian Images: Past, Present, Future" included individuals who are in sociology, political science, history, and biology departments. This and other sessions were very much interdisciplinary; the conference is moving toward structuring multidisciplinary sessions. A third factor holding people together within Appalachian Studies is a concern for the use of knowledge, particularly its impact on people. Those doing Appalachian Studies are closer to their subject than are many other research communities. This is not just a concern for the policy implications of research, therefore, but reflects the position of the participant who is "of Appalachia. Our work affects each other as well as people in general. This concern for having an impact, as well as what that effect will be, has led the studies conference to develop mechanisms for talking to people outside of the Appalachian Studies community. The teachers' workshop is very much a continuing part of the conference and the mental health workshop will hopefully become that also. The participation of community groups is an ongoing concern, although again there is much to be done to more fully integrate university and community participation. This concern for outcomes is reflected in what John Stephenson calls the "future oriented" interest of the community. Once again there has not been adequate or sufficient attention given to this subject. It is part of the consciousness of those doing Appalachian Studies, so hopefully we will improve our performance. We suspect that that concern will be translated into action; the 1982 conference made a modest contribution. 3 �The 1982 Conference "Alternative Appalachian Futures: Past and Present, 1832-1982," was the theme chosen for the 1982 conference. We in Appalachia seem once again faced with a critical period that will greatly affect our future. The energy crisis, funding reductions in federal social programs, more rapid growth of the smaller towns and rural areas, new communication and computer technologies,.. .all suggest that we are in a time of rapid change in Appalachia. There have been other times when critical choices were made, knowingly or unknowingly, that shaped Appalachia. We need to learn about earlier historical episodes during which critical choices were made, as well as to try to unravel the present. The program committee for the 1982 conference believed that we had better start looking now at the future of Appalachia if we hope to participate in influencing the changes that will come to pass. As with so many of the other considerations with the still young Appalachian Studies Conference, mechanisms to successfully institute our objectives are still developing. The theme for the 1982 conference, while providing some continuity for the different conference activities, was not successful in really focusing the conference papers and the other forms of presentations. Thus the editorial committee decided not to try to organize this collection around the theme of Appalachian futures, but instead to reflect the more modest success of speaking to that theme. Humbly, we have chosen a general title and organized papers around the subjects to which they speak. Nonetheless, the 1982 conference made some contributions toward the overall theme, some of which are represented in the nine papers reproduced in full in this volume.11 The one theme often repeated in the papers is: people in Appalachia need to develop new ways of understanding and new ways of doing so as to build the future on the cultural platforms of the past. Several of the papers,—Markley and Deaton, Wagner, and Branham—argue that the future, whatever its particular form, must be recognizable as a mountaineer culture. These authors question a future which would destroy that culture in achieving urban industrial growth. Wagner goes further, suggesting that Appalachian culture, to the extent that it is collective oriented and non-discursive, is not only a necessary foundation for Appalachia's future but for America's future as well. The collection of papers also suggests that the future should be shaped by the people of Appalachia, not experts, whether inside or outside the region. Eller criticizes the view that the "backwoods" culture limits the ability of people to be involved in shaping their own future and Markley and Deaton provide examples of people's involvement. Plaut, in reviewing some of the considerations in establishing new support networks in the mountains in the face of federal government cutbacks, suggests that these evolving support networks may be the basis for community-building. This in turn could provide the basis for people being broadly involved in helping to determine their own future. Lanier's review of Anderson's Kit Brandon suggests that Appalachian mountaineers, in facing their own struggles between good and evil, will be involved consciously or unconscious4 �ly, in shaping the future. It is appropriate that the keynote address should have focused on the Highlander Center in celebration of its 50th anniversary in 1982. Highlander's labor, civil rights, and Appalachian periods, as related by Thrasher, are tied together in Highlander's philosophy of trying to help people help themselves. Highlander's belief in the power of "ordinary people" is an important example for those trying to build a better future while preserving people's culture. The papers included in this volume have much more to say about the future and other subjects. The papers are introduced more fully below. Notes 'The proceedings of the Third (1980) Appalachian Studies Conference was published under the title Appalachia/America by the Appalachian Consortium Press (ACP). Funds were contributed by the Appalachian Regional Commission. It is the hope of the ACS and the ACP that the publication of the proceedings of this and forthcoming conferences will be self-supporting. 2 My role as editorial coordinator follows my serving as program coordinator for the 1982 conference. Although I was responsible for drafting this introduction, this collection has certainly been a collective effort. The conference program was the result of great effort from everyone on the 1982 program committee. The selection of papers and editorial work for this volume has been shared by Ronald Eller, Grace Toney Edwards, and Joan Moser. Barry Buxton has served as managing editor, with the aid of the staff at the Appalachian Consortium. 3 This was the second conference to hold such a workshop; twenty teachers were enrolled. A highlight of the 1982 workshop was a presentation, "A History of Education in Appalachia," by Gratis Williams. His excellent presentation marked one of his last activities before undergoing treatment for cancer of the lymph system. We all wish him a speedy recovery from his treatment, which is reported to be going successfully. ^"Politics and Scholarship: Appalachian Studies enters the 1980s," Appalachian Journal: IX:2, 3 (Winter-Spring 1982), p. 97. (This special issue of the A] has the title Assessing Appalachian Studies; this title will be used to refer to other articles appearing in this issue of the A].) Stephenson is suggesting here that the Appalachian Studies Conference has not been able to evaluate the status of Appalachian Studies even while it has encouraged the pursuit of Appalachian Studies subjects. 6 I believe that the differences are much greater over the strategies to pursue than our visions of what we wish to achieve. "See Jim Wayne Miller, "Appalachian Studies Hard and Soft: The Action People and the Creative Folk," Assessing Appalachian Studies, pp. 105-114. 'See John Stephenson, "Politics and Scholarship," in Assessing Appalachian Studies, pp. 97-104. Stephenson usefully notes that the Appalachian Studies interest was stimulated during the politically active late 60s and 70s by those who had come to Appalachia or became more involved in Appalachia during that time, and then "returned to academic society charged with political anger." Whereas the rapid growth of Appalachian Studies during the past ten years has brought with it increasing numbers of participants "whose early experience of the region was not especially political." Thus, the tension between the "pure academics" and the real politickers is deeper in Appalachian Studies than it is perhaps in professional associations other than those similarly formed, such as black or women studies. "See Steve Fisher, Jim Foster, and Mary Harnish, "From Nonsense to Good Space Sense: A Collective Reflection on Appalachia and Appalachian Studies," Assessing Appalachian Studies, pp. 149-169, especially p. 151. "See for example Frank H. Einstein, "Theory Si Practice No! Appalachian Studies Comes Full Circle," in Assessing Appalachian Studies, pp. 195-201. 5 �10 See Stephenson, "Politics and Scholarship," p. 103. "The selection of papers is always a difficult task. The editorial committee, with the needs of the Appalachian Consortium Press in mind, tried to select a set of papers which not only made contributions to their subjects, but which also would fit together so the volume as a whole would be of use to Appalachian scholars and teachers. In that process, unfortunately, a number of good papers had to be excluded from full publication. 6 �Keynote Address of the 1982 Appalachian Studies Conference Sue Thrasher Education and Change At Christmas time in 1931 in Copenhagen, Denmark, a young Tennessean by the name of Myles Horton made a note in his journal: I can't sleep but there are dreams: a school where young men and women can come and be inspired...expressing themselves through teaching history, literature, song and music, arts, weaving, and a life lived together....A school where young men and women living in close personal contact with teachers will learn how to take their place intelligently in a changing world, which at present presents so many baffling problems. It is hoped that the students will be able to make decisions for themselves on the basis of an enlightened judgment. The following November the southern mountain school of his dreams, the Highlander Folk School, was born on the Cumberland Plateau in the little community of Summerfield, Tennessee. This year, Highlander, in its new incarnation as the Highlander Research and Education Center, celebrates its 50th anniversary. It has survived major attacks by southern governors, legislatures, and businessmen. It has changed its name and its location, but the idea of democratic education that Horton envisioned that winter evening in Copenhagen has presevered. I would like to start with an overview of Highlander's work with the southern labor movement; the civil rights movement; and community groups in Appalachia, and then talk about its impact as a regional institution. * * * * The concept of a school for workers and community people was born in the little town of Ozone, Tennessee, when Horton, a third year student at Cumberland College arrived to teach vacation Bible school for the Presbyterian Church. That summer, in addition to his work with children, he decided to bring adults together for evening discussions about community problems. He was amazed at the response; people would walk for miles to make it to the evening meetings. They wanted to know about how to test wells for typhoid, or how to test their farmland. They also wanted to know about the possibility of getting jobs in textile mills. 7 �One of the most important things Horton learned from these meetings was to trust his own ability as a group leader who didn't have all of the answers. As he said later, To my amazement my inability to answer questions didn't bother them. That was probably the biggest discovery I ever made. You don't have to know the answers! You raise the questions, sharpen the questions, get people to discussing them. In that group of mountain people a lot of the answers were available if they pooled their knowledge. It was that discovery with the mountain people of Ozone that began to trigger in Myles Horton the notion of setting up a southern mountain school. Although the community wanted him to stay, and one woman offered her house as an educational center, he returned to graduate from Cumberland University. After spending a year working with the YMCA in Tennessee, in 1929 he followed his dream to Union Seminary where he studied under Reinhold Niebuhr and Harry F. Ward. He then went on to the University of Chicago and studied under sociologist, Robert Park, and more importantly met a Danish minister named Aage Moller, who told him about the Danish folk high school movement. At the end of his year in Chicago, and still not ready to "begin" his new school, Horton decided to travel to Denmark to see first-hand the Danish folk schools. During all of this time Myles wrote innumerable notes to himself trying to more precisely define his dream of starting a school. He was never quite sure exactly when it was time to begin. He still didn't have all the answers. Finally one night in Denmark, he decided it was time to come home and find himself a situation and a place. As he wrote later, All at once I told myself, 'All you do is get a place and move in. You are there. The situation is there. You start with this and let it grow. You have your idea; you know your goal. It will build its own structure and take its own form. Find the place, the people, the situation. Use your ideas as your loadstone and move into the thing and start.' With the help of his former professor and old friend, Reinhold Niebuhr, Myles began making plans to start his school for adults. He still didn't know what his situation or place would be; he simply knew that it had to be in the southern mountains and that the time to start was now. Will Alexander, Director of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation in Altanta, encouraged him to get in touch with a young man named Don West, who had also traveled in Denmark and wanted to start a folk school. They met at the Blue Ridge Assembly in North Carolina and agreed to start their venture together. At the suggestion of an old friend, they went to see Dr. Lillian Johnson, an educator, who owned a home and property in the small community of Summerfield, Tennessee. A graduate of Wellesley, and former President of Western College for Women, Dr. Johnson had moved to Summerfield to establish a community school, hoping it would be the first of many cooperative efforts. Although her school flourished, she was disappointed in the community's response to other cooperative endeavors, and anxious to see what the two young men could do with their notion of a folk school. The place that Myles and Don found themselves in the fall of 1932 was Grundy 8 �County, one of the ten poorest counties in the United States at the time. The situation they found themselves in was one of desperate poverty. Grundy County had once been rich in coal and timber but as Aimee Horton noted in her dissertation on Highlander: Those resources were exploited in classic 19th century style, and the economy there had begun to collapse decades before the depression. The only thing left in Grundy County at the time was cut-over timber, mined-out fields, and unemployed workers. The first phase of Highlander's work then began to center around the small community of Summerfield and Grundy County. During its first three years, the highlander staff helped establish a union for WPA workers; a community cannery; and a quilting cooperative. Later they set up a community nursery school on the Highlander property. At the same time that the staff was working closely with the surrounding community, they were also conscious that the institution had to be regional in nature and address the larger issues affecting the South. It was clear, for example, that regardless of the school's physical location—the coming industrialization of the South would mean that the school should work with industrial workers. By the time the Congress of Industrial Organizations was formed in 1936, Highlander was integrally involved in the growing labor movement. Horton, because of his extensive contacts, helped select many of the southern CI organizers, and from then until the late 1940s, Highlander was predominantly a labor school. CIO unions and some AFL unions from across the South sent members to Highlander to be trained in sessions lasting from one to five weeks. Union members learned how to put out a local union newspaper; how to do public speaking; how to write, draw, and mimeograph leaflets; and other skills needed to keep a union strong. They participated in courses such as labor history, the history of social change, and economics. These sessions were often taught by Highlander staff members in conjunction with CIO and other union officials. By the late 1940s, however, Highlander's definition as a labor school was coming to an end. At issue was Highlander's relationship with some of the unions who had been kicked out of the CIO for refusing to sign the anti-communist oath called for by the Taft-Hartley Act. Highlander did not, as an institution, espouse any particular ideology. Neither did it refuse to work with anyone who did. However, as political debate heated up within the unions over the anti-communist provisions of Taft-Hartley, political debate heated up around Highlander. An underlying issue was the independence of the school—whether it would be run by the CIO or whether it would maintain itself as an independent institution. In retrospect, it is striking to see how much the institution tried over the years to establish a working relationship with the unions. The school itself had subsidized many of the union sessions while also hoping to gain financial support from them. But at this particular time, given the critical issues that were facing the country and the union movement, the staff felt strongly that the unions should not dictate 9 �the ties and associations of the school. Perhaps more important than the divisions brought on by Taft-Hartley, was the underlying issue of race. Union members from across the South would come to Highlander to find themselves in an integrated situation for the first time. Although the Highlander staff insisted that the various unions inform their members of the schools' interracial policy before they arrived, it was not an easy policy to carry out. For one thing, the unions had been very reluctant to actually sponsor integrated schools. Although Highlander had had a policy of being an integrated institution from the time it opened in 1932, it was not until 1944 that the United Auto Workers held an interracial residential session at the school. The staff tried hard to break down racial prejudice among the students while they were at the school, insisting on interracial cooperative living in all aspects. In the segregated South of the 1940s, eating at the same table and sharing dormitory rooms was downright heretical. Usually by the end of a term, many of the students would comment on their own changing attitudes as a result of their experience at Highlander. Others, however, were not convinced, and it seems likely that at least two of the southern CIO state directors were as concerned about the interracial nature of Highlander as they were about its political associations. By 1949, it was apparent to both the CIO and Highlander that the uneasy truce that had existed for the past few years could no longer go on. The CIO did not attack Highlander, it simply dropped it from its list of approved institutions to hold its training schools. Although some of the international unions, such as the United Furniture Workers, and a few CIO state directors, notably Paul Christopher of Tennessee, maintained their association with the school, it was clear that the internal changes within the labor movement effectively left Highlander on the outside. For a brief time in the late 1940s and early 50s, Highlander turned its attention to working on a farm labor alliance. One of Highlander's publications during this period noted that farmers and their families made up 22 million members of the workforce, while industrial workers and their families comprised 95 million. Altogether farmers and laborers made up 85% of the population. Despite these optimistic figures, the dream of creating such a coalition was doomed in light of the large scale migration from family farms and the overwhelming concern of the industrial unions to consolidate their own strength and bargaining power. The situation with the unions, however, forced Highlander to a major turning point in its history. When the unions opted to build a strong union at the expense of other social and economic issues, it forced the Highlander staff to think more clearly about other social issues, particularly race, and its impact on the South during the next 10-15 years. * * * * In the early 1950s Highlander began having small meetings at the school to talk about the coming of school integration in the South. It was quite apparent, by this 10 �time that the Supreme Court Decision on School Desegregation would soon be handed down by the Warren Court. In the summer of 1953, Highlander held three experimental workshops with community leaders from across the South who came to talk about the issue of school desegregation. These workshops in 1953 signaled Highlander's immersion in the most important social movement of our time. Civil rights was not yet a "movement" in 1953, but the same spirit embodied in the word "organize" that had swept the country in 1936 for industrial workers was emerging again, this time in the nascent but long over-due struggle for equal rights. During the next fifteen years Highlander played an integral role in the civil rights movement. Until the passage of the first civil rights bill in 1964, it remained one of the few places available for interracial meetings. From its first tentative efforts with community leaders on school desegregation, the school moved to establish a major literacy and voting rights project in the Sea Islands of South Carolina, held workshops with students participating in the sit-in movement, actively participated in the training of civil rights workers for Freedom Summer of 1964, and continued following up on all of these efforts until the time of the Poor Peoples March in Washington in 1967. * * * * From its early days in 1932, Highlander had enjoyed a warm relationship with the surrounding community of Grundy County. Square dances held at the school, volleyball games, and community suppers were commonplace. In addition, Highlander operated a community nursery school, first organized by Claudia Lewis, who later wrote about her experiences in a book entitled Children of the Cumberlands. She was followed by Joie Willimetz, a graduate of Wellesley, who used her own personal contacts to raise money and supplies for the school. The Folk School also published a small community newsletter called the Summerfield News, featuring poetry, community news items, and a gossip column. Despite these indications of good community relations, however, there was always some opposition to the school and its ideas. In the early 1940s the school had come under attack by a local group called The Grundy County Crusaders, who had threatened to march on the school. Friends of the school simply ringed the area, and no harm was done. However, as the school made the crucial turn toward involvement in the civil rights movement, the Folk School lost its strong community ties. It was not the antagonism of the local community, however, that succeeded eventually in closing the school. It was the antagonism of the state, a force far more powerful than the people of Summerfield. In 1957, Highlander celebrated its 25th anniversary. One of the speakers was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had recently moved to Atlanta to help set up the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, following the successful Montgomery bus boycott. To put it mildly, he was not well-liked by southern governors, who 11 �by this time were involved in a program of massive resistance to any kind of integration—whether it was school integration of public accommodations or anything else. The governor of Georgia, Marvin Griffin, in particular, wanted to discredit King, and the state legislature of Tennessee wanted to discredit Highlander, to root out the cancerous growth that was in their state. So in 1957, when Martin Luther King spoke at Highlander, the governor of Georgia sent a reporter and a photographer to that gathering, and a few months later a four page tabloid began circulating about the "communist training school in East Tennessee." In 1959, the school was raided during a weekend workshop, and several staff members were hauled off to jail. The school was charged with selling beer without a license; operating an integrated school; and for operating for the personal gain of the director. The charge of being an integrated school was dropped before the case could be pursued to the Supreme Court of the United States; and operating a school for the profit of the director was never proven. The technicality that closed the school was selling beer without a license. It took two years for the state of Tennessee to actually close the school, but in 1961 they did succeed in revoking the charter and confiscating all property and assets which were later sold at public auction. To this day, Highlander has never received any remuneration. Between the raid in 1959 and 1961 when the school was actually closed, the Highlander staff began making plans for what they would do. As soon as they could, they rechartered, reorganized and opened again under the name of the Highlander Research and Education Center. In the meantime, the Citizenship School program that had steadily grown from its beginnings on Johns Island, South Carolina, was turned over to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for its continued operation. A few months after it reopened in Knoxville in an old house overlooking the Tennessee River, the Highlander Executive Committee had the choice of going back to Grundy County and buying their own land at public auction. The Executive Committee of the school made a very critical decision at this time, which was not to look backward, but to put all of their money and resources, time and energy into the growing civil rights movement and not into their own institutional battles. * * * * Highlander maintained its involvement in civil rights until the mid 1960s when it became increasingly apparent that the traditional roles of white people in the movement needed to change. It was in 1966 that the words "black power" were shouted in the Meredith March in Mississippi, and reverberated across the South. The following year Highlander helped organize the Poor Peoples March on Washington planned by Martin Luther King just before his death—a march fulfilling his dream of a multi-racial coalition of poor people from all across the country. 12 �Through its participation in the March and the accompanying encampment of poor people known as Resurrection City, Highlander began another major shift in focus. The hope of creating a multi-racial poor peoples' movement seemed tangible that summer and Highlander was urged by some of the participants to return to the mountains and begin working in the Appalachian coalfields. In addition to strengthening its existent ties with urban Appalachian groups, the school was soon involved with the anti-stripmine movement, and various community action organizations that were aided and abetted by the OEO language of one-third representation of the poor. Although the notion of developing a multi-racial poor peoples' coalition dissolved quickly when faced with the difficulties of actually putting that into effect, Highlander continued its work in the southern mountain area. In 1971, the school moved physically back to the mountains. The area where it had been living and working in Knoxville, Tennessee was urban renewed and to this day the place where Highlander stood is the only lot that has been bulldozed to the ground. It is now located near New Market, Tennessee, on a 110 acre farm, overlooking the Smokey Mountains. * * * * Highlander started out as a "southern'V'mountain" school and during its 50 year history it has been both of those things. The term "Appalachian" was not in vogue in 1932 when Myles and Don settled on the Cumberland Plateau, but Highlander was a well-known term, thus the Highlander Folk School. During its first two decades, Highlander worked with people from the mountains and with people from other parts of the South. The school's identification during those early years was much like the Cumberland Plateau where it was located—perched both figuratively and literally between the coalfields to the north and the agricultural regions to the South. Until the early 1950s it was able to maintain itself successfully as both a southern school and a mountain school. During the period of the civil rights movement, however, Highlander became almost totally a "southern" institution. It was only during the late 1960s and early 70s that Highlander could be called a strictly Appalachian institute. Much of Highlander's work in the coalfields in this period reflected the assumption that the region was a "colony." The distinctiveness of both the Appalachian coalfields and the deep South states has eroded as they have both become more Americanized. While each remains a colony, in the sense that the wealth from their natural resources are spirited away to the Eastern establishment, they are no more distinctive than the Indian lands of the Southwest, or perhaps more critical to our consciousness now, any of the Latin American, African, or Asian nations plundered for their natural and human resources by the multi-nationals. For the last five years, Highlander has neither called itself an Appalachian institution nor a Southern institution. As it once was in the early days on the 13 �Cumberland Plateau, it is again perched between two worlds. The real question, however, is not a matter of regional/geographic definition, but rather what impact Highlander has made on either of these regions and what we can learn for the future. Highlander's impact can be assessed in two ways: its impact on the establishment community, and its impact on the people for whom it was intended—workers, farmers, students, and community leaders. It is important to realize that Highlander always has been a controversial school. In 1936 when the Highlander Staff helped form the Highlander Folk Cooperative they were attacked by the head of the Southern States Industrial Council, who complained that: It would be interesting for the taxpayers of Tennessee and of this capitalistic nation to know just what the relationship is between the so-called Highlander Folk Cooperative and the Highlander Folk School. The question that was asked in 1936 has been asked over and over again in Highlander's history: Exactly what is Highlander's relationship with the people who are moving and shaping the society? It was asked of the Folk Cooperative in 1936; it was asked about the union movement in the 1940s; it was asked about the civil rights movement in the 50s; the Appalachian movement in the 60s; and more currently it has been asked of small communities like Bumpass Cove in East Tennessee. Exactly what is Highlander's relationship to all these people who are causing trouble, and would it not be possible to stop the trouble by simply stopping this "so-called school"? Although I ask the question from a different point of view, it is indeed a good question and one that has always haunted the Highlander staff as well as those people in opposition to the school. The people who are on the other side of the controversy believe that Highlander manipulates and controls, and in fact, creates troublemakers. The Highlander staff has always believed in the power of ordinary people to affect real change in our society, and believe that it is our responsibility as educators to support those efforts for social change. The relationship between Rosa Parks attending a Highlander workshop in the summer of 1955 and refusing to give up her seat that following December on a Montgomery bus is not a proven relationship at all. It does not mean that because she attended the Highlander workshop that she then went back to Montgomery and started the civil rights movement. The Highlander workshop that Rosa Parks attended was, no doubt, only one of the factors involved in her refusal to relinquish her seat on the bus. More importantly was the role that she had already played in the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama, as an active member of the NAACP for several years; she had worked closely with Mr. E.D. Nixon to find a suitable case that would test segregated seating on the busses. Probably somewhat important to her decision—and yet unknown to us in its specifics—was what she found at Highlander that summer: the ability to live in an interracial community of people; to express freely her own thinking about the interracial movement in the South; and to catch a glimpse of what perhaps an in14 �tegrated society might look like. And as Rosa Parks said recently, it was the first time she found white people that she could trust. Another way to look at the different responses from different audiences is to look at the charge of a "communist training school," a charge that has been leveled against Highlander in almost every period of its history. It is not unusual for people to call Highlander communist as a way of dismissing it or a way of attacking what it stands for. It is also not unusual for students who have been at Highlander to say in response, "If that's what it means to be a communist, then it must be good." Another factor that's in play here is an unstated and almost unconscious acknowledgement of what it means when people come together—the power that people have to teach one another. The very notion that black leaders across the South had a place to come and meet with white people who agreed with them about changing segregation in the South was threatening to the white power establishment of the time. It was easy for them to believe that Highlander itself was the threat, but implicit in their own fear was a gut understanding of the power of people acting collectively to bring about change. Though it may be an unconscious and unstated fear on the part of the establishment, it had not always been a conscious belief on the part of Highlander students. One of the most exciting processes to see is Highlander's educational theory put into practice when people, by exchanging their experiences, finally feel affirmed in their own beliefs and actions. Few people go away from a Highlander workshop without understanding the power of collective political action. Few people go away feeling that the problems they've encountered affect only them. Highlander started its 50th year with a commitment on the part of the board members and the staff to use its anniversary to celebrate and affirm the past, but more importantly, to look as unflinchingly as possible into the future, and what its own role might be as an educational center for social change. The issues and the communities that Highlander will work with in the 1980s and beyond will no longer be as clear cut as they have been in the past. In the 1930s and 40s, Highlander had a very clear cut decision to make: to work with the labor movement or not to work with the labor movement. In the 1950s and 60s , it had the same kind of decision to make regarding the civil rights movement. In the 1960s and early 70s, it found a natural place working in the Appalachian coalfields. The question arises now in 1982: What now is our situation and place? Our place now can neither be defined by a county or regional line, and our situation is one that we increasingly share with all the people of the world. We cannot talk to people in one Appalachian community about toxic waste without understanding that toxic waste has to be buried somewhere, and if not here, then perhaps in someone else's community. We cannot talk to people about absentee ownership of land without understanding that the same thing holds true in the Southwest and other parts of the country. We cannot talk about occupational health and safety as it relates to our industries in this area and not understand that it affects workers all over the United States and all over the world. 15 �We feel poised on the edge of a new era at Highlander. The time seems right to consolidate many of the lessons we have learned from our work in Appalachia with earlier experiences in the deep South states. The critical issues that face the country in the 1980s will know no regional boundary. The problem before us will be to keep our focus and understand always the strength and knowledge that comes from our own people. But we must also begin to see ourselves as part of a larger community. What is it that our southern/Appalachian communities have in common with the Indian communities of the Southwest—especially as it regards the rape of the land and the theft of natural resources? What is it that we have in common with workers from Latin America as they battle the same multi-nationals that also affect us? And what do we have to teach other people? Is it possible, perhaps, that the people from Johns Island, South Carolina, who participated in Citizenship Training Programs there in the 1950s have anything to teach the peasants in Nicaragua or El Salvador about literacy and political power? And what do we have to learn from them in return about how precious a true democracy is, and—about issues yet unstated in this country such as land reform? I don't know the answers to all of these questions and neither does Highlander. The lesson that all of us can learn from Highlander's past is really the same as it was in 1932 as articulated by Myles Horton in the small community of Ozone. You don't have to know the answers. You raise the questions, sharpen the questions, get people to discussing them. If anything is different now, it is that we must not ony raise and sharpen the questions within our own community and region, but in the larger world community—anywhere that people are fighting for justice. 16 �Values And Political Economy 17 �This page intentionally left blank �Introduction Rick Simon The shared beliefs of groups within the Appalachian region shape, and are shaped by, the organization of economic and social relationships. There is a substantial literature which tries to analyze the extent of these interactions, including the origins and development of "the" Appalachian value system. As necessary as these investigations are, they are often unsatisfactory in arriving at generally acceptable propositions. The values attributed to mountain people are often contradictory, reflecting, in part, the different values of Appalachian scholars. Nonetheless, the analysis of values is central to many issues of importance, as illustrated by the two essays which follow. The first illustrates how the mountain liberal values of Harry Caudill structure his interpretation of the history of the southern mountains. The second essay shows that values influence the identification of problems and their proposed solutions. Harry Caudill has been the single most important writer on Appalachia during the past twenty years, not only because he is the most recognized outside of the region, but also because his work has been the most influential inside the region. Ronald Eller begins the necessary task of reviewing the contributions of Harry Caudill by noting the contradiction between CaudilFs analysis of the exploitive development of the mountain mineral and human resources and "the lack of faith in the folk." Eller dismisses Caudill's analysis of the "backwoods" mountaineer culture, particularly its origin in inherited social characteristics and genetic inferiority. Eller locates the roots of Caudill's misconceptions in his values—those of the mountain liberal. As the urban liberal eschewed the ability of other minorities to take control of their lives, Caudill places his political faith in "enlightened government intervention under the auspices of careful planners." Furthermore, "because Caudill is uncomfortable with Appalachian culture...," he sees the future of Appalachia tied to its ability to introduce, in Eller's words, "the same urbane and cosmopolitan values that Caudill prefers." Eller, in conclusion, asks, "Do we continue to bear the cultural burdens of the liberal past, or do we allow mountain people to survive as mountaineers?" Although the definition of mountaineer may differ among students of Appalachia, the need to preserve the culture was one lesson drawn from a series of conferences about Appalachia. Deborah Markley and Brady Deaton investigate the relationship between cultural values and public policy by investigating two forums about the future of Appalachia. They summarize the overriding concern at the 1975 forum as "a lack of control over the destiny of the region." However, 19 �at the more recent 1981 gathering, they find that "optimism, activism, community participation, and coalition building" were the themes often repeated. As if in response to CaudilFs pessimism about the "backwoods culture," conference paticipants were told about "successful attempts by local citizens to achieve community development goals (health clinics, jobs, and tax and environmental reform)," and about land ownership research by and for local residents. Markley and Deaton argue, "Since many observers (at the conferences) perceive that outside change agents are willing to sacrifice local values for other ends, such as profit or control,...Appalachia's people are forced to action, to political participation, and to assertion of their rights as residents of the region in an effort to preserve their basic values." Thus mountain values are not only seen as worth preserving, but as containing the seeds of struggle necessary to shape political economic change consistent with the positive legacy of Appalachian history and culture. 20 �Harry Caudill And The Burden Of Mountain Liberalism Ronald D. Eller If Appalachian scholars prove to be as loyal to their mentors as those of the South are to C. Vann Woodward and Rupert Vance, considerable honor ought to be laid before the reputation of Harry Monroe Caudill. Since the publication in 1963 of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, Caudill has emerged as a prominent national spokesman for Appalachia and the foremost critic of economic exploitation and environmental destruction in the region. His prolific writings—including seven books and many articles—are widely read in regional studies classes and on college campuses across the country. He was one of the early proponents of the "colonial model" of Appalachian development, an interpretation which has come to dominate the literature on the region in the last decade.1 He has condemned the pillage of Appalachia by absentee corporations, championed a severence tax to return a portion of the wealth to the mountains, and decried the effects of the welfare state on mountain life. More than any other contemporary author, Caudill has helped to shape the way many Americans have come to perceive our region and the way we in Appalachia have come to understand ourselves and our heritage. Caudill's contributions to the region have come both as a historian and as a social critic. He was one of the first writers to reject the static image of Appalachian life and to describe the tragic industrial history of eastern Kentucky. His version of the arrival of the coal and timber barons, his conception of mountain politics, and his account of the union drives, the collapse of the coal economy and the rise of the welfare state have become the conventional wisdom. Although his research lacks scholarly documentation and his narrative focuses only on the Cumberland Plateau, Caudill's image of eastern Kentucky has become the popular image of Appalachia as a whole. As John Knowles contends on the jacket cover of one of Caudill's books, "This is the true picture of life in Southern Appalachia, eloquently recorded in all its gritty reality and wavering hope."2 Indeed, it is a tribute to Caudill's stature that after two decades, few scholars have challenged his original account of the Appalachian past, and his work remains a point of departure for new research on the region. Yet while Caudill has fashioned the most compelling image of Appalachia offered by his generation, his image of the region has a strategy not entirely born of the historical evidence alone. By his own admission, Caudill is a "liberal," and, if one adds the word "mountain" to that definition, one has a basic text for understanding the man and his work. The descendent of a pioneer family in 21 �eastern Kentucky and the son of a local New Deal politician, Caudill was educated at the University of Kentucky, served for over thirty years as a lawyer and politician in Whitesburg, and eventually returned to his alma mater as Professor of History. Along with others of his social rank and background, Caudill shares many of the values, visions, and assumptions of Twentieth Century American liberalism, tempered and shaped by the values of the southern mountain middle class. We are all, of course, victims of our social presumptions, but this impediment weighs heavily on the historian since it unconsciously affects the questions that we ask and the way that we interpret what we find. In CaudilFs case, the burden of these presumptions has not only influenced his role as a regional prophet, but it has shaped his understanding of the regional heritage upon which that prophesy is built. To understand Caudill as a historian, we must also understand Caudill as a phenomenon in the intellectual history of the region as well. Throughout the history of Appalachia and at least since the 1860's, there has existed a veiled tension between the mountain middle class and the rest of the mountain population. Residing primarily in the larger valleys, villages, and towns, the middle class has had greater contact with the larger world outside of the region and has more readily accepted modern attitudes and value orientations. Having easier access to education, political power, economic opportunities, and technology, they have esteemed progress, growth and change. While their ambitions for themselves and their communities have not diminished their attachment to the mountains, their values have acquired a certain cosmopolitan quality which has often led them to perceive less wealthy mountaineers with a certain condescention and contempt. Indeed, they have been wont to stigmatize their more traditional neighbors on the ridges and in the headwater coves and industrial camps as ignorant, primitive and backward—a barrier to the progress of the region. This disdain for the lower classes contributed to the severity of Civil War divisions in the region and played a major role in the post-war development and modernization of the mountains.3 Recently it emerged in the reluctance of the middle class to accept the term "Appalachia" during the 1960's because that term connoted poverty and backwardness, conditions with which the middle class was reluctant to identify. Along with other members of the mountain middle class, many liberals in the region have shared this patronizing view of the "folk." To genteel reformers educated in the "best" institutions outside of the region and believing in order, efficiency, and man's ability to control his destiny, the traditional mountain population has seemed naive, primitive, uncultured, and fatalistic toward life. After all, it is the rural masses who were "hoodwinked" by nepotism and corrupt politicians and who sold their birthright to outside exploiters. Mountain folk, it seems, have allowed the land to be ravaged and the schools to deteriorate while they have clung to a culture which is deemed conservative and passive. This cultural condescension and lack of faith in the folk (whether they be black, Chicano, Indian, or Appalachian) has burdened the history of American 22 �liberalism for generations and has been a consummate part of the liberal tradition in the mountains. It is out of this tradition that Harry Caudill approaches the history and contemporary life of Appalachia. While condemning the exploitation of the region by nonresident corporations and the destruction of the land for the sake of its mineral wealth, Caudill lays much of the blame for the region's problems on a conservative highland culture which has left the population beleaguered, quiescent, and forlorn. "No people in the nation are more forlorn than the Appalachian Highlanders in our time," he has written. "Their bewilderment grows out of a tenacious, deeply rooted, and conservative culture which was abruptly overwhelmed by vast forces that shattered the old without creating a viable system of new values, mores, and relationships."4 Frontier attitudes, ignorance, and isolation have produced in Appalachia, according to Caudill, "a backwoods culture" which has "made its people susceptible to an outside exploitation of their resources that has perpetuated on them a passive society largely dependent on relief."5 Caudill traces the roots of this "backwoods culture" to a certain genetic deficiency which he believes has plagued the region for more than two hundred years. "Every person and society," he asserts, "is a product of two factors, genes and culture," and since the culture of the mountains has evolved in isolation over many generations, the key to understanding Appalachia today, he believes, lies in the first white inhabitants who settled the region. "Many deeply rooted attitudes that still give rise to poverty and resignation," he argues, "may have been instilled in the mountaineers' ancestors during the centuries preceding the first English voyage to the New World."6 Caudill finds that the earliest pioneers into the mountains were themselves degenerate social outcasts of English society whose lack of will and ambition were perpetuated through years of seclusion in Appalachian hollows. This "human refuse" of the cities and greater towns of Britain—"nauseous hell holes of crime and venality," he calls them—"came in unnumbered thousands as indentured servants, redemptioners, transported felons and misdemeanants, and evicted tenants shipped off by landlords who nurtured some little spark of compassion."7 While the majority of immigrants to North America were the "very poor and outcast," the worst of these "mean English," who were unable to compete with their tidewater kinsmen, somehow found their way into the mountainous hinterland where they established the "seed stock" of subsequent generations of mountaineers.8 Of course most social scientists today reject the idea of inherited social characteristics, especially when values and social behavior are claimed to have been passed down for more than two hundred years, but Professor Caudill chooses not to acknowledge such evidence.9 Nor has he provided historical documentation to support his ideas of the background and nature of early mountain settlement. Indeed the historical evidence of the genetic deficiency of early mountain settlers simply does not exist, and those who would accept such a theory must do so on faith, not facts. Quite the contrary, scholarly research indicates that the population pool which settled the mountains was part and parcel of that which settled 23 �the rest of the South and the American frontier during the Revolutionary period. Appalachian pioneers were of multicultural origins and settled in the region out of choice rather than chance or desperate flight from tidewater society.10 Their ancestors were less the criminals and homeless orphans of British slums than a mixture of working class and middle-class Europeans who came to the New World seeking economic improvement and social freedom. In fact, contemporary social historians reject Caudill's picture of the teeming and inequitous cities of England spewing out its orphans, impoverished masses, and psychological invalids onto the American frontier. This view is adequate for the fiction of Charles Dickens but not for contemporary British scholars. Most white migrants to the colonies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries were young, skilled laborers who were literate and had been part of the British labor force before migrating to the New World.11 Caudill's version of Appalachian settlement derives primarily from the work of late Nineteenth Century intellectuals, especially John Fiske, whose racial attitudes, images of society, and Social Darwinist philosophies have been discredited by subsequent generations of scholars. He also draws heavily on the work of John Fox, Jr., and other local color writers whose literature contributed to the development, at the turn of the century, of certain negative and romantic images of the region—what Henry Shapiro calls the "idea of Appalachia" as a region somehow in, but not of America.12 But Caudill's misinterpretation of mountain origins is more than a misreading of outmoded sources, for the "genes thesis" provides a necessary prelude to the theoretical development of the rest of Caudill's vision of the region. Having established the genetic inferiority of mountain people and having determined that inferior genes lead to inferior culture and that "the faults of the culture outweighed its strengths," Caudill is then able to portray the mountain population as unsophisticated and childish, easy game for clever lawyers and land speculators who sought to steal their land and mineral rights.13 Indeed, he persistently describes the mountaineers as children—ignorant and naive and in need of guidance and direction. Reflecting the oft repeated pattern of liberal paternalism toward blacks, Indians, and other minority groups, Caudill's mountaineers are "as guileless as infants" and possess a "childish trust in others."14 When the coal boom descends on the region at the turn of the century, the mountaineers are mesmerized by the bright dresses, skirts, hats and baubles of the new age and flock to the "Alabaster Cities" and their fine company housing. "In the first few years after the railroads were built," Caudill writes, "thousands of mountaineers rushed into the coal camps and their glittering commissaries with all the abandon of a troop of six-year-olds let loose in a toy store."15 When the coal boom burst and Uncle Sam stepped in with his welfare handouts, the mountaineers quietly accepted their lot on "paleface reservations" and became professional reliefers, welfare malingerers, and psychoneurotic pill poppers. The best and the brightest of the region having left through out-migration, the mountain gene pool has deteriorated further leaving behind a society which is increasingly shiftless, indolent and inane.16 24 �CaudilFs vision of a benighted Appalachian culture is strikingly similar to that of liberal Progressives at the turn of the century who viewed the Southern masses and urban working classes as ignorant plebs who were easily duped by populist demagogues and corrupt precinct leaders. Like earlier Progressives who considered populist dreams and urban politics to be "backward" and "inefficient," Caudill refuses to believe that mountaineers might have acted rationally to evolving social and economic conditions which were beyond their control. Yet there is considerable evidence that many mountaineers did just that—at first resisting the new order and then accepting the rules of the new game and doing the best they could to survive. Indeed the survival of the very mountain cultural traditions which Caudill criticizes may have been a positive defense on the part of mountain people to the inequities and powerlessness which resulted from the industrialization and modernization of the region. Rather than blame the resulting human tragedies of Appalachia on the political processes of modernism and industrial capitalism (both of which have sought to concentrate power rather than disperse it), Caudill finds the local culture itself to be the ultimate barrier to "progress" since the mountain masses cannot be trusted to make sound decisions for themselves. Just as the Progressives, moreover, placed their political faith, not in the vagaries of democracy, but in education, government action, and efficient planning by the "best" people in the society, CaudilFs hope for the future of Appalachia lies in "enlightened government intervention under the auspices of careful planners.. . ."1? In 1963, Caudill praised the model of the Tennessee Valley Authority as "a showpiece of effective planning and accomplishment" and suggested that a similar Southern Mountain Authority might rebuild the devastated economy and society of Appalachia.18 When the Appalachian Regional Commission and other federal agencies of the 1960's failed to bring about significant change, Caudill blamed not only inefficient and ineffective government programs but the cultural inability of mountaineers to use government for their own benefit. "Progress, even survival, in the modern world," he wrote, "requires soundly conceived governmental policies, forthrightly and effectively executed. People who use government prosper while people who shrink from it sink."19 This lack of confidence in the mountaineer's political abilities has led Caudill in recent years to fall back on two possible solutions to the region's problems: (1) the replenishment of the Appalachian gene pool and (2) the revitalization of the region's culture and politics through education. As he is reported to have told Neal Pierce, The best thing that could happen to the mountains would be for the Army to put in a big base, thus introducing some new genes into the people's bloodstream. "Send in some of those eager boys, because these mountain girls will cross with anybody. They do love to consort, and that would be good for the country. Many of the problems of East Kentucky that they're spending money on are insoluble until you get in new genes."20 One of the greatest tragedies of the 1960's, Caudill believes, was the failure of many of the young and energetic poverty workers from across America to remain 25 �in the mountains at the end of their service. "The years of rediscovery," he asserts, "brought the highlands people an unparalleled opportunity to widen their mental horizon and enrich their gene pool." Unfortunately, most of these young people, trained in the best universities of America did not stay, and many others who had applied for teaching positions were turned away by local politicians—denied the opportunity to "enrich and strengthen" mountain public schools. Such teachers could have brought to Appalachia, he suggests, "the broader world of great music, fine arts, classic and first-rate contemporary literature, and lively thought and dissertation" which had been precluded in the region because "the urbane and cosmopolitan [middle class] could bring no political leverage" on traditional school boards.21 Like his Progressive forebears, Caudill has a deep rooted faith in the power of education, but this confidence does not extend to the traditional mountain school system, which he believes is provincial, narrow, and culturally inbred. In 1963 Caudill was a strong advocate of school consolidation in the mountains. Only through the construction of "attractive schoolhouses" to replace "the present drab facilities," he believed could education "with its accompanying sense of confidence and purpose" bring an end to the cycle of Welfarism.22 More than a decade later, however, the new schoolhouses had become a reality and most of the one-room schools had disappeared. Yet the promise of school consolidation had not been fulfilled since the Welfare State had burgeoned and the new schools had not brought the renaissance of mountain attitudes and values which Caudill had anticipated. Again he found that the problem lay in the conservative culture of the people and in the ineptness of mountain teachers, colleges, and universities. Not only did "backcountry school administrators" prefer to hire local people as opposed to more talented outsiders, but most of these local teachers were trained in the "intellectually circumscribed" regional colleges of education. "Graduates tended to leave these campuses," he lamented, "with little more knowledge than they brought with them, returning to their counties with their horizons little broadened and their minds burdened by poorly understood and often specious theories of 'methodology.' " Rare indeed was "the audacious soul who had ventured so far as the University of Kentucky, an institution most regarded as too large and too sophisticated."23 This, Caudill argues, has been the fundamental failure of the new schools. They could not be staffed with people who reflected disparate and stimulating backgrounds, so a deadening uniformity spread through the classrooms. Teachers drawn from Appalachian backgrounds, "trained" on insipid campuses and often strangers to true learning, brought a shocking lack of content to the teacher's desk.24 The consequence, Caudill believes, has been a "sustained, systematic intellectual inbreeding—the education of highland youth by teachers who reflect highland mores and attitudes at every turn." This has blanketed the school system, as it has the culture, with an incredible conservatism, indeed, a veritable reverence for traditionalism. Unwilling to venture into new and uncertain educational environs during their own scholastic efforts, they urge the same narrowness and caution upon their students, thus reinforcing the 26 �innate conservatism they hear in their homes and communities morning, noon and night.25 Because Caudill is uncomfortable with Appalachian culture and because he fails to find any liberal tradition in the mountains with which to identify, he turns to educational ideals and political models from outside the region. He would like mountain schools to encourage competition and intellectual rigor among listless and apathetic youth. In a phrase, he would like mountain students to become universal, renaissance men and women—the core of an enlightened middle class who would replace corrupt local politicians with "better people."26 His "better people," of course, share the same urbane and cosmopolitan values that Caudill prefers. His political heroes are not native mountaineers who have struggled in their own way against corporate exploitation, union corruption, and bureaucratic insensitivity but well-educated immigrant politicians like West Virginia's Ken Hechler and Jay Rockefeller.27 Like the Progressive reformers and missionaries who came into the region at the turn of the century to "uplift" and "Americanize" the mountains, Caudill would, subconsciously I think, see much of Appalachian culture destroyed in order to save Appalachia. In this respect, however, Caudill shares the burdens of other American liberals who have sought with the best of intentions to bring minority groups into the mainstream of American life. For Caudill and many other mountain liberals, the task has been not to maintain regional distinctiveness and cultural identity but to assimilate the region into the nation. While asserting the rights of Appalachian people in the abstract, his contempt for the received cultural heritage of Appalachia has provided him with little confidence in the ability of the mountaineers to exercise those rights. As time has passed and Professor Caudill has discovered how imposing are the economic (not to mention the cultural) forces which he deplores, he has done a very human thing. Still burdened by this lack of faith in mountain people, he has blamed not his opponents, but their victims. The Appalachian people, he has concluded, allowed themselves to be colonized ninety years ago when European and American capitalists were carving up Africa, Asia and Latin America into imperial fiefdoms. Elsewhere the native populations have revolted and cast out their absentee overlords, but with few exceptions quiescent Appalachian mountaineers still cast their votes in support of people who would be called exploiters, oppressors, imperialists and a wide assortment of other uncomplimentary names by rebels in other parts of the world... .It is hard to imagine a people so oriented climbing up from their abyss. They are more likely to dig themselves down to deeper levels.28 Caudill's hope for the mountains, therefore, lies not in the "ultraconservative, traditionalistic people" of Appalachia, but in the nationalization of mineral resources, the more effective use of government, and above all, the inmigration of "more aggressive and acquisitive people from areas not yet sapped by exploitation and the dry rot of welfarism."29 This new blood would "create a reconstituted society with different aspirations drawn from different backgrounds...." Most of the new people, he assumes, would be fleeing the problems of urban congestion and environmental pollution and would bring not only a commitment to political 27 �action and responsibility, but a conservationist land ethic as well. This would result in the passage of "zoning and land use laws and efforts to preserve residential areas against intrusion from mining and other industries. The old frontierspawned propensity for disorder will recede," he believes, and an increased coherence and sense of organization will emerge. "The movement toward coherence, order and organization," Caudill adds, would be hastened "if substantial numbers of the newcomers derive from the orderly Scandinavian stock in parts of the West."30 Caudill's model for the future is not a model out of the Appalachian past but out of the cultural assumptions of modern liberalism. It offers no alternatives to modernization and the continued concentration of political and economic power and little prospect for cultural diversity, self-reliance, selfrespect, and local initiative. For almost two decades Professor Caudill has raised the liberal challenges of social responsibility in politics and business and the appropriate use of the land upon which we all depend. It is for these issues that he has attracted such widespread admiration and support among Appalachian intellectuals and activists. But it is interesting, and perhaps revealing, to note what little outcry his vision of Appalachian culture has provoked among these same liberals. Is it because we ourselves share this lack of faith in the folk and are at times a bit uncomfortable with much of Appalachian culture? Harry Caudill is the kind of figure about whom Richard Hofstadter once wrote: "If we are to have any new thoughts, if we are to have an intellectual identity of our own, we must make the effort to distinguish ourselves from those who preceded us, and perhaps preeminently from those to whom we once had the greatest indebtedness."31 Perhaps it is time for those of us in Appalachian studies to acknowledge our debt and to move beyond Harry Caudill in search of not only a more accurate history of our region but also a more appropriate and just vision of the future. This is the challenge facing social action in Appalachia today. Do we continue to bear the cultural burdens of the liberal past or do we allow mountain people to survive as mountaineers? Notes 1. See Helen M. Lewis, et al., Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case (Boone, N.C.: 1978). 2. Harry Caudill, The Watches of the Night: A New Plea for Appalachia (Boston, 1976). 3. See Phillip Shaw Paludan, Victims: A True Story of the Civil War (Knoxville, 1981) pp. 6-30 and Ronald D. Eller, Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers: The Modernization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930 (Knoxville, 1982), pp. 11-12 and 58-64. 4. Harry Caudill, A Darkness at Dawn: Appalachian Kentucky and the Future (Lexington, 1976) p. 23. 5. Ibid., jacket cover. 6. Ibid., pp. 1-2. 28 �7. Harry Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area (Boston, 1963), p. 4-6 and Darkness at Dawn, p. 2. 8. ' A n Interview with Harry Caudill," Appalachian Journal, Vol. 8 No. 4 (Summer, 1981), pp. 277-278 and Night Comes to the Cumberlands, p. 6. 9. See for example, Steven ]. Gould, The Mismeasurement of Man (New York, 1981) and Leon J. Kamin, The Science and Politics oj I.Q., (New York, 1974). 10. See William H. Tallmadge, "Anglo-Saxon vs. Scotch-Irish," Mountain Life and Work, 45, No. 2 (February, 1969); Richard Drake, "Anglo-Saxon vs. Scotch-Irish," Mountain Life and Work, 45, No. 4 (April 1969); and Gratis D. Williams, "The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction," Appalachian Journal, 3, No. 1 (Autumn, 1975). 11. See Peter Clark and Paul Slack, English Towns in Transition, 1500-1700 (London, 1976) and David W. Galenson, "British Servants and the Colonial Indenture System in the Eighteenth Century," The Journal of Southern History, XLIV (February, 1978), pp. 41-65. 12. Darkness at Dawn, p. 6; Night Comes to the Cumberlands, p. 91. See Henry D. Shapiro, Appalachian on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870-1920 (Chapel Hill, 1978). 13. Darkness at Dawn, p. 12. 14. Night Comes to the Cumberlands, pp. 62-63 and Darkness at Dawn, p. 15. 15. Night Comes to the Cumberlands, p. 103. 16. Watches of the Night, p. 225. 17. Night Comes to the Cumberlands, p. 367. 18. Ibid., pp. 367-68. 19. Darkness at Dawn, p. 20. 20. Neal R. Pierce, The Border South States: People, Politics and Power in the Five States of the Border South (New York, 1975), p. 266. 21. Watches of the Night, pp. 50-52. 22. Night Comes to the Cumberlands, p. 288. 23. Watches of the Night, pp. 209-10. 24. Ibid., p. 210. 25. Ibid., p. 211. 26. Ibid., pp. 226 and 235-36. 27. Ibid., p. 56. 28. Watches of the Night, p. 260. 29. Ibid., pp. 262-63. 30. Ibid., p. 264. 31. Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (New York, 1966), p. XIV. 29 �Human Values And Resource Development In The Political Economy Of Appalachia: A Synthesis Of Two Regional Forums Deborah Morentz Markley and Brady J. Deaton * Two major regional conferences—"Appalachia Looks at its Future: Human Values, Resources Development, Political Economy" held in 1975 and "The (Second Forum on the Future of Appalachia: Human Values and the Political Economy" held in 1981—sought to clarify the interrelationship between human values and public policy in the Appalachian region. The papers presented at these forums provide the basis for our attempt to interpret the interrelationship between cultural values and public policy in the Appalachian region as articulated by some of the important actors—representatives of state and local governments, educational institutions, industry, and various citizen groups. Both forums brought together representatives of, primarily, five states (Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia). * * Specifically, this paper presents a synthesis of ideas delineated at the conferences. The cultural values described by participants in the conferences as important to a true understanding of the Appalachian region are discussed and their apparent continuity over time is appraised. Important changes were observed in the primary themes from the first to the second forum. We will explore whether these themes reflect changing values or simply different responses to political, social, and economic forces affecting the region. Finally, we will discuss whether a common set of values or a common policy perspective is evident in the region, i.e., whether a "regional consciousness" appears to be emerging among discrete groups, and what implications a regional consciousness may hold for the future of the Appalachian region. APPALACHIAN VALUES Any discussion of specific values can best proceed from a common understanding or definition of a value. Charles Cleland, at the first forum, defined a value as "an idea which is prized by the holder and for which the holder will make some sacrifice to support."1 He also notes that an individual has a multitude of values which are acted upon at different times and which, occasionally, may come into conflict. Such conflicts are, perhaps, more readily identified at the community level rather than in an individual. The expression of basic values is subtle and, therefore, usually requires that we 30 �infer something about values from observation of human or community behavior. Direct observation of human values, particularly within a region such as Appalachia, is a difficult, if not impossible task. However, the regional forums, designed as they were to specifically discuss human values in Appalachia, elicited definitions of a series of human or cultural values, and sought to provide insight into how these values helped shape and were, in turn, shaped by political and economic events of the times. At the 1975 forum, Cleland identified the primary values of Appalachian people as: individualism, traditionalism, fatalism, fundamentalist religious beliefs, and strength of family. With one exception these same values were articulated by Betty Crickard at the second forum. 2 She identified individualism, religion, and family as values that come under the umbrella of traditionalism. Fatalism was specifically excluded which serves as a possible indicator of other important differences in the themes expressed at each forum. This point will be discussed below in more detail. The remarkable continuity in identification of basic values in spite of significant social and economic changes in the region during this time period may suggest cultural resiliency and adaptability. Therefore, changes in the key themes expressed at each forum more likely reflect differences in perception and in the way in which values are acted upon, not changes in basic values. The persistence of closely held values directs our analysis to the extent to which public policy has been shaped to reflect and provide meaning to closely held values. These issues are developed further in the next section where the major themes from each forum are identified and related to basic values. KEY THEMES The 1975 Forum—One overriding theme evident in the first forum was: a lack of control over the destiny of the region. The discussion related to this central theme centered primarily around five key perceptions: 1. Relatively little local control over changes affecting the region which eminate primarily from outside the region; 2. A lack of citizen participation in government decisionmaking (whether on the federal, state, or local level); 3. A sense of alienation from public institutions; 4. A concern about the appropriate role of industrialization in the future development of the region; and 5. A need for local control over the resources in the region, i.e., concern with absentee corporate ownership of land. Consistent with the national mood at that time, the forum reflected a feeling of distrust of people in authority. As one participant stated, "from Watergate to West Virginia, growing numbers of citizens at the grassroots share a growing suspicion of people in authority".3 The authority at issue was not limited to the state or local level. Rather, the effectiveness of the federal and regional agencies establish31 �ed to assist in the development of Appalachia was brought into serious question. As an example, Dean Rivkin writes, "TVA has begun to be looked on as a faceless giant imposing its preferences for social and economic change on an uninvolved citizenry." And, in a similar vein regarding the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), "the Commission's inability to break anchor from its home base in Washington and establish its presence in the region, doomed ARC in the eyes of those in the region who knew all-too-well the source of their problems and that highways and centralized planning were not the solutions to the problems."4 These statements reflect the feeling that Appalachia was "being done to," not "being done with." Such feelings of powerlessness and lack of control over the local resource base were directed not only at federal or regional entities, but also at local governmental institutions and business interests. In describing the response of coal mine operators and miners to attempts by local citizens to organize against strip mining legislation, Marie Cirillo vividly described a confrontation between citizens and local elites. She writes, "if you can imagine a small, rural, isolated stripmining community controlled by a powerful (absentee-owned) business whose autonomy was threatened by community activity, you can probably have some feel for the fear and terror that people lived with for about three weeks." She summarized the situation of powerlessness and political alienation of Appalachian people by noting that, "where the educational, economic, and political institutions operate as oppressive institutions in the mountains, the positive efforts to keep family, arts, crafts, music, and religion alive allow a resistance to a total takeover."5 Cirillo clearly identified the underlying value structure as a major source of emotional and cultural support in the face of adversity. The need to draw on these values in order to maintain local control and provide direction for the future development of the region was a pervasive theme. For example, industrialization is frequently cited as a necessary component of an appropriate development strategy for Appalachia. Yet, it was advocated at the first forum only in a modified form. Industrialization may be desirable "if industry could be told where to locate and how to operate based on human needs."6 Curtis Seltzer argued for an industrial development strategy designed to improve the quality of life and enhance local control of resources. He proposed an effort based on "planning, public authority, popular participation, a sense of limits, community education and a goal of public benefit."7 Again, the recurring themes of local control and broadened citizen participation are cast as the desirable framework for shaping the future of Appalachian people. An upbeat view of coal's future contribution to the region was presented at the first forum by John H. Gibbons.8 At that time, most factors pointed to continued coal expansion. Gibbons argued that this portends well for the future of the region if the full social costs of production are internalized and these revenues used to upgrade the human capital and institutions of the region. Simon's historical review of the coal industry at the second forum provided a more cautious perspective. He asserted that "those who would suggest coal as an 32 �'engine of development' must prove their case."9 Simon argued that the continuing booms and busts of the industry plague the economy and social fabric of the region. An integrated view of coal and its environment will be required, he argued, in order for its potential contribution to be fully realized. The value of fatalism appears to play an important role in contributing to the sense of "being acted upon" so pervasive in the themes expressed above. However, the angry criticism and the search for alternative development models belie the simple acceptance of the role of fatalism. Thomas Ford, writing about the Southern Appalachian region in 1962, noted that traditionalism and fatalism had weakened considerably in recent decades. The activism reflected at the forum supported Ford's observation. What may have appeared as fatalism at the first forum may actually reflect the frustration of activists in the region responding to the intransigence of historical problems. While a sense of fatalism has long been identified with the Appalachian culture, the appearance that it persists even during a time of increased public attention and assistance to Appalachian people and their struggle may be more illusory than real. The issues and values articulated at the forum suggest that past development efforts may have amounted to a "skillful diversion from the core issue" that our "economic problem is really one of control and distribution of benefits."10 Any efforts to promote or encourage economic or social change that do not include the active participation of local people and, therefore, a clear articulation of local area needs, generally find themselves without requisite local support. Forum participants clearly expressed this crucial concern by repeatedly pointing to lack of local control over the destiny of the region. The 1981 Forum—Having sketched the general themes common to participants in the first forum, the pertinent differences in 1981 will be identified. Attempting to characterize this more recent forum with an overriding theme, words such as "optimism," "activism," "community participation," and "coalition building" come to mind. A greater sense of people working together to help determine the future of the Appalachian region was evident and numerous examples of local success stories were described. At the same time, most participants recognized that severe federal budget cuts and a shifting national mood would surely reduce financial support for many needy projects. In spite of the recognition that budget cuts threaten recent gains in the region, an optimistic show of courage prevailed. The changing themes are consistent with the charge of O. Norman Simpkins who, at the first forum, defined development as increasing control over the total environment, and argued for more grassroots involvement. His final challenge was to develop pride in present day accomplishments in Appalachia. If the second forum had explicitly chosen to explore the extent to which his challenge was accepted, there would have been little difference in the outcome of the forum. To continue with Simpkin's theme, evidence from the second forum suggests that efforts are being made to enable citizens of the region to become the "hammer" of social change rather than the mislabeled passive, eversuffering "anvil."11 33 �Five key issues were articulated at the 1981 conference: 1. Successful citizen participation has contributed to such areas as education, health care, housing, and economic development; 2. The need for employment in the region was emphasized and examples given of efforts to create permanent local employment opportunities; 3. The need for increased control over local resources was argued and ways discussed by which citizens can take an active role in determining ownership patterns of land and mineral resources. 4. Partnerships between financial institutions and citizen groups, business and citizen groups, and women and industry were cited as important components of any development strategy; 5. Coalition building was emphasized as an important means of consolidating the resources and support of many local groups. Some of these concerns were voiced at the earlier forum, but seemed to lose their impact in the face of the general criticism of broad institutions and agencies. Small success stories seemed to be weak ammunition at the 1975 forum. While a different set of speakers would have presented alternative viewpoints at either forum, it seems reasonable to assert that the spirit of regional activism has changed markedly. * Numerous examples of successful attempts by local citizens to achieve community development goals were offered by participants. Joan Ross, Executive Director of the Southwestern Community Action Agency in West Virginia, described how her agency was successful in opening modular health clinics in rural areas, in getting hot meals in rural schools, and in starting Appalachian Craftsmen, a local cottage industry. She pointed out the importance of partnerships by identifying the success of Appalachian Craftsmen as primarily due to the linkages established between the local crafts people and local business and civic organizations. In addition, she emphasized the importance of local participation in decisionmaking, "because it does make a difference in decisionmaking. You tend to make more rational decisions when you have the people who are going to be benefiting from your decisions involved in the process."12 In the area of employment, Ike Adams, Director of Community Development for the Kentucky Highlands Investment Corporation (KHIC), pointed to his organization's success in establishing local industries in east Kentucky. KHIC seeks to promote entrepreneurship by supplying venture capital to new and/or expanding businesses and helping to leverage other funds from traditional financial institutions. The KHIC provides venture capital loans and technical assistance to new industry. As Adams pointed out, an important feature of the KHIC is its relative independence from federal funds resulting from its relative success in recent years. He stated that many community based organizations have developed a "mode of dependence on federal funds, and we have not developed a lot of alternate strategies for where we're going to get water when the well goes dry."13 These 34 �words echo a concern expressed by many forum participants - what do we do in the post budget-cut years? As in the 1975 forum, lack of local control over resources in the region, particularly absentee corportate ownership of land, was seen as an important problem by numerous participants. Tom D. Miller documented the extensive absentee corporate ownership of West Virginia at the 1975 forum.14 However, the character of the discussion changed in 1981, reflecting a mood of activism and organizing around the issue of local resource control. This mood seems to be based in part on the successful efforts of such groups as Save our Cumberland Mountains (COCM) who have worked many years to strengthen citizens' roles in tax reform and regulatory enforcement over strip-mining.15 John Gaventa in 1981 discussed some findings from the ARC funded land ownership study and cited several of its important characteristics. First, it was the first study funded by ARC to be undertaken by local people. Local residents researched ownership patterns in their own local, county records and conducted local interviews. Second, the findings are being made accessible to local groups at individual county, state, and regional levels in order to facilitate further organizing to resolve the problems made evident by the study's findings. Third, the study's findings suggest the need for property tax reform to more equitably reap some benefits from extensive outside ownership of land. Again, this issue is one which lends itself to local or state level organizing efforts. As Gaventa pointed out, "it is going to take political action at the local level where property tax reform begins. And that's as American as the Boston Tea Party."16 Two factors were identified as the basis for successful efforts to further social and economic reform in the region: (1) expanded citizen rights based on legal reform, and (2) coalition building. Darell V. McGraw, Jr., Justice, Supreme Court of Appeals, State of West Virginia, vividly described the importance of the judicial system in expanding citizen rights against powerful forces. He argued that spraying from the basic agrarian ideals embodied in State and Federal Constitutions has corrupted the political ideals of our society to the detriment of the citizenry. Judge McGraw also called attention to the salutary role of the Legal Services Corporation in seeking to "vindicate constitutional principles" in support of citizen rights for the Appalachian people. The second factor, partnerships and coalition building among the important actors in Appalachia, was stressed by many participants as the key to successful attempts at social and economic development. Building coalitions to pool resources and political support becomes essential during periods, such as now, when the federal funds many groups depended upon have diminished or disappeared. Michael Maloney, Executive Director of the Urban Appalachian Council, described the trend toward coalition building as follows: "Many of our differences based on ideology, social class, and sanction may begin to seem less important. I think they should begin to seem less important. This may bring about a level of movement that we've not seen since the 1960's."17 On the other hand, Mary Margaret Pignone cautioned that "coalition building is issue dependent."18 She 35 �noted that we live in a world of pluralism which implies at least the potential for conflict among the basic values people hold. While it is possible to achieve compromise on some issues which are less closely held by the participants, it is also possible that compromise cannot be achieved on some issues based on values too important to relinquish. Pignone's statements pointed out the very real problems encountered in attempts at coalition building. Once again, we come to the point of asking what role values play in giving rise to the issues raised at this forum. Two rather general observations appear in order. First, the fact that fatalism was not cited as part of the Appalachian value structure indicates some degree of evolution in the way in which Appalachian people deal with the world and/or in the way they are perceived by others. The 1975 forum emphasized the problems of the region and the lack of citizen input into determining solutions to those problems. A sense of resignation was stronger among participants at the first forum. The 1981 forum, at the opposite extreme, represented an obvious lack of resignation to the status quo. Efforts to achieve local participation and even local control over decisionmaking were viewed as successful and were offered as meaningful and proven alternative approaches to community and regional problems. An important factor in the movement toward greater participation may have been the focus at the forum on state and local decisionmaking rather than on federal or regional processes. The second forum was designed to place a greater emphasis on forming or enhancing local and statewide coalitions. There was limited discussion of general, regional problems, except in a few very issuespecific ways; coal severance taxes, land ownership patterns, and coal development are examples. The focus by activists on state and local issues appears to have facilitated citizen participation and the process of coalition building. This increased participation may be clearly associated with an erosion of the relative position of fatalism in the value structure of Appalachian people. In any event, it appears that sufficiently satisfactory progress has been made on a number of important problems to engender a strong sense of progress and hope. Second, many participants at the second forum stressed that a desire to preserve the cultural values of the region was an important factor leading to increased participation in decisionmaking. Participants felt that those outside the region who directed change within the region did not adequately consider the importance of these values of Appalachian people. This feeling was also expressed at the first forum during a period of strong federal presence in the region. Since many observers perceive that outside change agents are willing to sacrifice local values for other ends, such as profit or control, it was argued that Appalachian people are forced to action, to political participation, and to assertion of their rights as residents of the region in an effort to preserve their basic values. Perhaps Betty Crickard said it most simply when she described the present as "a time of renewed commitment to enduring values in our culture and a time for action. The future of the past is the present!"19 36 �Implications For Changing Roles Of Principal Actors In The Appalachian Region While the future role of some actors within Appalachia is determined by changes stemming from efforts to preserve basic values, other groups have their roles dictated to them. For example, federal agencies may well play a reduced role because of the budget-cutting process. Fewer federal dollars can be expected to flow into the region as a result of basic cuts in social welfare programs, housing assistance, infrastructure investment (e.g., water and wastewater facility development), legal services, educational assistance, health care systems, and economic development programs (e.g., ARC, EDA). Many observers feel that these funds have made vital contributions to past improvements in the standard of living in the region. Now as federal funds decline, the role of state governments is expected to increase. However, it is questionable whether state and local governments are capable of shouldering the massive financial burden being shrugged off by the federal government. A reduced federal role implicitly defines a reduced role for federally dependent regional agencies and an increased role for state and local governments. Whether these local entities are capable of meeting such an increased role is a question for future deliberations. Fortunately, effective local leadership has emerged in many communities with the zeal and vision needed to strengthen the capacity of local government units. The increased level of citizen participation and constituional reform described at the second forum have generated new sources of power that are not expected to diminish in the near future. Therefore, an active role for citizen groups and coalitions is foreseen, but their dependence on federal funds, the primary source of financing for these groups in the past, will not be the case in the future. The need to seek funding from other sources seems to define a stronger role in the future of the region for private institutions such as industry, churches, foundations, and financial institutions. We might expect these groups to be called on to finance and/or support in other ways the activities of local groups within the region. Whether they accept the challenge is yet to be seen. Mary Margaret Pignone considered whether churches would or should assume the social service responsibilities from which the federal government has divested itself. If so, she argued, the church would serve only to support the current system by coming to its aid and meeting needs generally felt to be the responsibility of federal government. While she does not believe the poor should go unserved, Pignone supported her point by defining a "concomitant role of the church which would be taking a moral position to ask, to name, and to critique a system that professes to hold as inalienable rights the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And that says that when the government won't provide that, we'll change that government."20 Again, the importance of the underlying value structure as a determinant of the role ascribed to particular groups within the region must be noted. Pignone implicitly ascribes a social welfare role for the federal government, while defining a role for the church as advocating the morality of our social system. 37 �Finally, the numerous Appalachian studies centers and programs at universities and colleges within the region are seen as increasingly important for analyzing the values and culture of Appalachia. These centers serve the important functions of educating people both inside and outside the region about the characteristics and historical development of the region. They provide a means for self-reflection by residents of the region and are ultimately a source of cultural strength. REGIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS In looking at the history of Appalachia, it appears that the "prime mover" behind the development of any regional perspective on Appalachia has been the federal government. Although earlier literary writers provided a regional identity for the region, it was primarily recognized by outsiders. One can seriously question the extent to which Appalachian people ever felt a sense of regional identity, even in the 1970's. Through the establishment of the TVA and the ARC, the federal government imposed a regional identity on an otherwise diverse and even isolated group of state and local entities, achieving what writers, poets, and churches either never attempted or failed to accomplish. The first forum clearly reflected this regional perspective as many of the issues discussed tended to be regional in nature. The second forum was not devoid of a regional perspective. Many regional issues were discussed, such as land ownership, coalition building, the coal industry, and the impact of a diminished federal presence in the region. However, there was also a very strong sense of state identity.* Several individual state caucuses were held during the forum, with a good deal of participant support. Plans were laid for further action at the state level, coordinated by conference organizers from each participant state. There was a good deal of trading successful strategies among local citizen groups with the hope of repeating other groups' successes back home. What, then, can be said about the importance, necessity, or desirability of a "regional consciousness" based on the experience of the forums? From our perspective, the evidence seems clear that a "regional consciousness" is not a necessary (implying important) requisite for successful social, economic, or political development in the region. In our opinion, the themes expressed in the two forums suggest that such a consciousness might actually hinder development in some areas, because the issues appear to be too great and all encompassing to handle when viewed at the regional level. For example, trying to reform the rural health care delivery system in the entire Appalachian region does not inspire the local action and spirit to prevail that the same issue in Claiborne County, Tennessee or Lincoln County, West Virginia inspires in the people in those local communities. Granted, this is not to say that regional issues do not exist or that a regional perspective is not frequently warranted. A regional perspective may be essential in drawing attention to and gathering information about some issues, but effective action requires focus on a sub-unit within the region. For example, while the land38 �ownership study was undertaken on a regional level, the information has been utilized at the state and county level, in an ongoing attempt to act on the findings of the overall study. Organization at the regional level was followed through by action at the state and local levels. On the other hand, all problems do not lend themselves to local solutions. Once again Mary Margaret Pignone offers important insight on this issue. She contrasts regional planning with small group decisionmaking and states that regional planning "requires expertise that constantly drops people by the wayside." She argues instead for small group decisionmaking where people can be actively involved and, thus, experience the power that comes from control over decisionmaking. Such participation should be an integral part of the planning process. Unfortunately, state- and local-level decisionmaking in the Appalachian region have not provided sufficient avenues for citizen participation. Judicial processes have been an essential aspect of fundamental reform as Caudill has long argued and as McGraw attests. Clearly, more active participation could be encouraged without unduly sacrificing either economic or social efficiency. The forum called attention to the process of active participation as the primary goal, with efficiency and levels of output as secondary goals. All institutions should be drawn into this process. In summary, one should not rule out a role for a "regional consciousness" facilitating exploration of certain issues on a regional level. However, the decline in the federal government's role in the region, the consequent increase in the importance of individual states, and the strong sense of local citizen activism suggest that a regional consciousness is not a necessary ingredient for successful development and, indeed, it could serve to divert attention from resolution of important state and local problems. APPALACHIA - LOOKING TOWARD ITS FUTURE Given the trends identified as a result of analysis of the two Appalachian forums, what might we suggest about the perceived ability of the region to respond to future changes. In short, evidence seems to suggest that the road will not be easy, but that progress can be expected. As expressed by many at the second forum, Appalachia is in for a challenging period in the next several years. It must get along without the massive injections of federal dollars so crucial in the past. Rev. John McBride described the current time as a disaster - a flood that swept through overnight and left us homeless. Ike Adams continues the analogy and suggests the resiliency required of Appalachian people. "We've got to stop building back in the flood plain. We're going to have to take this disaster and instead of anticipating another flood and expecting things to work out and pray that there won't be another one, we've got to move to higher ground." Although times are not easy for people involved with community development, a new sense of activism was expressed at the 1981 forum that demands and attains, to some degree, participation in the decisionmaking processes influencing the 39 �region. Such resiliency can be expected to continue as Appalachian people face the challenges of the 1980s and become more intimately involved in the meaningful affairs of the region. This reality was foreseen by Thomas Ford twenty years ago when he observed that the way of life, beliefs, fears, and aspirations of Appalachians are not radically different from those of most other Americans.21 Perhaps it is a desire for a more truly democratic process that is being reflected in the region and in the broader society. We anticipate the third Appalachian forum with optimism that further strides by the people toward regaining control of the destiny of the region will have been made. Notes 'C.L. Cleland, "Human Values:: Their Origin and Influence," Appalachia Looks at its Future, Proceedings of a Regional Forum, Department of Agricultural Economics, VPI & SU, August 1978, 65-73. (Hereafter referred to as Proceedings.) 2 Betty P. Crickard, "Roles for Women in Creative Partnerships in Appalachian Development," paper presented at the (Second) Forum on the Future of Appalachia, Lincoln Memorial Univ. (LMU), Harrogate, Tennessee, July 14-16, 1981. 'Tom Plaut, "Resistance, Rebellion, and Repression," Proceedings, op. cit., 1-11. 4 Dean Hill Rivkin, "The Constitutional Setting in Appalachia: Of Scapegoats and Caricatures," Proceedings, op. cit., 21-30. 5 Marie Cirillo, "Service Development By and For Citizens," Proceedings, op. cit., 50-64. 8 Curtis Seltzer, "Two Conclusions about Cows and Some Thoughts About Appalachian Economics," Proceedings, op. cit., p. 12-20. 7 Ibid. "John Gibbons, "The Energy Industry: Coal and Its Competition," Proceedings, pp. 31-36. 9 Rick Simon, "Coal and Economic Development in the Southern Appalachian Mountains." Paper presented at the (Second) Forum on the Future of Appalachia, LMU, July 14-16, 1981. '"Seltzer, op. cit. "O. Norman Simpkins, "Pride: The Cultural Touchstone of Development," Proceedings, pp. 100-107. ]2 Joan Ross, tape recorded talk at The (Second) Forum on the Future of Appalachia, op cit. 13 Ike Adams, tape recorded talk at The (Second) Forum on the Future of Appalachia, op. cit. 14 Tom Miller, "Who Owns West Virgina?", Proceedings, pp. 37-49. ispeggy Mathews, "Problems in the Fundamental Laws: SOCM's Role in Legal Reforms." Presentation made at the (Second) Forum on the Future of Appalachia, LMU, 1981. "John Gaventa, tape recorded talk at The (Second) Forum on The Future of Appalachia, op. cit. "Mike Maloney, tape recorded talk at The (Second) Forum on the Future of Appalachia, op. cit. 18 Mary Margaret Pignone, tape recorded talk at The (Second) Forum on the Future of Appalachia, op. cit. "Betty P. Crickard, op. cit., 12. 20 Mary Margaret Pignone, op. cit. 21 Thomas R. Ford, Editor, The Southern Appalachian Region, University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, Kentucky, 1962. 'Research Associate and Associate Professor, respectively, in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The authors wish to acknowledge helpful comments by J. Paxton Marshall, who was the principal organizer of both forums. 40 �"Both conferences were organized by the Cooperative Extension Services of the five states, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Commission on Religion in Appalachia. Thus, a regional perspective on both values and important issues was afforded. The structure of each conference was planned by a committee made up of representatives of the sponsoring organizations. Deaton was a member of the planning committee for both forums. Markley assisted with the organization of the second forum. *A follow-up workshop held several months later in southwest Virginia provided strong support for this general observation. The general view expressed by a diverse audience was that times have changed, that possibilities exist for creative partnership among diverse interests, and that examples abound of general improvement in life opportunities in the Region. 'Emphasis on state identity was an objective of the organizing committee. Follow-up workshops in each state have occurred since the 1981 forum, a desired outcome of conference organizers. 41 �This page intentionally left blank �Urban Minorities 43 �This page intentionally left blank �Introduction Ronald Eller In recent years regional scholars have focused considerable attention on the experience of Appalachian migrants. Between 1945 and 1965, over three million mountaineers left Appalachia to find employment in the expanding industrial centers of the east and mid-west. Much of the emergence of the "consumer culture" in America during the post-war years was made possible because of the availability of a cheap and abundant mountain labor supply. The trek to Detroit, Chicago, Cincinnati, Atlanta, and other urban centers became an inseparable part of the mountain experience and helped to draw national attention to the social and economic problems of the region. Early studies of Appalachian migrants - based upon the perceptions of urban social workers and journalists -emphasized the difficulties which mountaineers had in assimilating to urban life. Lamenting the social and economic "costs" of the migrants to the urban areas, these studies concentrated on the adjustment problems of migrants as reflected in the schools, social services and the job market. More recent research, however, has begun to revise this picture somewhat and to emphasize the diversity of experiences within the urban Appalachian community, pointing out that a large element of the migrant population succeeded in assimilating into urban life and has become a significant "invisible minority."* Most of the research on Appalachian migrants has focused on the occupational and employment experiences of white males. Like much of the literature in Appalachian studies, little attention has been given to women, blacks, and other minorities from the region. The two essays which follow break with prior research and shed considerable light on the experiences of two minorities within the larger Appalachian minority community. Virginia McCoy Watkins and Diana Gullett Trevino focus on the occupational and employment status of Appalachian females in Cincinnati. Their findings reveal that recent female Appalachian migrants were not disadvantaged in terms of occupation and employment status. Indeed, they find that their occupational status was more favorable than that of the receiving population, and that the most dramatic difference was a disproportionate concentration of Appalachians in professional positions as compared to the receiving population. Their analysis reveals that this difference in occupational status could not be accounted for by age, but was due to occupational selectivity of migration. While the rate of unemployment among Appalachians was higher, they suggest, Appalachian females do not differ from other types of female migrants in terms of occupational and employment status. Watkins and Trevino 45 �conclude that while it may be true that Appalachian background constitutes a liability in the economic domain for males, there is no evidence to suggest that it constitutes a liability for Appalachian females. In the second essay, Phillip Obermiller and William Philliber analyze the relative socioeconomic attainments of black Appalachian migrants. Basing their research on data from three surveys conducted in Hamilton County (Cincinnati), Ohio, Obermiller and Philliber find that black Appalachian migrants have much more in common with other blacks than with white migrants from the mountains. While white Appalachian migrants may be distinguished from other whites, black Appalachian migrants do not have socioeconomic attainments different from other blacks. In terms of education, occupation, and income, the relative attainments of both black groups are about half the attainment of non-Appalachian whites. Blacks from Appalachia, they suggest, move to black neighborhoods where they are identified with and as blacks rather than as Appalachians. Accordingly, they experience the same life chances as other blacks. Their socioeconomic attainments, therefore, are restricted primarily by race rather than by ethnic or regional origin. Like Watkins and Trevino, Obermiller and Philliber conclude that much further research needs to be focused on minority groups within the mountains before the experience of urban Appalachian minorities can be more fully understood. 46 �Black Appalachian Migrants: The Issue Of Dual Minority Status William W. Philliber Phillip J. Obermiller A greater proportion of blacks moved out of Appalachia during the great migration of the fifties and sixties than did whites, reducing the percentage of blacks in Appalachia to 7.3% of the population by 1970 (Appalachian Regional Commission, 1971). As a result of this selectivity blacks are more common among Appalachian migrants than among those who remained in the region. An estimated one out of five Appalachians living in Hamilton County, Ohio, for example, are black. While studies were being conducted among Appalachian migrants who were white, black migrants were either excluded from the analysis or grouped with other blacks. Too few Appalachian blacks were found in any single survey to analyze as a separate category, and researchers feared combining blacks and whites together lest the importance of origin be confounded by race. Today knowledge of black Appalachian migrants lags substantially below their white counterparts (Fowler, 1980). There are reasons to believe that black Appalachians may have little in common with white migrants. First, their origins in Appalachia were different. While most white Appalachians living in Cincinnati, for example, came from Kentucky and Tennessee (McCoy and Brown, 1981), blacks moved from Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi (Appalachian Regional Commission, 1971; Fowler, 1976). Appalachia is not a single cultural entity and migrants from different parts of the region may be as different as Appalachians and non-Appalachians. Second, within the same part of the region black Appalachians have usually lived isolated from whites (Allen, 1974; French, 1975; Cabbell, 1980). As with the rest of the nation, blacks were excluded from the mainstream in Appalachia. Having shared little in Appalachia, it seems doubtful black and white Appalachians found much in common after they migrated. Third, although migration brought many Appalachians—black and white—to low income neighborhoods of the city, they settled apart from each other (Fowler, 1981). Blacks from Appalachia moved to black neighborhoods where they identified with, and were identified as blacks, but perhaps not as Appalachians (Zigli, 1981). On the other hand there are reasons to believe that Appalachia has had an influence on black migrants similar to that of whites. One of the first studies of black culture in Appalachia concluded that while blacks were isolated they nonetheless developed value systems similar to whites in the area (French, 1975). While the importance of such a value system has recently been a subject of criticism (Bill47 �ings, 1974; Philliber, 1981) any influence it has upon the life chances of white migrants should also then be true of blacks. The only research which has analyzed black Appalachians as a separate category supports that conclusion. Fowler's (Reeves, 1976; Fowler, 1981) study of residential distribution found that both black and white Appalachians were more likely than their non-Appalachian counterparts to live in low-income areas of the city. Whether blacks from Appalachia integrated into the local black community where they migrated or remained distinct because of their Appalachian heritage in the same manner as white migrants remains an unanswered question. The purpose of this paper is to provide a partial answer to that question by analyzing the socioeconomic attainments of black Appalachian migrants in Hamilton County, Ohio, relative to non-Appalachian blacks, white Appalachians, and nonAppalachian whites. Data Data were obtained by combining three surveys conducted in Hamilton County, Ohio. They were the 1971 Model Cities Survey (Sherrill, 1972), the 1975 Cincinnati Area Project (Philliber, 1981), and the 1980 Greater Cincinnati Survey (Obermiller, 1982). While neither methods of sampling nor measurement were the same, combining the studies produced 113 black Appalachians. That yielded a large enough group co provide a basis for at least some tentative observations. There are four differences in the ways the three surveys were carried out which may contribute to errors in the findings here. Two of those differences are minor and two are of some consequence. First, the Greater Cincinnati Survey was conducted by telephone while the other two were collected in-person. Findings from telephone surveys are generally consistent with in-person interviews, so this difference should matter little (Tuchfarber and Klecka, 1976). Second, participants in the Model Cities Survey were selected as part of a multi-stage probability sample stratified by race; the Cincinnati Area Project used a multi-stage probability sample of blocks with quotas proportional to the population; and the Greater Cincinnati Survey selected people using Random Digit Dialing. These differences also probably matter little (Tuchfarber and Klecka, 1976; Sudman, 1966). On the other hand, the Model Cities Survey is drawn from the population living within the inner-city low-income area designated as the target for the Model Cities program while the other two studies are drawn from the population of Hamilton County. As a result, the combination of the three samples disproportionately represents people in low-income neighborhoods. Finally, the Cincinnati Area Project and the Greater Cincinnati Survey classified people as Appalachian if they were born in Appalachia or had at least one parent born there while the Model Cities Survey classified people as Appalachians if they had moved to Cincinnati directly from Appalachia. As a result the Model Cities Survey classified some persons as non-Appalachians who would otherwise be Appalachian. We have no reason to believe that any of these factors seriously altered the findings, but they should be remembered before reaching any final conclusions. 48 �Findings Although migrants from Appalachia generally are better educated than nonmigrants who remained (Larkin, 1973), Appalachians average fewer years of education than natives and other migrants in their places of destination (Philliber, 1981). Table 1 shows that only 58 % of the white Appalachians in the three studies had completed high school but 78% of other whites graduated. However, while white Appalachians are left at a competitive disadvantage to other whites, black Appalachians are not much different from other blacks. Some 38% of the black Appalachians compared to 39% of other blacks were high school graduates. Both groups are seriously less educated than whites, but their differences from each other are small. The same pattern emerges with respect to occupational attainment among those in the labor force. White Appalachians have a lower percentage employed as white collar workers or in skilled trades than non-Appalachian whites have, 60% and 81 %, respectively. Both black groups have even fewer such employees. All but 41% of the black Appalachians and 30% of other blacks are employed in semi-skilled or unskilled jobs. Although the difference between the two black groups is still small, it should be noted that what difference does exist is in favor of black Appalachians. The pattern is repeated in family incomes. The average annual income of other whites in the three surveys was $16,470. White Appalachians had average annual incomes of $14,182. Both black groups were considerably poorer. The average family income of black Appalachians was $7,742 and the income of other blacks averages $6,719. Table 4 summarizes relative attainments of the four groups. On each of the three variables non-Appalachian whites averaged higher achievements than other groups. A total of 78 % were high school graduates, 81 % had white-collar or skilled jobs, and the group averaged $16,470 in family income. If these figures are set equal to 100 %, then the relative attainments of white Appalachians are shown to be about three-quarter of the attainments of other whites. Each of the surveys used in this study have previously been analyzed to show the relative attainments of white Appalachians so these findings are not new. They are reported here only to provide a ready comparison with black Appalachians. The data collected from black Appalachians are not entirely consistent. Black Appalachians have fewer high school graduates but better jobs and higher incomes than do other blacks. However, none of the differences within the black group are actually very large. When the attainments of either group are compared to non-Appalachian whites, both groups are shown to have half or less of what non-Appalachian whites have. Their differences from each other are trivial when compared to their differences from whites. It should be noted that the higher socioeconomic attainments of nonAppalachian whites can not be explained by age or by length of residence. In each of the three studies no significant differences existed for either of these variables. 49 �The explanation for the advantage of non-Appalachian whites lies in other directions. Conclusion The best conclusion from this study of the relative attainments of black Appalachians is that black Appalachians experience the same life chances as other blacks. They are restricted for being black, but they are not further restricted because they are Appalachian. The emergent ethnicity which is characteristic of working class and poor white Appalachians is not shared by Appalachians who are blacks. Black Appalachians seem to have become a part of the larger black group. There are two factors which may explain why black Appalachians are not distinct from other blacks in the same way Appalachian and non-Appalachian whites are. First, ethnic group formation is partially the result of labeling and discrimination by others. White Appalachians were singled out from the general white population by stereotyping and discrimination, thereby giving impetus to the formation of a group identity (McCoy and Watkins, 1981; Obermiller, 1982). Black Appalachians were not similarly distinguished from the general black population; labeling and discrimination affected all members of that group equally, giving no momentum to the rise of a separate black Appalachian identity. But group formation can also come from stereotyping and discrimination which is internal to the group itself (Obermiller, 1982). In this case race recedes in importance and socioeconomic stratification becomes critical. Intergroup labeling among white Appalachians in urban areas is quite negative and predominates in the higher status cohort. The absence of large differences in socioeconomic status among blacks in the county, particularly when compared to white residents, may lead to a diminution of intergroup stereotyping. This phenomenon may account for the absence of a specific Appalachian ethnicity among black Appalachians (Lewis, 1978). For both of these reasons Appalachian blacks do not appear to have emerged as a group separate from blacks who are non-Appalachian. It is appropriate to conclude by noting that these findings reflect the paucity of research on black Appalachians. Even if better data continue to find the absence of socioeconomic differentiation between Appalachian and non-Appalachian blacks outside the region, other important differences may exist. 50 �TABLE 1: Percent High School Graduates By Race And Appalachian Heritage Race Appalachian Other Black 35% (101) 39% (380) White 58% (359) 78% (1,015) TABLE 2: Percent Of Labor Force Employed In Skilled Trades Or White Collar Positions By Race And Appalachian Heritage Race Appalachian Other Black 41% (54) 30% (231) White 60% (248) 81% (783) TABLE 3: Average Annual Income By Race And Appalachian Heritage Race Appalachian Other Black $ 7,742 (98) $ 6,719 (403) White $14,182 (366) $16,470 (1,017) 51 �TABLE 4: Relative Attainments Of Black Appalachians, White Appalachians, And Other Blacks As A Percentage Of The Attainments Of Other Whites Education Job Income Black Appalachian 45% 51% 47% Other Black 50% 37% 41% White Appalachian 74% 74% 86% 100% 100% 100% Croup Other White References Allen, Fayetta A. 1974 "Blacks in Appalachia." The Black Scholar, 15 (June):42-51. Appalachian Regional Commission 1971 "Blacks in Appalachia. Population Trends: 1960 to 1970." Current Statistical Report Number 4. Washington: Appalachian Regional Commission. Billings, Dwight 1974 "Culture and Poverty in Appalachia: A Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Analysis." Social Forces, 53 (December):315-23. Cabbell, Edward J. 1980 "Black Invisibility and Racism in Appalachia: An Informal Survey." Appalachian Journal, 8 (Autumn) :48-54. Fowler, Gary 1976 "Regional Mobility Among People in Central Cincinnati." Urban Appalachian Council Research Bulletin (May): 1-3. 1980 Appalachian Migration: A Review and Assessment of the Research. Washington: Appalachian Regional Commission. 1981 "The Residential Distribution of Urban Appalachians." pp. 79-94 in William W. Philliber and Clyde B. McCoy (eds.) The Invisible Minority. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. French, Laurence 1975 "The Isolated Appalachian Black Community." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society. San Francisco. (August). 52 �Larkin, Robert Paul 1973 Out-migration from Altoona, Pennsylvania: Mobility Response to Changing Opportunities. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. Pennsylvania State University. Lewis, Michael 1978 The Culture of Inequality. New York: Meridian Books. McCoy, Clyde B. and James S. Brown. 1981 "Appalachian Migration to Midwestern Cities." pp. 35-78 in William W. Philliber and Clyde B. McCoy (eds.) The Invisible Minority. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Obermiller, Phillip J. 1982 Labelling Urban Appalachians: Bridges and Barriers to the Formation of a Contemporary Ethnic Identity. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Union Graduate School. Philliber, William W. 1981 Appalachian Migrants in Urban America. New York: Praeger. Reeves, David 1976 "Black Appalachians in the City." Mountain Life and Work, 52 (August): 18-19. Sherrill, Samuel B. 1972 Cincinnati Model Neighborhood Survey: A Statement of Research Objectives and Methodology. Cincinnati: Institute for Metropolitan Studies, University of Cincinnati. Sudman, Seymour 1966 "Probability Sampling with Quotas." Journal of the American Statistical Association, 61 (September) :49-71. Tuchfarber, Alfred and William Klecka 1976 Random Digit Dialing. Washington: Urban Institute. Zigli, Barbara 1981 "Appalachian Blacks—the 'Double Minority' " Cincinnati Enquirer, (May 5), p. A-6. 53 �Occupational And Employment Status Of Appalachian Migrant Women Virginia McCoy Watkins Diana Gullett Trevino INTRODUCTION The social science literature has portrayed Appalachian migrants as a disadvantaged group. The problems they have experienced in adjusting to the urban environment range from high school drop out rates (Maloney, 1974) and low levels of educational attainment (Philliber, 1981b) to cultural conflicts (McCoy, 1981) and low occupational attainment (Schwarzweller, 1971). The current study focuses on the occupational and employment status of recent Appalachian migrant women. The scarcity of migration research on women has left an enormous gap in explaining the consequences of migration for them. Their contributions in the economic domain have been particularly neglected.1 There have been, however, a number of studies on males. The Appalachian migration research indicates that migration takes place for economic reasons—to obtain a job or to obtain a better job. Generally, jobs are located through the help of relatives and friends rather than through employment agencies (Schwarzweller, 1981). Male migrants generally hold a greater proportion of semiskilled or unskilled jobs, but few hold professional jobs. Their occupational status was found to be lower than other migrants and natives, but higher than those in the area of origin (Philliber, 1981b; Schwarzweller, 1971). Appalachian migrants in suburban Cleveland were more likely than return migrants, West Virginia natives or ghetto migrants to hold skilled jobs; those in the ghetto were more likely to hold semiskilled jobs. The few professional workers in the Cleveland study tended either to be return migrants (to West Virginia) or to live in areas where there were few other Appalachians (Photiadis, 1981). It has also been noted that Appalachian occupational mobility provided less increase in income than for white natives, blacks, or other white migrants (Philliber, 1981b). Prior research has shown that Appalachians are placed at a disadvantage in the economic domain. This research has been almost exclusively on males or the combined male/female population; this exclusion has obscured or ignored the contribution of females. One study found that Appalachian females did not migrate alone. They left the mountains with their husbands or parents, or joined family members upon their 54 �arrival in the city (Schwarzweller, 1971). Only two studies mention the economic situation of women. Schwarzweller and Brown found that almost one-third of the women migrants in the Beech Creek study were employed; however, almost twothirds of them were in semiskilled positions. Philliber found that 31 percent of Appalachians in the Hamilton County, Ohio study area were in families in which the wife worked outside the home. In addition, the wife's employment created less of an advantage toward improvement in family income than did either natives, other white migrants or blacks. These Appalachian women, as in the Beech Creek study, had few skills which would facilitate obtaining higher wages (Philliber, 1981b). Based on general notions of Appalachian background and their lower status in the employment and the occupational hierarchy relative to the receiving population, we anticipated that findings with respect to females in the economic domain would mirror that of males. That is, that Appalachian women would be at a competitive disadvantage compared with the receiving population. These inclinations were in error. ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS The results of this analysis focus on the occupational and employment status of recent female migrants from Appalachia to the Cincinnati SMSA. While a number of studies have been made of males, little research exists on females in the economic domain. This exploratory study of recent Appalachian female migrants is based principally on a special tabulation of 1970 Census data which distinguished recent migrants from Appalachia and the receiving population in the Cincinnati SMSA.2 Appalachian migrants are those who, in 1965, lived in any of the 397 counties and five independent cities defined as the Appalachian Region, and in 1970 lived in the Cincinnati SMSA. All others in the receiving area were defined as non-Appalachians. Table 1 shows that Appalachian females (and non-Appalachian females) followed the traditional pattern of female occupational distribution in that they were concentrated in traditional "female labor market sector positions" (O'Brien, 1970). These include clerical (sales clerks), service worker (hairdressers, waitresses) and professional (teachers, nurses) occupation categories. Within this dual labor market structure, a striking difference appears, however. A disproportionate concentration of Appalachians (26.4 %) held professional positions as compared with non-Appalachians (14.9%). This difference remained when comparing the counties within the SMSA as well (data not presented).3 On the other hand, the occupational distribution showed that Appalachians held proportionately fewer sales (3.9%) and clerical (30.0%) positions than nonAppalachians. The plausible reasons for this difference between Appalachian and nonAppalachian females in the professional category could be attributed to dif55 �ferences in the age distribution of migrants, in the occupational selectivity of professionals associated with migration, or in the disadvantage associated with Appalachian background. This section will explore these explanations in order. As one would expect for recent migrants (Bogue, 1969), Appalachian migrant females are younger than non-Appalachians. For those who were 15 years of age and over, and most likely to participate in the labor market, 65 percent of the Appalachians were between the ages of 15 and 29 years, compared with 32 percent of non-Appalachians (Table 2). The older age groups (40-64) favored nonAppalachians (36.8%); whereas only 15.5% of the Appalachians fell into this age group. This inverse relationship between age and migration status has been documented in prior literature (Taeuber, 1967). Since occupation by age distribution was not available in the special tabulation on Appalachian migrants data set, it was not possible to directly control for age. In order to explore the hypothesis that the concentration of young women in the professional category produced the disproportionate concentration of Appalachians in that category, age standardization for the occupational distribution was calculated utilizing the U.S. occupational distribution by age4 (see Table 3). This procedure showed essentially no change in the difference between Appalachians and non-Appalachians in the professional category. Appalachians comprised 15.6% and non-Appalachians 15.0% in that category. Sales positions in which non-Appalachians predominated, were also found to produce no change in the differences observed between the two groups—7.1 % for Appalachians and 8.1% for non-Appalachians. Age distribution probably accounts for differences between Appalachians and non-Appalachians in the clerical positions. The most important finding is that there is no evidence that age differences between Appalachians and non-Appalachians account for the disproportionate concentration of Appalachians in the professional category. The second plausible explanation raised was whether the difference in the professional category was due to the occupational selectivity of professionals among migrants and non-migrants. The tabulations appear in Table 4. This hypothesis was explored using Public Use Sample data5 on aggregated migrants and nonmigrants. We can see clearly that a greater proportion of migrants (22.8%) than non-migrants (13.8%) held professional positions. Referring back to Table I, one can see that the difference in the proportion of professionals between Appalachians and non-Appalachians parallels the difference in proportion of professionals between migrants and non-migrants. This strongly suggests that the occupational selectivity of professionals among migrants accounts for the difference between Appalachian and non-Appalachian professionals. This finding supports the interpretation that the disproportionate concentration of Appalachians in the professional category as compared to the receiving population is not accounted for by age, but rather was due to occupational selectivity of migration. In addition to the occupational status, another frequently used measure of competitive posture in the economic domain is unemployment. We examined the 56 �employment status of Appalachian migrant and non-Appalachian women. While a greater proportion of Appalachians than the receiving population were in the labor force, there was a wide gap in unemployment between Appalachians (8.6%) and non-Appalachians (4.6%) (see Table 5). Procedures were conducted similar to those conducted for the occupational distribution to explore the influence of age and migrant status on the difference between Appalachian and non-Appalachian unemployment. When we standardized employment status for age (Table 6), this gap in unemployment narrowed considerably, showing 6.3% Appalachians unemployed and 5.4% non-Appalachians unemployed. This finding suggests that the largest portion of the difference in the unemployment rate can be attributed to age difference between Appalachians and non-Appalachians, potentially corresponding to the age selectivity of migration. The national data showed (Table 7) that only slightly more migrants than non-migrants were unemployed, 4.3% for migrants and 3.6% for non-migrants. These results suggest that the higher rate of unemployment for Appalachian women was due primarily to the age selectivity of migration and secondarily to the slight correspondence between unemployment and migration. In summary, we found no evidence to suggest that recent Appalachian female migrants are disadvantaged in the economic domain by their Appalachian background. In general, Appalachians were of higher occupational status than non-Appalachians. Analysis suggests that the difference is due to the occupational selectivity of migration that occurs among females. The higher unemployment rate among Appalachians as compared to non-Appalachians seems primarily due to the difference in the age composition between the two groups. There was also evidence of some slight influence due to the association of employment status and migration among females. Therefore, while prior literature found that Appalachian background constituted a liability in the economic domain for males, there was no evidence to suggest that it constituted a liability for Appalachian females. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS There are several explanations to be explored for the finding that Appalachian background in this study does not constitute a liability for Appalachian migrant females. The first of these considers the definition of Appalachians used in this study. Appalachian migrants are defined as those who lived in the Appalachian Region between 1965 and 1970 and in 1970 lived in the Cincinnati SMSA. Therefore, the Appalachian migrants category does not necessarily include only those who were born in the region; that is, those of Appalachian background. It is purely a recent migrant designation, which excludes Appalachians who migrated to the Cincinnati SMSA in an earlier period. The non-Appalachian migrant category includes all other recent migrants (from someplace other than Appalachia), natives, as well as Appalachians who migrated to and stayed in the 57 �Cincinnati SMS A in earlier periods. This confounding of the categories might underestimate the difference between Appalachian and non-Appalachian professionals since both categories include some Appalachians. In addition, the Appalachian migrant professional category may include very mobile professionals who are not Appalachians, but who moved in the Appalachian Region, were residing there in 1965, and migrated out to be found in Cincinnati in 1970. Some in the Appalachian migrant category, therefore, may not be of Appalachian background at all. Definitions of Appalachians in other studies have varied from migrants from one Appalachian state (West Virginia), migrants from one Appalachian county (Clay County, Kentucky) to migrants who moved from the Appalachian Region and those who were born in the Appalachian Region or had one parent born in the Appalachian Region. Settlement areas of the migrants in these studies have been diverse as well—the inner city of Cincinnati, Ohio, suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, Hamilton County, Ohio, and several counties in the Cincinnati SMSA, which include northern Kentucky and one Indiana county. Even though the definitions of Appalachians varied somewhat from study to study, the findings on males are consistent. For males, the occupational status was lower than for other groups, either other migrants or natives (Philliber, 1981a, 1981b; Photiadis, 1981; Schwarzweller, 1971, 1981). They were concentrated in unskilled and semiskilled jobs; few held professional positions. In addition, Appalachians were found to receive the lowest increase in income attainment for concomitant increases in occupational status (Philliber, 1981b). The literature on Appalachian employment status indicates that, in general, Appalachians are able to find jobs, and are willing to take lower status jobs. Studies showed that Appalachian heads of households in Hamilton County in 1975 were employed at a rate similar to other white migrants and white natives. Only six percent of the Appalachians and five percent of the white migrants and natives were unemployed (Philliber, 1981b). A 1961 study, with similar results, found that most males were employed (Schwarzweller, 1971). Photiadis' (1981) study of Appalachians in Cleveland found somewhat higher proportions of unemployed and retired for migrants in the ghetto (9 %) than in the suburbs; however, West Virginia natives and return migrants had the highest unemployment of these four groups. Similarly, Maloney (1981) indicates a ten percent unemployment rate for inner city Appalachian neighborhoods in Cincinnati. There is apparently a period of rather high instability in employment among recent Appalachian migrants during the first year or so after migration. However, stability improves once the migrant gains some confidence in the industrial work setting (Schwarzweller, 1971). We analyzed the occupational and employment status of Appalachian migrant males and compared them with the receiving population, using the special tabulation data set. This analysis showed that, like females, Appalachian males were more heavily concentrated in the professional category. However, when we controlled for age using the age standardization procedure, it was found that age not 58 �only accounted for the difference between Appalachian and non-Appalachian males, but the direction changed to favor non-Appalachians. This finding, using the same data set for males and females, supports the prior literature on males; that Appalachian males suffer economic disadvantage compared to the receiving population. The few earlier studies which made statements about females in the labor market indicated that they had few skills and were employed in low status jobs. A 1961 study indicated that while a good number of the women (32%) were employed, only a very small proportion held professional and clerical positions. Most of those employed (67%) were in unskilled or semiskilled jobs (Schwarzweller, 1971). On the other hand, a 1974 study found that fewer Appalachian women than other white migrants, white natives or blacks were in dual worker families. Only 31% of Appalachians were in family situations of this type, whereas 46-51 % of the other groups were in dual worker families. The contribution of the wife's employment to the total family income was less in Appalachian families than in those of other white migrants, white natives or blacks. Appalachian wives who worked outside the home had few skills which would enable them to make a greater contribution in wages to the family income (Philliber, 1981b). While both studies found that Appalachian women who were employed had few job skills, the findings are inconsistent in terms of the proportion employed. One cannot obtain a clear picture of the occupational or employment status of Appalachian migrant women from prior studies. However, these findings on women seem to indicate that Appalachian women and Appalachian men are placed at a disadvantage in the job market, unlike the findings in our study for women. Explanations for the disadvantage experienced by Appalachian males in the economic domain and the lack of this liability for Appalachian females could not be determined in our study. This difference could possibly be due to the higher educational attainment of females. The literature indicates that male educational achievement is low (Schwarzweller, 1981; Photiadis, 1981; Philliber, 1981a) and this could contribute to low occupational status. Another study, however, also indicated that additional education did not improve the economic situation of Appalachians (Peterson and Sharp, 1969). In addition, nothing in the literature indicates whether female educational achievements are greater than for males. One might suppose that males left school to take available unskilled jobs which required little education in the home area. Females remained in school to continue their education and await the availability of jobs. Another possibility is that, for whatever reasons, Appalachian women are better able to compete in the urban job market. Even though the dual occupational structure has restricted Appalachian women to the female labor market sector positions, as it has non-Appalachian women, Appalachian women may be better prepared to compete with other women within these restrictions. Appalachian males have been found ill-prepared to compete in the urban labor market. Many had experience as coal miners or farmers which did not prepare them for competi59 �tion in the industrial work situations in the receiving areas (Schwarzweller, 1971; Philliber, 1981b). Appalachian women were probably trained to do jobs traditionally perceived as "woman's work"—teachers, nurses and secretaries. This training has apparently paid off for them and has enabled them to compete in the urban job market where female labor market jobs are the norm. To suppose that Appalachian women have better competetive skills than men, however, runs counter to findings that Appalachians have difficulty competing in the urban schools (Wagner, 1974). In conclusion, these findings, as they relate to those in prior work, suggest the need for more research focusing on the occupational and employment achievement of Appalachian migrant females. For example, the changing economy necessitates dual worker families and challenges traditional roles of Appalachian migrant women. Research in the social sciences has traditionally delayed study of minorities and women until the size of the group reaches sufficient proportions to warrant study or until their political activities force attention to certain issues for the group. We are hopeful that the apparent inconsistency between this work and the other studies stimulates efforts at further research. This research should focus specifically at determining the consequences of migration for Appalachian migrant females. Table 1 Female Occupation Status, Cincinnati SMSA 1970 Occupation Appalachian Professionals Managers Sales Clerical Craftsmen Operatives Transport Laborers Farmworkers Service Workers Private Household No. 824 63 122 934 29 493 12 62 0 486 91 Total Females Employed 3,116 60 % 26.4 2.0 3.9 30.0 0.9 15.8 0.4 2.0 15.6 15.6 2.9 Non-Appalachian No. 28,656 5,709 15,721 72,382 3,585 22,790 819 1,866 464 32,865 6,856 191,713 % 14.9 3.0 8.2 37.8 1.9 11.9 0.4 1.0 0.2 17.1 3.6 �Table 2 Female Age Distribution, Cincinnati SMSA 1970 Age Groups (in years) Appalachian % No. 15- 19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-54 55- 64 65-74 75 and over 16.0 33.9 15.0 7.3 6.1 3.9 6.7 4.9 2.8 3.4 1,235 2,608 1,156 560 469 297 514 377 215 264 Total Females Non- Appalachian 7.695 No. % 12.4 10.5 8.9 7.9 7.7 8.2 15.6 13.0 9.3 6.5 63,076 53,479 45,158 40,310 39,201 41,891 79,704 66,193 47,291 33,073 509,376 Table 3 Age Standardization Of Female Occupation Status 1970 Appalachian Non-Appalachian % Occupation % 15.6 2.6 7.1 38.7 2.3 12.0 0.4 1.0 0.7 16.4 3.3 15.0 3.8 8.1 33.5 1.8 13.2 0.4 1.0 0.9 17.2 5.1 Professionals Managers Sales Clerical Craftsmen Operatives Transport Laborers Farmworkers Service Workers Private Household Source: 1970 U.S. Bureau of the Census. Census of Population: 1970 Detailed Characteristics. Final Report PC(1)-D1, U.S. Summary 61 �Table 4 Occupation Status By Migrant Status Of Females 1970 Migrant % 22.8 3.2 Professionals Managers Sales Clerical Craftsmen Operatives Transport Laborers Farmworkers Service Workers Private Household Non-Migrant % Occupation 13.8 3.3 7.9 33.5 1.8 16.2 0.4 1.0 1.2 16.7 4.2 7.7 36.1 1.5 9.8 0.2 0.7 0.6 15.5 1.8 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1970 Public Use Sample Table 5 Female Employment Status, Cincinnati SMSA 1970 Employment Status No. Labor Force Employed Unemployed Non-Appalachian Appalachian 3116 3116 294 % 43.1* 91.4** 8.6** No. 191,740 191,713 9,303 % 39.4* 95.4** 4.6** *No. in labor force as a percent of females, 14 years old and over. * *No. employed (and unemployed) as a percent of the female civilian labor force. 62 �Table 6 Age Standardization Of Female Employment Status Employment Status Appalachian Non-Appalachian 45.9 93.7 6.3 41.0 94.6 5.4 Percent in labor force Percent Employed Percent Unemployed Source: 1970 U.S. Bureau of the Census. Census of Population: 1970 Detailed Characteristics. Final Report PC(1)-D1, U.S. Summary. Table 7 Employment Status By Migrant Status Of Females Employment Status Migrant % % 95.7 4.3 Employed Unemployed Non-Migrant 96.4 3.6 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1970 Public Use Sample Footnotes 'We gratefully acknowledge the guidance and assistance of Professor P. Neal Ritchey, University of Cincinnati. 2 The data set is the property of the Urban Appalachian Council. We acknowledge their generosity in providing us with the computer tape. Roger Steubing, Behavioral Sciences Laboratory, University of Cincinnati, was most helpful in providing assistance with the documentation of the tape and generating data. 'The tract data provided in the Special Tabulation of 1970 Census data produced many cells which contained zeros or were based on only a few sample cases. Therefore, to reduce the lowest variability, small cells were combined into the largest analytical units for analysis. 4 Age standardization was calculated using the direct method. The U.S. population provided age groups beginning with age 15, whereas the special tabulation began with age 16. This discrepancy caused a slight distortion in the totals; however, adjustments were made in calculating the percentages. 5 The Public Use Sample Data (U.S. Census, 1970) available to us provided only age groups 20 and over, whereas the Appalachian data set provided a younger age group; 16 years and over for occupation and employment status. Since the younger age groups have little influence on either of these variables, the effect is probably minimal. 63 �References Bogue, D.J. 1969. Principles of Demography. New York: Wiley. Maloney, M.E. 1974. The Prospects for Urban Appalachians. In The Invisible Minority: Urban Appalachians, ed. W.W. Philliber and C.B. McCoy. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. McCoy, C.B. and V.M. Watkins, 1981. Appalachian Youth in Cultural Transition. In Proceedings of the 1980 Appalachian Studies Conference: Appalachia/America. Washington: Appalachian Regional Commission. O'Brien, P.J., 1979. The American Dual Occupational Structure As An Influence on the Sex Differential in Migration. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Cincinnati. Philliber, W.W. 1981a. Accounting for the Occupational Placements of Appalachian Migrants. In The Invisible Minority: Urban Appalachians, ed. W.W. Philliber and C.B. McCoy. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Philliber, W.W. 1981b. Appalachian Migrants in Urban Areas. New York: Praeger. Photiadis, J.D. 1981. Occupational Adjustment of Appalachians in Cleveland. In The Invisible Minority: Urban Appalachians, ed. W.W. Philliber and C.B. McCoy. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Schwarzweller, H.E., J.S. Brown, J.J. Mangalam, 1971. Mountain Families in Transition. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Schwarzweller, H.E. 1981. Occupational Patterns of Appalachian Migrants. In The Invisible Minority: Urban Appalachians, ed. W.W. Philliber and C.B. McCoy. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Taeuber, K.E. 1967. The Residential Distribution of Farm-Born Cohorts, Rural Sociology, Vol. 32. Wagner, T.E. 1974. Urban Appalachian School Children: The Least Understood of All. Cincinnati: Urban Appalachian Council Working Paper. 64 �Language And Literature Of The Appalachian Region 65 �This page intentionally left blank �Introduction Grace Toney Edwards In a collection of critical essays devoted to present and future issues in the Appalachian region, a pair of literary critiques gives us reason to pause and reflect for a moment on what literature is and what its place is in an anthology of this sort. As Jim Wayne Miller aptly says in / Have a Place: "Life is one thing; literature is another. They are not the same, but they are related. First there's life, then literature, in the same way that there's marble in a mountain before a sculptor makes it into a statue. Literature is made from the raw material of life" (p. IX). That raw material occupies the attention of most of the authors in this collection. However, for those who choose to look beyond the raw material, the artist's creation offers another perspective, oftentimes an enriched and heightened perspective that somehow comes clear only through the made structure. A piece of literature is such a structure and can serve to focus the reader's vision on a significant contemporary issue or concept that he might have ignored without the artistic stimulus. In Miller's words again: "Literature can make familiar things seem new, and new things seem familiar. The poem or story we read is not the thing we see finally; the poem or story is more like a light we see by, and what we see is life or some part of life" (p. IX). Harold Branam, in his essay on Jim Wayne Miller's poetry collection entitled Dialogue with a Dead Man, affirms the connection between life and literature. He sees the book as a "gradual coming together of personal and socio-political concerns" in the author's mind, depicted by a movement from "the specific to the general, from the personal to the universal." The collection first offers "poems about the poet's grandfather, whose death was the subject Miller returned to, and ends with poems about other relatives and friends, living and dead, who, by extension, suggest all of Appalachian society." The dominant theme illuminated by Branam is the poet's awareness of continuity amid change. Despite the changes caused by loss through death, the dead continue to live—in the poet's memories, in the ongoing generations, in the poet himself. Awareness of and receptivity to the living dead provide a powerful consolation for the poet's "sense of change and cultural loss in Appalachia." Branam makes the leap from literature to life as he theorizes on the implications of this theme: Amid the tide of change sweeping over Appalachia, leading some of us to survey the past with tears and the future with fears, perhaps there is more continuity than we first see. We should seek out this continuity: through informing ourselves with a sense of our past, we stand a better chance of knowing who we are and owning our futures. 67 �For his analysis Parks Lanier plucks a novel from the past written by an adopted son of Appalachia. Sherwood Anderson's Kit Brandon is not less timely for its setting in the 1920's; indeed, Lanier moves it into the present with his comparison to William Styron's Sophie's Choice. Both are stories of women—one, a native Appalachian who grew up during the Prohibition era in the mountains and mill towns of Tennessee and the Carolinas; the other, a Polish refugee whose past encompasses the horrors of Auschwitz. For both women the large drama being enacted in their lives is a contest between good and evil. In Sophie's case, woman as victim of evil forces is historically and culturally authenticated. In Kit's case, however, woman becomes the victimizer, though never totally separated from the victim's role either. Kit is indeed the exceptional woman in a culture where women, like Sophie, have traditionally been victimized, or at least, suppressed. In making her choices, Kit marshalls all the powerful strengths of self-reliance, individualism, and pride, which are the heritage of the mountain women as well as the men. She maneuvers those qualities into a pattern of action that allows her to grow ever more aggressive, to become at last a "criminal character...which lays a powerful hold on the reader's imagination." But she is not an unregenerate criminal without thought or concern for her actions. Lanier characterizes her as "a woman who excels in a man's world, does men's jobs better than men, and in doing so works toward her own redemption." Through Kit, Anderson brings "the ancient story of Eve into the future"—a future where Appalachian mountaineers, both individually and collectively, must take control of their own destinies, work out their own struggles between good and evil, just as Kit Brandon does. What better examples can we ask than these to demonstrate the intricate link between life and literature? Through the critical analysis of literary works, we gain yet another perspective so that our angles of vision are broadened and heightened and deepened at once. The experience of looking at life through layers of artistically formed thought and craft allows us to return to the raw material, to living itself, with a renewed and strengthened will. 68 �Generations: The Theme Of Jim Wayne Miller's Dialogue With A Dead Man Harold Branam Because the poet Jim Wayne Miller returned to the subject of his first collection, Copperhead Cane (1964), in his third collection, Dialogue With a Dead Man (1974; reprinted 1978), and even reprinted most of the earlier collection as a section of the later one, the casual reader is liable to overlook the important developments of Miller's thought in Dialogue—indeed, perhaps even discount Dialogue as a regression. Miller did return to an old subject in Dialogue, yes, but with new awareness. Out of this awareness came a new stage of Miller's thought which began synthesizing the personal and socio-political strands existing separately in earlier works—Copperhead Cane and The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same (1971), respectively—and which has since borne fruit in The Mountains Have Come Closer (1980). Thus, for Miller, Dialogue With a Dead Man was a sort of crucible, a transitional work in which he found his characteristic style and subject matter. The gradual coming together of personal and socio-political concerns in Miller's mind is suggested by the book's three-part structure, which moves outward from the specific to the general, from the personal to the universal. The book begins with poems about the poet's grandfather, whose death was the subject Miller returned to, and ends with poems about other relatives and friends, living and dead, who, by extension, suggest all of Appalachian society. There is a widening focus here that nevertheless remains anchored in the personal. That this widening focus continued for Miller is indicated by the different dedications of Dialogue's two printings: the 1974 printing is dedicated to Miller's wife, and the 1978 printing is dedicated to "the people of Appalachia/wherever they are." With apologies to Mary Ellen, I might add that the second dedication strikes a characteristic note that we have since become familiar with in The Mountains Have Come Closer. In Dialogue With a Dead Man, then, Miller began using his personal experiences as the basis for writing about a whole region. Another development we can see in Dialogue is a subtler awareness of change in Appalachia. In a paper at last year's conference, I argued that the death of his grandfather formed, for Miller, an archetypal pattern for change generally and change in Appalachia particuarly. The poet's personal loss became a sense of cultural loss, voiced so powerfully by the Brier, an ethnic persona in Miller's later poetry. This sense of change as loss is, I still maintain, the dominant note in 69 �Miller's poetry. However, in making my point last year, I perhaps overstated it. There is another side of this theme that is developed in Dialogue With a Dead Man and that remains, at least as an undercurrent, in Miller's later poetry. The other side is an awareness of continuity amid change, however traumatic the change might be. Miller sums up this notion as follows in "On Native Ground," a key poem in Dialogue: Life grows in rings around a hurt, a tree with barbed wire running through its heart. Indeed, in Dialogue With a Dead Man continuity is represented in a characteristic Appalachian way, through the family tree, the ongoing generations—an idea that is nicely captured by the cover design for the second printing of Dialogue, with its montage of old family photographs. Finally, these thematic developments in Dialogue With a Dead Man are accompanied by a stylistic development—movement away from traditional verse forms and rhyme, which predominated in Miller's early work, to a flexible free verse form that Miller has since remained with. It is not my purpose here to trace this development in style, but I mention it to emphasize the transitional nature of Dialogue With a Dead Man. Altogether, Dialogue With a Dead Man is a mixed bag of the old, the new, and the recycled, and it is sometimes difficult to separate these; nevertheless, the three-part structure of Dialogue does provide a thematic progression which gives unity to the whole work. Part I of Dialogue shows us Miller's oldest treatment of his grandfather's death, the poet's first reactions. Subtitled "Copperhead Cane" and reprinted almost entirely from Miller's early collection of the same title, Part I is a series of seventeen intensely personal elegies, most in sonnet form. Although the sonnet sequence has not traditionally been put to this elegiac use, nevertheless it is a traditional form. Similarly, the sequence is conventional in theme and treatment-straight out of "Lycidas" via Appalachia. The point of the elegy/sonnet sequence is the poet's grief-stricken awareness of his overwhelming loss: At night, my grief a traveled, polished stone, I'll pass and disbelieve I hunt alone. And: I'm burning tobacco beds alone tonight And talking to myself and to the flames. The point is couched in distinctly pastoral terms, repeatedly showing the poet farming or hunting alone, although in actuality Miller at the time was either a graduate student or young professor. In reprinting "Copperhead Cane," however, Miller did make some changes. Five poems are omitted from the original sequence of twenty-one elegies, and one poem is added, "Old Man All My Life." The poems left out are the poorer ones. The poem added concerns a period of time, probably near the end of his life, when the grandfather apparently lived in the home of a daughter in town. 70 �Significantly, living in town is described as the next thing to death: You don't know how slyly days and nights in town foretold this thin and soundless dream away from home. There are also smaller changes, revisions in some of the poems that improved their clarity. But perhaps the most significant change is omission of a prominent note identifying the grandfather: Fred Smith, farmer and foxhunter, was born in 1875 on Sandy Mush Creek in Buncombe County, North Carolina. Twice married, he had ten children, eight of whom are living. The author, one of numerous grandchildren, wrote the preceding sequence of verses after his grandfather's death in 1962. By leaving out this note in Dialogue With a Dead Man, Miller universalizes his personal experience. There is recognition that the death of a grandparent has been a crucial event for many Appalachians. Miller's grandfather becomes the generic grandparent who has figured so largely in Appalachian literature from Jesse Stuart and James Still to Robert Morgan, Fred Chappell, and Mary Joan Coleman. The most important section of Dialogue With a Dead Man is Part II, subtitled "Dialogue With a Dead Man"—and titles are significant here. The subtitle describes not only the dialogue form that some of the poems in this section take but also the theme that the section develops. For if the point of Part I is the poet's grief-stricken awareness of his overwhelming loss, the point of Part II is the poet's grief-abating awareness, as time passes, of the grandfather's continuing presence, though dead. Part II seems to begin much the same as Part I left off, with sad reminders of the grandfather's death and of the poet's farming and hunting alone. But if one reads carefully, one detects a different note, a note that was not entirely missing even from "Copperhead Cane." In the constant reminders of the grandfather, there are subtle signs of the grandfather's continuing presence: his paths across the fields still exist, his face seems to appear in shadows of clouds and in reflections of clouds in water, and he seems to move just out of sight with the poet through the woods. Then in the fourth poem, "Meeting," the grandfather's spirit suddenly appears: My shadow, standing by me in the row, waited, and while I rested, raised his hoe. And in the next poem, "Dog's Eye," the dead man's ghost scares the poet's dog: Shaking his ears and stretching, my dog comes from sleeping in the shed to lick my hand. The short hairs on his neck begin to stand; black lips curl from meat-red gums, from hooked fangs. He growls, stiffens, and shies away. My face reflected in his eyes hangs smoky on a papered wall at home, a dead man's picture in its oval frame. 71 �Finally the poet recognizes what even his dog has been able to see: I can't recall when I was last alone. You go by day unseen among the living whose life went out with stars as day came on and reappears, a star, as light is leaving. Why have you followed me through this unbroken round of days and nights and never spoken? At this direct question, the grandfather's spirit breaks its silence, responding as follows: I couldn't wedge a word into your grieving, not as long as you whispered rhymes down dark holes in the earth to a face you thought you saw looking up with dead eyes from the ground.... For I'm not in the ground, nor the sky either. I am a live man, walking with you, wanting to throw a shadow into life. In the next poem, "Vine," the grandfather continues: I am not anything apart from you. Except as you see, speak, and do, I have no voice, no hand, or eye. I have to lie lodged in you by my own word and deed, myself inside my seed, damp in the dark ground of your word.... Here we have it, how it works, the basic facts of the phenomenon. The poet discovers, to his shock, that the grandfather lives on. To the poet's greater shock, the old man's spirit has become a grandfatherly dybbuk who has taken up residence in the poet himself. The grandfather lives on in the poet's memories, in the poet's attitudes and values, in the poet's genes, in the poet's very appearance. In short, the poet has become "a moving monument" to the old man. Upon these discoveries, a back-and-forth dialogue, like a flurry of spiritualized CB conversation, breaks out. The dialogue reveals some ambivalence in the poet. On the one hand, he is proud to announce that the grandfather's spirit also lives in his poems, which the poet breaks "like mountain/newgrounds." On the other hand, the poet complains that the process of empathy and creation has been personally devastating: —I've followed you so far down into death I'll never find my way back to home ground. The poet even suggests that the dead are a bit like vampires: I think the dead lie hungry in the dark, below the living teeming in the light. But in "Last Words," the grandfather tells the poet, in effect, to stop complaining and accept the inevitable: —Well, neither of us will ever be at rest until our separate voices speak as one 72 �and I move with you, black shadow in sun, only as you move. There has to be, it seems, a merging of identities, and in the following poems, since the old man stops speaking, this merging of identities appears to happen. Thus, in a sequence of events symbolically enacting the acceptance of one's cultural heritage, the poet finally realizes and accepts the fact that the old man lives on through him, the poet. For the poet, this realization has profound consequences. One is that the poet comes out of his mourning. Another consequence is growth for the poet, growth so great that he feels his former self as a stranger. Still another consequence is the poet's springlike reawakening to life—for example, in a poem entitled "Thaw." It is "a season of small miracles"; the poet is "restored." Finally, the poet experiences a heightened awareness of his power and his sense of identity. After going without sleep for three days, he feels that he "will live forever." He seems to have certain preternatural—or perhaps hallucinogenic—abilities: I grow sighted in the dark take long walks aware of a light behind the life of stones. It is as if the merging of their identities not only enables the grandfather to live on but also extends the range of the poet's experiences, who taps into a kind of collective consciousness, as suggested in "Writing My Name": Maybe our name's a creature born and born, each metamorphosis recapitulating all its former selves as it evolves. The poetic high induced by tapping into his roots is summed up in the last poem of the section, "On Native Ground": This wind is blowing me all time's weathers, mingling near and far....O doors are everywhere: the spring at the mountain's foot holds the running taste of childhood, the barking fox blurts the mountain's riddle.... I travel everywhere on native ground; roads turning into darkness turn me home, plunge me into cool air of the mountains— In Part III of Dialogue With a Dead Man, subtitled "Family Reunion," Miller applies the theme of Part II on a larger scale: friends and relatives are dying all over, but they never die completely. They live on in memories, in photographs, in old love letters, even in old home movies. Certain key images of the dead are indelibly printed on the minds of the living, providing a constant link to the past, like the old bee woman who moves through Miller's dreams: And no matter where I wake—horn's beep, ship's bells, clatter of garbage cans, strange tongues spoken on the street below, in a rising falling bunk out at sea,— 73 �everywhere I stand on native ground. The bee woman may pass through my dream: running under a cloud of swarming bees, she beats an empty pie pan with a spoon till the swarm settles, black on a drooping pine bough and guineas regroup pottericking—all moving toward waking's waterfall. And at certain key moments when we are receptive, the dead are like "visitors," like "relatives coming south in summer": It is no wonder the dead come visiting this morning. After last night's storm the air is so clear, even the mountains have moved closer. These lines provided the title for Miller's next collection, The Mountains Have Come Closer, where, as here, Miller indicates that we must cultivate a receptivity to these visiting dead, who embody our past, our tradition. In the final analysis, the family is made up of both the dead and the living, as stated in the title poem of Part III, "Family Reunion," that concludes Dialogue With a Dead Man: Here the living and dead mingle like sun and shadow under old trees. For the dead have come too, those dark, stern departed who pose all year in oval picture frames. They are looking out of the eyes of children, young sprouts whose laughter blooms fresh as the new flowers in the graveyard. What we have suggested here is the outline of a living tradition, a tradition larger than any individual in it but which individuals keep alive. Through this tradition the dead live on, but, paradoxically, the living also experience a heightened sense of life, of whom they are. That's why, in Miller's "Brier Sermon," the long poem that concludes The Mountains Have Come Closer, Miller preaches that we must be born again in the spirit of our ancestors. In Dialogue With a Dead Man we see Miller, somewhat like the apostle Paul, undergoing his own conversion. Dialogue With a Dead Man, then, is more than just a return to an old subject, the death of Miller's grandfather. Just as the death of his grandfather embodied Miller's sense of change and cultural loss in Appalachia, so his realization that the dead continue to make their presence felt is more than just a conventional consolation for the loss of his grandfather—it is an awareness of continuity amid change. For us, the implications of Dialogue With a Dead Man are encouraging: amid the tide of change sweeping over Appalachia, leading some of us to survey the past with tears and the future with fears, perhaps there is more continuity than we first see. We should seek out this continuity: through informing ourselves with a sense 74 �of our past, we stand a better chance of knowing who we are and owning our futures. For some, I realize, the implications of Dialogue With a Dead Man will appear too encouraging, too optimistic. Miller will perhaps seem like my parents, who, living amid strip-mined lands, go on growing their garden. Are Miller and my parents latter-day Candides, holding on to some fragment of cultural construct when the whole has been shattered beyond recognition? Do they know what they are up against? Are they Appalachian Baucis and Philemons whom some corporate Faust is getting ready to steamroller in the name of "progress"? On the other hand, for some, the implications of Dialogue With a Dead Man will seem too pessimistic. If Miller's predominant view of change is as cultural loss, and the best he can offer us is a thread of continuity from the past, what does this say about his hope for the future? Is his poetry essentially backward-looking? Does he nowhere say that change brings improvement, something better? Is his poetry merely an expression of the pessimism, fatalism, and fearsomeness that, according to some outside commentators, we Appalachians are so prone to? As a poet, of course, Miller is not obliged to cover all sides of an issue, but I believe his poetry does include some vision of the future. His predominant view of change as cultural loss is based, I believe, on the fact that change in Appalachia has so often come from the outside. In too many instances, change has been forced on us by people who didn't give a damn for us and in some cases actually saw us as obstacles who had to be utterly destroyed, or forced on us by people who wanted to save us from ourselves and had to first destroy us in order to make us into something else. By and large, the process of change in Appalachia has been a continuous, obscene assault on our identity, if not our very existence. Miller's solution to this problem lies, I believe, in our sense of identity. We must look to our past in order to regain a sense of our identity as people with a strong, proud cultural tradition; then we will have the confidence to throw the rascals out and take our future into our own hands. We must realize that we are the biggest chunks of Appalachian heritage walking around and that only through our achievements, which we must break "like mountain / newgrounds," will the Appalachian heritage live on. Otherwise we are doomed to live other people's dreams, to sing their songs, and to dig their coal. (At the time of the 1982 Conference, Dr. Branam was a faculty member of Pikeville College, but he is now on leave from there and wishes to be listed as unaffiliated.) 75 �Kit Brandon's Choice Parks Lanier Ten years after he settled among the beautiful mountains in the Grayson/Smyth County area of southwest Virginia, Sherwood Anderson produced his last novel, Kit Brandon (1936). It is the story of a girl who is native to Appalachia, a girl who leaves the mountains for the mill towns of North Carolina, and who eventually becomes a notorious blockade runner with a price on her head. More than any events in the novel which point to national social concerns, such as prohibition, unrest among textile workers, or mill town strikes, it is the individual criminal character of Kit Brandon which lays a powerful hold on the reader's imagination. Anderson admitted that the model for Kit Brandon was "a certain young woman rum-runner,"1 and there have been at least two attempts to identify the "real" Kit Brandon.2 But the fictional character has a reality far beyond any biographical fact-sheet available in a newspaper or court record. Writing in 1962, Gratis Williams observed that Kit Brandon "failed to appeal to critics and the academic historians of American fiction because it [did] not fit easily into any Mythos created recently to encompass large samplings of American fiction."3 The isolated case of a female blockade runner here or there did not suggest any pattern to the critics. The novel's mythos was a thing of the future. Just recently, when I was subjected to a lengthy opinion poll on my perceptions of female criminals, Kit was much on my mind as I answered the questions, especially one which asked, "Do you believe that talk about women's liberation has made women feel freer to commit criminal acts?" That may be a profitable question for sociologists or criminologists to ask, but I think Anderson had deeper interests when he wrote Kit Brandon than just topics of the times, then or now. He was delving into timeless questions about the nature of good and evil, looking into the past and into the future. In this respect, his work bears closely on issues raised by a Nathaniel Hawthorne, and also by a William Styron. Sophie's Choice (1980) and Kit Brandon are novels with much in common, and by comparing these two works, one can see that Anderson's last novel may just be finding its proper place, its future, in our present. It is interesting that the stories of Kit and Sophie are narrated by men who are professional writers, more expert with words than the women whose lives they chronicle, yet who grope desperately, sometimes unsuccessfully, to articulate those stories. These two Virginians, one, Stingo, by birth, and the other, whom critics identify as Anderson himself, by adoption, grapple at times with their own identities as they seek to convey to us a sense of a life beyond their own but inextricably entwined with theirs. Unlike Stingo, however, the narrator of Kit Brandon does not play a major role in her adventures. He is observer and evaluator of 76 �the Kit who tells him her story. Kit sought him out in South Dakota, where he had gone to write a magazine article of "dust storms, whole farms buried under drifting sand and dust."5 As the initial setting implies, hers is another story of the buried life, and he must tell it as she told it to him. At the beginning of Sophie's Choice, Stingo regales the reader with anecdotes of his life as a reader for McGraw-Hill. The narrator of Kit Brandon is never so hilarious, but he is equally engaged as he allows Kit to tell her story of growing up poor in the hills of East Tennessee.8 Her autobiography is a veritable catalog of stereotypes used in Appalachian fiction since the days of Mary Noailles Murfree. One finds, for example, the dirt floor cabin, the ill-dressed barefoot children, the slovenly wife, and the moonshiner daddy with just a hint of Melungeon about him. While Stingo on the one hand eagerly dispels the myths that draw young writers to New York, Anderson allows Kit to indulge in all the cliches of mountain life. Are we to believe Kit Brandon? The narrator says yes, for he "had lived among the mountain people out of whom Kit Brandon has come" (KB p. 20) and discovered that although there are literary stereotypes drawn with a broad brush (KB p. 28), they do appear in real life.7 Of that fact Kit Brandon is living proof, he says. The first meeting of Sophie and Stingo is not so calculated as the meeting between Kit and her writer. After being fired from McGraw-Hill for flying balloons from the office windows, Stingo must find cheaper lodgings—in Brooklyn. He has, however, money from his father to support him, a legacy of money hidden during the Civil War and not found until 80 years later. In a letter containing Stingo's share of this money, Stingo's father holds forth bitterly on "the vicious monopoly capitalism that tramples the little man," and recalls how his father and grandfather were, after the Civil War, "forced out" of their small tobacco business "by those piratical devils, Washington Duke and his son, 'Buck' Duke."8 That Singo should be an alumnus of Duke University is no small irony to his father. It is into the world dominated by the powerful Dukes that Kit Brandon comes when she flees her mountain home for the mill towns of North Carolina. As he draws a scene with Kit and Agnes walking through the snow beneath Duke Power lights, Anderson is moved to remind us that "the states of the upper South had been made what they were, what they suddenly, in a single decade, became, by the coming of water power. Duke.. .the Duke fortune—Story of Duke, the old one, the wise one...what a doctor from North Carolina, practicing perhaps in New York, told him.. .'Boy, go get the water power of our State. It's a state of high mountains, cheap land, many mountain streams rushing down....They don't see it. Go get itl" (KB p. 105; ellipses are Anderson's) Thus in Kit Brandon as in Sophie's Choice the Dukes stand for the "big bugs" of industry, the ones against whom Stingo's father hurls invectives and Kit's radical mill-worker friend, Agnes, hurls a brick in order to break a window in a big bug's house and disrupt an evening dance. (KB p. 89) Kit, however, does not share Agnes's resentment of the rich. She envies their money, fine clothes, and fast cars, especially the fast cars. She wants to have what they have even if she cannot be what they are. This is her 77 �choice, the one which sets the pattern for her life throughout most of the novel. The Dukes in Kit Brandon are held up as the stereotypical exploiters of southern Appalachia, able to do so because the stupid highlanders "cannot see" how to capitalize on their own environment. In Sophie's Choice, sub-human highlanders are ridiculed by Nathan Landau's mimicry of "an entire southern Appalachian scenario, a kind of darkling concupiscent Dogpatch in which Pappy Yokum was transformed into an incestuous old farmer consecrated to romps with a daughter that Nathan—even medically aware—had christened Pink Eye." (SC p. 89) Stingo, who was riled every time Nathan called him "Cracker" and slurred the South, relished the "genius" of this parody of Appalachian life, especially Nathan's "heavenly facsimile...of some weak-witted and godforsaken wife and victim, blighted by wedlock, history and retrograde genes." It is easy for big bugs like the Dukes to dupe such people. The specter of the incestuous hillbilly father rises only briefly in Kit Brandon as Kit tells the narrator of a time when her own father commanded her to bathe with him in a mountain stream. When he began to touch and bathe her, "she grew suddenly alarmed and ran from him....He didn't call to her, didn't pursue." (KB p. 34) The incident, however, was enough to frighten Kit into leaving her mountain home for work in the mills. Only during the war did Sophie, daughter of a Cracow intellectual, come to know the harsh world of labor. In Warsaw, she worked long hours in a tar paper factory. (SC p. 434) It was there she met Josef, who was to become her lover, and his half-sister, Wanda, a member of the Polish underground. Wanda, a socialist dedicated to Polish freedom, insists that Sophie also join the Resistance. "You must come to a decision!" she exclaims to Sophie, but Sophie declares, "I have already made my choice, as I told you. I will not get involved. I mean this!" (SC p. 457) For smuggling meat, however, "Sophie the stainless, the inaccessible, the uninvolved—was adventitiously ensnared" (SC p. 459) and imprisoned with Wanda and other Resistance fighters who had been captured in a raid elsewhere. Similarly, Kit Brandon turns an uninterested ear to Agnes's socialist manifestos on workers' rights, also with ironic results. Agnes is the type to be angered by the identification buttons which the mill workers are forced to wear; she once "took the button from her coat and made a gesture as though to hurl it away into the darkness....Her anger brought a smile to Kit's lips." (KB pp. 94-95) Kit thinks to herself, "All right, sister. You've got your dream. I've got another." (KB p. 95) Her dream leads her to the blockade-running gang of Tom Halsey, who is both her boss and father-in-law, to an industry more sinister than any mill with identification badges. When Kit is a woman with a price on her head, subject of post office wanted posters, she thinks of flinging that life away into the darkness and starting anew. She thinks also of buying a farm with Agnes; "why shouldn't she and Agnes work together on the land?" (KB p. 347) To Agnes she writes a letter suggesting just that, but, Anderson tells us, "she never knew whether or not it reached its destination." (KB p. 348) Another choice becomes more important in Kit's future. Neither the Polish refugee nor the refugee from the hills is interested in sweep- 78 �ing social or political reforms, but they share a passion for reading. Inspired by her English language teacher's reading of Emily Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for Death," Sophie goes to the Brooklyn College library and, in broken English, asks where to find "the works of the nineteenth-century American poet Emil Dickens." (SC p. 124) The overbearing Nazi of a librarian, Sholom Weiss, browbeats Sophie for her ignorance until she faints in nauseous fear. It is Nathan Landau, her schizophrenic Prince Charming, who kindly stops for her in this their first meeting. Later, Nathan, who describes himself to Sophie as "a confirmed and frustrated schoolmaster," discovers in Sophie's apartment "Polish translations of Hemingway and Wolfe and Dreiser and Farrell." Eagerly he talks with Sophie about Dreiser, insisting that she read Sister Carrie. (SC p. 169) This novel by a sojourner in Appalachia is the one offered Kit Brandon when she first ventures into a public library, an episode which occurs shortly after she has left Agnes and the mill for work in a shoe factory in another town. Her lodging is with an Italian family whose native language piques Kit's curiosity to learn more about the world. When she turns to the library, she is confused but not intimidated, as Sophie is. To a well-dressed, very refined woman who offers her help, Kit openly confesses, "I'll tell you, I'm a factory girl. I've never been in a place like this before. I know nothing of books." (KB p. 158) The woman goes over rows of books before offering one to Kit. " 'It's a book by Theodore Dreiser,' she says. 'He may be our greatest novelist.' The title of the book was Sister Carrie." (KB p. 159)9 The elegant woman who helps Kit is a big bug, daughter of the man who founded the shoe factory where Kit works. This chance meeting is fatal to Kit's future, for as the woman drives Kit to her rooming house, Kit can think of only one thing, the beauty of the fast car. It makes her restless for something more in her life, and so in a few days she is on her way to another town, another job. For both Sophie and Kit, the visit to a library is the first step toward an overwhelming catastrophe from which Sophie does not escape, and from which Kit barely escapes with her life. As Kit sits in the train station with Sister Carrie in her hands, she is approached by a young man looking for a girl to pick up for a night of fun. Kit lets him drive her to the next town and buy her a dinner at the hotel, but she slips away. It was an experiment in the manipulation of men; "she felt like a hunter of big game who had been out shooting rabbits." (KB p. 171) No man ever dominates Kit the way Nathan dominates Sophie. Sometimes a young man appeals to Kit's motherly instinct, but in her life, especially in her marriage, men are merely useful as a means to fine clothes, money, and fast cars. In Sophie's Choice, Stingo earnestly hopes to become not only Sophie's friend and confidant, but also her lover. The moment is realized when he saves Sophie from the enraged Nathan and they flee toward Virginia where Stingo plans to give Sophie sanctuary on a farm. Three men play the role of Kit's confidant-loverrescuer. The first is Alf Weathersmythe, like Stingo aVirginia college boy with a taste for the exotic life. While Kit teaches Alf how to drive the blockade, he in turn tells her tales of his aristocratic Virginia family, and of the grandfather who was one of Mosby's raiders during the Civil War. Kit cherishes Alf as a good friend to 79 �whom she can talk candidly. Only after he leaves her to serve as Tom Halsey's bodyguard does Kit realize that Tom is playing on Alf s distorted notions of aristocratic heroism in order to trick him into becoming a murderer. The second man who plays a role like that of the madcap savior, Stingo, is Kit's estranged husband, Gordon Halsey. Fearing that he cannot survive the infighting among his father's gang, Gordon beseeches Kit to escape with him: They would run away together, go out West. They would get a ranch, raise cattle. He would become something he had seen depicted in the movies, a cowboy... .He would wear spurs and a ten-gallon hat, have a rope hanging on the pommel of his saddle. He would lasso steers, ride proudly into the western towns while she She would be a meek and faithful wife to him. (KB p. 324) Just as Sophie allows Stingo to have his pipedream, Kit plays along with Gordon. Instead of taking him west, however, she returns him to his father's hideout on the night when it is raided by federal agents. In his confusion and fear, Gordon kills his father and Kit escapes. It is while she is on the run, having decided to renounce her life as a blockade runner, that Kit meets the third man who is truly her savior, not in any dramatic way but in one of those typically understated epiphanies for which Anderson is so famous.10 He is Joel Hanaford, son of Judge Hanaford, another in a long string of men "bored with respectability." If she found Gordon a child-man to despise, her attitude toward the alcoholic, shell-shocked Joel is quite different. "I wish I could take him with me," she thought. "I'd like to take care of him." (KB p. 371) Joel recognizes the nature of Kit's response. "I wish it wasn't like that with you," he says, "but you see I'm only half a man and you want a man. If I was a bit more a man, I'd be asking you to marry me." (KB p. 372) Stingo planned to marry Sophie, to keep her safely on his farm in Virginia, but she deserts him and returns to the crazy Nathan whom she loves, returns to the suicide pact with him she had avoided once before. Kit also deserts Joel, but not before she has stood a long time looking across the hallway from her hotel room to his. Before, she had asked herself, "What did I want? What have I always wanted?" (KB p. 358) With Joel, in one day, "she had been carried out of herself and her own problem and into the life of another puzzled human. There were people to be found. She would get into some sort of work that did not so separate her from others. There might be some one other puzzled and baffled young one with whom she could make a real partnership in living." (KB p. 373) Sophie's choice is to die with Nathan; Kit's choice is to live again, love again. Despite Anderson's insistence that Kit Brandon's choices are played out in an atmosphere of war, a civil war with Prohibition as its central issue, that war in no way becomes for Kit the nightmare Holocaust which Sophie endures. Kit makes no choice comparable to Sophie's choice and pays no price comparable to hers. In this war, the roles of Sophie and Kit are reversed. Sophie is a victim. Kit is a warrior, a victimizer. And yet there is at the heart of Anderson's novel the conviction that Kit, too, passes through a testing fire, less hot than Sophie's perhaps, but no less purifying. 80 �It is unfortunate for Anderson's novel that this conviction is enunciated in a rambling, disjointed passage. Indeed, Charles Child Walcutt would call its method of statement "an endpoint of naturalistic unform. It is experience recorded without commentary, without adequate selection, and without the saving grace of being organically related to an action."11 That would be true, were it not for the fact that the passage to which I am referring comes in the first chapter, and the remainder of the novel is commentary by adequate selection upon the truth of it. Anderson begins his analysis of Kit by saying, "Men can be beasts sometimes and so can women, too. I'm not trying to reproduce her exact words. I can't. You can go through any possible experience. A dog rolls in offal sometimes. It doesn't change him. She evidently wanted to say that she thought that she had been something when she started life and that she was the same after the experiences she had been through." (KB pp. 23-24) The narrator is intrigued by this attitude, by Kit's belief that she can pass through the fire without so much as the scent of smoke on her garments when she reaches the other side. She had the "notion" that "it's best sometimes to throw everything away," a notion which the narrator says "certainly isn't an American notion.. .1 have known (he says) a few Europeans and particularly Russians and a Turk who had the same notion." (KB p. 24) This notion embodies the idea that "all people have...meanness, lowness in them" (KB p. 25) hidden behind a veil of respectability that is best "thrown away." In illustration, Anderson offers Kit's story of a woman, virgin daughter of a Presbyterian Sunday School superintendent, who visited Kit in jail, not to offer her Christian charity but to become her disciple in crime. She, like Kit, believed that "it was better for all people, if they had it in them...to be sometime in life openly, even publicly, low." (KB p. 26) The narrator questioned Kit closely about her belief: "You mean," I asked, "that if you want to kill some one it's better to go and do it than to go around with killing in your heart?" "Yes, to do that or any other low or mean thing," she said. "Right out publicly before all the world, you mean?" She seemed to have the notion.. .it was a kind of philosophy she had built for herself out of her experience. "We're low and we're high. It's better to feel everything you can feel—throw it away." (KB pp. 26-27) Implicit in the philosophy, however, is the idea that one must tread this path alone, that one can be this way yet remain unchanged for the worse. Indeed, because of it one may be better. The narrator remembers a painter who said, "A man can't really paint unless he can also be an utter skunk." (KB p. 27) These "European notions," this philosophy of "throwing it all away," have a bearing on the life of Sophie, for she is the victim of a man who lives this philosophy to its most horrible limits. He is Dr. Jemand von Niemand, the Auschwitz doctor who commands Sophie to choose which of her two children she will send to the gas and which she will save. Von Niemand is a complex character whose "depravity has been enacted in a vacuum of sinless and businesslike 81 �godlessness, while his soul thirsted for beatitude. Was it not supremely simple, then, to restore his belief in God, and at the same time to affirm his human capacity for evil, by committing the most intolerable sin that he was able to conceive? Goodness could come later. But first a great sin." (SC p. 593) His unpardonable sin is the prerequisite to unalloyed goodness. One must first pass through the fire, be low and mean, throw it all away, in order to achieve salvation. Thus it is possible for such a person, as in Kit Brandon's case, to believe that one is unchanged for the worse since the truth is that by being a devil one is becoming a better person. The terrible irony is that others inherit the hell which he or she is leaving behind. And yet there can only be the hope that for them, for a Sophie or for a Gordon Halsey, it is also a purifying hell. Thus in some respect it may be that the horrors and complexities of Sophie's Choice offer a key to understanding Kit Brandon. We expect to find a complex wrestling with the question of good-and-evil worked out in the story of a Captain Ahab or a Dr. Von Niemand, those archetypal Somebody/Nobody Everymen who stride so forcefully through our literature. We expect an Ethan Brand, but not a Kit Brandon, to be the soul in which such great drama is played out. Instead, we are captivated by a woman who excels in a man's world, does men's jobs better than men, and in so doing works toward her own redemption. In this novel, Anderson has brought the ancient story of Eve into the future with a new and powerfully provocative dimension added to it. NOTES 'W.D. Taylor, "Kit Brandon: A Beidentification," Newbeny Library Bulletin, 12(1971), 264. 2 In addition to Taylor, see also an earlier article, R.L. White, "The Original for Sherwood Anderson's Kit Brandon," Newberry Library Bulletin, 6 (1965), 196-199. 'Gratis D. Williams, "Kit Brandon: A Reappraisal," Shenandoah, 13, no. 3 (1962), 61. 4 See, for example, the generally negative evaluation of Kit Brandon in Charles Child Walcutt, "Sherwood Anderson: Impressionism and the Buried Life" in Ray Lewis White, ed., The Achievement of Sherwood Anderson: Essays in Criticism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966), pp. 169-170. 5 Sherwood Anderson, Kit Brandon (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), p. 1. Hereafter, the novel is cited in the text as KB. "Williams, p. 58, places the setting near Elizabethton, Tennessee, a locale which fits the novel's vague reference to a place "seventy or eighty miles" from Knoxville (KB p. 4). If that be the case, Kit would grow up in and migrate to a place connected with famous textile strikes of 1929. For this background to KB, see also Sylvia Cook, "Gastonia: The Literary Reverberations of the Strike," The Southern Literary Journal, 7, no. 1 (1974), 49-66. 7 I am indebted to my colleague Dr. Grace Edwards, Radford University, for an unpublished analysis of "the exceptional woman" in Appalachian fiction, a study which convinces me that Anderson indeed meant us to take Kit's background seriously. 'William Styron, Sophie's Choice (New York: Bantam Books, 1980), p. 33. Hereafter, the novel is cited in the text as SC. 9 The model for Kit Brandon is, in part, Carrie Meeber herself. See Rex Burbank, Sherwood Anderson (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1964), p. 134. '"Concerning Anderson's technique of revealing "in transcendent scenes, often epiphanies, the reality beneath appearances..." see William V. Miller, "In Defense of Mountaineers: Sherwood Anderson's Hill 82 �Stories," Ball State University Forum, 15, no. 2 (1974), 58. Walcutt, p. 171, however, considers such a moment as one finds at the conclusion of KB merely, "static reverie." Burbank, p. 135, avers that KB bears out the fact that while Anderson was master of the "brief episode," he never mastered "the demands...of the novel." Nancy L. Bunge, "The Ambiguous Endings of Sherwood Anderson's Novels," in H.H. Campbell and C.E. Modlin, eds., Sherwood Anderson: Centennial Studies (Troy, New York: Whitson Publishing Co., 1976), p. 256, says that "the novel ends hopefully," but Kit's "search (for a new life) will be extensive; there are few men capable of love." "Walcutt, p. 170. 83 �This page intentionally left blank �Culture, Images and Change 85 �This page intentionally left blank �Introduction Joan Moser The first reason for including these two papers has to do with their content—they address some major questions about the nature of cultures and societies and how the past, present, and future of the lives of real people in specific places may be affected by the dynamic processes represented by these broad concepts. The second reason for publishing the two papers should become obvious even on a first reading. They treat their subjects in well-crafted, articulate and straightforward styles and enhance the usefulness of this entire volume in so doing. Both articles also happen to compliment each other by presenting contrasting approaches to ways of interpreting what is going on and why. For instance, they both ask whether there really is an Appalachian entity involved in the evolution of an extended diversity of events. However, one writer looks mainly at factors from within, the other, from without. The Wagner paper focuses primarily on questions of how urban America reaches a perspective of viewing itself as being on the outside of whatever Appalachia may be. In counterpoint to this, Plaut's approach deals directly with happenings inside a place which, call it what you will, is definitely not your average urban, middle America context. Wagner suggests that there is a social science model designed by Turner which best illustrates what has actually emerged as the alter ego of mainline America and affected its relationship with other societies, notably Appalachia. She demonstrates that this same model offers a way of explaining the conception of Appalachia as different, maintained consistently by middle America in so many diverse manifestations for an amazingly enduring expanse of America's social history. Plaut's approach is to examine a set of problems within a specific social context and, while acknowledging outside historical and socio-economic impacts, to discover ways of generating some workable solutions from within. In expounding on such solutions, he also suggests that there is that something different which he views as 'a "traditional" Appalachian community.' Finally, both writers agree that whether Appalachia is simply an abstract conception in the collective awareness of many people, or a definite locale in space and time, it deserves intense scrutiny. In either case, both the quantity and quality of many human lives may depend on a clear-sighted sensitivity toward the complexity of either interpretation. 87 �Appalachia In America's Future: Alternative Cultural Forms Melinda Bollar Wagner We are faced with the question, especially since the publication of Shapiro's Appalachia On Our Mind (1978), of whether Appalachia is fact or fiction: Is there a distinctive subculture here under our feet, or is Appalachia a myth (which we perpetuate)?1 Shapiro maintains that Appalachia is a figment of the vested interest imaginations of: 1) local color writers of the 1870's who saw in Appalachia new grist for their paper mills; 2) Protestant Home Missions, who in the 1880's were seeking new worlds to conquer; 3) social scientists looking for new worlds to analyze, and 4) social reformers, who saw Appalachia as an experimental ground where strategies for change could be tested. Appalachian scholar Jack Higgs said "A lot of people are concerned that Appalachia is being done away with, but I think that it will continue to survive as a myth. In actuality, it's probably very little different from any place else, but the human mind insists on certain myths" (Alderman 1981). Anthropologist Allen Batteau (1979a,b,c) dubbed Appalachia a "creature of the urban imagination;" Batteau has described the content of the "myth" of Appalachia, and discussed why it has taken the particular form it has. Indeed, it does seem that urban America is captivated by the idea of Appalachia, (or at least has been from time-to-time). As early as 1924, dramatist Percy MacKaye wrote: Over there in the mountains are men who do not live in cages; a million Americans, who do not chase the dollar, who do not time-serve machines, who do not learn their manners from the movies or their culture from the beauty parlors. Shall we not then, hasten to civilize them—convert their dirty log-cabins into clean cement cages? Or first shall we inquire whether they may have something to contribute to our brand-new civilization—something which of old we cherished but now perhaps have forgotten. The issue this paper wishes to address is this: If Appalachia is the subject of mythmaking in America, why is it? What is this "cherished something" which is sought after? Like Batteau (1979a,c), I wish to leave aside, for now, the question of whether the myth is based in fact. I want to know why urban (and academic) America is drawn particularly to Appalachia? What philosophical purpose does Appalachia serve for America? This paper is meant to be a stepping stone to crossing this theoretical creek, rather than a fully constructed bridge. Perhaps it will serve to focus more thinking in this direction. A model which may be instructive in analyzing why America looks to Appalachia, and what it expects to find here, is Victor Turner's delineation of "community" and "communitas." "Community" is Turner's label for a society's social 88 �structure. It is a norm-governed, institutionalized and abstract structure which delineates how people behave toward one another according to the roles they play. "Communitas," on the other hand, represents spontaneous, immediate, and concrete relationships among human beings as human beings, rather than as rolebearers. Communitas suggest—not what is (that is social structure), but what could be—it is the crucible which holds human potentialities and universal human values. It is thus existential and speculative. Turner (1969:203) sets forth the idea that society "needs" both. Society seems to be a process rather than a thing—a dialectical process with successive phases of structure and communitas. There would seem to be—if one can use such a controversial term—a human "need" to participate in both modalities. This could be said to be akin to "culture" seeking after "nature" (or "absence of culture" (Batteau 1979a:6), with the caveat that "communitas" is opposed both to acting only in terms of the rights and obligations conveyed by virture of a role in the social structure and to "following one's psychobiological urges at the expense of one's fellows" (Turner 1969:105). Some societies seek "communitas" in rituals, where, for the moment, the rules of social structure are loosened, abandoned, or made to stand on their heads. In ritual, the structural underdog becomes the symbolically superior. The structural "boss-man" undergoes penance to achieve an experience of "communitas." The states reached in rituals imply: that the high could not be high unless the low existed, and he who is high must experience what it is like to be low (Turner 1969:97). The hypothesis I am putting forth here is that urban America or middle America seeks "communitas" in Appalachia.2 Rather than experiencing "communitas" through rituals which carry one through a "liminal" state (a state of transition, or marginality, or being on the "threshold"), America looks to Appalachia, and by looking, experiences a sort of vicarious liminality. In other words, America looks to Appalachia for its alter ego. But why is America's alter ego to be found in Appalachia? Why do we have Appalachian Studies Programs, Foxfire books, and Our Appalachia collections of oral histories, but not Midwestern Studies Programs, and "Our Indiana" books?3 Some clues to the answer here are to be found in the characteristics which Turner finds are common to representatives of communitas. Turner's examples of bearers of communitas include court jesters, holy mendicants, good Samaritans, seekers belonging to millenarian movements, beatnicks and hippies, and matrilateral kin in patrilineal systems.4 The roles these persons play represent the "soft," the personal, the morally and ritually (as opposed to structurally) true. I don't know why Turner didn't think to include Appalachia in his list of examples, because it seems to fit on many counts. If we look at the traits which Turner finds are characteristic of carriers of communitas, we'll see that many actually apply to Appalachia, and all have been attributed to Appalachia. First, let's deal with the ways individuals relate to one another, which Turner 89 �implies differ in community and communitas. Our community here—middle America—is known for its individualism, for the expression of "self," and for relationships which are largely "secondary," partial, and segmented, governed by the rules of roles. But in our communitas—Appalachia—we find that "familism" or a "personorientation" is often noted by observers. This could be characterized as a "collective" orientation, which stands as the opposite of individualism. In a collective orientation, there is an overriding concern with making things go smoothly within the group. A whole passel of traits goes with this one. For example, one's place in the group is an important identifying marker; who you are, especially in terms of kin ties, is more important than what you do. And competition among individuals is hardly compatible with the collective mode. An indirect mode of communication, which anthropologist George Hicks (1976) calls the "ethic of neutrality," accompanies the collective orientation. In Appalachia, a person may not directly ask, "How much did that new car cost?" Instead, he might say, "I bet a car like that cost a right smart," or "You can't get a car like that for no $200." And the owner of the car can answer "Yep," or "Nope," or "It cost dollars," or not answer at all. Or, as a West Virginia friend of our Dean replied when asked the cost of a horse collar: "I just bought it brand new and paid a three dollar bill for it." (I recently asked a student how much she received for the sale of a horse. Standing beside my desk, she drew herself up and replied "Enough.") The modes of "identity" associated with these two orientations differ, as well. Middle America, especially in recent years, has been noted for its expressions of "selfhood." In Appalachia, on the other hand, it is said that one's identity is ultimately bound up with the community. Kai Erikson (1976) discusses the submergence of the self in the collectivity. Looff (1971) describes child-rearing practices which he says foster "dependency" on the group. F. Carlene Bryant (1981) interprets religious forms as the submergence of self in the family of Christ (and finds that this interpretation fits better with indigenous understandings than does the "religious individualism" noted by Weller (1965) and others.) Within the collective mode, it is not desirable to step out, to be recognized, to set yourself apart as different from, perhaps better than, your group. Philosophy professors have noted that it is difficult to teach philosophy in the traditional way to Appalachian students because causing them to criticize one another's thinking is like searching for the philosopher's stone (Acquaviva 1980; van der Bogert 1980; Humphrey 1980). Perhaps that is why individualistic America looks longingly toward Appalachia, because its alter ego, the collective orientation, lies here. The millenarians and hippies Turner uses as examples show that it is persons who occupy a weak position in the society's social structure who represent communitas. The structural underdog is morally and ritually superior. Secular weakness is sacred power. Thus, Appalachia's economic and political position in 90 �the society—its place as an internal colony (Lewis 1970, 1978) or as part of a peripheral economy (Walls 1978)—help to make it a repository of communitas. The communitas of "wealth and nobility is poverty and pauperism" (Turner 1969:200). Is this why rich America looks to Appalachia for its communitas, and finds and emphasizes poverty? Is this why Appalachia is endowed with the "lost" virtues such as "making do" and "spirituality"? Relationships among the poor (though "content") folks of Appalachia are often characterized as "egalitarian" in nature. Again, this is consistent with the social structure-communitas model, for according to Turner (1969: 96), social structure is nearly always stratified, and communitas is relatively undifferentiated. Looking through the prism of social structure, society appears "as a structured, differentiated, and often hierarchical system of politico-legal-economic positions...separating men in terms of 'more' or 'less'." But turn the kaleidoscope, and the lens of communitas reveals a "relatively undifferentiated.. .communion of equal individuals."5 Turner's communitas is represented in figures of folk literature, such as "holy beggars, third sons, little tailors, and simpletons, who strip off the pretensions of holders of high rank and office and reduce them to the level of common humanity and mortality" (Turner 1969:110). Appalachian lore—for example, Gurney Norman's tales of getting the best of the king—play this role for America. (Another American-made example, which uses Appalachian characters, is the Duke Boys of Hazzard and their treatment of Boss Hogg.) As these distinctions between social structure and communitas show, the presence of communitas serves to define social structure by putting it into relief—making it "stand out." This part of the myth which dwells on poverty may function to preserve the status quo in America. For example, "fatalism" or "contentment" serves as a rationale for maintaining the status quo in Appalachia among the 15% of the people who are poor (ARC 1981:25).e The "poverty in the mountains" can also serve to maintain the middle American status quo, by providing a platform for relative deprivation in reverse. The middle American sees the lack of economic resources in certain areas of Appalachia, and says "Boy, I really am well off compared to those folks." Communitas' representations of the opposite of structure and order could be manifested physically, or geographically, as well as socially. Look at a map of the United States. The Appalachian region is a crazy quilt of counties, which look like pieces cut to fit jigsaw puzzle spaces. They were defined by the natural terrain, which is not ordered, or at least its order is not imposed by humans. But this nonorder falls away to the order of regular squares and rectangles as you move west into Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, where middle America and social structure live. (Even the beside-the-road crown vetch, planted by State Highway Departments, looks "wild" as it flows over the roadside cliffs in southwest Virginia; the same plant looks quite kempt where it creeps along the flats beside highways in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois.) Lack of structure bubbles up into lawlessness, fascinating to the bearers of 91 �social structure. An American-Appalachian example is the long-standing heed paid to feuds (e.g. Campbell 1923; Fox 1901; Frost 1899). In December 1981, Time magazine devoted its back page essay to "Hatfields and McCoys on the West Virginia Border." Articles on strikes in Appalachia often make the front page of the news. Another perhaps trivial, yet nevertheness startling, similarity between Turner's conception of communitas (which he derived largely from fieldwork in Africa), and the middle American conception of Appalachia, is the fascination with the Appalachian dulcimer, banjo, and more recently, the interest in the hammer dulcimer and the ancient psaltery. Turner says often expressions of communitas are culturally linked with simple wind instruments (flutes and harmonicas) and stringed instruments. Turner (1969:165) hypothesizes that it is the capacity these instruments have "to convey in music the quality of spontaneous human communitas" which accounts for this. Thus, social structure and communitas represent two sides of a coin reflecting ways people perceive and play out relationships among themselves. The two also differ in their modes of perceiving the world. According to Turner (1969:127-8), "relations between total beings are generative of symbols and metaphors and comparisons; art and religion are their products rather than legal and political structures." Perhaps Appalachia's alter ego for America includes an alternative "way of seeing." Two distinct means of understanding have been delineated by social scientists, and have now been popularized as "left brain" (logical, rational), and "right brain" (nonlogical, intuitive) modes. Rational means of communication are based on information, facts, and analytical, logical reasoning. Marshall McLuhan (1977) claimed that discursive communication, which relies upon words, grammar and mathematical symbols, began to dominate when the written word came into being and took a giant leap forward with the invention of the printing press. This lineal, or linear, style of thinking is exemplified in the usual Western scientific thought, which approaches history and evolution in terms of long lines (running from left to right, top to bottom, or bottom to top on the blackboard) tracing its "progress" (however devoid of "intentionality" we try to be). Another example is the "cause," with the arrow pointing toward the "effect." Even complicated feedback loops and "path diagrams" are crisscrossed with lines, and can ultimately be broken down into so many cause-and-effect relationships. The nondiscursive elements of culture, on the other hand, include traditions, meaningful places, sentiments like love, loyalty and faith, and ways of knowing which are nonrational, intuitive, expressive and emotional. Nondiscursive modes of communication such as rituals, dance, drama, painting and music, carry meaning beyond that which can be conveyed in words. 92 �Following is a list of words which apply first to the discursive and then to the nondiscursive aspects of culture: Discursive knowledge fact history technique cash value secular science Nondiscursive experience metaphor myth ritual sentimental value sacred religion vs. vs. vs. vs. vs. vs. vs. Our cultural storehouse is at present top heavy with information, facts, and rational means of understanding. "Institutions emphasizing discursive communication—such as science, technology and the market—are functioning more energetically and effectively than those which emphasize such things as art, poetry, ritual and human relations" (Klapp 1969:324). Perhaps American culture, built primarily on discursive thinking, again looks to Appalachia for its complement, i.e. nondiscursive thinking. Whether nondiscursive thinking is actually to be found here is a not yet answered question. There are, however, some tentative clues that Appalachia may be a repository of this kind of understanding. For one, collective orientation and nondiscursive understandings tend to occur together; they support one another. Marshall McLuhan said that cultures which still had strong oral traditions, like the rural Irish and like Appalachia, were bastions of this way of knowing, which McLuhan (1977) championed. Anthropologist Tom Plaut's (1979) essay on the Appalachian view of the land shows that it is symptomatic of this kind of understanding. The land is seen as a matrix for life, as a crucible for the social world, rather than as property, or as the thing upon which development takes place (which would be more typical of a "linear" mode of thinking). It will be necessary to conduct further research to discover whether nondiscursive modes of understanding are actually to be found in Appalachia. This research (which I hope to undertake in the future), will clarify whether this hypothesis is another exercise in myth-making, or an analysis which will carry the understanding of Appalachian cultures forward. To summarize, we have discussed anthropologist Victor Turner's concept of "communitas," the seemingly necessary counterpart to a society's social structure. We have seen that Appalachia's actual (factual) place in American social structure makes it a prime candidate to play the "communitas" role in American society. And, we have seen that middle America's (and academic America's) conception of Appalachia does fit the characteristics Turner ascribes to "communitas." Data are accumulating which will allow us to better judge whether these characteristics are actually a part of Appalachian cultures. 93 �If we find that Appalachia, or parts of it, is indeed a repository for a collective orientation and nondiscursive ways of knowing, what then? Why should these constitute, as the title of this paper implies, alternative cultural forms for America's future? Do the "elements for a Utopian vision" which would allow human beings to live "the kind of life that is meaningful in the most profound sense of the term" (Plaut 1978:362) lie here? Why not root out the last vestiges of nondiscursive understanding, and proceed down the path to ultimate rationality (a path championed, for example, by astronomer and polymath Carl Sagan)? Perhaps the answer lies in a kind of "law" of evolution which says that the best chance for long-term survival lies in diversity. The "adaptation" of any species refers to its ability to survive (reproduce) in a particular physical and social environment. If the environment changes, what is "adaptive" will change. The presence of diversity (called polymorphism, or "many forms") means that some beings will be able to adapt to the change. The principle works for cultural as well as biological forms. The necessity for future flexibility requires that many modes of relating to one another and understanding our world remain with us. Obviously, we cannot disparage, nor afford to lose, logical rational thought. It is imperative that we (and our children) understand the way to rationally weigh scientific evidence. Yet Turner may have been more right than he knew when he said there may be an almost biological need for the two "sides" of society, and thus, for the two modes of relating to other people and understanding the world around us. Anthropologists Roy Rappaport and Gregory Bateson believe that nonrational modes of understanding are critical for our continued existence. Conscious reason reinforces the human's conception that he stops at his skin. On the contrary, he is a part of larger systems upon which his ultimate survival depends. Rappaport (1976:33) contends that "the wholeness, if not indeed the very existence of these systems may be beyond the grasp of ordinary consciousness. Conscious reason is incomplete, and so are its unaided understandings." Bateson (1972:444) suggests that the "cybernetic nature of self and the world tends to be imperceptible to consciousness," which is linear. This is especially problematic since the advent of advanced technology, which empowers "conscious purpose.. .to upset the balances of the body, of society and of the biological world around us." Perhaps we should not be castigated for perpetuating a myth, We should continue to develop means, of course, for discovering whether these alternative cultural forms are actually present in Appalachia. If they are, perhaps they are the means of our ultimate survival. Those who are accused of wishing to preserve outmoded lifestyles, to create living museums of "backwards" cultures or "yesterday's people" should counter with this question: Can American culture afford to lose any means of understanding each other or the world around us—even as we continue to create and discover more and more to understand? 94 �Footnotes 'This use of the word "myth" depends on the common meaning which simply connotes a traditional story or "image," whether founded in fact or not (the implication is that the story is not verifiable by empirical means). A more specific use of the words refers to myth as a set of symbols set in a structure which serves to express, and resolve, contradictions among traits within a culture. This use derives from the work of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. While the simple and less specific meaning is implied here, Turner's (1969) delineation of community and communitas ("structure and anti-structure") discussed later in the paper lends itself to comparison with the meaning and function Levi-Strauss gave to myth. '"Middle America" and the characteristics we attribute to it may also be mythical. The use of this term implies more homogeneity in the rest of America ("non-Appalachian America") than there actually is. Nevertheless, there is an extant image of a "heartland" which typifies Turner's "community." The image would reflect reality in certain geographical and cultural areas and in certain socioeconomic strata. 3 When media attention is focused on the image of the midwest, as when the Public Broadcasting Service made its series of documentaries about "Middletown" (Muncie, Indiana), newspaper headlines in Roanoke, Virginia read "Muncie is us: PBS picks Indiana town to typify Middle America." (It should be noted that the sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd "picked" it first.) Muncie et al. are seen as America—as Turner's social structure. Appalachia is seen as something else: something we've lost, something we should at times "get back to." Appalachia may be seen as America's contemporary ancestors, but not as what America "is." 4 As this list of examples shows, it couldn't be said that Appalachians are the only "folk" urban Americans look to for "communitas." For example, American Indian cultures also play this role. 'Studies have been and are being undertaken to discover whether "egalitarianism" exists and what it means in Appalachia (eg. Matthews 1966 and Schwarzweller 1971). "According to the Appalachian Regional Commission (1981:24-5), in 1976, 15% of the households in Appalachia (ARC definition) were below a poverty level defined as "a 1975 income below $5,502 for a nonfarm family of four persons with a male head." In the Central Appalachian subregion, 25% of the households were below this poverty level. These figures compare to 11.8% below poverty level for the nation as a whole. Much of the writing which emphasized poverty was, however, undertaken at a time when the proportion of Appalachian people in poverty (as defined in a statistical sense), was higher than this. References Cited Acquaviva, Gary J. 1980 Teaching Philosophy in Appalachia: An Existential Approach. Paper presented at the Appalachian Studies Conference, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN. Alderman, John 1981 Heroines, Good Guys, Bad Guys and Other Nice Folks. Radford Magazine, 3(1): 12-13. Anderson, Kurt 1981 On the West Virginia Border: Hatfields and McCoys. Time, December 14. Appalachian Regional Commission 1981 Appalachia—A Reference Book: Supplement to the Second Edition. Washington DC: Appalachian Regional Commission. Bateson, Gregory 1972a Conscious Purpose versus Nature. In Steps to an Ecology of Mind. pp. 426-439. New York: Ballantine. 1972b Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation. In Steps to an Ecology of Mind. pp. 440-447. New York: Ballantine. 95 �Batteau, Allen 1979a The American Culture of Appalachia. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Cincinnati, Ohio. 1979b Appalachia and the Concept of Culture: A Theory of Shared Misunderstandings. Appalachian Journal 7(1-2) :9-32. 1979c The Making of "Appalachia" in America. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society, Memphis, Tennessee. van der Bogert, Frans 1980 The Cultural Context of Philosophic Criticism. Paper presented at the Appalachian Studies Conference, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN. Bryant, F. Carlene 1981 We're All Kin. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Campbell, John C. 1923 The Southern Highlander and His Homeland. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Erikson, Kai T. 1976 Everything in its Path. New York: Simon and Schuster. Fox, John, Jr. 1901 The Southern Mountaineer. Scribner's Magazine 29:387-399, 556-570. Frost, William G. 1899 Our Contemporary Ancestors in the Southern Mountains. Atlantic Monthly 83:311-319. Hicks, George L. 1976 Appalachian Valley. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Humphrey, Richard 1980 Academic Philosophy and Appalachian Culture. Paper presented at the Appalachian Studies Conference, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee. Klapp, Orrin E. 1969 Collective Search for Identity. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Lewis, Helen M. 1970 Fatalism or the Coal Industry. Mountain Life and Work 46:4-15. Reprinted in Appalachia: Social Context Past and Present. Bruce Ergood and Bruce E. Kuhre, eds. 1976, pp. 153-161. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt. Lewis, Helen Matthews, Linda Johnson, and Don Askins, Editors 1978 Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case. Boone, NC: The Appalachian Consortium Press. Looff, David H. 1971 Appalachia's Children: The Challenge of Mental Health. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. MacKaye, Percy 1924 Untamed America: A Comment on a Sojourn in the Kentucky Mountains. Survey 51:326-31, 360, 362-63. McLuhan, Marshall 1977 Lecture given at Radford University, Radford, Virginia. Matthews, Elmora Messer 1966 Neighbor and Kin: Life in a Tennessee Ridge Community. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. 96 �Plaut, Tom 1978 Extending the Internal Periphery Model: The Impact of Culture and Consequent Strategy. In Colonialism in Modern America, Helen M. Lewis, et al., eds. pp. 351-364. 1979 Appalachia and Social Change: A Cultural Systems Approach. Appalachian Journal 6(4):250-264, esp. pp. 253-255. Rappaport, Roy A. 1976 Liturgies and Lies. International Yearbook of Sociology and Religion 10:75-104. Schwarzweller, Harry K., James S. Brown, and J.J. Mangalam 1971 Mountain Families in Transition. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Shapiro, Henry D. 1978 Appalachia on Our Mind. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Turner, Victor W. 1969 The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine. Walls, David S. 1978 Internal Colony or Internal Periphery: A Critique of Current Models and Alternative Formulation. In Colonialism in Modern America. Helen M. Lewis et al., eds. pp. 319-349. Weller, Jack E. 1965 Yesterday's People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 97 �Notes On Voluntary Service Networking And Community Building Thomas Plant When one goes beyond the statistics of the current economic crisis in America to the faces and everyday lives of the people in places like Appalachian, Western North Carolina, there is ample evidence of suffering and an inability of a number of households to remain self-sufficient. There are victims of industrial accidents and serious illness who are homebound and isolated without adequate care. There are people sent home to die by health care facilities which "can't do anything more" for them. There are families of these people, trying to care for them without adequate resources—medical or psychological—who suffer from a sense that "I'm not doing enough for her/him." They, too, suffer from an isolation caused by the fact that friends and neighbors also have a sense of not knowing how to help. There are the elderly (whose children are now in Baltimore, Detroit, or California) who need adequate nutrition, adequate heating, adequate housing...adequate love, caring, and connections with the social world beyond the old home place. There are people who need transportation—to medical facilities, to nutrition sites, to shopping areas, and to work. There are people who need food. There are people who need fuel for cooking and heating. There are kids who need big sisters and brothers and tutors to help negotiate school systems. A caseworker in a rural service agency recently shared with me some needs and life experiences of his clients in the form of questions that came up during interviews: Have you ever had to sell food stamps to buy medicine? Have you ever had to spend all day huddled under blankets because you had no money to buy oil? Have you ever had to drive 65 miles to work every day to make minimum wage and tried to buy gas and feed and clothe your family? Have you ever lived in a little mountain town and been told by an interviewer at the vocational rehabilitation office that even though you had severe medical problems you didn't qualify for disability because you could work as a bell hop? Have you ever had to pick through trash dumpster boxes to find food and clothing? 98 �Have you ever had the factory where you work close down and discover that you couldn't draw unemployment because the company hadn't put in for it? In sum, people are hurting. Traditionally in the mountains there have been networks of kin and community to support individuals and families in times of stress. As people have helped each other in times of planting and harvest, so also they have been at each other's bedsides in times of illness. These traditional support systems still exist in great degree. I remember an incident in a small community in Randolph County, West Virginia, about ten years ago, when a serious industrial accident put a man out of work. Surrounding families made certain that there was enough food, clothing, and heating fuel for his wife and five children during a six-month convalescence. But traditional support systems like this one have been weakened by governmental agency programs, outmigration, and the general mobility industrialization has brought to the mountains in recent years. Consequently, there are many families in need who aren't getting help. In counterpoint to the growing number of people in need, there are increasing numbers of people in the mountains interested in developing new support systems. As demographic patterns have changed in America and people are moving from metropolitan to rural areas, Appalachian counties in Western North Carolina are gaining an inmigrant population with the sort of middleclass values that prompt them to look for service organizations and opportunities. Those already doing this kind of work consistently report a high level of satisfaction with what they're doing. For example, a woodworker and construction contractor in Yancey County recently told me: I've been teaching woodcarving to a multiple sclerosis victim. I take him to my shop on Saturdays just to get him out of his house...which is a hassle because I've got to pick him up and carry him in the shop.. .it's frustrating sometimes and a couple of weeks ago, I was really feeling down about it. Well, anyhow, I went and picked him up at his house and brought him to the shop and as I went in the door with him in my arms, he grinned and said, "You know, John, the difference between staying at home and coming here is the difference between nothing and something." And that's the payoff in this kind of work—you do something and realize "hey, this guy doesn't hurt so much because I'm here" or "he's really been able to unlock something and I've had the key." In a recent year-end review session for a volunteer agency in Buncombe County, N.C., team members were asked to comment on the impact of service in their lives. The uniform response was that the experience had provided relationships and meaning that were highly desirable: "Identifying with a group of people who want to act, who want to intervene and make a difference has been really significant...." "It's such a rewarding thing to go into a patient's home and be able to help...." "I recently had to decide if I would take another job in Raleigh and I found I didn't want to leave this...to leave you." "I hated to leave my profession (nursing, after a crippling accident), but there was no way I could continue on a full-time basis. You have given me my dream back...my profession back. Now I can function as a nurse." 99 �It seems that in our part of the mountains—and I suspect elsewhere as well—there are people who may or may not be employed but who are looking for ways to intensify and enrich their everyday lives. Who are they and where are they located in relation to other people in the social landscape? John Stephenson has developed a typology of families in a relatively "traditional" Appalachian community. The typology "is ordered about variations in ways families have solved the economic problem (which) amounts to deciding how one is going to secure what are defined as the necessities of life: food, shelter, clothing, medical care, or whatever else might be defined as necessary."1 He found a high correlation between the means employed in solving the "economic problem" and the other kinds of everyday life activities and relations. At one end of his scale or continuum, his "Type I" families are white-collar professional, managerial folks, owners of businesses, who attend mainline denomination churches and look well beyond the borders of their neighborhoods and families for friends and associates and symbolic referents and, when needed, assistance. Type II families have full-time blue-collar employment as the basis of support but are more closely tied to the local neighborhood institutions and support systems. Type Ills have seasonal or intermittant work and attend sect-type local, independent churches (if they attend church at all). Sex roles are more clearly divided and exclusive, and kinship looms ever stronger in the loyalty and patterns of everyday interaction. In Type IV, at the opposite end of the scale from Type I, there is "occasional, little, or no real occupational engagement at all,"2 and families tend to be bound into traditional roles, support networks, and forms of worship. Type I is located in the mainstream of national symbols and referents, while Type IV tends to "have the lowest proportion of significant contacts outside the neighborhood; they are not truly isolated, but.. .they are more cut off and self-contained than any of the other types."3 In conceptualizing community service networks, we face the uncomfortable reality that those in need are Stephenson's Types III and IV, and even some Type Us. Virtually all those who want to serve are Type Is. The people involved in voluntary service seem to be a special kind of Type I, distinguished by the following characteristics: All have some college or university training. Most are active or retired pro ssional people. Most are socialized to the view that business is conducted thr gh formal organizations bound by rational rules for action and determining need (as opposed to networks of kin and community where action tends to be based in affective ties of loyalty and obligation). Most are immigrants to the area, having left family and friends in other parts of the country. Consequently, in many there is a need to re-establish meaningful relationships. Community service and membership in "formal" service organizations is one way of doing this. In sum, there are serious class and cultural differences between the serviceoriented inmigrants and those in need of assistance. These differences can result in confused and sometimes destructive contacts between groups which can be especially painful for those on the receiving end (although Type Is get burned too). Some efforts at helping are rebuffed. For example: 100 �A Type I woman knows a family is in dire need of food. She buys a variety of foodstuffs and takes them to the home, but the family refuses all but a few cans of green beans. A Type I person buys a kerosene heater for any elderly couple in need of supplemental heat. Despite obvious need, no one could be found who would accept the heater. A dichotomy Jack Weller borrowed from Herbert Cans to describe Appalachian people helps explain what we see happening here. Our Type I people seem to be object oriented. They want to achieve, discuss, and move in a world of things. When someone is in need, they want to give her or him something and be done with it. But our people in need—our Type Us and certainly Type Ills and IVs—are person oriented.* In their social world, goods move only within the context of, and are often symbolic of, personal relationships. Thus, in the view of most potential recipients, assistance and especially assistance in the form of material goods, is not acceptable unless it comes within the context of relationships that are carried out within the context of community (which at the very minimum at least hints of reciprocity). We need then volunteers and programs capable and willing to function in a person oriented social universe. But what about the people who "want to help," but aren't capable of or simply don't want to reorient themselves or work face-toface with people in need? Volunteers can be classified by what they are willing to give. Some only want to give money. Others are willing to collect and distribute goods. And still others seek ongoing personal relationships with people in need. Organizations focusing on different services can use different kinds of volunteers. One effective organization, "Neighbors in Need" of Madison County, N.C., was established in the Spring of 1982 to funnel material goods to people in crisis—from cash for fuel oil and wood for cooking and heating, to clothing and food for people burned out of their homes. It is staffed by Type I folk of the cash and goods-giving sort. Being a small organization dealing primarily with emergency kinds of situations, its object orientation produces goods when they're needed. Becipients hear about the service through a person-oriented, word-of-mouth network. There is no "official" office or place to apply for aid or be evaluated. The service operates out of private homes, recipient needs being communicated essentially by telephone. A short excursus is perhaps in order to describe another kind of volunteer effort—an academic and research oriented project that has had a profound impact on many mountain communities. It is the Appalachian Land Study, which has produced some 1800 pages of land ownership data on some 55,000 parcels of land in 80 counties of six Appalachian states. Some 75 volunteers worked on this effort over a two-year period, going through records courthouse-by-courthouse. In areas where the study uncovered concrete examples of unfair or illegal practices, further citizen action has resulted in demands by other volunteers, at the community and county level, that corporations pay a fair share of their property taxes. In 101 �western North Carolina, questions of land use raised by the study have been debated in several public meetings. The land study represents a different kind of community volunteerism, one which is more appealing to academics or others who like research. The data has generated a means for communities to determine their interests and what is happening or might well happen which would work against those interests. Another organization is the Mars Hill College "Voluntary Services Committee." Students work in teams of two with families in Madison County. The teams are introduced to a family by someone who is already accepted and trusted. It might be a social worker, a home health nurse, a community mental health worker, a meal site director, or a neighbor. The work may or may not start out being very specific. Tasks performed by volunteers usually are defined out of the relationships developed with the families in the course of their visits. The process often starts by "just visiting" (this is especially true with the elderly). As trust develops, felt needs emerge. Students find themselves doing everything from nursing the sick and helping people deal with grief and loneliness, to helping clean and repair houses, gathering firewood, and getting people in touch with various kinds of services. A problem now emerging on the horizon of this program is that students come and go—at least every four years—and strong relationships built over a period of time are attenuated or broken outright. But the program does suggest a model which could be developed by permanent residents of an area. This has begun to happen in our county with the suggestion that willing families develop on-going ties with families-in-need in their neighborhoods. One volunteer program that seems to have a high level of acceptance among recipient families involves work with the dying. It's called "hospice" and its aim is to provide interdisciplinary care—medical, psychological, social, and spiritual—to dying patients and their families. It involves teams of nurses, social workers, ministers, and lay "one-on-one" volunteers providing care most commonly in the home setting, although a minority of hospices now have their own impatient facilities. Unheard of in the United States a decade ago, hospice is an ongoing operation now in every major city in the United States. More than 300 groups have sprung up, largely staffed by volunteers. Mountain Area Hospice in Buncombe County, N.C., for example, has the equivalent of three full-time paid staff and nearly 100 people volunteering time for around-the-clock service and availability to homebound patients and their families. Hospice care has been very successful, having even gained enough legitimation in some areas for third party reimbursement. Several large employers such as General Electric and Westinghouse include hospice care among their workers' health benefits and unions are bargaining for more companies to do so. But for our purposes here, the interesting thing is that strangers can go into a household which is in a state of extreme stress and be accepted and be effective. The key to this success seems to lie in the following factors: a rigorous process of volunteer selection and self-selection, a training program of some 30 hours (in the case of the Buncombe County's Mountain Area Hospice) and the accessing of patient families to 102 �volunteers through the medical delivery system. (Doctors refer patients to hospice who then are interviewed by the hospice staff with an eye to their interest in and suitability for hospice care. A nurse is assigned and initially a lay volunteer [or a two-person volunteer team] will accompany her. From then on the lay volunteers and the volunteer nurses work out their relationships with and services to the family and the patient through the process of on-going interaction.) A number of us have been trying to adapt the hospice concept to a process of community building in rural areas. In both Yancey and Madison counties in North Carolina, groups are meeting to discuss ways of training and organizing local volunteers to work with families where someone is at home with a long-term illness of any sort (hospics generally focus on late stage cancer victims) or is in long term recuperation from an industrial accident or other injury. In each case, volunteers would be used in conjunction with existing public and private medical delivery systems. Other services that can be utilized in building or rebuilding mutual aid networks in rural communities include providing food to the homebound, big brother/sister programs for kids, woodcutting for those people who cook and heat wood, but lack the ability to collect it or buy it; programs for the elderly in meal sites, nursing homes, and private homes, transportation services to congregate meal sites and medical care facilities, and assistance in garden preparation. There are several hazards associated with developing new voluntary support networks: 1. Traditional support systems can be overlooked and thus weakened or replaced by new volunteers efforts. Families that truly need help are those somehow isolated from traditional, kin and community-based networks. 2. Families-in-need can develop dependency relationships with the family or group providing help. Something akin to child-parent relations can emerge. 3. On the other hand, development of new services can be intimidated by the rather common myth that nobody and no family is homebound and isolated "in our community," and thus no new efforts are needed. The myth is often heard in the form of "what do we need that for. We've always taken care of our own around here," but the facts indicate otherwise. 4. Once a program is established, there is a tendency to ease up both in the matching of appropriate volunteers with specific services and in orientation and training of volunteers. If a volunteer shows shock or dismay upon entering a home or a sickroom, those on the receiving end pick it up and respond accordingly. An individual contact will be lost and community gossip born of resentment or defensiveness can cripple an entire program. In sum, and at the very least, careful research is required to determine precisely who needs what and how any new service can enhance, rather than challenge or weaken, existing networks. Research should also indicate who can serve in 103 �various roles and how they should be trained. One observation about volunteers which makes an interesting hypothesis for future research: The most motivated and sensitive people capable of personoriented, one-on-one service are those with personal experience on the margins of a social system—those who by physical injury, class position, sexism, or agism in the form of forced retirement, and discrimination, have been jolted out of their everyday taken-for-granted worlds and personally known isolation and loss of social and self-esteem. The most effective volunteers seem to have experienced vulnerability in their own lives to a degree which permits them to be open, as opposed to being defensive and judgemental, when faced with the crisis of a neighbor. In conclusion, there are many kinds of support systems needed at the community and county level and different kinds of people are needed to staff them. As we build these systems, we build interactional networks of people—what Warren would call horizontal networks of people—who can come to identify with one another as inhabitants of a common turf and, to some degree, a common destiny.5 The kind of support networks that we're trying to develop are a means of community-building. Mutual aid networks have the potential to develop into communities—groups of people with a sense of common purpose and destiny—which can define their interests and defend them, especially in a region where multinational corporations and government agencies have increasingly gained control of land, resources, and the power required for self-determination. Footnotes 'Stephenson, John B., Shiloh: A Mountain Community, Lexington, University of Kentucky Press, 1968, pp. 43-53. *Ibid., page 48. *Ibid., page 53. 4 Weller, Jack, Yesterday's People, Life in Contemporary Appalachia, Lexington, Kentucky, University Press of Kentucky, 1965, pp. 49-57. 5 Warren, Roland, The Community in America, Chicago, Rand McNally and Company, 1972, p. 162. Bibliography Stephenson, John B., Shiloh: A Mountain Community, Lexington, University of Kentucky Press, 1968. Warren, Roland, The Community in America, Chicago, Rand McNally and Company, 1972. Weller, Jack, Yesterday's People, Life in Contemporary Appalachia, Lexington, Kentucky, University Press of Kentucky, 1965. 104 �Abstracts 105 �This page intentionally left blank �Renewable Energy For Appalachia Development C. James Bier Ph.D. Appalachia is a region well-suited to the utilization of renewable energy, both directly and indirectly as the major source of energy to meet its population's needs in the 21st century. Solar energy can be used for direct heating of new homes with low-cost passive solar building techniques using a balanced mix of increased internal thermal mass and improved exterior insulation. Large south window area in combination with movable insulation will allow homes built to these standards to be heated for less than 1/5 the cost of heating standard contemporary buildings and not require any formal cooling system in the Appalachian region. There is abundant biomass in our woodlands to provide all the back-up heating needs for solar heated buildings. Wood and agricultural wastes can also be used as a feedstock for the production of liquid and gaseous fuels and chemicals through both pyrolysis and biological fermentation. Hydroelectric power in the form of pumped storage reservoirs can be used to complement photovoltaic and wind generated electricity to meet variable load demands. This paper will emphasize solar-derived energy production in the Appalachian region. About 1/2 of the presentation time will be devoted to immediate pay-back, low-cost solar applications for space, domestic, and industrial process water heating. The balance of the presentation time will be devoted to an assessment of the developing technologies for producing electricity and fluid fuels through photovoltaic, wind, small and low-head hydroelectricity and biomass conversion systems. The balanced and complementary integration of these diverse but renewable energy sources and their relationship to the development of the Appalachian region will be emphasized. In summary, the Appalachian region is becoming more attractive to development as past negative perceptions about this region diminish. The greater realization that this region has abundant renewable energy resources in the form of its forests and moderate sunshine, an attractive year-round climate, dependable water supplies and substantial human resources will accelerate that development. Careful development of renewable energy sources will make the region a more prosperous and pleasant place to live. Personal and political action at the local, state, and national levels can result in the actions necessary to accelerate the adoption of renewable energy technologies. Research sources include "Solar Age," "Solar Engineering," directories and research studies of solar homes, Annual Reviews of Energy, as well as the author's own experience in designing and building, and living in, a passive solar home. 107 �The Need For A Descriptive Study Of Appalachian Children's Language Development Dina Blum-West A review of the current literature concerning Appalachian studies shows that while there has been a great deal of research on the Appalachian dialect, virtually no research has been published on the early language development of Appalachian children or how these children acquire grammatical parts of speech and use them in their everyday speech. This lack of information poses a grave problem for language assessment and educational planning in this region. Gathering information concerning the language development of Appalachian children is a complex and time consuming task. The importance of this information for educational planning in this region, how this information can be collected, and some of the factors that should be considered when doing this type of study are presented in this paper. Floating Down The Stream Of Time: An Appalachian Rural Community Confronting Mass Society Tom Boyd This is a description of an Appalachian rural community having no formal organization and few fields of organized activity outside the family. A consideration of the horizontal level of integration finds interaction between units such as families, sets, churches, a community center, and a school. A consideration of the vertical level of integration illustrates interaction between the community and units such as the county, state organizations, social change agencies, and the United States Forest Service. The community can thus best be seen as an interaction field rather than a product of "Folk Society" or "Mass Society". 108 �Appalachian Change: The Federal Involvement Michael}. Bradshaw Appalachia contains a range of problems in its three main internal regions—north, center and south. Each of these regions has seen major changes in its social and economic conditions in the last 20 years. The federal contribution to these changes is listed, and an analysis is made in terms of the relationships of a range of different programs to the needs of Appalachia. It is seen that, within the limitations imposed by the study of such complex factors, the most important long-term significance of federal inputs is in the provision of infrastructure, the involvement of local people in the planning process, and in a trend towards making the most of the human resources present in the region. Appalachian Serpent-Handlers In The Urban Midwest: A Test Of A Satisfaction Hypothesis Michael Carter and Kenneth Ambrose This paper uses a case study approach in testing a church satisfaction hypothesis on a store-front, serpent-handling church located in the urban midwest. Participant-observation by both authors combines to a total of over eight years with this particular congregation and over ten years in observing the sect in the Appalachians. During a five month period in 1981 attitudes were measured concerning degrees of satisfaction with church and various non-church activities. This exploratory study reveals that these sectarian pentecostals (N = 19) derive more satisfaction from church (and church related types of) activities than from any other form of behavior measured. In the face of extreme danger (e.g., handling of poisonous serpents, fire, and the drinking of strychnine) and severe criticism from both family and friends, this small congregation is significantly more satisfied with church activities than from more traditional discretionary (leisure) time activities. This deep level of satisfaction gained from church and church related activities may be a key element in accounting for the sect's survival both in and out of Appalachia. Glossolalia and the trance-like behavior which often accompanies it was also found to be very satisfying and appear to be serving as a mechanism for self-fulfillment and possibly self-actualization. 109 �Looking Back...Before Integration Victoria A. Casey This slide-talk show deals with the struggles and triumphs of the Black Appalachians in the small mountain communities in the remote area of Western North Carolina. With this as the background, the slides will depict the Black Appalachians as they survive in the white world as well as their own where they establish their own churches and schools. The remote communities chosen are in Jackson County whose motto is "in the middle of most." The county includes Western Carolina University in Cullowhee and is located at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, where the Eastern Band of Cherokees reside. Most Blacks in the county have been in this area for five to six generations, brought into the area as slaves as early as the late 1700's. It is from this slavery background that the Blacks in Jackson County began to lead their own lives and direct their own destiny. This was done by establishing their own schools and churches. It is from these two institutions that the Blacks in the county are able to find a common denominator to pull together as one, although their numbers weren't strong and "communities" were very small. The slide-talk show will deal with three aspects of the Blacks in Jackson County, which seems typical of all small Black communities in rural remote areas of Western North Carolina. It shows their life from 1865 to 1965 stressing jobs, church and school. In this framework it will show the migration within the county and will show the migration out of the county because of the needs for jobs. Both of these dates are significant because 1865 ends the period of formal slavery, while 1965 ends the period of school segregation in the county. The Homemade Toys Of Appalachia Debbie Collins Growing up was hard for past generations of Appalachian children. They had little time for play and toys. Like many items on the small, self-sufficient Appalachian farms, the few toys the children had were handmade. My paper deals with these homemade toys. The first part of the paper discusses the past of Appalachian toys. The children had few toys because they had little time for them and because there was little if any extra money. The toys they did have were made by the children themselves or by their parents or grandparents. These toys were made from scraps of wood, cloth, etc. found around the farm. The practice of making the toys was passed down from generation to generation through oral transmission. 110 �Another major part of my paper deals with the changes that have taken place through the generations of toymaking. Toymaking has come from being a way to pass time to a source of income, a hobby, and a specialized craft. The toys themselves have moved from playthings to collectors' items with prestige and large markets. The materials for the toys are often bought today where they were once found. The tradition of oral transmission has died in some areas, and toymaking is learned in classes and from books. In many cases toymaking has become a way to hold to the past. I compare the toys of Appalachia with those of other cultures—Eskimo, Indian, Mexican. I have found that many of their homemade toys are similiar to ours. I take a look at what is needed to consider a toy an Appalachian folk toy. I feel the location of origination is not important in the decision. The toymaking may have been brought into the mountains by immigrants or left by the Indians, but if it was accepted by the people and if they added their own ideas to the toys, it became part of their culture. The apple-head dolls and the cornshuck dolls are excellent examples. I also take a look at toymaking as art vs. craft and as folk vs. non-folk. In presenting my paper I plan to discuss these major points. I have photographs of toymakers and toys from my interviews. These will be on display during my presentation. I have also been collecting several of the toys I discuss in my paper. I plan to display these also. Sherwood Anderson's Appalachian Years: An Overview William T. Cornett Although most readers and scholars associate the name of Sherwood Anderson with the literature of the Midwest, this seminal writer spent the last fifteen years of his life as a resident of Appalachia and produced there several works highly reflective of his adopted region. The primary purpose of this paper is to present in some detail the contents of these "Appalachian" writings, chronicling something of his use of an overall philosophical stance which guided him as he wrote from 1925 through 1940. A secondary purpose is simply to promote familiarity with this lesser-known period of Anderson's life. In general scholars and critics of American literature have dismissed Anderson's later years as inconsequential artistically, but this paper hopes to demonstrate that the subjects and stylistic qualities which are present in such fictional works as Beyond Desire (1932), Death in the Woods (1933), and Kit Brandon (1936)—and even in some of the essays of Perhaps Women (1931) and No 111 �Swank (1934)—are frequently continuations of basic interests and approaches found in earlier works like Marching Men (1917) and Winesburg, Ohio (1919). Even though very little of Anderson's later output is of the consistently high quality of Winesburg, it certainly does not deserve the considerable neglect which has come since the author's death in 1941. Anderson found peace and happiness in Appalachia, though at a time when much was going wrong on both the local and national scenes. He reveled in being a citizen of a small town (Marion, Virginia), and wrote piercingly, both in fiction and journalistic essays, of the problems generated by events around him. Therefore, Anderson's life-long quest for "belonging" was realized in his southwest Virginia town, "halfway between the earth and the city." Aesthetically, he remained an experimenter after his removal to the mountians. Certainly Sherwood Anderson's Notebook (1926), A New Testament (1927), and even Home Town (1940) are innovations in their own ways. Such writings show obvious deficiencies, but they do not show a man who was "written out". Today with many proclaiming the death of our nation's cities and with growing psychological, economic, and population pressures, Anderson's earlier decision to become a small-town man in the Southern Appalachians may represent one possible alternative to urban decay that has only begun to be explored. Perhaps a reputedly burnt-out artist will now be seen in the new role of prophet. Tales of Power: A Community Perspective Of The TVA Richard Couto Part of the original hopes that this nation had for the Tennessee Valley Authority was that it would contribute to the development of a river basin in the Appalachian region. But the hopes extended beyond developing dams on the Tennessee River, the nation's seventh largest. In addition, TVA had the agenda of resource development including the human as well as national resources of the region. Since 1933 TVA has evolved to a more narrow mission of providing electricity in a seven state area. The impact of this mission of low cost electricity in the Appalachian region has been most manifest in the strip mining of coal. This slide and tape presentation interviews Barbara Green, a resident of Campbell County in East Tennessee. This county adjoins Union County which was the site of TVA's first project the Norris Dam. Through her comments Barbara Green gives us an idea of the impact that TVA has had in recent years and the unfinished agenda of natural and human resource development that faces this nation. 112 �Location Decisions Of Appalachian Youth: A Case Study In A Rural Appalachian Community Barbara Daniel Location decisions of Appalachian youths are explored from the standpoint of the "utility of staying" in the region as opposed to the "utility of moving" from the region. Elements of these two constructs are to be measured by survey questions administered to three cohorts of students from a rural Appalachian Ohio High School. This study presents the theoretical framework to be used and a summary of a preliminary survey conducted at the high schools in the region. Conclusions from the preliminary survey are that most students stay in the region of origination, and impressions of guidance counselors about why they stay are presented. The final study will consist of interviews of a randomly selected sample of recent graduates. Results will be analyzed by discriminant analysis. It is hypothesized that the decision-making processes of movers and stayers can be discriminated, and that the bases on which they make their decisions differ. Land For East Kentucky's Development: An Inventory Of Mountain Top Mining Sites Douglas Dotterweich The shortage of flat land above the flood plain in the coalfields of eastern Kentucky is well known to anyone who has driven through this area. This problem has been a serious constraint on any type of development including housing, industrial, commercial, retail and services outlets, and even agricultural uses. There has simply been no place to locate these land uses. However, in the last few years, a new method of coal mining has come into rather widespread usage-mountain top removal. This technique literally removes the top of a mountain leaving often sizable quantities of flat land, out of the danger of flooding. The purpose of this brief report will be to present the results of an inventory of mountain-top mined lands that appear to have development potential. A total of more than sixty sites within the region have been identified that encompass more than 38,000 acres. This inventory does not include all the mountain top land in eastern Kentucky, but only those parcels with the greatest development potential. 113 �Factors considered in selecting these sights include: 1) access to roads, 2) access to population centers, 3) availability of water in the vicinity, 4) distance to rail facilities, and 5) number of feet of elevation above the valley floor. The report will include: 1) a listing of sites, 2) site characteristics, and 3) a map showing actual location of the land sites. This presentation should be of interest to anyone concerned with the development of the Appalachian region in general, or with specific land use and development ideas for East Kentucky. Finally, an effort will be made to outline the method used in developing this site inventory for eastern Kentucky, so that similar site listings might be compiled for other Appalachian states that have shortages of developable land. Planning For Appalachians Future: The Forest Service And Public Input L. Sue Greer The U.S. Forest Service is the single largest land holder in the Appalachian region. Consequently, the Forest Service has a potentially significant impact on the direction of developments in the Appalachian region. The issue is not just what kinds of choices will be made for the management and development of the National Forests, but how those decisions will be made and who will have input into them. This paper reviews the course of planning for the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area in the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia. The history of that development illustrates the problems associated with the rationalization of social structures. Greater centralization of planning and increased reliance on experts make decision-making more remote from the individual and more difficult to influence. The conflict over development of the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area also illustrates the factors affecting the organization and success of local opposition. The rationalization of public input may provide a tool for the effecting change, but it also limits the issues which can be addressed. 114 �The Nada Tunnel: Through Fact And Through The Imagination Larry G. Meadows The Daniel Boone National Forest covers over half a million acres of eastern Kentucky, constituting a major watershed and source of timber. A large portion of this forest lies in the Red River Gorge, a puzzle of ridges, cliffs, and stone arches. From the last half of the nineteenth century to the 1920s, this area attracted loggers and rivermen, railroaders and blasters, hunters, fishers and trappers, and farmers and sharecroppers who worked while the great trees of the Gorge were cut by industry. When the logging companies finished and the railroads closed down, however, many people had no choice but to leave. Little now remains of that earlier mountain culture, one that was rich with custom and oral traditions. Today, several hundred thousand people annually visit the area to camp and sight-see, most entering the Gorge through the Nada Railroad Tunnel (constructed in 1911 and now part of highway 77). Driving through the one-lane darkness of the tunnel to confront this wilderness, these visitors often want to forget their preoccupation with man. Yet, the area's human history matches its impressive counterpart in stone; and merely to enter the Gorge through the tunnel is to travel through a future blasted, shovelled and carved out by men some twenty years ago. This multi-media presentation explores the history of the Nada Tunnel, and its cultural and economic effects on the surrounding area and people. Its construction is one example of the impact that the coming of the logging industry and the railroads had upon the Appalachian Mountains. The presentation consists of two parts: 1) The first is a historical account of the tunnel, prepared by Larry Meadows, which relies heavily on documentation from written sources. It includes material concerning the tunnel's construction, logging trains and work crews, and is highlighted by authentic photographs and slides. 2) The second part is a fictional approach to the same topic. Recently, Ellesa High has been completing a cycle of short stories set in the Red River Gorge. One titled "The Luck of Elmer White" centers around the building of the Nada Tunnel. This story combines elements pulled both from oral history and from the author's imagination. 115 �Made In The Mountains: Folk Art And Traditional Handicraft: A 22-Minute Slide/Sound Program, Explores The History And Development Of The Crafts Movement In Western North Carolina Laurel Horton The Southern Mountain region is often considered a last bastion of traditional handicrafts and folk art. Earlier travelers and writers described what they saw as a distinct mountain culture producing handicrafted items long after technological society had rendered them quaint and archaic elsewhere. More recently, folklorists and other scholars have questioned the uniqueness and separate development of "mountain crafts" compared with those produced in other regions. To add to the confusion craft guilds and marketing agencies, which originally established themselves to promote native handicrafts, have also encouraged contemporary and avant garde styles and techniques. The result is a multiplicity of description, definition, and delineation of terms such as "folk art," "traditional handicrafts," "mountain craftspeople" and "heritage crafts." It is no wonder that not only the buyers and collectors of handmade items, but also the makers and marketers are often unsure about how to describe their work and its historical and regional sources. The objective of this program is to provide information about the promote discussion of the following issues: 1. the role of handicrafts within traditional lifestyles. 2. crafts, craftspeople, and techniques in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. 3. the crafts revival of the twentieth century. 4. the continuities between art and craft, folk and popular, utility and decoration, native Appalachian artisans and those not identified with the region. 5. the influence of guilds and marketing agencies upon craft production and techniques. 116 �The Cherokee Religious Experience Richard A. Humphrey Native Americans have been in Southern Appalachia for at least the past 12,000 years. Little is known about the religion of these early Indians. The coming of DeSoto's expedition into the region provided the first written reports on the Cherokee. Eighteenth century travelers' accounts of the Cherokee are informative, but James Mooney and his Cherokee friend, Swimmer, have provided excellent source materials on Cherokee history, beliefs and ceremonies. Many people have written about the Cherokee religion. However many of these interpretations must be questioned and corrected. Charles Hudson and his wife, Joyce Rockwood in their writings demonstrate the complexity of the Cherokee religious system better than previous descriptions. In 1738 the missionaries' activities began and a new attitude developed towards the Cherokee and their religion. Cherokee religion was seen as a barrier to Christianizing and Civilizing. The popular view is that the Cherokee were converted easily to Christianity because of the similarity between the two religions. Historical records do not support this popular belief. The conversion process to Christianity was difficult and slow and elicited suspicion and hostility. After the removal of 16,000 Cherokee to Oklahoma in 1838, there were approximately 1,000 Cherokee left in the mountains of North Carolina, half of whom were Christians. Today the Baptists number 2,353 while the Methodists number 211. There are Cherokee members in the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Christ, Mormon, Wesleyan, Pentecostal-Holiness and Church of God. There are 25 churches on the Qualla Boundary, 3 Baptist Churches at Snowbird and 1 Baptist and 1 Methodist Church at Tomotla. Today, Cherokee Christians tend to be conservative Calvinists, theologically. Of the 8,000 Cherokee in the mountains of North Carolina about one-third are Christian and another third practice their traditional religion. There are fewer who attend Christian Churches or hold membership than the literature suggests. Present day Cherokee are involved in similar cultural tensions as are other people in Southern Appalachia. They are caught between their traditional beliefs and those of mainstream America. Even the Christians among the Cherokee have not forgotten their heritage. The oral history, their crafts, language, pride as a people and certain ancient ceremonies are still affirmed. The emphasis on family, place, and their "harmony ethic" are similar to their white counterparts in Southern Appalachia. Lloyd Owle expresses this with beauty when he wrote: "The mountains pull at me The trees stroke my eyes The Wind brushes by pulling down the sky. 117 �The flowers tug at me The streams wash me down Life drives at me I fall and hug the ground." 118 �Toward A Theory Of Appalachia In Advanced Capitalism Stephen P. Legeay This paper develops the notion of advanced capitalism to analyze certain social changes in American society during the 20th century. Among those dimensions considered are the concentration of capital, changes in class structure, ideological change, changes in the labor process, and the expansion of government intervention in the economy. The role of Appalachia within advanced capitalism is discussed, and some consideration is given to how the above-named structural and ideological changes are exemplified in the Appalachian region. Finally, the paper utilizes interviews with retired coal miners in southern West Virginia to illustrate certain aspects of capitalist development in the coalfields. Ethnicization And Urban Appalachians Martin N. Merger Ethnicization, specifically the formation of ethnic groups, is analyzed, using migrant Appalachians in cities of the industrial Midwest as a case study. Ethnicity is described as a variable rather than a constant or uniform social phenomenon, providing for the conceptualization of ethnic groups in different forms and at different levels of distinctness. Urban Appalachians are viewed in the context of four theoretical approaches to ethnicization, each stressing either cultural adaptation, the establishment of subjective group boundaries, ecological circumstances, or political development. In explaining emergent Appalachian ethnicity, traditional models of ethnicization focusing on culture and identity are rejected in favor of those emphasizing ecological and political forces of the urban environment. 119 �Pine Mountain Boarding High School: A Unique Educational Community, 1930-49 Walter Oldendorf This presentation features the results of an investigation sponsored by The Mellon Foundation and Berea College into the origins and consequences of a unique educational community created at Pine Mountain Settlement School in Eastern Kentucky during the two decades from 1930 to 1949. The notion of a community based curriculum is not particularly unique in the literature, but it is usually contained within a romanticist ideological framework. What occured at Pine Mountain Boarding High School, however, apparently lies more within the progressivist ideological framework that commenced with John Dewey, a rare phenomenon in American schools. The crucial distinctions between the two notions of education in a community experience curriculum can be discussed in terms of the role of the school. For the romanticist, the school is essentially passive in the education of the child—the child chooses those experiences in the community which will best enhance growth. The progressivist, however, sees the school as consciously arranging the kinds of experience—and reflective thinking about these experiences—which will best stimulate the cognitive and affective development of children. The progressivist school takes a very conscious, active role in arranging interactive experiences in or out of school which stimulate growth; the romanticist school counts on innate patterns to guide the child to choose his/her own optimum growth conditions. The Pine Mountain Boarding School curriculum seems unique in its application of progressivist principles to a community based curriculum. From the first year civics program in which students wrote, printed, and bound their own text based on life in their community, Pine Mountain students were given opportunities to be educated through school arranged life experiences in their own community. This kind of curriculum is unusual in the literatures of American education, and even rarer in actual practice. Investigating the history of Pine Mountain Boarding High School was worthwhile for reasons beyond its apparent uniqueness in American education. From a scholarly point of view it is significant to attempt to trace the ideological roots of the curriculum. More importantly, the progressivist notion of a community based curriculum has been advocated as a more effective curriculum for the education of youth than traditional or romantic approaches. Locating and interviewing graduates of Pine Mountain Boarding School offered a unique opportunity to confirm claims about the effects of a progressivist community based curriculum. Finally, if the Boarding High School was effective in facilitating the growth of youth into effective members of our society, then it would be very worthwhile to attempt to apply the principles of community based education to contemporary schools. 120 �A Critique Of Appalachian Sociolinguistics Brenda Cottrell Pfaff Is the concept of the language variety known as Appalachian English valid? After nearly a century of word-lists, dialect maps, and informant codes, mainstream linguists either take it for granted that the previously established descriptions of the language are accurate, or the question is ignored completely. In order to understand the significance of the progress that has been made in the area of Appalachian speech investigation, the inadequacies of the early linguistic studies, the dialect geographies, will be discussed. But rather than dismissing this forty-five year dialect atlas project as being outdated, possible alternative methods of analysis will be suggested which would incorporate new sociolinguistic data and techniques. In the preceding decade two non-mainstream sociolinguists, Walter Wolfram and James Robert Reese, working independently of each other, began to study the speech of Appalachia. Their techniques differ mainly from those of the linguistic geographers in that their investigations are much more thorough, the elicitation techniques are more conversational, and the data are more detailed. Though their work is a step in the right direction, their results are not conclusive about all of Appalachia because each linguist, of necessity, dealt with a very small number of informants, in a restricted setting. These field studies, because the results dislodge some of the old notions about Appalachian English, do indicate a need for more similar types of investigations throughout the entire Appalachian region, in urban as well as rural settings, if a clear, objective understanding of the language is to be obtained. An Ethnography of Speaking In An Appalachian Community George B. Ray This monograph presents a description and analysis of speech behavior in a rural community in Eastern Kentucky. Speech is viewed as one type of behavior which is culturally patterned. The research approach known as the ethnography of speaking is embraced as a means of discovering the way in which culture influences speech. Three speech events are analyzed: talk on home porches, talk at stores, and testifying in a church. The analysis of these events is carried out through a descriptive framework based on nine speech event components. A second section of the paper offers the development and interpretation of two cultural themes in the community, seasonal variations in speech topics and settings, and egalitarianism. 121 �"Oh, How I Want To Go Home:" The Myth Of Return And Ethnic Identification Among Appalachian Migrants To Urban Places. Terrence Russell My point of departure is Simmel's note on "The Stranger" (1950) which is concerned with "the stranger who stays" and the terms, characteristics and causes of his sojourn. The concept of the stranger directs attention to conditions of the stranger's life that remain unexplained (especially in the Appalachian case) after we have accounted for class-based phenomena and the insularity of his folk culture. If assimilation in the urban place is not going to occur, and for any existing ethnic group it most pointedly has not, we are dealing with Simmel's "stranger who stays". How can the stranger's sense of mobility, being out of place, be preserved when in fact he has been "in place" for years or generations? It is this aspect of ethnicity that has special relevance to the question of Appalachian ethnicity. I argue that there is such a thing as Appalachian ethnicity and that it is organized around a symbolics of place, central to which is a symbolic complex that may be termed "the myth of return." The myth of return is not unique to Appalachian migrants, but it is uniquely useful in explaining ethnic identity among a people who have few distinguishing physical or cultural traits to form the basis of "ethnic occasions." Women In Appalachian Education: An Initial Inquiry Ruth Scott This inquiry into whether women have had an impact on Appalachian Education has focused on four women, each of whom broke the accepted pattern of their day in terms of the female role. Each presents an image of power, vitality and vision, leading to measurable changes in the localities they chose to make real their visions. None is found among the 102 men in the index of McVey's history of education in Kentucky. My search was a small effort to balance that record. It sought to draw together some significant aspects of Katherine Pettitt, Cora Stewart, Alice Lloyd and Mary Spilman. 122 �I was interested particularly in the dynamics of these leaders: what factors were common? Each was born, and spent her childhood in the late 1900s; each was entirely single, or single after a brief, unsatisfying marriage; each spent decades, and massive efforts toward socially constructive goals. Through our limited knowledge, can we find a unifying concept? Katherine Pettitt, born in 1868, the earliest date of the four, was impelled by her curiosity to travel from her privileged home in Blue Grass Kentucky to the then remote Appalachians. She had read in the newspapers of 1885 of the FrenchEversole Feud in Hazard, Kentucky, "and she was eager to see what sort of place it was where people seemed to spend most of their time trying to shoot one another from ambush." When she and her companions arrived, on horseback, their emotions and sympathy were rather more engaged by the poverty, malnutrition and illiteracy of the "independent, high-spirited folk whose poverty and location have isolated them from the advantages of education and religion." These "quare women" bridged the cultural gap, received the trust and affection of the people, and managed to bring off introduction of health, educational and industrial-type innovations. Cora Stewart, born in 1875, began teaching when she was 20 and became superintendent of Rowan County schools at 26. Her second distinction was to become the first president of the Kentucky Education Association. The most remarkable achievement was initiation and carrying out of the Moonlight Schools for adult illiterates, almost wiping out in a few years Rowan County's thousands of illiterate adults. Her movement spread nationwide. Alice Lloyd, born in 1876, came as a frail cripple to the trackless Caney Creek area of the Kentucky mountains. Her Boston doctor had predicted that if she stayed home she would be dead in six months. In the chilly log cabins of the Caney Creek "holler" she worked incessantly for 43 years toward education and leadership for the mountains, initiating over 100 elementary and high schools and Caney Creek College, now Alice Lloyd College. Briefly, Mary Spilman of Pikeville College completes the foursome. Born in Illinois in 1888, she became for 39 years almost a one-woman faculty; she taught math, biology, German, Bible and physical education, coached the sports, and procured from the mountains an excellent collection of plants and insects. These four unique personalities share some distinctive traits. Each conforms to Maslow's description of the self-actualized individual. Such persons are characterized by a focus of interest on problems rather than self, identification with the human race, spontaneity in behavior and readiness to endure privation in the interest of values and goals. These four provided models for many young persons early in the 20th century. Their story should be widely told to hold up models of vitality and constructiveness for young people who will live in the 21st century. 123 �New Ideas And New Cultural Experiments In Appalachia—A Historical Outline Jewel L. Tabor The isolation imposed by the Appalachian mountains has forced their residents to develop self-reliance and courage. The spirit of independence has led mountain people to fight for democracy to defend their ideas and to provide the setting for many new cultural experiments. Appalachian people have fought for democratic ideas from the Colonial period. The first battle between the colonies and Great Britain occurred in 1771 when Royal Governor Tyron defeated a group of North Carolina "Regulators" who took up arms over excessive taxation and corrupt officials. Some of the regulators moved to the Watauga river valley in present day Tennessee and later evened the score at the Battle of King's Mountain. After the Revolutionary War some settlers who lived in the Appalachians or west of the mountains felt abandoned by their eastern neighbors. One group attempted to take matters into their own hands and formed the state of Franklin. Though Franklin failed it proved that Appalachian people would not allow themselves to be ignored. The mountaineers again showed their independent spirit in 1863 when some counties in western Virginia seceded from that state to form West Virginia because they opposed Virginia's plan to leave the union. Some democratic ideas from Appalachia have been of national or international significance. The federal income tax, reciprocal trade agreements and Good Neighbor policy were written by an Appalachian congressman. Their sense of defending what they believe in has led Appalachian people to espouse many humanitarian causes. Elihu Embree of Jonesboro, Tennessee published the first anti-slavery newspaper in the nation. David Crockett protested the removal of the Cherokee Indians from their native lands. "Mother" Mary Harris Jones was instrumental in organizing the United Mine Workers and in influencing the Pennsylvania State Legislature to pass child labor laws. Appalachia has been the setting for numerous cultural experiments. In 1880 Rugby was established as a settlement for second and third sons of British gentry to provide them with a new start in life. In 1925 Dayton, Tennessee became the setting for a famous trial over the controversial evolutionary theory. In 1933 the Tennessee Valley area was the setting for a revolutionary new effort to transform the entire region by harnessing a river. The electric power resulting from this and the isolation offered by the mountains were major factors in the selection of nearby Oak Ridge for the development of the first atomic bomb. 124 �The World's Largest Pottery: Does Appalachia Hold Its Future? Jack Welch This twenty-minute slide-illustrated lecture will indicate the history and accomplishments of the world's largest china manufacturing company, the Homer Laughlin China Company. Growing from a small company in the Ohio Valley in 1872 to the world's largest producer of semi-vitreous pottery (with claims to have produced 30 % of all pottery dinnerware sold in this nation) this company has a brilliant but unheralded past. Some of its most popular lines of ware, such as the "Fiesta" pattern, are collected world wide and attract buyers who pay fifty times what the item originally sold for. The company developed an automatic jigger, which will be shown in the lecture, as well as other important processes such as colored glaze and the tunnel kiln, which will also be shown. However, the company faces an uncertain future with foreign imports competing heavily for the former markets which Homer Laughlin claimed for its own. Also, problems in design and a tendency to look too much to others for leadership also enter. One especially interesting facet is the refusal to consider anything regional or Appalachian in its design. This lecture deals centrally with the remarkable persons and challenges which faced this Appalachian industry. The early technical difficulties in manufacturing the ware were confronted by Homer Laughlin who was made rich by the company, the increased capacity for production as the industrial revolution escalated was made possible by the Aaron and Wells families who bought the company, the problem with sales to match the increasing output was overcome by a salesman named George Washington Clarke, and the efforts at artistic maturity were undertaken by Frederick H. Rhead; the decision to make a fine china, the problems with unionization, and the gradual decline as a result of the foreign competition and difficulties in the industry itself are other problems that are discussed. The lecturer will have samples of pottery from the Homer Laughlin China Company as well as slides of the company, its founders, its present workers, and its current and past lines of ware. 125 �The Blue Ridge Mountains: A Regional Ecology Of Natural Hazards Gene Wilhelm, Jr. This paper starts from the apparently modest goal of assessing all the natural hazards that afflict a place. It is concerned with natural hazards in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia-North Carolina and with the long-term pattern of human response and adjustment. Specifically, the paper focuses on mountain folk kinship behavior and response to montane hazards, all of which are common, recurring, natural events. A 300 air-mile-long montane area between Waynesboro, Virginia, and Asheville, North Carolina, was researched over a nine-month period in 1980-1981. This region has consistently experienced riverine flooding due to severe rains, cloudbursts, and hurricanes; blizzards; freezing rain and glaze; wind storms; forest fires; droughts; massive earth movements; and severe native plant epidemics. Nevertheless, the mountain people have clung tenaciously to their kinship groups in gap, hollow, cove, meadow, and ridge settlements and, when necessary, rebuilt their homes. The environmental perceptions of natural hazards may be unique as a function of individual experiences, sensing, and learning capacities. But there are also processes and interactions of development that apply to the kinship group generally. In sum, in any kinship group there are two broad sorts of behavior that need to be performed: the instrumental or task-oriented behavior and the expressive or social-emotional behavior. When particular parameters of age, sex, knowledge, and experience with natural hazards are included, the individual who most often plays the instrumental role in kinship meetings and discussions was identified as the primary decision maker. Such an individual can be either male or female, but usually old and "wise." Appalachia And The World's Fair Michael J. McDonald and William Bruce Wheeler The 1982 World's Fair, to be held in Knoxville, Tennessee from May through October, has selected for its central theme that of "Energy Turns the World," a theme clearly designed to exploit one of the principal concerns of our society. Without blushing, promoters of the Fair have called Knoxville the "Energy Capital of the World," and have promised an "energy efficient" fair, an "Energy Innovation Center," and "Energy Research Pavilion," and wondrous displays of advances in solar, wind and geothermal energy. Counterpoised with the "high-tech" energy exhibits and the symbolic 126 �Sunsphere, however, will be many displays of Appalachian culture, the most ambitious of which will be the Folklife Festival, billed as "the most comprehensive presentation of traditional Appalachian culture ever held" in which "literally hundreds will participate, under good and sensitive circumstances." The contrast between the announced theme (of energy) and the displays of Appalachian life is sure to strike a note of discord and ambivalence. In 1904 hundreds of thousands of Americans attended the St. Louis Exposition, most of whom gawked and gaped at native tribesmen and women from the recently-acquired Philippines and displayed a mixture of curiosity and horror at their courtship dances, their eating habits and their standard of living. To Americans, these natives were living proof of the superiority of American culture, of its economic system's success, of the worthiness of its imperialistic venture. It is unlikely that a similar phenomenon will occur in 1982. Indeed, the opposite is more likely. In the midst of the complex, technological future is a certain dread of that very future, an ambivalence about it, a nostalgia for the simpler, uncomplicated life symbolized by Appalachia. Recently this impulse has been a powerful one in American life, giving power to Reagan's drive for the presidency, Jesse Helms, Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, the revival of the popular music of long ago and the recently revived "tea dances," and the increasing yearning for the simpler, uncomplicated life. Therefore visitors to the 1982 World's Fair will approach exhibits of Appalachian culture in a quite different way than people who stared wide-eyed at the Philippine natives in 1904. Of course, the Appalachian culture on display at the World's Fair is likely to be a contrived, sanitized, idealized Appalachia, in stark contrast to the "high-tech" energy exhibits. Such sanitized displays of Appalachia may offer false impressions and (worse) false hopes to Americans peering toward an uncertain future. Methods, Means, And Materials For Teaching Appalachian Studies Carolyn M. Hinson Since Eliot Wigginton's Foxfire experience, there has been little argument that Appalachia's oral tradition can prove a great motivating factor for students in our schools. By providing students with some very basic information about folklore, the teacher can rely on students' research skills and native knowledge to fill out a unit of study on Appalachian folklore. Focusing the study of the folktale on ghost, witch, Appalachian hero, and tall tales provides students with an understanding of this genre as well as an understanding of the people who produced these tales. By listening to and discussing the folk music of Appalachian, students recognize the British roots of our music, but also recognize changes in this music produced 127 �by life in Appalachia. Appalachian logic can be explored through activities related to superstitions of the area. Finally, a study of Appalachian language provides an awareness within students of various nonstandard grammatical forms that are a part of their everyday speech. Given within this presentation will be suggestions for teaching these various parts of our oral tradition as well as suggestions for motivating students to actively participate in the collection and preservation of this tradition. Unraveling Folklore—The Thread Of Appalachia Joyce L. Graham "Unraveling Folklore—The Thread of Appalachia" is designed to offer the participants a close-up look at the collecting process and findings of high school students. This project was done by ninth grade English students at Shawsville High School, Shawsville, Virginia. The students were provided the opportunity to participate in a field experience during the fall of 1981. Masses of information were gathered including: over fifty taped interviews, approximately two hundred written pages, unusual books, and handmade posters. A sampling of this diverse collection of folklore will be on display for the perusal of participants. This presentation will begin with the distribution of information on the procedure followed throughout the collecting process. These handouts will include ideas regarding goal setting, topic selection, procedural suggestions for collecting folklore, an anlysis form for post-collection study, and a sheet with a variety of reactions to field experiences and folklore collection. After distribution of handouts, the purpose of this collecting effort and the results of the process will be discussed. The primary objective of this project was to research the means by which folklore is transmitted from generation to generation and the effect this information has on the receiver of the information. Topic selection will be discussed. Examples from a variety of topics researched will be presented to the participants. The presentation will conclude with an overview of the results of the collecting process. Special attention will be given to attitudinal changes on the part of the students toward their culture. 128 �The Impact Of Economic Development On Women: Women And The Welfare State In Southern Appalachia Mary Anglin Rather than speaking to the issue of labor force participation rates or changes in the economy, per se, in this paper I focus upon social programming as a part of the development process and examine its impact on women in Appalachia. It is my contention that such programs serve as the means for the State to reorganize social relations around the productive sphere and a sense of class identity, in place of their foundation in kin networks and community ties. In this way the State is able to create an infrastructure to expedite the process of development, as well as to create social needs that can only be answered through further economic and social change. Because women serve as pivotal members of their families and kin networks, they are considered the "target population" for many of the programs. In my paper I consider the impact of the programs offered by two agencies, the Health Department and the Department of Social Services, on women's lives in the two counties I am studying. The Richmond, Kentucky Solar Energy Community Assessment /. Allen Singleton During February of 1979, Oak Ridge National Laboratories issued a RFP for a community in the Southeastern U.S. to participate in "The development of a solar future's scenario for the community ." In Richmond there were a number of ongoing activities and individuals who were already interested in energy alternatives. There were at least four perceptions of the project. The Oak Ridge National Laboratories Research Plan of the Technology Assessment Program called for "working teams" to develop plausible solar future(s) for the community, then present the scenario(s) to the community for "an assessment of the perceived social, economic, institutional and life style impacts...." It was not clear that the university based participants had fully grasped the sense of what the dynamics of a Community Level Technology Assessment concept was. A message which was never assimilated: "That is, the local economy actually may profit from the energy crisis, or at least from meeting successfully the challenges of that energy crisis in our own town." 129 �The final report of the project stands as one of those documents one wants to claim "credit" for authoring. One point stands clear, the task force activitists could never perceptualize how to develop scenarios, especially ones specific to Richmond. The Richmond experience did not produce the kind of results the stated purposes that TAP publications had indicated. Beyond the fundamental confusion, there were several latent factors which affected the project. One is the fact that approximately 60 % of the households in the city are heated by natural gas. Second, is the apparent availability of wood as an alternative heating source. As a result of these, there was a willingness in the community to postpone any systematic search for energy alternatives. There were several specific and continuing contributions: the solar fairs; the window covering workshops; the solar greenhouse workshop; the audio-visual presentations; SOLAR publications; the creation of an on-going organization, the Mountain Communities Energy Alternatives; and the creation of a permanent community library of reference materials. It is also reasonable to assume that within the community of Richmond there is a higher degree of awareness of alternative energy sources. 130 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publications Description An account of the resource This collection contains digitized monographs and collections from the Appalachian Consortium Press. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Date Issued Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource. June 1, 2017 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource <a title="Digital Scholarship and Initiatives" href="http://library.appstate.edu/services/digital-scholarship-and-initiatives" target="_blank">Digital Scholarship and Initiatives</a> Publication URL https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636818/critical-essays-in-appalachian-life-and-culture/ Digital Publisher Digital Republication Appalachian State University Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Critical Essays in Appalachian Life & Culture Description An account of the resource <span>The proceedings from the 1982 Appalachian Studies Conference, edited by Rick Simon, Grace Edwards, Ron Eller, Joan Moser, and Barry M. Buxton, includes contributions by Rick Simon; Ronald D. Eller; Deborah Morentz Markley and Brady J. Deaton; William W. Philliber and Phillip J. Obermiller; Virginia McCoy Watkins and Diana Gullet Trevino; Grace Toney Edwards; Harold Branam; Parks Lanier; Joan Moser; Melinda Bollar Wagner; and Thomas Plaut.</span><br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VGgY_tnkB056w_5EHHKR8hnWoaElUOEu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636818/critical-essays-in-appalachian-life-and-culture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UNC Press Print on Demand</a> Subject The topic of the resource Appalachian Region--Congresses Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Simon, Rick Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982 Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Proceedings of the 5th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Conference proceedings Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/12212302/appalachia.html Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a> Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1980s Multidisciplinary/ Appalachian Studies https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/ba4c8a6ba400f4867c6779e9f893a89e.pdf 27b2eca5b3a16ab81b5194d0558f5e06 PDF Text Text �TRaNSFORMATION OF LIFE AND LABOR INAPPALACHIA Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association Edited by Ronald L. Lewis 1990 Volume II �The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From 1973 to 2004, its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program, Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press. www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Original copyright © 1990 by the Appalachian Consortium Press. ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-3699-3 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-3701-3 Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press www.uncpress.org �Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association Volume 2 1990 Transformation of Life and Labor in Appalachia TABLE OF CONTENTS Preindustrial Jackson County and Economic Development 1 Gordon B. McKinney Western Carolina University Folk Tradition and Industrialization in Appalachia Jean Haskell Speer Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Signs of Civilization: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine as Colonial Narrative Rodger Cunningham Sue Bennett College Household Composition and Early Industrial Transformation: Eastern Kentucky 1880-1910 Thomas A. Arcury University of Kentucky Bringing Modern Notions of Childhood and Motherhood to Preindustrial Appalachian: Katherine Pettit and May Stone, 1899-1901 Rhonda England University of Kentucky Four Perspectives on Appalachian Culture and Poverty Roger A. Lohmann West Virginia University iii 11 21 47 69 76 �Organized Medicine and the UMWA Welfare and Retirement Fund: An Appalachian Perspective on an National Conflict. Richard P. Mulcahy University of Pittsburgh-Titusville The Roving Picket Movement and the Appalachian Committee for Full Employment, 1959-1965: A Narrative Kate Black University of Kentucky Community Mobilization: The Tug Hill Landfill Site Beth Degutis University of Tennessee The Bitter Creek Appalachian Symposium Garry Barker Berea College A Bridge or a Barrier?: Assessing the Usefulness of Public Education for Individual Success in an East Tennessee County Roberta Campbell and Alan J. DeYoung University of Kentucky "Never Met a Man Who Made a Basket... Never Saw My Daddy Cane a Chair" Bobby Ann Starnes Harvard University Appalachian Studies Association Membership These articles are based on presentations made at the 1989 Appalachian Studies Conference. iv 92 110 128 143 155 175 187 �1989 Appalachian Studies Association Officers Loyal Jones Doyle Bickers Ronald Lewis Sallie Miller Alice Brown President Vice-President Conference Program Chair Newsletter Editor/Secretary Treasurer Steering Committee Program Committee Loyal Jones, Chair Doyle Bickers Barry Buxton Roberta Herrin Parks Lanier, Jr. Grace Toney Edwards Gordon McKinney Rosemary Goss Eliot Wigginton Wilburn Hayden Ronald Lewis, Chair Dwight Billings Kate Black Rebecca Hancock John Inscoe Nancy Joyner Jane Shook William Turner Local Arrangements Mary Beth Pudup, Chair Staff of Regional Research Institute of WVU Ronald L. Lewis, the 1989 program chair of the Appalachian Studies Association and guest editor of the Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association, is professor of history and chairman of the department of history at West Virginia University. He has published extensively on the coal industry. v �This page intentionally left blank �Preindustrial Jackson County and Economic Development Gordon B. McKinney The presence of a growing number of community studies of preindustrial Appalachia allows us the luxury of taking a broader look at this most important part of the mountain past. The number of studies has increased rapidly and has been of very high quality (Waller, 1988; Dunn, 1988; and Pudup, 1989). The results suggest the need for a major revision of our understanding of the traditional world of the highland farmer. This change in perspective will then require a modification of our interpretation of the role played by industrialization in the years between 1880 and 1920. This more realistic understanding of the foundations of preindustrial society will inevitably undermine some of our more cherished notions about the responsibility for the economic problems that followed. This is a small price to pay for increased knowledge and a sounder conceptual base upon which to base our analysis of present conditions. One of the most difficult tasks for historians to deal with is the baneful effect of perfect hindsight. Knowing that the mountain region was to be industrialized, has led most of us to deal with the previous time as nonindustrialized Appalachia instead of approaching it on its own terms. This has allowed us to create a virtual 'Garden of Eden' waiting to be despoiled by insensitive and greedy outsiders and capitalists (Eller, 1982; Billings et al. 1986). This has encouraged most of us to ignore or repress such historical developments as the dispossession of Volume Two, 1990 1 �Native Americans, African slavery, the exploitation of women, the misuse of the environment, elitist politics, rampant drug use, and reluctance to support education as part of preindustrial life. This convenient memory lapse has allowed us to center our attention on the formation of an agricultural society characterized by communal and kinship ties that limited the impact of impersonal economic relationships. A study of Jackson County, North Carolina, in a broader context will allow us to examine the validity of even this limited vision of the mountain past. One concept associated with the traditional mountain lifestyle that has survived the onslaught of recent scholarship is that of community. The new studies agree that the nuclear family homestead was the most basic economic unit. They point out, however, that the families were never individually self-sufficient (Loehr, 1952; Shammas, 1982; Puritt, 1984). In fact, many of those who lived on the land were not themselves landowners. A study of several north Georgia counties concluded that as many as 40 percent of the farmers in that region were tenants (Bode and Ginter, 1986). This conclusion is partially confirmed by the work of my colleagues on the Jackson County project (Blethen and Wood, Jr., 1987). Steven Hahn's innovative work on the Georgia upcountry strongly suggests that despite these differences in the relationship to the land that personal contacts and concerns dominated a community based economy (Hahn, 1983). The point being that all residents of a locality required the skills of craftsmen like millers, blacksmiths, joiners, coopers, and wheelwrights to survive. Hahn concluded that this community agricultural economy was not deeply influenced by the market economy. Several studies of twentieth-century mountain people document that this sense of personal relationship persisted despite the impact of industrialization and change required by Federal policies (Dunn, 1988; Hall et al. 1987; and McDonald and Muldowny, 1982). Another school of interpretation suggests that the presence of a community-based economy does not mean the absence of market pressures. Among the most significant of the scholars proposing this perspective is James T. Lemon. Lemon (1972) argues that the early settlers in southern Pennsylvania were deeply influenced by commercial motives. Many of these individuals ultimately migrated to Virginia and North Carolina and became the first settlers in the Appalachian highlands. If Lemon is correct, the original mountain settlers came not to escape the competition of the market economy, but to find a better opportunity to succeed in it. Nor is Lemon alone in his assertion that community economies were part of a broader market economy. A variety of traditional and Marxist scholars have concluded that American farmers had strong commercial ties by the early 19th century (Clark, 1979; Appleby, 1982; Merrill, 1977). 2 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �For example, Winnifred Rothenberg (1981) has analyzed the convergence of market-center prices and local prices and concluded that by 1820 at the latest Massachusetts farmers were part of the market economy. Analysis of preindustrial Appalachia confirms both the role played by the community in the economy and the importance of the market. The traumatic events of the Civil War illustrated the interdependence of mountain families. Since there were relatively few slaves in Jackson and other mountain counties, the absence of husbands and sons in the army left most families at risk. One Jackson County woman reported that the families of Cherokee soldiers were "living on weeds and the bark of trees ...."! Since their neighbors were little better off themselves, the state and local governments were forced to turn to a formal welfare program to try to insure that soldiers families had food (Escott, 1984). The Confederate draft not only took farmers, but the army needed highly skilled craftsmen to equip and maintain itself. The result was that Jackson and most other mountain counties were stripped of millers, joiners, blacksmiths, tanners, and shoemakers. The loss of these men was disastrous in the extreme and desperate appeals went out to government officials to return some of these essential workers to mountain communities. 2 Thus, the stress of war conclusively demonstrated the dependence of mountain families on their neighbors. Despite the community structure of the mountain economy, there is increasing evidence that the farmers of the region were integrated into a broader series of regional relationships. While local residents may have appeared to take part in a series of barter exchanges, their transactions were based on monetary values being assigned to each item. For example, one western North Carolina farmer made the following offer to a local merchant: "We received a note from you stating that you was anxious to swap beef hides for leather. We will swap at the old prices if that will suit.3" Jackson County farmer and businessman, William Holland Thomas, was typical of this type of mountain store owner. During the years between 1820 and 1850, Thomas secured furs, hides, livestock, butter, and ginseng from his neighbors. In return, he provided them with liquor, salt, gunpowder, hardware, and dry goods (Blethan, p. 74-75). Advertisements in the Asheville News in 1860 offered a wide variety of products for sale. These included such luxuries as piano fortes, personal photographs, and hooped skirts. Clearly, the mountain people had access to the broader American economy. There were other indications of the mountain people's participation in the regional and national economy as well. Not only was cash the basis for commodity exchange, but it was also the measure of value for the most basic of goods—land. Unlike real property in other parts of the South where it was treated as a disposable resource—an attitude found Volume Two, 1990 3 �among some in the highland as well—land was usually the measure of a mountain farmer's wealth and a source of speculative investment (Wright, 1986; Blethen, p.77). William Holland Thomas not only ran a number of stores, but he invested in hundreds of thousands of acres of western North Carolina land. While part of Thomas' reasons for doing this was to protect the homeland of the Eastern Band of Cherokees, he used most of the land for his own personal gain. His own holdings were smaller, however, than those under the control of the Love family—his in-laws (See Inscoe, 1984; Crawford, 1986). Of course, the value of slaves had a regionally determined monetary value as well—prices in Texas and Arkansas determined values in the mountain counties. A report in the Asheville paper noted that five slaves were sold for an average cost of $1,150—a very good price for the time—in early 1859. As a result, all aspects of a mountain farmer's life including his land, crops, livestock, and labor were computed in monetary terms. Thus, we seem to have a contradiction in our analysis. Jackson and other mountain counties were the home of a community economy that functioned through a series of interdependent local relationships. At the same time, all items in the economy were valued in monetary terms determined by broader regional and national markets. The confusion seems to rest on the assumption that the people at the time sensed that these two conditions were not consistent. Apparently they did not. Certainly in western North Carolina, there was a strong push by local leaders to encourage increased economic development outside of agriculture. The problem as Mary Beth Pudup has convincingly demonstrated was the absence of local capital to finance the desired changes. Thomas, although a member of the anti-development party in North Carolina, was an outspoken proponent of the extension of the Western North Carolina railroad into the mountain counties (Jackson County Journal, 1912). His stand was endorsed by the entire political opposition and by most voters who willingly accepted higher taxes in return for access to the outside world (Kruman, 1983; Asheville News, 1959). Using the small amount of state aid available, western North Carolina county governments provided the first major roadways in the region. The Buncombe Turnpike—laid out north and south—connected East Tennessee with upper South Carolina through Asheville. This route provided an avenue for most of the livestock trade of that part of the mountain region. At one point in the 1850s more than 100,000 hogs a year moved across this route (McDonald and McWhiney, 1975). The state road cut across the mountains from east to west and was maintained by local labor. The importance of this road was demonstrated when it fell in disrepair during the Civil War and goods could not be shipped to Jackson County.4 Even government officials were forced to admit that the normal pattern of transport to western North Carolina 4 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �had been destroyed. The North Carolina salt commissioner at Saltville, Virginia, could not ship his precious cargo to several mountain counties.5 Obviously, these problems would not have been so crucial if the region had not needed to trade with other parts of the South. The impact of the breakdown of mountain transportation during the war further illustrated the dependence of mountain families on the outside world as well as their communities. Abundant evidence indicates that most western North Carolina families had stopped producing their own cloth. Many households lacked even the basic cotton cards and wood cards needed to start the process of preparing the fibers to make thread and yarn.6 Others refused to consider starting from that basic level and insisted upon obtaining finished thread and yarn ready for weaving.7 Even those who tried to do it themselves found the old skills difficult to learn.8 Still others disdained the use of the loom and would purchase only the finished product.9 The demand for cloth was so great in the western counties that one group wanted to construct a textile factory there.10 As conclusive as the above example is of market involvement, the expectation of farm families that they would have to purchase food during the war is equally convincing. Those involved did not find the practice unusual or unexpected. While the numbers involved were relatively small, the appeals to the government for direct assistance were done with the expectation that food could be directly purchased.11 It is clear that many mountain families had become dependent on the market for products that scholars have assumed were produced at home. The investigator must confront the question of why contemporary observers were convinced that the mountain people lived in a different world from the rest of the country. This perception would seem to be based on the assumption that the relative isolation of the mountain people was a matter of their own choice. They chose to live apart and to live at the subsistence level. Mary Beth Pudup's recent work suggests otherwise. Looking at economic developments in Eastern Kentucky, she demonstrates that the mountain population actually lost contact with the market economy in the latter part of the nineteenth century. As railroads opened up the adjacent lowlands, trade routes moved away from the mountains, and the resulting economy was more isolated than had been previously the case (Pudup, 1988). When outside capital perceived the opportunities provided by the natural resources of the region, the state governments and large corporations provided the rails that opened up the region. These investors fulfilled not only their own visions of development, but those of many mountain businessmen who had little access to capital. Thus, one can argue that the creation of the community-based agricultural economy of the Southern mountains was not an escape from the market economy. Instead, it was a reflection of the geographical Volume Two, 1990 5 �realities and economic resources of the region. This does not mean that the mountaineer did not live in relative isolation. Nor does it mean that the families in Jackson County produced many manufactured goods or commercial farm products. But it does indicate that this was not the result of a commitment to an ideology that opposed economic expansion and industrialization. When the railroads arrived in Sylva and Dillsboro, the farmers left their relatively unprofitable farms to work in town or for timber companies. Even the great depressions of the 1890s and 1930s did not stop this flow of people off the farm. Our new understanding of the preindustrial world of Jackson County must, therefore, contain the following points. The acknowledged isolation of the mountain people was relative and did not shield them from the workings of the market economy. Many in the county and in the region worked hard to maintain connections to the outside world. Individual slaveowners, merchants, stock drovers, craftsmen, and farmers were already directly involved in a cash economy in which prices were determined outside of the region. The failure to expand commercially and to industrialize was not due to hostility directed against that type of activity, but was due primarily to an absence of local capital necessary to finance large scale enterprises. When the capital was made available by outside sources, the mountain middle class eagerly participated in the economic revolution that followed. Many mountain farm families also exchanged their dependence on the neighbors for the dependence on the large companies that exploited the resources of the region. Large landowners like William Holland Thomas were replaced by large landowners like Champion Paper Company. Viewed from this perspective, the industrialization that followed the coming of the railroads was an acceptable change. While many residents of Jackson County would decry the loss of intimacy in personal contacts, few desired to return to their previous way of life. In addition, they were able to maintain contact with large numbers of their children who would have had to migrate if industrial jobs had not provided opportunities near the homes of their parents. By looking at the preindustrial period as free from commercial influences, scholars have overemphasized the changes brought by economic development. In addition, they have been able to portray the mountain people as unwilling victims of a world they did not understand. While many of them did not comprehend or endorse the totality of the changes, they did welcome the opportunities presented and recognized that the region had irrevocably changed. It is now time for Appalachian scholars to make the same discovery. 6 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Letters Adkins, William. Statement, n.d. Eller, Jas et al, to Zebulon B. Vance. 8 November 1862. Callaway, R.F. et al, to Vance. 11 November 1862. Reel 15: Shell, J. F. to Vance. 3 March 1863. Reel 16: Conley, Elizabeth et al, to Vance. 10 July 1863. Reel 18: Shoop, D.C. to Vance. 24 March 1864. Reel 22: Love, R.E.A. to Vance. 22 April 1864. Reel 23: Coxey, John A. et al, to Vance, n.d. Reel 26. In McKinney and McMurry, Vance Papers. Atkinson, Thomas to Zebulon B. Vance. 27 November 1863. Reel 20: Bowen, N. to Vance. 6 January 1864. Reel 21: Erwin, JJ. to Vance. 1 February 1864. Murdock, [W.] to Vance. 7 February 1864. Reel 3: Reagan, J.A. to Vance. 15 February 1864. Welch, R.V. to Vance. 20 February [18]64. Reel 22: Warren, J.M. to Vance. 16 March 1865. Reel 26: In McKinney, Vance Papers. Cummings, A.W. to Zebulon B. Vance. 14 April 1863. Reel 17: Walker, R.T. to Vance. 2 March 1865. Reel 4: McKinney, Vance Papers. [Deaver], Mary to . 30 March 1863. "Mary Cansler is here learning me how to spin, but finds it a rather hard job." Gash Family Papers, North Carolina Division of Archives and History. Henry, Wm. L. to Zebulon B. Vance. 16 May 1864. Reel 23: McKinney, Vance Papers. Lankford, Wm. to Zebulon Vance. 14 April 1863. Reel 17: Summey, A.T. to Vance. 20 May 1863. Reel 7: McKinney, Vance Papers Love, Margaret E. to Zebulon B. Vance. 10 May 1864, Reel 23. In McKinney, Gordon B. and Richard M. McMurry, eds. 1987. The Papers of Zebulon Baird Vance. Frederick: University Publications of America. McClelland, H. T. to Zebulon B. Vance. 22 February [18]63. Reel 16: Lonon, John to Vance, n.d. Reel 26: McKinney, Vance Papers. Miller, S. H. to Zebulon B. Vance. 23 March 1863. Reel 16: In McKinney, Vance Papers. Spicer, H. and H. J. to J. and C.J. Cowles. 26 January [18] 63. Calvin J. Cowles Papers, North Carolina Division of Archives and History. Woodfin to Zebulon B. Vance. 1 October 1863. op.cit. Volume Two, 1990 7 �Works Cited Appleby, Joyce 0.1982. "Commercial Farming and the 'Agrarian Myth' in the Early Republic." Journal of American History LXVIII: March 1982, 833-849; Merrill, Michael. 1977. "Cash is Good to Eat: Self-Sufficiency and Exchange in the Rural Economy of the United States." Radical History Review III: Winter 1977, 42-71. Asheville, N.C. News. 6 January 1859. Asheville, N.C. News I. 1 November 1860. Billings, Dwight et al. 1986. "Culture, Family, and Community in Preindustrial Appalachia." Appalachian Journal XIII: Winter 1986, 154-170. Blethen, H. Tyler and Curtis W. Wood, Jr. 1987. "The Pioneer Experience to 1851." In Max R. Williams ed., The History of Jackson County. Sylva, N.C: The Jackson County Historical Society, 83. Bode, Frederick A. and Donald E. Ginter. 1986. Farm Tenancy and the Census in Antebellum Georgia. Athens: University of Georgia Press. "Campaign Broadside," reprinted in Jackson County Journal, 12 June 1912. Clark, Christopher. 1979. "The Household Economy, Market Exchange, and the Rise of Capitalism in the Connecticut Valley, 1800-1860," Journal of Social History XIII: Winter 1979, 169-189. Dunn, Durwood. 1988. Cades Cove: The Life and Death of A Southern Appalachian Community, 1818-1937. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Eller, Ronald D. 1982. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1-37. Escott, Paul. 1984. "Poverty and Government Aid to the Poor in Confederate North Carolina," North Carolina Historical Review LXI: October 1984, 462-480. Hahn. 1983. The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890. New York: Oxford University Press. Hall, Jacquelin D. et al. 1987. Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Inscoe, John. 1984. "Mountain Masters: Slaveholding in Western North Carolina." North Carolina Historical Review LXI: April 1984, 143-173; Crawford, Martin. 1986. "Wealth, Slaveholding and Power in the Southern 8 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Mountains: Ash County, North Carolina, in 1860-1861." Appalachian Studies Conference: unpublished paper. Kruman, Marc W. 1859. Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 1836-1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 10; Asheville, N.C. News, 9 June 1859. Lemon, J.J. 1972. The Best Poor Man's Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southern Pennsylvania. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Loehr, Rodney C. 1952. "Self-Sufficiency on the Farm," Agricultural History XXVI: January 1952, 41. McDonald, Forest and Grady McWhiney. 1975. "The Antebellum Herdsmen: Reinterpretatio." Journal of Southern History XL1: May 1975, 161-162. McDonald, Michael J. and John Muldowny. 1982. TVA and the Dispossessed: The Resettlement of Population in the Norris Dam Area. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Pudup, Mary Beth. 1988. "The Limits of Subsistence: Agriculture and Industry in Central Appalachia." Unpublished paper: 11-13. Pudup, Mary Beth. 1989. "The Boundaries of Class in Preindustrial Appalachia." Journal of Historical Geography, XV: 1989, n.p. Puritt, Bettye Hobbs. 1984. "Self-Sufficiency and the Agricultural Economy of Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts," William and Mary Quaterly XLI: July 1984, 338. Rothenberg, W. 1981. "The Market and Massachusetts Farmers, 1750-1855." Journal of Economic History XLI: June 1981, 302. Shammas, Carole. 1982. "How Self-Sufficient was Early America." Journal of Interdisciplinary History XIII: Autumn 1982, 252-253. Waller, Altina L. 1988. Feud: Hatfields, McCorys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Wright, Gavin. 1986. Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War. New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 30-31; Blethin and Wood, "Pioneer," 77. Wright, Gavin. 1978. The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 144-154. Volume Two, 1990 9 �Footnotes 1 Love, Margaret E. to Zebulon B.Vance. 10 May 1864. Reel 23. In McKinney, Gordon B. and Richard M. McMurry, eds. 1987. The Papers of Zebulon Baird Vance. Frederick: University Publications of America. 2 Adkins, William. Statement, n.d. Eller, Jas et al, to Zebulon B. Vance. 8 November 1862. Callaway, R.F. et al, to Vance. 11 November 1862. Reel 15: Shell, J. F. to Vance. 3 March 1863. Reel 16: Conley, Elizabeth et al, to Vance. 10 July 1863. Reel 18: Shoop, D.C. to Vance. 24 March 1864. Reel 22: Love, R.E.A. to Vance. 22 April 1864. Reel 23: Coxey, John A. et al, to Vance, n.d. Reel 26. In McKinney and McMurry, Vance Papers. 3 Spicer, H. and H. J. to J. and C J. Cowles, 26 January [18]63. Calvin J. Cowles Papers, North Carolina Division of Archives and History. 4 Miller, S.H. to Zebulon B. Vance. 23 March 1863. Reel 16: In McKinney, Vance Papers. B Woodfin to Zebulon B. Vance. 1 October 1863. op.cit. 6 Atkinson, Thomas to Zebulon B. Vance. 27 November 1863. Reel 20: Bowen, N. to Vance. 6 January 1864, Reel 21: Erwin, J.J. to Vance. 1 February 1864. Murdock, [W.] to Vance. 7 February 1864. Reel 3: Reagan, J.A. to Vance. 15 February 1864. Welch, R.V. to Vance. 20 February [18]64. Reel 22: Warren, J.M. to Vance. 16 March 1865. Reel 26: In McKinney, Vance Papers. I Cummings, A. W. to Zebulon B. Vance. 14 April 1863. Reel 17: Walker, R.T. to Vance. 2 March 1865. Reel 4: McKinney, Vance Papers. 8 [Deaver], Mary to . 30 March 1863. "Mary Cansler is here learning me how to spin, but finds it a rather hard job." Gash Family Papers, North Carolina Division of Archives and History. 9 Lankford, Wm. to Zebulon Vance. 14 April 1863. Reel 17: Summey, A.T. to Vance. 20 May 1863. Reel 7: McKinney, Vance Papers. 10 Henry, Wm. L. to Zebulon B. Vance. 16 May 1864. Reel 23: McKinney, Vance Papers. II McClelland, H. T. to Zebulon B. Vance. 22 February [18]63. Reel 16: Lonon, John to Vance, n.d. Reel 26: McKinney, Vance Papers. Gordon B. McKinney is a program officer with the National Endowment for the Humanities. He recently edited The Papers of Zebulon Vance. 10 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Folk Tradition and Industrialization in Appalachia Jean Haskell Speer Folklore, like Appalachia, is one of those words that is usually misunderstood. Both words are mystified and mythologized in the popular media and popular parlance. For many people, the words "folklore" and "Appalachia" do not belong in the same sentence with the word "industrialization." So, I want to begin this paper with a definition of terms, then give an overview of the transformation of traditional culture in Appalachia through increased modernity and industrialization, and finally examine in detail some specific traditions to illustrate the changes. Some people dismiss what they consider to be "just folklore" as the quaint and trivial parts of the culture of a group. Folklore, they believe, is the remnant of some earlier, more primitive level of culture found only among rural and/or illiterate persons. Folklore is unreliable belief or practice, always on the verge of dying out. These are common misconceptions. Folklore, in fact, is found in all cultures, and at all levels of society. It is not a mark of, nor a lack of, sophistication. Folklore is not a sign of the uncultured—folklore is culture. Folklore may not be reliable in the same way that historical fact, legal documents, or scholarly studies are, but it is an accurate indicator of the shared aesthetics, philosophy, values, and identity of a group. Folklore creates both communities and Volume Two, 1990 11 �families and may inform us more about culture than do dates, names, events, or prominent leaders. Folklore and folklife consist of received traditions passed on by those who have gone before us, or, with whom we share some community. It is our traditional culture: all that we learn informally, orally, by observing, or by imitating. Tradition is part of all lives; our folk traditions create the distinctive sense of us that we share with our families, friends, work groups, regions, and so on. In folklore, the groups in which people participate express their values and worldview in traditional ways. Folk traditions do reveal some of the past to us; but folk traditions are, in fact, more revealing of the present than the past. While folklore does conserve patterns and some specifics of language, belief, or behavior, folk traditions do not persist unless they are dynamic as well as conservative. While folk processes are recognizable across time and space by some unchanging features, traditions disappear when they do not make dynamic adaptations to changes in people's cultural circumstances. We only maintain those traditions that are meaningful to us in the present and adaptable to our current needs. So, some traditions do die out; others remain vital and viable, while still others are revived when circumstances change. This is not to suggest that all folk traditions serve us well; some are dysfunctional. Often people are hidebound by what we may call the tyranny of tradition, but this too is a symptom of their current lifestyle as much as it is an indication of the past. Folk traditions will reveal, however, what we think we need from our past. When we study folk traditions, we examine the processes by which culture is expressed in verbal art such as stories, ballads, jokes, curses, and the like; things made by hand, or material culture (barns, fences, clothing, baskets, tombstones); and the things people do or customary lore (beliefs, gestures, music, celebrations, work processes, rites of passage). Many of the folk traditions we study, of course, are complex and encompass all these categories at once: an Appalachian hog killing, for example, combines traditional patterns of work, food preservation, weather lore, verbal art, and much more. One way to see the dynamism of folk tradition is to observe the adaptation of traditional forms and practices to new necessities of life. Periods of rapid change in a society are peak times for observing this adaptive process. In Appalachia, the transformation from a more stable, agrarian lifestyle to an industrialized, modernized, and fragmented life, particularly in the early part of this century, transformed traditional culture in the mountains as well as the economy. The story of the industrialization of Appalachia has been told with insight by Eller (1982), Kirby (1987), and others. 12 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �These researchers document rapid and wrenching social and economic changes that occurred in the mountains in the period from 1880 to 1960. In the first major period of industrialization at the turn of the century, the development of timbering, mining, and tourism changed the physical landscape of Appalachia, as well as the economy and the social structure. A people who had been largely independent, subsistence farmers became urban, industrial, or service workers. While some cultural traditions most assuredly disappeared with these changes, the process of tradition remained unchanged. Many older folklore forms were adapted to new themes, contexts, and functions; new traditions developed from changed patterns of living. One of the clearest examples of this adaptation of traditional forms is the use of folksong and ballads as vehicles for expressing the emotional experience of coal mining. There were songs about explosions ('The Dream of the Miner's Child"), songs about labor struggles ("Coal Creek Troubles"), songs about heroes ("The Death of Mother Jones," "John Henry"), and Blues like "Black Lung Paycheck." Older folksong and ballads have often been adapted to songs of protest on the picket lines; such songs combine continuity and change in an effort to keep the protesting group cohesive and aligned with their cultural roots. Jack Kirby, in his book, Rural Worlds Lost, cites another example of a traditional Appalachian practice that changed, but persisted, with the industrialization of the mountains. He writes: That the collapse of mountain lumber and coal industries and the onset of the Depression coincided with national Prohibition made moonshining and bootlegging all the more logical as a strategy for coping with misery and overpopulation. And just as country people took their liquor-making skills and habits to coal camps, migrants to textile towns also cooked whiskey for succor. During the mid-1980s a physician making house calls in the squalid Piedmont Heights section of Burlington, North Carolina, saw a man distilling spirits on his kitchen stove. Another factory hand sold corn whiskey from his mill village shack, hiding his supplies under the house next to the Chimney base. No adult (including the police) could squeeze into the crawl space, so the bootlegger's four-year-old son did the fetching. Thus were rural ways adapted to urban scenes (1987: 205). One phase of Appalachian industrialization began during World War II and postwar years, when changes in the industrial economy sent Volume Two, 1990 13 �thousands of mountain folk to live in urban centers outside the mountains; the process of tradition migrated along with them. Although fictional, Harriett Arnow's, The Dollmaker, charts changes in tradition memorably. Gertie Nevels, a mountain carver of wooden figures, moves with her family from the mountains of Kentucky to a large, industrial city in the north. The transformation in her family's relationships, values, and lifestyles are embodied in the changes in her traditional carving. As her carvings become popular among her new neighbors, and the commercial potential of her carving becomes clear, her husband, Clovis, and her children urge Gertie to "mass produce" her wood figures by using an electric saw and make them more commercially appealing by painting the figures. Gertie resists until she must face the choice between her old ways of craftsmanship and feeding her family. Because her dolls are "folksy" enough for her urban customers, she gets a large order for her work: She told Clovis of the doll order when she went indoors, and he was pleased. "You could have a little steady income—if you can make the things cheap enough but nice enough that a lot of people'ull want em." "Yes," she said, but with no enthusiasm, studying now the thumb of the uplifted hand in the block of wood [the figure of Christ she has been carving for years]. She held her own just below her breasts, then dropped it quickly; her hand would never be like that; she had two hands now, one reaching out making people drop into it money that might have gone for down payments [on land back in Kentucky]. She felt heavy and tired and old (Arnow 1954: 507). Arnow uses Gertie's carving as a central metaphor in the novel to show the devastating effects of industrialization, and to point out the resilience of traditions. In Jim Wayne Miller's poem, "The Brier Losing Touch With His Traditions," he, like Arnow, captures the changes that traditions often undergo, but that many people find unacceptable: The Brier Losing Touch With His Traditions Once he was a chairmaker. People up north discovered him. They said he was "an authentic mountain craftsman." People came and made pictures of him working, wrote him up in the newspapers. 14 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �He got famous. Got a lot of orders for his chairs. When he moved up to Cincinnati so he could be closer to his market (besides, a lot of his people lived there now) he found out he was a Brier. And when customers found out he was using an electric lathe and power drill just to keep up with all the orders, they said he was losing touch with his traditions. His orders fell off something awful. He figured it had been a bad mistake to let the magazine people take those pictures of him with his power tools, clean-shaven, wearing a flowered sport shirt and drip-dry pants. So he moved back down to east Kentucky. Had himself a brochure printed up with a picture of him using his hand lathe. Then when folks would come from the magazines, he'd get rid of them before suppertime so he could put on his shoes, his flowered sport shirt and double-knit pants, and open a can of beer and watch the six-thirty news on tv out of New York and Washington. He had to have some time to be himself. (Miller 1980: 44) Miller astutely demonstrates how much people prefer their own perception of folklore and folklife rather than the realities of the traditional process in an urbanized, industrialized age. As a folklorist who primarily studies oral traditions, I find it interesting to see how traditional story forms are adapted to changing cultural circumstances and needs. A story we collected in Patrick County, Virginia, a few years ago as part of a grant project, illustrates the evolution of such a traditional story. The county still appears outwardly to be rural and serene. In reality, most of the residents no longer live off the land, but commute outside the county to work in textile plants, furniture plants, or similar industries. The young people generally leave the county to find employment after schooling. Since the beginning of this century, the changes in this community have been profound, and we documented these changes in our project. Volume Two, 1990 15 �Not surprisingly, the traditional culture, or folklore, of the community also has adapted to, and expresses, the changes. Anthropologist Victor Turner (1977: 76) has said that the texts of a community are special reflexive mechanisms for mirroring and monitoring behavior in a culture. These cultural performances, such as stories, legends, ceremonies, rituals, and so on, help us to learn our own culture, give our lives meaning beyond the immediate present, confront our fundamental values, and help us discover the principles for right living within our own culture. The stories and other cultural performances that we studied in Patrick County functioned as just such reflexive mechanisms for commenting on life in the community. One story we collected was a traditional ghost story. The story roughly goes this way: a man spends the night in a haunted house or cabin. An apparition appears and speaks to him (in some versions the apparition is only seen and does not speak). The man runs, and, after some distance, stops to rest. The apparition again appears beside him and says, "We had a pretty good race, didn't we?" The man replies, "Yes, and we're fixin to have another one." The story is a traditional one found throughout the Appalachian mountains and contains two traditional motifs: "Fear test: staying in haunted house," *H1411; and "Ghosts scare people deliberately," *E293 (Baughman, 1966). In most of the tellings we recorded, the story was told for its entertainment value, as a story of the way wit, construed as creative intelligence, can outweigh greater power and serve courage. This seems to be the performance tradition of the story. But, in one version of the story, we can see how this traditional form is adapted to the changed circumstances of the social and economic life of the community. The storyteller is Mrs. Ada Martin, about 85 years old, and living alone (see appendix for her version of the story). Mrs. Martin is concerned about the ability of her community to carry on correctly: to live in a "right relationship" to one another. A dominant theme in the oral history interviews conducted with her is her fear of the fragmentation of community. She expresses a deep sense of loss for the communal caring of earlier days, and a belief that such continued loss will lead to the disasters that God visited on Pharaoh to save the culture and community of the Israelites. Mrs. Martin says, sadly: Well, life was really wonderful in those days, when you'd think about it... we, uh, all the people look like, uh, was just united together in a way, because they would just love each other. And they'd try to do what they can, for each other, in sickness, troubles, anything that come upon them. And uh ... I felt like that at the time that people would, uh, had more love in their heart, or something, I 16 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �don't know ... than they do these days because people's too busy now ... they have to work too hard ... and they don't feel well. I feel like in those days when we done our work, we went to the field and done a little, got our crops laid by, and put away, and we had time to entertain each other. To get around, and have a good time together. But people now don't... and nowadays, seems like they all, is just nervous, full of nerves ... and, uh, I feel the difference (Patrick County Project, 1981). Mrs. Martin echoes the sentiments of many in her community, young and old, and she, at the least, clearly believes that loss of community is both spiritually and physically debilitating. Personal and community health depend on interdependence. In her performance of the ghost tale, the protagonist is not a local person; indeed, he comes to the community as a stranger and, "he couldn't find anywhere that he could stay." He gets discouraged by this lack of warmth and hospitality, and asks for "an empty house" to stay in. The community sends him to a haunted house, and he accepts this rebuff and the challenge they have given him with bravado, "I don't care anything about that... just tell me where the house is." Mrs. Martin's tale reverberates with echoes of earlier traditions—the sacredness of guest-host relationships as old as the Greeks, Biblical rejections of strangers, especially "no room at the inn." Part of what makes this story memorable for Mrs. Martin is pleasant recollection of the interaction that produced it. There was a sharing of gifts, a story for a song between herself and her uncle, the kind of sharing she remembers as more typical of her community years ago. In the oral history interview that produced this performance, Mrs. Martin goes on to tell seven Tiaint' tales in succession, warming to the friendly interchange with the interviewer. She says all the ghost tales she knows are old—"I don't understand that, unless they uh, spend the days at the time that people just enjoyed talking ... people like to tell things ... sit around the fire and talk, you know, in those days." She particularly recalls a woman in whose home people gathered to hear her tell ghost tales. Mrs. Martin, sighs, "She was a good woman and a good neighbor." For Mrs. Martin, ghosts tales are less about the supernatural and more about the natural order of things. This folk tradition she knows from the past becomes her vehicle for expressing her needs and concerns in the present. It reveals what she needs now from her past. It is interesting to note, too, that "more sophisticated" people will believe that collecting a ghost tale from an Appalachian resident proves that mountain folk are still a primitive, superstitious, unsophisticated Volume Two, 1990 17 �lot who believe in the supernatural. This elitist attitude demonstrates an ignorance of the serious business of storytelling and of folklore in general. At the conclusion of Ron Eller's book about the industrialization of Appalachia, Eller quotes a letter from a mountain farmer in 1938 gripped by the frustration of watching his lifestyle change from one of contentment to despair. The farmer writes: Now what are we going to do, move on and try to fit in where we do not belong or undertake to face the situation and gradually starve to death? In the little mountain churches where we once sat and listened to the preaching of the gospel with nothing to disturb us, we now hear the roar of machinery on the Sabbath day. After all I have come to believe that the real old mountaineer is a thing of the past and what will finally take our place, God only knows (Eller, 1982: 242). The farmer agonizes over the gut-wrenching changes he sees in the rapid industrialization of the mountains. Rightly so, for many of the damaging consequences of the environmental and economic disturbance have come to pass. He fears the loss of mountain culture as a "thing of the past." On this front, he underestimates the persistence of tradition. Certainly it evolves, adapts, and reshapes itself, but the essence of a given tradition remains recognizable. The "real old mountaineer" used the process of tradition and some of his repertoire of cultural traditions to cope with, comment upon, resist, and encompass the situations of industrialized life. The real old mountaineer is not a thing of the past but has evolved into the resilient mountain people of contemporary Appalachia. Works Cited Arnow, Harriette. 1954. The Dollmaker. New York: Avon Books. Baughman, Ernest W. 1966. Type and Motif Index of the Folktales of England and North America. The Hague: Mouton. Eller, Ronald D. 1982. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Kirby, Jack Temple. 1987. Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Miller, Jim Wayne. 1987. The Mountains Have Come Closer. Boone, N.C: Appalachian Consortium Press. Used by permission. 18 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Patrick County Project: Continuity and Change in a Rural Community. 1981. Apppalachian Collection, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Library, Blacksburg, VA. Martin Tape 1, Accession 81. Transcript, p.10. Turner, Victor. 1981. "Social Dramas and Stories About Them," On Narrative. ed. W.J.T. Martin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Appendix (Mrs. Ada Martin, Star Route, Stuart, Virginia) "Urn, we, we enjoyed that, us kids—the older people, was older than we was you know, they had learned lots of ghost tales and they just really enjoyed it, I could tell one that my uncle told me when I was just about six or seven years old. And he told this, to me and, if I'd sing a song for him And so I said "What do you want me to sing?" He says sing "At the Cross." So I sang that song for him He says, "well now, I—I tell you a ghost story. Says, "It's true now," that's the way he said it He says, "It's true now." Said one time was a man travelling, and he come to a community and he wanted to spend the night and he couldn't find ANYWHERE that he could stay Finally he got discouraged and he said, well could you tell me about uh is there any empty house anywhere around that I could stay in. And uh, they said yes Says uh, we know of a house but they say it's haunted. He says, I don't care anything about that He says just tell me where the house is. So they told him where the house was And he went on to it And that night he'd, he'd went in got him some wood and put in put it in the fireplace and built him a little fire. Volume Two, 1990 19 �And he pulled his shoes off wanning his feet, All at once the uh door came open and a big cat come in. And this old cat come on in sit down by the fire And uh, seemed like he sit there a little while and uh he said, the cat said to him—says, "well" says, "it's uh real cold tonight." And uh He says And he looked around Said, "there's a cat a-talking?" And uh, he got a little bit afraid. He says, "we—says, I tell you, Says, wait till I get my shoes on" And says "you can have this fire by yourself." And so he got his shoes on He ran out the door, and begin running. And he run for about, quarter of a mile, and he stopped. And he says uh, looked around and someone had come up too, just about out of breath Says, "we had a pretty good race, didn't we?" He says, well, just let me get my breath a minute or two Says we'll have another one. (gentle laughter) March 30, 1981 Jean Haskell Speer is director of the Appalachian Studies Program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a faculty member in humanities and communication studies. She is author of The Appalachian Photographs of Earl Palmer and former president of the Appalachian Studies Association. 20 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Signs of Civilization: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine as Colonial Narrative Rodger Cunningham The relation between Southern Appalachia and America as a whole has been described in third-world and colonial terms for two decades. Early works in this vein concentrated on the economic and political aspects of this analogy (e.g. Dix, 1970). Building on this groundwork, other writers were soon exploring social and psychological parallels with equally productive results (e.g. Lewis, Kobak, and Johnson, 1978). The year 1978 will go down as a pivotal year in Appalachian studies, since it saw the publication of four widely differing books, deeply relevant to the region, even though two of them make no mention of Appalachia. These are Henry Shapiro, Appalachia on Our Mind; Helen Lewis, Colonialism in Modern America; Edward Said , Orientalism; and Malcolm Chapman, The Gaelic Vision in Scottish Culture. Shapiro's book was a groundbreaking study of the construction of the image of Appalachia in the American mind. In spite of the conceptual inadequacies with which it is riddled, it brings together invaluable documentation needed to broach the topic: what it is we talk about when we talk about Appalachia. One of the many defects of the book, however, is that it deals with America's idea of Appalachia in terms of a purely intellectual response to a cognitive problem, largely divorced from considerations of power. In contrast, the volume edited by Lewis, et al., richly explores many aspects of the power-relations between Appalachia and America, but few of the essays deal systematically with the effects which those relations have had on the language used to describe the region. Volume Two, 1990 21 �The link between these two approaches to the region is made by the two books which make no mention of it. Said's book discusses another intellectual construct, namely the Western idea of the Muslim East, within a conceptual framework much more adequate to such a task than Shapiro's naive realism, especially in terms of the discursive relation between knowledge and power. No Appalachian scholar can read Orientalism without being irresistibly reminded that "Appalachia on America's mind" is a function of "Appalachia in America's hands." Chapman's book, finally, discusses still another such case of domination, and one closer to the roots of Appalachia, emphasizing how the discourse of power can mute the voice of opposition by covertly defining the terms in which the latter expresses itself. The synthesis of these and other approaches into a general theory of colonial/hegemonic discourse in the domination of Appalachia has been gaining ground in the past decade. In this essay, which I hope may become the germ of a booklength study of colonial discourse in Appalachian and Appalachianist literature, I propose to examine John Fox, Jr.'s bestseller, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1908), as a potent reflector— and creator—of middle-class American attitudes toward Appalachia during the first period of rapid modernization. Set in the 1890s, during the first great industrial penetration of the mountains, Fox's novel is built on the love affair between Jack Hale, a coal developer from the Kentucky Bluegrass, and June Tolliver, a mountain girl whom he "civilizes" and eventually marries. This plot is played out against the background of coal mine boom-and-bust, and a feud between June's family and their neighbors, the Falins. The framework of the novel is, I shall show, structured according to a developmentalhistorical emplotment embedded in a hegemonic sentimentalist discourse which serves the power-interests of modernizing elites. Though the novel has often been praised for showing the ambiguities of "progress" in the mountains (Coles, 1985),' I intend to show that Fox's ambivalences toward Male's (autobiographical) project pull against the basic discourse of the book, and that this discourse eventually wins out in a way which causes the book to end in a cascade of false resolutions as Fox's own opposing voice is muted by his own dominant discourse. The beginning of the novel foreshadows the clash of visions and viewpoints which informs it and briefly gives it life. The novel is told from a third-person-limited viewpoint, divided between the two main characters. The major focus is on Jack Hale, but in the opening scene we see through June's eyes. The young girl, in her red dress, sits at the foot of the Lonesome Pine, in the gap (based on Big Stone Gap but never named) above her home in Virginia, and she looks down into the first valley in Kentucky. The pastoral scene is broken only by her own curiosity toward the outside world, for she knows rather than sees, that 22 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �the "trailing blue mists" below are the smoke of a "shrieking monster that ran without horses like the wind and tossed back roaring black plumes all streaked with fire" (1-2). Her perception is like that of a cliche Indian, for her preindustrial perspective, in the terms of gildedage America, is equivalent to savagery or barbarism (Cunningham, 1987: 105). This young savage is also repeatedly described in terms of wildness and 'nature': "The little creature ... like something wild ... lay, like a crouched panther-cub, looking down. For a moment, all that was human seemed gone from her eyes" (3), as she first sees Jack Hale approaching from the shrieking monster's direction. We then see the same scene through Hale's eyes as he contemplates the Pine, which to him is not a neutral piece of the world but an esthetic object of "nature" with which he nevertheless feels a kinship (Fox, 1908: 6). Then he spots June, whom at first he had mistaken for "a flaming bush of sumach" (7). From this point on, the novel is dominated by Hale's viewpoint, for we do not return to June's until he has transformed her into the image of his desire. At that point, to be sure, the ambiguities of her viewpoint, and Hale's awareness of her reciprocal view of him, play a large role in lifting the middle portion of the novel out of its onedimensionality by opening spaces of dialogue which threaten to overwhelm the coherence of Fox's representations of "civilization's" march. But, as we shall see, these apertures are not maintained. The bluegrass coal developer's growing relationship with this 'child of nature' occupies a particular, familiar site in the West's discourse over its subject territories. In the traditional mountain culture as described through Hale's eyes, certain features are consistently emphasized. The terms of its contrast with "America" are articulated in a set of dichotomies which will be familiar in its outlines to any student of colonial discourse. These may be set forth conveniently in a familiar table: SAVAGERY CIVILIZATION Nature Animality Childhood Female Solitude Chaos War Violence Personal Loyalty Mountains Appalachia Man Humanity Adulthood Male Society Order Peace Reason Abstract Duty Lowlands America Volume Two, 1990 23 �And this synchronic schematism is laid out diachronically, as well, in terms of a historical-developmental emplotment which assumes a development as inevitable and desirable as the growth from childhood to adulthood—a development from "savagery" toward a "civilization" which will continue growing more "improved" and rational forever. Thus Fox glowingly assumes, eight years after the beginning of the hopeful new century and six years before the tensions arising from the saturation of the non-industrialized world by Western "civilizing" power were to be ignited by the spark of Sarajevo. If the terms of Hale's/America's perception of Appalachia occupy a basically familiar semiotic and ideological space, nevertheless they also occupy a distinctive site in that space, one corresponding to the distinctive site occupied by Appalachia in "a curious inner division of the WASP identity" (Snyder, 1982: 130). And the thematics of Fox's novel are governed both by the universalities of this discourse and by the distinctiveness of this site within it. Paraphrasing Foucault, Manthia Diawara notes: Western man, in defining himself, finds it necessary to link himself to the African as his negation. Insofar as the Western ratio is constituted through the negation of the African, Africa can only serve as the testing ground for what the Westerner can know about himself. Ethnology is not so much the story of cultures without history, as it is the region where the Western ratio seeks its unity through the duplication of its narratives and theories (1988: 67). And, insofar as "Appalachia" is also constituted by the discourse in America, it is also a testing ground for what America can know about itself. Furthermore, insofar as such a dominant subject constructs an 'other' which is a projection of that subject's self, that quest for selfknowledge will be conditioned by narcissism—by that "increasingly obscene narcissism" of which Frantz Fanon accused the Western mind (Fanon, 1961: 313). This, I shall show, is a strong feature of Jack Hale's relation to Appalachia and in particular to June Tolliver, in a novel whose subtest is essentially a quest for his and America's self-knowledge. And this narcissistic drive is only strengthened by that "curious inner division of the WASP identity" which constitutes Appalachia as both other to America and as peculiarly self to it—as what a noted anthropologist of Fox's time called "a peculiar type which has been developed by environment and isolation into something distinctly American, and yet unlike anything to be found outside the southern Alleghenies."2 The encounter 24 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �with what W. G. Frost called these "long lost Americans" (New York Times, 1914) is thus an encounter with the long-lost parts of the self— an encounter made necessary by that self-alienation which is at the root of narcissism. And the great contemporary popularity of Fox's work—it spawned a play, a film, and a popular song—is a measure of how deep was the chord it struck in the self-alienated heart of middle-class America. And this fact also illuminates the strength of the bond of discourse between Appalachia and America—illuminates even the fact that, to this day, denigration of Appalachians is the one remaining ethnic prejudice expressible in polite company among those middle-class Americans. The status of Appalachia vis-a-vis America as both peculiarly "self" and strangely "other" means that the Other is muted by being identified with the self in a very direct way—denied any identity of its own other than what the speaker (the one endowed with voice) perceives as his identity. Furthermore, this relation is not only one between regions in space, but is temporalized by the characterization of Appalachia as an arrested, early form of America—as a sort of'contemporary ancestor,' in Frost's well-known phrase. And this temporalization tightens the grip of the discourse of American power upon the region. For, thus invested with the appearance of static changelessness—since any non-static feature of the 'contemporary ancestor' is defined out of the equation—Appalachia becomes not a parallel development, a potentially threatening reminder of unlived possibilities and, hence, a real agent for self-discovery, but rather a pure potential, ready to be given actuality through 'the' developmental process. Hence, it is precisely the peculiar "Americanness" of Appalachia which gives American hegemonic discourse such a strong hold on the region. Christopher Miller notes that in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, "the temporal and the spatial are conflated in such a way that physical travel will take one Taack to the earliest beginnings of the world"1 (1985: 172). Even so, the colonial narrative of Appalachia executes just such a conflation, so that Jack Hale's journey, like Mai-low's, is into his own heart. And if the journey is less dark than Marlow's, this is only a measure of the depth of Fox's self-knowledge as compared to Conrad's. In the Trail of the Lonesome Pine, this discourse is explicitly imposed on the Appalachian region in a long expository speech by the Hon. Sam Budd, a "lawyer and budding statesman" (Fox: 89) who has come to Hale's coal-boom town and who "as a recreation ... was an anthropologist" (89) as well as being "an ardent disciple of Sir Walter Scott" (90). This combination of positivism and romanticism, which Don Askins notes as typical of Fox's work (Askins, 1978: 253), informs the Hon. Sam's long speech in which he expounds the classic environmentalist explanation of mountain otherness as a consequence of isolation. Budd Volume Two, 1990 25 �actually uses Frost's phrase, "our contemporary ancestors" (97), to refer to what he also calls "the natives" (95) and, uniting both images, "the closest link we have with the Old World"—people who "live like the pioneers" and whose "feud business is a matter of clan-loyalty that goes back to Scotland" (97). "They were Unionists because of the Revolution," he adds, "as they were Americans in the beginning because of the spirit of the Covenanter" (97). This last sentence is the key to the meaning of what Fox, in order to cushion the awkwardness of the exposition, makes Budd ironically call his "anthropological drool" (97). It ignores well-known historical reasons for Scots-Irish attachment to the Revolution, and for Appalachian opposition to the Confederacy. It implies, instead, that Appalachian mountain people not only retain old customs, but somehow live literally in the past—that their minds exist in some time-warp in which they are incapable of responding to what is actually in front of them, but instead go around seeing what was there a century or so earlier and bumping like zombies into whatever has changed in the meantime. This characterization, which, in fact, is typical of traditional "scientific" accounts of Appalachia, is immensely significant in view of the occasion giving rise to the speech—to wit, the gathering of a militia composed of outsiders in order to put down a strike of "native" workers.3 There is no suggestion that the workers might have legitimate grievances against their new masters, or that these "malcontents" (94) could indeed be responding to anything in the present at all. It is all a matter of a "war between civilization and a lawlessness that was the result of isolation, and consequent ignorance and idleness" (98). If the mountaineers' reality is different from the hegemonic construction of it, then it is deemed unreal, or rather a part of the past they seem to be 'really' living in. 'Yesterday's People,' indeed. But in fact, of course, the tables are turned on Hale and his troops: it is they and their "drooling" ideologue who cannot see what is in front of them in the present. It is they who have fallen prey to their own mystification of the reasons for what is happening when a mountaineer puts a bullet through a sign (48), counterphallically challenging the commanding discourse, or when other strikers "[puncture] the chromos in their boarding-house" (94), taking action against the imposition of cheap Victorian middle-class taste in a context of regimentation. 'They won't understand," avers Budd; ". . . they'll look on us as a lot of meddlesome 'furriners' who have come to run their country as we please" (96-97). If so, they seem to understand all too well. But in this master-discourse, to understand means to see things as the master sees them, which in this case means not to see them at all. Edward Said characterizes Western anthropology as "a partner in domination and hegemony" (1989: 225) in which "someone, an authoritative, explorative, elegant, learned voice, 26 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �speaks and analyzes, amasses evidence, theorizes, speculates about everything—except itselF (Said: 212), in "the almost total absence of any reference to American imperial intervention as a factor affecting the theoretical discussion" (Said: 214).4 Clearly no better description of Sam Budd's "anthropological drool" could be found. And yet, Budd's speech reveals not only the straightforwardly hegemonic character of the American discourse of Appalachia, but also certain ambiguities inherent in the dualism of Appalachia/America as an "inner division" of a single identity. Budd begins by calling the militia "the vanguard of civilization—'crusaders of the nineteenth century against the benighted of the Middle Ages'" (Fox: 96). How paradoxical to think of'crusaders' going forth against "the Middle Ages"—as paradoxical as the other rhetoric, occurring repeatedly in the book, in which Hale and the other outsiders are described as "pioneer(s)" (40, 98, etc.) waging war on "natives" who themselves are described as "pioneers" and "frontiersmen." These images reflect complex, paradoxical crossings and interlacings inside 'the WASP identity' and its perceptions of self and other.5 Indeed, even when inscribing motifs which represent the mountaineer as a "savage" and the American industrial invader as the "pioneer of civilization," Fox maintains the underlying identity of the two. He always denied the view, common in his time and maintained by some well-meaning Honorables even now, that the mountain population as a whole represented a genetically inferior "stock" drawn from the slums of London and the like. Instead, he held that the "better sort" of mountain people were the same in 'blood' and inherent "gifts" as the more "fortunate" lowland population, and that environment alone accounted for the former's "deficiencies." And on this very point of essential identity, oddly enough, Fox's attitudes paralleled those of his ancestors toward the first 'savages' they had encountered. Fox, whose ancestors had come to the Bluegrass in 1790 from Virginia (Titus, 1971: 17) and (in the person of another John Fox) to Virginia in 1649 from England (Brosi, 1988: 6), was glowingly proud of both connections and liked to compare the Bluegrass itself to "merry England" (Askins, 1978: 255). Thus, it is informative to recall that in seventeenth-century Virginia, according to Karen Kupperman, "English colonists assumed that Indians were basically similar to themselves and that savagery was a temporary condition which the Indians would quickly lose. The really important category was status" (1980: 2), and in that regard the contemporaries of the first John Fox made careful distinctions between the "better" Indians and the "baser" sort: "Indians, like base or humble English people, were expected to be of service in the [English] society. Indians of the 'better sort' were not expected to be of service" (Kupperman, 1980: 140). Just so, in Fox's novel, Jack Hale's Volume Two, 1990 27 �eroticized identification with his contrasexual and countercultural other/ self, June Tolliver, is predicated on the superiority of her "stock." Immediately after Sam Budd's "drool," Hale notes of June that she was "so intelligent" as to constitute evidence that the Hon. Sam is right: that the mountaineers were of the same class as the other westward-sweeping emigrants, ... that they had simply lain dormant in the hills and ... that the children of that day would, if given the chance, wipe out the handicap of a century in one generation and would take their place abreast with children of the outside world. The Tollivers were of good blood; they had come from Eastern Virginia, and the original Tolliver had been a slave-owner. The very name was, undoubtedly, a corruption of Tagliaferro (Fox: 100-101, emphasis added). The emphasized words sharply expose the episteme in which Fox's distinctions among mountaineers are inscribed, an episteme which posits one-dimensional progress along one conceivable line, and in which "goodness" is equated with wealth and domination. More particularly, they show that to John Fox and Jack Hale, goodness means being as much like John Fox and Jack Hale as possible. This example leads to another strong parallel between Fox/Hale's view of mountaineers and his ancestors' view of Indians. Bernard Sheehan notes: Although the barrier between the civil and savage conditions seemed impenetrable, most commentators allowed for movement between the two. In one mood Europeans sought a return to original innocence. In another they were convinced that they had once been mired in savagism and had managed by dint of hard work and the blessings of Providence to reach the civil stage of life... . This assurance, however, did not obviate the possibility of a slide back into the savage state. The ignoble savage always loomed as an external threat to Europeans and as an internal danger because he represented primal urges that, although subdued, remained part of the human condition. In the eighteenth century this relationship between savagism and civility would be transformed into a formal theory of staged development (Sheehan, 1980: 2). This formal theory, derived from white-Indian contact, is what Fox and Hale project upon mountain people at a time when, as I have shown 28 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �elsewhere, the entire set of representations of the relation white/Indian was being inscribed upon the relation American/Appalachian (Cunningham, 1987: 102-112)6—a time when, in addition, an exhausted late Victorian/Edwardian bourgeois culture was tiring of, and becoming disillusioned with, its repressions and was searching eagerly but anxiously for a regenerating contact with 'primal urges.' With this in mind, therefore, let us examine the development of the relationship between Hale/America and June/Appalachia. As Hale has established "benevolent1 control of June's community, so also he establishes an equally 'benevolent' domination over June herself. Finding that when she reads aloud she already approximates standard English quite well (Fox: 27), Hale begins by working on her language so as to standardize her speech as well. In so doing, he literally initiates and inserts her into a master-discourse to which he holds the key. Furthermore, though in persuading her to change in this way he pretends to relativism, saying simply that "the way people in the mountains dress and talk is different from the way most people dress and talk" (113), he is soon narrowing the choice to her adoption of others' customs ("you will want..."), and then using the word ought. Hale is sincerely trying not to privilege his own speech, but his discourse drives him to do so. At this point June responds with anger, and Hale recalls to himself "the sensitive pride of the mountaineer" that makes it so hard for him "to make her understand" (114). These are the same terms with which Sam Budd, just earlier, has noted "a pride that is morbid" (96) as the cause of the mountaineers' resistance to outside imposition of others' notions of order, and has assured Hale that "the natives won't understand" (95)— when it is clear enough to the modern reader whose understanding is at fault in either case. Thus, this talk of "morbid pride" (still often heard in "enlightened" quarters) is simply a discursive ploy which labels a universal reaction with a special name in order to mystify the situation which is being reacted to—which attaches that special name to the Other as a mark of that otherness in order to turn an attempt at communication into the opposite. But eventually June acquiesces to being engulfed in Jack's discourse. He literally appropriates her voice as she learns standard English verb forms (170, 175) and the standard English names for flowers (161-65). She has had a playhouse, but now she abandons it for a flower garden—one made for her by Hale (194-95). The playhouse had already been a middle term between Nature and Civilization, as June had already been 'above' her environment; the flower garden is a piece of civilization itself, an ordering of natural life which has been explicitly identified with a logocentric linguistic and discursive field, ordered and fertilized by Hale's own male force. Hale goes on to teach June the Latin names of flowers, and even imagines her one day learning that language Volume Two, 1990 29 �after she masters standard English (211-12), thereby mastering a second stage of the master-discourse of Western civilization. "[LJaurel (she used to call it 'ivy') and rhododendrons (she used to call them 'laurel')... were her old and fast friends" (257). She calls her old friends by new, "real" names. And why should she not, since she is entering a world where she is not privileged to know her own "real" name: "Who's that?" Hale turned—it was the Honourable Samuel Budd, coming home from Court. "June Tolliver." "June Taliaferro," corrected the Hon. Sam with emphasis (280). Thus, with her very identity emphatically "corrected" by outsiders, June is reduced to an abject, an interlocutor who is muted precisely as she takes on the master's voice—as her dialogue with Hale is inexorably entrained into America's discourse.7 Thus, we see The Trail of the Lonesome Pine winding through a familiar colonialist discursive space in which the relation of other to self is expressed in terms of the relations child/adult and passive female/ active male. This discourse, furthermore, here interlocks with the archetype of the hero's quest into the strange land, a quest in which he finds his own self through union with the contrasexual Other. Thus, it is not surprising that the relation between Hale and June is distinctly eroticized from the beginning. Even in their earliest scenes together, it is evident that the preadolescent June is special to Hale in more than one way. He learns her name when her stepmother calls her, and he reflects that it is "a queer name for the mountains" (12). Jack and June's names not only are the same length but alliterate, as do both with her father's and with their creator's: she is an aspect of all these males, and their Js are the hooks by which he eventually purposes to pull her out of her otherness altogether. In a moment he will refuse to tell Judd his name, and only June saves him from being shot by telling her father his name as he has told her. The relation among the three of them is reflected in this interchange; and as Hale feels gratitude toward June, and wonders why she has done this, he begins musing on her beautiful eyes and on her hair, which is "exactly like the gold-bronze on the wing of a wild turkey that he had shot the day before" (16). His love for this bit of wild Nature is already eroticized and already tinged with aggression, just as, not long afterwards, he contemplates a beautiful valley and murmurs, "Such a drainage!" (46) and sees it as "the heaven-born site of the unborn city of his dreams"—the dark Satanic mills inscribed in the rhetoric of Jerusalem—as "his eyes swept every curve of the valley lovingly" (44). 30 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �This eroticism is, of course, treated in a conventional Edwardian way, which is to say that it sometimes reveals more than it must intend to. Thus, for example, in the flower-lesson mentioned above: With the next look she found a tiny bunch of fuzzy hepaticas. "Liver-leaf." "Whut's liver?" [Has this mountain child never seen the insides of a hog?] Hale, looking at her glowing face and eyes and her perfect little body, imagined that she would never know unless told that she had one, and so he waved one hand vaguely at his chest: "It's an organ—and that herb is supposed to be good for it." "Organ? Whut's that?" "Oh, something inside of you." June made the same gesture that Hale had. "Me?" "Yes," and then helplessly, "but not there exactly" (162). This vague, tentative and anxious approach to June's corporeality occurs during a lesson in which Hale is teaching the names of flowers to "the loveliest flower of them all—little June" (165). (We have seen that she eventually learns the "correct" name for that too.) Later expressions of June's corporeality are no stronger, even when the erotic element in Hale's attraction for her is allowed to become more explicit as she matures. June at this point is at the edge of puberty. In subsequent chapters, her sexual maturing parallels her "growth" into bourgeois American civilization, at the same time that it deepens and complicates her relation with Hale as the two fall in love. She "develops" indeed, in a variety of senses; but her "growth" makes her, not a more independent adult, but a more suitable object for Hale's desire—or at least this is so on the level in which the primary discourse operates. She abandons her fairy tales for Paul and Virginia (173), a classic in the romantic fusion of love of Nature withsentimentalized eroticism. In the following year she passes fully over the threshold of puberty, and in another of those remarkable Edwardian locutions: Her nature had opened precisely as had bud and flower that spring. The Mother of Magicians had touched her as impartially as she had touched them with fairy wand, and as unconsciously the young girl had answered as a young dove Volume Two, 1990 31 �to any cooing mate. With this Hale did not reckon, and this June could not know. For a while, that night, she lay in a delicious tremor ... and, as had all the sleeping things of the earth about her, she, too, sank to happy sleep (Fox: 181). At this point she is about to be sent off to school—on Hale's money, though she does not yet know this. When she returns, "the little fairycross dangled at a woman's throat. Her figure had rounded, her voice had softened. She held herself as straight as a young poplar and she walked the earth as if she had come straight from Olympus" (239). Her middle-class posture—one of the first things she had noted about Hale was that he did not slouch like a mountaineer (4)—is here presented as one more part of her growth into a woman. It makes her, indeed, a figure from Olympus: a Europa (cf. note 7) fit to consort with Hale's Zeus, though in the same breath she can still be compared to a forest tree. The specific mutual attraction between June and Hale becomes more and more explicit. Hale develops more esthetic appreciation of the mountains' beauty, and "June was the incarnate spirit of it all" (252). As for June: "If she saw a bass shoot arrow-like into deep water, if she heard a bird or saw a tree or a flower whose name she had to recall, she thought of Hale" (288). Hale, for her, is the name-bearer, the primary signifier even of her own native world; he is knowledge, and more and more that knowledge is eroticized. He haunts her as a specter constituted by the voice he has given her, "a ghost ... so like a human presence that she felt sometimes a strange desire to turn and speak to it" (288)—a presence particularly evoked by the new middle-class furniture of her room. Here, too, we learn that "her once-favorite picture" is that of "the lovers clasped in each other's arms—'at last alone'" (288). There is a potent irony here, for the actual title of the painting, mentioned elsewhere in the book, is Enfm Seul. As well as being a sad commentary on Fox's artistic taste (cf. Agnes Repplier in Titus, 1971: 90), the painting has a title which in the original refers to only one of the two lovers, viz. the man: That is, it is not Enfm Seals or Seule, but Seul. Thus, this popular Victorian genre painting embodies a discourse in which everything, even a pair of lovers, is seen solely from the man's viewpoint. And, in admiring it, June longs for the total muting of her own presence—for absorption in Hale as she has already become absorbed, her authentic presence muted, in a world now constituted for her by his significations. At the same time that June is becoming absorbed in Hale's world, she is becoming alienated from her own, and this, too, is presented as if it were a natural result of her growth. Her family's table manners begin to inspire her with "a vague newborn disgust" (Fox: 200); the slurping of 32 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �coffee is "painful to June's ears" (199). But this process is not smoothly carried out, for the division passes not only between June and her family, but through June herself. Hale "saw that while her body was at home, her thoughts rarely were" (215). This division between body and thoughts is common in adolescence, which here is equated with assimilation in the developmentalist paradigm. But, as June's adolescent identity crisis begins to intersect with her crisis of cultural identity, the result begins to shake the paradigm on which the book's simple plot line is based. As June becomes 'better' from her experience in New York City, Hale becomes 'worse' from his stays in the mountains, until finally the day comes when a long-awaited reunion is soured as she looks with distaste upon him. This is the main plot development of the middle part of the novel, and, thus far, all it amounts to is a straightforward demonstration of Fox's simple environmental theory. But Fox's knowledge of the situation is so detailed, and his two main characters have taken on so much roundness, that this simple paradigm generates within itself elements which complicate and subvert it, threatening to undo Fox's obvious conscious intentions for the book's scheme. As June matures, she becomes more consciously aware of the strains in her being. Returning to the cove from New York, she experiences the flowers as "her old and fast friends," but all the works of man, and even the people themselves, appear dismal to her. It is with a shock that she realizes that "they were her people" (258)—a shock of selfalienation and yet of self-recognition. The ultimate result of this process is revealed in a long episode immediately following her above-quoted reflections on Hale and his painting. In this episode she attends a beanstringing: a traditional mountain community work-gathering. Her very appearance is hybrid, a combination of city and mountain dress, but she goes to work on the beans "as one of them" (292). As: does this mean that she is one of them or that she is merely like one of them? This ambiguity is sustained throughout the episode, which is a minor masterpiece of social drama. Her neighbors pay "unconscious tribute to a vague something about her" (292)—not to her but to something that has gotten on or in her; and she pays her own tribute to them by "dropping consciously into the vernacular" (292) in her speech. Both words I have emphasized are significant in an interlocked way. She is a conscious agent, in contrast to their "unconscious" reactions, because she is higher, and the higher subsumes the lower—englobes its discourse—but not the reverse. At her neighbors' request she exhibits her new professional singing skills, and when her aunt remarks, "She shorely can holler some!", she "flushed and then smiled with quick understanding" at this ironic mountain style of humor (295). "Quick," but not immediate and unconsidered: her "consciousness" is starting to get in her way. Volume Two, 1990 33 �A particularly interesting manifestation of June's hybridity is embodied in her meeting with her uncle, the feudist Bad Rufe Tolliver. "Something in June's bearing made him take off his hat" (295)—once more, not she but something which has gotten into her. She, however, does not respond to this deference. She had been afraid of Rufe as a child and, though he is much changed in appearance, his eyes are still the same as they were and still inspire that fear. He, then, responds to something that has gotten into her; she, to his own inner being manifested in spite of his physical changes. Those eyes, the windows of his soul, are both the baffled agents of his knowledge (he has had to be told who she is) and the effective agents of her fear based on her own knowledge. But this fear is simply a revived childhood fear, not based on anything in the present (as far as she now knows). It is the child in her that is the mountaineer. In this interesting crossed relationship, his gaze is at first baffled and then friendly; hers is fearful insofar as she has gone back "down" to the mountain world. June "had conquered birth and speech and customs and environment" and "become ... the woman of the world" (352). She has "conquered" her "environment"—including parts of herself which she has learned not to identify with herself—and by this act of self-amputating self-colonization she has joined the real "world," the world of the "pioneers" and "conquistadors" who are subduing her land and people. But there is a cost. This self-characterization occurs in a subordinate clause within a question: "Was she really the June Tolliver who had ...?" She has, in fact, lost her secure sense of her own identity altogether. She is alienated not only from her people but from herself. And it is this alienation that a counter-discursive space begins to open up within the novel; it is within this self-doubt that a voice of doubt begins to question the very discourse which informs the novel. For as June's consciousness has become a facet of Male's, so her alienation has become the site of a growing skepticism on Kale's part, and even at some level on Fox's. Immediately after the scene in which she looks on her family with "a vague newborn disgust," comes a passage describing "the cruel, deadly work of civilization" (201-02) as it brings pollution to her world. The creek is full of sawdust, coal dust and dead fish; a circle saw is described as a "buzzing monster ... biting a savage way through a log, that screamed with pain as the brutal thing tore through its vitals, and gave up its life each time with a ghost-like cry of agony" (202). Much earlier, Hale is described as seeing "nothing alive but an occasional bird" (75); the trees are not yet alive to him. Here, though, they are not only alive but sentient. Thus, the tables are turned on "civilization," which equally with "barbarism" can be described in terms of savagery, brutality, and defilement.8 The description of the trees as alive further recalls the 34 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �comparisons of June with a "young poplar," and indeed the two are connected explicitly: "A strange spirit pervaded the Cove.... What was the matter with everything—what was the matter with her?" (207). Thus, we are invited to see what is happening to June—her very "refinement"—as itself a "cruel, deadly work of civilization." These ambiguities can be seen in retrospect as early as the first page, when June imagines a locomotive as a "shrieking monster" (1), but they begin to become more than dismissable childish perceptions only— and abruptly—when June begins to enter into dialogue with Hale to grow by the process. Even in the scene, examined above, in which he tries to change her speech, June speaks for herself and for her culture so eloquently, and Hale shows such ambivalence, that a way is opened for dialogue and for a complexity and self-subversion which are developed more a bit later in the book. In that scene, as we have noted, he succeeds in foreclosing the dialogue by englobing her communication in words like "sensitive pride"; but as June matures, and as their relationship deepens, spaces of dialogue open which are more difficult to paper over. What is happening is that as Hale "civilizes" June—makes her an "adult" of the only kind he can really recognize as such—she starts to transcend Hale's, or even Fox's, intentions for her. Rather than simply a more suitable object for Hale's desire, she starts to become a real adult, and her ambivalences toward her upbringing start to insert themselves into the text in a way which fissures the seamless, one-dimensional master-narrative that Fox evidently presupposes for it. Hale has been fashioning June in his image, giving birth to her through his signifying discourse. (In his image, or in the image of his desire; for the disjunction between the two is one of the apertures through which a genuine dialogue begins to squeeze.) Feminists have criticized the modern scientific/ technical spirit as a fantasy of male birth, and have pointed out a trenchant critique of that fantasy in Mary Shelley's compelling allegory to which Hale alludes when he says: "The truth was he was building a lovely Frankenstein and from wondering what he was going to do with it, he was beginning to wonder what it might some day do with him" (241). One may well suspect that the uneasiness is also on the part of Fox himself, as his characters (and June in particular) begin to develop their own life, or to show a life separate from the life he is constantly trying to insert into their lifeless matter. Fox's master-discourse becomes infected with counter-discourse, and hence with the dialogue between June and Hale as well as between the different parts of Hale, and the romance, in consequence, struggles to become a polyphonic novel which threatens to do something serious (in more than one sense) to Fox's intentions for it. Volume Two, 1990 35 �For Hale, meanwhile, has been changing in a different direction. "Deterioration is easy in the hills" (249), says Fox, and though he immediately qualifies this deterioration as "superficial" and lists simple reasons for it, he quickly draws this fact into a paradigm in which "the little niceties of life" are equated with "civilization" (250) and the deeply environmental-determinist implication is made that it is impossible to be "civilized" in the mountains: Hale's life, since his college doors had closed behind him, had always been a rough one. He had dropped from civilization and had gone back into it many times. And each time he had dropped, he dropped deeper, and for that reason had come back into his own life each time with more difficulty and with more indifference. The last had been his roughest year and he had sunk a little more deeply just at the time when June had been pluming herself for flight from such depths forever (250; emphasis added). What is most notable about this "deterioration," however, is that Hale undergoes it largely as a result of his "civilizing" activities. On the page after the above, a great deal of his roughness is attributed directly to his function as captain of the Police Guard, the organization which imposes "law and order" on a population whose 'lawlessness' in the first place is partly a matter of perception and partly a result of the disruption of their way of life.9 June shrinks from kissing him when they meet because "he was as rough and dirty as the chain-carrier opposite him, who was just in from a surveying expedition in the mountains, as the sooty brakeman who came through to gather up the fares" (265). A bit later it is reported that "Hale had been raising Cain in Lonesome Cove— 'a-cuttin' things down an' tearin' 'em up an' playin' hell ginerally'" (281). The fact, presented in the very next sentence, that "[t]he feud had broken out again" is left unconnected with this. For indeed, Fox fails to make the (to us) obvious connections in all of what he describes here. Just as Altina Waller has shown that the feuds of the period were an aspect of modernization and not of "backwardness"—a fact visible intermittently between the lines of Fox's narrative10—so the facts of Hale's "deterioration," as Fox shows them, are very different from what he seems to want to say about them. For in both cases, Fox imposes a simple developmental scheme which contradicts his own words—and especially the words put in the mouths of the main characters. A result of what Hale is doing to Appalachia is projected as a result of what Appalachia is doing to him. The deep ambiguity which is visible in the thematics is inexpressible in the exposition, which is trapped inside a 36 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �discourse that mutes it. This becomes the main problem with the book from here on, as Fox's own sense of ambiguity is trapped in a onedimensional episteme conditioned by the discourse of power between Appalachia and America. We have seen things heretofore mainly through Hale's eyes, but the complications enter as we begin to see Hale seeing himself through June's new eyes. He has given her these eyes; but in spite of his intentions, they are not his eyes. Thus, a binocular view develops, one in which the images of Appalachia and America suddenly stand out in a depth which unsettles the narrative. What happens in the rest of the book, however, is a betrayal of this depth, a determined flattening of it as Fox retreats in an almost palpable panic from its implications. Hale shaves, resumes his "civilized" demeanor—"There was nothing of the mountaineer about him now" (275)—and goes to meet June, rising to encounter her from below (274). Then the two discuss matters. He expresses his doubts as to whether he has done the right thing in taking her out of the world in which she can no longer be content. Then he shifts the topic to their relationship, while showing no awareness of the shift: "I would not have married you as you were ... . And now you have gone beyond me and you do not want to marry me as I am. And it is all very natural and very just" (276-77). All very natural and very just. The main function of this crucial conversation is to reconcile Hale and June by muting the ambiguity of their situation. Neither of them moves out of their now-shared system of one-dimensional valuations. Before Hale approaches, June has been contemplating with horror the prospect of descending again to the "lower ... standards" (274) of her home community. She never questions Hale's corresponding view of the matter; she never questions the assumption that she is being 'freed' by being englobed in his discourse. That assumption is self-contradictory, of course, and the irony here and the subsequent tangles of the plot result from an attempt to untangle this paradox without cutting at the root of it. For indeed, by the end of the scene June has suppressed her very adulthood for Hale's sake: "Like a child she obeyed him" (278), and he repeatedly calls her "little girl" (277, 278). The eyes he has given her are once more becoming simply his eyes; the eyes of the image of his desire are becoming simply the eyes of his desire, leaving him enfin seul. In subsequent scenes, June is further reduced to an object, her voice returned to muteness, as Fox assumes monologic control. Her Uncle Billy "was the one unchanged soul to her in that he was the one soul that could see no change in June. He called her "baby' in the old way, and he talked to her now as he had talked to her as a child" (297). Thus, June is comforted by seeing her identity entirely in other's gaze, and, specifically, in the gaze of men who see her as a child. Furthermore, this Volume Two, 1990 37 �confining yet comforting gaze forecloses the possibility of her being an adult member of her own society—it conflates time and space in accordance with Bale's perceptions. At this point, the plot is drawing to a climax. Of the conventional savage/civilized oppositions which function in the novel, two are especially important for the plot. One, as we have seen, is childhood/adulthood; the other is personal loyalty/abstract duty. The conflict between these two has an honorable history in the thematics of Western literature as far back as Sophocles' Antigone. But in Fox, this conflict is, like everything else, assimilated to the colonialist paradigm: The average mountaineer," he avers, "has little conception of duty in the abstract, but old Judd belonged to the better class—and there are many of them—that does" (152). This theme begins to be struck early on (129) and is brought up repeatedly from then on (151, 184, 221, etc.); and, in general, even the class distinction among mountaineers is not as carefully made as in the passage quoted. June's uncle, Bad Rufe Tolliver, has returned to the mountains at the same time as she. He is, therefore, in some sense her contrasexual mirror-image, and we have already seen the crossing of mutual reactions which occurs when they meet for the first time in years. If June is the quintessentially "good" mountaineer, Bad Rufe is the quintessentially "bad" one, and he establishes this identity by shooting a policeman: one of the outside representatives of "law and order." Before he commits the act, though, June overhears him stating his intention to do so. Thus, when she is called to testify at his trial, she must choose not only between her family and her conscience, but between personal loyalty and abstract duty, and thus between two different civilizations—or rather between Savagery and Civilization. But what actually happens at this crucial juncture? Though the issue seems clear-cut, its execution is in fact fatally blurred. When June had overheard her uncle saying, "I'm goin' over to kill me a policeman" (296), at first she had agonized at the thought that the intended victim might be Hale—such is her love of Civilization, the identification of the latter with Hale, and the labeling of traditional Appalachia as its violent enemy for the crime of defending itself. Later, at the climactic moment in the courtroom—a few seconds spread over a whole page—June's first thought is only of duty: "Would she lie for him—would she lie for him?" she wonders as "Rufe's black eyes"—those eyes which have awakened her childhood fears—"held her with mesmeric power" (320-21). But she also feels upon her "the blue eyes of a man for whom a lie was impossible and to whom she had never stained her white soul with a word of untruth.... Not a soul in the room knew where the struggle lay—not even the girl—for it lay between the black eyes of Rufe Tolliver and the blue 38 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �eyes of John Hale" (321). And then, as "her dark eyes swerved suddenly full on Hale," she tells the truth which dooms her uncle. In this scene—the pivotal climax of the novel—the issue with which it ostensibly deals, and with it the whole thematic structure of the novel, are all at once sharply skewed. June's decision between personal loyalty and abstract duty is collapsed into a matter of two conflicting personal loyalties. Worse yet, June does not even make a clearly free and voluntary choice between the two loyalties. "[T]he girl" becomes a passive object, pulled between the two powerful adult male figures, as unaware of her own real thoughts as she is of her 'real' nature. Her choice is not only personalized but emotionalized and eroticized to the point where her individual will is erased. From being a rounded character she is suddenly flattened into a female stereotype, ruled by emotion and sexual desire and incapable of thinking "above" the personal level. The thematic development of the book is wiped out by a decision which ignores that theme while ostensibly acting it out and June's personal development is also wiped out by an act in which she herself is unaware of the real locus of her struggle—an act which is explicitly located outside of her; it is located in the two men whose intersecting gazes constitute her as an object, and whose real struggle is to possess her. This dishonest treatment of the climax shatters whatever artistic integrity the book had managed to achieve. From here on, the plot itself falls apart. It founders in the same way the developmentalist emplotment founders on the ambiguities of development. Since these ambiguities are not foregrounded, nor the contradictions dealt with creatively and dialogically, the book breaks down in a series of schematic denouements and deus ex machina resolutions as Fox pulls his characters and situations back into line with his preconceptions. The first order of business is to dispose of Hale's rival for June's affections, her cousin Dave. He fits into the semiosis of the book as a young male mountaineer, therefore not amenable to the masterdiscourse. His identification with the mountain code of personal loyalty (137, 221) both places him on the "savage" side of the epistemic dichotomy and provides a plot motivation for his lethal hatred of Hale when June rejects Dave—and does so speaking to him, to her own family and people, in Hale's voice, that is in standard English (359). The matter eventually comes down to physical combat between the two men. Hale wins, of course, by technique over the brute force of an opponent whose actions are repeatedly described in terms of savagery, animality, and madness—"savagely" (374), "a grunt of rage and pain... crazy rage...bellow" (376). But, before the fight, Dave has given Hale a shrewd and accurate account of their respective power-situations: "D'ye think I'd fight you hyeh? If you killed me, you'd be elected County Jedge; if I killed you, what chance would I have o' gittin' away? I'd swing fer it" Volume Two, 1990 39 �(373-74). Hale's way of winning the combat he has forced on his opponent only underscores this relation, but Hale simply avers that "I've never done anything to you that I hadn't to do" (374). His self-righteousness comes from his self-enclosure in his own discourse of power which justifies his dominance as an inevitable part of "progress." Dave, humiliated, moves west. So do all the Tollivers, in a group, as the Tolliver-Falin feud heats up. Hale, too, leaves, having failed to halt the collapse of the coal boom in the Gap, but he returns for one last visit to a scene of human desolation. At the Lonesome Pine, where the book began, he spots Dave's horse and assumes that his old enemy has set an ambush for him. But, instead, the person who comes into view behind the horse is June, who has providentially returned to the Cove at the same instant. She is the substitute for Hale's rival for her, and, so, her appearance (at which Hale nearly shoots her) is a kind of bride-capture, a sentence in a language of patriarchal exchange in which she functions as a kind of serious pun, emphasizing and emphasized by her contrast with what she replaces. The scene also recalls, with reversed roles, the pair's crossed perceptions of each other on the same spot at the beginning of the novel. It develops that Dave has been shot out west (405) and has given June his horse as a last token of his affection. Thus, his 'frontier' violence (Hale's negative side) is exorcized, and he awards June the good part of his own male energy. Judd has died, but not before telling June that Hale, not he himself, had been the source of the money which paid for her education: "It was all you, you, you, and there was never anybody but you" (405). Hale has thus deprived her family of agency in their love of her.11 Yet, the words are ambiguous: they sound like a confession of love, and they could, in fact, be either a complaint or an expression of gratitude. Hale replies: "[Y]ou mustn't feel that way.... [Y]ou mustn't rob me of the dearest happiness I ever knew in my whole life" (406). "I knew you would say that," replies June "like a submissive child" (406). Thus she submits to his injunctions and he smilingly takes her over, having reduced her to what she always has been in relation to him. She pledges him her undying love, and it develops that since Judd had managed to reacquire his cabin and its surrounding two hundred acres (369-70), these now belong to June as sole surviving heir. This further deus ex machina cuts the last strand of the Gordian knot, and the way is clear for Hale to marry June and for both of them to move into the cabin, which is "just as she had always kept it" (410). June is wearing "the last crimson dress of her young girlhood—her sleeves rolled up and her hair braided down her back as she used to wear it" (412). She is, in fact, as much as possible exactly as Hale first saw her. This wildly improbable bit of schematism (how can she possibly still fit in that 40 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �dress?) not only emphasizes the erotic element in Hale's relation to June from the beginning12 but shows that she has never been more than a child in his eyes—those eyes which at her uncle Rufe's trial reduced 'the girl' to a passive object. June had first appeared to Hale as a "keen-eyed, sweet-faced child" (35)—the eyes sharp, penetrating, perhaps dangerous in the assertive gaze, but set in a face that is an object of pleasurable consumption; the eyes active, the face passive. Now the passive sweetness is all as she looks at Hale "with parted lips and great shining eyes wide" (421)—the eyes as receptive as the lips, which in turn exist as organs of speech only to say 'yes' to his proposal of marriage. Hale's gaze, no longer binocular, flattens June so that Fox with his single vision may flatten them both. For, thus, they plan their double fantasy: "Even if we do go away, we'll come back once a year," said Hale. "Yes," nodded June, "once a year." "I'll tear down those mining shacks, float them down the river and sell them as lumber." "Yes." "And I'll stock the river with trout again." "Yes." "And I'll plant young poplars to cover the sight of every bit of uptorn earth along the mountain there. I'll bury every bottle and tin can in the Cove. I'll take away every sign of civilization, every sign of the outside world." "And leave old Mother Nature to cover up the scars," said June. "So that Lonesome Cove will be just as it was." "Just as it was in the beginning," echoed June. "And shall be to the end," said Hale. "And there will never be anybody here but you." "And you," added June (415-16). Thus, in this cascade of female affirmations, the happy couple plot an escape from history, time, and society. In June's "Yes...Yes...Yes" we hear the click of locks as her counterdiscourse shuts down utterly and dialogue is finally foreclosed altogether. This speech, and the red dress, express the whole spectral, fantasticized quality of the union between them. There is not a word about reclaiming the rest of the mountains or their people, or about doing anything to stop the process which is getting under way to destroy them. Hale and June's utopia is literally inscribed in the absence of the real Appalachia existing in history—and of the real "America" as well. The ambiguities of the midsection of the book, with its talk of the "cruel, deadly work of civilization," is tied to an ambiguity: Volume Two, 1990 41 �Male's attitude toward June and toward the patriarchal/capitalist enterprise in general. But this fundamental and threatening selfcriticism, this real self-discovery through inner dialogue, must be rejected or the entire enterprise—Hale's, Fox's, and by implication America's—will collapse. So reconciliation takes place in the usual patriarchal way as the feminine discourse is englobed within a little, impotent space of its own—with "every sign of civilization" borne just out of sight. Insofar as the book is "about" Hale's/America's self-discovery through June/Appalachia, the ending fails when everything returns to its initial state, including Hale's own state of self-knowledge. (A failure as art, if a perfect success as cultural reflection, hence the story's enduring popularity.) And indeed, the pressure that has made the creative fissures close up and the novel collapse—which has forced Fox to take monologic control—is the nearly-fulfilled threat of self-knowledge leading to consequences which Fox never intended and which America would have rejected. Then, out of nowhere descends the last deus ex machina as Uncle Billy comes riding along to marry the pair. As he is about to do so, the book ends. Hale's anticipated sweeping and garnishing had turned Lonesome Cove from the "narrow grave" (352) which June has feared— since woman, in patriarchal discourse, is dead and barren without man—into a bridal bed; from a locus of absence into one of presence generated by the hegemonic discourse (Said, 1978: 208). Yet it is the locus of a presence which can only be achieved in the absence of the historically constituted world as we know it. The reality of the "civilization" Hale represents is, in the form of its waste residue, literally evacuated. Thus, once more, Hale's true self-discovery is short-circuited into standard patriarchal-romance terms of Redemption by Woman, a paradigm whose limitations are commensurate with those of the tiny area being "saved" from "civilization." June has lost her individual humanity and become wholly assimilated to the anima-archetype, which, being transpersonal, depersonalizes her (Cunningham, 170)—just as the semiotic appropriation of Appalachia by America takes place hand in hand with political and economic takeover and absorption.13 June even promises to smooth Hale's wrinkles away (415) through her acceptance of them (417)—to erase his experience through her reciprocal gaze from eyes which have ceased to be anything but the reflection of Hale's desire. Once more he fits his early description: "With the vision of a seer, he was as innocent as Boone" (41). Thus, Hale's self-discovery collapses into that self-gazing narcissism which Fanon attributed to Hale's civilization, here among the precipices of Appalachia. Hale has engulfed June as America engulfs Appalachia. 42 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �He has taken back her eyes and made them his again as America reappropriates its "gifts" to Appalachia. He has reduced her to absolute receptiveness in a sort of rape, surrounded with the glowing rhetoric of love, as America rapes Appalachia. Thus, the dialogue finally completes its perfect collapse into a monologue without interlocutors. Jack Hale, like John Fox, like American and Western civilization, is indeed enfin seul. Works Cited Askins, Don. 1978. "John Fox, Jr., a Re-Appraisal; or, With Friends Like That, Who Needs Enemies?" Lewis, Johnson, and Askins, ed., Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case. Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press, 251-257. Brosi, George. 1988. "John Fox, Jr.," Appalachian Mountain Books 4: 7,6-7. Chapman, Malcolm. 1978. The Gaelic Vision in Scottish Culture. London: Groom Helm; Montreal: McGill-Queen's. Coles, Robert. 1985. "Review of The Trial of the Lonesome Pine by John Fox, Jr. Appalachian Journal:l2, 265-267. Cunningham, Rodger. 1987. Apples on the Flood: The Southern Mountain Experience. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Diawara, Manthia. 1988. "The Other(s') Archivist." Review of Blank Darkness, by C.L. Miller. Diacritics 18: 1, 66-74. Dix, Keith. 1970. "Appalachia: Third World Pillage?" People's Appalachia 1: 4, 9-13. Fanon, Frantz. 1961. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Constance Farrington, 1968. New York: Grove. Fox, John, Jr. 1908. The Trial of the Lonesome Pine. Revised 1984 by University Press, Lexington: Kentucky. Gaventa, John. 1980. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. 1980. Settling with the Indians: The Meeting of English and Indian Cultures in America, 1580-1640. Totona: Rowman. Lewis, Helen Matthews, Sue Easterling Kobak, and Linda Johnson. 1978. "Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia, or, Bury My Rifle at Big Stone Gap." Edited by Lewis, Johnson, and Askins, 113-39. Volume Two, 1990 43 �Lewis, Helen Matthews, ed., with Linda Johnson and Don Askins. 1978. Colonialism, in Modern America: The Appalachian Case. Boone: Appalachian Consortium Press. McKinney, Gordon B. 1977. "Industrialization and Violence in Appalachian in the 1890's." J.W. Williamson, ed. An Appalachian Symposium: Essays Written in Honor of Gratis D. Williams. Boone: Appalachian State, 131-144. Miller, Christopher L. 1985. Blank Darkness: Africanist Discourse in French. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. The New York Times. 26 April 1915. VIII15: 1; in Shapiro, 1978, 352. Parker, John. 1979. "Religion and the Virginia Colony, 1609-10." K. R. Andrews, N.P. Canny and P.E.H. Hair. The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic and America. 1480-1650. Detroit: Wayne State, 245-270. Pearce, John Ed. Foreword to Fox,.1908. vii-xvi. Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Random House. . 1989. "Representing the Colonized: Anthropology's Interlocutors." Critical Inquiry 15: 205-225. Shapiro, Henry D. 1978. Appalachia on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina. Sheehan, Bernard W. 1980. Savagism and Civility: Indians and Englishmen in Colonial Virginia. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press. Snyder, Robert. 1982. "Image and Identity in Appalachia," Appalachian Journal 9: 124-33. Titus, Warren I. 1988. John Fox, Jr. New York: Twayne. Waller, Altina. 1988. Feud: Hatftelds, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina. Footnotes 1 Cole's characterization of the book as "utterly contemporary in its lack of sentimentality," (206) is as accurate as his statement that Fox, a native of Paris in the Bluegrass, "spent his early years in the mountain part of Kentucky (265). His review is notable largely as an especially glaring example of the limitations of liberalism on the part of this great friend of the mountains. 2 Mooney, James. 1889. "Folk-Lore of the Carolina Mountains." Journal of American Folklore 2: June 1889, 95-104, in Shapiro, 245. 44 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �3 Fox's description of the activities of this group is largely taken verbatim from an earlier nonfiction piece of his titled "Civilizing the Cumberland" (Titus, 1971: 62-63). For a quite different view of this "civilizing" process, see McKinney, 1977. 4 Fox also draws another science into partnership with domination: Cumberland Gap "would have to be tunnelled. So said Geography" (42). So, of course, says the personified intersection of'objective' science with a particular intention toward its subject; but geography as a 'science' has never in fact been free from that intention. s The British agents at Cumberland Gap (like Big Stone Gap, not named, but unmistakable) are called "helmeted Englishmen" three times (88, 232) and once "conquistadors from Albion." One is evidently intended to visualize Renaissance soldiers in morions, which, of course, is as accurate an image of the agents of the American Company as is Fox's general image of their doings, for a truer account of which we are indebted to John Gaventa, 1980. 8 Indeed, Male's and Budd's attitude closely echoes that of an early English writer on Virginia: "Our intrusion into their possessions shall tend to their great good...to bring them from their base condition to a farre better"; but "so many as obstinately refuse to unite themselves unto us, or shall maligne or disturb our plantation...shall be dealth [sic] with as enemies of the Commonwealth of their country." Emphasis added. Robert Johnson. (1609), Nova Britannia (London) f. C2r; in Parker (1979), 253. 7 A particularly interesting example of this appropriation and abjection occurs when Hale takes June down to meet his Bluegrass relatives: "Rumour had gone ahead of June. Hale had found her rushing about the mountains on the back of a wild bull...She was as beautiful as Europa" (231). Here, Fox recalls the girl of whom he was told in the late 1880s (Titus, 1971: 24) and who became the inspiration of his first Appalachian story, "A Mountain Europa." This is a central image, therefore, in Fox's relation to Appalachia; indeed, it is the germ of his literary career. But the girl in the anecdote and in Fox's story was calmly riding the bull along a path on the way to market—a practice sometimes actually followed in the absence of other draft animals. She is, in short, a mistress, or rather master, of the bull's male force (the word bull is cognate to phallus). But to call her "Europa" is to identify her with a helpless victim of the bull of AllFather Zeus in an act of bride-capture. (One is reminded of the observation of Levi-Strauss that kinship is a language in which women function as words and their exchange as communication.) Thus, this metaphor reduces June to a functional sign in the semiotic exchange between Appalachian and American cultures—and in Fox's communicative exchange with the reader. Serres observes that all logocentric discourse occurs over a third party, a muted and abjected Other; here that party is June/Appalachia reduced to feminine passivity in a dialogue between the two parts of Jack/America—a dialogue constantly pulling toward monologue. 8 In an earlier chapter, the "railroad that had been creeping for many years toward the Gap" is seen by Hale as a "worm" whose "head...was just protruding from the Natural Tunnel twenty miles away" (126). Despite this sinister phallic imagery, though, the railroad at this point is described in positive terms. Its Volume Two, 1990 45 �passage was made by "the Almighty," who had "stored" the resources of the mountains and "driven this passage himself to help puny man to reach them" (126). Thus, the phallicism is redeemed by attributing it to a Father-God made in Man's/Hale's image, endorsing and reinforcing man's own 'puny1 phallicism and, indeed, creating the female by that force. Yet in the threatening unpleasantness of the image, there is an undertone of doubt about Hale's male impulses and those of his civilization. (Hale's name means "healthy," but when June first hears it she spells it "Hail" [208, 356], the name of a phenomenon sent from Heaven but dreaded by rural people.) 9 Fox explicitly labels as "lawlessness" some things that are simply face-to-face, human-scaled, oral-cultural means of social control: "[Ejections were held viva voce under the beeches.... Here...the people had come together during half a century for sport and horse-trading and to talk politics" (141). This is part of a long passage in which violence is mentioned as sometimes incidental to these processes, but is implied to be the essential feature of them. One of the first ordinances passed by the outside 'civilizers' is to ban shouting in the streets (142), and "the lawlessness of the town itself is attributed to "its close environment" (142)—evidently a prejudicial name for face-to-face interaction. One moonshiner is "dubbed Caliban" (143)—shades of D.O. Mannoni and other colonial-discourse critics of The Tempest. 10 The feudist Devil Judd Tolliver is based on Devil John Wright, a notorious opportunist "who had supposedly fought on both sides of the Civil War.... When Fox knew him, he was serving as a Kentucky peace officer and helping the Consolidation Coal Company buy up land in Letcher and Pike County, Kentucky" (Titus, 1971: 96). Fox himself presents Devil Judd as an entrepreneur, a non'traditional' person, while simultaneously making him a symbol of'barbarism': "It was not often that he found a mountaineer who knew what a parting in a coal seam was" (25). 11 Even earlier, he has deprived them, in her eyes, of agency in the conduct of their own lives: "They were not to blame—her people, they but did as their fathers had done before them" (362). She sees their actions as only passively following the groove set down by their discourse. But, here again, as with Sam Budd's dismissal of the reasons for the strike, the real master-discourse is 'civilization's' and Fox's—and, here, Hale's as June has fallen into that groove. 12 I am indebted for this insight to Linda Gill, my student in Appalachian Literature at Sue Bennett College. 13 And, indeed, industrial waste is to this day poured on Appalachia because Appalachia is itself the semiotic residue of America. Thus do the 'symbolic' and the 'imaginary' redound upon the Veal.' Rodger Cunningham, a native of West Virginia, teaches English and Appalachian studies at Sue Bennett College in London, Kentucky. He is the author of Apples on the Flood: The Southern Mountain Experience. 46 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Household Composition and Early Industrial Transformation: Eastern Kentucky 1880 to 19101 Thomas A. Arcury This paper describes household composition in Appalachian Kentucky in 1880 and in 1910, and analyzes change in household composition during this period. There is general agreement that the family and household have great importance in Appalachian society today, and that the importance of the family and the household have historical depth (Brown and Schwarzweller, 1971; Titon, 1988). While their importance in the region is acknowledged, empirically little is known about the composition and functioning of households and families in the 19th century or the first third of the 20th century. The lack of materials for these earlier periods means there is currently no way of understanding the changes in household and family which have occurred in the region. The earliest description of Appalachian household and family composition was completed by Brown (1952a, 1952b, 1988). Brown used ethnographic and survey data, collected in the "Beechcreek" neighborhood of Eastern Kentucky in the early 1940s, to describe household and family structure, their developmental cycles, and their variation. Brown's Volume Two, 1990 47 �work, however, was conducted in a single neighborhood; generalizations to the contemporary population (1940s), or the historic Appalachian or Eastern Kentucky populations must be tempered. No surveys predating Brown's work provide data on household and family composition. Nor were any ethnographies completed before Brown which contain information on household and family structure. The available "ethnographic novels," particularly those of Arnow (1936, 1949), give an understanding of familial bonds, roles and behavior for a period somewhat earlier than that of Brown's research, but these novels cannot give the data needed to analyze early composition. Several surveys were conducted in the 1940s in Eastern Kentucky which include information on household and family. These are analyzed by Boyd (1948). Since 1960, there have been analyses of households and families in Appalachia using survey and ethnographic data (e.g., Bryant, 1981; Beaver, 1986; Schwarzweller, et al 1971; Ford, et al, 1985). Other research has examined family roles and values in different segments of the Appalachian population (e.g., Lewis, 1970). These materials provide information to help interpret earlier structural characteristics, and something to which earlier materials can be compared to measure change, but they do not provide basic information on the household composition for earlier periods. Some efforts toward the empirical analysis of Appalachian household composition during the 19th and early 20th centuries have begun. These include the paper by Arcury and Porter (1985) for 1900 Eastern Kentucky comparing household composition in Pike County to that in Ashland. Titon (1988) analyzes household economy in Page County, Virginia, from settlement to the present to establish the continuity in the value for household based production. Billings and Blee (1989) have begun publishing their historical work on the Beech Creek neighborhood of Kentucky studied by Brown in the 1940s. Waller's (1988) analysis of the Hatfield-McCoy feud also includes an examination of the socioeconomic circumstances influencing changes in family relationships at the turn of the century in Pike County, Kentucky, and Mingo and Logan Counties, West Virginia. Each of these studies, however, is based on one or two counties and do not have regional data available for comparison. While there is little detail about the structure of Appalachian households and families before 1940, there is a growing literature on the economy of the region from 1880 to date. The 1880 to 1910 period was the beginning of industrialization in Eastern Kentucky. During this period the regional economy changed from one more geared to subsistence production to one more geared to commercial production (Eller, 48 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �1982; Moore, 1984). In this period large scale commercial coal mining and timbering began. These economic changes were not evenly distributed throughout Eastern Kentucky. In 1910, 7 of the 31 counties did not have a railroad. In this same year, coal was being commercially mined in only 13 of the 31 counties. Arcury (1988) shows that there was wide variation in agricultural production throughout the 1880 to 1910 period. The theoretical framework which guides this research is that of cultural ecology. From this perspective, in addition to its psychoemotional and symbolic functions, the household is the basic unit for the economic activities of production, distribution and consumption (Wilk and Netting, 1984). The household is a means by which individuals organize and adapt themselves economically. As changes occur in the economy of the communities of which the households are a part, or in the subsistence pursuits of the household residents, the composition of the households should reflect these changes. The expectation is that the closer the economic base of the community or household(s), is to a subsistence type, the greater is the tendency for households to be large and structurally complex. The closer the economic base of the community or household to a more cash or commercial type, the greater is the tendency for households to be small and structurally simple (Arcury, 1984). Methods This research focuses on 31 Eastern Kentucky counties commonly included in the Appalachian Region (Ford, 1962). See Figure 1. Data on household and family are taken from the 1880 and 1910 U.S. census manuscripts. Three samples were selected. (1) A stratified random sample of 600 households from the 1880 census; (2) A stratified random sample of 600 households from the 1910 census; and (3) A random sample of 260 households from the 1910 census in which the household heads were employed by a coal mine company. The 1880 and 1910 samples were stratified to insure the inclusion of (1) households located in enumeration districts containing towns as well as those which were totally rural, and (2) households located in counties in which commercial coal mining was present by 1910 as well as in those counties in which there was no commercial coal mining. For this analysis these samples are weighted.2 Volume Two, 1990 49 �Operationally, households include all individuals listed as being part of a household in the manuscript census. Household type in this analysis is based on the Hammel and Laslett (1974) typology. Five types are used. (1) A nuclear family household includes the nuclear family of the household head, but no other relatives. (2) An extended family household includes the nuclear family of the household head, and any other relatives who are not part of a nuclear family; or an individual household head and a related nuclear family. (3) A multiple family household includes the nuclear family of the household head, as well as any nuclear family related to the household head. It may also include any other relatives who are not part of a nuclear family. (4) A solitary household includes no relatives of the household head. (5) An other household contains relatives of the household head, but no nuclear family which includes the household head or any relative of the household head. Each of these types may contain any number of individuals or families not related to the household head. Household size is the total number of persons living in the household. Generations spanned is the maximum number of generations related to the household head in a household. A household including a grandparent and a grandchild would span three generations whether or not members of the parental generation are present. A household including a head with no other relatives present would span only one generation even if it included three generation family of resident employees. The components of household type are the presence of nuclear families and individuals. A nuclear family is a conjugal pair (husband and wife) with or without children; or a conjugal stem, a parent with at least one coresident child. In addition to a primary nuclear family (a nuclear family in which the family head is the household head), there are subfamilies (a nuclear family in which the family head is not the household head, but members of the family are related to the household head through kinship), and secondary families (a nuclear family in which the family head is not the household head, nor are members of the family related to the household head). 50 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Individuals are household residents who are not part of a nuclear family. There are two major type of individuals: primary individuals are those who head households, and secondary individuals are those who do not head households. Secondary individuals are further divided into those related to the household head and those not related to the household head. In describing Eastern Kentucky household composition, general structure and size are presented for each sample. To examine the developmental aspects of household composition, structure and size are then examined by age of head. Four household head age groups are used: (1) young adult household heads aged 15 to 29; (2) middle aged household heads aged 30 to 49; (3) older household heads aged 50-59; and (4) elderly households aged 60 and older. The analysis of household developmental cycle is limited to those households with male heads; few households in any of the samples have female heads. The small number of female headed households does not lend itself to more specific analysis. The distributions of size and type for households with female heads differ from those with male heads. It would distort the analysis to combine households with female and male heads. 1880 Household Composition The majority of 1880 households have a nuclear family structure (79%), and are large, with an average size of 5.8 persons (Table 1, Panel A). The majority of all households have male heads. Households with male and female heads differ in composition. Female headed households are a person smaller. Fewer female headed households are nuclear family and extended family, while more are multiple family, solitary and other. When the age of the male household head is controlled, the influence of the developmental cycle on variation in household composition is apparent (Table 2). With the increasing age of head, there is a tendency for households to become complex. Over 80% of the households with heads under age 50 were nuclear family in structure, 76% of those with heads aged 50-59 are nuclear, and only 55% of those with heads aged 60 and older are nuclear. Extended family households increase from 8.5% of those with young adult heads, to 13.3% of those with older heads, and 29.0% of those with elderly heads. Multiple family households increase from 1.1% of those with young adult heads to 11.8% of those with elderly heads. Volume Two, 1990 51 �TABLE L HOUSEHOLD STRUCTURE AND MEAN SIZE, TOTAL SAMPLES AND BY GENDER OF HOUSEHOLD HEAD — 1880 GENERAL SAMPLE, 1910 GENERAL SAMPLE, AND 1910 COAL MINE EMPLOYEE SAMPLE. A B C TOTAL SAMPLE 1880 General 1910 General 1910 Mine Sample Sample Sample N % N % N % Household Structure 217 83.5 476 79.3 473 78.6 Nuclear Family 31 75 12.5 11.9 70 11.7 Extended Family 3 4.8 30 4.3 1.2 26 Multiple Family 3 2.0 12 2.4 14 Solitary 1.2 6 2.3 2.0 12 2.3 14 Other 4.8 5.3 5,.8 Mean Household Size 260.0 600.0 600..0 Unweighted N Household Structure* Nuclear Family Extended Family Multiple Family Solitary Other Mean Household Size # Unweighted N MALE HEADED HOUSEHOLDS 1880 General 1910 General 1910 Mine Sample Sample Sample N % N % N % 80.2 448 12.3 71 4.0 26 1.7 7 1.8 7 5.8 5.4 555.0 560.0 445 68 22 10 10 80.1 12.8 4.6 1.2 1.3 83.8 31 12.0 3 1.2 3 1.2 5 1.9 4.8 259.0 217 FEMALE HEADED HOUSEHOLDS 1880 General 1910 General 1910 Mine Sample N % Sample N % Sample N % Household Structure* Nuclear Family Extended Family Multiple Family Solitary Other Mean Household Size Unweighted N 31 2 4 4 4 4.9 45.0 68.5 4.4 8.0 10.0 9.1 24 4 3 5 5 4.4 40.0 58.2 9.6 7.8 12.5 11.0 0 0 0 0 1 .0 .0 .0 .0 100.0 4.0 1.0 *Chi Square of household structure by gender of head for 1880 and 1910 general samples significant at .05 level. #T-test of household size by gender of head for 1880 and 1910 general samples significant at .05 level. 52 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Other components of household composition reflect the tendency for greater complexity. Households with any secondary individuals increase from 15.5% of those with young adult heads, to about 20% of those with heads aged 30 to 59, and to 44% of those with elderly heads. Households with related secondary individuals increase from 9% to 31% with the increasing age of the household head. Households with subfamilies increase from 1.1% of those with young adult heads to 11.8% of those with elderly heads. Households with secondary families, while fewer than those with subfamilies, also reflect the trend for complexity with age of household head. Households with secondary families increase from 1.3% of those with young adult heads, to 2.5% of those with middle aged heads, to about 3.5% of those with heads aged 50 and older. Over 80% of households with heads under age 60 span two generations, but only 52.9% of those with heads aged 60 and older span only two generations. Households spanning three generations increase from 3.3% of those with young adult heads to 9.3% of those with older heads, and then jump to 35.4% of those with elderly heads. Fifteen percent of households with young adult heads span only one generation. This relatively high percentage probably results from the formation of new households. Single generation households decline to about 7% of those with heads aged 30 to 59, and then increases to 12.2% of those with elderly heads. This increase in single generation households among the oldest household heads results from the departure of marrying children. Household size and the number of head's children in the household have a curvilinear rather than a direct relationship to head's age. The mean number of persons increases from 4.2 for households with young adult heads, to its peak of 6.9 for households with middle aged heads. Average size then decreases to 6.6 persons for households with older heads, and to 5.2 persons for those with elderly heads. Households with children of the head present increase from 84.4% of households with young adult heads, to 92.6% of those with middle aged heads, and then decline to 91.3% of those with older heads, and to 80.5% of those with elderly heads. The average number of head's children in the household increases from 1.8 for those with young adult heads, to over four children for those with heads aged 30 to 59, and then declines to 2.3 for those with elderly heads. Volume Two, 1990 53 �TABLE 2: HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION BY AGE OF MALE HOUSEHOLD HEAD, 1880 GENERAL SAMPLE. Household Structure Nuclear Family Extended Family Multiple Family Solitary Other Age of Household Head 15-29 30-49 50-59 60 + Young Middle Older Elderly Adult Aged 2.7 .4 1.1 81.6 11.3 3.5 1.1 2.5 75.9 13.3 7.0 1.3 2.4 55.3* 29.0 11.8 2.0 2.0 15.5 9.0 6.6 22.9 12.7 13.8 20.4 14.7 7.0 44.1* 30.9* 15.0 Subfamilies 1.1 3.9 7.0 11.8* Secondary Families 1.3 2.4 3.8 3.5 15.0 81.7 3.3 6.6 86.8 6.6 7.0 83.7 9.3 12.2* 52.9 35.4 4.2 6.9 6.6 5.2# 84.4 1.8 92.6 4.4 91.3 4.1 80.5* 2.3# 84.4 1.8 90.4 4.0 83.7 3.0 49.0* 1.1# 1.4 .0 23.3 .4 58.6 1.1 60.8* 1.2# 4.3 3.0 8.2 5.6 9.4 2.4 13.5 5.2 Secondary Individuals Any Related Unrelated Number of Generations Spanned One Two Three or More Mean Number of Person 87.2 8.5 Children of the Household Head Present Any One or more Mean Under Age 18 One or more Mean Age 18 and Older One or more Mean Nonrelatives Employees Boarders Unweighted N 174 259 73 50 *Chi Square by age of household head significant at .05 level. SF-test by age of household head significant at .05 level. 54 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �1910 Household Composition—The General Population Sample The majority of the 1910 general population households have a nuclear family structure (79%), and are large, with an average size of 5.3 persons (Table 1, Panel B). The majority of all households also have male heads. Size and type differ between households with male and female heads. Female headed households are on average a person smaller. Fewer female headed households have a nuclear family or extended family structure. More female headed households are multiple family, solitary or other. There is a moderate tendency for household complexity to increase relative to the age of the household head (Table 3). There is also, however, a limited tendency for household complexity to have a curvilinear relationship to age of household head; for some characteristics which indicate complexity, the highest percentage of households is among those with heads aged 50-59, and this percentage decreases among those with heads age 60 and older. Households with a nuclear family structure decrease from 86.9% of those with young adult heads, to 67.5% of those with elderly heads. Households with an extended family structure increase from 9.1% of those with young adult heads to 22.0% of those with elderly heads. For the multiple family type the highest percentage, 9.3%, is among those households with heads aged 50-59. Households with any secondary individuals increase from 13.6% of those with young adult heads, to 29.0% of those with older heads, before declining to 24.5% of those with elderly heads. Households with unrelated secondary individuals increase from 3.3% of those with young adult heads to 10.0% of those with older heads, and then decline to 5.6% of those with elderly heads. Households with related secondary individuals increase from 10.3% of those with young adult heads to 21.5% of those with older heads, and again to 23.2% of those with elderly heads. Volume Two, 1990 55 �TABLE 3: HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION BY AGE OF MALE HOUSEHOLD HEAD, 1910 GENERAL SAMPLE. Household Structure Nuclear Family Extended Family Multiple Family Solitary Other Age of Household Head 15-29 30-49 50-59 60 + Young Middle Older Elderly Adult Aged 86.9 9.1 3.4 .0 .6 83.0 11.5 3.5 .7 1.4 70.8 15.8 9.3 3.2 .9 67.5* 22.0 4.5 2.9 3.2 13.6 10.3 16.9 12.3 24.5* 23.2* 3.3 5.8 29.0 21.5 10.0 Subfamilies 3.4 3.5 10.2 6.1 Secondary Families 1.2 2.4 .9 1.6 17.1 80.0 5.1 86.9 8.0 14.3 69.1 16.6 25.1* 55.8 19.1 3.9 6.5 5.5 4.4# 82.3 92.9 1.6 3.9 81.8 61.9* 2.0# 82.3 92.2 71.5 2.0 43.3* 1.2# Secondary Individual Any Related Unrelated Number of Generations Spanned One Two Three or More Mean Number of Persons Children of the Household Head Present Any One or more Mean Under Age 18 One or more Mean Age 18 and Older One or more Mean 2.9 1.6 3.7 3.1 5.6 .0 .0 17.4 58.8 38.8* .2 1.0 .8# Nonrelatives Employees Boarders 2.7 1.1 4.8 4.5 1.7 4.8 4.3 1.3 Unweighted N 150.0 247.0 108.0 60.0 *Chi Square by age of household head significant at .05 level. #F-test by age of household head significant at .05 level. 56 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �About 3.5 percent of the households with heads aged under 50 include subfamilies. While 10.2% of those with heads aged 50-59, but only 6.1% of those with heads aged 60 and older have subfamilies. Households spanning two generations generally decrease with the aging of the household head. After increasing from 80.0% of households with young adult heads to 86.9% of those with middle aged heads, two generation households decrease to 55.8% of those with elderly heads. Three generation households increase from 2.9% of those with young adult heads to 19.1% of those with elderly heads. However, the increase in one generation households is even greater; 25.1% of households with elderly heads span only one generation. Household size and the number of head's children in the household have a curvilinear relationship to head's age. Average household size by age of head increases from 3.9 to 6.5 persons, and then declines to 5.5 and 4.4 persons. The average number of children similarly increases from 1.6 to 3.9, and then declines to 3.1 and 2.0. Households with children relative to head's age increase from 82.3% to 92.9%, and then decrease to 81.8% and 61.9%. 1910 Household Composition—The Coal Mine Employee Sample The dominant household type in the 1910 coal mine employee sample is the nuclear family (Table 1, Panel C). In addition to nuclear family households (84%), only extended family households represent a substantial part of the sample (12%). Average household size in the mine sample is 4.8 persons. Only one of the households in this sample has a female head. There is little developmental change in household composition among the coal mine employee households (Table 4). The analysis of the developmental cycle for this sample is made difficult by the small number of households with older and elderly heads; 19 households have heads aged 50 to 59, and only two have heads aged 60 and older. Measures of significance were calculated for variation in household characteristics by age of head for all of the age groups, excluding the two households with heads aged 60 and older. There was no difference in results. Volume Two, 1990 57 �TABLE 4: HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION BY AGE OF MALE HOUSEHOLD HEAD, 1910 COAL MINE EMPLOYEE SAMPLE. Age of Household Head 15-29 30-49 50-59 60 + Young Middle Older Elderly Adult Aged Household Structure Nuclear Family Extended Family Multiple Family Solitary Other 1.7 .0 2.5 89.5 5.3 5.3 .0 .0 100.0 .0 .0 .0 .0 26.1 11.8 16.0 26.9 14.3 13.5 15.8 10.5 5.3 .0 .0 .0 Subfamilies .0 1.7 5.3 .0 Secondary Families .8 2.5 .0 .0 26.1 71.4 8.4 5.0 31.6 57.9 10.5 50.0* 86.6 3.9 5.7 5.2 4.0# 69.7 90.8 1.5 3.3 68.4 2.9 50.0* 2.0# 69.7 89.1 1.5 3.1 63.2 2.0 50.0* 2.0# .0 .0 12.6 47.4 .9 .0* .0# Secondary Individual Any Related Unrelated Number of Generations Spanned One Two Three or More Mean Number of Persons Children of the Household Head Present Any One or more Mean Under Age 18 One or more Mean Age 18 and Older One or more Mean 84.0 11.8 82.4 13.4 .0 2.5 1.7 2.5 .2 50.0 .0 Nonrelatives Employees Boarders 4.2 8.4 10.9 5.9 .0 5.3 .0 .0 Unweighted N 119.0 119.0 19.0 2.0 *Chi Square by age of household head significant at .05 level. #F-test by age of household head significant at .05 level. 58 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Over 80% of the households have a nuclear family structure no matter the age of the head, and this percentage increases from 84.0% of those with young adult heads, to 89.5% of those with older heads. Extended family households decline from 11.8% of those with young adult heads, to 5.3% of those with older heads. The other components of household composition also indicate limited variation relative to the age of the head. Households with any secondary individuals decrease from about 26% of those with young adult and middle aged heads, to 15.8% of those with older heads. Households with unrelated secondary individuals decrease from 16.0% of those with young adult heads, to 13.5% with middle aged heads, and to 5.3% of those with older heads. There is almost no change in the presence of related secondary individuals. The number of generations spanned in these households generally decreases with the increased age of the head. Among those with young adult heads, 26.1% span one generation and 71.4% span two generations. Two generation households increase to 86.6% of those with middle aged heads; those with one generation decline to 8.4%. Among households with older heads only 58% are two generation and 31.6% are one generation. Households spanning three generations do increase with the age of the head, but this is from 2.5% of those with young adult heads, to 10.5% of those with older heads. Household size increases relative to age of head from 3.9 to 5.7 persons, and then declines to 5.2 persons. Almost 70% of households with young adult heads have a child present, and the mean number of children is 1.5. For households with middle aged heads, 90.8% have children and the average number of these is 3.3. Among households with older heads, only 68.4% have a child present, and the average number of children is 2.9. Continuity and Change in Household Composition, 1880 and 1910 The comparison of the 1880 and 1910 data indicate how households changed during this period. Comparison of data for the 1910 coal mine employee households indicates the features they share with the 1910 general population. Households in Appalachian Kentucky in 1880 were large. During most of the development cycle most of the these households had a simple, nuclear family structure. Household structure became more complex through the developmental cycle, particularly among Volume Two, 1990 59 �households with heads aged 60 and older. These characteristics seem reasonable given the agrarian base of the Eastern Kentucky economy at that time and the large average size of the farms (Arcury, 1988). Waller's (1988) analysis of the resources of elder household heads at this time in Southeastern Kentucky supports this interpretation. In 1880, as well as in the 1910 general and coal mine employee populations, household size had a curvilinear relationship to age of head. For each population this was largely the result of the common developmental pattern of growth, with the addition of children followed by decline with the loss of these children. In 1880, however, as household size and the number of children in the household began to decline relative to age of head, household structure was becoming much more complex. As most children were leaving their natal homes, they were replaced in some cases with the families of procreation of one or more of the head's children or with other of the head's relatives. This would result in a smaller size but a more complex, extended or multiple family household structure. For 1880, while there is a decline in the presence of children in households with elderly heads, the large number of all households with children present must be emphasized. Even among households with elderly heads, 80% still have a child residing with them; the mean number of children is over 2. Among households with the oldest heads, 49% have minor (under age 18) children in their homes, and 60.8% have a least one adult child present. Why this large number of children? The resources controlled by these older household heads are sufficient both to support these remaining children and to require a large workforce. Greater household complexity with the increased age of head resulting from greater resource control is further supported by the number and roles of unrelated secondary individuals. Unlike related secondary individuals, unrelated secondary individuals do not influence household type. Nonrelatives who are household employees increase from 4.3% of those households with young adult heads, to around 9% for those with heads aged 30 to 59, and then to 13.5% of those with elderly heads. There is general continuity when 1880 and 1910 households are compared (Tables 1 and 5). There is only 30 years difference between these years. Many of those who were householders in 1880 were still householders in 1910. While a great deal of economic change occurred in the region, the majority of the population made its living by farming in 1910 as well as in 1880. 60 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �TABLE 5: HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION BY AGE OF MALE HOUSEHOLD HEAD, 1880 GENERAL SAMPLE AND 1910 GENERAL SAMPLE COMPARED. 1880 General Sample 1910 General Sample Age of Household Head Age of Household Head 15-2930-49 50-59 60 + 15-29 30-49 50-59 60 + Household Structure 70.8 67,.5 86.9 83.0 87.2 81.6 75.9 55 .3 Nuclear Family 8.5 11.3 13 .3 29 .0 15.8 22 .0 9.1 11.5 Extended Family 3.4 3.5 Multiple Family 9.3 4..5 1.1 3.5 7,.0 11.8 2 .0 2.7 1.1 1.3 Solitary .7 3.2 2.9 .0 2 .0 .4 2.5 2 .4 Other 1.4 .9 3..2 .6 Secondary Individuals 15.5 22.9 20..4 Any 9.0 12.7 14 .7 Related 7..0 6.6 13.8 Unrelated 44 .1 30 .9 15 .0 Subfamilies 13.6 16.9 10.3 12.3 3.3 5.8* 29.9 21.5 10.0 24..5* 23.,2 5,.6 1.1 3.9 7..0 11.8 3.4 3.5 10.2 6..1 Secondary Families 1.3 2.4 3..8 3.5 1.2 2.4 .9 1.6 Number of Generations Spanned 7,.0 One 15.0 6.6 Two 81.7 86.8 83..7 Three or More 3.3 6.6 9.,3 12.2 52.9 35.4 17.1 5.1 80.0 86.9 2.9 8.0 14.3 69.1 16.6 Mean Number of Persons 4.2 6.9 3.9 6.5 5.5# 25.,1* 55..8 19.,1 6.6 5.2 4.4 84.4 92.6 91.3 1.8 4.4 4.1 80..5 2 .3 82.3 92.9 81.8 61.9* 1.6 3 .9# 3.!# 2.0 84.4 90.4 83.7 1.8 4.0 3.0 49..0 1.1 82.3 92.,2 1.6 3.7 1.4 23.2 58.6 .0 .4 1.1 60,.8 1.2 4.3 8.2 9.4 3.0 5.6 2.4 174.0 259.0 73.0 13..5 5..2 50..0 Children of the Household Head Present Any One or more Mean Under Age 18 One or more Mean Age 18 and Older One or more Mean Nonrelatives Employees Boarders Unweighted N .0 .0 71 .5 43.3 2 .0# 1.2 17,.4 58 .8 .2# 1.0 38.8* .8 1.7* 4.3 2.7 4,.8 4 .8 1.3 1.1 4,.5 150.0 247..0 103 .0 60.0 *Chi Square significant at .05 level for comparison of 1880 and 1910 variables for each age group of household heads. #T-Test significant at .05 level for comparison of 1880 and 1910 variables for each age group of household heads. Volume Two, 1990 61 �Households in both 1880 and 1910 are large. In both populations most heads are male. The differences between male and female headed households in 1880 are similar to those 1910. In both years male headed households are one person larger and have a greater tendency to have a nuclear family only structure. Female headed households tend to be more variable in composition, including large proportions of each of the five types. The developmental cycle for both 1880 and 1910 male headed households is for households to become more complex. There is also evidence of change from 1880 to 1910. The largest differences are among households with older and elderly heads (aged 50 and older). These indicate a change in developmental cycle; from 1880 to 1910 there is a decline in complexity with increasing age of the household head. In 1880, there is a strong tendency for households to become complex with the aging of the head; in 1910, this tendency is weaker. Households are smaller in 1910, with a decline of half a person. The largest size differences are between households with older and elderly heads; these 1910 households include one fewer person. In 1880 and 1910, structure is very similar among households with male heads aged 15 through 59. Among households with elderly heads, there are more pronounced differences in structure: for example, 55.3% of the households with elderly heads are nuclear family in 1880, versus 67.5% for 1910; 11.8% are multiple family in 1880, versus 4.5% in 1910. Similar proportions of households with heads up to age 59 have secondary individuals for 1880 and 1910. However, among those with elderly heads 20% fewer have secondary individuals in 1910 than in 1880. This difference holds true for related secondary individuals (30.9% in 1880, 23.2% in 1910), and unrelated secondary individuals (15.0% in 1880, 5.6% in 1910). Households with household employees increase from 4.3% to 13.5% in 1880, but only from 2.7% to 4.3% in 1910. There are also fewer households with subfamilies and secondary families. Households with subfamilies increase to 11.8% for those with elderly heads in 1880, but to only 6.1% in 1910. Of 1880 households with elderly heads, 3.5% include a secondary family; only 1.6% of their 1910 counterparts do. In 1880 and 1910, similar percentages of households with young adult and middle aged heads have children present. The average number of children is lower in the 1910 households. Fewer households with older and elderly heads in 1910 have any children of the head present. The number of children present for these 1910 households with older and 62 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �elderly heads is also smaller. In particular, in 1880, 60.8% of households with elderly heads included children aged 18 or older; for 1910, only 38.8% of these households contain adult children. The 1910 coal mine employee households differ substantially from those of the 1910 general population (Tables 1 and 6). The 1910 coal mine employee households have essentially no female heads, or male heads aged 60 and older. Even with no female or elderly headed households, the coal mine employee households are relatively small with an average size of 4.8 persons. More of the coal mine employee households are nuclear family in structure. In the 1910 general population, there is a trend toward complexity with the aging of the household head. Among the coal employee households there is very little structural change relative to the age of the household head. The differences between the 1910 general population and coal mine employee households are even more pronounced when household composition is examined by age of head. Among coal mine employees there is a smaller increase in three generation households with age of head than among the 1910 general population. There is a larger increase among coal mine employee households in one generation and a smaller decrease in two generation households with the increasing age of the head. Variation in household size relative to the age of the head in the 1910 coal mine employee sample results from the common developmental pattern of growth and decline with the addition and loss of children. Size among the coal mine employee households is also influenced by the number with unrelated secondary individuals, particularly boarders. More 1910 coal mine employee households with young adult and middle aged heads have secondary individuals. Fewer 1910 coal mine employee households with older heads include secondary individuals. As the coal mine employee household heads have more children, these children replace non-relatives. These unrelated individuals were largely boarders rather than employees (as in 1880), and their departure results from their beds being needed by the heads' children. Finally, there are fewer households with any children, under age 18 children, or age 18 and older children, in the 1910 coal mine employee households. The average numbers of children, however, do not differ that much between the 1910 coal mine employee and 1910 general population households. This indicates that if the coal mine employee households have children present, they have more of them. This follows Haines' (1979) analysis of miners' fertility. Volume Two, 1990 63 �TABLE 6: HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION BY AGE OF MALE HOUSEHOLD HEAD, 1910 GENERAL SAMPLE AND 1910 COAL MINE EMPLOYEE SAMPLE COMPARED. 1900 Mine Sample 1910 General Sample Age of Household Head Age of Household Head 15-29 30-4950-59 60 + 15-29 30-49 50-59 60 + Household Structure 84 .0 82.4 89.5 100.0 86.9 83..0 70.8 67.5 Nuclear Family 5.3 .0 11.8 13.4 9.1 11..5 15.8 22 .0 Extended Family 5.3 .0 .0 1.7 3,.5 9.3 4.5 3.4 Multiple Family .0 .0 .0 .0 2 .5 Solitary .7 3.2 2.9 .0 .9 3.2 .0 .6 Other 1..4 1.7 2.5 Secondary Individual Any 13.6 16 .9 29.0 24 .5 10.3 12 .3 21.5 23 .2 Related 3.3 5..8 10.0 5.6 Unrelated 26 .1* 26.9* 15 .8 11.8 14.3 10.5 16 .0* 13.5* 5.3 .0 .0 .0 Subfamilies 3.4 3.5 10.2 6 .1 .0* 1.7 5.3 .0 Secondary Families 1.2 2..4 .9 1.6 .8 2.5 .0 .0 Number of Generatic is Spanned 17.1 One 5.1 14.3 25 .1 80.0 86 .9 69.1 55.8 Two 2.9 8.0 16.6 19 .1 Three or more Mean Number of Persons 3.9 6.5 5.5 4.4 Children of the Household Head Present Any One or more 82.3 92.9 81.8 61 .9 Mean 1.6 3.9 3.1 2 .0 Under Age 18 One or more 82.3 92.2 71.5 43..3 Mean 1.6 3.7 2 .0 1.2 Age 18 and Older One or more .0 17.4 58 .8 38 .8 Mean .0 .2 1.0 .8 Nonrelatives Employees Boarders Unweighted N 2.7 4.8 1.7 4..3 1.1 4.5 4 .8 1.3 150.0 247.0 103.0 60.0 26 .1 8.4 71.4 86.6 2 .5 5.0 3.9 5.7# 31.6 50.0 57 .9 50.0 .0 10 .5 5.2 4.0 69 .7* 90.8 68.4 1.5 3.3# 2.9 50.0 2.0 69 .7* 89.1 63.2 1.5 3.1# 2.0 50.0 2.0 .0 12.6 .2 .0 47.4 .9 .0 .0 4..2 5.9 .0 8..4* 10.9* 5.3 119 .0 119.0 19.0 .0 .0 2.0 *Chi Square significant at .05 level for comparison of 1910 general and 1910 mine employee variables for each age group of household neads. #T-Tcst significant at .05 level for comparison of 1910 general and 1910 mine employee variables for each age group of household heads. 64 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Economic Change and Household Variation: Interpretation Is the economic process of industrialization reflected in household composition changes from 1880 to 1910? Average household size did decline during this period. The most important structural change can be summarized as a modification in the household developmental cycle that resulted in a decrease in household complexity among households with heads aged 60 and older. Did any of these changes in household structure and size between 1880 and 1910 actually result from industrialization and consequent changes in the regional economy from a subsistence to cash orientation? It is not possible to directly observe causation with the data presented. The household composition changes which occurred between 1880 and 1910 could have resulted from other factors. For example, the majority of the household heads in both samples were farmers. Elsewhere, analysis has shown that average farm size for the counties of Appalachian Kentucky declined greatly between 1880 and 1910 (Arcury 1988). This decline in farm size might account for the changes in household composition, without industrialization or the commercialization of the local economy either occurring or, if occurring, influencing household composition. Differences between household composition in the 1910 general sample and the 1910 coal mine employee sample, are more easily attributed to differences in economic lifestyle. The requirements of being a coal mine employee, generally being young and male, would lead us to expect the households of coal mine employees to be different from the households of the general population. Even when the attributes which make coal mine employee households distinctive, having younger and only male household heads, are controlled, the characteristics of the households of the coal mine employees differ non-trivially from the household characteristics of the general population. The households of those employed by coal mines are smaller. In the 1910 general population, households tend to become more complex with the increased age of the head; in the 1910 coal mine employee sample, household structure changes very little relative to the age of the head. This analysis provides some support for the general relationship between changes in economy and household composition. The next step for this research is to conduct a more indepth analysis of variation in household and family composition for 1880 and 1910. For example, the Volume Two, 1990 65 �influence of changes in agriculture must be examined by comparing the household composition of farmers in 1880 to the household composition of 1910 farmers, and the nonfarm households of 1880 to the nonfarm households of 1910. This research must examine more specific issues. For example, what was the influence of greater participation in a money economy on the cooperation between families and households? Analysis of another rural U.S. population (van Willigen, 1989) indicates that these economic changes led to less cooperation. What are the effects of city versus small town versus rural residence on household and family composition? Residence in cities and towns would indicate an even greater participation in a commercial rather than a subsistence economy, there then should be even greater variation in household and family composition. Finally, what are the effects of ethnic and migrant status on household composition? Finally, the 1880 and 1910 data for Eastern Kentucky should be compared to data for the national U.S. population and other local and regional populations for these years. These comparisons will indicate the uniqueness of Appalachian social organization during this period. The 1880 and 1910 data should also be compared to data for more recent populations of the Appalachian region. Comparable data exist for Eastern Kentucky in the 1940s (Boyd, 1948), and for the larger central Appalachian region in 1950s and the 1970s (Ford et al, 1983, 1985). Notes 1. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. BNS 8519633. The map for this paper was prepared by the University of Kentucky Cartography Lab. 2. A description of the sampling and weighting procedures is available from the author upon request. Works Cited Arcury, Thomas A. 1984. "Household Composition and Economic Change in a Rural Community, 1900 to 1980: Testing Two Models." American Ethnologist 11: 677-698. Arcury, Thomas A. 1988. "Agricultural Diversity and Change in Industrializing Appalachia: An Ecological Analysis of Eastern Kentucky, 1880 to 1910," CDC Development Paper 23. Lexington: University of Kentucky, Center for Developmental Change. Arcury, Thomas A. and Julia D. Porter. 1985. "Household Composition in Appalachian Kentucky in 1900." Journal of Family History 10:183-195. 66 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Arnow, Harriette S. 1936. Mountain Path. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Arnow, Harriette S. 1949. Hunter's Horn. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Beaver, Patricia Duane. 1986. Rural Community in the Appalachian South. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Billings, Dwight B. and Kathleen M. Blee. 1989. "Family Strategies in a Subsistence Economy: Beech Creek, Kentucky, 1850-1942." Lexington: University of Kentucky, Department of Sociology. Boyd, Virlyn A. 1948. "Household and Family Composition in Selected Rural Areas of Eleven Kentucky Counties. Lexington: University of Kentucky, Department of Sociology, M.A. thesis. Brown, James S. 1952a. The Farm Family in a Kentucky Mountain Neighborhood. Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 587. Lexington: University of Kentucky. Brown, James S. 1952b. The Family Group in a Kentucky Mountain Farming Community. Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 588. Lexington: University of Kentucky. Brown, James S. 1988. Beech Creek: A Study of a Kentucky Mountain Neighborhood. Berea, KY: Berea College Press. Brown, James S. and Harry K. Schwarzweller. 1971. "The Appalachian Family." In Change in Rural Appalachia: Implications for Action, eds. John D. Photiadis and Harry K. Schwarzweller. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 85-97. Bryant, F. Carlene. 1981. We're All Kin: A Cultural Study of a Mountain Neighborhood. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Eller, Ronald D. 1982. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Ford, Thomas R., ed. 1962. The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Ford, Thomas R., Thomas A. Arcury, and Julia D. Porter. 1983. "Changes in the Structure of Central Appalachian Mountain Families and Households, 19581976." CDC Development Paper 19. Lexington: University of Kentucky, Center for Developmental Change. Ford, Thomas R., Thomas A. Arcury, and Julia D. Porter. 1985. "The Impact of Economic Change on Central Appalachian Households and Families." Sociological Focus 18: 289-299. Volume Two, 1990 67 �Haines, Michael. 1979. Fertility and Occupation: Population Patterns in Industrialization. New York: Academic Press. Hammel, Eugene A., and Peter Laslett. 1974. "Comparing Household Structure Over Time and Between Cultures." Comparative Studies in Society and History 16: 1, 73-109. Lewis, Helen Matthews. 1970. "Occupational Roles and Family Roles: A Study of Coal Mining Families in the Southern Appalachians." Lexington: University of Kentucky, Department of Sociology. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Moore, Tyrel G., Jr. 1984. "An Historical Geography of Economic Development in Appalachian Kentucky, 1800-1930." Knoxville: University of Tennessee, Department of Geography. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Schwarzweller, Harry K., James S. Brown and J J. Mangalam. 1971. Mountain Families in Transition: A Case Study of Appalachian Migration. University Park: Pennsylvania University Press. Titon, Jeff Todd. 1988. Powerhouse for God: Speech, Chant, and Song in an Appalachian Baptist Church. Austin: University of Texas Press. Van Willigen, John. 1989. Gettin' Some Age on Me: Social Organization of Older People in a Rural American Community. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Waller, Altina L. 1988. Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Wilk, Richard R. and Robert McC. Netting. 1984. "Households: Changing Forms and Functions." In Households: Comparative and Historical Studies of the Domestic Group, eds. Netting, Robert McC., Richard R. Wilk, and Eric J. Arnould. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1-28. Thomas A. Arcury is research coordinator in the Center for Developmental Change, adjunct assistant professor of anthropology, and an associate of the Appalachian Center at the University of Kentucky. His research interests include household and family composition, aging, and environmental issues in rural America, particularly Appalachia. 68 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Bringing Modern Notions of Childhood and Motherhood to Preindustrial Appalachia: Katherine Pettit and May Stone, 1899-1901 When asked how old a dirty but bright looking baby was, the mother said, "Waal people, I don't know how old hit is." excerpt from Katherine Pettit's account of Camp Sassafras 1901 Rhonda George England In the summer of 1899, Katherine Pettit and May Stone, along with other teacher/volunteers from the Bluegrass section of Kentucky, established the first social settlement in the Kentucky mountains. In Chautauqua-like-fashion, the women pitched tents in and around the vicinity of Knott County, Kentucky, for three consecutive summers. In an attempt to accommodate the settlement to the region, Pettit and Stone established the first rural settlement school in 1902, and in 1915, the town of Hindman incorporated the school, providing it with the permanent title of Hindman Settlement School. Since the primary purposes of the social settlement were social justice and community uplift, one can assume that Pettit and Stone's work in Appalachia was motivated in part by a belief that the mountaineer had been neglected. While the women found many of the older, more traditional aspects of Appalachian culture preferable to the changing values in the more industrialized areas of the country, they also found many elements in the culture that were backward, especially in the areas of health and education. In order to help the mountaineer to help himself, the women believed they should "teach the mountaineers to make the best use of the material they had" (author unknown, 1899). Volume Two, 1990 69 �In All That Is Native and Fine (1983), David Whisnant examines "the politics of culture" at Hindman Settlement School. Whisnant's argument focuses on two major points: (1) the women professed a reverence for mountain culture and hoped to offset the dire effects of impending industrialization, but inadvertently they themselves became powerful instigators of cultural change; and (2) the women, like clergymen of the time, took a very cautious approach to social issues. Whisnant's argument places him in a paradoxical situation similar to the one he assigns to Pettit and Stone. On the one hand, he argues that the women brought some of the very changes they hoped to forestall (modernity). On the other hand, he argues that the women were too conservative in their approach; in other words, they did not effect enough change. Perhaps part of Whisnant's dilemma stems from his point of view: he addresses only one side of the issue, the cultural losses incurred by modernization through schooling. Cultural conflict, or the losses and gains incurred through schooling, has long been a major concern in educational historiography. Because schooling as a socializing agent has had the double agenda of preservation and assimilation, the outcomes of schooling have always appeared to be contradictory. So, in order to strengthen their point of view, many scholars focus primarily on one side of the loss/gain issue. However, Lawrence Cremin reminds us that the loss is inherent in the gain, and the combination is a continuum of what he refers to as "generic polarity." That is, schooling like education in general, "never liberates without at the same time limiting. It never empowers without at the same time constraining. It never frees without at the same time socializing" (1976). Therefore, Cremin says, the important question to be addressed is not whether the losses and gains are occurring in isolation, but what the balance is, and to what end, and in light of what alternatives. We are indebted to Whisnant for revealing the cultural losses the mountaineer incurred through the process of schooling, a process that began in the summer settlements when the teachers began to plaster on modern notions by teaching Appalachian boys and girls such things as "how to make a cake with chocolate icing, dress a chicken properly, cook beans without lard, and sing songs to the accompaniment of a portable reed organ" (Whisnant, 1983). This paper, however, hopes to extend and balance Whisnant's work by looking at the cultural gains that Pettit's and Stone's modem notions of childhood and women's role brought to Appalachia at the turn of the century. The concepts of childhood and adolescence are social constructs. Therefore, we must remember that Pettit's and Stone's notions of childhood and adolescence were part of an evolving process. Although educators and youth workers between the years 1900 and 1920 worked under 70 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �the assumption that childhood and adolescence would soon become a universal experience, variations in regional and class lifestyles of the nation delayed both the attitudes and the institutions; the concepts did not become a universal in this country until the 1950s (Kett, 1977). For that reason, it is difficult to label Pettit's and Stone's views or approaches to social issues in Appalachia as conservative or progressive during that time period. For example, although Pettit and Stone were probably involved in the child labor laws problem in the Bluegrass, child labor in itself was not an issue in their early reports of Appalachia. An explanation for this is found in the 1919 report of the Child Labor Committee. The report cites the popular conception of child labor as employment for wages in factories, mines, and stores; farm work was not considered since the farm was usually viewed as an ideal place for children (Bush, 1919). Therefore, when Pettit and Stone comment on the children working, it is not the work alone that is the primary issue, but the lack of good educational facilities and the mountaineers' attitude toward schooling as something irrelevant in their lives that receives the emphasis: The play life of the child is cramped. They go early into the fields and from there to the school room about the middle of July. The schools have to begin in summer and close before cold weather, because the buildings are not warm enough and the children cannot walk over the mountains and down the swollen streams in winter. Mr. Combs, although one of the best teachers in the County, does not realize the responsibility of his calling. For the last four weeks he has had no school, he gave two weeks for foddering and the other time he has been away hunting criminals (Pettit, 1901). Pettit and Stone probably realized the need for children to work in the self-sufficient farm economy, but they were concerned about the lack of opportunity for the mental and spiritual development of the children. The settlement teachers' emphasis on the importance of "play life" for the children was, perhaps, one of the strangest notions that the women brought to pre-industrial Appalachia: In most cases, mountain parents expected the children to act like adults. May Stone describes the parents' lack of knowledge concerning the play life or imagination in the child: The mother told me that Tilda, who is the older of the two girls, of five and six, is known all over the community as "the worst child that ever wuz," that she would slip and put on long dresses and walk around and say she was Volume Two, 1990 71 �somebody else and fool that way all day. I tried to explain to them that this imagination was a good thing if well directed, but she said "hit was pure meanness and she ought to be killed for 'hit (Stone, 1901). It is apparent from these excerpts that Pettit and Stone viewed the child as one who needed to be nurtured, or, as Susan Blow described it, "nudged" into being. For that reason, the concept of childhood represented by the kindergarten program at the settlements was probably one of the most modern notions that the settlement teachers brought to the region. The similarities in the goals of the kindergarten and the social settlement were so similar that Nina Vandewalker said "the settlement has often been referred to as a kindergarten for adults" (Vandewalker, 1908). Both the kindergarten movement and the social settlement movement resulted from a spiritual enlightenment that had its origin in Europe. They both proclaimed a kind of "new gospel"— that of man as a creative being, and both saw education as a process of development. Therefore, Pettit's and Stone's emphasis on the importance of the "play life" of the child was not a trivial notion; it was the crucial first step in the philosophy of Friedrich Froebel, who saw "education as a continuation of the world's unceasing evolution on the level of consciousness, with the child's play being the first signs of life's urge toward purposeful activity" (Froebel, 1887). Not only were flights of fantasy forbidden to mountain children, but the presence of toys was a very unusual thing. Although the Presbyterian Sunday School had distributed some dolls in the region prior to the settlement of 1899, Pettit says "the dolls were never in the arms of the children." In one home where there was a large family of girls, Pettit says they counted six dolls disposed on the wall "cruelly out of reach of the children." "The dolls were objects of beauty only, not living, breathing, loving babies, to be carefully dressed and cared for and punished" (Pettit, 1901). However, securing the mountain child with a play life was only a step in Pettit's and Stone's attempts to foster some kind of spiritual activity for the children. For not only were children expected to behave like adults, in many cases they were allowed the same privileges that are usually confined to the adult world. In Appalachia, the children "were allowed the use of tobacco as soon as they could walk and talk" (author unknown, 1899), and their indulgences in alcoholic beverages often had devastating consequences. Pettit says one young boy, about twelve years old, came to borrow a book from the circulation library. "He had a lame hand, with the bullet showing plainly in his wrist where he had shot himself while he was drunk" 72 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �(Pettit, 1901). While the settlement teachers used temperance pledges and/or the "love of God" to encourage the children to relinquish these negative habits, their work with the mothers was also an essential part of the process. In "Let Us Live with Our Children: Kindergarten Movements in Germany and the United States, 1840-1911," Ann Taylor Allen says one of the reasons that the kindergarten flourished more in the United States during its early years than it did in Proebel's native Germany, was the difference in the conservative and liberal political traditions of the two countries. Allen uses German sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf s work to substantiate her findings. Darhendorf relates public/private boundaries to conservative and liberal political traditions. He lists Germany as one the conservative societies because it promoted the private or inwardturning virtues, such as piety, profundity, and a strict maintenance of public and private boundaries. The United States is included in the liberal list of countries because it promotes the public virtues of sociability, good citizenship, and political responsibility. Because cultural definitions of the private sphere during the nineteenth-century were assigned to women and children, the kindergarten movement, which was an attempt to join the private with the public, was much too liberal for Germany during that time period. Allen says, "the kindergarten movement, which in both Germany and America was often led by women, exemplified a major theme of nineteenth-century feminism: an attempt to redefine public/private boundaries that, as interpreted by patriarchal culture, condemned both women and children to confinement and subjection (Allen). Even though Pettit and Stone came from the Bluegrass section of Kentucky, there is little doubt that the society they came from was male dominated. Coming from the upper/middle class, however, provided them with freedoms that did not exist for many women during that time. In Appalachia, they found a patriarchal culture that was in many ways distinct from their own. As Pettit writes: It is the deplorable condition of the women that appeals so strongly to me. Their condition is truly wretched. The domestic life of the mountaineer is crude. They know absolutely nothing of decent living. How can they when the women who should be fitted for housekeepers and homemakers are doing the work of men, who think their duty consists in hunting, fishing, and sitting on the fence talking politics. While the women hurriedly cook their meals and spend the rest of the time in cultivating crops, building fences, milking cows.... Many of the country women marry, have real large families and die without ever having the diversion of a visit to the little Volume Two, 1990 73 �village of their county. The poor unfortunates who have not even this one opportunity must spend their lives, as Miss Henderson down on Laurel Fork told us, "jest bummin' around among their folks" (Pettit, 1899). When the mountain women brought their children to the kindergarten classes at the settlement, it was a policy of the settlement to involve them in classes also. Teaching the women home improvement through sewing, cooking, weaving or grooming was the way of the settlement to supplement rather than to supplant the family's role and to further integrate the individual into society. Realizing the rigid restraints of their gender and their "fotched-on" (or outsiders') role in Appalachia, one has to appreciate Pettit and Stone's rather daring attempts to uplift the role of both women and children in Appalachia. In the following passage, Pettit describes one of the daily ways that the settlement women attempted to uplift the woman's role: The people were unusually kind to us. Mr. Sam Kilgore, one of the lawyers, sent a cow for us to use. Monroe Maggard, our hired boy, said that he could not milk, that boys and men did not milk in the mountains. But we did not intend to set any such example to the women, so, we told Monroe that he must learn and then undertook to teach him. At first the cow refused to let the boy milk her, but we all gathered around her and kept her in place, while Monroe learned. One had to keep the flies from her head, one hold the bucket, while the boy milked. In a short while, he could milk alone, but he never was a success and whenever we wanted an extra supply of milk, Arminta, the hired girl, would help him. Many people from the country would look on in amazement to see a boy milk and were much more surprised when we told them that the men did the milking in the level country and that women did not work in the field. (We finally had to put a skirt on the boy to fool the cow.) (Pettit, 1900.) So, while David Whisnant has revealed some of the cultural losses that the mountaineer incurred through the process of schooling, one can see by these brief examples that Whisnant's work does not tell the whole story. The work that Katherine Pettit and May Stone carried on with the women and children in Appalachia should certainly be recognized as cultural gains. Whisnant appears to hold a rather mixed kind of view; for in one sense, he sees the culture as something static, and, at the same time, he dreams of change. All That is Native and Fine may be 74 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �limited because it is written from a male's point of view: a view that looks for the "big happenings" or "great events," and underestimates the amazing transformations that a group of women can make with the subtleties of a pen or needle. Works Cited Allen, Ann Taylor. 1988. "Let Us Live With Our Children: Kindergarten Movement in Germany and the United States, 1840-1911." History of Education Quarterly; Spring 1988, 24. Author Unknown. "Camp Cedar Grove Summer 1899." Hindman Settlement School Archives. Hindman, Kentucky, 6. Bush, Mrs. Lorain B. 1919. "Child Labor." Child Welfare in Kentucky. New York: The National Child Labor Committee, 200. Cremin, Lawrence A. 1976. Traditions of American Education. New York: Basic Books, 36-37. Froebel, Priedrich. 1887. The Education of Man. Trans. W.N. Hailmann. New York: D. Appleton, 35. Kett, Joseph. 1977. Rites of Passage. New York: Basic Books, 245. Pettit, Katherine. 1900. "Camp Sassafras." 1900 Hindman Settlement School Archives. Hindman, Kentucky, 20, 54. Pettit, Katherine. 1901. "Camp Sassafras." 1901 Hindman Settlement School Archives. Hindman, Kentucky, 11, 25. Stone, May. 1901. "Camp Sassafras." 1901 Hindman Settlement School Archives. Hindman, Kentucky, 76. Vandewalker, Nina C. 1908. The Kindergarten in American Education. New York: MacMillian, 38. Whisnant, David E. 1983. All That is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 15, 48. Rhonda England is adjunct professor at Eastern (Central) University, Richmond, Kentucky, and part-time English faculty at Lexington Community College. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Kentucky, writing a dissertation on Katherine Pettit, May Stone and Elizabeth Watts at Hindman Settlement School, 1899-1956. Volume Two, 1990 75 �Four Perspectives on Appalachian Culture and Poverty Roger A. Lohmann Poverty in The Appalachian Context Poverty is as closely associated with the Appalachian region as coal mining and the hammer dulcimer. Appalachian poverty has seldom been portrayed simply as poverty, but as the expression and symbol of something larger. Images of poverty—poorly dressed, sooty, emaciated, barefooted, mostly white, rural children and adults beside cabin porches—are as closely associated with Appalachia as cowboy hats with the West or moss-covered trees and white-columned mansions with the Old South. Buried deeply beneath the images and stereotypes, the realities of poverty in the Appalachian region have changed greatly in the past 25 years. Yet our views of poverty have remained remarkably stagnant during that period. Such a situation might be tolerable if there were evidence of the continuing decline—and eventual disappearance of poverty as a major fact of life in the region. Current data suggest a quite different picture, however. Poverty rates in Central Appalachia remain nearly twice the national average (Tickamyer and Tickamyer, 1987). The collapse of employment in the steel industry has been added to the earlier decline of mining employment to make the problem of structual unemployment a region-wide phenomenon. Further, recent indications 76 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �are that the situation for poor children in Appalachia may have gotten significantly worse during the 1980s, after nearly two decades of gradual improvement (West Virginia Human Resources Assn., 1988). An electronic media wag on one of the all-news channels suggested (in 1988) that nobody believed theories of poverty anymore—not even the theorists who had developed them. This statement may represent a slight exaggeration—academic theorists are generally quite reluctant to give up on their favorite theories. It does not, however, adequately convey the present overall lack of enthusiasm with theories and explanations of poverty. While we have recently been subjected to a number of laser-like penetrating insights into contemporary poverty, summed up by terms such as "new poor," "near poor," "feminization," "urban underclass," "rural ghetto" and "deindustrialization," nothing like the sustained interest of two decades ago in theorizing about (or, even thinking about) poverty appears to be evident at present. And no single theoretical approach or perspective seems capable of provoking much reaction. Even the seemingly heretical view that federal programs are the ultimate causes of poverty draws largely a yawn from most of the academic community. Such lack of interest is particularly true with respect to poverty in Appalachia. With the notable exception of poverty among the elderly, most of the poverty-related problems which attracted significant attention in the 1960s are more or less as serious in the 1980s, while some new forms of poverty have emerged alongside the older forms. Yet, nothing like the sustained interest of that earlier time can be found today. Two decades of energy crisis, federal deficits, social program cutbacks, accountability, and privatization has had remarkably little impact on the remaining poverty problems in Appalachia. Mine and factory closings have made problems worse; inadequate public benefits, occasional new industries, and outmigration have, each in its own way, acted to lessen the severity of problems without ever offering a realistic hope to completely eliminate them. One of the things which is most needed, at present, is renewed discussion and debate over the nature and circumstances of poverty in Appalachia. First and foremost, researchers and scholars with interests in the Appalachian region need to recognize the continued existence of poverty as an important economic, political, and social fact of life. One way to begin refocusing our attention on the phenomenon of poverty in the region, is to begin where we left off: to reexamine some of the thrusts and foci of previous research and writing on Appalachian poverty. In the most general terms, there are probably four identifiable positions on poverty in Appalachia which have impacted most directly Volume Two, 1990 77 �upon issues of public policy and community life in the region. These four positions, outlined in Table 1, can be termed: Bureaucratic Realism, Appalachian Culturalism, Predatory Capitalism, and Domestic Colonialism. It is possible to begin with any of these four dramatically different world-views on Appalachia and to reach startlingly different conclusions regarding the problem of poverty in the region. Like the television commentator cited above, however, each of these perspectives rings somewhat hollow in the world of the 1990s. We shall briefly examine each of them in turn: Bureaucratic Realism This is a view of the Appalachian region shared by most federal and state public agencies, including the Appalachian Regional Commission and the state government departments which administer the categorical aid programs for the eligible poor. From this vantage point, the Appalachian Region is a congressionally defined, 12 state, multi-jurisdictional, administrative district characterized chiefly by a number of inter-related social and economic problems, the solutions of which are important objects of public policy concern. The region as a whole is the administrative domain of a federal agency, the Appalachian Regional Commission, which has ultimate responsibility for the problems of the region. The lack of employment opportunities for residents of the region is a high priority consideration in any list of such problems (Zeller and Miller, 1968). Economic development, heavily concentrated upon capture of new industries for the jobs and tax revenues they bring, is perhaps the most important proximate objective of recent public policy in the Appalachian region. In bureaucratic realism, the problem of poverty has dissolved into the more general problem of economic underdevelopment. The sources of this dissolution are not hard to trace. Shortly after its creation in 1965, the Appalachian Regional Commission embarked upon its imaginative, but controversial, regional development strategy, which stressed highway construction and health care facilities as the key elements in the improvement of the economic infrastructure of the region. This strategy still tends to enrage many in the region who see it as a strategy of bringing a distinctive cultural minority into the homogenized middle-class mass, or who feared that "highways in are also highways out" and will contribute further to the depopulation of the region. To administrative realists, poor people are fairly normal people— clients of public assistance, perhaps distinguishable by their eligibility or "ineligibility." Poverty is an economic condition whose principal characteristic is lack of money. Work is what people must do in order to enjoy a 78 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �satisfactory quality of life. Unemployment, or underemployment therefore, are the principal proximate causes of poverty. Above all else, stress upon national public policy and economic development tends to discount most of the unique or distinguishing characteristics of poverty in Appalachia. Poverty is defined in largely statistical terms following standard methods. Orshansky (1966, 1968), Perry (1979), and Tickamyer and Tickamyer (1987) are among the many statistical studies of poverty in the region. Poverty may exist in the region in greater numbers and proportions, but the essential characteristics of Appalachian poverty are not seen as fundamentally different from poverty elsewhere. Traditionally, bureaucratic realism has been built for the past two decades upon a two-fold strategy against poverty in the region: On the one hand, reliance upon the same programs and services found elsewhere in the U.S., and, on the other hand, the Appalachian Regional Commission "growth centers" strategy in which health and other services are concentrated in areas with high growth potential while highway development provide egress to these areas from more isolated pockets of poverty. (U.S. News and World Report, September 27, 1965; WVGOECD, 1980; WVGOECD, 1983). Largely because of this continuing Appalachian Regional Commission strategy, community-level economic development remains as the preferred anti-poverty strategy of bureaucratic realism in the 1970s and 1980s. (Whitman, 1986; Trent, Weigand and Smith, 1985; Blair, 1973; McNeill and Miller, 1971). Grave doubts continue, however, about the efficacy of bureaucratic realism as an anti-poverty strategy. Appalachian Culturalism One of the sources of those doubts is a view of poverty which is grounded in a social outlook on the region which can be termed "Appalachian Culturalism," and which tends to stress the uniqueness of beliefs, attitudes, and folkways in the region as important factors in understanding poverty. At least since the time of the local colort writers of the 19th Century, and probably well before, there has been a conception of the Appalachian region as a place apart in which ways of life unique and distinct from those known by most Americans existed. Whether in the form of pop-culture stereotypes like Lil Abner and Snuffy Smith, or in serious scholarly studies of Appalachian values, or Appalachian arts and crafts, the sense of a unique and cherished cultural heritage has been encouraged and promoted. One of the defining characteristics of this strange place is the acceptance of subsistence life styles and high levels of poverty as normal or characteristic. Volume Two, 1990 79 �From this vantage point, Appalachia as a cultural unity is not in any fundamental sense the large region associated with the federal administrative district served by Appalachian Regional Commission, but a much smaller area composed of parts of western North and South Carolina, eastern Tennessee and Kentucky and most of southern West Virginia. (Approximately this same area is known in the Appalachian Regional Commission argot as "Central Appalachia.") Weller (1965) identified a long list of traits which he says define Appalachian culture. Probably the most important for an understanding of the Appalachian poor is the sense of resignation and fatalism. Irelan (1966) summarized studies of social attitudes, family patterns, education levels, health, and consumer practices among the poor in Appalachia and other "subcultures." Dial (undated) has discussed the uniqueness of Appalachian language, and Coles (1971) has discussed distinctive Appalachian child-rearing practices. In its more romantic strains, Appalachian culturalism is prone to view work as passe in the world of the hollows, where people survive by hunting, fishing, gardening, and collecting welfare. As with other cases of romantic poverty in distant, remote and picturesque places, poverty may not be viewed as quite so negative because it is part of a traditional way of life. As one source puts it: Thus, the mountaineer appears to be at variance with the standardized image of the American in everyday life. Consequently, he is accused of possessing negative attitudes, of being a defeatist, of having an inferiority complex, and of lacking appreciation for education. His lack of social skills in modern social situations is dubbed by some as having a "backwoods flavor." His inability to follow expected behavior patterns in group situations is assigned to what some call "rural values." (Zeller and Miller, 1968.) Appalachia, it is often said, was a region settled by rugged individualists, more interested in "their own private little worlds" than in any large-scale plans for society or the state (Zeller and Miller, 1968). This view of Appalachian uniqueness as an indigenous cultural product has not been entirely unchallenged. While others have viewed the region as a distinct subculture within contemporary American life, Shapiro (1980) views "the myth of Appalachia" as largely a fabrication of journalists and intellectuals which began in the colonial era, when the region was the "wild west." It was substantially supplemented by the missionaries and local color writers, who among other things, fostered the arts and crafts movement in the region—thus originating mountain 80 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �music, quilting, and clogging—some of the more colorful cultural artifacts found in the region. This view has often been associated with other culture of poverty arguments, for obvious reasons. It is even quite likely that such culture of poverty explanations have been largely discounted as general explanations of poverty in Appalachia. For example, Billings (1974) casts doubt upon the theories of Ford, Weller, Photiadis, et al, that traditional Appalachian culture is a cause of continuing poverty in the region, and suggested that fuller understanding of the causes of poverty in the region would "require a comprehensive social history." It seems likely that Appalachia might better be viewed as a culture of subsistence than a culture of poverty. It is also reasonable that poverty is not an individual, but a family and community concern. Everywhere in the region, localism prevails, with relative indifference to the outside world. Appalachian culturalism accounts for a large portion of the total research output on poverty-related phenomena in the region. Rebow, Berkman and Kessler (1983) isolated "learned helplessness" as a component of the culture of poverty in Appalachia. Lowndes (1972) examined the impact of mass communications on modernization among the Appalachian poor. Ball (1968) examined Southern Appalachians in what he termed an "analgesic subculture." Peterson, Stivers, and Peters (1986) studied the role of family members and others in the career decisions of low-income Appalachian youth. Gender is one of the most examined issues in this literature. Thus, Philliber (1982) examines the phenomenon of working wives in relation to low-income status of low-income Appalachian migrants. Kenkel (1980) examines the occupational and marriage plans of low-income high school girls in Appalachia and the Southeast. Hennon and Photiadis (1979) investigated the changing role of rural Appalachian males in lowincome family structures. Predatory Capitalism Bureaucratic realism and Appalachian culturalism generally fail to capture the sense of frustration and anger among the Appalachian poor and those who speak for them. Others have sought in various ways to get at these questions. One of these views is the "social control" thesis which posits that the function of public assistance in capitalist society is to regulate the poor and keep them underemployed for the benefit of corporate profits. The most extensive general statement of this view of poverty is by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven in the book Regulating the Poor (1971), and a paper presented by them at a conference on public welfare held at West Virginia University in 1971. Volume Two, 1990 81 �Although the paper discusses the Anglo-American public welfare tradition, and makes numerous references to contemporary national issues, it contains no unique or distinct references to the Appalachian region. Piven and Cloward (1972), and Walls (1976), however, applied a similar perspective to the region. From the vantage point of predatory capitalism, poverty is a necessary precondition of the effective functioning of labor markets in capitalist economies. Succinctly stated, in Appalachia, profits of outside corporations are dependent upon a large, enduring class of workers who are kept unemployed and/or underemployed. Walls (1976), for example, speaks of this as "cultural hegemony and capitalist domination." Two issues have been particularly important to an understanding of poverty from the viewpoint of predatory capitalism: The declining importance of mining (and more recently, manufacturing) as a source of employment in the region, has resulted in a growing "surplus population" of workers. In addition, ownership of a large percentage of the land in Appalachia is by outside interests (Miller, 1972; Gaventa and Horton, 1982). One of the most persistently heard criticisms of the Appalachian Regional Commission development strategy from this perspective is the view that the principal effect of economic development will be for the natives to become the servants of middle-class retirees and vacationing second-home owners (Whisnant, 1974). In large measure, predatory capitalism has served the historic mission of giving voice to the alienation and sense of powerlessness often shared by poor and nonpoor alike in the region. At the same time, from this perspective poverty is often reduced to a mere background or preamble concept serving only to introduce other questions. Alas, the essentially sound insight that an understanding of poverty also requires an understanding of the wealthy and powerful, has proven to be the pretext for a generalized loss of interest in the problem of poverty in the region. Domestic Colonialism A fourth model is based on an implicit comparison of Appalachia with "underdeveloped" regions in Africa and Asia formerly colonized by European nations. Although this view overlaps to some degree with that of predatory capitalism (e.g., Walls, 1976), the primary emphasis here is generally more political than economic. In one of the earliest statements of the domestic colonialism view, Friedmann (1966) suggests that comparisons of characteristics common to poor regions and poor nations suggest the existence of a syndrome of collective poverty, but do not support a hypothesis of structural similarities. Kahn (1970) blends aspects of the culturalism and colonialism views in his comparison of rural Appalachian and urban poverty. 82 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Appalachia, he says, is an economic colony, drained of important resources by absentee ownership and political control. Parsons (1969) raised questions about the appropriateness of the comparison with underdeveloped countries as a basis for issues of public policy. Lewis (1978) brings together a variety of perspectives on this issues. The colonialism model appears to be largely an outgrowth of the experiences of local community organizers in the War on Poverty. Much literature from that period is approached from that standpoint. For example, Bould (1977) argues that rural poverty is a political, as well as an economic, problem. The domestic colonialism perspective often shares much of the anger and stridency of poverty in the context of an unbroken history of AngloAmerican class domination; adherents of this view tend to set issues within a unique regional history of exploitation. The basic view of domestic colonialism is that Appalachia represents a domestic colony within the United States—with a largely surplus population stockpiled for national emergency purposes, and rich mineral resources exported by outside sources with maximum cost and minimum gain to the state. Unlike any of the other three positions, the domestic colonial view typically links public welfare issues directly with environmental issues (strip mining, air, and water pollution), land ownership, housing, and other issues. The following excerpt summarizes important aspects of this view: Appalachia is America's Third World. The absolute control the coal companies had over people's lives in the old company towns is no more, but the power of absentee corporate owners to affect the economic future of local communities is still massive. The situation is most severe in the coal counties, where half the land surface is corporately owned and 72 percent is absentee-owned. In Logan County, West Virginia, 11 corporations own nearly everything... (Southern Exposure, Jan-Feb, 1982, 41). One of the most basic issues raised by the domestic colonialism model is a definitional one: What exactly is that that is being referred to as poor? The region itself, or a portion of the population within it? Simon, for example, focuses on the region in his contrast of domestic colonialism with what he calls the "uneven development" model (1981). The question, then, which is begged by domestic colonialism is one very comparable to that raised by Appalachian cultures: Is the experience of poor persons in Appalachia in any way different than that of being poor elsewhere in American society? Volume Two, 1990 83 �Universes of Discourse and Poverty The essential differences between these four perspectives are less a matter of rival hypotheses about the nature and causes of poverty than a matter of the different universes of discourse with which they are anchored. Without remarking at all on the truth or values of the statements produced in these perspectives, we can make some observations about each perspective solely as a system of terms. For example, the language of bureaucratic realism is primarily the language of policy analysis, with heavy accents of political and economic utilitarianism and individualism. In general, the language of bureaucratic realism tends to rationalize poverty into a series of negative strategic choices that tend to infuriate Appalachian culturalists in particular. "Unemployed? Then move where the jobs are!" and so forth. Statements of Appalachian culturalism are often spoken in local dialects of the region, with heavy reliance upon metaphorical or archaic localisms. Appalachian culturalism often tends to romanticize Appalachian poverty into a developmental experience, moral challenge, or personal and family struggle. The words "poor but happy" come easily in this language. Predatory capitalism, and to a lesser extent, domestic colonialism tend to be built on a substructure of Marxian sociology and critical theory, relying heavily on terms like "alienation," "class," and "exploitation." Such language seems, to many, particularly apt to describe aspects of the localism, Jacksonian populist politics, and tradition of exploitive business practices of the region. At the present time, speakers of these dialects are finding it easy to adopt the term "underclass" as a suitable descriptor of the Appalachian poor. It is almost as though we were faced with theoretical statements about poverty in English, Swahili, Farsi and Korean. So long as the purpose of statements in these various languages is (as it often may be) to support the general world views of their respective communities, one need feel little discomfort with this state of affairs. If the problem is defined as one of constructing a coherent general theory of poverty in Appalachia, however, quite a different problem arises. Before we can possibly compare or evaluate these four perspectives on Appalachian poverty in any great depth, it would be desirable to translate them into a single language. Except that, in this case, there is no apparently neutral fifth language into which to translate statements about Appalachian poverty. Thus, the challenge of furthering general understanding of Appalachian poverty at present may well boil down to translation of the key insights of each perspective into the theoretical languages of the other perspectives. Some of this translation happens already on a more or less ad hoc basis. One commonly hears references to "empowerment" scattered among statements of bureaucratic realism 84 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �and Appalachian culturalism, for example. And, at least for a time, the term "underclass" may well permeate all four perspectives. Conclusions What is needed at the present time is yet another "rediscovery" of poverty in Appalachia. A contemporary rediscovery of Appalachian poverty has not one, but four, rich traditions of research and inquiry with which to work. Each of these perspectives has its strengths and weaknesses. These perspectives are, however, as a group somewhat dated and out of touch with the realities of poverty in the region in the late 1980s. The simplistic division of the region into Northern, Central, and Southern Appalachia by the bureaucratic realists of Appalachian Regional Commission, for example, fails to deal adequately with the essential social, economic, and political boundaries within the region. However, the tendency of the Appalachian culturalists to deal only with the Central subregion as the real Appalachia is similarly limited. Both might well benefit from the much more refined subregions offered by the Economic Research Service Population Section in the U.S. Department of Agriculture which divides the counties of Appalachia into at least five separate subregions. The rediscovery of poverty in Appalachia should seek a more balanced view of the continuing political, economic, and social phenomena of poverty in the region and in the nation than that offered by any of the four past perspectives. Future studies of Appalachian poverty should take into account such factors as regional urbanization and deindustrialization, and the impact of recent national trends such as rural poverty, deinstitutionalization, growing homelessness, and the feminization and racialization of poverty. Such approaches are likely, of necessity, to touch upon many of the themes most central to each of the four perspectives. One of the most important themes for contemporary research on poverty is likely to be the convergence of the Appalachian poor into the mainstreams of poverty in the U.S. In the past twenty years, the Appalachian Regional Commission growth centers strategy appears to have brought a clustering of populations—poor and nonpoor alike—into the cities of the region. As a result, it is quite likely that both the urban Appalachian poor and the rural poor left behind are much more like urban and rural poor of the rest of the country than they were twenty years ago. In this context, family breakup may be as important a factor in Appalachian poverty as in mainstream America (Pierce, 1978). Similarly, deinstitutionalization, deindustrialization, urbanization, and an increasingly ancient housing stock have all contributed to the phenomenon of homelessness in the region as they have elsewhere. Volume Two, 1990 85 �This convergence thesis is likely to be closely associated with the perspectives of bureaucratic realism. Acceptance of such convergence arguments should not necessarily be equated with rejection of culture of poverty explanations of the causes of poverty. There is still a role for studies of the family structure and other subcultural characteristics of the Appalachian poor. Such foci need not dwell exclusively on the poor, however. There is probably still merit in Welter's (1967) question asked in the title of an article in Volume 1 of Appalachian Review: "Who is the Target Group?" (of research and intervention)? His recommendation in that article was to concentrate upon studying wealthy industrialists and economically secure residents of the region to gain a more complete picture of the problem of poverty in Appalachia. In many cases, studies of small town businessmen, politicians, social welfare professionals and other "middlemen" would prove equally rewarding. Nor should one ignore or reject the insights possible with the Predatory Capitalist and Domestic Colonial approaches. The Appalachian land ownership study (Gaventa and Horton, 1982), as well as recent indictments of local officials in a southern West Virginia county, shows that there is still merit in such approaches in a region where economic exploitation and political corruption remain important realities bearing upon the condition of the poor. The cleavages in ideology, politics, and world views which are behind the four viewpoints on Appalachian poverty identified in this paper, remain strong within the region and the scholarly community today. Thus, it is probably naive to argue for any theoretical or research convergence among them. It is not naive, however, to suggest that each of these perspectives is a bit dated and showing signs of age due to the general neglect of any research interest in Appalachian poverty in recent years. Yet, each points to important research questions which have gone uninvestigated and to hypotheses which have gone untested. At the same time, none deals adequately with the "new poverty" which has arisen in the region and the nation. All things considered, therefore, the time has come to reopen serious study of Appalachian poverty. 86 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Table 1 Four Perspectives on Appalachian Culture and Poverty APPALACHIAN PEOPLE ARE Typically American Culturally Unique Disadvantaged Administrative Realism Appalachian Culturalism Oppressed/ Exploited Predatory Capitalism Domestic Colonialism The Poor Are: Works Cited Austin, Richard C. 1967. "A Search for Appalachian People." In Parish Studies. San Francisco, Ca.: San Francisco Theological Seminary. Ball, Richard A. 1968. "A Poverty Case: The Analgesic Subculture of the Southern Appalachians." American Sociological Review 33: 6, 884-894. Bassett, Jeffrey E. 1973. Regional Delineation of Poverty Levels in Appalachia. Thesis. Lexington, Ky: University of Kentucky. Billings, Dwight. 1974. "Culture and Poverty in Appalachia: A Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Analysis." Social Forces 53: 2, 315-232. Blair, John P. 1973. "A Review of the Filtering Down Theory." Urban Affairs Quarterly 8: 3, 303-316. Bould, Sally. 1977. "Rural Poverty and Economic Development: Lessons from the War on Poverty." Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 13: 471-488. Clarkson, Ray B. 1964. Tumult on the Mountains—Lumbering in West Virginia, 1770-1920. Parsons, WV: McClain Publishing Co. Coles, Robert. 1971. Migrants, Sharecroppers and Mountaineers. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. Cloward, Richard and Frances Fox Piven. 1971. Regulating the Poor. New York: Free Press. Volume Two, 1990 87 �Dial, Wylene. "Appalachian Culture" (mimeo) Eller, Robert D. 1982. Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Fenton, John H. 1957. Politics in the Borders States. New Orleans: Hauser Publishing. Friedmann, John R. 1966. "Poor Regions and Poor Nations: Perspectives on the Problem of Appalachia." Southern Economic Journal 32: 465-477. Gaventa, John. 1980. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Hagerstown MD: University of Illinois Press. Gaventa, John and Bill Horton. 1982. "Who Owns Appalachia? Digging the Facts." Southern Exposure. January-February, 34-35. Harrington, Michael. 1984. The New American Poverty. New York: Macmillan. Hennon, Charles B. and John Photiadis. 1979. "The Rural Appalachian LowIncome Male: Changing Role in a Changing Family." The Family Coordinator 28: 4, 608-615. Irelan, Lola M. 1966. Low Income Life Styles. Washington: U.S. Welfare Administration. Washington D.C. Kahn, Si. 1970. "New Strategies for Appalachia." New South 25: Summer, 5764. Kenkel, William F. 1980. "Occupational Saliency and Age at Marriage Plans of Low Income High School Girls." Sociological Forum 3: Fall, 62-74. Lewis, Helen. 1978. Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case. Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press. Miernyk, William. 1982. "The West Virginia Economy." Prepared for the West Virginia Legislative Tax Study Commission (mimeo). Miller, Tom D. 1982. "Who Owns West Virginia?" Huntington, WV: series of newspaper articles (paperbound, undated). Orshansky, Mollie. 1968. "Shape of Poverty in 1966." Washington: Social Security Bulletin 31: March 1968, 3-32. Parsons, Kenneth H. 1969 "Poverty as an Issue in Development Policy: A Comparison of United States and Underdeveloped Countries." Land Economics 45: February, 52-65. 88 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Perry Charles, S. 1979. "Income and Poverty in Kentucky, 1959-1976: A Comparative County-Level Analysis." Paper presented to the Rural Sociological Society, Lexington, KY. Peterson, Gary W., Mary E. Stivers and David F, Peters. 1986. "Family Verses Nonfamily Significant Others for the Careet Decisions of Low-Income Youth." Family Relations 35: 3, 417-424. Philliber, William W. 1982. "Wife's Absence from the Labor Force and Low Income Among Appalachian Migrants." Rural Sociolgy 47: 4, 705-710. Photiadis, John D. 1970. "The Economy and Attitudes Toward Government in Appalachia." John Photiadis and Harry Schwartzweller, eds. Change in Rural Appalachia: Implications for Action Programs. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 115-127. Piven, Frances Fox and Richard Cloward. 1972. "Enforcing Low Wage Work: Administrative Methods." Public Welfare...Right or Privilege: System Under Attack. Wil J. Smith and Frederick, eds. Morgantown, W.Va: West Virginia University, Office of Research and Development, 24-54. Pierce, Diana. 1978. "The Feminization of Poverty: Women, Work and Welfare." Urban and Social Change Review 11: 28-36. Pierce, Neil. 1975. "West Virginia: The Saddest State." The Border South States. New York: W.W. Norton. Rabow, Jerome, Sherry L. Berkman and Ronald Kessler. 1983. "The Culture of Poverty and Learned Helplessness: A Social Psychological Perspective." Sociological Inquiry 53: 4, 419-434. Rosenberg, Bernard and Joseph Bensman. 1968. "Sexual Patterns in Three Ethnic Subcultures of an American Underclass." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 376: 61-75. Shapiro, Henry 0. 1978. Appalachia On Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Conciousness: 1870-1920. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press. Simon, Richard. 1981. "Uneven Development and the Case of West Viriginia: Going Beyond the Colonialism Model." Appalachian Journal 8: 3, 165-186. Smith, Wil J., ed. 1971. Critical Issues in Public Finance in an Underdeveloped Region. Morgantown, W.Va.: West Virginia University, Office of Research and Development. Volume Two, 1990 89 �Stephens, L.F. 1972. "Media Exposure and Modernization among the Appalachian Poor." Journalism Quarterly 49: 2, 247-257. Tickamyer, Ann R. and Cecil Tickamyer. 1987. Poverty in Apppalachia. Appalachian Data Bank Report #5. Lexington, Ky: University of Kentucky, Appalachian Center. Trent, Roger B., Nancy S. Weigand and Dennis K. Smith. 1985. "Attitudes Toward Development in Three Appalachian Counties." Rural Sociological Society. U.S. News and World Report. 1965. "New Way to Beat Poverty—the Plan for Appalachia." 59: 27 September 1965, 68-70. U.S. National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty. 1967. The People Left Behind. A Report. Washington D.C.: U.S. Gov. Print. Off. Walls, David. S. 1976. "Central Appalachia: A Peripheral Region within an Advanced Capitalist Society." Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 4: 2, 232247. Weller, Jack. 1967. "Who Is the Target Group?" Appalachian Review 1: Winter, 15-20. Weller, Jack. 1965. Yesterday's People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia. Lexington, Ky: Kentucky University Press. West Virginia Governor's Office of Economic and Community Development. 1980. State Development Plan. Charleston, W.Va. West Virginia Governor's Office of Economic and Community Development. 1983. State Plan Update. Charleston, W.Va. West Virginia Human Resources Association, Inc. 1988. Children In Crises, State at Risk. Charleston: HRA. Whisnant, David E. 1974. "Growing Old by Being Poor: Some Cautionary Notes About Generalizing from a Class Phenomenon." Soundings 57: Spring,101-112. White, David B. 1987. "A Social Epidemiological Model of Central Appalachia." Arete 2: 1, 47-66. White, Theodore. 1960. "The Art of the Primary: Wisconsin and West Virginia." The Making of the President-1960. New York: Atheneum Press, 93-138. 90 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Whitman, Gloria. 1968. "Economic Development." Trends in Human Services. Kevin Meeghan, Roger Lohmann and Barry Locke, eds. Morgantown, W.Va: West Virginia University School of Social Work. Wilensky, Harold and Charles LeBeaux. 1965. Industrial Society and Social Welfare. New York: Free Press. Zeller, Fred and Robert Miller. 1969. Manpower Development in West Virginia. Morgantown, W.Va: West Virginia University. Roger A. Lohmann is professor of social work at West Virginia University. He has long had an interest in rural poverty. •R1"" u"!"*-3 Bur» 4«Balach1an <;,,i u,et1r» Volume Two, 1990 91 �Organized Medicine and the UJVLW.A. Welfare and Retirement Fund: An Appalachian Perspective on a National Conflict Richard P. Mulcahy Introduction Recently, the New England Journal of Medicine editorialized that if health care in the United States was to remain accessible for most Americans, some sort of national health insurance scheme had to be created. The significance of such a statement being printed in such a respected medical journal cannot be underestimated. Although publications like the New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and The Journal of the American College of Surgeons are noted for their contributions to advancing medical science, they have also served as forums for writers interested in medical politics. In their turn, each of these publications, in addition to those sponsored by state and county medical societies, have continuously published articles which opposed socialized medicine, closed panel practice, third party medicine, and have promoted free choice of physician, and fee-for-service payment. The terms listed here comprise the basic working vocabulary used in discussing medical policy, and have served as rallying cries for people concerned about the issue. In general, free choice of physician and fee-for-service payment has been the method of operation for most physicians in the U. S. It means that any licensed physician is regarded as competent to practice medicine in all of its branches, unless proven 92 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �otherwise by his peers, and that a patient is free to choose among various physicians available for any treatment needed. A medical third party refers to any group or individual who pays the patient's medical bills, and thereby acts as a third party between a doctor and the patient. Closed panel practice refers to an organizational method used by some medical third parties that limits participation in the program to a group of selected doctors. Designed to restrict a program's medical costs, it automatically limits the patient's free choice of physician. According to its critics, closed panel organization reduces the quality of care a patient receives, since the participating physicians do not face the pressure of free competition to maintain high standards of professional competence. This same reasoning also serves as the principle rationalization for opposition to socialized medicine by the medical profession. Proponents of closed panel argue, conversely, that restriction of care does not significantly reduce a patient's free choice. Under closed panel, a patient can choose from a group of physicians who have been proven to be honest and highly competent. During the 1950s, this argument became the central point of a struggle between organized medicine, the American Medical Association and its various state and county medical societies, and the United Mine Workers of American Welfare and Retirement Fund. Because of its experience as a medical third party, the Fund adopted closed panel organization, which earned it the A.M.A.'s formal condemnation in 1958. Nevertheless, a large minority movement within the A.M.A. opposed the policies of the Association and believed that the actions of the Fund were justified. Because the A.M.A. was basically the sum total of its parts, much of the controversy is fought out on the state level. The central question of this paper was whether organized medicine in Appalachia behaved in a manner which was appreciably different from the A.M.A. and other state societies outside of the region. From its inception the Fund has been surrounded by controversy. John L. Lewis began demanding the creation of a miners' health and welfare program in 1938, after the larger questions of union recognition, wages, and hours had been settled. It must be remembered that in addition to his duties as President of the United Mine Workers of America, Lewis was serving as Chairman of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, which he had founded. At the time, the C.I.O. had just won important organizing victories in such basic industries as rubber, steel, automobile, and electrical manufacturing, all of which had successfully resisted unionization in the past. Confident of the U.M.W.A.'s position within the coal industry, Lewis now decided that the time was right to demand the creation of a fund. The plan Lewis envisioned was to be administered by the U.M.W.A. and was to be financed through a tonnage royalty assessed on all coal Volume Two, 1990 93 �mined for sale or use, without any deductions from the earnings of union miners (Dubofsky and VanTine, 1977). Lewis's demand was radical for two reasons. First, all other union health plans had been based, at least in part, on contributions from the membership. Second, all hospitalization and medical schemes in existence in the coal industry at the time were controlled by the mine operators. These plans fell into two categories: hospitalization and office care, and were funded through wage deductions known as "check-offs." Taken as a whole, these plans were thoroughly inadequate to meet miner health needs. In general, the hospitalization plans did not cover treatment for tuberculosis, a common disease among miners, obstetrical services, nor treatment for venereal disease (Wysang and Williams, 1981). Office care plans were little better. Usually office care was provided by a single physician who served as the "company doctor." His practice consisted of the miners and their families only, and he was paid through the check-off. The treatment limitations listed above for the hospitalization plans generally applied to treatment given by the company doctor as well, and the treatment tended to be low quality. The causes for this problem varied. Although some physicians were underqualified to perform all of the treatment their patients needed, there was a consistent problem of check-off practices being filled by individuals who suffered from alcohol or drug abuse (Kerr, 1988).1 The creation of a welfare fund administered through the U.M.W.A. meant the end of these check-off arrangements, and the loss of one area of control which the operators had over their employees. Because of this fact, and the costs involved in financing such a program through a tonnage royalty they would have to pay, coal operators vehemently opposed the idea, and managed to delay its creation until after the end of World War II. In 1946, however, Lewis managed to force the Fund's creation by calling the union's membership out of the mines just at the time when the U.S. government was reconverting to a peace-time economy. Because coal stockpiles were low, the strike threatened to derail the reconversion plans. Unable to break the strike, the Truman administration invoked the War Labor Disputes Act, seized the mines from the operators, and negotiated directly with Lewis. Acting for the operators, Secretary of the Interior Julius A. Krug agreed to Lewis's demand for a fund's creation, and provision for it was made in the national contract Lewis and Rrug signed on May 26, 1946.2 Although the Fund was a reality, it did not begin full operations as a medical care program until January, 1948. Part of the problem was that the overall performance of the Fund was hampered by a struggle for its control between Lewis and the coal operators. Lewis eventually won the conflict, but not until 1950. Another source of delay concerned the man who Lewis originally appointed as the medical director of the Fund, Dr. 94 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Royd R. Sayers. For most of his professional life, Sayers had worked within the medical section of the U.S. Bureau of Mines, and eventually became the director of the Bureau. Noted for his pro-union sentiments, Sayers had done extensive research on ventilation and carbon monoxide poisoning, which later formed the design basis for the air circulation system in the Holland Tunnel (U.M.W. Journal, 1947). Despite Sayers' qualifications, he became unacceptable to members of the Fund's staff, in particular Josephine Roche. At the time when Sayers was appointed in 1947, Roche was serving as the assistant director of the Fund. From there, she would eventually rise to the directorship and become a member of the Board of Trustees. The reason for Roche's rapid promotion was her close relationship with John L. Lewis. This connection began when Roche inherited the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company from her father in 1927. Because of her liberal sentiments, Roche signed a contract with the U.M.W.A. a year later, and was the first major coal operator west of the Mississippi to do so.3 From that year forward, Roche established a close working relationship with Lewis, and served as his principle advisor in all matters. Roche's objection to Sayers centered upon Sayers' original plan on how to implement the health care program of the Fund. Instead of developing an integrated system, Sayers wished to establish separate health care plans for each district of the union.4 The plan envisioned the Fund acting as a health services payer, while allowing county and state level medical societies affiliated with the A.M.A. to set prices, treatment standards, and participation rules. Roche claimed that the plan was too expensive and would prevent the Fund from establishing its pension system. From Roche's point of view, Sayers conceded too much authority to organized medicine, which she regarded with suspicion as overly conservative.5 Roche's opinions concerning the A.M.A. probably arose out of her experience as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the New Deal. While serving in this position, Roche oversaw the operation of the United States Public Health Service (Current Biog., 1941). As a rule, organized medicine was antagonistic to the U.S.P.H.S. and to health insurance systems such as Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Referred to as "Medical Third Parties" by physicians, doctors resented the systems as intruders into the private relationship between physician and patient. In addition, physicians feared that the use of third party payers distributed accepted health care arrangements and could eventually lead to socialized medicine. For most doctors, the only acceptable method of health care delivery was free choice of physician by the patient and payment on a fee-for-service basis. Any deviation from these methods was to be condemned. Volume Two, 1990 95 �Due to Roche's dissatisfaction with Sayers' plan, Sayers was eventually moved out as the chief medical officer of the Fund, and eventually off the medical staff itself (Kerr, 1988). To replace Sayers, the Fund hired Dr. Warren F. Draper. For most of his career, Draper had worked in public medicine. During the New Deal he served the U.S.P.H.S.'s chief medical officer, and had worked with Roche. With the outbreak of the Second World War, Draper was promoted to Deputy Surgeon General of the U.S. Army, where he was assigned to work at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces under Eisenhower (Kerr, 1988; Ploss, 1981). Regardless of Draper's qualifications, members of the staff were uneasy at first about his appointment, since Draper appeared to be very conservative. Draper not only was a ranking member of the ruling body of the A.M.A., the House of Delegates, but he also accepted the belief of the Association in free choice of physician and fee-for-service payment as the best method of providing health care (Kerr, 1988). Despite these facts, Draper's career showed that he regarded medicine as a public service instead of a private business, and was flexible in his views. Aside from working for the U.S.P.H.S. for most of his professional life, Draper had been a co-founder and charter member of the A.M.A. Council on Health Care for Industrial Workers, which was established in 1938.8 Previously, the A.M.A. did not have any sort of official body to address issues concerning industrial health. Upon becoming the Executive Medical Officer of the Fund in the spring of 1948, Draper devised an integrated health care system to enable the Fund to pursue its work. Under Draper's direction, ten regional medical offices were established in strategic cities in the bituminous coal fields. These cities were Pittsburgh and Johnstown, Pennsylvania; Morgantown, Charleston, and Beckley, West Virginia; Knoxville, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; Louisville, Kentucky; St. Louis, Missouri; and Denver, Colorado. Each office was headed by a physician who served as the Area Medical Administrator, and each had the responsibility of overseeing the medical program of the Fund in each of the respective districts. Through this system, general policies on health care were established at the headquarters of the Fund in Washington D.C. The Area Medical Administrators were, however, allowed wide discretion on how best to fulfill these policies within the local context7 (Ploss, 1981: 131-135). By the end of the 1948, the new system was in place and the Fund began its work. Originally, the Fund placed no restriction on what sort of health care it covered, nor on who could participate. In fact, the Fund invited all licensed doctors, including general practitioners, to participate (Wysang and Williams, 1981:8). The only limit placed on the program was a demand that all obstetrical and minor surgical work be done in the hospital instead of the patient's home or doctor's office.8 96 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Aside from offering an all-out and unrestricted program, Draper worked to foster good relations between the Fund and organized medicine on both the national and local levels. As a gesture of goodwill, Draper managed to persuade John L. Lewis to discontinue U.M.W.A. support for the establishment of a government supported national health insurance system (Mulcahy, 1988). In addition, Draper appointed Dr. Carl M. Peterson to the Advisory Board of the Fund. At the time, Peterson was Secretary of the A.M.A. Council on Industrial Health, and while concerned about health care needs in basic industry, Peterson was no friend of "state medicine."9 As a final measure, Draper sponsored the creation of county and state level liaison committees whose members represented the Fund and organized medicine. The purpose of these committees was to ensure cooperation by providing a forum where mutual concerns and conflicts could be discussed and solved. Implicit in Draper's policies was a belief that the medical profession would effectively police itself, and so prevent and discourage any abuse of the Fund. By the end of 1951, however, it became clear to Draper that the Fund needed to exercise greater control over its program. Although situations and cases varied, the difficulties of the Fund centered around two general categories: overcharging for services, and the rendering of poor treatment by both physicians and hospitals. In the case of individual physicians, the Fund discovered that many doctors were charging inflated fees for common procedures or were giving excessive office care. On the average, a given patient in the early 1950s visited his or her physician three times a year. The Fund's records showed that some beneficiaries were seeing their doctors four times above the yearly average.10 In addition, some doctors, especially general practitioners, were resorting to surgery far more often than necessary. Prior to April 1954, 65% of all surgery covered by the Fund was performed by general practitioners at a rate of 76 operations per 1000 beneficiaries.11 Even more disturbing was the fact the Fund was having problems with poor treatment of workmen's compensation cases, indifference toward beneficiaries by company doctors, and poor hospital care.12 Although no one section of the bituminous coal fields had a monopoly on physician fraud or poor practice, the records of the Fund showed that southern Appalachia demonstrated a consistent pattern in this regard. Most of the physicians in those areas were general practitioners, usually in their late fifties, and had been trained in medical schools which had disbanded.13 As far as poor hospital care was concerned, southern Appalachia again was the single largest problem area. The cause was that most of the hospitals in the southern section of the region were small, containing 100 beds or less, and worked on a for-profit basis. Usually owned by a Volume Two, 1990 97 �single physician, these proprietary hospitals maximized profits by offering low-quality care at an inflated rate14 (Wysang and Williams, 1981:16). Also, these institutions were generally lacking in terms of staff, modern equipment, sanitation, housekeeping, and specialized facilities.15 Similar deficiencies were noted first in a survey which studied medical and living conditions in the bituminous coal fields that had been sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Interior in 1946, when the Fund was established. The project had been overseen by Rear-Admiral Joel T. Boone, surgeon-general of the U.S. Navy, who had been appalled by the findings of the Boone Report.18 A second survey, directed primarily at viewing hospital conditions in southern Appalachia, was sponsored six years later, in 1952, by the A.M.A. itself. Done in response to allegations from the Fund about poor treatment given to its beneficiaries, the survey demonstrated that conditions had not improved since 1946, nor had the medical staff of the Fund been exaggerating its case. The A.M.A, survey team was so disturbed by what it had seen, and because their findings were so shocking, they wished to keep their report confidential.17 In response to the situation, Draper pursued a dual policy of restructuring the program of the Fund while seeking to maintain and broaden the cooperation of organized medicine, especially in Appalachia. As a direct outgrowth of the A.M.A. hospital survey, the Fund sponsored a series of four medical conferences between 1952 and 1956; these included representatives of the Fund and the state level medical societies of the Appalachian region. The first meeting was held in Charleston, West Virginia. The main objectives were to secure a consensus on how to improve medical practice and conditions in the region, and to secure a clear commitment from the state societies that they would discipline unethical members. Unfortunately, no such consensus on either issue was ever formed. As time progressed, participating state associations, especially Kentucky and Pennsylvania, used the meetings as a forum to air their grievances concerning the policies of the Fund. At the same time, however, some of the most constructive ideas offered at the meeting were made from the representatives from the Tennessee State Medical Association, which was usually represented by Dr. B. M. Overholt. During the first conference, Overholt suggested that organized medicine take an active role in improving the quality of health care in their areas by providing postgraduate training for practicing physicians. Under the scheme Overholt envisioned, the A.M.A. would periodically send instructors into the field to demonstrate new medical techniques to practitioners working in isolated rural areas.18 Overholt's idea, however, was ignored. 98 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Even more frustrating was that organized medicine on the national and state levels refused to take any decisive action to discipline unethical physicians. Time and again, when Draper raised the issue, the leaders of the medical profession responded that better liaison between the Fund and the profession was the answer to all problems. Yet, it became increasingly apparent to Draper that liaison was not working. Out of the several ethics cases the Fund brought to the A.M.A., only one resulted in disciplinary action, and then only by a letter of censure which was originally intended to remain confidential.19 Because of the situation, Draper came to rely solely upon restructuring the program of the Fund as a method to ensure quality and limit costs. Under normal circumstances, Draper would have been concerned about cost containment. But by the early 1950s, the financial position of the Fund demanded that all expenses be limited as far as possible. The cause of the problem had several interrelated sources. First, between 1949 and 1953, income fell due to a decline in coal demand (National Coal Assoc., 1960: 80). As this happened, the pension program of the Fund was placed under a great strain. As coal demand declined, miners were losing their jobs and an ever-increasing number of the older men who were scheduled to be laid off were now taking early retirement.20 Because these retirees were leaving the mines at an earlier age than before, their life span increased. Second, by the early 1950s the Fund had committed itself to building chain of hospitals that it planned to operate in south/central Appalachia. Owing to inflation, and the hidden expenses attendant with building a modern health care complex in a comparatively isolated area, the expense of the hospital project rose to twice as much as originally estimated.21 To meet the crisis, the Fund began an across-the-board policy of benefit restriction. In the area of health care, the Fund discontinued direct payment for general-practice office treatment and started to require prior approval for certain common surgical procedures, such as tonsillectomies (Kerr, 1988; Wysang and Williams, 1981: 7). Under the new policy, the Fund now covered all hospitalization costs, and all specialist treatment given to its beneficiaries in a hospital, clinic, or office (Kerr, 1988). Also, the Fund began developing usage of payment systems other than fee-for-service. While participating physicians could continue using fee-for-service if they wished, the Fund also began offering payment arrangements based on fee-for-time. Essentially fee-for-time was a monthly retainer the Fund paid to a participating clinic or physician that based payment on how much work time of a given practice was taken up with treating Fund patients.22 With this arrangement, the physician or clinic was provided with a guaranteed income, and relieved of the problems of billing the Fund for Volume Two, 1990 99 �each individual service rendered. Also, since the payment was guaranteed, the physician or clinic was able to provide the patient with a more thorough form of treatment than what would have been possible under fee-for-service (Durmaskin, et al, 1982: 17). It also should be noted that the retainer system of the Fund was responsible for the establishment of a number of group practice clinics in areas which had been medically under-served in the past (Durmaskin, 1982: 7). None of these actions were popular with organized medicine. Not only did the A.M.A. frown upon its retainers, but most of its members were disdainful of group practice. Although group practice was officially accepted by the A.M.A. as a legitimate method of offering health care, most of the members refused to accept it. The reason was that a group pooled its income and could offer lower fees. Not only was such behavior regarded as unfair competition, but its cooperative aspect resembled the mentality behind socialized medicine. It is for this reason that members of group practices were generally persecuted by their peers.23 Despite this disapproval, neither the early restrictions on the program of the Fund, nor retainers, nor the encouragement of group practice caused an open break between the Fund and organized medicine, either in Appalachia or on the national level. However, two events did eventually lead to just such a breach: the Fund's hospital project and Draper's decision to adopt closed panel organization. The decision for the Fund to build its own set of hospitals stemmed back to the difficulties that had been reported about the proprietary hospitals in southern Appalachia. Although building a group of hospitals at a time of diminishing income may have appeared as extravagant, the reasoning behind the project was sound. First, when the decision to build the facilities was first made in 1951, the available statistics on coal production had not yet indicated that the industry had entered into a recession. By the time the trend was clearly recognizable, the building program was already in progress and could not be stopped. Second, the hospitals appeared to be a good long-term investment from the perspectives of cost limitation and quality treatment. Although the Fund paid inflated prices to the physician/operators of the proprietary hospitals, Fund beneficiaries were not receiving quality care. Nor were the operators of these institutions upgrading the quality of their facilities in any meaningful way. According to Draper, continued use of these facilities meant that the Fund was subsidizing low-quality care.24 Draper was also deeply concerned by the fact that these institutions were usually organized on closed staff basis, and denied visiting staff privileges to all outside practitioners.25 In such a setting, the A.M.A rule concerning free choice of physician by the patient was effectively denied. In reaction, Draper gave his support to the Fund building a chain of hospitals which stretched from Eastern Kentucky, through West 100 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Virginia, into Virginia. With these institutions, the Fund could offer better hospital care than previously available, and could reduce its costs since it would no longer be paying the inflated fees charged in the past. Completed and opened in 1956, the hospital chain worked as a centralized unit under its own distinct administration. Originally headed by Dr. Frederick Mott, the chain's chief administrator was Dr. John Newdorp, who had experience with other miner health needs due to his work in Harlan County, Kentucky, during the 1930s. In order to secure tax-free status for the chain, the hospitals were organized under a non-profit corporation, separate from the Fund, named the Miners Memorial Hospital Association. All of the M.M.H.A. doctors were hired directly by the corporation, were paid on a salary basis, and had been recruited from medical schools across the U.S.26 As it was, the M.M.H.A. was a cause of controversy within the Fund itself since some of Draper's area administrators either doubted the wisdom of using a salaried medical staff, or questioned whether or not the hospitals were just an expensive luxury. Another source of trouble within the Fund was the demand made by some of the area administrators that they have the right to review the care given in these hospitals as they did with other participating institutions. The M.M.H.A rejected the claim since it infringed upon the authority of its director. Draper was never able to reconcile this conflict to the satisfaction of either side.27 While such infighting hurt the project, the real problem was the unalterable hostility the hospitals encountered from organized medicine in Kentucky. The objections voiced by the various local medical societies in the counties where the hospitals were located, and from the Kentucky State Medical Association itself, ran as follows: The hospitals, with salaried staffs, engaged in unfair competition; salaried staffs restricted free choice of physician for the patient; and the use of the hospitals as teaching institutions placed local practitioners under the stress of having their work watched and criticized. These claims ignored certain basic facts concerning hospitals and the state of medicine in Kentucky prior to the chain's establishment. The most glaring misstatement was that the hospitals denied physician free choice. In direct contrast to the proprietary hospitals with which the M.M.H.A. now competed, all ten M.M.H.A. hospitals were organized on an open staff basis.28 Moreover, the ten new hospitals contained the more sophisticated diagnostic and treatment facilities that the proprietary institutions lacked. The KS.M.A. ignored this fact, nor had it ever raised the free choice issue in relation to the proprietary hospitals. Thus, the complaints made by the branch of organized medicine in Kentucky did not have any standing in fact, and did not reflect a genuine concern for the welfare of the patient. Instead the K.S.M.A. on the state Volume Two, 1990 101 �and county levels was behaving like a trade protection society, working for the best business interests of its current membership. To fight the Fund, the K.S.M.A. county societies used the most potent weapon available to them, they barred the M.M.H.A. doctors from membership. Because the A.M.A. was the sum total of its parts, denial of membership in a county medical society meant that a physician was not a member of the state or national organization.29 In addition, membership in the A.M.A. was a prerequisite to belonging to any specialist organization, as well as final certification to practice in some states. The M.M.H.A. attempted to fight this unfair practice through the K.S.M.A. appeal procedure, to no avail. Finally, certain M.M.H.A. hospitals retaliated by forming rival county societies in an attempt to force acceptance of M.M.H.A. doctors on the K.S.M.A.30 According to the K.S.M.A. bylaws, whenever two rival county medical societies existed, it was the responsibility of the state society to bring the two groups together into one organization.31 Although this solution was creative, the hospital chain did not have the opportunity to pursue it to a conclusion. Because of a disastrous fall in coal demand which began in 1958, the Fund was forced to sell the chain in 1963. All ten hospitals were eventually purchased by the Board of National Missions of the Presbyterian Church USA. Renamed Appalachian Regional Hospitals, the hospital chain managed to retain most of its staff physicians, and the hospitals were reorganized upon a group practice basis. While the difficulties of the Fund with the K.S.M.A. centered around the hospital chain, the conflict took place within the wider context of an open breach between the Fund and organized medicine which finally took place between 1955 and 1956. On all levels of the struggle, the general cry was that the Fund was denying its beneficiaries a free choice of physician because of Draper's decision to adopt closed panel practice. By late 1954, it had become apparent to Draper that the initial restrictions which had been placed upon the medical program of the Fund were not enough to limit excessive costs arising from medical fraud, nor did they appreciably improve the quality of care provided. To deal with the situation in a more effective manner, Draper decided to make the following changes. He ordered that the Fund review all of its participation lists, and that authorization for service by physicians be limited to those areas of medicine in which they were fully qualified. Participation with the Fund now would be limited to those physicians willing to arrange for adequate diagnostic work on an office or outpatient basis. Hospitals were to be reviewed on the basis of quality of treatment, and detailed medical audits would now be required to determine if low quality or unnecessary surgery was being performed.32 The results of the changes were encouraging. Prior to the new guidelines, 65% of all Fund covered surgery was performed by general 102 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �practitioners. Under the new policy the figure declined to 25%, and the number of operations performed per 1,000 beneficiaries had been cut in half.33 Convinced that he was moving in the right direction, Draper ordered in March, 1955, that the Pittsburgh, Johnston, and Morgantown offices require all doctors to seek specialist consultations prior to hospitalizing Fund beneficiaries.34 Draper's previous orders had been resented; however, this final decision was too much to be accepted, and the A.M.A. House of Delegates passed a resolution condemning the order in June of the same year. Faced with this opposition, Draper withdrew the order. However, during the June meeting of the House, Draper was approached by representatives of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania. The M.S.S.P. had vehemently opposed Draper's actions, and had suspended all participation with the Fund.36 Nevertheless, the M.S.S.P. leadership was anxious to come to an arrangement with Fund, and initiated negotiations for a formal agreement. These discussions were successfully completed in November, 1955. Under the terms of the "Pennsylvania Agreement" the M.S.S.P. agreed to weed out unethical physicians within its ranks, while not conceding that the Fund had the right to judge the quality of a physician's work. The agreement called for all hospitals to form medical audit committees, and endorsed a uniform policy of granting visiting staff privileges to any doctor who sought them. The Fund retained the right to remove any unethical physician from its list, and the agreement even covered how participating practitioners were to be paid. Using a system similar to fee-for-time, the agreement created a "block fee-for-service" based on what percentage of a physician's practice consisted of Fund beneficiaries. The agreement was hailed as a major achievement, and was published in the May 12, 1956 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.36 While avoiding an argument over closed panel, the agreement did commit the M.S.S.P. to actively police its membership. Because of the goodwill the agreement created, other state medical societies were interested in using it as a model to govern their relations with the Fund. Tragically, this goodwill was lost when the M.S.S.P. House of Delegates abruptly voted to abrogate the agreement in October, 1956. The pretext for the action was that the M.S.S.P. Committee on Medical Economics had negotiated the accord without the knowledge of the general membership and had overstepped its authority. In the midst of the acrimony, Dr. Elmer Hess, the M.S.S.P. president, spoke to the delegates. He told them the agreement had been made in good faith, and that there was no just cause to terminate it. Going further, Hess warned that this action would leave Draper with no other recourse than to adopt closed panel organization. The delegates Volume Two, 1990 103 �responded to Hess's pleas by booing him, and then voted to terminate the agreement immediately thereafter.37 With the Pennsylvania Agreement ruined, Draper was finally forced to move in the direction that Dr. Hess predicted. This action not only worsened relations with organized medicine in Pennsylvania and Kentucky, but with other state organizations across the U.S., as well as the A.M.A. national office, and culminated with its formal condemnation of the Fund in 1958. Judging from the record, the response of organized medicine in Pennsylvania and Kentucky was not distinctive. Although these groups were vehement in their opposition to Draper's policies, this behavior did not differ from the reaction of other state medical societies outside of Appalachia, and reflected the majority opinion of the A.M.A. House of Delegates. Conversely, the Tennessee State Medical Association continued to maintain good relations with the Fund throughout the crisis, as did the West Virginia State Medical Association. In this respect, these two groups were representative of a minority within the A.M.A. national organization which did not wish to condemn the Fund, nor break relations with it. While not agreeing with everything Draper did, the members of this minority insisted that Draper's actions arose out of the failure of the medical profession to police itself. Just how much sway the minority view held is seen by the fact that the vote tally on the 1958 resolution to condemn was 110 in favor to 72 opposed.38 Ironically, both the A.M.A. and its more combative state branches were soon forced to drop their stand against the Fund. By 1958, the number of men working in the mines had declined considerably due to the overall drop in coal demand and the greater level of mechanization in the industry. Also, before the end of the year, it became apparent that liberal members of the U.S. Congress intended to push for direct federal involvement in providing health care for the elderly. Frightened by this prospect, organized medicine discontinued its conflict with the Fund to prevent the creation of what ultimately became Medicare. Conclusions Over the past thirty years, an entire genre of literature has appeared about Appalachia which views the region from the point of view of poverty and degradation. In this vein, writers have presented medicine in Appalachia as being based on superstition and home remedy. Obviously this view is false. However, there is no question that the quality of medical care in the region was poor. This fact was proven by both Admiral Boone's report and the A.M.A. hospital survey mentioned in this essay. Essentially, the Fund, through its work as a medical third party, strived to improve medical standards. The success of the Fund here is 104 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �attested to by its creation of what became Appalachian Regional Hospitals, and the growth of a system of primary care clinics, which were either created by the U.M.W.A., the Fund, or other groups, and which received financial support from the Fund. In essence, this process of improvement was the distinctive aspect of the Fund's experience as a health care agency in Appalachia, and not its struggle with some branches of organized medicine in the region. While the behavior of the K.S.M.A. and the M.S.S.P. demonstrated hypocrisy and mean-spiritedness, other state-level medical societies outside the region, as well as the A.M.A. national office, behaved in a similar manner. In fact, what was unique about the relationship of the Fund with organized medicine in the region was the attitude of the Tennessee State Medical Association. Far from combative, the T.S.M.A. always cooperated with the Fund, and was one of the few groups in the A.M.A. which offered constructive suggestions on how the Fund and organized medicine could work together to improve the quality of health care. Thus, the attitude of the Kentucky and Pennsylvania branches of the A.M.A. demonstrated that physicians across the nation were motivated to action by a similar set of concerns, and used the same arguments to protect their interests. Works Cited Bituminous Coal Facts, 1960. Washington, B.C.: National Coal Association. Current Biography. 1941, 725. Dubofsky, Melvyn and Warren Van Tine. 1977. John L. Lewis: A Biography. New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co: 376. Durmaskin, Bettina, Ronald C. Althouse, William Wyant, and Edward Bosnar. 1982. The Impact of Changes in Health Care Coverage Provides by the United Mine Workers of America Health & Retirement Funds in West Virginia Primary Care Clinics and Multi-Specialty Clinics having Extensive Miner Case Loads. West Virginia University: Department of Community Medicine, Office of Health Services Research. Unpublished Report. Kerr, Lorin, M.D., M.P.H. Interview taped at Dr. Kerr's home in Washington, B.C., 30 May 1988. Mulcahy, Richard. 1988. "To Serve A Union: The United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund, 1946-1978." Morgantown: West Virginia University. Unpublished Ph.D. Bissertation, 240. Ploss, Janet. 1981. "A History of the Health Care Program of the United Mine Workers of America Welfare Retirement Fund." Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. Unpublished M.S. Thesis, 53. Volume Two, 1990 105 �United Mine Workers Journal. 1 April 1947; United Mine Workers Journal. 1 August 1947. Wysang, Jere A. and Sherman R. Williams. 1981. Health Services for Miners: Development and Evolution of the United States Mine Workers of America Health Care Program. Washington D.C: National Center for Health Services Research, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Health Research, Statistics and Technology, 3. Wysang and Williams, 1981: 8. Footnotes 1 Kerr, Dr. Lorin, M.D., M.P.H. Interview taped at Dr. KBIT'S home in Washington D.C., 30 May 1988. Most of Dr. KBIT'S career had been spent in either working for the Fund or the U.M.W.A. Dr. Kerr joined the Fund's staff in 1947 and served as medical administrator for Morgantown, WV until 1952. In 1952, Dr. Kerr came to Washington and worked directly under Dr. Draper. In 1968, Dr. Kerr left the Fund to work for the U.M.WA. An expert on Coal Workers' Pneumoconiosis, Dr. Kerr organized and headed the Union's office on occupational health and safety. Currently in retirement, Dr. Kerr maintains both his connections with the Union, the-Fund, and his interest in occupational health issues. The author wishes to thank Dr. Kerr for his invaluable help on this research project. 2 Thurmond Diary, 22 March 1946, 1 April 1946, F.F. Goodykoontz vs. Shatle, 1918, A&M Series 4, Goody County Box 5, West Virginia Collection, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia; Press statement of John L. Lewis on Retirement Fund, dated 14 May 1946, F.F. 10, Box 1 of 3,1946 Fund Files, Series II, Office of the Director Records, United Mine Workers of America Health and Retirement Funds, A&M 2769, West Virginia Collection; Thurmond Diary, 14 May 1946; Seltzer, Curtis. 1985. Fire in the Hole: Miners and Managers in the American Coal Industry. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 58. 3 Biographical data on Josephine Roche, Box 3 of 3, 1946 Fund Files, Series II, Office of the Director Records, United Mine Workers of America Health and Retirement Funds; "Josephine Roche Dead at 89, Treasury and U.M.W. Official." The New York Times Biographical Service, July 1976. 4 Memos from Josephine Roche to John L. Lewis, dated 29 March 1948; F.F. J.L.L. Medical and Hospital; Dr. Sayers' Memorandums, Box 6 of 11, United Mine Workers of America Correspondence, 1946-1972, Series II, Office of the Director Records, United Mine Workers of America Health and Retirement Funds. 5 Memos from Josephine Roche to John L. Lewis dated 18 May 1948, and 30 May 1948, Ibid. 6 Memo from Dr. Draper to Josephine Roche, dated 1 November 1948, F.F. A.MA. Council on Industrial Health, 1948 & 1949, Box 6 of 52, Subject Files, Series III, Executive Medical Officer, United Mine Workers of America Health and Retirement Funds. 106 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �7 Daniels, Mr. Henry C. 14 June 1988. Taped Interview. Like Dr. Kerr, Mr. Daniels began his association with the Fund in 1947. Although not an M.D., Mr. Daniels worked in the Fund's hospitalization section, and was involved in monitoring the quality of care Fund beneficiaries received in various participating institutions. 8 Letter from Dr. Lorin Kerr to Dr. Draper, dated 19 August 1949; Letter from Dr. William Dorsey to Dr. Draper, dated 11 August 1949, F.F. Office of the Director Records, M.M.H.S. Correspondence, 1947 Fund Area Reports, Box 1 of 4, Medical, Hospital, and Health Services Correspondence, Series II, Office of the Director Records, United Mine Workers of America Health and Retirement Funds. 9 Clipping of article entitled "Should Industry Back Compulsory Federal Health Insurance?" F.F. A.M.A. Council on Industrial Health, Box 6 of 52, Subject Files, Series III, Executive Medical Officer, United Mine Workers of America Health and Retirement Funds. 10 Dr. Draper. 1950. Annual Conference on Medical Health Services, Palmer House, Chicago: 5 Feb. 1950. 11 Letter from Dr. Draper to All Area Administrators, 30 December 1954, F.F. American Medical Association, General 1952-1955. Ibid. 12 Letters from Dr. Draper to Dr. Carl M. Peterson. 5 January 1951 & 12 February 1951. F.F. A.M.A. Dr. Draper (Correspondence), Box 39 of 52. 13 Third party Medicine in Kentucky," presented by Dr. Asa Barnes, M.D., Before the Jefferson County Medical Society, Jefferson County, Kentucky, 19 October 1959, 4-5, F.F. A-II-6, Relations with Medical Societies, Box 6 of 16, Subject Files, Series IV, Miners Memorial Hospital Association, Ibid. 14 Remarks given by Dr. Warren Draper at the groundbreaking ceremonies at Man Memorial Hospital, Man, West Virginia, 31 October 1953, F.F. M.M.H.A. Publicity - Publications, Box 2 of 5, Construction/Administration, Series IV, Miners Memorial Hospital Association, United Mine Workers of America Health and Retirement Funds. 15 A Medical Survey of the Bituminous Coal Industry, Report of the Coal Mines Administrator (The Boone Report), Department of the Interior (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1947), 171-187, Box 1 of 1, Bibliography—U.M.W.A. Health and Retirement Funds, United Mine Workers Health and Retirement Funds. 16 Ibid., 1-2 & 59. 17 "Medical Hospitals in the Bituminous Coal Mining Areas of Kentucky — Tennessee—West Virginia, Preliminary Study to Survey Extent of Problems," 56, 8-12, F.F. Council on Medical Service U.M.W. Survey Report, Box 7 of 52, Subject files, Series III, Executive Medical Officer, Ibid. 18 Conference on Medical Care in Bituminous Coal Mining Areas, Charleston, West Virginia, 6-7 Sept. 1952,.3-4, F.F. American Medical Association, Committee on Health Care for Industrial Workers, Box 17 of 52, Ibid. 19 " Report of Survey Team to the Committee on Medical Care for Industrial Workers of the Councils on Medical Service and Industrial Health," American Medical Association, 15-16 April 1952, 2-5, 10-12; Telegram to Dr. Carl M. Volume Two, 1990 107 �Peterson, dated 10 April 1953, F.F. American Medical Association, Council on Industrial Health. 20 Statistical Abstract, Welfare, and Retirement Fund, United Mine Workers of America. 10 January 1949, 29-30, Statistical Abstract, Welfare, and Retirement Fund, United Mine Workers of America, 11 December 1951, 11; Statistical Abstract, Welfare and Retirement Fund, United Mine Workers of America, 10 December 1952, 11-12; F.F. Statistical Abstract Series, 1947 Fund, 1 July 1948 through June 1950, Box 1 of 7, Statistical Reports, 1952-1974, Series V, Office of Research and Statistics, Ibid. 21 Excerpts from the Minutes of the 12th Meeting of the Board of Trustees of the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund of 1950, 32-40; F.F. Minutes of Welfare and Retirement Trustee Meetings with Respect to the Miners' Memorial Hospital Association, Box 2 of 7, Legal and Contracts, Series IV, Miners' Memorial Hospital Association. 22 Koplin, Allen M., M.D., M.P.H. "Retainer Payment for Physician Services," 4-6, Box Addendum 1981, July 8, Annual Reports, 1952-1979 and Misc. Staff Publications, Gift Yale University Library, United Mine Workers of America Health and Retirement Funds. 23 " Report of A Survey of the Group Practice Medical Centers Serving Beneficiaries of the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund in the Pittsburgh Area," 12-17 October 1957, F.F. A-II-3, Box 6 of 16, Subject Files, Series IV, Miners Memorial Hospital Association, United Mine Workers of America Health and Retirement Funds. 24 Remarks given by Dr. Warren Draper at the ground-breaking ceremonies at Man Memorial Hospital, Man, West Virginia, 31 October 1953, F.F. M.M.H.A. Publicity-Publications, Box 2 of 5, Construction/Administration, Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Letter from Dr. Asa Barnes to Dr. Draper, dated 8 August 1956, F.F. A-II-2, Relationship between Fund medical service and the M.M.HA., Box 6 of 16, Subject Files; Letters from Dr. Frederick Mott to Dr. Draper dated 7 December 1956 and 22 January 1957, F.F. Integrations of M.M.H.A. and the Medical Service of the Fund, Box 5 of 12, Clinical Operations, Ibid. 27 Memo from Dr. Draper to Medical Services and Hospital Service, Miner's Memorial Hospital Association, dated 5 December 1956; Letters from Dr. Frederick Mott to Dr. Draper, dated 7 December 1956 and 22 January 1957, F.F. Integration of M.M.H.A. and the Medical Service of the Fund, Box 5 of 12, Clinical Operations, Ibid. 28 Letter from Dr. Asa Barnes to Dr. Draper, dated 8 August 1956; Letter to Dr. Asa Barnes from Dr. Francis Hodges, dated 2 May 1956, F.F. A-II-6, Relations with Medical Societies, Box 6 of 16, Subject Files, Ibid. 29 Memo to Dr. Draper from Dr. John Newdorp, dated 28 October 1959, Ibid. 30 Memo from Dr. Gordon Meade to File, dated 21 October 1959; Letters to Drs. Clark, Judd, Wishman, and Owens, dated 28 November 1959, F.F. A-II-6, Relations with Medical Societies, Draft Letter to Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association, F.F. A-II-7, The Society of Medicine of Pike County, Ibid. 108 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �1 Memo from Dr. John Newdorp to Dr. Draper, dated 28 October 1959, F.F. A-II5, Relations with Medical Societies, Ibid. 12 Letter from Dr. Draper to Area medical Administrators, dated 6 April 1954, F.F. American Medical Associations , General, 1952-1955, Box 6 of 52, Subject Files, Series III Executive Medical Officer, Ibid. 13 Letter from Dr. Draper to All Area Medical Administrators, dated 30 Decemoer 1954, Ibid. " Letter to Dr. Draper from Dr. William A. Sawyer, dated 26 April 1955, Resolutions of the Pennsylvania and West Virginia Delegations to the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association, June 1955 meeting held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Ibid. 35 Resolution of the Pennsylvania delegates to the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association, June 1955 meeting held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Ibid. 36 " Problems of the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund in Providing Medical Care to its Beneficiaries," by Warren F. Draper, M.D., P. 5. F.F. American Medical Association, Meetings in 1957, Box 12 of 52, Ibid. 37 Report of the Meeting of the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association, San Francisco, California, 23-26 June 1958, F.F. A.M.A. General, Box 5 of 52, Subject Files, Ibid. 38 Ibid. Richard P. Mulcahy is in the department of history at the University of Pittsburgh, Titusville, Pennsylvania. Volume Two, 1990 109 �The Roving Picket Movement and the Appalachian Committee for Full Employment, 1959-1965: A Narrative Kate Black In Eastern Kentucky in the 1950s coalfield life was not easy for mining families. With each passing year in that decade, mine work was increasingly difficult to find, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) grew more antagonistic towards the rank-and-file, and the mines that were operating became even less safe, more economically marginal, and eventually, non-union. It was the decade when thousands left the area in search of jobs. No one "discovered" Eastern Kentucky; no major surveys were conducted; and no massive federal aid programs were implemented. No one outside the area paid attention to Eastern Kentucky. Yet, in the midst of this silence, disquieting activities occurred in the boardrooms of coal corporations and the UMWA International. Plans were made that, by the end of the 1950s, whirled Eastern Kentucky into the national limelight and ultimately forced mining families to organize and agitate to an extent not witnessed since the 1930s. After World War II, the coal industry, notorious for its boom-andbust cycle, headed into a slump. (Caudill, 1963; Hume, 1971; and Seltzer, 1985, provided the following information.) Because coal had a bad reputation—fluctuating prices in the marketplace and so-called unstable labor in the workplace—corporate America was anxious to find alternative energy sources. The home-heating market converted from coal to 110 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �fuel oil and natural gas, and the railroads turned to diesel fuel. Even the thermo-electric market became highly competitive as steam generated power plants developed the capacity to convert from one fuel to another, depending on what was cheapest. In addition, the coal industry, known for its well-defined worker/management conflicts, was anxious to control its labor force. Historically, miners had been defiant and militant when faced with standard industry fare: low wages, deathly working conditions, virulent anti-union tactics, and job instability. The other "major enemy coal suppliers faced was themselves. They were too numerous, too divided, and too anarchistic to discipline their affairs" (Seltzer, 1985: 62). Increasingly the large coal operators and John L. Lewis, the autocratic President of the UMWA, recognized that they needed each other to insure mutual survival. They decided to end the old antagonisms; labormanagement collaboration and collective bargaining would, they believed, stabilize the coal industry. Thus, by 1950, the newly formed organization, the Bituminous Coal Operators' Association (BCOA) began unprecedented industry-wide collective bargaining with the UMWA. Headed by George Love of Pittsburgh-Consolidation Coal, the BCOA members represented companies producing half the coal mined in the United States. In keeping with the tenets of corporate capitalism, the number of votes each BCOA member could cast was proportionate to the tonnage their mines produced: the higher the tonnage rate, the more power they had in decision making (Seltzer, 1985: 63). From the beginning, then, the northern commercial operators and captive mine owners, both of whom produced far more coal than the southern commercial operators, clearly had the upper-hand; moreover, the group of smaller southern companies with UMWA contracts, the Southern Coal Producer's Association, were forced to enter national contract negotiations along side corporations having unbelievable capital advantage. The die was cast. In 1950, the BCOA and UMWA negotiated a new contract swiftly and without a strike. In exchange for controlling labor costs industrywide, the BCOA made three demands: a contract which could not be cancelled prior to its expiration date, a no-strike clause, and stipulations that only employees of companies signatory to the contract should receive benefits from the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds.1 An essential ingredient of this agreement was mechanization. The new alliance saw automation, not as a choice to make, but as a fact to face: The logic that wedded [the UMWA and BCOA] was economic. To survive the competition of other fuels, coal had to remain cheap and free from the threat of strikes. Mechanization would raise productivity and keep coal Volume Two, 1990 111 �competitive with oil and gas... Those who could mechanize fastest would be able to get the best contracts and make the most money... [S]maller companies with UMWA contracts could not afford both to invest in mechanization and meet the new BCQA wage-and-benefit standards. [They] hoped that mechanization would lower the production costs of union-mined coal below what the small non-union suppliers could achieve by cutting wages. Machines, they hoped, would eventually suppress competition (Seltzer, 1985: 67). The squeeze tightened in 1952, when the BCOA and UMWA negotiated a $1.90 per shift wage increase and a $.10 per ton increase for royalties to the Health and Retirement Funds and, in 1955, UMWA miners received a raise of $2.00 per shift. The collaboration was cemented when the UMWA secretly loaned money from their own bank, The National Bank of Washington, to some of the larger companies to capitalize their mechanization efforts.2 Smaller mines, unable to compete with an industry-wide contract and mechanization, increasingly went bankrupt or non-union. In Eastern Kentucky, however, the results of the BCOA-UMWA partnership were particularly dramatic and not according to plan. Instead of the smaller mines going out of business, they proliferated. Many were "dog-hole" mines—truck mines which "came into existence during World War II, when the demand for coal increased sharply and the big mines gave up operations that did not yield to mechanization" (Linton, 1959: 472). Truck mines were usually economically marginal businesses; they were labor intensive and even more unsafe than the larger operations. Coal from these mines was trucked to a preparation plant, or to a ramp located on a railroad. The ramp owner often owned or leased these truck mines to the operators. Actually "operator" is somewhat of a misnomer because many of these truck mines were "gangworked" by small groups of miners who could no longer find work in larger, union mines. Usually the miners at the truck mines thought they were working for signatory companies because the ramp operators were signatory and, therefore, paying the royalties on the tonnage (purchased from the truck mines) to the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds. In many cases, however, the UMWA formed sweetheart contracts with the ramp owners, ostensibly to keep Eastern Kentucky unionized.3 But by 1958, the UMWA clearly was interested in coal production which generated royalties, rather than in the rank-and-file. The 1958 contract included a clause which later caused the coalfields, especially in Eastern Kentucky, to explode. The Protective Wage Clause forbade the signatory operators to do any business—mine, prepare, transport, or sell—with non-union companies: 112 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �It was not intended to protect the wages of UMWA miners (except perhaps in the most remote sense), since BCOA operators did not want to break their union contracts. [It] was a device to concentrate economic power within the boundaries of the UMWA-BCOA sphere [Emphasis original] (Seltzer, 1977: 446). In Eastern Kentucky, where truck mines were not the exception but the rule, the stipulations of the clause were felt strongly. A ramp operator who remained competitive in the spot sales market by determining what the truck miners got for their coal could no longer use that leverage if everyone was actually paying union scale and the 40 cents-a-ton royalty. No longer could the truck mines have any economic edge over the large rail mines (i.e. BCOA members). This exceedingly complex situation led to a long, very violent strike in 1959, which has often been described as John L. Lewis' "last ditch effort to organize Eastern Kentucky" (Seltzer, 1985: 81; Maggard and Home interviews, 1987). Many of the smaller independent companies refused to sign the 1958 contract either because they actually could not afford to meet its demands or because they refused to be coerced by a BCOA-UMWA conspiracy.4 So, when the miners came out on strike it was, in effect, an organizing tactic, not a contract strike. In fact, Lewis used, once again, his ultimate authority over the rank-and-file as a method of squeezing out yet more non-BCOA companies which, in his mind, would further stabilize the coal industry. It was a tactic that failed miserably. While many smaller rail and truck mines did go out of business, new ones popped up as non-union mines. Competition for jobs was fierce and UMWA miners were forced to work in non-union mines. By 1960, those who were lucky enough to be employed worked for even lower wages in more dangerous conditions than in the 1950s. The marginal economic system in which the Eastern Kentucky mining family lived narrowed. In the meantime, throughout the 1950s the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds disenfranchised large numbers of disabled miners and prospective pensioners with ever-changing and arbitrary eligibility rules. A set of interconnected reasons caused these changes. Because the income to the Funds was tied to production — 40 cents-per-ton — its financial status was directly linked to the well-being of the coal industry. The perspective of the Funds became: people who do not produce tonnage (disabled and retired miners) do not produce royalties. In addition, the health care system, which featured a chain of hospitals and pre-paid services had to keep up with inflation but, since 1952, the royalty had not been increased. And, to make matters more sinister, the assets of the Funds, kept in the UMWA-owned Bank of Washington, "were loaned interest free to coal operators and its cash reserves were used to purchase coal company and utility stocks" (Seltzer, 1977a: 25). Finally, the Volume Two, 1990 113 �Funds, like the union, were under the iron fist of Lewis, whose quest for power had long surpassed his consideration of the miners' welfare. Participation by the rank and file in union politics and decision-making had been systematically, and even militantly, closed. The failure of the Funds to serve the mining communities—everyone, not just the miners—was the result of the mismanagement and corruption inside the UMWA itself. In 1960, the Funds cancelled medical coverage for all miners who had been unemployed for more than a year, and for all those working in a non-union mine, even if all prior service had been in a union mine. The final blow came in 1962, when the Funds closed its ten hospitals located throughout the coalfields and revoked the medical cards held by miners working for companies not paying royalties. Thus, thousands of miners, who worked for below-scale wages because their employer had a sweetheart contract with the UMWA, were double-crossed. Retired miner, Robert McDonald, explained that the operators "may not have paid the wages [up to scale] but they did pay royalties, as I understand." Another miner, when asked how the men felt about sweetheart contracts, answered, "You never did hear them talk about it. Operators would say they had everything took care of (McDonald, Hensley interviews, 1987). Miners who believed if they stuck with the union through the hard times their loyalty would be rewarded were wrong. Initially, it was hard to know who to blame. Miners who had worked for years at below union wages had done so believing that at least they and their families could receive medical care at no additional cost—a considerable benefit. The surprise announcements by the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds in the fall of 1962 burst the dam. In Eastern Kentucky, especially Letcher, Knott, and Perry Counties, hundreds of effected miners came out on strike. Soon their ranks were joined by other unemployed miners and their families, as well as by those the Health and Retirement Funds had disenfranchised throughout the 1950s. Spontaneously, they began driving caravans from one mine to another, trying to close down operations that were non-union and those that were not paying their 40-cents-per-ton royalty. The press dubbed them the "Roving Pickets." When asked what the nature of the Roving Picket movement was, miners who were pickets explained: [We were] protesting the coal operators making sweetheart contracts with the [UMWA] field [representatives]. They started trying to get rid of the union. These big mines did. [The operators] just shut the mines and hired new men to take their places for less wages. [The Roving Pickets] tried to organize [those mines]. 114 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �[We were trying to] save our jobs and save our hospitalization (Campbell, Sexton, Home interviews, 1987). The Roving Pickets focused on several different, but not necessarily unrelated, circumstances. In some areas the pickets attempted to close mines and ramps whose owners failed to sign the 1958 contract and were therefore handling non-union coal. Others targeted mines holding sweetheart contracts with the UMWA; those operators had not paid their royalties to the Funds. The miners working at these operations were those who lost their hospital cards in the fall of 1962. The Roving Pickets also demonstrated at mines which closed or simply let their contract expire, changed names but not ownership, and re-opened as non-union.6 These were obviously confusing times. Striking and picketing had always been the union miner's recourse for unfair labor practices. But eventually the miners had to face the facts: the UMWA publicly denounced the Roving Pickets. Joe Scopa, a retired miner and former Roving Picket said that initially "[W]e got the impression the district was 100% behind us," but he later learned differently when the District 19 president announced over the radio, They are on their own." Buck Maggard, another picket said the UMWA "disowned the men. They wouldn't sanction the strikes" (Scopa, Maggard interviews, 1987). People involved with the movement are divided in their analysis of the UMWA refusal to support the Roving Pickets. Some believed that the UMWA secretly subsidized the pickets and encouraged them to close down mines and even destroy mine property (Hatmaker, Home, Turner interviews, 1987). The theory was that the union would be slapped with too many law suits if they overtly sanctioned the strikes. The other side claimed that the union betrayed the rank-and-file miners of Eastern Kentucky and simply pitted them against one another to strengthen the UMWA-BCOA alliance (Maggard, Campbell interviews, 1987). If the UMWA did covertly instigate the Roving Picket movement, they still used the miners to fight back at the same operators with which the union had formed sweetheart contracts. Naturally the operators would have been furious if the UMWA had publicly sanctioned the strikes. However, if the UMWA did not covertly sanction the pickets, they nevertheless sacrificed their own members—those that were already the most marginal—to the cause: destroy the competition faced by BCOA members, created by small mines flooding the markets with cheap coal. Or, if the miners actually forced all the small non-union mines to sign union contracts, those mines, while paying union wages and royalties, could not have survived the competition with large rail and captive producers. Either way, the miners lost. Volume Two, 1990 115 �The Roving Picket movement was particularly intense for approximately a year after the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds announcement in the fall of 1962. Activity centered in Perry County, where Berman Gibson emerged as the leader. In Perry, as well as surrounding counties, the pickets used similar strategies. In the early morning hours, groups ranging from approximately 50 to 300 people gathered— usually at one of the Miners' Memorial Hospitals or at the local union hall—and a decision was made about which mines would be picketed before the car caravan departed.7 Once they arrived at their destination the pickets attempted to prevent the scabs from going to work or tried to persuade them into coming out. As the local power elite became more organized, the pickets increasingly faced state police, injunctions, restraining orders, and eventually arrests. In Perry and Letcher Counties, in particular, violence was a tactic used by the pickets when all else failed: At first we would task the men to come out.] We'd do it the sensible way. And then, if bad things come to worse, they wouldn't have no place to dump their coal or tip [i.e. tipple] it... [A] ramp, or tipple, or big bridge right nearby—someway it would fall in... (Maggard interview, 1987). Many supporters of the Roving Pickets, however, claim they were often prevented from picketing at mines by "gun thugs" hired by the operators and by the ruthlessness of people like Charlie Combs, Sheriff of Perry County and a mine owner himself (Hensley, Turner interviews, 1987). At any rate, mine and railroad property was destroyed and several pickets were indicted and convicted of related charges. Throughout 1963, the Roving Picket movement changed from a miners' resistance to an unemployed/poor people's movement. As the roving pickets were increasingly challenged by the local political structure, it became clear the movement was not accomplishing its original intentions: saving jobs and UMWA health cards.8 This realization crystalized in November, 1963, during the campaign for circuit judge in Perry County—Courtney Wells, who was sympathetic to labor, was up for re-election: On the morning of the election the State Police and County Sheriffs promptly showed up with warrants for Berman Gibson and seven of his followers who were carted off to the Letcher County Jail and charged before a Justice of the Peace with assault with a deadly weapon which carried the maximum penalty of death. This maneuver served two purposes: first to remove them from the polling places to help defeat the friendly Judge and to destroy the movement of the roving pickets. The opposition defeated the Judge... (Tharp, 1965:1). 116 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �The election was final proof that the issue was not simply a standard labor-management battle (if it ever had been) but a broader politicaleconomic one. Because their analysis of the situation was changing, the pickets realized their strategies must also change. Their old-style labor agitation was no longer effective or comprehensive enough to deal with such a complex situation. To use UMWA tactics when the union was part of the problem was clearly not the answer. In January, 1964, a small group of unemployed miners chartered a bus to Washington to call attention to the situation in Eastern Kentucky and to seek Federal relief for the unemployed. Everette Tharp, who was in the delegation, described the trip: We visited Senators and Representatives throughout Appalachia and also various governmental department heads. We asked for an appointment with President Johnson and received an invitation to meet with his Aide, Mr. George Reedy. It was in this discussion that Mr. Reedy suggested that we come back home and organize so as to be in a better position to aid and assist the Government to carry out their War on Poverty Program (Tharp, 1956: 2). Upon returning home the Appalachian Committee for Full Employment (ACFE) was formed. Its goals were broad-based and radical: To expose corruption in the framework of our government... To continue to organize the unemployed... To promote the more equal distribution of the Nation's wealth... To fight for the enactment of a tax structure, humane in administration, equal in the tax burden... To conduct a [voter] registration campaign of the people in poverty... To take a vow ourselves to be men of courage and vision, to scoff at no brother because of his ideas and to unite without regard to color or creed, the better to cope with our enemies (Tharp, 1965: 5). The ACFE established community action committees which protested how local politicians were spending War on Poverty monies, challenged the school board over its administration of the Federal school lunch program, and organized against the $1.00 hourly wage paid to those in the unemployed father's program, calling it "legislated poverty" (Tharp, 1965: 2). Eventually, the ACFE was embroiled with the local power structure over how Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) funds should be expended.9 Volume Two, 1990 117 �Another group that became an important part of the Roving Picket era was formed in the summer of 1963 under the leadership of Hamish Sinclair10 The Committee for Miners (CFM) was organized in New York to raise money and carry on the legal defense of all pickets who had been arrested. But Sinclair admitted that: [W]e were getting involved with a movement which was already in existence and the price we had to pay for a ready made constituency was the problem of transferring its aims to those defined by our analysis.... There was often sharp conflict between the needs of a movement for jobs and the needs of the preparation for the trials. Money and staff time was frequently diverted to trial work at times when both were urgently needed for an organizing development. [Emphasis added] (Sinclair, 1965: 90). Nevertheless, the Committee, ACFE, and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) co-sponsored the "Easter Conference" in March, 1964, in Hazard (Perry County). The purpose was to introduce SDS members to the area and to encourage their interest in returning for a summer of organizing work with ACFE. SDS, at that time, wanted to foster an alliance between unemployed blacks and whites and saw the opportunity to begin this work in Eastern Kenucky.11 One year after the Easter Conference, however, the Committee for Miners was defunct, citing as its reasons: "(1) disagreements between CFM and ACFE as to policies and leadership; and (2) ACFE's decision to raise funds independently."12 Since Hazard became the center for the Roving Picket movement— both the CFM and ACFE offices were there—most of the national publicity about the miners focused on that area. In addition, Berman Gibson, charismatic and colorful leader of the Perry County pickets and later chair of the ACFE, probably attracted press because he was naturally a "good story." According to Hamish Sinclair of the CFM, Gibson was one of the reasons his organization chose Perry County for its field office. The...problem was that with little resources (myself as the one organizer in the area) we could not cover the geographical expanse of seven counties adequately. The men who had been active in the picket movement, now threatened with reprisals by the FBI, the local police and political structure in the area, were not willing to set up their own cadres of leadership in the other six counties. Gibson stood out alone as the one man who was prepared to go on. (Sinclair, 1965: 91). 118 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Of course, the arrival of so many outsiders—press, students, organizers—did not go unnoticed in Hazard. This added another dramatic dimension to the Roving Picket movement: red-baiting. As early as February, 1963, the Hazard-Herald printed stories with headlines that read, "Communism Comes to the Mountains of East Kentucky" and "Cuba Broadcast Tells Mine Woes" (Hatmaker, 1987). Of course, it was true that members of the Communist Party press came to investigate and write stories on the Roving Pickets as did the Maoist Progressive Labor Party.13 But the Hazard press and the local power elite red-baited the miners and all who associated with them in hopes of diffusing the movement. Everette Tharp, Recording Secretary and theoretician of the ACFE, analyzed the elite's actions in a piece called "Outsiders." The cry of'outsiders' [is a] political weapon to be used against certain classes of individuals in order that a small minority may perpetuate their strangle-hold upon [our] economic, political, and social lives (Tharp, 1964: 4). When Buck Maggard, a former picket, was asked whether the redbaiting hurt the movement, he said it did not and then wryly added, "Can't you just see the Communists taking over Hazard? What in the hell would they have done with it?" (Maggard interview, 1978). The cry of "Outsiders" and "Communists" has always been used in the coalfields to point a finger or raise suspicion whenever working class people have organized themselves to resist or agitate. These accusations come especially when the local power structure is being scrutinized nationally. Louise Hatmaker, who wrote for the Hazard-Herald, strongly illustrates this reaction when she bitterly recalled how national publications "wrote great glowing things about these miners, these pickets ... it was as if we were ogres and they were completely downtrodden. But they were having a wonderful time, believe me" (Hatmaker interview, 1987). The local power elite worked relentlessly to break the spirit of the Roving Picket movement and later the ACFE: From red-baiting to forming the Citizen's Committee for Law and Order; and, from insuring that Courtney Wells was not re-elected as the Circuit Court Judge to using the local paper for powerful media manipulation.14 Long after the end of the Roving Picket movement and even after the demise of the ACFE in the mid-1960s, this basic struggle continued. In fact, the fight to control federal OEO dollars between poor people and local politicians and bureaucrats ultimately diluted intensity of the ACFE. Volume Two, 1990 119 �Concluding Questions and Remarks More original research needs to be conducted on the Roving Picket movement as I indicated in several footnotes. I have many unanswered questions: —The union's position should be documented by interviewing UMWA officials, especially district officers, of that era and by obtaining official records, if they exist and are accessible. What exactly was the UMWAs role, what part did the International play and what parts did the Districts play? Were Districts 19 and 30 in Eastern Kentucky historically different from other districts? —Why was the Roving Picket Movement strongest in certain Eastern Kentucky counties? Why was it limited to the Eastern Kentucky coalfields? Why was there no similar movement in West Virginia? Were those Eastern Kentucky counties structurally different somehow? Was the development of those coalfields (economically and technologically) significantly different? —What was the relationship between the pickets and the "outsiders"? When differences of ideology and strategy surfaced between the ACFE, CFM, and SDS, what were they? What was the power struggle about? How did the ACFE effect the students? Did any of them later become AVs (Appalachian Volunteers)? Can the Roving Picket Movement and ACFE be tied to the larger Civil Rights Movement during this period? —Women were active in the Roving Picket movement and, in fact, a woman, Lola Moore, was later Financial Secretary of the ACFE. Not surprisingly, I have found no sources which discuss women in the movement, beyond the briefest mention. Interviews with these women should be conducted and analyzed. —How and why did the local power structure hinder the movement? What relationship do they have to a national and international power structure? How did their Citizens Committee for Law and Order affect the media's interpretation of the movement? In what ways did they collaborate with state and federal law enforcement agencies against the pickets? —Finally, how did the pickets, who shifted their focus from labor organizing to a broad-based poor people's coalition view this process? In what ways did they create the process; in what ways did the process 120 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �change their lives? And, how did the Roving Picket Movement and ACFE prepare them for subsequent activism—such as the Miners for Democracy and Black Lung movements? Why is it so important to even ask all these questions and continue to analyze a relatively short-lived, local, historical event? I can think of three good answers. The first is quick and simple: because no one has. In 1978,1 did a bibliographic search on the Roving Picket movement. Now, ten years later, I could locate less than a half-dozen new secondary sources on the subject. From what I can gather, no substantive work has been done, except for the interviews conducted in 1987 and a video-inprogress by Appalshop. Second, the Roving Picket movement is more than simply an interesting event in Eastern Kentucky history, or Appalachian history, or even coalfield history. It is about a process that moved a people from one period to another, from one way of being and perceiving to another. It is about a people who took stock of their situation, and as a group fought back at the coal companies, the UMWA, and their own elected officials. It is about a people whose resistance led them to organize themselves into a force which unnerved the status quo. And that force, of their own creation, carried them into the late 1960s and 1970s armed with their own empowerment. The battles begun by the Roving Picket movement and the ACFE later became demands for social and economic justice expressed in the social movements of the era: anti-stripmining, Black Lung Association, welfare rights, and Miners for Democracy. Finally, the Roving Picket movement is a challenge to an established view of Appalachian history and culture. It is extremely important to continually expose the historical myths and explode the cultural stereotypes about the region because the "idea of Appalachia" unfortunately remains implanted in the memory of the nation. The story of the pickets and the Appalachian Committee for Full Employment is further evidence that the history of the region is not static or necessarily provincial; and that, like all people, Eastern Kentuckians want to control and shape their own destiny. Interviews Black, Kate (interview by). Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Oral History Archives. Tape is housed in Special Collections. Maggard, Charles Buck. 6 July 1978 Cantrell, Doug (interviews by). Coal Miner's Oral History Project. Lexington, Kentucky: Appalachian Center University of Kentucky. Tapes are housed in Special Collections. Volume Two, 1990 121 �Campbell, Darrell. 31 July 1987 Grubbs, Robert. 25 June 1987 Hatmaker, Louise. 17 July 1987 Hensley, Bige. 26 June 1987 Home, Buster. 24 August 1987 McDonald, Robert. 23 June 1987 Maggard, Hobart. 26 June 1987 Morton, Bill. 30 July 1987 Philpott, Chester. 7 July 1987 Scopa, Joe. 16 June 1987; and 16 July 1987 Sexton, Lee. 26Julyl987 Turner, Clayton. 19 August 1987 Tharp, Everette collection, Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky, Special collections. Works Cited Berney, Barbara. 1978. "The Rise and Fall of the UMWA Fund." Southern Exposure 6: 2, Summer, 95-102. Bethell, Tom. 1968. "Southeast Coal Co. in a Battle for Life." Appalachian Lookout 1: December, 3-6. Caldwell, Nat and Gene S. Graham. 1961. "The Strange Romance Between John L. Lewis and Cyrus Eaton." Harper's Magazine. December, 25-32. Carawan, Guy and Candie. 1975. Voices from the Mountain. New York: Knopf. Caudill, Harry M. 1963. Night Comes to the Cumberland*. Boston: Little, Brown. Caudill, Harry M. 1964. "The Permanent Poor: The Lessons of Eastern Kentucky." Atlantic 213: June, 49-53. Caudill, Harry, M. 1962. The Watches of the Night. Boston: Little, Brown. Christenson, C.L. 1962. Economic Redevelopment in Bituminous Coal: The Special Case of Technological Advance in United States Coal Mines, 1930-1960. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. "Coal Royalties—Small Mines Win." 1963. U.S. News and World Report 54:29 April 1963, 93. "Coal Strike: What is the Real Issue?" 1959. Mountain Life and Work 35: Fall 1959, 5-7. 122 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �"Coal: When Machines Took Over." 1963. U.S. News and World Report 5: 29 April 1963, 69-73. Donoughue, Bernard. 1959. "Bloody Harlan." New Statesman 58:14 November 1959, 654-658. Dubofsky, Melvyn and Warren Van Tine. 1977. John L. Lewis: A Biography. New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co. Gervis, Stephanie. 1963. "Gray Spring in Hazard." Commonweal 78:17 May 1963, 220-222. "How a Big Union Handles Money." 1963. U.S. News and World Report 54: 6 May 1963, 94. Hume, Brit. 1971. Death and the Mines: Rebellion and Murder in the UMW. New York: Grossman Publishers. Inventory to the Committee for Miners' Papers. University of Wisconsin. "Is is Boycott?" 1958. Business Week: 13 December 1958, 94,96. Kahn, Kathy. Hillbilly Women. 1972. New York: Avon Books. "Kentucky: The Facts of Life." 1962. Time 80: 28 December 1962, 17. King, Lawrence T. 1959. "Idle Mines, Idle Men." Commonweal 70: 29 May 1959, 228-230. Linton, Ron M. 1959. "Kentucky's Tragic Strike." The Nation 188: 23 May 1959, 471, 473. Marsh, Don. 1963. "Chaos in the Coal Fields." The Nation 196: 26 January 1963, 69, 72. "Mining: Hot Coal." 1962. Time 79: 16 April 1962, 90, 92. Moore, Lola. 1965. "Why Mountain Folks Walked in Frankfort Freedom March." The Appalachian South 1: Summer, 41-42. "More Machines, Fewer Men—A Union That's Happy About It." 1959. (Interview with John L. Lewis) U.S. News and World Report 47: 9 November 1959, 60-64. Myers, Robert J. 1967. "Mine Workers' Welfare and Retirement Fund: Fifteen Years' Experience." Industrial and Labor Relations Review 20: 2, January 1967, 265-274. "New Threat in 'Bloody Harlan'." 1959. Business Week: 14 March 1959, 124. Volume Two, 1990 123 �Nyden, Paul. 1972. The Coal Miner's Struggle in Eastern Kentucky. Huntington, West Virginia: Appalachian Movement Press. Nyden, Paul. 1970. "Coal Miners, Their" Union, and Capital." Science and Society 34: 2, Summer, 194-223. Pearce, John, ed. 1963. "The Superfluous People of Hazard, Kentucky." Reporter: 3 January 1963, 33-35. Peg. 1973. "A Letter from Perry County, Kentucky." In Axelrod, Jim, ed. Growin' Up Country. Clintwood, Virginia: Council of the Southern Mountains, 26-46. Peterson, Bill. 1972. Coaltown Revisited: An Appalachian Notebook. Chicago: Henry Regnery. "A Private Welfare State' Runs Into Trouble." 1962. U.S. News and World Report 53: 3 December 1962, 55-58. Raskin, A.H. 1963. "John L. Lewis and the Mine Workers." Atlantic Monthly 211: May, 53-58. Seltzer, Curtis. 1985. Fire in the Hole: Miners and Managers in the American Coal Industry. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Seltzer, Curtis. 1977b. "Health Care by the Ton: Crisis in the Mine Workers' Health and Welfare Programs." Health /PAC Bulletin 79: November/ December, 1-8, 25-33. Seltzer, Curtis. 1977. The United Mine Workers of America and the Coal Operators: The Political Economy of Coal in Appalachia, 1950-1973. Columbia University, Ph.D. diss. Shackleford, Laurel and Bill Weinberg, ed. 1977. Our Appalachia: An Oral History. New York: Hill and Wang. Sinclair, Hamish. 1965. "Hazard, Ky.: Committee for Miners." Studies on the Left 5: Summer, 87-107. Sinclair, Hamish. 1968. "Hazard, Ky.: Document of the Struggle." Radical America 2: January-February, 1-24. "Stalemate in the Coal Fields." 1959. Business Week, 19 September 1959, 53-54. "A Strike That Spells Bullets and Dynamite." 1959. U.S. News and World Report 46: 25 May 1959,104-105. 124 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Students for a Democratic Society. 1964. "Plight of Jobless Miners." Tharp, Everette. 1965. "Appalachian Committee for Full Employment: Background and Purpose." The Appalachian South 1: Summer, 44-46. "UMW Feels Pressure for Change." 1960. Business Week: 15 October 1960, 165. "UMW On the Griddle in Court and Coalfields." 1962. Business Week: 3 November 1962, 49-51. "A Union Got Rich—Then...." 1961. U.S. News and World Report 50: 24 April 1961,104-105. "Violence Lingers in Kentucky." 1959. Business Week: 25 April 1959, 48? 50. Wakefield, Dan. 1963. "In Hazard." Commentary, September, 209-217. Walls, David S. and John B. Stephenson, ed. 1972. Appalachia in the Sixties. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Waters, Mary-Alice. 1969. "Adventure in Hazard, Ky." In Maoism the U.S.: A Critical History of the Progressive Labor Party. New York: Young Socialist Alliance, December, 5-6. Welsh, David. 1965. "Death in Kentucky." Ramparts 4: December, 50-64. Wiley, Peter. 1968. "Hazard: Socialism and Community Organizing." Radical America 2: January-February, 25-37. Wolfert, Ira. 1960. "Monster in the Mine." Nation 190: 2 January 1960, 3-12. Footnotes 1 The Health and Retirement Funds, created in 1946, were financed by royalties paid on the tonnage produced by each signatory company. 2 Seltzer contends that the UMWA also made sweetheart contracts with certain BCOA companies, allowing them to pay less royalties and use the difference to finance mechanization. He also states, "By holding the Southern companies to the full wage and benefit package, the UMWA made them less competitive." (See Seltzer, 1985: 73.) Seltzer does not document this claim. While the literature on this subject does not refute Seltzer's theory, it tends to discuss more often the sweetheart contracts made with smaller, usually Southern and, in particular, Eastern Kentuckian coal operators in an effort to keep them from going nonunion: better to have some royalties coming into Health and Retirement Funds than none at all; better to have miners employed at below-contract wage scales than not at all. Volume Two, 1990 125 �3 When I was a paralegal at an Eastern Kentucky legal services in the mid-70s, working on UMWA Health and Retirement Fund cases, I heard this scenario described dozens of times. See also interview with Clayton Turner. 4 In fact, some companies like Southeast Coal (Letcher Co., Ky.) charged the UMWA and Consolidated Coal of conspiring to break them and, after years in the courts, won large settlements. See Thomas Bethel. 1971. Conspiracy in Coal. Huntington, WV: Appalachian Movement Press. 5 This is an interesting and significant point for which I have no definite answer. All the news accounts and other documentation establish Eastern Kentucky, and, in particular, Letcher, Knott, and Perry, as the focal point of the Roving Picket Movement. Why weren't similar responses made in West Virginia, for example? Were as many miners in other states disenfranchised by the UMWA Funds as in Eastern Kentucky? If not, why? Were more sweetheart contracts made in Eastern Kentucky and were more miners unemployed? Had the mining operations in these counties always been more marginal? If so, was that due to fewer rail and captive mines locating there? Were the coal seams substantially different, less adaptable to mechanization, and does that mean that mining operations were less likely to be large UMWA-BCOA mines? These questions require more research and consideration. 6 The Blue Diamond Mine at Leatherwood in Perry County was infamous for using this tactic. See also interviews with Chester Philpott, Charles "Buck" Maggard, Lee Sexton, and Joe Scopa. 7 This was not the first time that miners had used this method of picketing. During the 1959 strike, Gerald Griffen, a reporter for the Louisville CourierJourneH noted the new style of picketing as a "motorized picket line." CourierJournal: 10 March 1959,1. 8 In Perry County, Hazard businessman, Bill Morton, helped form the Citizens Committee for Law and Order. In an interview with Morton he stated that the coal business was being impeded by the pickets which was bad for all business. The Committee used their influence to get the state and federal law enforcement agencies involved and to generate publicity. 9 Within ACFE a division occurred between those who thought the organization should emphasize electoral politics and the faction who urged mass organizing and agitation. 10 I do not know much about Sinclair except that he originally went to Hazard to make a TV documentary about the unemployed miners. See his "Hazard, KY.: Committee for Miners," 1965. Studies on the Left 5: Summer, 87-107, for his analysis of the Roving Picket movement. See also the clippings file in the Everette Tharp Collection, where he is mentioned briefly in several articles. He needs to be located and interviewed, as does Arthur Gorson who directed the New York office of CFM. 11 I need to do more research on and thinking about the students' involvement with ACFE. Little has been written about what influence the two groups had on each other, what exactly the students did in the summer of 1964, etc. It would be interesting to know if and AV's came out of this group. See Peter Wiley. 1968. 126 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �"Hazard: Socialism and Community Organizing." Radical America 2: January/ February 1968, 25-37. Wiley, a student that 1964 summer in Perry County, donated the Committee for Miners' papers to the University of Wisconsin where they are available for use; I have not, however, researched in that collection. 12 Inventory to the University of Wisconsin's Committee for Miners' Papers, 2. In my files. 13 The Progressive Labor Party (PLP), which split off from SDS, is a whole other story. The January, 1963, issue of the Party's journal, Progressive Labor, was devoted to the Roving Picket movement. The PLP also raised money and sent food and clothing to the miners. While the PLPs intentions were good, their approach was opportunistic, which ultimately stirred the local elite into a frenzy. The Hazard-Herald even reprinted several of the articles from that January, 1963, issue of Progressive Labor and many related editorials followed. 14 This whole topic warrants more attention. Do the middle-class act as agents for the corporate class in this way? Do they do their dirty work, so to speak? How much do/did their economic lives rely on the health of the coal business? Does/Did this class in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky have more power or have more at stake than its counterpart in other regions? Kate Black is the curator of the Appalachian Collection at the University of Kentucky. Volume Two, 1990 127 �Community Mobilization: The Tug Hill Landfill Site Beth Degutis Modern lifestyles, and the technical advances that support those lifestyles, have caused a proliferation of trash that is all packed up with "no place to go." Every American produces an average of one ton of solid waste each year, and American businesses make a total of 250 million tons of hazardous waste during the same amount of time ("Garbology," 1988). Nearly half of the cities in our country will have filled up their underground dumps by 1990. Consequently, there is a rush to find new and acceptable places (at least on paper) to build solid waste disposal dumps—called landfills by their proponents. It is not unusual for the agencies in charge to try to locate these landfills in unspoiled areas, where people are assumed to be less informed about the dangers they pose to drinking water and to the environment in general. In some areas, environmental protest groups have formed to try to force the proponents of landfills to listen to another side of the story. They do not want their water polluted, or their environment spoiled by toxic waste. Sometimes they simply do not want trash dumped in their backyards. Further industrial growth in our country depends upon mass consumption. We have become a throw-away society. But, we live in a finite system that cannot continue indefinitely to absorb the results of this lifestyle. Trade-offs are constantly made between the different interest groups toward meeting their goals of increased profits or protecting the environment. Communities are sometimes shocked by the realization that governments and agencies, supposedly designed for their benefit, have agendas quite different from their own. Economic and political considerations 128 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �may make these agencies willing to pollute the environmental resources in return for high salaries and political free-wheeling over the short term. People living in the communities are forced to deal with the realization that things are not what they seemed. They may react by mobilizing grassroots environmental protest organizations, determined to expose the problem being forced upon them, and forcing perpetrators to rethink their positions. When the residents of the rural area surrounding the Tug Hill plateau realized that New York State planned to build a large landfill in their midst, they formed Pure Water for Life. Their goal was to prevent the building of the landfill in order to protect their water supply from being polluted and the natural wildlife habitat from being destroyed. This paper will examine the organizational process used by Pure Water for Life from a resource mobilization perspective. Analytical Framework Since the Love Canal incident and the subsequent formation of The Citizens' Clearing House on Hazardous Wastes in 1981, the numbers of grassroots environmental protest groups have increased at a geometric rate. The Clearing House has worked with a total of more that 2700 groups in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico (Interview, 1988). These groups can be analyzed from a social movements perspective using the resource mobilization model (see Oberschall, 1973; McCarthy and Zald, 1973 and 1977; Gamson, 1975). It is a multifactored model emphasizing the mobilization of resources, the strengths of organization, and the timeliness of political opportunity. The approach argues that groups of people can be mobilized in a crisis through their other memberships and made available to help with the work of organizing a movement. Resource mobilization theory emphasizes the significance of outside contributions and the cooptation of institutional resources (Jenkins, 1983). Anti-technology movements tend to develop when the technology is new or when it is forced upon people without their consent (Mazur, 1985). The membership is often middle-aged or older and relatively well educated, with a history of previous involvement in public affairs. Members tend to have occupations that allow them to devote considerable amounts of time to the controversy. Retired men, housewives with grown children, writers, teachers, and scientists in fields related to the technology are likely to be involved with the movement. The research design for studying the Rodman protest group involved the use of newspaper articles to establish the chronological order of developments. Video tapes of various meetings, obtained from the Pure Water for Life officers, provided insight into the positions taken by Volume Two, 1990 129 �various stakeholders. Another video tape surveyed the topography of the land by foot and helicopter, explaining the location of the site and providing a glimpse of the beautiful countryside that may soon contain acres of garbage. Tug Hill Tug of War," a documentary video tape done by graduate students from Syracuse University included personal stories told by residents of the Town of Rodman and interviews with DANC board member and editor of the local newspaper, John B. Johnson, Jr., and State University of New York hydro-geologist, Donald Coates, Ph.D. Telephone interviews with Pure Water for Life members added a socialpsychological dimension to this resource mobilization analysis. Case History of Pure Water for Life The Tug Hill plateau is located in Jefferson County, about 60 miles north of Syracuse, New York, the closest major city. It is about 15 miles from Lake Ontario and about 40 miles from the Canadian border. Virgin forests starting here continue into the Adirondack State Park about 35 miles to the east. Winters are long and severe and the people have developed a hardiness that allows them to survive and enjoy the climate. Enthusiasm for outdoor sports, especially snowmobiling, cross country skiing, and hunting, abounds. The residents are proud of the natural beauty of their land and express an awareness that they have a personal "stake" in preserving it for themselves and future generations (L. M. Evans, personal communication, October 16, 1988). Background of the Rodman Area New York State is divided into counties, which are then divided into towns. Tug Hill plateau is in the Town of Rodman and people live in the village by the same name, in smaller settlements of a few homes each, or on farms. The Town covers an area of 27,264 acres. In this rural area town governments provide important services; e.g., road maintenance and winter snow removal. People identify with a town and build family roots accordingly. During the 1940s and 1950s, the economy was based on farming, cheesemaking, and a variety of family-owned service businesses. Some individuals commuted ten miles to the nearest city, Watertown, and worked for the New York Air Brake or Black Clawson Company. Most women were housewives, but some worked as nurses, teachers, secretaries, sales clerks, or telephone operators. Family and community ties were very strong. By about 1960 the small businesses had trouble competing with the conglomerates. Young people went away to college and found higher paying jobs in other areas. During the 1960s and 1970s, Rodman became primarily a community of older people living on fixed incomes. 130 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �They lived in the midst of an extraordinary, natural wildlife habitat. Many of them grew part of their own food, used the barter system for some of the goods and services they needed, and recycled or disposed of their own trash. Progress would not wait, even in this rural area, and it made its presence felt in 1977. The village of Rodman's water system was outdated and in a bad state of disrepair. The water came from a natural spring and there were no pumping facilities. Pressure depended on gravity. Some of the pipes were made of wood. Local officials applied for a federal grant to update the system. It was given, with the stipulation that chlorine and flourine be added to the water. At the same time, a water tower was built to increase water pressure and the tradition of taking water directly from a natural spring was changed. The people of Rodman were very proud of their spring water, but they cooperated in the name of progress. The 1980s brought more changes. Eight miles from Rodman, Dry Hill Air Force Station closed and the property was turned into a federal prison. Rodman was not consulted because Dry Hill is in the Town of Watertown. Rodman residents benefited, however, through employment and economic prosperity; for the first time in many years new houses were built. In 1986, Fort Drum, an army post outside of Watertown that had been used by summer reservists, was developed into a full time major installation for winter warfare training. Large amounts of government money flowed into the area for the construction of housing, and for the development of an infrastructure capable of supporting the influx of army personnel and their families to the areas immediately surrounding the fort. Changes were needed in the numbers of school classrooms available, and in the capacity of water and sewage facilities. The population of Watertown was expected to double from 30,000 to 60,000 over the next few years. Fast food restaurants sprang up. Salmon Run opened, the first major shopping mall in a radius of about sixty miles. The media capitalized on the situation, arousing concern over these changes and the effects they would have on the lifestyles of long-time residents. Newspaper reporters and radio commentators urged local governments to examine their ordinances and rewrite them, if necessary, to prevent the establishment of pornographic and other undesirable businesses that might open up around the expanded army post. New York State and the local governments of Jefferson and Lewis Counties created a special agency, the Developmental Authority of the North Country (DANC), to help with adjustments needed in the infrastructure to accommodate the increase in population. An Executive Director was appointed and given the responsibility for solving several Volume Two, 1990 131 �immediate problems. He was asked to oversee the implementation of adequate water and sewage systems and to build a state of the art, areawide landfill. The landfill would meet the solid waste disposal needs of Jefferson and Lewis Counties, the city of Watertown, and part of Fort Drum. The DANC is governed by a board of directors with eight voting, and five non-voting, members. Board members have consistently been business leaders and politicians. Most of them are local residents, but one was an investment banker from New York City. He resigned on 1 November 1988 because of difficulties in traveling from New York City to Watertown. Initial Organization The residents of the Town of Rodman read newspaper accounts regarding the DANC plans to test a site on the Tug Hill plateau for a landfill and noticed the sudden appearance of strangers on their land. Based on the sketchy information that was available to them, residents were concerned about the environmental consequences of a landfill in the area and began to investigate the potential effects on their water supply. The site is 1100 feet above sea level, the highest spot in Jefferson County. Average annual rainfalls of 46 inches and snowfalls of 120-140 inches mean that very large amounts of water run down all sides of the plateau to feed tributaries and major streams leading into Lake Ontario and Oneida Lake. The site chose for the landfill is nearly on top of a 55mile long underground lake, or aquifer, that supplies water for the wells of rural residents, the village of Rodman, and the village of Adams. The village of Rodman's waterworks is located at a 752 foot elevation about two and a half miles from the site. Adams, a larger village about eight miles away in another Town, gets water for its 2700 people from the aquifer It is thought to be one of the few last naturally pure aquifers in New York State. Residents of the area started to organize in October, 1986. They chose the name "Pure Water for Life" and worked toward building a mass of support. A geologist, a retired school principal, a retired lawyer, an accomplished artist, and men and women with a variety of other talents and educations joined forces to stop the landfill from becoming a reality. The DANC Executive Director remarked at the November meeting of the Town of Rodman Board of Trustees that the people of Rodman could fight the landfill if they wanted, but he would bankrupt the Town and it would be built (V.R. Brown, personal communication, 18 October 1988). This remark played an important role in setting the tone of relationships between the DANC and the residents. 132 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �A community meeting was planned by the residents for 14 January 1987, and the DANG officials were invited to share information and answer questions about the proposed landfill. The meeting was held in the Fire Hall with the Town Supervisor presiding. Residents attended in numbers sufficient to fill the building and spill over into the street. The DANC Executive Director was introduced and he in turn introduced a variety of consulting experts. Each of them talked at length and indicated that the Tug Hill site had been chosen as the one most suitable for the landfill and, unless some unexpected evidence of unsuitability arose during testing, the landfill would be built there. By the time the residents got to speak, three and a half hours into the meeting, frequent remarks were made by the DANC officials about the late hour, and a few of them dozed off. Despite this, the Rodman citizens voiced their objections, offered some alternatives, and expressed their considerable discomfort with the way the DANC claims seemed to be prefixed with "probably" or "possibly," but never with any kind of guarantee regarding the safety of their water supply. The director of research for the Temporary State Commission on Tug Hill, a state funded planning agency, spoke against the use of the site for a landfill. He suggested that it should be built closer to a suitable site for an incinerator, planned by the state to be in operation by 1995. Without coordination, the cost of transporting waste between the two locations would be exorbitant, and truck traffic on the highway between the two facilities would increase much more that the predicted twenty new tractor trailers per day. He concluded that the Tug Hill site was too far removed from any population center to be a practical place for a power generating incinerator. When the DANC presentation was finally finished, and the Town Superintendent allowed questions, the DANC Executive Director brought out a kitchen timer and set it for two minutes as each questioner approached the microphone. A few expressed their annoyance; most simply ignored the buzzing until they had asked their question and received an answer. Many questions were referred to the County Superintendent from nearby Oswego County, who approached the podium frequently to assure the people that there were no problems with the Oswego landfill. Many comparisons were made between the proposed landfill for Rodman and the one in operation in Oswego because of their similar designs. One questioner referred to a study that was completed in 1972 which concluded that Fort Drum had the most suitable lahd in the area for a landfill operation. Another asked the DANC to contact St. Lawrence County officials and offer to help them meet the expenses of the incinerator they were planning as a larger, cooperative effort. A college student from Cornell said that he planned to live in Rodman after Volume Two, 1990 133 �graduation. When the DANG official scoffed that he would not find any employment in the area, the young man said that although there were few jobs, some things (hunting, fishing, and a beautiful countryside) were more important than money. The meeting continued for more than six hours, with residents repeatedly voicing their fears and lack of trust in the representatives of the state. Even though the DANG Executive Director frequently reminded the residents that he lived in Jefferson County and had a personal interest in the general welfare of the area, they noted that he had avoided putting the landfill in his part of the county. They were resentful that a landfill could be imposed upon them and endanger their environment without their even having an opportunity to vote on it. They considered the DANG official's remarks to be arrogant and accepted the challenge of the DANG and of New York State. A second meeting, held at the City-County Building in Watertown, was attended by about 50 Oswego County residents who did not see their landfill as the success the DANC suggested in the first meeting in Rodman. They chartered a bus to attend the meeting, hosted by the DANC, for further exchange of information. Anyone who wanted to ask questions at the meeting was assigned a place on the agenda. The Oswego residents were given a time so late that they had to leave before speaking. Their bus started its return trip at midnight. Pure Water for Life hired an environmental lawyer who had a history of successes in helping grassroots organizations prevent the building of landfills in their areas. They incorporated in March, 1987, as a local not-for-profit organization devoted to preventing the use of the Tug Hill site for the landfill. Pure Water for Life was organized and led by middle aged and older men and women who rearranged their schedules to allow time for the work of organization and for self-education in the particular technology of landfills. Surrounding towns and villages expressed support for Pure Water for Life. Fifteen sportsmen's groups and clubs drafted resolutions, wrote letters, and donated money. A variety of civic organizations became involved, including the Central New York Toxins Association and the Citizen's Clearing House for Hazardous Wastes. Support was offered by conservation groups such as the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society, the Adirondack Conservation Council, the New York Conservation Council, the Adirondack Mountain Club, the New York State Fish and Wildlife Management Board, Regions 6, 7, and 8, and the New York State Fish and Wildlife Management Organization. The New York State Bureau of Environmental Conservation, Division of Fish and Wildlife, wrote a letter to the DANC stating that they felt cutting the softwood cover in the area of the proposed landfill site would significantly impact both food and travel lanes in the deer wintering yard. They added that 134 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �they felt there could be no mitigation for this loss. After a series of aerial and ground checks of the 140 square mile deer yard, they completed a fact sheet estimating that 850 deer winter there. The New York State Department of Environment Conservation did a second fishery survey at the request of Pure Water for Life members, and demonstrated that Fish Creek, one and a half miles from the Tug Hill site, is a natural spawning trout brook. The main concern of Pure Water for Life members was the protection of the Rodman water supply from landfill leachate, but they also identified and carefully defined four other important issues: protecting the deer wintering yard on Tug Hill which they believed provided food and shelter for approximately 1000 deer; preventing unsafe use of a winding, curvy highway and the narrow old bridges; informing the DANG about climate conditions that may lead to 14 or 15 foot snowdrifts and high winds during winter months; and the guarding against unnecessary uses of taxpayers' money to truck solid waste from more populous areas to the Rodman site. During its first year, Pure Water for Life members provided leaflets at county fairs and entered floats in parades. They raised about $150,000 through individual donations, raffles and other activities. In the middle of their second year, they raised $6,000 in one evening by sponsoring a bowl-a-thon. Retired members have taken part-time jobs in order to help support the activities of Pure Water for Life. They hired a wildlife biologist and two hydro-geologists to help them prepare a case that would prove the site unsuitable for a landfill operation and prevent the issuance of a Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) permit for its construction. Attempts were made to limit the DANG access to the property by seeking court help in enforcing trespassing laws. The judiciary responded by issuing an order allowing the DANG to proceed with the testing. Pure Water for Life officers learned quickly that political likemindedness and personal friendships between the DANG officials and other powerful individuals would inhibit their progress. John B. Johnson, Jr., editor and son of the owner of the Watertown Daily Times, is one of the non-voting members of the DANC's board. The DANG has had some difficulties other than those imposed on it by the Pure Water for Life activists. A state Department of Transportation engineer and voting board member of the DANC resigned from the board early in September, 1988. He claimed the board was "fiscally out of control" and that DANC officials were more concerned with pay raises and job title changes than with the original goal of meeting the infrastructure needs of the 30 mile radius around Fort Drum (Foy, 1988a). An engineer for the city of Watertown warned city officials in early Volume Two, 1990 135 �December, 1988, that the regional landfill was too costly and environmentally "marginal" at best. He put his job on the line by preparing a statement to read at the hearings scheduled for 6 and 7 December (Foy, 1988b). Emergence of an Environmental Ideology A Pure Water for Life member and retired lawyer, Donald R. Ravenscroft, ran for the 26th Congressional District seat on the Democratic ticket in November, 1988. Rural northern New York state has traditionally been a Republican stronghold. When the residents realized that local and state officials were not interested in their plight, many of them changed party affiliations in order to run their own candidates on the less tightly controlled Democratic ticket. Ravenscroft campaigned on an environmental program, promising legislation that would phase out 90 per cent or more of the ocean dumping, landfilling, and incinerating by 1990, require products entering interstate commerce to be accompanied with instructions for recycling any waste that would result from their use, prohibit non-recyclable goods from being sold across state lines, and permit waste to be transported from one state to another only when in transit to a recycler. Ravenscroft lost the election by a three to one margin, but Pure Water for Life members were proud of their association with this candidate. He challenged an established powerful incumbent with a non-traditional program and got a remarkable number of votes. Pure Water for Life drilled nine test wells on the Tug Hill site, so that it would not have to rely on the DANG for information. Members feel that they have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the aquifer is very close to the Tug Hill plateau site. The DANG has continued to deny the aquifer's presence. The landfill proposal requires the purchase of a total of 1,173 acres. The landfill would occupy 340 acres and the rest of the land would be used as a buffer zone. All of the owners of the 19 parcels of property involved, except one who is a state employee, have returned payments sent to them by the DANG as reimbursement for damage done by trespassing and the drilling of test wells. They felt that accepting payment would imply consent. A recycling center was organized as a cooperative effort between Pure Water for Life and the Town of Rodman. The Town provided legislation that makes recycling mandatory and supplied money to pay for the materials to construct a building. Pure Water for Life members provided education for the residents and staffed the center with volunteers for its first year. In the first year of operation, from 1987 to 1988, they were able to reduce the quantity of solid waste that needed to be disposed in dumps or landfills by 67.8 per cent volume and 45.2 per cent 136 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �weight. Only about 10 per cent of the residents do not participate in recycling (Recycle Report, 1988). The New York State Environmental Commission has included mandatory recycling in its new solid waste regulations. The regulations are designed to be in place by the beginning of 1989. Municipalities will have to meet recycling quotas in order to get landfill permits. The goal is to reduce solid waste 50 per cent by 1997. Changes have already taken place at the grassroots level and are finally being written into law. A two volume draft environmental impact statement was completed for the DANG near the end of October, 1988. Of the 101 sites considered, the Rodman site was found to be the best suited for the landfill. An engineering estimate had put the cost of testing at $300,000; $2,000,000 was spent. The study determined that the Rodman water supply is derived from a groundwater source independent of the regional flow system and that the landfill would pose no threat to it. The environment impact statement also found that there is no direct connection between the landfill site and the Tug Hill aquifer. Their consultants concluded that the landfill will actually benefit the deer by providing more winter food with greater accessibility that has existed in the past. Asked about the deer herd, the DANG officials said that when the landfill is completed it will be covered and seeded and make excellent grazing for them. This information seemed strange to the Rodmanites who knew that deer do not graze, they browse. And they especially like the cover offered by the threatened virgin hemlock forest on the Tug Hill plateau during the cold winter months. The public and, especially, the members of Pure Water for Life, have a few weeks to read and respond to the document. They are continuing to use every means at their disposal to put pressure on the DANG to consider the serious consequences of proceeding with this project. Reports have been made of a new flurry of activity on Tug Hill as the DANG rushes to complete a new series of tests. Telephone chains have been set up to keep members of Pure Water for Life informed and focused on the importance of a large turn out at the public hearings scheduled for 6 and 7 December 1988. The hearings, presided over by a judge, offer the people an opportunity to respond to the draft environmental impact statement. The Rodmanites, confronted with a threat to their water supply and environment, realize that the government's and the Department of Environmental Conservation's interests are not the same as theirs. Rodman has the kind of natural balance that governments and conservation groups talk about protecting, and, in this case, the supposed protectors are the enemy. It has been especially alarming to the property owners that state employees could work on their land with bulldozers Volume Two, 1990 137 �and backhoes, and even drill wells, without their permission. When the property owners tried to get an injunction to keep the trespassers away, it was denied. In the words of one resident, They don't care about the people. It's the guy who makes the buck" (Walker, Mrozek, Hoffman, 1987). Pure Water for Life signs have been very visible. The farmer who owns the biggest tract that the DANC wants for the landfill has a sign in his front yard that reads, This farm was my dream, now it may become a landfill nightmare" (Walker, Mrozek, Hoffman, 1987). Residents have been dismayed at the arrogance of the state officials and have remarked over and over again that it would not be as bad if they could at least vote on whether or not they want a landfill on the Tug Hill plateau. The landfill offers no benefit to the local people. Its large size seems to indicate plans to import waste from places other than Jefferson and Lewis Counties, the City of Watertown, and part of Fort Drum in order for it to be cost effective. The members of Pure Water for Life have built a network with other environmental activist groups and have kept up their battle for nearly two years; they have not simply joined the "Not In My Backyard" (NIMBY) bandwagon. As rural landowners, they take care of their own trash and are not anxious to take responsibility for that of New York City or the military at Fort Drum. But, their major concern is protecting their water supply and the natural wildlife on the Tug Hill plateau. They have a stake in protecting the land for themselves and future generations. Real progress in controlling pollution is not made by containing pollutants once they are in the environment. It comes from eliminating the source by stopping the production of the pollutant. While "the levels of most pollutants have declined only modestly, and others not at all, a few have been reduced sharply: lead, DDT, and similar chlorinated pesticides, mercury in surface waters, radioactive fallout from nuclearbomb tests, and, in some rivers, phosphates" (Commoner, 1987). These successes, which began to fulfill the aim of the environmental movement, have been achieved by simply eliminating the pollutants. Pure Water for Life was organized to stop the pollution of the Tug Hill aquifer before it happens. Analysis and Discussion Most of the residents of Rodman have lived there for a long time. Everyone knows everyone. They are proud of the beautiful countryside and feel they have a "stake" in protecting it. One family allowed the DANC to park vehicles on their property and soon felt snubbed by other residents. Pure Water for Life offers its members the social benefits of camaraderie for busy schedules. 138 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �A considerable proportion of the residents are retired, work in businesses that allow some flexibility in time schedules, or are housewives. They support the volunteer fire department, either as firemen or auxiliary, and other established organizations. Because of their flexible schedules and experience in organizing activities, many residents were available to be mobilized for this new cause. The residents had already experienced the disappointment of giving up their pure spring water in the name of progress and had seen the nearby Dry Hill Air Force Base turned into a federal prison. They had been alerted by the media to look for major threats to their rural lifestyle as Fort Drum expanded into a major army training center for winter warfare. Meetings and planning sessions had been held between the counties and they considered the Development Authority of the North Country to be their invention, not their master. The landfill proposal came at a time when the residents had reached both the level of government interference in their lives that they would tolerate and had developed social networks that could be transformed into sympathy for the protest movement. Fundraising became an extension of the regular social life of the residents. The summer time work of organization was highlighted by providing leaflets at county fairs and entering floats in parades. During the winter months, they sponsored some very successful fund-raising activities including bowl-a-thons. Pure Water for Life organizers looked for creative ways to add fund-raising dimensions to activities that members enjoy or would participate in normally. Friends and neighbors worked together in planning the fund-raising and those who could not help in the preparation participated in the actual event in the same way they have always supported the fire department's activities. Pure Water for Life members concentrated on building networks with other environmental groups across the country, taking advantage of opportunities to learn about landfill technology. Their community is only about 175 miles from Love Canal and they quickly sought help from The Citizens' Clearing House for Hazardous Wastes and a wide variety of other state and national organizations concerned with conservation and the environment. The residents were repulsed by what they learned, and looked for alternative means for disposing of solid waste. The Recycling center that they built in cooperation with the Town of Rodman had been extraordinarily successful. They are shocked by the willingness of government officials to trade off essential natural resources, even people's drinking water, for a few high salaries over the short term. People who might have the power to make a difference seem to be connected in a sort of "good ol' boy" system with an agenda quite different from that of the people of Rodman. Some Volume Two, 1990 139 �supporters of Pure Water for Life have changed their political party affiliation because the locally powerful Republican party has consistently refused to hear their case. Donald R. Ravenscroft, a member of the organization, ran for Congress on the Democratic ticket with an environmental program. He challenged a powerful incumbent and raised issues that had not been raised in previous campaigns. Activists fighting a proposed landfill differ from those coping with a landfill that is already leaking. The residents of Rodman have been able to take a proactive approach as opposed to the reactionary one they would have been forced into if the pollution was already occurring. Their effort has been directed toward proving that the Tug Hill site is not suitable for a landfill operation and demonstrating the feasibility of recycling as a means of gaining some control over the quantities of waste that accumulate. Pure Water for Life members have invested a lot of time in self-education. Older people and those with flexible schedules are leading the movement. In situations where the focus is on stopping pollution that has already started, younger people and mothers of young children anxious to avoid future health problems are most often involved in environmental activism (Hamilton, 1985). The DANG spent $2,000,000 of taxpayers' money in testing the Tug Hill site. When the danger of added traffic to the curvy, narrow highway was mentioned, the DANG officials said they would fix it. Questions about ongoing monitoring of the water in rural wells, at the Rodman waterworks and in Adams, were answered with assurances that the DANG, and the DEC, would accept the responsibility (Meeting at Rodman Fire Hall, 1987). Homeowners' expressions of disappointment over the devaluation of their extraordinary homes, built into the picturesque countryside adjacent to the landfill site, were met with an offer from the DANC Executive Director to buy one of the most valuable ones as a home for the caretaker (Landfill Site, 1987). The residents are concerned about this "shotgun" approach to planning. Promises are couched in vague language and the term "guarantee" is used to make points, but not in any legal sense. An officer of Pure Water for Life said, "Guarantees are more like what you get when you buy a car. You can take it to a mechanic and get it fixed. There is no way to fix a polluted aquifer" (Meeting at Rodman Fire Hall, 1987). Several corporations have announced that they are no longer interested in using the proposed Tug Hill landfill for their solid waste. Champion International Corporation officials said the company wants to avoid being the "deep pockets" in possible future lawsuits (Hummel, 1989). The City Council of Watertown has asked the City Manager to "study what it would cost the city to build its own landfill or incinerator" and to review the contract it signed with the DANC in October, 1986 (City and the Landfill, 29 December 1988). 140 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Preliminary hearings on the draft environmental impact statement prepared by the DEC will be held in Watertown (Jefferson County) on 6 December, during the afternoon and evening, and in Lowville (Lewis County) on 7 December, in the evening. Pure Water for Life members have formed telephone chains and are busy reminding the residents and other supporters to prepare their statements and come to the hearings. Conclusion Pure Water for Life members have taken a proactive, even creative approach to dealing with the environmental threat that is being forced upon them They are deeply committed to the protection of their water supply and the wildlife habitat and have kept their energies focused on these issues. The threat came at a time when the people were expecting change and local governments had signed contracts with the Development Authority of the North Country. The governments and residents assumed that the DANG would represent their combined interests during this time of transition. On the one hand, Pure Water for Life has enjoyed the support of many environmental groups and some concerned scientists while, on the other, they have had to cope with the editor of the only local daily newspaper being a member of the governing board of the DANC. With hearing on the suitability of the Tug Hill site for the landfill project approaching, Pure Water for Life members are continuing to build their case and to pressure the DANC to admit the presence of the aquifer and its environmental sensitivity. Works Cited City and the Landfill. 1988. Watertown Daily Times. 29 December 1988, 4. Commoner, Barry. 1987. "A Reporter at Large." New Yorker. 15 June 1985, 46-71. Foy, Paul. 1988. "Morris: Authority Could Explode." The Watertown Daily Times. 7 September 1988,1, 20. Poy, Paul. 1988. "Sligar will Sally Forth to Slay Landfill Plans." The Watertown Daily Times. 6 December 1988. Gamson, William A. 1975. The Strategy of Social Protest. Homewood: Dorsey Press. Garbology. 1988. The Economist 302: February 1988, 82. Volume Two, 1990 141 �Gibbs, Lois. 1988. Interview. "Grassroots Leader, Lois Gibbs, Speaks Out on Contaminated Drinking Water." Water Technology. September 1988,1318. Hamilton, Lawrence C. 1985. "Concern About Toxic Wastes: Three Demographic Predictors." Sociological Prospective* 28: 4, October 1985, 463-485. Hummel, Scott E. 1989. "Mill Running Into Trouble on Landfill." Watertown Daily Times. 5 January 1989. Jenkins, Craig J. 1983. "Resource Mobilization Theory and the Study of Social Movements." Annual Review of Sociology 9: 527-53. Landfill Site. 1987. Walking Tour, video tape. Rodman, NY: Pure Water for Life. Mazur, Allan. 1985. The Dynamics of Technical Controversy. Washington, DC: Communications Press. McCarthy, John D. and Mayer N. Zald. 1973. The Trend of Social Movements in America: Professionalization and Resource Mobilization. Morristown: General Learning Press. McCarthy, John D. and Mayer N. Zald. 1973. "Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory." American Journal of Sociology, 82: May 1973, 1212-41. Meeting at Rodman Fire Hall. 1987. DANC Presentation video tape, 14 January 1987, Rodman, NY: Pure Water for Life. Oberschall, Anthony. 1973. Social Conflict and Social Movements. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Recycle Report. 1988. Town of Rodman Recycle Report. 9 September 1988. Rodman, NY: Town of Rodman. Walker, A.D., C.V. Mrozek and A.J. Hoffman. 1987. Tug Hill Tug of War video tape. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Newhouse School of Communications. Beth Degutis is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. After working for several years as a registered nurse, she earned degrees in health education and in public health. Currently her interest is in environmental sociology. 142 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �The Bitter Creek Appalachian Symposium Garry Barker Buddy and the Bootleg Bandits reverently played that old Appalachian folksong, "Get Martha White self-rising flour, the real all-purpose flour," and the music flowed happily. Clarence Whittimore led the way on his steel guitar, and Alfred Cox followed on creaky fiddle. Buddy tugged down the brim of his black ten-gallon hat, glared out from behind wraparound sunglasses, and sang in a nasal monotone. Most of the crowd was already noisily drunk. Buddy grinned wolfishly and dragged the tune out two more verses. He finished with a flourish. "Thankee, thankee," Buddy growled into the microphone. "Ya11 a nice crowd. Real nice. We appreciate it." The Third Annual Bitter Creek Humor & Folklore Society's Appalachian Symposium was in full swing. Buddy and the Bandits had already played "All My Rowdy Friends," "I Like Beer," and "Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys," and now were ready to do some authentic mountain music. "We're gonna do a little thing for you now that my granddaddy learned me," announced Buddy. "Grandpa, he never did see the words wrote down. He just learned her by listening." Buddy grinned. "Now what Granddaddy was listening to, it was a stereo tape. Grandma's new microwave oven has got a digital alarm clock, a dual tape deck, and chimes that play *My Old Kentucky Home.' Anyhow, this here is a old mountain song my grandpa picked up while he was out in the kitchen heating up a pizza. Ready, boys?" "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" featured Alfred's frantic fiddlework and Buddy's busy vocals plus tight harmony on the "Fire on the TWminf a in carrmonf Volume Two, 1990 143 �As the tune ended, to rowdy applause, George Peters was trying to locate a parking place outside The Maverick Club. George finally edged the silver Volvo into a slot between a jacked-up, four-wheel-drive pickup truck and a sleek yellow 1957 Chevy Bel Aire. "Here we are," George announced grandly. The elegant Maverick Club, on the weedy outskirts of suburban Pikeville, Kentucky." The tall woman sniffed suspiciously. That's Bud Wilson's fish fry," chuckled George. "Deep fried catfish and hushpuppies and french fries. You won't see a whole lot of yogurt and alfalfa sprouts at the Bitter Creek Symposium." Dr. Amanda Coldiron, Ph.D in Rural Sociology and visiting professor in the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center, uncoiled gingerly from the big Volvo seat. "What have you done to me, George?" she asked with a half-smile. She cocked an ear to listen. "Are they handling snakes in there?" George grinned. "Not yet." Amanda shuddered. "Are you sure this is safe?" "Just don't get near Lem Stephenson," cautioned George. "Lem thinks all outside women are like some of the girls who came here in the sixties with VISTA. Lem laid stoned, in bed for three years, and he still gets a glazed look about him when he hears a city accent." "Very funny," said Amanda. She hesitated. "Which one is Lem?" "He looks like Little Abner," grinned George, "and talks out of the corner of his mouth. Like Elvis." "You're kidding." Amanda laughed nervously. "Am I?" George grinned. There's just one way to find out. Ready?" As they walked closer to the Maverick Club the noises were even louder. Somebody was vomiting between two trucks, and giggles and groans came from inside a red and black Monte Carlo. "Don't look now," advised George, "but it sounds like Lem has met another anti-poverty worker." He led Amanda to the front door. "After you," George said gallantly, "and welcome to the Bitter Creek Appalachian Symposium." Amanda stopped halfway inside. "My God," she whispered. George shoved her on in, and followed. Buddy looked up, stopped the music, and pointed. "Here he is, folks," bellowed Buddy. The poet laureate of the Bitter Creek Humor & Folklore Society, George Peters." George waved to Buddy and somebody stuck a bottle of beer in his hand. "We'll hear more from George later," promised Buddy. "He said he'd read us a poem. Bitter Creek Breakdown." There were groans and boos. "But first," continued Buddy, "let's turn Clarence loose on the steel guitar." Buddy left the band on stage, shucked his guitar, and worked through the maze of cords and connectors to greet George and Amanda 144 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �at their table. "Dr. Amanda Coldiron," announced George, "meet Dr. Edward Chase." "Dr. Edward L. Chase?" asked Amanda, staring blankly. "Buddy to my friends," he laughed. "How's the beer?" Buddy poured from a plastic pitcher. "The Maverick is fresh out of white wine." Amanda sipped, still awed by Buddy's presence. "Dr. Chase, I've read all your books." "The name's Buddy," said Buddy, "and I've read all of yours too, but that doesn't mean we can't be friends." Buddy drained his mug and beamed. "So, Dr. Amanda Coldiron, what brings you to Pikeville tonight?" "I thought George was serious," Amanda said weakly, "when he told me about the Bitter Creek Symposium. He said to come here if I wanted to meet some real Appalachians." Amanda stiffened. "I didn't know I was coming to an orgy. What is this place?" "A genuine redneck honky tonk," grinned Buddy. "One that nobody has put in a book yet, so a body can still come here and have some fun." "But," stammered Amanda, "what kind of symposium is this?" "According to Dr. Chase," explained George, "a symposium, in the original sense of the word, was a time when a lot of people got together and did a lot of hard drinking." Amanda glared. "So it's all just one big, not very funny joke. The symposium, the Bitter Creek Humor & Folklore Society, and your presence here." "Not exactly," laughed Buddy. "It's sort of a conditioned reaction. The Appalachian Studies Conference, the New River Symposium, the Appalachian Humor Festival, and Saturday Night in Eastern Kentucky all rolled into one. With lots of beer, music, dancing, and laughing right out loud." "I should have expected something like this from George," sniffed Amanda. "But not from you, Dr. Chase, you're a very respected scholar and professor." "That's the cross I must bear," groaned Buddy. "Don't hold it against me. Want some more beer?" Buddy called for another pitcher, refilled the mugs and leaned close to Amanda. "Dr. Coldiron, every person in this room is a native Appalachian. People from families who've lived here eight, maybe ten generations, people who've never read your books, or my books, who wouldn't know Harry Caudill if he fell through the door screaming. But they'd buy Harry a beer." Buddy smiled. There's not one dulcimer player, Danish folk dancer, academic storyteller, or ballad singer in the building. Just truckers, clerks, waitresses, bankers, coal miners, farmers, schoolteachers, a few bootleggers, and not more than a dozen used car salesmen. Take a good look, Volume Two, 1990 145 �Dr. Coldiron. Lake it or not, these are the people you study and write about." Amanda looked around the room and sniffed distastefully. "Does anybody ever get killed during your symposium?" "Not so far," said Buddy. "We've had some broken jaws, bloody noses, some food poisoning, and a few pregnancies." "I understand now," said Amanda. This is all research for you. You're going to put it all in a new book." "No way," scowled Buddy. "That wouldn't be right. I leave that kind of writing to George, only he calls it fiction and the editors give him hell for not writing about believable characters. George's weirdest stuff is just the pure truth with the names changed." "The Maverick Club is a beer joint," George said quietly. "That's all. It's like the ones I grew up in, a few counties over. Call it a settlement school for rednecks." He chuckled. "When I went off to college, I had to hunt all over for a place where I felt at home. I found the old White Horse Tavern over in Richmond, but then had to quit going there when the bartender shot a customer. After that they checked IDs, and a seventeen year old couldn't get in." "Does everybody in Eastern Kentucky spend their time in places like these?" Amanda asked weakly. "Lord no," George said quickly. "My mother would burn this place down. But, I'd say attendance here comes in a close second to church services." He shrugged and grinned. "Lots of the same people at both places, too." George smiled. "Here, they let Buddy bring his band and have some fun. Sometimes a student or two will wander in, but the Maverick is too rough for kids used to rock bars, so it's pretty much just the natives who come back." "So why did you drag me up here?" asked Amanda. "To round your education," grinned George. "The hillbilly bars in Lexington that you go to are patterned after places like this, but you needed to see the real thing. In person. This is pure, scholarly research." "I'd better get back to the band," said Buddy. "They're slowing down." Back onstage Buddy brought Alfred and a wolfish young mandolin player up closer to the microphone. "We're going to do a number now for Dr. Amanda Coldiron," grinned Buddy. "This one's for you, doc. Ready, boys?" The band leapt into a wailing, hard-driving bluegrass version of "Long, Lanky Woman." George howled, and Amanda bristled. "I've certainly learned the truth about Dr. Edward Chase," she snapped. "Monday morning his books come off the reading lists for my classes." 146 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �"Settle down and have a beer," suggested George. Amanda sipped numbly and stared out across the dimly lit cement block dance hall. George chuckled. "You'll see more Kentucky Cluster diamond rings, polyester, pancake makeup, sideburns, and gold chains in here tonight than you could find back in New Jersey in a month of Sundays. And any one of those big trucks out there in the parking lot costs more than you paid for that Saab." Amanda studied George, slumped happily back in his chair, and smiled. "You don't belong here," Amanda said triumphantly. "Your blow-dried hair and plain glasses are a dead giveaway. Not to mention that fifty dollar sweatshirt and the scuffed up sneakers." She smiled, a little drunk and evil. "You, George Peters, are a fake. You're no more Appalachian than I am." George shrugged. "Once I open my mouth all is forgiven. Once a hillbilly, always a hillbilly. No matter what you look like." "Don't you find the term 'hillbilly' degrading?" asked Amanda. "From you I would," said George, "or from anybody else who meant it as a slur. But I was a hillbilly, and damned proud to be one, a long time before some scholars and bureaucrats decided I was an Appalachian." "Then why don't you live here?" Amanda asked. "And why don't you have any sideburns down to your neck?" "Couldn't make a living here," grunted George. "You could work in the mines," persisted Amanda. "Sell mobile homes. Teach English." George grinned. "But then I'd never get to meet people like you. Besides, I like my running water and central air." "They've got that here now," argued Amanda. "Plus satellite television, VCRs, fast food, cocaine, and venereal diseases." "True," grinned George. He drank again, and sighed. "We've been given that kind of progress in Eastern Kentucky. I grew up on a hillside farm with nine brothers and sisters, an outhouse, and a big old heatstove. The happiest day of my young life was when they ran electricity and my parents brought home a used cookstove. That meant I didn't have to split kindling and carry coal all summer. Now, the kids eat pizza and walk around with ear plug radios, drive Camaros, and work at Druther's. Half of them can't read or write above a third grade level, but they're overweight, healthy as horses, and sexually active from the time they're twelve." "Weren't you?" smirked Amanda. "I sure did want to be," George said mournfully. "I just couldn't get anyone to cooperate." Volume Two, 1990 147 �"Why did you leave?" asked Amanda. "Seriously, George, why didn't you just stay at home?" "College, I guess." George swirled his beer and pondered. "I wanted to go to school some more. I figured there had to be more to life than driving a truck or growing a crop, and it seemed to me that the only way out was college. I had good grades and test scores, and scholarship offers, but I still couldn't afford school in Lexington, so I went to Berea." "The school for Appalachians," smiled Amanda. George grunted. "When I was there, most of the faculty tried to make me over into a midwestern missionary. They didn't like anything about the way I talked, acted, or thought." He poured more beer. "But there were some professors who liked me the way I was. One even let me write about Eastern Kentucky while everybody else was imitating J.D. Salinger." "I've tried to read your fiction," said Amanda. "You use too much dialect, too much stereotype, and far too much crude humor." "Thank you," said George. He signalled for more beer. "Drink up, Dr. Coldiron. You get graded on class participation." "You're already drunk," said Amanda. "How are we going to get back to Lexington?" "On the great Bert T. Combs Mountain Parkway," George said grandly. "We'll crash the Winchester Wall at about ninety then cruise on up 1-64 to the beautiful city built by the people who moved away from Hazard." "What's the Winchester Wall?" Amanda asked anxiously. "The Winchester Wall," George said solemnly, "is the great invisible barrier which keeps Eastern Kentucky from polluting the sacred bluegrass. They don't dare bring the Japanese carmakers past the Wall. If they did, we might shoot them. Some of us haven't forgotten Pearl Harbor." George leaned closer. "The Winchester Wall, Dr. Coldiron, is the line the Kentucky politicians drew when it came to divide up the power and money. Eastern Kentucky gets the shaft. Always has, always will. We're outnumbered, outvoted, and outspent. New industry goes to the golden triangle, Lexington, Louisville, and Cincinnati, and our coal severance taxes help pay for getting them there." "That's sort of a one-sided evaluation," smiled Amanda. "I can be one-sided if I want to," mumbled George. "I'm a deprived minority." Buddy and The Bootleg Bandits played "Blue Moon of Kentucky," and George sang along. "You're very drunk," observed Amanda. "Part of my heritage," grinned George. "I come from a long line of men who got very drunk now and then." 148 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �"Since you're so wound up," smiled Amanda, "what warped view of the future do you have? What comes next for Eastern Kentucky?" "In a hundred years," George announced profoundly, "this place where we're sitting will be in the middle of a desert. Or a garbage dump. When the coal is all gone, we may become the refuse depository for all of the Eastern United States." "My God," laughed Amanda. "Now you've turned morbid." "A genetic defect," said George. "I'm descended from the scum of London, you know." "Such a pessimist," said Amanda, smiling gently. "Don't you see any hope? Any changes that could make things different?" George shrugged. "Schools. But that won't happen until parents and taxpayers decide to value education enough to foot the bills, and that's not likely until there are jobs here for the ones who do get educated. But we can't get the industry until we improve the schools, so it's sort of a hopeless, vicious circle." He sighed. "In my home county, unemployment runs about 25%. Half of the ones who do work commute. A hundred to two hundred miles a day, for low-end jobs. The counties themselves are a big part of the problem. Too many, too small and too poor to support good schools and services; too crooked to change." Amanda grinned. "What about the welfare system? I assume you hate it too?" "No," said George, "I don't. At least now nobody starves to death, or freezes, and thirty years ago that happened. I don't like the way the system penalizes the ones who want to work, but anything is better than the misery some people used to endure." George rocked his chair back and continued. "I'll tell you what kills me. It's the hopelessness. You see so many people who've given up. They won't try any more. They've been whipped, then whipped again, and now they've quit. It all changed so fast, after World War II, that some families never did adjust. Up till then you could live pretty good without cash money. With enough kids to do the work, you could scratch a living out of a hillside farm. Grow or shoot your own food, order whatever else you had to have from the Sears & Roebuck catalog, and survive if you'd worked hard enough. That ain't so any more. You can work your butt off and still have to have help." George drank more beer and stared morosely at his hands. "I'm one hell of a scholar. I preach doom, practicing raising cane. I love Eastern Kentucky but won't live here. I want it to change, but I want it to stay the same. I'm full of questions, but I don't have one single damned answer." George smiled wearily. "Welcome to the Bitter Creek Appalachian Symposium, Dr. Coldiron." Amanda watched George, as he emptied the beer pitcher and signalled for one more. Buddy came back to the table. "Have you two Volume Two, 1990 149 �solved all the ills of Appalachia, or have you said the hell with it and got crocked?" Amanda had kicked off her sensible shoes, crossed her legs, and had opened the top buttons of her silk blouse. Buddy grinned. "Enjoying yourself, Dr. Coldiron?" Amanda nodded and smiled sadly. "I can tell. Old Lonesome George has been on the stump." Buddy chuckled. "Fill George full of beer and he'll preach until somebody stuffs a towel in his mouth. The drunker George gets, the more sense he makes. Or is it the drunker I get, the more sense he makes?" Buddy laughed. "Whatever. I guess George told you about the vast wasteland?" "In detail," Amanda said thickly. "George Peters is a walking contradiction," said Buddy. "He was too old to be a good hippie, and he's too young to be a proper mountaineer. George is smack-dab in between. About one more pitcher and he'll want to sing with the band. Did you ever hear a slobbery drunk try to sing 'Amazing Grace'?" Amanda giggled. "Maybe we'll do a duet." "A new George and Tammy," grinned Buddy. "Who's that?" asked Amanda. "You poor thing," grinned Buddy. "You just ain't been educated." "Dr. Coldiron has led a very sheltered life," George said. "Until tonight she didn't even know about hillbillies." "And she's learned from you?" Buddy snorted. "This man here," he told Amanda, "drinks beer for breakfast. He can shoot like Daniel Boone, but ain't killed a squirrel or rabbit in thirty years. He's got a 1959 Ford pickup and a new Volvo. He keeps a pack of red tick hounds out back of a house that came right out of Architectural Digest. George would die without air conditioning. He writes fiction. How could you believe a word George Peters says? He's about as much of a hillbilly as I am a cowboy, except I come closer because I at least got boots and a hat." "I got a cap," protested George. "And it says 'Eat More Possum' right across the front." Buddy grinned, and leaned close to speak softly to Amanda. "I've heard rumors that George Peters listens to classical music and goes to aerobics classes. I know for a fact that he drinks Perrier water and orders boots from L. L. Bean." Amanda giggled. George scowled. "Have you seen George's bumper sticker?" Buddy asked. "The one that says 'Minor Regional Writer*?" Amanda nodded. "In George's case," said Buddy, "that sticker is the honest-to-God truth." 150 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �George nodded his agreement. "But it ain't my fault," he added, "that I write about such a minor region." "My God," said Amanda. "I've stumbled onto the set of'Hee Haw.' Where are the dancing pigs?" She stopped George. "Please don't answer that question." Amanda shook her head and sipped on the beer. "How," she asked, "are we ever going to get back to Lexington? George can't possibly drive, and I'm a little too drunk to try it." "Just get a little drunker," grinned Buddy, "and drive like the natives do. Stop and shoot up a few road signs. Pull off on the ditch to puke and sleep it off. If the sheriff gets you all you have to do is spend the night in Pikeville jail." Amanda grimaced. "It ain't all that bad," shrugged George. "You get pork-and-beans twice a day and a shower once a week." "How would you know?" asked Amanda. "Research," grinned George. "Pure scholarly research. Working on a paper. 'Famous Kentucky Jailhouses I Have Known.' We'll get Appalshop to make the movie, with Ned Beatty." He yelled for more beer and studied Amanda. "Well, Dr. Coldiron, how do you like the real Appalachia? Will this change the way you teach?" Amanda peered over her glasses at the two men who sat smiling at her. "Not really," she finally said. "But I might bring my class to your next Symposium." "You do that," Buddy said wearily. "Bring the youngens to see the hillbillies up close. Have them write essays about how the mountaineers drink away their frustrations." Buddy drained his mug. "Ready, George?" "Ready for what?" mumbled George. "Your poetry reading," beamed Buddy. He shoved back his chair. "This here's the serious part, Dr. Coldiron. Literature. Classy stuff." Buddy wobbled to the stage, stopped the band, and bent to the microphone. "Here's what you've all been waiting for, folks," he said dryly. "It's time for George." Buddy waved away the groans. "Here he is." George shuffled up to the mike, pulled a tattered paper out of his pocket, coughed, and blushed. "Ill make it fast," he mumbled. "This is 'Bitter Creek Breakdown'." George bent over close to the mike and read: Up here on Bitter Creek The water runs green and acid yellow Clogged by Pampers and Clorox jugs Refrigerators and shells of old Chevrolets. The government run us a water line In 1968, so we got a mobile home, Volume Two, 1990 151 �And Uncle John's Black Lung check Pays the bills Ever since we voted wet And a body can't make a living no more Bootlegging. Cousin Jeff grows marijuana Over on Poosey Mountain But he says it's hard to make any cash money. Last year some old boys from Hazard stole half his crop And this year the cows got in And et it. They give mighty good milk for a while, Jeff said, But then they got all sniffly and red-eyed Went to wearing red bandannas And writing poetry. Brother Ben went to Vietnam And come home a hippie. Beard, hair Old Army field jackets And a strange look in his eyes. But now they made him a memorial Over in Frankfort And the lottery, it's going to get Ben a hundred-dollar bonus So I guess it's okay That he still don't sleep at night Can't hear out of one ear Or hold down a job. There's work up around Lexington, they say If a body1!! drive two hours each way Build Japanese cars Or sweep up floors for one of the coal companies That owns most of this county. No work here, though. Mines are about shut down, 152 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Timber's all cut, And the government's idea of how to get us all back to work Is to have us make quilts, whittle, spin and weave, And peddle our stuff to the tourists. Ain't no tourists here, though. And factories, they say, Won't come to the mountains. Bad roads, bad water, and bad schools, And we're all too damned ornery to work When it's squirrel season. So here on Bitter Creek We got to go it on our own Scrouge out a living somehow Hang onto this hillside And 80 acres of scrub timber. You ask me why? Why, this here land's been ours for 200 years. Up in that graveyard they's markers Ten generations that lived here And died poor. So I got to stay. Got to keep the strip miners out Of Grandpap's graveyard Scratch out enough cash money To send the youngens to school And get 'em a little Christmas. But don't you worry none. When it's all over, When the coal's give out, The creeks is dry, And the do-gooders have done Give up and gone We'll still be right here. George folded up his paper, stepped back, nodded to the audience, and waited, uneasy in the sudden silence. Volume Two, 1990 153 �"Goddamn," Buddy finally growled. "You'd take the fun out of a funeral, George. Why'd you have to go and read that?" Buddy waved to the band. "Play," he ordered. "Give us a little bit of 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown.' George, get your skinny butt off of that stage." As the band leapt into the driving music George walked slowly back to the table and sat down heavily. "Beer," he said. Dr. Amanda Coldiron poured. "I think you need this," she said. "For what it's worth, George, I liked your poem." "Me too," grinned Buddy, "but I couldn't let everybody stand around all embarrassed, and this bunch ain't much to show it when they get serious." George shrugged. "Hey, it's a symposium, right?" "Right," laughed Buddy. "We all came here to learn, didn't we?" He leaned closer to Amanda. "And what I want you to learn next is the words to a song. I want you to do a number with us." "Me?" Amanda stared. But, thirty minutes later, with George Peters swaying beside her singing harmony, Dr. Amanda Coldiron belted out a gutsy rendition of "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," and the Bitter Creek Appalachian Symposium was back in session. The poem has been published in Appalachian Heritage, New River Free Press (Appalachian Voices), and in Bitter Creek Breakdown. Garry Barker is assistant director and marketing manager of the Berea College Student Crafts Program in Berea, Kentucky. His published books include three short story collections—Fire on the Mountain, Mountain Passage, and All Night Dog—plus a novel, Copperhead Summer. His short fiction has appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Grab-a-Nickel, The Mountain, Delta Scene, and The Mountain Spirit. 154 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �A Bridge or a Barrier?: Assessing the Usefulness of Public Education for Individual Success in an East Tennessee County Roberta Campbell and Alan J. DeYoung During the past decade, business leaders, government officials, and national politicians have increasingly begun to view American children as "human resources" to be (better) developed in our schools in the pursuit for better "international competitiveness" (DeYoung, 1989). In addition to this national agenda for "improving" education via school reform, we are also witness in our own region to public calls for educational improvement, supposedly as an aid to increasing local economic development. In rural America (as in our central cities), many politicians claim that declining local economies are a function of the inferior condition of rural schools. And much of the contemporary rhetoric regarding "what's wrong" with such schools begins with some reference to the supposedly inferior attitudes toward education held by students and their parents; with the inferior skills of classroom teachers; and/or with the inadequate financial resources available to schools in the region. Predictably, national efforts to "improve" education have taken two directions to solving "problems" like those mentioned above. On the one Volume Two, 1990 155 �hand, increased funding for education (for teacher salaries, better supplies, etc.) is being championed around the country at both local and state levels. Relatedly, a second strategy increasingly involves creating a higher "demand" for public schooling through publicizing hypothetical returns on educational investments for high school diplomas, and exhorting parents and community leaders regarding the "technological requirements for a post-industrial society." Education for Appalachia At the national level, there have been a variety of insightful critiques of the educational excellence "movement" and motives behind it from a multiple of sources (e.g., Aronowitz and Giroux, 1985; Spring, 1984). Many such criticisms take issue with the lack of analysis of social and cultural factors associated with educational "underperformance" in America, and go on to suggest alternative perspectives on this relationship and requirements for improving our schools, Much of the national critique of efforts to "upgrade" our economi(es) via concentrating on school reform, however, has already been visible in the discourse of Appalachian scholars. Here, the importance of cultural factors in explaining the status of education has been discussed and debated for several decades, and rarely have discussions about the nature of schooling been reduced to discussions solely about cognitive skills acquisition and/or high school graduation rates, etc. (as important as they may be). As a number of regional and national educational sociologists and anthropologists have pointed out, the hidden or unadvertised features of formal and compulsory schooling are as, or more, important in understanding the mission of public instruction than is all the concern about its cognitive content of (e.g., achievement test scores, courses completed, etc.). "Modernization" and the Public School For example, while the concept of social/political/individual "modernity" has been rendered theoretically suspect both internationally and locally, the list of personal attributes associated with psychological modernity have been pointed out by many social scientists (not only those identified with modernization theory), as the most central cultural "teachings" of public education. Importantly, those who worked in this area when it was "in vogue" (during the 1970s) claimed that the public school (as sponsored by national governments in developing countries) was one of the most important (if not the most important) formal institutions for bringing about the individual modernity demanded for sociocultural and political progress. 156 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �A representative working list of modern personality characteristics ostensibly related to individual modernity and contributed to by participation in formal schooling is available in works like those of Alex Inkeles and his colleagues (Inkeles and Smith, 1974; Inkeles and Holsinger, 1974). For example, Inkeles et al. argue that "modern" individuals are (among other things): open to new experience; accepting and ready for social change; able to reflect on issues and form independent judgements; interested in acquiring information and facts; oriented toward the future as opposed to the past; have a sense of mastery over the environment; believe in the value of future planning; have an appreciation of technical skills; and have high educational and occupational aspirations. According to those who argue for the utility of individual modernity perspectives, persons locked into more traditional societies are typically less interested in new experiences; uninterested in social change; more likely to form and hold opinions based on beliefs held by others in the tribe and/or kinship systems; uninterested in acquiring knowledge for its own sake; value the past more than the future; are more fatalistic than optimistic regarding the human ability to control future events; place less value on occupational specialization and competence; and have low educational and occupational aspirations. Importantly for our purposes, "deficiencies" of psychological modernity like those listed above have also frequently been applied to Appalachians, who, it is believed, are unable to participate in middle-class culture because of a history of isolation and the tenacity of a traditional subculture. Mountaineers, in other words, culturally "lag behind" most other Americans, and this is the reason for their inability to assimilate into the mainstream. As Tyler (1919) once phrased it: "Shut up within these fastnesses they have stood still for a hundred years." Their "provincial" mentalities impede the acceptance of modern world advantages. "Bridging the Gap" Through Education Whether one agrees or disagrees with various tenets of the sociocultural modernization thesis, few social scientists tend to doubt the "modern" features and orientations of public schooling internationally or domestically; rather, they debate the desirability of becoming "modern," and/or the hidden stratification dimension concealed within most elaborations of the modernity thesis. Adherents to a variety of "functionalist" views of social progress and the role of schooling in its evolution all tend to focus on the transmission of norms and values consistent with instrumentalism, impersonal authority structures, and future orientation as primary components of Volume Two, 1990 157 �any formal schooling agenda (Dreeben, 1968; Jackson, 1968). Meanwhile, even the critics of such perspectives in Appalachia (and elsewhere) do not take issue with the list of attributes as suggested above, but rather emphasize the role of public schooling in reproducing the larger modern/urban/capitalist culture (Bowles and Gintis, 1976; Branscome, 1971;Whisnant, 1980). Perhaps the most optimistic and sympathetic interpretation of the role public education could play in bridging the gap between the region and "The Great Society" was brought forward by Schwarzweller and Brown (1960). In this essay, the authors suggested (before it became fashionable) that the kinship, political and economic systems of Appalachia continued to instill character traits among the youth of the region which were inappropriate for their integration into the increasingly available outside world. The school, they argued, could indeed become a cultural bridge from this agrarian/kinship centered Appalachian subculture to "the great society," because the formal policies and practices of the school, coupled with the more cosmopolitan role models of university trained teachers, could provide for mountain youth an access to skills, values, and attitudes they needed to journey from an outmoded past into the future. According to these authors, since the school is an institutional complex situated within and supported by the local community but directly tied to the Great Society, it "is a natural and strategic center for the diffusion of Great Society norms" (Schwarzweller and Brown, 1960: 37). According to the cultural bridge metaphor, schools in Appalachia provide the best mechanism for providing young people with the skills, values, and norms necessary for rational decision-making in the modern "great society," and thus the capability to "escape" the bonds of traditionalism. Illustrative of their hopes for the school would be "instruction" in processes of desired social change through evaluative thought. For example, voting behavior may be influenced when children learn that "government in the United States is in many respects shaped by economic pressure groups," enabling students to become oriented to evaluating political issues, and, thereby, becoming more rational decision-makers (Schwarzweller and Brown, 1960: 371). Such teachings would counter, according to the authors, trends of traditional voting based on family loyalty, and on loyalty to the past (which theoretically renders political institutions less effective in solving current social problems in Appalachia). Significantly, not only the teachings, but also the organization of instruction were touted by these authors (and others) as enabling mountain children to become more modern. For example, the transition from the non-graded and community based elementary school to the subject-matter oriented and impersonal high school signifies both the 158 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �importance of academic knowledge and the organization of such knowledge into compartments of expertise. This social teaching of modern education and its theoretical link to the requirements of mainstream and modern society have been eloquently presented by structural functionalists like Parsons (1959) and Dreeben (1968). As institutions tied importantly to the larger society, schools can perform modernizing functions which other important social institutions in the region cannot, according to Schwarzweller and Brown. For example, the local orientations of many Appalachian churches and extended families are more "insular" in the region, and (they claim) tend to perpetuate traditional norms. To be sure, Schwarzweller and Brown suggest that other demographic and economic factors can affect the modernization process in desirable ways. For example, aspects of the modern organization of work in the mining communities of Appalachia can facilitate progress (as opposed to those still dependent upon declining agriculture), because mining is a more centrally organized industry and more integrated into the national culture. Critiques of Modernization Theory and the Great Society In essence, Schwarzweller and Brown echo ideas put forth in other works sympathetic to modernization theory, which contend that the "lagging" Eastern Kentucky subculture can catch up to the rest of America as great society linked institutions, like the school, socialize Appalachian students with the modern norms required for great society participation. The central point of the entire analysis is that Appalachia as a region is located somewhere in the progression to modernity, and institutions existing in the region with close ties to the modern world are the keys to a more rapid arrival date into the modern world. Unfortunately, even though such arguments sound plausible (and to some, hopeful), there are several features of the cultural bridge metaphor which may be misleading and have proven erroneous and/or problematic. Furthermore, emphatic critiques of the "great society" and modernity perspectives have been authored since Schwarzweller and Brown developed their metaphor. Therefore, while we will soon present evidence with regard to the shortcomings of formal schooling to provide the "cultural bridge" in one Appalachian county, some attention to inadequacies of the entire progress to modernity perspective must be highlighted. A variety of social scientists take issue with the key assertions and descriptions of "the great society," and/or other optimistic versions of modern society. Several basic fallacies of modernity theory, some claim, are the unquestioning acceptance of a continuum between traditional Volume Two, 1990 159 �and modern cultures; that social change happens through linear stages; and that the transition automatically represents progress (Dickens and Bonanno, 1988; Gusfield, 1967). For example, modernity theory clearly suggests that tradition is an obstacle to modernization. Yet, what evidence is there that some "traditions" have no utility within this process? The fact that such questions are rarely seriously considered by modernity theorists suggests the ideological character of modernization theory itself, according to various critics (e.g. Gusfield, 1967: 358). Furthermore, by reifying the distinction between "modern" and "traditional" individuals, any inequality brought about by unequal access to the (new) structure of opportunities inevitably leads to blaming the victims of unequal development for their own perceived social "backwardness." Peter Berger (1977) also makes a compelling argument against the ideological nature of modernity theories. He points out five dilemmas of modernity which he argues are underestimated by would-be harbingers of "modern" society at home or abroad. And, in point of fact, the dilemmas he foresees in the modernization process are some of the very factors which modernist theorists champion as unilaterally progressive for the human species. One dilemma with severe consequences for human social systems, according to Berger, is the loss of communit(ies) made necessary by abstract market and bureaucratic forces as they govern social interaction in modern societies. As he phrases it, "this destruction, of the concrete and relatively cohesive communities in which human beings have found solidarity and meaning throughout most of human history" (Berger, 1977: 72). Secondly, Berger notes the imprisonment of humans in modern societies to the demands of time management and future orientations: clocks and watches dominate everyday life; individual biography is described as a "career," and societal institutions operate according to "plan" (Berger, 1977: 73). This dominance of futurity and weakening of community facilitates the abstraction of institutions and the individuation process which in turn increases the danger of anomie (Berger, 1977: 75-76). The dilemmas of futurity and individuation then result in the "underlying ambiguity of people wanting both individual autonomy...and communal solidarity" (Berger, 1977: 76). In modern societies, fate takes a back seat and human beings can see choices: "One of the most seductive maxims of modernity is that things could be other than what they have been...Tradition is no longer binding; the status quo can be changed; the future is an open horizon" (Berger, 1977: 77). The dilemma of liberation is that in challenging tradition, collective life becomes uncertain. The price of liberty is the 160 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �confusion between freedom of choice and freedom from choice. This is the "terror of chaos" (Berger, 1977: 77-78). The last dilemma, according to Berger, concerns secularization. The challenge to religion by modern science and technology as well as the modernization process itself, whether one is religious or not, "frustrates deeply grounded human aspiration—most important among these, the aspiration to exist in a meaningful and ultimately hopeful cosmos." In other words, the process of modernization, of rationalization, not only confuses through liberation, but chops away at the transcendental escapes from pain and sorrow. However, the impact of secularization is shown in the strength of countermodernizing trends and movements characterized by religious faith and fervor (Berger, 1977: 79). If Berger's assessment suggests equivocal and problematic aspects of modernization, different social theorists have taken issue with other benign assessments of modern capitalist society. Stephenson, for example, posited a typology of families in his study of Shiloh, based on their situation and "stages" of modernity (1968). Although his analysis does not decry the modernity thesis, he clearly suggests that "cultural lags" present in Appalachia might more appropriately be viewed as economic with unequal skills and resources. A more direct "attack" on the cultural lag thesis of modernity theory appeared in the 1970s with the development of the internal colony model (i.e., Gaventa, 1980; Lewis, 1978; Melizia, 1973; Walls, 1978 and 1976). Based on Third World studies, especially dependence theory, this perspective charged that the experience of colonialism was still affecting the political processes and social organizations of those countries. Applied to Appalachia, this model claimed our region to be a "victim" of uneven capitalist relations, whereby the mineral wealth of Appalachia (the periphery) became appropriated by the industrialized north (the core). The model was attractive because of its powerful analysis of the destruction of indigenous culture by the dominators (Walls, 1976: 238), a practice that prevails internationally in core/periphery situations. Relatedly, much recent scholarship on "uneven development" has looked at the specifics of cultural trends, class analysis and power relationships in hopes of explaining the dynamics of regional behavior (Eller, 1982; Waller, 1988; Whisnant, 1983 and 1980). For instance, Waller (1988) argues the violence that erupted among the feudists of Virginia and Kentucky in the late 1800s was a reaction to the frustrations of economic deprivation brought on by the influx of capitalism. Her analysis emphasizes the social relationships within the local community as well as the "modernized" society-at-large and makes class distinctions a central theme. In arguments like these, the existence of a unique Eastern Kentucky subculture is not dismissed outright, but its economic and political origins became the focus of discussion and analysis. Volume Two, 1990 161 �The Utility of "Tradition" in "Modern" Appalachia If modernization poses the many dilemmas which theorists like these suggest, then perhaps any view which castigates the importance of traditional social institutions, like the extended mountain family and local churches, ought to be reconsidered. For example, when Stephenson (1968: 51-56) explored the effects of modernization on an Appalachian community, he noted the more fundamentalist nature of mountain churches which served some of the most marginal residents. It seems quite plausible that such institutions provided a shelter for those families less able (or welcome) to join "the great society." In fact, Stephenson's suggestion is that perhaps traditional norms should not be viewed automatically as artifacts, but a particular means of adapting, of hanging on to a sense of self in an encroaching modern world, a way of adjusting to a new situation which is superimposed and not part of a "natural progression." Furthermore, it could be said, were the problematic dilemmas of modernization realistically faced, perhaps dealing more directly and sympathetically with local institutions like mountain churches and families would be in order, rather than seeing such institutions as unequivocal hindrances to the modernization process. Of course, if the various dependency theorists earlier mentioned are more accurate than those subscribing to modernity perspectives, much of the foregoing discussion is rendered moot. For, in order for "internal colonies" like much of Appalachia to become part of a larger empire, individuals and social institutions within the colonies need to accept and to internalize the ideologies, values and norms of external agents (and their local representatives) which enable the colonies to remain under absentee control. Thus, for example, learning to see the world as framed by outsiders, coming to accept external definitions of the nature of the world and social progress, and internalizing individual inadequacies as the reason locals are "backward," demands that the social teachings of the family and the local church must be diminished and replaced by external ideologies. Class and Education in "Modern" Appalachia As most readers will recognize, important theoretical and institutional aspects of the preceding discussion are readily available in a variety of sources, many of which are noted. However, our more particular task in this essay is to consider the status of the public school in Appalachia, particularly with reference to claims by Schwarzweller and Brown that such schools can and will provide the cultural bridge to the great society. 162 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Unfortunately, and as much of the preceding discussion no doubt implies, in our view the cultural bridge metaphor as elaborated upon by these authors is much more problematic than it is laid out to be. In our view, there are several claims about the possibilities of public schooling in the region which are not confirmed by reference to the evidence available—at least with regard to the evidence we have for one Appalachian county/school district. One of the major confessions evident in Schwarzweller and Brown's argument is with regard to the external allegiance of public education in the mountains. Unfortunately, while it might be true in developing nations that the public educational system is tied directly to a federal government, this is clearly not the case in America. Here, schooling has always been a local concern, and under the control of local agents. And, while aspects of the formal school curriculum have usually been dedicated to external teachings, it is unclear from the historical evidence that local populations have always equated the mission of the "school marm" with their own "educational" aspirations. For example, counter to the pedagogical aims of generations of American educators, it appears that a variety of non-intellectual goals have been of concern (and remain of concern) in many rural areas of the U.S. Boy's sports activities (for example) have always dominated school life in Appalachia in the twentieth century, ostensibly because of the community pride (rather than individual success) which such programs generate locally. In the mountains, football and basketball programs and teams exist at virtually every grade level in even the smallest of schools. Not coincidentally, such aspects of rural schools have enraged and encouraged reform efforts of generations of urban based school reformers, once they began to infiltrate state departments of education throughout the land (Tyack, 1974). Another "traditional" fact of life in most rural school districts concerns attendance patterns, where missed days of school and "tardiness" rates are epidemic compared to such patterns in metropolitan America. Anecdotal evidence from many Appalachian communities will confirm that the first week of hunting season, or planting/harvesting time for Parley tobacco drains 20-40% of all students in a district (mostly boys). And, while many school districts in the U.S. mandate that students repeat a grade for having as few as a week of unexcused absences per year, many rural Appalachian districts have no formally enforced attendance policy at all. Not wishing to belabor the point, the point is that the social life of Appalachian schools has a variety of "traditional," "pre-modern," "counter hegemonic" (pick one) features which weaken any argument that Appalachian schools are automatically agents of the great society. Volume Two, 1990 163 �They have histories and social functions, in other words, independent of norms of the great society—and many of these norms may run counter to modernization interests. Furthermore, as public schools in America are locally controlled, much of what transpires within the schools of many mountain counties is also a function of the local political mechanisms which dominate many aspects of formal life. It might even be argued that the political nature of schooling in Appalachia is less "modern" than many other features of Appalachia, given that state and federal monies directed to local school boards and superintendents is arguably the single greatest source of patronage there. Economic and Occupational Conditions in One East Tennessee County So far we have been suggesting theoretical and anecdotal problems and weaknesses in the cultural bridge which Schwarzweller and Brown suggest the school can provide between Appalachia and "the Great Society." At this point, we would like to document more precisely some of these problems with reference to an east Tennessee county school district in which we are currently doing fieldwork.1 Located in the northeastern section of Tennessee, Clinch County is one of the poorest counties in Tennessee, and among the poorest in the nation. Per capita income in 1984 for this county was approximately $5,300, 41% of the national average. The official unemployment rate in 1984 was reported to be 11.9%, yet since many of the rural poor are not actively seeking employment, this figure probably underestimates the number of individuals who would work were suitable employment available. Furthermore, jobs held by county residents are typically in neighboring counties, where minimum wage is the maximum for most Clinch Countians; where much of the employment is in the textile and furniture industries; and where one and two hour commutes to and from such unskilled and minimum wage employment "opportunities" are not uncommon. During the past sixty years, unemployment and out-migration have been a fact of life on Clinch County. In 1940 the county had a population of over 11,000 people, and 86% of those "employed" earned a living through agriculture. Currently, the county contains approximately 6,000 residents, and agriculture accounts for less than 20% of employment there. While outmigration has somewhat stabilized during the past decade, the percentage of aged and disabled among those who remain has greatly increased. Like many Appalachian counties, Clinch County has some history of timber and mineral exploitation but is recognized as having primarily an 164 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �agricultural economic base. One of the impediments to industrial development noted by its citizens is the lack of major roads leading into the county. As well, no railroads, airports, or navigable waterways exist in Clinch County. And reliable telephone service there (outside of the county seat) is reputed to be a relatively recent invention. The School Situation in Clinch County A major oversight evidenced among those who write about public schools, without having worked within them, lies in the lack of appreciation for the large discrepancies between schools and school districts in this country. There are schools with ample funding, excellent academic programs and large amounts of parent involvement (all of which appear associated with successful academic school performance); and there are schools which clearly lack most of these (Howley, 1988). So too, what many modernization theorists underestimate in their pronouncements regarding education and its relationship to economic development and social progress has to do with the real structure of opportunities in "modernizing" nations/regions. And according to some, the competition for better jobs in America usually is won by those with the better educational credentials, irrespective of how these credentials actually relate to job requirements/performance (Collins, 1979). To move quickly to the point, the schools of rural Tennessee in general, and of Clinch County in particular, compare very unfavorably to those of many more affluent communities in the U.S. And unfortunately, this can be said not only with regard to school facilities and school funding, but also with regard to a variety of educational practices which do not exist in Clinch County but are taken for granted in most of metropolitan America. For example, in 1980 Clinch County enrolled approximately 1400 students, of whom over 86% came from homes below the poverty line. Furthermore, even though residents of the district provide average tax effort in support of local schools, the taxes generated in the county are among the lowest in the state, since there is almost nothing of value (in terms of real property) for taxable purposes. In 1980, less than 12% of the money necessary to run Clinch County schools was generated from local revenues. Therefore, the bulk of money spent for education in the county is supplied from state and federal sources. Since equalization formulas in Tennessee are geared to providing a "minimum foundation," it comes as no surprise that teacher salaries in Clinch County in 1980 were the third lowest in the state (of a total of 141 districts). Furthermore, the school facilities in the county are by current standards almost obsolete. While the state helped the county build a new high school almost thirty years ago, the other five remaining school Volume Two, 1990 165 �buildings are at least fifty years old. The school most residents would claim to be "the best" in the county (in terms of programs) is a grim reminder of the fact that education has always been operated on a shoestring: for this building (in the county seat) was built in the 1930s as part of a WPA project. While some might believe that Clinch County schools can operate effectively on state and federal aid, this appears clearly not the case at the present time. For example, the state legislature in Tennessee mandates that even the poorest districts must generate adequate funds to match various state level appropriations. Furthermore, the state mandates specific quotas for student/teacher ratios and for educational specialists without supplying additional funds for their salaries. And in 1986, the state raised all teacher salaries in the state by mandate, without providing all of the funds required to meet the payrolls. Trying to meet these state guidelines is one of the main reasons the Clinch County school system faces a possible deficit of just under $400,000 for the 1988-1989 school year, according to the local superintendent. This point was brought home to local residents when he ordered that all school buses would cease operation following the 19881989 Christmas holiday. Recognizing the seriousness of the problem, a hesitant County Commission "donated" an additional $13,000 dollars to resume bus operation until new funds could be raised. In Tennessee, school budgets are determined not by the school systems themselves, but rather by appropriate municipal/county governments. In Clinch County this has led to bitter contention between the county commission and the school superintendent. Because there is not enough money to provide for almost any of the services local citizens require, no county agencies get the money they request; all such agencies are forced to bargain with the county commission for funds; and since most commissioners in the county are elected on an "I won't raise taxes" platform, additional monies for running things like the local schools are always being sought. Unfortunately, since there is no industry in Clinch County, since there is no state income tax, and since sales taxes on purchases by Clinch Countians are paid out of the county (where all the new malls and bigger shopping areas are), there literally is no source of new revenue for the county to attach. The latest attempt by the county commission (supposedly undertaken to generate money specifically for Clinch County schools) involved contracting with first the state, and then with a private company from Washington D.C., to house hundreds of state and B.C. prisoners in a new county jail (being built specifically for such purposes in the only large population center in the county). Unfortunately for local schools (but perhaps fortunately for the general public), this possibility was scaled 166 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �back substantially due to a loud public outcry against the most ambitious version of the prison construction plan. School funding problems have become so overwhelming in Clinch County that its problems have been highlighted in a current lawsuit filed by 66 rural school districts in the state. In essence, this suit charges that the present system of funding education in Tennessee is inequitable, and discriminates against the poor and rural children. (Similar lawsuits in Kentucky, Texas and West Virginia have found state funding systems unconstitutional.) The Politics of Clinch County Schools Funding inequities of rural and poor schools are not the only problems for achieving some of the modernizing goals which proponents hold out for Appalachian schools. Another is the serious patronage problem in the county with regard to the hiring and firing of local teachers and administrators. For example, based on interviews we have made in Clinch County, a typical "career pattern" of classroom teachers there involves attending a local teacher training program close to home, and then taking temporary employment in a local furniture factory until a relative or close political friend gets elected to the school board. From this point on, it behooves newly hired teachers to help his/her benefactors) on the school board to remain on the board until his/her tenure is achieved. Subsequently, the worst that can happen is that a tenured teacher can be moved (seemingly) arbitrarily from one school to another, or from one grade to another, without benefit of any review related to job performance. When asked how particular teachers get assigned particular duties within the system, the inevitable answer given is "it's political." And, contrary to hopes like those mentioned earlier, that the school can model "modern" rational and non-political decision making processes, most citizens (and children in the system) appear to learn quickly that such procedures are routine and inevitable. Another example of the political nature of school district functioning in the county might be inferred from the highly politicized dispute during recent years between the county executive and the school superintendent. Clinch County is a Republican county, with two entrenched factions (going back for several generations, according to some sources). Furthermore, as the school superintendent is an elected official, his ability to run the schools in ways he would like depends upon the majority of the school board coming from the same faction as his. However, this has not been the case until just the past year (he has been superintendent for five years). Furthermore, the (other) most powerful politician in the county is the executive of the county commission. Without dwelling on the matter, battles over the school budget alluded to above have been quite revealing Volume Two, 1990 167 �during the past year, with the county executive typically complaining about personnel costs of the school system, at the same time the superintendent is blaming shortfalls on county and state appropriations. Not coincidentally, the county executive is fond of pointing out that two of the highest paid employees of the school system are the superintendent and his wife, who also works in the central office. According to him, this couple receives almost $100,000 from the county in combined salaries, which would be almost 15 times the average family income in Clinch County. Of course, the superintendent denies that he and his wife earn this much, but they are hesitant to share such "sensitive" information with either the county commission or the public at large. Clinch County Academic Programs Needless to say, the academic programs of the six schools in Clinch County are no model by national standards. The dropout rate for schools in Clinch County hovers at about thirty percent, although it has officially been over sixty percent within the last decade. The county superintendent claims, however, that all such figures are probably inaccurate, since officially reported data are sometimes mis-reported to the state where the statistics are tabulated. With regard to academic achievement, Clinch County fell within the bottom five percent of all reporting districts in Tennessee in 1980 on high school achievement tests in reading, spelling, and mathematics. In fact, they came in dead last on several of these tests. And while the County seems to have improved its performance on standardized tests of late, the superintendent's candid comment that some (or most?) school data may be unreliable gives some pause for suspicion. Stories of political intrigue and inadequate funding in Clinch County could no doubt provide a worthy subject of a Hollywood soapopera for years. So, too, profiling the statistical inferiority of Clinch County schools, compared to more affluent and less politicized systems around Nashville and Knoxville, could occupy many pages of text. More central to the concluding section of this paper, however, is how such issues and/or problems get translated into educational opportunities and programs which might enable Appalachian students in this East Tennessee county to bridge the gap from "tradition" to modernity. Sadly, whether one truly believes that the public school can and should help children bridge the gap to modernity in Clinch County, the programs and policies evident there do not seem to provide such possibilities. We have already suggested, for example, that being a "good" teacher (whatever this means) appears not of particular concern in the hiring and retaining of teachers in the county. So, too, since most teachers also farm and/or have other "non-professional" interests, little attention in 168 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �the county to teacher "improvement" courses/workshops, etc., is evident there; at least it hasn't been during the year of our fieldwork. As well, district philosophy at the high school level appears to be more in line with the school as a military outpost than an educational facility. Locks and chains on every door, and across the main corridors of the school are perhaps the most visible characteristic of the institution. And teachers, as well as students, are typically gone within minutes of the final bell each afternoon. So, too, the principal of the high school is a young man with a good income-producing farm, and perhaps, some political future. His primary claim to school fame in the county is that he is a "good disciplinarian," meaning that he has a reputation for suspending or expelling any and all troublemakers from the school with the slightest cause. Other than discussion of financial woes, the only other predictable item on the agenda of Clinch County school board meetings has frequently to do with the list of expulsions requested by the principal. Two other examples of the comparative marginality of school district operation have also become evident to us in our year working in Clinch County. One has to do with the growing national consensus that effective schools (in terms of academic programs) demand strong and innovative school leadership patterns, either as led by or facilitated by building principals. However, for a variety of reasons, such leadership is dramatically underdeveloped in Clinch County (except, perhaps, for the high school principal). On the one hand, since money is so tight there, four of the six principals in the district are teaching principals; they teach multiple grades in addition to serving titularly as the administrative leaders of the school. Unfortunately, administration of the schools in each of these four schools primarily involves filling out free—and reduced—lunch forms, and selling soft drinks and candy after school to help generate funds for school supplies not supplied in the school board budget. The other major activity of the four principals is in coaching the multiple basketball teams in each school. And this is no minor responsibility, as the basketball season runs virtually all year long in the county, and appears to be one of the most important activities of the school as far as the parents are concerned. Each of the four "elementary" schools has fewer than ninety students, yet manages to field two or three teams each for games in the county and in contiguous counties, two or three times a week, and which are typically held either right after school or during the school day itself. Another primary reason why principals in the four smaller county elementary schools are not instructional leaders involves the fact that during the year of our study none of them had even taught in their schools before, and two of them had never taught before at all. In each Volume Two, 1990 169 �case, assignments to the respective schools in question had been "politically" motivated. And, there is little guarantee at this writing that any of these four will still be in the same school this time next year. This, of course, is not even to mention the rather rigid nature of school leadership already discussed at the high school, or that of the largest "elementary" school. In the latter case, the principal was "invited" out of retirement (from a non-education related business) to become principal of a school he had graduated from almost forty years earlier. Not surprisingly, the person who invited him was his "drinking buddy," the county superintendent; and the principal in early interviews with us confided he knew almost nothing about the job he had agreed to take, except that he "liked children." A final educational anomaly worth mentioning here is in regard to district policies allowing/enabling students throughout the county to bypass the outlying small schools in order to attend the larger and agegraded consolidated school in the county seat. On the one hand, this has caused the more centrally located school to become seriously overcrowded. Even so, according to most educational personnel in Clinch County, the teachers, facilities, and students there are all better than they are in the outlying schools. According to some, this reputation causes both the more "professional" teachers and the more affluent county residents to prefer "Central," where not surprisingly, parent involvement is much greater (at least in athletic affairs). Meanwhile, the less affluent (meaning, in Clinch County, those in the most abject poverty and/or the furthest removed from town and/or those least able to request or demand improved school services) students and parents remain dependent upon the isolated, multigraded, and underfunded outlying schools, where politically motivated teaching assignments are routine and the bridge to the "great society" is not even in sight. Conclusions While most schools in the region have become more and more "modern" during the past decade (in terms of school consolidation, stricter certification requirements, etc.) under the auspices of state department of educations, many schools in Appalachia are by no means comparable to those in other parts of America. Based on the evidence in Clinch County, schooling as a means of bringing the mountaineer into "Great Society" (a term which we obviously believe is a misnomer), is extremely problematic. Due to a variety of historical and economic reasons, many Appalachian schools still do not function to counter the effects of other more "insular" institutions, assuming this is what they ought to do. Rather, they are inadequately funded, (still) locally controlled, frequently the focal point of county politics, and often viewed by 170 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �parents as the site of community social life rather than as purely academic settings. The reasons why schools in places like Clinch County appear as they do could no doubt lead to the same type of theoretical disputes presented earlier in this analysis. Modernity advocates, for example, might suggest that the reason learner outcomes in Clinch County appear as outlined is because those individuals and families with the most modern values and skills are the ones who have migrated out of the county, leaving more traditionally focused families behind. And, they would probably point out that state efforts to reform schools along criteria as listed above indicate good progress towards modernity in the region. Those impressed with core/periphery explanations of local domination by external elites would no doubt focus on the transformation of Clinch County households from self-sufficient farming to low-income wage earners. Such an interpretation would probably argue that local schools and school personnel function as agents of external political and economic interests. The purpose of schools like those of Clinch County is to provide the minimum of cognitive skills necessary to work in minimum wage jobs, and the real task of the schools is to introduce time and authority structures to mountain children, making sure that students drop out of high school, and thus blame themselves for not being able to obtain better employment. The class standing, political location, attitude, and educational philosophy of the high school principal earlier profiled would perhaps provide a prototypical model of a local agent in service of external agendas. Through our eyes, both and neither of such perspectives totally explain the educational status and/or the location of the public school in Clinch County. Schools have increasingly become more "modern," rational and bureaucratic there during the past three decades. Yet, much of the day to day life of children and teachers in Clinch County schools probably resembles school life earlier in the century. And given that learner outcomes in this County compare unfavorably to those from more affluent areas, it would be hard to argue that the modern schooling practices which have replaced more traditional ones have well served its children. In our judgment, Clinch County schools probably function well as reproducers of social inequality in the County. Yet, while the school system seems clearly related to the stratification system there, social stratification mechanisms appear to have existed long before the public school became so central to county political life. Contrary to both modernity theory and to various conflict perspectives, small/community/ elementary schools in most of the mountains had, and continue to have, social histories and non-academic functions carried over from an earlier Volume Two, 1990 171 �era. Furthermore, the dilemmas of social change toward modern life which Peter Berger outlines appear in some ways mediated by these "non-rational" functions in some rural schools. We have no easy answer as to how to solve social problems in the mountains, and we are hesitant to suggest that some natural progress towards a problematic "great society" will take care of the issues we raise here. However, to us it certainly seems that assuming that public schools can and/or should be a primary institution for unilaterally bringing about this process is in error. Rather, perhaps it is time to entertain the transitional possibilities of mountain schools, instead of insisting on "reforming" them by making them more "modern." Perhaps these institutions could be made more useful for the future of our region were the important non-instructional functions of mountain schools highlighted, and were the community importance of such schools developed into formal components of the curriculum. [Such an argument, of course, underlies much of what the Foxfire Project(s) of Eliot Wigginton are all about. See for example his Sometimes a Shining Moment (Garden City, New York: Anchor, 1985.)] Works Cited Aronowitz, Stanley and Henry Giroux. 1985. Education Under Siege: The Conservative, Liberal and Radical Debate over Schooling. South Hadley, Massachusetts: Bergin and Garvey. Berger, Peter L. 1977. Facing Up to Modernity: Exclusion in Society, Politics and Religion. New York: Basic Books, Inc. Bowles, Samuel and Herbert Gintis. 1976. Schooling in Capitalist America. New York: Basic Books. Collins, Randall. 1979. The Credential Society. New York: Academic Press. DeYoung, Alan J. 1989. Economics and American Education: A Historical and Critical Overview of the Impact of Economic Theories on Schooling in the United States. New York: Longman. Dickens, David R. and Alessandro Bonanno. 1988. "Analyzing Development, Dependency, and Underdevelopment: Suggestions for an Alternative Approach." Sociological Spectrum 8: 169-186. Dreeben, Robert. 1968. On What is Learned in Schools. Boston: Addison Wesley. Eller, Ronald D. 1982. Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers: The Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1980-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. First Tennessee Development District. 1985. "Facts." October, 1985. Johnson City, Tennessee. 172 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Ford, Thomas R. (ed.). 1962. The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Gusfield, Joseph. 1967. "Tradition and Modernity: Misplaced Polarities in the Study of Social Change." American Journal of Sociology 72:1967, 351-362. Hogan, David. 1982. "Education and Class Formation: The Peculiarities of the Americans." ed. Michael W. Apple. Cultural and Economic Reproduction in Education. Londen: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Howley, Craig. 1988. Synthesis of the Effects of School and District Size: What Research says about Achievement in Small Schools and School Districts. ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools. Charleston, West Virginia, Appalachia Education Laboratory. Keefe, Susan E., Una Reck and Gregory Reck. 1985. "Family and Education in Southern Appalachia." Berea, Kentucky: Appalachian Studies Conference. Livingstone, D.W. 1985. "Class, Educational Ideologies, and Mass Opinion in Capitalist Crisis: A Canadian Perspective." Sociology of Education 58: January, 3-30. Mulkey, David. 1988. Workshop, "Education Policy and Rural Development: A Perspective from the Southern Region." Southern Region Rural Development Policy. 3-5 October 1988. Birmingham, Alabama. Parsons, Talcott. 1959. "The School Class as a Social System: Some of its Functions in American Society." Harvard Educational Review 29: 297-313. Plunkett, H. Dudley and Mary Jean Bowman. 1973. Elites and Change in the Kentucky Mountains. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Reck, Una Mae, Gregory Reck and Susan Keefe. 1987. "Teachers' Perceptions of Appalachian and Non-Appalachian Students." 20-24 April 1987. Washington, D.C., Annual Meeting of the American Educational Association. Schwarzweller, Harry K. and James S. Brown. 1962. "Education as a Cultural Bridge between Eastern Kentucky and the Great Society." Rural Sociology 27: 4, 357-373. Sher, Jonathan P. 1987. "Making Dollars by Making Sense: Linking Rural Education and Development in Appalachia." Proceedings of the University of Kentucky Conference on Appalachia. Spring, Joel. 1984. "Education and the Sony War." Phi Delta Kappan. April 1984, 534-537. Stephenson, John B. 1968. Shiloh: A Mountain Community. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Volume Two, 1990 173 �Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. 1986. "Economic Statistics." 4 March 1986. Authorization #330244. 1988. "Education". February 1988. Authorization #330324. 1986. "Population." March 1986. Authorization #330112. Tennessee Department of Education. 1987. State of Tennessee: "Annual Statistical Report of the Department of Education for Scholastic Year Ending June 30." Tyack, David. 1974. The One Best System. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Tyler, J.W. 1919. Our Appalachian Cousins. The Executive Committee of Home Missions. Presbyterian Church of the United States. Atlanta, Georgia. Waller, Altina L. 1988. Feud: Hatfields, McCoys and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Whisnant, David E. 1983. All That is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Whisnant, David E. 1980. Modernizing the Mountaineer: People, Power and Planning in Appalachia. Boone, North Carolina: Appalachian Consortium Press. Wigginton, Eliot. 1985. Sometimes a Shining Moment. Garden City, New York: Anchor. Footnote 1 This work has been partially facilitated by the Appalachia Educational Laboratory of Charleston, West Virginia. The views represented within this document, however, are those of the authors' and do not necessarily represent those of the Lab. Roberta Campbell is a doctoral candidate and teaching assistant in the sociology department at the University of Kentucky majoring in Appalachian Studies. Alan DeYoung is a professor in the department of educational policy studies and evaluation at the University of Kentucky. His most recent book is Economics in American Education: A Historic and Critical Overview of the Impact of Economic Theories on Schooling in the United States. 174 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �"Never Met a Man who Made a Basket... Never Saw My Daddy Cane a Chair" Bobby Ann Starnes A study by Jake Kroger found that only nine of the sixty-one sixth grade students who comprised the class of '84 at the Oyler Elementary School in Cincinnati, Ohio, were still in school on graduation day six years later (Kroger, 1984). The findings of Kroger's study are sobering. Yet, they do not come as a surprise to the urban Appalachian population of Cincinnati. Parents, community leaders, and researchers have long recognized the dropout rate, low student achievement, and student alienation as symptomatic of the failure of the school system to meet the educational needs of students of Appalachian heritage (Appalachian Advocate, 1984; Wagner, 1974; Berlowitz and Durand, 1977). Experience in and with the public school system has led many of us to believe that teachers, for the most part, are unaware of Appalachian history and culture, include nothing in their curriculum to support the development of a healthy identity, and often consider urban Appalachian students to be less able than other students. Word of mouth assessments, as well as studies with parents and students, have indicated that they think teachers, schools, and curricula are insensitive to children of Appalachian heritage. No directed study, however, was done earlier with teachers to Volume Two, 1990 175 �actually determine their attitudes; this paper is based on that study. It is my belief that an understanding of teachers' opinions and attitudes is vital to guide the development of methods and materials to improve the quality of urban Appalachian children's educational experiences. The study consisted of questionnaires and follow-up interviews, and was conducted in three predominantly urban Appalachian elementary schools in Cincinnati. It posed the following questions: do teachers value the inclusion of Appalachian history and culture? would they use materials if they existed? how do teachers view their students of Appalachian heritage? and, what expectations do teachers have for students of Appalachian heritage? In this paper, study findings will be discussed only briefly. Additional discussion will be featured in the upcoming The Advocate, a publication of the Urban Appalachian Council. For the most part, the findings are not surprising. Participant teachers do have low expectations for the children of Appalachian heritage. For example, when asked to rate students on a scale of 1 to 5 in 29 academic-related traits, teachers consistently rated urban Appalachian students lacking in almost all areas; for example: social skills, ability to understand abstract concepts, ability to concentrate, reading skills, and writing skills. They further claimed that "Appalachian people do not seek to do well," and, "Appalachian students have short attention spans." Urban Appalachian students are, as one teacher put it, "the broom pushers" of tomorrow. "As they get older they [will] value education less. They will get pregnant and drop out" or "only 3 of 90 will graduate." A teacher of first graders says she "knows" that most of her students will be unprepared and undisciplined. And on the section of the questionnaire that asked teachers to list the strengths of their urban Appalachian students, only such traits as "loving nature" were listed. Views expressed in questionnaires were supported in follow-up interviews; three themes emerged in teacher responses: teachers have a sense of frustration, confusion, ineffectiveness, and powerlessness; teachers' values are in conflict with community values (often stated as class conflict); and, teachers blame parents for poor achievement. Although these themes are complex and intertwined, I will attempt to discuss them only briefly here. It should be understood, however, that in the life and culture of the classroom, each theme would support others, creating an almost indistinguishable cycle. Teachers consistently identified a class difference between themselves and their students, as though to be urban Appalachian is to be poor. In most cases, they saw this difference as making it impossible for them to understand how urban Appalachian parents and students understand the world, what their goals are, or why they make the 176 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �choices they make in their daily lives. This class difference led to both confusion and frustration as demonstrated by comments such as: ... My family has ... money. I drive a big... car ... my Mom and Dad bought it for me. There are just some things I can't understand about these people. I will never be able to ... I just have to do the best I can to make a place where my values and theirs can be together ... Sometimes ... I impose my values ... I know I do ... I feel guilty, but I think I'm right... I think my way is better ... makes more sense ... Each of the teachers made similar comments about value differences. When discussing these differences, teachers generally used the terms "poor" and "Appalachian" interchangeably. The effects of such culture confusion are played out in a number of ways that affect students' educational program, opportunities, and chances of success. Having acknowledged that they do not understand their students or their families, or the values they hold, teachers expressed frustration, confusion, and hopelessness. They talked about their ineffectiveness with urban Appalachian students and, at the same time, expressed feelings that they were powerless to change the way things are in their schools. Although I went into this study expecting that teachers would care little about their students of Appalachian heritage, I was moved by the concern expressed by these teachers. While they are, I believe, illinformed about Appalachian history and culture, miseducated with regard to appropriate ways to teach children not of the middle-class dominant culture, and unwilling to either accept or respect the values of urban Appalachian students, much of their frustration and their feelings of powerlessness rise out of their sincere desires to help their students to, as they put it, "break the cycle of poverty." It seems clear, then, that at least some teachers want to be more effective with their students. They know they are failing to teach, and, while they blame others, they also blame themselves. They seem to be grasping for ways to make sense out of a culture and class that they do not understand. For example, I would suggest that, while some teachers do label urban Appalachian children, they might do so in order to mentally construct an understanding of their students and how they might help them. The use of the label—though actually quite harmful—may make students seem less mysterious and the situation seem less out of control. Volume Two, 1990 177 �While the tendency to blame parents for students' lack of academic success is a serious obstacle, using the study to understand teachers, rather than blame or judge them, makes this tendency quite valuable as a sort of "roadmap" for effecting change at least in individual classrooms where teachers are struggling—without much success—to improve their teaching and to help their students succeed. It is highly possible that frustrated but well-intentioned teachers can be assisted in ways that would meet their need to feel less frustrated and ineffectual and, at the same time, and more importantly, increase students' chances of success. Clearly, however, change will not come easily. Any one of these findings has implications that require a massive commitment to rectify. Still, important as each seems, they are, I believe, secondary. The first thing we must address is the teachers' perceptions of what it means to be of Appalachian heritage—what is our culture and what is our history. Because these perceptions shape the instruction, expectations, and opportunity afforded to urban Appalachian students, any reform that does not first redefine the perceptions of Appalachian history and culture currently being presented in schools is doomed to failure. The balance of this paper will focus on these perceptions and how we might go about redefining them. So, although teachers say they believe it is important to include Appalachian history and culture in their classrooms, we must ask what is the history and culture they would include, and is it the history and culture we think worth including? Currently, teachers in this study are presenting Appalachian history and culture in two primary ways: art crafts (i.e., doll making, baskets, and quilts), and performance crafts (i.e., music, dance, and storytelling). Therefore, almost all of what is currently being presented as the history and culture of Appalachia is craft related. This indicates that teachers' current perceptions of Appalachian history and culture are superficial. However, they are not only superficial. For at least two reasons, they are dangerous. First, as we recall from the studies of the effects of stereotyping on black students, such a narrow list of cultural activities conveys a message to children which limits their options (See Fenton, 1970, and Roth, 1969, for example). And second, such superficiality trivializes the culture. By presenting primarily craft activities as strengths of the culture, urban Appalachian students are consistently sent a message that, as members of their cultural group, their talents lie in working with their hands rather than in more academic areas. The results of this study offers evidence that teachers have accepted this limited view of their students and of their cultural roots. To them, Appalachians as a people, and, therefore, their students, are somehow inherently talented with their hands, but not talented intellectually. One teacher put it this way: 178 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �What we have to understand about Appalachian people is that they are right-brained. They can cane chairs. They can make quilts, and they can make baskets, but they just can't get the academics ... We have to realize that these will be the broom pushers and cash register operators ... and we have to educate them for that... We have to teach them how to make change ... and apply for jobs ... We have to be realistic, set realistic goals ... Also disturbing was the fact that teachers who were of Appalachian heritage themselves seemed to need to distance themselves from the culture as much as possible. We must seriously address this issue because of the messages it sends to our children and to the mainstream population. For example, one teacher became quite angry about having to identify himself. My paternal grandfather was from the Blue Ridge of Virginia—near Washington D.C. ... [Students] do not identify themselves as Appalachians. I don't think this school body in general identifies as Appalachians and neither do I. I do not consider myself Appalachian. I personally resent being tagged an Appalachian because one grandparent whom I never knew was from there. I think its wrong for a government office to arbitrarily identify people in this way. I'm more Anglo-German than anything else and so are many who happen to have an Appalachian ancestor. I also have an American-Indian ancestor, but I'm not considered Indian. It is here then that we must begin our attack. First, I believe we must actively disclaim a crafts identity. It is not only the focus of the school on crafts, but also our own that is limiting and false. We must, at every occasion, point out its falseness. And we must say what it is about us and about our heritage that is at the core of our identity. There is more to us, and we must learn to say what it is. It is, of course, far easier for us and others to point to a quilt and say, "there, that is what our culture is about." It is concrete. It can be held in our hands and we can see the beauty, skill, and hard work in it. Perhaps we ourselves understand what else that quilt tells us about the person who made it and about our people. Perhaps not. However, teaching about our heritage almost exclusively through such concrete topics as storytelling, music, or quilt making, without teaching the social, economic, and political contexts in which the stories, music, or quilts were created, Volume Two, 1990 179 �misses the abstract aspects of the culture which gave rise to the crafts. To learn the words to bluegrass music, for instance, without, at some point, discussing their meaning or why they were written—or failing to note the complexity and sophistication of the music itself—is to trivialize the art form and, possibly, the culture itself. Many urban Appalachians know this difference, though they may not have explained it to outsiders. For example, Thomas Owens, an urban Appalachian born in Baptist Bottom, Kentucky, and currently a computer programmer at MIT, believes that emphasis on mountain craft misses the heart of his culture. Like many of us, he: ... never met a man who made a basket. Never saw my Daddy cane a chair. But Daddy wouldn't sell land as long as he lived ... said "Owenses don't sell land," and we don't ... There is something more basic than crafts that identify us. Crafts are just how we entertained ourselves or carried our eggs from the hen house. Who we are as a people, and the history we've lived, goes much deeper than that. ...[In Floyd County] I knew lots of people who made corn cribs and houses and foot bridges, but I never met anybody who made a basket. Our people worked. They worked in the mines, and they worked in the fields ... We have will... stamina. We know how to sacrifice for the family ... and [back home we] knew how to get by—and be happy—without material things... I remember Dad talking about trying to [build] a $500 car out of a $200 car for $1.50 in parts. We had to know how to get by ... to take care of ourselves and take care of our families ... Those are the things I want my kids to know [about the culture]... If they learn to quilt, that would be nice, but I wouldn't say they were more Appalachian for it. So, if not crafts, what do we want to tell our children and the children of non-Appalachians about our history and culture? To answer this question, we must know more about ourselves and the effects of our unique cultural identity—that of city dwellers with roots that run deep into the mountains. Recently, talking with my Aunt Polly, a sturdy mountain woman well-versed in traditional mountain skills, I explained that my city friends think that because I am from the mountains I know all about mountain cooking and canning. My aunt was surprised. "Why you're not from the mountains. You're a city girl." Aunt Polly's response and the response of my city friends is typical—to mountain people, urban 180 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Appalachians are city dwellers, and to city dwellers, they are hillbillies. And, as the situation currently exists, as much as we might wish otherwise, some urban Appalachians are uncertain about who they are and where their "home" is. Teachers in this study who call themselves "kind of" Appalachian demonstrate this uncertainty. And there is reason for it. We are no longer Appalachians; we were never urbanites. Many of us find that our hearts are in the mountains, but our lives are in the cities. I believe our experiences have created a new culture and history— neither Appalachian nor urban—and it is this that we must come to understand. Long-range research addressing the following questions should help to define who urban Appalachians are and what traits we have in common across class and race lines with Appalachians and with native urbanites—and which traits are purely urban Appalachian. Who are Urban Appalachians? A very large number of migrants achieved mainstream success. Many descendants of these migrants can no longer be identified as hillbillies by their accents, where they live, or what they do for a living, but who are they? What do they value? What Appalachian traditions have they maintained? What values do second or third generation middle-class urban Appalachians have in common with first-generation urban Appalachians. What do they have in common with poor or working class urban Appalachians still living in the inner city? How do the value systems and traditions of middle-class urban Appalachians differ from their non-Appalachian counterparts? How are the traits, values, traditions, and culture of urban Appalachians similar to and different from rural Appalachians? Have they hidden their identity? If so, why? What of black urban Appalachians? What traits do they have in common with urban Appalachian whites? How does their "double minority status" (Turner and Cabell, 1985) affect their identity? Do they perceive themselves as black, as urban Appalachian, or as urban Appalachian black? How did their Appalachian roots affect their assimilation in the city? How Do Class and Culture Differ? Teachers in this study seem to believe that white poverty in Cincinnati is limited to Appalachians and that Appalachians are limited to poverty. Urban Appalachian must be defined in a way that separates class from ethnicity. What are the traits, values, and culture of poor urban Appalachians which are separate and distinguishable from the traits, values and culture of poor whites in general? At the very least, the culture of poor whites should be compared to the culture of poor urban Appalachians through a study of the literature. Volume Two, 1990 181 �What Can be Learned from the Stories of Urban Appalachians? Little is known about the experiences of urban Appalachian migrants. And, unless their stories are known, statistics and other forms of research seem of little real value. More important than knowing how many students drop out of school, is knowing the experiences of those who dropped out, not through someone else's interpretation, but through stories told in their own words. We can better explain why urban Appalachian parents have certain attitudes toward school when their own school experiences are known. This known, programs can be more effectively planned and the urban Appalachian community will be better able to advocate for change. I am, therefore, suggesting extensive research to collect the stories of black and white, adult and child, male and female urban Appalachians from the poor, the working, and the middle classes. This research is, I think, both the most important and the most neglected. Action for Change in the Classroom First and without compromise, urban Appalachian children must acquire the skills necessary to gain access to educational, occupational, and financial opportunities. Students must also be taught in ways that instill pride, create a sense of personal power, and provide a variety of successful experiences. The use of any approach should be decided by how well it attains these goals. What educates with pride and power should be used. What does not should be replaced. The current traditionalist approaches have not proven effective with urban Appalachian children. I believe these approaches are so class- and majority-culture oriented that it is unlikely that any recommendations based on their use will prove successful. Instead, I suggest that access, pride, power, and successful experiences are most apt to occur when teaching methods are grounded in, but not limited to, a cultural base. The recommendations I make in this section are based on the findings of this study, particularly the teacher interviews, and on my experiences as an urban Appalachian and as a teacher. To a large degree, they are approaches developed over a period of years working with urban Appalachian children and with a culturally diverse school population. Some aspects are similar to those used by Eliot Wigginton in his Foxfire curricula. It is important to note, however, that these recommendations are not intended as solutions, but as directions and alternatives to be explored. They are based on the assumptions that students are capable of achieving; that education is important in success outside of school; and, that teachers want to help their students achieve. I have suggested that two major actions to be carried out simultaneously: creating a culture-based curriculum, and providing support for teachers. In this paper I will discuss only the creation of a curriculum. 182 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Creating a Curriculum While "Appalachian Week" activities, folk singers, or bulletin board displays are probably favorable to excluding Appalachian awareness from the curriculum, they are, as I have said earlier, often superficial in their approach. Here I will discuss ways Appalachian history and culture may be integrated into the curriculum and their definitions broadened. One of the things I find most exciting about curriculum development is the opportunity to design with multiple layers, each layer offering different possibilities and meeting different objectives. I suggest that two strands be woven into a curriculum for white urban Appalachian children. The first strand should be directed at presenting the cultural traits that "go deeper" than crafts. A second strand should address race issues. This is especially important considering the implementation of a desegregation plan that requires cross bussing between the predominantly black and urban Appalachian enclaves. White urban Appalachian students tend to be fearful in integrated situations (Wagner, 1975) and black students tend to be more nervous around poor or working class whites than middle-class whites (Delpit, 1988). The desegregation plan is apt to result in racially tense situations for many participating black and white Appalachian students. Curriculum developed with this in mind could teach basic skills and, at the same time, contribute to a reduction in racial tension. Topics, materials, and classroom speakers could be chosen to demonstrate the diversity of the Appalachian region and to highlight examples of blacks and whites working together in Appalachia. One example of such a topic is a study of the coal mining industry, focusing on the creation of the first multiracial union resulting from alliances between black and white miners. Or, younger children could be told stories about life in the mountains that focus on the positive racial relationships there (see Starnes, 1988, and Corbin, 1985, for example). And, when the Underground Railroad is studied, the significance of the contributions of white mountaineers, normally not mentioned, could be emphasized. Appalachian diversity could also be illustrated by including stories of Appalachian Native Americans, and of immigrants who came to the mountains during the mining boom. In addition, ways can be found to teach mandated social studies skills, at least to some extent, through Appalachian history. Books about and by Appalachians can be integrated into English and reading curricula, not only for the urban Appalachian population of Cincinnati; but for the population in general. Both black and white Appalachians can be included as speakers and as role models for students—role models Volume Two, 1990 183 �who have come out of the mountains or the inner city to become successful in mainstream society, but have not sacrificed their roots in the process. If carefully chosen, role models could serve more than one purpose. For example, Harriet Marsh-Page is a Cincinnati civic leader involved in the arts and education and is the daughter of a black coal miner from West Virginia. Identifying herself as a black Appalachian woman, Harriet tells engaging stories with important messages for urban Appalachian students of today—black or white. Such a curriculum could provide role models and options quite different from those provided by the crafts person. Though the language of Appalachia and of the urban Appalachian have an undeniable beauty and have meanings that cannot always be accurately translated into mainstream English, those who are able to express themselves in the language of the majority are more apt to have access to opportunities. Therefore, curricula must emphasize the development of fluency in this mainstream language. However, attaining fluency must not require students to sacrifice or devalue their culture or their own language. Since many urban Appalachians speak a language foreign to those in the mainstream, their language need not be considered "substandard," but rather a second language. Teaching mainstream English to urban Appalachian children then becomes a matter of using techniques that have proven successful with other language minority or bilingual groups. Such methods can teach the language of the dominant culture without stigmatizing students for using their first language. These are only a few of many ways that a creative curriculum can instruct both those who are and those who are not of Appalachian heritage. The possibilities are almost limitless. In addition, the inclusion of a Foxfire-]\ke program that would teach basic skills through a study of the community would help students to identify their personal histories and to celebrate their culture—in the city—as well as to identify and celebrate the history and culture their parents or grandparents brought with them from the mountains. Conclusion In this study, I set out to gather information on teachers' attitudes toward their students of Appalachian heritage. The study yielded that and much more. Dealing with the education of urban Appalachian children, or any cultural minority for that matter, is not an easy task. The ingredients of low school achievement are so intertwined and deeply rooted that change can not be expected when any one of the actors—the parents, teachers, children, Appalachian activists, or school power structure—is working in 184 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �isolation. I am suggesting, therefore, that since teachers apparently do have negative attitudes toward their urban Appalachian students, they will need assistance to change their attitudes and practices. It is not only logical that assistance should come from the urban Appalachian community, it is necessary. Part of that assistance will come from identifying our cultural traits, learning our history, and helping teachers to include these in their curriculum. If we believe that change is required, we must work with teachers, not policy makers, to bring about change at a grassroots level. Without these changes, we are all victims. Some of us are victims because we are denied access to the quality education we are entitled to. Others of us are victims because we are forced to give up, or deny, our culture in order to achieve mainstream success. For me, the value of this study is not that it provides concrete examples of teachers who have low expectations or who are biased or insensitive (though it certainly does provide those examples). It is, rather, valuable because it points out so clearly that people do not know who we are, and that many of us do not ourselves know who we are. We must be vigilant in identifying ourselves, and in finding ways to inform others. We must learn to say what it is about us, regardless of race, class, or education, that sets us apart from the mainstream. We must then celebrate that difference and help others to celebrate with us. I am not really sure what all of those difference are, but I am sure that they are not crafts. I am also sure that we must not let others define who we are, what is important or valuable in our history and culture, or what our children should be taught. Bringing about the kind of change I have suggested in this paper would not be a small task. It is, however, a task worthy of our time and energy. And we must act quickly. Classrooms in Cincinnati and other urban settings are filled with children waiting for our action. Works Cited Appalachian Task Force for Reducing Racial Tension. 1984. Cincinnati Public Schools, Stuart Faber, Chairman. March-April, 1984. Unpublished meeting notes. Berlowitz, Marvin J. and Henry Durand. 1977. "School Dropout or Student Pushout? A Case of Possible Violation of Property Rights and Liberties by Defacto Exclusion of Students from Public Schools." Working Paper, No. 8. Cincinnati: Urban Appalachian Council. Delpit, Lisa. 1988. "The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in the Education of Other People's Children." Harvard Educational Review. Volume Two, 1990 185 �Fenton, D. 1970. "Crispus Attuks is Not Enough." National Association of Secondary School Principals. April 7-14,1970. Fouts, Arnold. 1988. Personal Communication. July, 1988. Kroger, Jake. 1985. "Lower Price Hill Community School Fights Dropout Rate with Adult Education." Appalachian Advocate. March 4-5, 1985. Roth, Richard. "Effects of Black Studies on Negro Fifth Graders." Journal of Negro Education 38: 435-9. Starnes, Bobby Ann. 1988. Two Urban Appalachian Families: Down but not Out." Unpublished manuscript. Starnes, Bobby Ann. 1988. "The Education of Blacks in the Coal Camps 19351958: Social Integration, Educational Segregation, and Economic Oppression." Unpublished manuscript. Wagner, Thomas. 1975. "Report of the Appalachian School Study Project." Working paper, No. 4. Cincinnati: Urban Appalachian Council. Wagner, Thomas. "Urban Schools and Appalachian Children." Urban Education 12: 283-295. Bobby Ann Starnes is in the Harvard graduate school of education, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 186 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Appalachian Studies Association Members Adams, Lynn Pikeville College Box 26 Bypro, KY 41612 606-452-4842 Asbury, Jo Ann Radford University 515 Newbern Road Pulaski.VA 24301 703-980-5036 Barker, Garry Berea College CPO 2347 Berea, KY 40404 606-986-9341 Adams, Marty Pikeville College PO Box 492 Pikeville, KY 41501 606-432-9253 Asbury, Sr., Roger Pulaski High School 515 Newbern Road Pulaski.VA 24301 703-980-5036 Bartholomew, Betsy 301 Thompson Street Stanton, VA 24401 703-885-0233 Adkins, Roy Pikeville College 200 Winston Creek Rd Pikeville, KY 41501 606-432-0649 Askins, Justin Radford University Rt. 1, Box 215 Radford, VA 24087 703-831-5494 Alters, Ellen New River Community College PO Drawer 898 Wytheville, VA 24382 703-228-6611 Athey, Lou F & M College Dept. of History Lancaster, PA 17604 712-299-3482 Anglin, Mary Lenoir-Phyne College Dept. of Sociology Hickory, NC 28603 704-328-7232 Austin, Sonya Radford University PO Box 6082 Radford, VA 24142 703-731-7292 Anglin Kuhne, Sharon 109 Wing Road Bakersville, NC 28705 704-688-4810 Badgett, Ken Appalachian State Univ. 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Davis & Elkins College Elkins, WV 26241 304-636-1903 Williams, Dean Appalachian State Univ. Appalachian Studies Todd, NC 28684 704-877-5803 Weaver, Hank Appalachian State Univ. Appalachian Studies Boone, NC 28608 704-262-4089 Wheeler, Cecilia PO Box 1141 Oxford, NC 27565 919-693-9281 Williams, Mary 802 Hillman Highway Abingdon.VA 24210 703-628-9504 Wheeling, Teresa Radford University Rt. 2, Belspring Radford, VA 24141 703-731-1519 Williamson, Jerry Appalachian State Univ. Appalachian Journal Boone, NC 28608 704-262-4072 Weaver, Joseph H. Allegany Com. College Cumberland, MD 21502 301-724-7700 198 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Wilson, Larry Highlander Rt. 2, Box AA68 Middlesboro, KY 40965 606-248-8213 Wilson, Shannon H. Berea College Special Collections Berea, KY 40404 606-986-9341 Wood, Curtis Western Carolina Univ. Mt. Heritage Center Cullowhee, NC 28723 704-227-7219 Wood, Sharon 7815 Conner Road, NE Copperhill, VA 24079 Woods, Geoff West Virginia University Regional Research Morgantown, WV 26506 304-293-2896 Yang, Heather Wake Forest University Reynolds Station Winston-Salem, NC 27109 919-750-1332 Yarrow, Michael Ithaca College 407 Hancock Street Ithaca, NY 14850 607-272-4943 Young, Lisa Wake Forest University PO Box 7543 Winston-Salem, NC 27109 919-723-0626 Zahorik, Pamela East Tenn. State Univ. Depart, of Family Med. Johnson City, TN 37614 615-929-6738 Workman, Mike West Virginia University Morgantown, WV 26506 304-293-2896 Worley, Bethany Emory &Henry College Emory, VA 24327 Yamazaki, Hiroe West Virginia University 511 H. High Street Morgantown, WV 26506 304-293-2896 Volume Two, 1990 199 �This page intentionally left blank �Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association Subscriptions and Order Form Detach, Fold and Staple this Form, and Mail to: Appalachian Consortium University Hall Boone, NC 28606 Please make checks payable to the Appalachian Consortium. NoTof Copies Issue Price Journal of the Appalachian Studies Assoc./Vol. 2,1990 "Transformation of Life and Labor in Appalachia" $10.95 Back Issues Journal of the Appalachian Studies Assoc./Vol. 1,1989 "Mountains of Experience" Total $. $10.95 Proceedings of the Appalachian Studies Conference (10) "Rememberance, Reunion, Revival" (9) "Contemporary Appalachia" $10.95 $10.95 (8) "The Impact of Institutions in Appalachia" $10.95 (7) "The Many Faces of Appalachia" $10.95 (6) "The Appalachian Experience" $10.95 (5) "The Critical Essays" $10.95 Subtotal 5% N.C. Sales Tax (NC residents only) Handling Shipping is $1.00 per copy $_ Total Enclosed $. S 2.00 Name Address Phone Please enter my name on the Subscriber's list. I understand that Subscriptions for the Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association are available through the Appalachian Consortium. The cost is $13.95 per copy, which includes shipping and handling. I understand that orders will be kept on file and automatically shipped and billed once each year unless cancelled by written correspondence. �Return Address Stamp Appalachian Studies Association Journal Appalachian Consortium Press University Hall Boone.NC 28608 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publications Description An account of the resource This collection contains digitized monographs and collections from the Appalachian Consortium Press. 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Title A name given to the resource Transformation of Life & Labor in Appalachia - Volume Two Description An account of the resource This volume of the <em>Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association</em> includes a collection of essays exploring the industrialization of the Appalachians and the effect on the economy.<br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fB91RhLSFei5jFhmiU7pcAneS2Q9R2TB" target="_blank">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636993/journal-of-the-appalachian-studies-association/" target="_blank">UNC Press Print on Demand</a> Subject The topic of the resource Appalachian Region--Labor Appalachian Region--Social conditions--19th century Appalachian Region--Social conditions--20th century Industrialization--Appalachian Region Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lewis, Ronald L. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1990 Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Appalachia Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Periodicals Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/12212302/appalachia.html Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a> Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1990s Multidisciplinary/ Appalachian Studies https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/f3cd24c5272e28faf30422e6fe01f215.pdf 9a2f404036d57a498777237b8cd6bbb3 PDF Text Text �SOUTHERN APPALACHIA AND THE SOUTH: A REGION WITHIN A REGION Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association Edited by John C. Inscoe 1991 Volume Three �The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From 1973 to 2004, its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program, Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press. www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Original copyright © 1991 by the Appalachian Consortium Press. ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-3696-2 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-3698-6 Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press www.uncpress.org �Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association Volumes 1991 Southern Appalachia and the South: A Region Within a Region TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction John C. Inscoe 1 A Regionalism Within Regionalisms: Three Frameworks for Appalachian Studies John Alexander Williams Southern Appalachia and the South: A Region Within a Section Richard B. Drake Hegemony, Alienation and Identity Reformulation: Further Thoughts on a Comparative Approach to Appalachian Studies Richard Blaustein 4 18 28 The Appalachian Frontier and the Southern Frontier: A Comparative Perspective H. Tyler Blethen and Curtis W. Wood 36 The Enduring Legacy of the "Southern Rebellion": West Virginia's Weil-Being David B. White 48 Forgotten Sisters: Mountain Women in the South Milton Ready Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on Appalachia's Economic Dependency Paul Salstrom iii 61 68 �The New Deal for Tenant Farmers: Government Planning and Indigenous Community Development on the Cumberland Plateau Benita J. Howell Lawrence Augustus Oxley: The Beginnings of Social Work Among Blacks in North Carolina Counties John L. Bell 82 98 Religious Freethinkers in the Southern Highlands Henry J. Weaver 110 Two-Party Politics in Appalachia? David Button 123 Political Culture in Jesse Stuart's Appalachia and the South: From Agrarian to Industrial Development 134 Glen Edward Taul A Cure for the Malaise of the Dislocated Southerner: The Writing of Jesse Stuart Edgar H. Thompson 146 James Jones' Appalachian Soldier in His World War II Trilogy Loyal Jones Southern Gothic and Appalachian Gothic: A Comparative Look at Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy Louis H. Palmer III The Roots of Appalachian English: Scotch-Irish or British Southern? Michael Montgomery "Shall We Teach 'Em or Learn 'Em?" Attitudes Toward Language in Appalachian Children's Literature Roberta T. Herrin iv 152 166 177 192 �1990 Appalachian Studies Association Officers Doyle Bickers Wilburn Hayden John Inscoe George Reynolds Sallie Miller Weaver Alice Brown Gerald Roberts President Vice-President Conference Program Chair Youth Conference Chair Newsletter Editor/Secretary Treasurer Archivist Steering Committee Program Committee Doyle Bickers, Chair Barry Buxton Rebecca Hancock Roberta Herrin Ken Sullivan Howard Dorgan Parks Lanier John Inscoe, Chair Garry Barker H. Tyler Blethen Susan Keefe Bill Martin Jeannie Reed Maureen Reid Durwood Dunn V �This page intentionally left blank �Introduction John C. Inscoe Southerners, Jonathan Daniels once observed, are "a mythical people, created half out of dream and half out of slander, who live in a still legendary land" (Tindall 1980, 161-62). If this description is applicable to the South in general, how much more applicable it is to Southern Appalachia. In many ways, the burdens borne by the South, whether experienced historically, economically, or socially, or interpreted literarily, are burdens shared, often in more acute form, by its highlanders. Perhaps because of these burdens, both mythic and real, southern Appalachians also have shared with the rest of the South a degree of regional self-consciousness more intense and more deeply rooted than that in almost any other area of the country. Just as the nature of being southern and the qualities that make the South the South have been long debated by scholars and journalists, by natives and outside observers, so Appalachia has been subjected, at least from the late nineteenth century on, to equal scrutiny by both insiders and outsiders seeking to identify and explain its distinctiveness as a region. There is perhaps no better example of how vital that scrutiny remains and how varied and sophisticated it has become than the annual conference of the Appalachian Studies Association. In his study of American cultural regions, Raymond Gastil observed that as long as residents of a region "see success as achievable only outside their region, there will be no great regional cultures. . . . On the other hand, as long as those who remain in the 'boondocks' see their task as the glorification of whatever characteristics their regions happen to possess, they will build little that is enduring" (Gastil 1976, 16-7). Both reactions are evident among southerners, but again, they're even more pronounced in southern Highlanders, simply because they seem to have been shackled with an even greater inferiority complex. As Wilma Dykeman has noted, such self-perceptions have made it hard for Appalachians "to be neither defensive nor offensive about the region where we live" (Dykeman 1984, 14). Volume Three, 1991 1 �No less than four papers presented at the 1990 Appalachian Studies Conference at Unicoi State Park in Georgia (two of which are included in this volume) cited Chapel Hill sociologist John Shelton Reed's obviously often quoted 1982 observation that "Appalachia has always served as the South's 'South'" (Reed 1986, 42). This is indeed a succinct way of expressing at least the negative implications of Appalachians' perceived status not only within the nation, but within their own broader region as well. Elsewhere Reed has confronted the whole dilemma of distinguishing between subregions within regions. "Does one—or rather when does one—speak of Sicilians, for example, rather than Italians, or Jamaicans rather than West Indians?" he asks (Reed 1982,14). Indeed, when does one speak of Southern Appalachians rather than southerners? How do the identities, experiences, and interests of these two groups intersect, overlap, diverge, or contradict each other? These were the questions confronting participants at last year's Appalachian Studies Conference at Unicoi. The papers in this volume are for the most part reflections of the wide variety of ways in which those issues have been and can be addressed. The theoretical and practical implications of regional identity, of marginality, of ethnic commonalities, and of comparative perspectives are laid out in broad and often provocative terms in the first several essays, after which the same questions are applied to more specific aspects of the Appalachian and/or southern experience, such as gender and race; historical turning points from frontier settlement to the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II; political trends and religious expression; and both individuals and groups coping with dual regional identities and the means by which that duality has been expressed, either literarily or linguistically. The 1990 conference was the association's largest yet, in terms of both program participants and attendance. Because of the wealth of material presented at the Unicoi conference, both in quality and quantity, the essays here are but a small sampling of the approaches taken in dealing with these issues. Most of the papers not included in this volume are available through the ASA archives at Berea College, Berea, Kentucky, and no doubt many of them will appear in print elsewhere. The success of that conference was due to a number of factors, but none more so than the dynamic leadership of the association's president, Doyle Bickers. His energy, enthusiasm, and dedication to the Appalachian Studies Association, combined with a managerial style all his own, inspired all of us who had the privilege—and the pleasure—of working with him last year. The program committee, particularly Tyler Blethen, Susan Keefe, Jeannie Reed, and Durwood Dunn, deserves far more credit that it usually receives for the myriad of ways, large and small, it contributed to pulling together yet another in what is becoming a tradi- 2 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �tion of rich and varied conference programs. George Reynolds almost single-handedly organized a fresh and innovative Youth Conference, thus perpetuating what Rebecca Hancock has made an increasingly significant facet of the association's efforts. Bill Martin at the Appalachian Consortium and Linda Turner at Unicoi State Park worked steadily and efficiently behind the scenes to coordinate what managed to be a smoothly run and crisis-free weekend. I am grateful for the support and cooperation I enjoyed on my own campus, particularly from my department head, Lester Stephens, and from Sheree Dendy, who generously gave of her own time and considerable talent in coordinating the program planning at our end. Finally, Pat Arnow and the staff at East Tennessee State University's Center for Appalachian Studies and Services are fast becoming the unsung heroes of the association for their vital contributions in time and talent in editing and printing this journal. Works Cited Dykeman, Wilma. 1984. Explorations. Newport, Tennessee: Wakestone Books. Gastil, Raymond D. 1976. Cultural Regions of the United States. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Reed, John Shelton. 1982. One South: An Ethnic Approach to Regional Culture. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Reed, John Shelton. 1986. Southern Folk, Plain and Fancy: Native White Social Types. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Tindall, George B. 1980. "The Resurgence of Southern Identity." The American South: Portrait of a Culture. Ed. Louis B. Rubin, Jr. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. John Inscoe is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Georgia and Editor of the Georgia Historical Quarterly. He was the 1990 program chair of the Appalachian Studies Association Conference and guest editor of the Journal of Appalachian Studies Association. Volume Three, 1991 3 �A Regionalism Within Regionalisms: Three Frameworks for Appalachian Studies John Alexander Williams In the papers of Frederick Jackson Turner at the Huntington Library in California, is an outline for a history of the industrialization of southern Appalachia between 1880 and 1930. The outline proposes research on the social and political impacts of industrialization in the region, the problem of absentee ownership, and labor history. Its author was John Barnhart, a doctoral student of Turner's at Harvard, who was then beginning his career as an assistant professor of history at West Virginia University (Barnhart 1932). Barnhart's outline of proposed research amounts to a prospectus for much of what now comprises the scholarly field of Appalachian Studies, but nothing came of his project except a single article, which neither he nor any other scholar followed up on (Barnhart 1931, 581-94). He went on to teach and to write about midwestern history at Indiana University. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that professional historians began to carry out the research program that Barnhart had outlined a generation before. I regard both Barnhart's outline and its timing to be equally significant. The outline itself tells us something about the history of American regionalism. Turner was the foremost academic contributor to this movement, which embraced a loose constellation of scholars, reformers, and artists who believed that regional patterns provided the key to the proper understanding and ordering of American history, society, and culture. Regionalist scholars, especially historians like Turner, were less 4 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �theorists than practitioners; they did not elaborate much of a systematic theory of regionalism. Bamhart's outline, however, is evidence that regionalist historians worked from a model, although the model was more often implicit rather than explicit in their research. The regionalist model began with the environment and focused on those institutions and issues which were derived from the exploitation of spatially-distributed resources. Turner's student and self-described "disciple," Herbert E. Bolton, put it succinctly: "European expansion and the building of American societies .. . has been determined largely by geographical forces. Caribbean development has been much the same whether Spanish, French, Dutch, Danish or English ... The type of prairie society does not change essentially across the forty-ninth parallel" (1926). Bamhart's outline—constructed at the time when Turner, Bolton, and other scholars were laying the foundation for regional research in the South, Midwest, West, and Spanish Borderlands (Bolton's name for what we would now call the Sun Belt)—shows that Appalachia could have fit equally well within the regionalist scheme. But Appalachian Studies did not develop until a generation later. Thus, Bamhart's outline tells us that we must look to factors other than the development of regionalist ideas to explain the lag. To explain the lag, we must move from the history of ideas to the sociology of knowledge. As applied to American regionalism, the history of ideas tells us how regional concepts developed and spread through the domains of the humanities, social sciences, public administration, literature, and the arts during the first half of the twentieth century. The sociology of knowledge seeks to explain intellectual history not only in terms of the articulation of, and structural relationships among, concepts, but also in terms of social relationships among the proponents of related ideas and of the organizational frameworks within which they worked. This approach asks not only why American regionalism, developed during the first decades of the century, flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, and declined after 1945. It also seeks to identify patterns of uneven development which cannot be explained by the content of the ideas involved — such as why Borderlands studies developed during this period but Appalachian Studies did not — and it probes for organizational patterns, such as the impact of regionalist scholars in the humanities and social sciences in founding scholarly institutions and conventions which survived long after the regionalist paradigm had ceased to exert intellectual appeal. Regional inquiries customarily begin with a series of definitions. Howard Odum and Harry Estill Moore came up with some forty definitions of region in their book American Regionalism (1938, 3-21). The recent bibliography compiled by Clarence Mondale and Michael Steiner Volume Three, 1991 5 �identifies 1,652 items, many of which offer definitions of their own or confirm someone else's (1988). Sorting through so many definitions is a daunting task, yet it is possible to make some fairly simple general statements about the subject. Most arguments about the definition of region turn on whether we conceive of a region as a thing or a concept, with most humanities scholars coming down on the side of region as a thing, social scientists on the side of region as concept. Geographers have come down on both sides of this issue, but, increasingly, their work today integrates the two arguments by emphasizing the importance of perceptual regions: regions whose origins are in mental constructs, but whose representations assume a life of their own and thus a form of objective reality. Regionalism may be defined as the ideological form of the regional concept — the belief in the primary importance of region as the organizing principle for the work to be done: cultural study, economic planning, political reform, architectural design — whatever it is that the deflner wants to accomplish. Regionalism originated in the search for a natural social order. A belief in the existence of natural regions and in their importance as the foundation of progressive economic planning drove the activities of John Wesley Powell and other pioneer regionalists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and guided them to their most enduring achievements: Powell's Irrigation Survey of 1890 and the resulting creation of the Bureau of Reclamation in 1906, the Regional Planning Association and the interstate compacts of the 1920s, and of course the Tennessee Valley Authority. A broad overview of regionalism's political achievements leaves two overriding impressions: the swiftness with which the regionalist project collapsed in the years following World War II, and the extent to which regionalist creations such as TVA or the New York-New Jersey Port Authority stand accused today of betraying many of the ideals which animated their founders. It would seem that regionalism as a doctrine was more successful in inspiring the creation of institutions than in guiding them after those institutions matured. Academic regionalists of the early twentieth century did not bend their efforts to the construction of dams or the reshaping of cities, but they too, were reformers in their way, and like watershed and metropolitan regionalists, they founded institutions which outlived their ideology. For in such fields as history, geography, folklore, and sociology, regionalism provided a key impetus to a process which Robert McCaughey has called the "academic enclosure" of disciplines (1984). Among historians, regionalism provided the opportunity and excuse for the enclosure of state and local history, an enterprise whose institutions and concerns were considerably older than academic history departments. By "academic enclosure" McCaughey means both "the more general 6 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �process by which the primary responsibility for the pursuit of learning in America has been transferred from the American intellectual community at large to the universities" and the specific processes by which a given intellectual discipline is transformed into an academic enterprise, with the attendant institutionalization of resources for teaching and research in the discipline and for the regulation of individual academic careers. He deliberately chooses the historic English word "enclosure" for this process, with its connotation of "converting pieces of common land into private property" and with reference to his own field of international studies, reminds us of Adam Smith's dictum that "the advantage of enclosure is greater for pasture than for corn" (McCaughey 1984, xiv-xv). From this standpoint, the significant development in early twentieth century regionalist historiography is the way in which history professors laid claim to the resources—libraries, archives, journals, and tax subventions—which earlier generations of amateur scholars and collectors had founded, and then bent those resources to the promotion of academic research, publications, and to the advancement of academic careers. Bolton's career in Texas and later in California provides a perfect example. Rather than lament the low esteem in which Texas history was held in academic circles, Bolton and his friend Eugene C. Barker worked to give the field a regional framework, renaming the state historical journal "Southwestern" and securing state funds to build up research resources with materials from Mexican archives. While Bolton was unsuccessful in persuading the state historical societies of other southwestern states to pool their resources with those of Texas, he flooded their journals with articles by his graduate students, persuaded ancestor clubs to fund dissertation fellowships, and built a program of regional research around the magnificent collection which the University of California had acquired from the estate of the amateur historian and publisher Hubert Howe Bancroft. While most of his students fanned out across the Borderlands to the region's universities, other Bolton students staffed state historical societies and archives. Leroy R. Hafen, for example, went directly from his studies in Berkeley to become the Historical Society of Colorado's first professional employee; in 1924, arriving in Denver with his family, he first bought a car, then drove out to the campuses at Boulder and Colorado Springs to link up with other "Bolton men from Berkeley" (Hafen 1969, 3). On a comparable scale other Turner students initiated the academic study of state and regional history in the universities of Alabama, Tennessee, Colorado, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oregon, Washington, and West Virginia and staffed midwestern state historical societies such as those of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Turner himself had led the enclosure movement at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and in 1904 mobilized other Volume Three, 1991 7 �midwestern historical society leaders into a committee within the American Historical Association. The blue-blooded historical societies of the Atlantic seaboard states and those of certain midwestern cities kept aloof from this movement, as did a number of state-funded archives and history officials, chiefly in southern states. As with any process of change, there were winners and losers. The state historical societies had threatened to form a rival organization to the AHA in 1890, and a new threat began building early in the new century. The Illinois state historian warned Turner in 1910 of "a growing body of insurgents who will in the course of time make themselves felt" (Alvord 27 June 1910). When the rebellion against the AHA leadership finally broke out in 1916, it was led by southern state historical agency heads and the amateur scholar Frederic Bancroft. Turner sided firmly with the AHA's Ivy League leadership and broke off relations with a former student, Charles Ambler of West Virginia University, who he believed had aided and abetted the revolt (Ambler 1915 and 1916). This pattern explains why so much regionalist history, supposedly conceived in a search for natural regions, actually conformed to existing state lines in framing research designs. To a student shopping for a dissertation topic, Turner advised taking "state politics in a decade .. . the economic and social transformations would serve as foundations for political history and its interpretations ... the general topic of state political history can be used to cast light on the attitude and influence of a section upon general American tendencies" (Turner 1920). When another student, Thomas P. Abernethy, followed this advice, he gave the resulting book a regionalist title—From Frontier to Plantation in Tennessee —only to be disheartened when readers responded to it as Tennessee history pure and simple" (Turner 1926; 1920; Abernethy 1932). "[W]hen one tries to deal with the sections statistically," Turner pointed out to a geographer in 1928, "he is practically forced by the groupings in the Census either to use its Divisions (New England, Middle Atlantic, South Atlantic, etc.) or to attempt to a rearrangement by counties or precincts, which involves work that some future group of investigators may undertake for the whole of our history but which is too big a job for one man" (Turner 1928). The persistence of the states in regional contexts was a problem not only for historians, of course. When Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York addressed a "Round Table on Regionalism" held at the University of Virginia in 1931, he bluntly informed the assembled experts that "I do not know what regionalism means. I do have fairly clear ideas in respect to the relative spheres of governments of states on the one hand and Federal government on the other hand . .." (Roosevelt 1931). In 1944, when interest in regionalism was beginning to wane, the Chapel 8 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Hill sociologist Howard Odum summed up the problem in a letter to Norman Cousins: The ideal regional delineation of the United States would be one in which state lines could be ignored and cultural and natural likenesses could be clustered together with as near perfect homogeneity as possible. In America, however, the states we have with us always" (Odum 1944). There are two obstacles to the growth of Appalachian Studies in this context. One was the fact that Appalachia, unlike the South or the West or New England, could not be defined in terms of boundaries drawn along existing state lines or studied by means of aggregate data or archives collected on this basis. West Virginia was the sole exception, and the founding of the West Virginia and Regional History Collection at Morgantown by Ambler, along with Barnhart's aborted prospectus, testify to the importance of the state framework to the regionalist project. The second obstacle was that many of the earliest proponents of Appalachian regionalism were outside of academia and were neither interested in grafting their ideas onto emerging models of academic professionalism or in a position to do so. Conceptually, the formulations of Appalachian regional identity advanced by Appalachian activists such as Olive Dame Campbell were no less sophisticated than Bolton's Borderlands, but neither the goals nor the resources of such persons matched those of the academic regionalists. Thus, while the 1920s and 1930s were also an era of institution-building for Appalachian specialists—the Council of Southern Mountains, John C. Campbell Folk School, Highlander Folk School, and Southern Highlands Handicraft Guild all date from these years—their efforts paralleled but did not converge with academic regionalists. For example, Lucy Morgan of the Penland Weavers and Potters in North Carolina was in touch with Odum during this period but her purpose—finding support for a "mountain cabin exhibit" for the upcoming Chicago Worlds Fair—did not fit in with the purposes of academic enterprise (Morgan 1932). Consequently, while every strain of regionalism, including metropolitan regionalism and southern and southwestern literary regionalism, was represented at the Charlottesville meeting and at an earlier "Conference on Regional Phenomena" that Odum organized for the Social Science Research Council, no one with specific interests in Appalachia was there. Similarly, when, in the twilight of regionalism in 1949, the leading academic specialists gathered at Madison to discuss the field which had been so richly plowed in the two previous decades, Appalachia was not even mentioned (Jensen 1951). This was too bad, since the Rockefeller Foundation, which had funded many of the regionalist enterprises in other parts of the country, would in the next few years liquidate its program for "regional studies of the North American conti- Volume Three, 1991 9 �nent" and disburse a final round of grants which would ensure prosperity to many of the key institutions and projects that the regionalist scholars had begun.1 We cannot say that Appalachian Studies came away from this banquet merely empty handed; Appalachia had not been invited. In fields such as regional planning, where regionalist experts had attempted to enclose or supersede enterprises based within state government and/or politics, state officials led a determined and successful counterattack during the 1940s, beginning with the Pick-Sloan Act, which squelched the threat of a TVA-style regional agency in the Missouri Valley. Thus, when federal officials returned to regionalism during the 1960s, the agency which resulted—the Appalachian Regional Commission—was constructed so that its powers were strictly subordinated to the statehouses involved. But this is another story. I mention it here only because of the contrast with academic regionalism's generally successful mobilization of resources which had earlier been the preserve of state-based elites. When state and local history revived again during the 1960s and 1970s, under the rubric of regional studies, Appalachia was at long last ready to dine. I will not attempt here to recount the emergence of Appalachian Studies as an academic field, with the requisite conferences and symposia, journals, centers, programs, and other hallmarks of academic enclosure. Most of the people attending the Appalachian Studies Conference are probably better equipped than I to tell this story, although I will say that I hope that when it is told, due concern will be taken to solicit the views of Appalachianists who were and remained outside the academic fold during this period. I do want to say something about regional studies generally, however. In contrast to regionalism, regional studies entailed no implied or explicit attempt to create grand syntheses. It was a movement of discrete and usually unconnected projects, and to the extent that the movement developed theoretical concerns at all, these derived from the "new" social history and the community-action orientation of scholars influenced by the civil rights movement and the New Left.2 Regional studies flourished during this period for several reasons, I believe. There was, first of all, the impetus toward a new social history, whose research strategies necessarily required research at the local, regional, or other subnational level. During the 1930s, regionalism had flourished in part as an alternative to nationalism; a comparable impulse promoted regional studies in the guise of social studies during the Vietnam War. But there was also the impetus given by two patriotic celebrations, the Civil War Centennial and the American Revolution Bicentennial, an impetus born less of enthusiasm for flag waving as of 10 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �an abundance of state and federal funds which could be directed to regional research. The emergence of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) played an important role in this florescence as well. From 1974 on, NEH appealed specifically for proposals in regional studies, and this drive intensified during the Carter administration when the distributionist potential inherent in a regional-studies grant program assuaged agency concern over academic elitism. What the Carter people did not realize, however, and here I speak as the administrator of the regional studies program in the years between 1980 and 1983, was that an academic elite had already captured much of the program's budget for studies in social science or social history. NEH was not the only impetus for regional studies, however. In the 1940s a new generation of academically-trained state archivists and state historical society professionals broke away from the American Historical Association to form the Society of American Archivists and the America Association for State and Local History. The American Revolution Bicentennial gave a tremendous boost to historic preservation on the local level. The rapid expansion of the Smithsonian Institution, and the museum field generally, created both opportunities and models for yet another approach to regional studies. The maturing of these trends during the 1970s, fostered by federal and state humanities grant funds, promoted a new level of professionalism and sophistication in nonacademic programming (which academics moved swiftly to enclose under the rubric of "public history"). One measure of the contrasting impact of regionalism and regional studies is suggested by Carl Abbott's recent survey of course offerings and professional specializations among historians in the regional fields. His findings suggest that academic course offerings and text books are still largely a product of the regionalist era and that the predominant regional fields are still the state-based regional constructs—the South, the West, the Southwest—the teaching and research specializations created by Turner, Bolton, Walter Prescott Webb, U.B. Phillips, and their students. Abbott found much smaller configurations of resources devoted to the Pacific Northwest, the Great Plains, and New England, but Appalachia showed up in his survey only in the "other" category, along with the Ozarks, the Tennessee Valley, French Louisiana and the Sun Belt (Abbott 1990, 4-8). A survey of social history journals, however, shows that Appalachian Studies benefited from the expanded scope of regional studies projects during the 1970s and 1980s. Henry J. Weaver, a research assistant at Appalachian State University's Center for Appalachian Studies, surveyed all articles published in five journals between their founding and their fall issues of 1989. He found that 2,230 of the 5,466 articles published in the Journal of Social History, Journal of Volume Three, 1991 11 �Interdisciplinary History, Signs, Women's Studies Quarterly, and International Journal of Women's Studies were place-specific, that is focused on some locality, state, or region of sub-national scope. Of these, 151 dealt with a New England place, 69 with an Appalachian. If we limit the count only to Southern Appalachia, the number falls to 28. If we eliminate the feminist journals and count only articles in Social History and Interdisciplinary History, Southern Appalachia's share of place-specific articles remains roughly proportionate: 2 percent of the overall total, roughly half as many articles as those on New England. This may seem a modest gain, but when we consider that many of these article writers— Dwight Billings, Gordon McKinney, John Hevener, Archie Green, Ron Eller, David Corbin, Ron Lewis—were also among those who brought John Barnhart's prospectus to life with a rich array of monographs during the last decade, it seems reasonable to conclude that—whatever may have been the balance of corn and pasture for eighteenth century English agriculture—the academic enclosure of Appalachian Studies has produced plenty of both. And the monographs keep coming—Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion (1986), Altina Waller, Feud (1988), and John C. Inscoe, Mountain Masters (1989)—to name only a few of the social history monographs which have appeared in the last few years. Anyone familiar with Appalachian history knows that the region is easier to define as a periphery of someplace else—as "frontier," "back country," "backyard," or "colony." Appalachia is one of the oldest geographic terms in North American history and it still means some place or other "out there." But a new historiographical movement, which I shall call "neo-regionalism," has emerged in recent years which actually defines Appalachia not as periphery but core. The core of what? That is the question which connects my topic with the general theme of the 1990 conference. Neo-regionalism makes Appalachia the heartland of an expanded Upper or Upland South that in its grandest formulation extends across the continent from Philadelphia to California. Neo-regionalists, like their Turnerian counterparts in the first half of the century, attempt syntheses and erect theoretical frameworks which connect regionally-distributed phenomena to national or even global concerns. But neo-regionalists do not confine their research to resourcebased institutions such as plantation agriculture, ranching, or mining, and they extend their gaze far beyond those state and local political institutions and cadres which focus upon state capitals. They frame cultural studies in terms of anthropological definitions of culture and search out geographic patterns that reflect actual human behavior. The result is an emerging regionally-defined, ethnoculturally focused synthesis that is potentially quite breathtaking in scope. Three magisterial works of synthesis—one completed, two still under 12 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �way—introduced us to the neo-regionalist project in the late 1980s: Donald W. Meinig, Atlantic America (1986) and David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed (1989), both of which are presented as the first volumes in multi-volume analyses of the roots of American culture, and The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (1989). The Encyclopedia is not a synthesis as such, but it serves the same function in an era of pluralist scholarship. All three works promise to have a great impact on the understanding of southern history, not the least of which effect erects Appalachia as a region of the South, but not contained by it. Fischer explicitly, and the Encyclopedia by implication, raises Appalachia to a position of parity with the plantation South. It becomes an equivalent region, intermingled with the traditional South at its edges but something quite distinct at its core. Meinig doesn't mention Appalachia, but in many ways his book is the most promising, if he applies to inland regions the same scope and sophistication he brings to his treatment of the Atlantic littorals which formed the initial theatres of New World history. Most importantly, while Fischer and the encyclopedists are guided by the same nation- and state-based boundaries that frame our polities and our course offerings, Meinig approaches America from the cartographic vantage points of the ocean currents and winds which guided Columbus, and the island stepping-stones, estuaries, and river corridors which guided the European approaches to North America. This approach, for one thing, clarifies the history of New World slavery in ways that all historians can profit from. As surely as Hurricane Hugo did last Fall, he lays bare the historical and cultural patterns linking the West Indies to the Carolina coast, and renders intelligible the cultural patterning which allowed Spanish Florida, French Louisiana, and Barbadian South Carolina at once to stand apart and become an integral part of the plantationderived southern culture that borders Appalachia on the east and south. Fischer makes Appalachia central to his thesis: that American culture in both its historic and modern regional pattemings originates in four regional cultures of Britain. Appalachia's hearth he defines as "North British," as much English and Scots as the traditional ScotchIrish, and its North American domain spreads out from the immigrant port-of-entry in Pennsylvania to the original focus in the colonial backcountry and from there across a broad arc of the upper South through the Ozarks, across north Texas, southeast Oklahoma, and east New Mexico to the southwest, where it peters out in the dusty streets of Bakersfield (Fischer 1989). Albion's Seed runs to 946 pages and even the helpful precis, which Fischer provides to conference discussants too busy to read the book, is 65 pages long. Thus, a brief summary of the work risks caricaturing it. Volume Three, 1991 13 �(The same holds true for the Encyclopedia, but no one expects it to be summarized.) Fischer attributes to regional variation everything interesting in American cultural history from New England baked beans to the St. Andrew's cross on the Confederate battle flag. Revisionists and dissertation writers are going to have a field day picking holes in this thesis. But in its breadth and ambition, the book cannot help but inspire respect. Here I want to emphasize one aspect of the book which will appall some Appalachian specialists and delight others: its failure to define Appalachia with anything resembling precision. Throughout the book, Fischer uses the term Appalachia, southern highlands, and backcountry interchangeably. The same is true of many entries in the Encyclopedia, where Appalachia appears interchangeably with the Upper South.3 Is this casual approach to regional boundaries a breakthrough or a defect? I think we can expect an abundant discourse on this subject as Albion's Seed becomes more widely known. Meanwhile, there are two recent monographs which offer support to Fischer's thesis: Rodger Cunningham, Apples on the Flood (1987) and James N. Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (1989). Cunningham engages in ethnocultural regionalizing on a scale equal to Meinig and Fischer, although with considerably less attention to specifics. He avoids the Celticism of Grady McWhiney but, nevertheless, locates the origin of Appalachian culture in a pre-Anglophone, Atlantic-oriented Britain whose Welsh, Scottish, and Irish remnants in the eighteenth century foreshadow both in their cultural patterns and economic activities the pre-industrial society of nineteenth-century Appalachia. The region's domain in America is the Upland South, the arc of hilly land extending westward from the Appalachian mountain system proper through the lower Ohio Valley into the Ozarks and north Texas. He even gives this region a name, Suala, borrowed from the reports of the De Soto expedition and, thus, a fitting substitute for the more limiting Appalachia which derives from the Spanish march through the Blue Ridge (Cunningham 1987, 78-101). Gregory's book seconds this linkage of southeastern and southwestern uplands. He sees the mass movement of "Okies" from the Ozarks and nearby districts to California as the western prong of a two-part movement. The other prong carried migrants from the Appalachian region northward, to the hillbilly enclaves of the urban-industrial Midwest. Like the movement of black Texans or Louisianians to Los Angeles, or black Mississippians to Chicago, or black Carolinians to New York, the Okie and hillbilly exoduses were of a piece (Gregory 1989, xviixviii; 258, n. 6). Gregory reinforces this thesis in his choice of institu- 14 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �tional foci for his study of Okie culture: Protestant fundamentalism, country music, "plain folk Americanism," the problems of labor organizing among people whose culture resists bureaucratic mobilization. In other words, he chooses topical staples from the interdisciplinary Appalachian Studies cupboard. Yet another form of neo-regionalism is flourishing under the rubric of "environmental history." Practitioners in this new field have initially focused upon issues of environmental policy and ecological beliefs and have generally accepted the regional frameworks—South, West, and New England—institutionalized during the regionalist era. But in their concern with "understanding how humans have been affected by [and have affected] their natural environment through time," environmental historians are also hearing calls to focus more directly on particular places at particular times and thus to undertake local and regional studies. It seems likely that Appalachia will be one of these places, and that the neo-regionalist interest in understanding cultural forces will shape future research into the successive transformations of Appalachian environments (Worster 1990, 1089). If I may repeat my caveat about the dangers of summary becoming caricature, it seems clear that the neo-regionalist framework considerably broadens the scope of Appalachian Studies, but at what price? Certainly anyone who accepts the geographic framework offered by Fischer, Cunningham, and Gregory has to think long and hard about what to call it. Appalachia seems rather a misnomer for a region whose outliers extend around the compass from Bakersfield to Detroit to Philadelphia. On the other hand, if we slip back to the familiar geographic usage of core and periphery, the traditional, if slippery, boundaries of Appalachia—if we include the Carolina Piedmont and the Ridgeand-Valley province of Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee—fit rather neatly as the core of this more broadly defined region. In either case, the neo-regionalists have given us lots to think about, lots to write and talk about, plenty of ground to enclose, plenty of corn to grind. Notes 1 The history and operations of the foundation's regional program may be followed in the foundation's records in the Rockefeller Archives Center, Tarrytown, New York, especially Series 200 of Record Group 1.1, boxes 274-76 3 Unless otherwise cited, my discussion of regional studies in these pages are less the result of formal study than of personal observation from the vantage point of my position as an administrator in the National Endowment for the Volume Three, 1991 15 �Humanities during the period 1979-1986 (which was preceded by a two-year term on the council of the Humanities Foundation of West Virginia). 8 Eg. Albion's Seed, 635, 638-42, 650-51, 652, 655,664-68,677,691-93,699, 701, 714, 716-17, 729-31, 735-36, 749, 759-63, 765-69, 778, 781; Encyclopedia, 243,374, 414-15,534-39, 546, 548-49, 550-54, 988. Works Cited Abbott, Carl. 1990. "Tracing the Trends in U.S. Regional History." Perspectives: American Historical Association Newsletter 28 (2): 4-8. Abernethy to Turner. 10 March 1932. Frederick Jackson Turner Papers, Henry E. Huntington Library. Alvord to Turner. 27 June 1910. Turner Papers, Box 12. Ambler-Turner Correspondence. August 1915. Turner Papers, Box 25. . January 1916. Turner Papers, Box 26. Barnhart, John D. March 1931. "Recent Industrial Growth and Politics in the Southern Appalachian Region." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 17: 581-94. Bolton to Turner. 15 September 1926. Turner Papers, Box 35A. Cunningham, Rodger. 1987. Apples on the Flood. Rnoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Fischer, David Hackett. 1989. Albion's Seed. New York: Oxford University Press. Gregory, James N. 1989. American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California. New York: Oxford University Press. Hafen, Leroy R. 1969. "My First Months as Colorado's State Historian." Colorado Magazine 46 (3): 3. Inscoe, John C. 1989. Mountain Masters. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Jensen, Merrill, ed. 1951. Regionalism in America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 16 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �McCaughey, Robert A. 1984. International Studies and Academic Enterprise. A Chapter in the Enclosure of American Learning. New York: Columbia University Press. Meinig, Donald W. 1986. Atlantic America. New Haven: Yale University Press. Morgan to Odum. 25 May 1932. Howard W. Odum Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Box 12, Folder 256. Mondale, Clarence and Michael Steiner. 1988. Regions and Regionalism in the United States: A Source Book for the Humanities and Social Sciences. New York: Garland Publishers, Inc. Odum to Cousins. 14 July 1944. Odum Papers, Box 26, Folder 559. Odum, Howard and Harry Estill Moore. 1938. American Regionalism. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Odum to Morgan. 3 June 1932. Odum Papers, Box 14, Folder 283. Roosevelt, Franklin D. 6 July 1931. "Address by Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York on STATE PLANNING." Mimeograph copy in Odum Papers, Box 12, Folder 255. Slaughter, Thomas P. 1986. The Whiskey Rebellion. New York: Oxford University Press. Turner to Whittaker. 23 April 1920. Turner Papers. Turner to Abernethy. 16 July 1920. Turner Papers, Box 30. Turner to Abernethy. 12 March 1926. Turner Papers, Box 35. Turner to Paullin. 20 November 1928. Turner Papers. Waller, Altina 1988. Feud. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Wilson, Charles Reagan and William Ferris, eds. 1989. The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Worster, Donald. 1990. "Transformations of the Earth: Toward an Agroecological Perspective in History," in "A Round Table: Environmental History." Journal of American History, 76 (4): 1089. John Alexander Williams is Director of the Center for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina. Volume Three, 1991 17 �Southern Appalachia and the South: A Region Within a Section Richard B. Drake A key question for Appalachian history prior to the Civil War is, "How did the Appalachian South relate to the larger South?" Thus far, quite different answers have been given to this question. Some important historians have taken the position that the two were closely related. Champions of southern nationalism from Jefferson Davis to E. Merton Coulter and Francis B. Simkins1 have presented their studies as if rather total southern unity were a given fact. Also, two recent studies have taken this position. Most impressive is John Inscoe, Mountain Masters (1989), a study of slavery, slaveholders, and secession in western North Carolina. Inscoe builds an impressive argument that the connections between the people in the mountains of North Carolina and the people in the rest of the South were very close. When secession came, the region for the most part, (he says) supported the Confederacy. The other study, Grady McWhiney, Cracker Culture (1988), makes the argument that the South and the mountain South were both essentially Celtic, as opposed to the Anglo-Saxon North. In fact, it is McWhiney"s view that the mountain South was more "Celtic" than the rest of the South, thus presumably the most "Southern" part of the "South." On the other hand, there have been important historians who held that Appalachia was not an integral part of the South. This position was taken first by abolitionists before and during the Civil War who saw Southern Appalachia as an ally against "Slaveocrats." Berea College's founders clearly took this view, as have pro-Union apologists such as William G. Brownlow (1862), and important Afro-American historians such as Carter G. Woodson (1916). Later historians, such as Allan 18 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Nevins (1950), have shared this view.2 But, perhaps the most significant of the recent historians who share this perspective are Carl Degler (1974), who saw a consistent "Other South" since the early nineteenth century, and Stephen Hahn (1983), who found the roots of Georgia populism in the long standing differences between downstate planners and mountain yeoman farmers. My argument belongs in this second perspective, and will follow two lines of enquiry thus far not carefully explored. First, I will look at the thinking of Howard W. Odum as he defined the terms, "sectionalism" and "regionalism," to see how his thinking applies both to southern history and Appalachian history. Then I will explore two varieties of the agricultural experience which emerged in the Old South. Usually writers who have evaluated the relationship between the South and the Appalachian South have followed one or more of the following lines of enquiry: 1) the conflicting responses to the institution of slavery within the Appalachian South and the Old South, and the persisting antislavery sentiment in Appalachia;3 2) the substantially different political agendas, especially as reflected in separatist sentiment in trans-Allegheny Virginia and in East Tennessee;4 or 3) the opposition to the Confederate cause in large parts of the Appalachian South. Promising as these lines of enquiry are, I will confine myself here to 1) Odum's analysis of Sectionalism and Regionalism; and 2) two separate agricultural traditions of the Old South. Howard W. Odum's Analysis: Howard Odum fifty years ago developed the concept of "regionalism," which he carefully distinguished from "sectionalism." The South's Civil War experience and Frederick Jackson Turner's 1928 book, The Sections in American History, led Odum to conclude that "sectionalism," though understandable in a nation as large and diverse as the United States, was potentially divisive and created parochializing, even separatist loyalties. Regionalism, on the other hand, Odum saw as essentially positive and in no way subversive of national interests. Regionalism as Odum saw it, sought its own economic development, and was concerned with its own traditions and the lives of its own people. But it always sought these ends within the larger and more important national loyalty (1936, 245-61). Historian George B. Tindall suggests that in Odum's time the South never realized the "regionalism" that he desired (1976, 100-15). No specific organization seeking the South's well being and development within the nation ever emerged. Indeed, single interest agencies emerged: the Southern Regional Council, which was concerned about Volume Three, 1991 19 �the South's race relations; the Southern Governor's Conference, which was concerned with governmental cooperation; the Southern Historical Association which wished to strengthen the region's historical scholarship, etc. But, Tindall says, no larger spokesman agency for the South's total interest ever emerged. Of course, the Southern Confederacy had attempted this, but with its sectionalism it surely was contrary to the general national interest. In my view, Appalachia has developed the sense of region in the way Tindall suggests that Odum used the term. Various agencies have developed in Appalachia that have pretty much become "regional spokesmen". Two government-supported regional development efforts have emerged within the region—the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Appalachian Regional Commission. Yet neither has become a true regional agency for Appalachia, except as they relate to Odum's expectation that a regional focus is ideal for planning purposes. The TVA has drawn its principal leadership from professionals and politicians outside the region. Furthermore, TVA's concern has been narrowed toward becoming a utility company for a region not as large as the whole of Appalachia. The TVA's policies sometimes have worked against the interests of other significant areas within Appalachia. The Appalachian Regional Commission has not drawn its leadership from the area itself. Its directors and staff, except at first, have not been Appalachians. It, for the most part, has been an "outside" uplift agency with an "outside" agenda.5 In 1913, however, a broad regional spokesman/program agency developed with the Council of the Southern Mountains. Begun as an annual meeting of missionaries, and called initially the Conference of Southern Mountain Workers, the CSM developed as a broad umbrella agency attracting any and all who had an interest in Appalachia. After the CSM was "captured" by aggressive, reform-oriented change agents in the 1970s, the Appalachian Studies Conference emerged to provide a broad platform for those interested in the region, thus providing a place where a regional agenda can be developed. Regionalism, in terms that Odum could understand, has been achieved to a remarkable degree in Appalachia, perhaps more fully than in any other area within the United States. To be fair to Odum, however, he never considered "the South" as a single region. Again and again, he made the point that the South was many regions. He identified twenty-seven "Southern Regions," five of which were in the Appalachian South as usually defined.6 Odum never gave a precise definition of "region," except to indicate that it had heavy geographic and cultural components. He was almost mystical in his insistence that regionalism was the best mechanism under which to work out the demands of local liberty, economic develop- 20 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �ment, and national order. Listen to his words: The earlier assumption that regionalism was only a glorified localism now appears completely outdated. Regionalism is the key to attaining balanced democracy and the redistribution of wealth .. ."(Odum 1936, 156-59). In the mid-1980s, even as President Roosevelt saw the South as a problem-prone area in a nation that was one-third ill-housed and ill-fed, Odum noted that "the rest of the nation is tired of being told that it must do missionary work in the South. The South is certainly no more enthusiastic. The middle ground of cooperative effort must be found through the regional way" (249). Odum was born less than twenty years after the Civil War ended and in his native Georgia was filled with stories of the Lost Cause as he grew up. As a Southerner he came to be critical of the sectionalism that had led to secession. He said: There are fundamental distinctions between sectionalism . . . and the developing cultural and administrative regionalism of the United States of the 1930s . . . . Regionalism envisions the nation first, making the national culture and welfare the final arbiter . . . while the section thinks of the nation in terms of itself. (253-54) Four other points Odum found differentiated sectionalism from regionalism: 1) "sectionalism emphasizes political boundaries and state boundaries" while "regionalism connotes component. . . parts of the larger national picture;" 2) "sectionalism may be likened unto cultural inbreeding in which only home stocks are advocated .. . whereas regionalism is line breeding, in which regional cultures contributed the base but not the whole;" 3) "regionalism by its very nature . . . implies more of the designed and planned society," whereas "sectionalism would abound in conflict" among interests; and 4) as a southerner he noted that "one of the most critical aspects of sectionalism is. . . .its counterpoint in potential.. . .as inevitable coercive federalism" (257-59). Odum did not see the South in the 1930s as a section. Rather, the South was by then a set of regions. But, historically, the South had been a section, as New England had been, and a tragic confrontation had been the result. More research and thought needs to go into probing the question, "but had an Appalachian regionalism developed in the pre-Civil War period?" The Tindall-inspired line of enquiry followed above notes that the "true regionalism" of Appalachia applies to twentieth-century Appalachia. Though there was a clear "backwoods" awareness in the nineteenth century, this "backwoods" awareness may not be related closely Volume Three, 1991 21 �enough to a "regional" awareness for Odum to have recognized it. The Two Agricultural Systems of the South: Now for the second line of enquiry: the development of separate agricultural systems in the antebellum South. One of the important new ways of life to emerge in early modern Europe was the approach to farming by the "English Country Gentleman." As the feudal manor disintegrated, the new leaders of agriculture developed methods quite in harmony with the rising mercantile economy and the emerging national monarchies. This "scientific agriculture of scale" pioneered new and more efficient methods, practices and technologies. Those in control of this approach to agriculture in England pressured Parliment, especially after the Settlement of 1688, to release the former common lands to them in a series of enclosure acts. Their argument was to provide "a more efficient and productive agriculture of scale," a prejudice that persists today in modern agricultural policies. The country gentleman approach to agriculture was mercantile. He operated as an agricultural industrialist, an "agribusinessman" if you please, concerned with markets, prices, and profits. And as more and more land came under his control through inheritance, purchase, speculation, and through enclosure by Parlimentary act (or was it corruption?), this class of agriculturalists and its way of life rose to great significance. In England, this class was most prominent in the eighteenth century. In the New World, too, this group, or rather the group in America that attempted to recreate the country gentleman way of life, became powerful as well. In America, the country gentleman ideal was approximated most closely in the Old South. The plantation way of life took this ideal as its model. The American plantation was essentially a mercantile enterprise seeking to produce crops for a market. To provide labor for its enterprise at the cheapest level possible, Negro chattel slavery was the answer arrived at. This European-derived agriculture had much persistence and attractiveness in the New World during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. There was, however, another rural way of life born during the decay of the Medieval world which emerged with some strength and attractiveness in Europe, but which developed immense significance and appeal in America. It had its largest role in the late eighteenth century, but during the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it has played a defining role. I speak of the "Yeoman" way of life. Yeomanry was a very different approach to both farming and the land from that of the mercantile country gentleman. Yeomanry had its 22 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �roots in medieval peasant culture. Land in medieval times had been the principal source of wealth. It appeared, in fact, to be the basis of life itself. The peasant who had his place defined only in relation to the land he farmed, of course desired freedom from that bondage. But what good was freedom without land? Thus, the ideal emerged: land was the basis of well-being. It was place and home, that part of "Nature" that allowed one to survive. Land was, therefore, not a commodity to be bought and sold, but rather it was that which gave meaning and security to life.12 Yeomanry in England had another meaning too. In fact the earliest use of the term had a military meaning. The "sturdy yeoman" or "yeaman" was an infantry/archer used by Edward I, Edward III, and Henry II, in Scotland and France. The yeomen unhorsed the knights and nobility in the military revolution of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As the poem, "The Yeoman of Kent" suggests: At Cressy and Pointers of old His ancestors were bowmen bold; Were good yew bows and sinew strong Drew arrows of a cloth - yard long; For England's glory, strew'd the plain With barons, counts and princes slain. (Campbell 1942, 6) The yeoman was not a permanent soldier like the knight. Like Cincinnatus of old, once the war was over the yeoman returned to his agricultural pursuits. He was drafted by a royal levy, and once the danger was passed he returned to his acres. Government was something remote in normal times, but was something to be protected in times of crisis. So, to the yeoman who bitterly resented the weight of peacetime taxes and dues from local and national authorities, the best government was the least government. Yeomanry, though born in Europe, developed particularly strongly in the New World. Europe found little place for the yeoman, for land there was taken over by enclosure and purchase by the Country Gentleman in England, or the Junker class of Germany. Once religious compromise and a political "settlement" was reached in Germany in 1648 and in England in 1688, the chances of acquiring land in Europe became more and more remote. Those aspiring to yeomanry were driven by the tens of thousands to Britain's North American colonies in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in quest of land. Most of the 500 thousand or so Scotch-Irish and Germans who migrated to North America between 1688 and 1775 were aspiring yeomen who found their chances for acquiring land much greater in America than in Europe. The yeoman/farmer, backwoods/pioneer was an ideal settler. As England built her colonies, her first settlements were along the coasts Volume Three, 1991 23 �where communication could be kept more easily with the mother country. But a backwoods developed quickly, beginning an elongated struggle with the American Indians. In this struggle, the pioneer/settler, an independent, self-sufficient yeoman, was a major weapon in the ultimate Euro-American triumph. More significant even than weaponry, the settler defeated the Indian as he moved relentlessly into and across the Indian's land, preempting it farm by farm. The yeoman was particularly well suited to this task of continental conquest. His unit of cooperation was his own family and the informal neighborhood. The cost to establish him in the "wilderness" was minimal, for the yeoman desired only the land, which could be graciously granted. And he aspired only to support himself on that land in a selfsufficient way. In a time of the technology of the musket, the military tradition of self-defense was an integral and effective part of the ideal. The myths sung at Crecy fit nicely with the tradition of the Minute Men or the Heroes of King's Mountain, and of Sergeant York. When the American Revolution was fought and the Republic created, it seemed to some as though a yeoman's utopia had been established. Thomas Jefferson, the nation's principal spokesman for that period, voiced this hope when he wrote in 1785: Those who labor the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people . . . Corruption of morals . . . is the mark of those, who, not looking up to heaven, to their own soild and industry, as does the husbandman [yeoman]. .. depend for it on casualties and caprice of customers. Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the design of ambition . . . [Wlhile we have land to labor then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a work-bench, or twirling distaff. (Foner 1944, 161-62) The yeoman made the ideal citizen, it appeared. He made no demands upon government, and was willing to protect it in military crisis. And in return all the yeoman asked was to be let alone on his acres to make his own way in a self-sufficient manner. His land would provide for his needs. This type of yeoman/agriculture represents no early stage on its way to a "more mature" mercantile style of agriculture. Unlike Frederick Jackson Turner's analysis of the stages of the Midwest Frontier, which suggested a "primitive stage of self-sufficiency" which preceded a later, more advanced capitalistic agriculture, yeomanry represented a quite different approach to agriculture. Its purpose was to make a life on the land and was an end in itself. It was not a stage toward any other type of agriculture. 24 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �What a different agricultural way of life yeomanry represented when contrasted with the Squirarchial, plantation agriculture in the Old South. That style of agriculture that John S. Otto has called, "the plain folk agriculture of the Old South," was essentially yeomanesque. Otto suggests that this kind of agriculture was characterized by 1) a grazing, farmland economy with animals grazing on an "open range" in the forests, 2) a life where families lived in dispersed rural neighborhoods, with 3) occasional county-seat towns serving as centers of community concern and recreation. This was the style of agriculture, Otto says, that continued to dominate the poorer areas from Delaware to east Texas until the end of the nineteenth century (Otto 1985, 234-35). Yeomanry has had a remarkable persistence in Southern life, particularly in southern Appalachia until well past the middle part of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century it posed a significant challenge to the type of agriculture and way of life that developed in the Old South's plantation areas. The squire and the yeoman were different agriculturalists, a difference that James Kirke Paulding noticed as early as 1817. It is the old story of Mrs. Farmer Ashfield and Mrs. Planter Grundy. Mrs. Ashfield leads the tone among the Cohees (a term for those west of the Blue Ridge) squints at Mrs. Grundy, a fine lady of the Tuckahoes (those east of the Blue Ridge in Virginia). [M]y lady gives herself airs, and wears such mighty fine clothes, when she goes to the Springs. Now Goody (term for the yeoman's wife) Ashfield, for her part, don't care for fine things. As to Squire Grundy and Farmer Ashfield, they have certain snug matters of dispute to themselves. The Farmer insists upon it, at town-meetings and elections, that the Squire enjoys greater political privileges than he does, that the country of Tuckahoe has more representatives in the legislature than it ought to have, that all Squire Grundy's "negroes" are counted for voting. (Higgs and Manning 1975, 64-66) It was a difference within the South that persisted through the Civil War, and has persisted even on into the twentieth century. Notes 1 See Jefferson Davis (1881, 2 vols.), E. Merton Coulter (1950), and Francis B. Simkins(1956). 2 Allan Nevins (1950,17-19, 73-6, 90,103, 322-26). 3 These are the arguments found in Carter G. Woodson (1916) and Richard B. Drake (1986, 25-33). Volume Three, 1991 25 �4 These are the arguments made by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker (1942, 167-180), Charles H. Ambler and Festus P. Summers (1958), Otis K. Rice (1985), and William G. Brownlow (1862). 5 For treatments of the TVA and the ARC see James Branscome (1977), Donald N. Rothblatt (1971), and David E. Whisnant (1980) and (1985). * Good discussions of English yeomanry are in Asa Briggs (1983) and Wallace Notestein (1962). Works Cited Ambler, Charles H. and Festus P. Summers. 1958. West Virginia: the Mountain State. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Branscome, James. 1977. The Federal Government in Appalachia. New York: Field Foundation. Briggs, Asa. 1983. A Social History of England. New York: Viking. Brownlow, William G. 1862 . Sketches of the Rise, Progress and Decline of Secession, with a Narrative of Personal Adventures among the Rebels. Phildelphia: George W. ChildCampbell, Mildred L. 1942. The English Yeoman Under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts. New Haven: Yale. Coulter, E. Merton. 1950. The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Davis, Jefferson. 1881. The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. New York: Appleton. Degler, Carl N. 1974. The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Harper and Row. Drake, Richard B. 1986. "Slavery and Antislavery in Appalachia." Appalachian Heritage 14 (Winter): 25-33. Foner, Philip S, ed. 1944. "Notes on Virginia (1781-1785), Quiery XDL" Basic Writings of Thomas Jefferson, New York: Wiley. Hahn, Stephen. 1983. Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and The Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890. New York: Oxford. Higgs, Robert J. and Ambrose N. Manning, ed. 1975. Voices from the Hills. New York: Unger. 26 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Inscoe, John C. 1989. Mountain Masters, Slavery and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. McWhiney, Grady. 1988. Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Kevins, Allan. 1950. The Emergence of Lincoln: Prologue to the Civil War, 1859-1861. New York: Scribners. Notestein, Wallace. 1962. The English People on the Eve of Colonization, 1603-1630. New York: Harper & Row. Odum, Howard W. 1936. Southern Regions of the United States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Otto, John Solomon. 1985. "Reconsidering the Southern Hillbilly: Appalachia and the Ozarks." Appalachian Journal 12.(Summer): 324-32. Rice, Otis K. 1985. West Virginia: A History. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Rothblatt, Donald N. 1971. Regional Planning: The Appalachian Experience. Lexington, Massachusetts: Heath. Simkins, Francis B. 1956. A History of the South. New York: Knopf. Tindall, George B. 1976. The Ethnic Southerners. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson. 1942. The Old South: The Founding of American Civilization. New York: Scribners. Whisnant, David E. 1980. Modernizing the Mountaineer: People, Power and Planning. New York: Burt Franklin. . 1985. Appalachia, Twenty Years of Progress. Washington: Appalachian Regional Commission. Woodson, Carter G. 1916. "Freedom and Slavery in Appalachia." Journal of Negro History 1 (April). Richard Drake is Julian-Van Dusen Professor of American History at Berea College, Berea, Kentucky. Volume Three, 1991 27 �Hegemony, Alienation and Identity Reformulation: Further Thoughts on a Comparative Approach to Appalachian Studies Richard Blaustein When the sociologist John Shelton Reed stated that "Appalachia has always been the South's South" (Reed 1986, 42), he deftly pinpointed a key feature of the Appalachian dilemma: marginality. Appalachia as a region is marginal to the official centers of political, economic, and cultural power in the southern states just as the South as a region is peripheral to the core of official power in the United States as a nation-state. In both cases we can observe ambiguous identity of peripheral regions with a more inclusive official sociopolitical establishment; conflicting tendencies towards acceptance or rejection of the hegemony, that is to say, the authority and legitimacy of a dominant elite which establishes cultural standards for society as a whole. Culturally speaking, there is no such thing as the "Solid South." Though John Shelton Reed is careful to indicate the limitations of the survey data he presents in Southerners: The Social Psychology of Regionalism, it would appear that people who were born and raised in the Border States are much less likely to identify themselves as Southerners (42 percent) than people from the Deep South (87 percent) (1983, 13). Despite John Inscoe's recent study of Confederate loyalism in Western 28 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �North Carolina, and Tom Burton's earlier research on Confederate Home Guards in Watauga County, it would be going too far to say that Upland southerners have uniformly identified with the South; in Reed's North Carolina survey, he found that people who disassociated themselves from southern identity came from all age groups, all social classes and both sexes, but geographically they were disproportionately concentrated in mountain and hill areas in the western and north central sections of the state which were centers of strong Union sentiment during the Civil War (1983, 24). Recent studies of Appalachian self-identity by Susan Keefe (1989) and Philip Obermiller (1987) actually suggest that many southern mountaineers resist any sort of regional or sectional labeling, and mainly to avoid stigmatization. Regardless of all of the other ethnic and racial pride movements which have taken place in the United States since the early sixties, low-status marginal southern white social types like hillbillies, crackers, and rednecks are still fair game for stereotypic put-downs: "Just as rednecks seem to be the last identifiably ethnic villains, so hillbillies appear to be the last acceptable ethnic fools" (Reed 1986, 43). As Ross Spears has graphically illustrated in Long Shadows, his documentary film on the enduring psychic effects of the American Civil War, regional and sectional biases are still very much alive in the United States; to quote John Shelton Reed again, "As long as nonsoutherners think of southerners as different, southerners will be forced to think in these terms" (1983, 110). Throughout the modern world, the vitality of regionalism, nationalism, religious, and ethnic separatism has defied the predictions of liberals and rationalists who believed that the progress of science and industry would inexorably result in homogeneous mass cultures and classless societies. Instead, the reverse seems to be happening. In capitalist and socialist nation-states alike, peripheral subject minorities are challenging the hegemony of elite establishments. The melting pot is melting, the iron curtain is rusting, the domino theory has fallen on its face, while national, regional, ethnic, and religious affiliations and animosities have proven to be stubbornly persistent. Many contemporary historians and social theorists are now convinced of the inadequacy of assimilation and mass culture theories. In their place, we are witnessing the ascendancy of models of social and cultural development founded upon the realization that ethnic, regional, and national cultures are surprisingly resilient and extremely resistant to assimilation. In recent years, theories positing the persistence of British regional cultures in the New World have gained currency in Appalachian Studies and related branches of American social history. In part, this could be a response by British-American intellectuals to the assertion of cultural continuity by other ethnic and racial groups. If Alex Haley of Henning, Volume Three, 1991 29 �Tennessee, can trace his ancestor Kuntu Kinte to the village of Juffure in Gambia, and if art historian Robert Farris Thompson can conclusively demonstrate the continuity of specific West and Central African graphic and musical motifs in African-American folk art, (1984), is it too farfetched to propose that British-American regional subcultures might be equally resilient? Though new regionalists as philosophically disparate as Rodger Cunningham, Grady McWhiney, and David Hackett Fischer concur that British regional subcultures have been preserved essentially intact in America, they are otherwise in far from perfect accord regarding specific historical and ethnological details. In the 1990 Winter edition of the Appalachian Journal, Cunningham has recently concluded that McWhiney's notion of Celtic hegemony in the American South as presented in Cracker Culture (1988) is not only simplistic but also accepts xenophobic descriptions of these people by hostile outsiders at face value. Though McWhiney and his colleague Forrest McDonald assert that no less than 75 percent of the settlers of the hinterlands of the Southern colonies were of Celtic origin, and these people imposed a non-English culture characterized by pastoralism, laziness, intemperance, sensuality, violence, and anarchic individualism on their neighbors (McDonald and McWhiney 1989, 1131), Cunningham contends that these people can hardly be considered Celts at all. According to Fischer, most of these back country settlers, English-speaking Protestants rather than Gaelicspeaking Catholics, came from the rim of the Irish Sea including the border country of Northern England and Lowland Scotland as well as Northern Ireland and not from historically Gaelic areas (1989, 618-21). This non-Celtic North British border culture, transported to the colonial frontier between 1717 and 1775, informed the distinctive character and image of the Appalachian South. Indeed, Fischer would argue that centuries of insecurity and violence on the borders of North Britain resulted in the psychological and cultural preadaptation of the settlers of Appalachia before they ever came to America, just as the historical experiences of the Puritans in East Anglia, the Cavaliers in southwestern England, and the Quakers in the Midlands set the stamp on the regional subcultures they brought to New England, the Tidewater, and the Delaware Valley. American history is largely a result of the dynamic interplay of these four hearth cultures. Though Cunningham finds Fischer's version of regional determinism more agreeable than McWhiney's Celtic hypothesis, Albion's Seed, despite its higher degree of historical and ethnological precision, is nonetheless grievously flawed. In supporting his thesis, Fischer indulges in sweeping generalizations and outright distortions which reinforce xenophobic stereotypes. Fischer's cursory discussions of folk 30 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �speech (652-55) and folk magic (708-15) are particularly distressing from the viewpoint of the folklorist; it almost seems as though he has deliberately chosen the most bizarre examples available to demonstrate just how barbaric, cruel, and superstitious these peculiar people really are. Are the vocabulary items and superstitions he presents as quintessentially Appalachian (or North British?) as he claims, or would exhaustive research uncover parallels and cognates in other BritishAmerican subcultures? And what about the purported xenophobia of the southern highlander? Fischer's characterization of Appalachians as antisemitic (650-1) seems to be an egregious generalization from the terrible but unique ordeal of Leo Frank; what would a careful study of the geographic distribution of anti-Jewish violence in the South actually show? These may seem like carping criticisms, but what of Fischer's failure to address the ambiguity and diversity of Appalachian involvement in the Civil War (859-61)? Curiously enough, he says nothing at all about conflicts among his four hearth cultures: is this because the actual complexity of the historical event has exhausted the explanatory power of his theoretical construct? Fischer's conception of persistent dialectic tension between regional subcultures, which posits enduring, organic relationships between a people, its homeland and distinctive linguistic and cultural characteristics, is essentially romantic. Exploring the parallels between romantic regionalism in Britain and America is ultimately more informative to the cultural historian than sifting and straining historical and ethnological facts to support a comforting counter myth. Like Rodger Cunningham, we must address fundamental questions of cultural dominance and subordination that divide core from periphery in any complex society and create identity conflicts which pull marginal, non-elite personalities between the poles of assimilation and separatism. In Apples on the Flood, Cunningham theorizes that a continuous history of marginality and subordination has left the descendants of the North British borders who migrated to Appalachia with an impaired sense of autonomous identity and self-worth (xxiii). This ambiguity is compounded by the ambivalence of the core culture towards its own advancement. On one hand, the primitive periphery represents backwardness, irrationality, superstition, sloth, violence; on the other, the core believes that the periphery has preserved values it believes it has lost: the primordial, the natural, organic, traditional, spiritual, spontaneous, sensual, and emotional. John Shelton Reed contrasts this peripheral "id culture" with the "superego culture" of the core: "The idea is that members of the group doing the stereotyping project their unacceptable impulses onto the group being stereotyped, and thus deny that they have those impulses" (Reed 1986, 45). Volume Three, 1991 31 �Whether we are talking about Appalachians, Celts, vanishing Indians, or any other dominated, marginal group, it is interesting that the qualities which distinguish "superego" and "id" cultures remain constant, for ultimately they are expressions of unequal power relationships: (+) Dominant versus Rational Advanced Hard working Practical Organized Anglo-Saxon male Apollonian superego left brain core bureaucracy United States (-) Subordinate Irrational Primitive Lazy Impractical Fragmented Celt female Dionysian id right brain periphery folk society Appalachia According to this formula, vanishing peripheral cultures are assumed to be displaced by advancing core cultures; historically, this has provided the rationale for the study and celebration of folk culture and indeed, for the initiation of romantic cultural revivals in general. However, before such revivals can begin, their leaders must resolve their feelings of ambiguity regarding these opposing cultural poles, neatly summed up in Malcolm Chapman's assessment of the paradoxical position of the Highlanders in Scottish culture: The highlands have long been derided as the barbarous antithesis of southern culture and sophistication, yet they have at the same time become the location of all of the virtues that civilization has felt itself to lack" (1978, 13). Like the Scottish Gael, the Appalachian highlander comes to embody the inner conflicts of core civilization," at once a fit object for the location of primitive traits, and a fit object for taming, schooling and 'improving7 " (20). This is true of the folk in general. As folklorist Alan Dundes comments, "The folk is a backward, illiterate segment of the population of which elitist intellectuals are ashamed. On the other hand, the folk represents the glorified, romanticized remnants of a national patrimony which is something for zealous intellectuals to celebrate. . . .the same situation applies in most countries. Intellectuals were both embarrassed by and proud of their folk and folklore" (Dundes 1989, 44). Dundes proposes that the selective reconstruction or the wholesale 32 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �invention of folk traditions compensates for feelings of cultural inferiority experienced by such intellectuals. The reformulation or fabrication of tradition provides a means of shedding internalized stigmatizing stereotypes and asserting a self-defined social and cultural identity. The purported revival or rediscovery of cultural traditions dating back to an unsullied Golden Age serves the same psychological function as countermythologies which reject the core culture's assertion of its own primacy and superiority; the adoption of Mother Goddess myths by feminists or Jesus-Was-Black myths by African-Americans are salient examples of what David Whisnant has seen fit to call "counterhegemonic opposition." By embracing the periphery and rejecting the core, such movements resolve the crisis of dual cultural loyalties experienced by peripheral intellectuals. Functionally speaking, it matters little if the cultural forms which serve as the focus of such movements are ethnographically authentic or recent fabrications as long as they fulfill the need for meaningful, positive social identity. As the British sociologist Anthony D. Smith remarks, the preservation and celebration of the cultural heritage of the periphery serves to bolster a threatened or vanishing communal personality: The enemy within is loss of identity, selfoblivion, the end of authenticity, which erodes and corrupts the community, dividing and weakening the members and tempting them into cultural imitation and political dependence" (Smith 1979, 118). In conquering the inner enemy, which is in fact the internalized conflict between core and periphery, disaffiliated intellectuals are transformed into partisans (or patrons) of the reconstituted folk community: They go out among the peasants and farmers, commune with nature, record the rhythms of the countryside, and bring them back to the anonymous city, so that rising urban strata may be 'reborn' and possess a clear and unmistakable identity" (106). Folk revivalism is only one form that such counter-hegemonic movements have taken. In Appalachian Studies, we have often commented on the apparent conflict between what Jim Wayne Miller has referred to as the "action people" and the "creative folk." In recent years, that division has become less intense with the growing realization that both positions represent alternate solutions to the fundamental problem of marginality, subordination, and the consequent need for self-actualization. Rodger Cunningham has imaginatively and constructively synthesized these seemingly disparate points of view. As Cunningham states in the final chapter of Apples On The Flood, the resolution of the Appalachian dilemma entails "the healing of the divided self (Cunningham 1987, 171). His image of a borderland Merlin awaiting rebirth in his mystic womb-cavern in primordial North Britain evokes Gurney Volume Three, 1991 33 �Norman's David Ray "Divine Right" Davenport wrestling with the fiery serpent in the darkness of an abandoned mine on his Uncle Emmit's homeplace in eastern Kentucky; both suggest archetypal rituals of psychic alchemy through which the dross of the false self is separated from the gold of the authentic self and the self-actualized personality is reunited with an authentic, autonomous community. In the end, it is probably fruitless to argue over the historical validity of the new romantic regionalism; Jo Carson has often repeated George Ella Lyon's contention that the facts and the truth are not necessarily the same thing. And, as Cunningham has observed, the real struggle in Appalachian Studies is not between the action people and the creative folk, but between the Enlargers and the Enclosers. By making us look at old questions in new ways, Rodger Cunningham is definitely one of the Enlargers. Whether we agree with all of the basic assumptions of the new regionalism or not, it is nonetheless contributing to the reconfiguration of Appalachian Studies itself. Works Cited Chapman, Malcolm. 1978. The Gaelic Vision In Scottish Culture. London: Groom Helm and McGill-Queen's University. Cunningham, Rodger. 1987. Apples on the Flood: The Southern Mountain Experience. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. -, 1990. "Eat Grits and Die: Or, Cracker, Your Breed Ain't Hermeneutical." Appalachian Journal 17 Spring. Dundes, Alan. 1989. "The Fabrication of Folklore," in Folklore Matters. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Fischer, David Hackett. 1989. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McDonald, Forrest and Grady McWhiney. 1989. "Celtic South." eds. Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris. Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 34 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �McWhiney, Grady. 1988. Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in The Old South. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Reed, John Shelton. 1983. Southerners: The Social Psychology of Sectionalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. -. 1986. Southern Folk, Plain And Fancy: Native White Social Types. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Smith, Anthony D. 1979. Nationalism in the Twentieth Century. New York: New York University Press. Richard Blaustein is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology and Director of the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services at East Tennessee State University. Volume Three, 1991 35 �The Appalachian Frontier and the Southern Frontier: A Comparative Perspective H. Tyler Blethen & Curtis W. Wood As the title indicates, this paper originally set out to compare antebellum southern Appalachian society with that of the rural South in general. As the work progressed it became obvious that this undertaking was far too ambitious, even in general terms, given the time and space available. Its goal now is more limited: to discuss some recent revisionist perspectives from which to reexamine antebellum southern mountain society and to consider how unique that society was compared to the larger non-plantation South. The paper will focus in particular on questions of mobility and community. The period under examination (roughly from the 1780s to 1860) is frequently referred to as the frontier or pioneer stage; those decades of initial settlement during which European culture was brought into the mountains. But this antebellum era involves more than migration, settlement, and pioneering. In fact, it contains two stages, the second constituting a time of development and elaboration during which a synthetic mountain society and economy took shape and sank deep roots. What are the most useful terms by which to describe that syncretic society: isolated, insular, provincial, self-sufficient, subsistent, communal, egalitarian, barter, market-oriented? To what degree were the essential features of antebellum mountain society unique? To what degree were they simply more pronounced or sharply drawn, and thereby more distinctive than in the non-mountain South? What factors account for any uniqueness or distinctiveness? 36 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �The idea that mountain society is unique frequently has been used to explain the highly visible cultural survivals of the region and its more intractable problems. Arguments for uniqueness have relied on various assertions: that the southern mountain region was settled by a distinctively different class of people, or alternatively, that it was settled by certain ethnic groups whose culture was particularly adaptive to the mountain environment. Closely related is the argument based on geography: that a harsh and restrictive environment forced development along certain lines while, at the same time, forestalling alternatives and producing economic and cultural deprivation along with political isolation and powerlessness. Any student of southern Appalachian history can recognize the appeal of these ideas; however, recent research reveals a more complex picture. One important trend has been to portray the antebellum mountain region as an integral part of the "Upland South." This interpretation, recognized by Frederick Jackson Turner seventy years ago, has recently been documented and described by Fred Kniffen, Henry Glassie, Milton Newton, James Lemon, and Robert Mitchell. Though the views of these scholars (mostly historical geographers) vary in some important respects, they stress the cultural unity of the non-plantation antebellum South from Pennsylvania to Mississippi, and they minimize diversity within this "cultural hearth." The "nearly uniform set of solutions" (Newton 1974, 150-1) of this "midland backwoods culture" (Jordan and Kaupsl989, 8-9) spread rapidly across the "Old West" frontier in the period 1750-1825. It was a cultural fusion contributed to and borne by a number of ethnic groups: Scotch-Irish, German, English, etc. The distinctive features of this cultural synthesis were dispersed settlement, the single-family farmstead, the county unit, a courthouse-town focus, an open class system, a generalized but commercially-oriented stockmanfarmer-hunter economy, log construction, an extremely productive and varied food-and-feed complex, and evangelical Protestantism (Mitchell and Newton 1988, 20). The value of this "geographer's view" is that it reminds us of the cultural unity of the frontier South, a unity which is sometimes overlooked when research is narrowly focused on the mountain region. It also encourages a greater appreciation for this remarkably dynamic phase of southern history—"the most successful forest colonization process ever devised" (Jordan and Kaups 1989, 7) —and its imprint on later southern history. Its weakness is that it accounts for continuity more successfully than for emerging regionalism and diversity. But recent research also has revealed a surprisingly mobile, marketoriented antebellum mountain society: not a monolithic society, but one characterized by clear gradations of class and an important diversity Volume Three, 1991 37 �including both isolated and accessible regions. Significant areas of the southern mountains interacted extensively with the larger society and economy and preserved a basic similarity with the rest of the South. But at the same time, some distinctive regional characteristics emerged. The problems of travel and transportation played an important role in defining antebellum mountain society economically, politically, and culturally. The mountain environment did not pose a serious barrier to frontier settlement but presented to new immigrants a physical setting distinct enough to constitute some novelty in the settlement experience. Physical distances were measured in days or even weeks, and any travel could impose significant choices on an individual or family. Migration even over relatively short distances could mean long separation from family and friends. The single-family farmstead, the norm for mountain society, took on new meaning when farms were separated by rough, poorly maintained roads. Nonetheless, Appalachian frontier society developed a transportation system that connected it to the larger southern economy and society and which supported a lifestyle that was comparable to that in the rural non-plantation South. Frank Owsley's description of the "plain folk of the old South" provides graphic evidence of this (1949, 90-123). The diversity of mountain society was apparent from the earliest period of white settlement. River bottoms became home to more prosperous and accessible valley communities. The families who settled the coves and hollows were affected by varying degrees of isolation, which in some cases was undoubtedly extreme. But overall, antebellum mountain society was characterized by a remarkable flow of people and a steady movement of goods. Demographic research indicates that the earliest settlers came from considerable distances, frequently from other states, and often stayed for only a short time before moving on. Even as late as 1850, a study of census records for Jackson County, North Carolina, reveals that most residents had been born in neighboring counties and that short-distance moves were still part of a typical migration pattern there. Similarly, in Washington County, Tennessee, over half the individuals recorded on any of the surviving tax lists between 1790 and 1845 did not appear on the next list, and 40-50 percent of the surnames on any tax list were missing from the next (Blethen and Wood 1987, 7883; Dunn 1988, 1-21; Hsiung, 5-6). Populations were remarkably fluid and mobile along the southern Appalachian frontier in the early nineteenth century. Families moved readily and frequently as the frontier shifted south and west. Often they settled on land that they never bought, and may not have even entered a claim for, before moving on. The early married life of Andy J. Wood of Jackson County illustrates that mobility: 38 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �I entered 100 acres of land on the headwaters of Cullowhee [Creek], built me a little cabin and we moved what we had to begin housekeeping with in a sled.... I worked very hard all day and at night I would make shoes for my neighbors or card for my wife who had toiled faithfully all day long and then did her carding and spinning at night. We stayed two years but were not satisfied with the gain we were making and in the year 1842 we decided to go to Georgia and work for gold. (Wood) Just a few years later the family returned to Jackson County . Places throughout the southern mountains that even in the present day seem extremely remote attracted settlers quite early. A popular presumption is that families sank their roots "where the axle broke." That explanation for the far-flung white settlement of the pioneer period is colorful, but it is not historically very plausible. Instead, we must credit the remarkable penetration of settlement into remote mountain regions to settlers in search of arable land with good water. Essential to this pattern of settlement was the mountain economy which motivated them, an economy which, though largely subsistence, was never entirely removed from a greater regional market economy. Mountain communities in the frontier period appreciated the importance of improved transportation. Although obstacles were considerable and resources scarce, upgrading roads was a priority from the start. Once settlements were established, the settlers looked for the easiest routes to conduct their trade. In general, these routes tended to be northsouth, rather than east-west. This meant that the mountain people of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia found that their trade was directed not primarily toward their own states but toward the states to their north and south. These routes and the economic ties that grew from them are important in understanding subsequent developments (Blethen and Wood, 73-75, 86-87; Inscoe 1989; Hsiung 1989, 336-49). Internal improvements were one of the burning issues of the early nineteenth century, particularly in the more recently-settled areas of the south-central backcountry. The developing road network led citizens in many parts of the southern mountains to identify more with neighboring states than with the eastern seaboard and even with the capitals of their own states. Locally, county governments worked to establish and maintain public roads. Indian trails quickly became wagon roads. Private investors built turnpikes and toll roads. As new counties were created, road improvements were undertaken to connect scattered communities to their new new county seats. In fact, the system of county government and the development of mountain transportation Volume Three, 1991 39 �were intimately related. By the 1830s and 1840s scheduled transportation had begun to connect many of the small towns of the southern Appalachians. Western North Carolina illustrates this growing interconnectedness. By the 1830s a weekly stage ran from Asheville to Clayton, Georgia, through Waynesville and Franklin. Another ran from Tennessee through Qualla and Webster to South Carolina. These mountain roads also gave the region good access to the Buncombe County Turnpike between Greenville, Tennessee, and Greenville, South Carolina. This network made possible interaction beyond the region which is reflected in the trade commodities regularly shipped in and out of the mountains (Blethen and Wood, 74). Rather than focusing on the isolation and impoverishment of pre-railroad mountain society, it is more useful to understand the nature of pre-railroad transportation which supported mountain life and to analyze the manner in which it met the needs of the region. Nevertheless, the fact that railroads arrived in the southern mountains decades later than in surrounding regions is of critical importance. This delay, as much a function of sectional conflict and competing economic interests as it was of the engineering and financial obstacles posed by mountain terrain, had a dramatic impact on the development of southern Appalachia. As early as the 1820s, mountain leaders were involved in efforts to bring railroads into their region. The failure of most of these initiatives until the 1870s profoundly altered the relationship between the southern Appalachians and mainstream America. In the decades of the midnineteenth century, the uneven distribution of railroads widened the gap between a progressive, industrial America and an "isolated" mountain people. The highland region was once again a "frontier." From a national perspective it was "the land where time lingers," awaiting development. Its control of its own resources and its own destiny were precarious indeed. All this leads directly to the important historical question of just how isolated the region was in the era before the coming of the railroads. The evidence for isolation is found in descriptions from travelers' accounts (Bishop Francis Asbury; Andre Michaux, etc.) and in some recent regional studies, particularly those that focus on community history (Waller 1988; Paludan 1981). Physical separation was certainly an important political reality. Local communities complained about the disadvantages in daily life of being several days removed from county courts and land offices. Their discontent was the driving force behind the creation of new counties throughout much of the nineteenth century. The mountain counties remained hidden from the attentions of their respective state governments and were sometimes even referred to as the "lost counties." This governmental attitude, however, was more a 40 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �reflection of sectional conflicts within states than of genuinely crippling isolation. For mountain communities in fact had developed strong ties to the national economy and society. Evidence of a dynamic economic life is found in the commercialized agriculture which developed in the region from an early date. The livestock economy with its annual drives to South Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia, which have been vividly described in recent literature (Dykeman 1955,137-51; Blethen and Wood, forthcoming), burst the bonds of the subsistence economy. They gave mountain farmers direct access to southeastern markets and created local opportunities to sell corn to drovers. Trade with the outside economy stimulated the growth of mountain towns and gave rise to a class of merchants like James Patton, William Holland Thomas, and David Deaderick. There is also evidence of a more cosmopolitan cultural and social life, stimulated by antebellum tourism (Inscoe, 30-33). Finally, in what way did the development of the community set mountain people apart from the rural South? The traditional image of American pioneer life has been that of people living in isolated, subsistence-oriented, self-sufficient family farms. Community (defined as an active network of interdependence and of shared objectives pursued collectively), when it existed, was described as marginal, with most people living in the context of rugged individualism and sturdy independence. Only recently has revisionist scholarship begun to challenge that almost mythic portrayal of our country's roots. The new version, first developed in studies of rural New England and then extrapolated to the Midwest, insists that pioneer farmers were not totally self-sufficient, but instead lived in complex webs of interdependence. This revisionist paradigm of pioneer life is now being applied to our understanding of community in the southern Appalachians. In studying a region once upheld as the epitome of rugged individualism, and social and economic isolation, some historians are now beginning to insist upon the significance of community in the mountains. The work of scholars like Gordon McKinney, John Inscoe, Durwood Dunn, Philip Paludan, David Hsiung, and ourselves points the way to a new understanding of antebellum life in the southern Appalachians quite different from the old stereotypes of isolated and independent family farms. In summarizing these recent writings, McKinney acknowledges that most pioneer families indeed practiced subsistence agriculture and relied on their own production for all of their food. Nevertheless, he asserts that they remained dependent on the presence of craftsmen for certain skills, such as blacksmithing, milling of grain, and wheelwrighting, and on merchants for a wide variety of commodities like salt and manufactured goods (McKinney). Volume Three, 1991 41 �The key interpretive hypothesis which underlies this revisionist portrait of the southern mountains is an assertion that the Appalachian region was not socially and economically homogeneous. Rather, the new scholarship insists upon examining the southern Appalachians as a region marked by diversity. Thus, while there were some isolated family farmers, there were also towns and townspeople, as well as rural communities possessing their own social gradations and a developed sense of community and interdependence. This more sophisticated interpretation of the southern Appalachians explains how the traditional image of isolation could have arisen, while at the same time it reveals how poorly that image serves as a generalization. One important distinction which the new scholarship has highlighted is that between urban and rural mountaineers. Not all mountaineers were the same. While there were few truly urban areas in the antebellum southern mountains, and the existing towns were admittedly small, they nevertheless created a society distinctive from the rural areas outside them. John Inscoe, in his study of antebellum western North Carolina, has identified three types of mountain towns. The first were the older, more established towns in the foothills east of the Blue Ridge (Morganton, Lenoir, Wilkesboro). These towns were relatively prosperous and served as "gateways" between the mountains and the rest of the state. The second type were those located along the French Broad River. They were strung along the major route through the mountains, from Tennessee to South Carolina, which served as the region's economic lifeline before the coming of the railroad (Warm Springs, Asheville, Hendersonville, Flat Rock). The final type consisted of the remaining county seats west of the Blue Ridge. These were crude and frontier-like towns, which travelers delighted in belittling. Augustus S. Merrimon, a young Asheville attorney whose practice took him throughout the region, described Murphy as "a small place and poorly improved. There are several small stores here that seem to do a small business. All of them together would not make one good one." Waynesville he described as a "dirty small village and there is no place of entertainment in it fit to stay at. One would suppose it to be a large negro quarter to see it from a distance." He reserved his most unkind remarks for Jewel Hill, where Madison County's court still met. Its citizens were generally drunk, its women were "dirty, filthy strumpets," and he concluded that "I do not know any rival for this place in regard to drunkenness, ignorance, superstition and the most brutal debauchery" (Inscoe, 30-35). Carville Earle and Ronald Hoffman in their research on early southern urban history have found the development of similar types of towns across the South (Earle and Hoffman 1977, 23-51). All of these towns, regardless of their type, created a sense of com- 42 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �munity less isolated than that experienced by the surrounding rural mountaineers. Inscoe, Hsiung, and Paludan have all stressed the connections of townspeople to the outside world and their role in linking the mountains to the greater American society. A thriving elite of business and professional men existed in them. Towns were places where merchants, travelers, and courts gathered and met. As Paludan points out, values developed in towns that were different in many ways from those held by the surrounding rural mountaineers, especially in their emphasis on looking outside the mountains to meet their needs and plans (Paludan, 26). In this way, mountain townspeople were connected to the rest of the nation. It is likely that mountain towns, though small and rudimentary, also had significant impact on the sense of rural community. But again, it is important to understand the variations that existed within the southern Appalachians. For example, Inscoe and Paludan argue that over time, small communities of rural mountaineers, like Shelton Laurel and Plum Tree Creek in western North Carolina, actually became isolated from the mountain towns (Inscoe, 53-4; Paludan, 7-8). While Paludan offers no explanation as to why this would be so, Inscoe attributes it to the growing pressures of population. Continuing immigration forced later settlers further up the mountainsides and into the coves and hollows whose distances made travel to towns more difficult. As the nineteenth century unfolded, community life in towns became more distinctive as they generated much of the area's progress, diversity, and entrepreneurial spirit (Inscoe, 25). Just as there was diversity among various mountain communities, so too was there diversity among rural mountain people. Recent work has challenged the traditional stereotype that all mountaineers were sturdy independent yeoman farmers. McKinney and Inscoe have pointed out important variations of socioeconomic class within antebellum mountain society. Our research on antebellum Jackson County revealed a distinction between subsistence-oriented farms on which families produced for their own needs and little else, and market-oriented farms that produced a surplus and required more labor than the family could provide. Prosperous farmers in the broad valley of the Tuckaseigee River, and along Scotts Creek, grew more grain than farmers in other communities and sold it to drovers on their way to autumn markets in South Carolina and Georgia. They also maintained large herds of cattle and hogs which they both sold to drovers and took to markets themselves. These market-oriented farmers created a demand for more labor than the family could provide. In a few cases this need was met by slaves, for there were significant numbers of slaveholders and slaves in western North Carolina, as there were in eastern Tennessee and north- Volume Three, 1991 43 �em Georgia. More often, it was suppled by landless laborers who worked as tenant farmers. The census of 1850 indicates that most Jackson County communities included at least a few such heads of households, identified as laborers. In the Tuckaseigee Valley community, eighteen of fifty-eight households were headed by laborers. The census does not specify what kind of work these laborers did, but it does make clear that they did not own land. Jackson County was an overwhelmingly agricultural region, and only a handful of men supported themselves by work other than farming. There is little doubt that these men identified as laborers worked on other people's farms. A class of landless farm workers does not fit with the conventional view of a society where all men were independent farm owners. However, other research confirms the presence of dependent, landless tenants in the mountain counties of north Georgia, in Cades Cove, and in Haywood County, North Carolina (Blethen and Wood, 83-85; Bode and Gunter 1986; Dunn; Reid 1976, 69-83); and it is probable that this situation was common throughout the mountain region. Few rental contracts have been found, but a handful from Haywood County offer insight into tenant status. Tenants were probably sharecroppers rather than renters; certainly rents were rarely paid in cash. It is likely that tenants farmed pieces of land separate from the farms of their landlords. They received an agreed-upon share of the crop—often two thirds—in lieu of wages. Tenants often had other obligations required by their leases, such as to prepare new land for cultivation or to build or repair fences. Landlords probably supervised the work of their tenants and decided what they should grow and where. The Haywood County records indicate that leases were often short, for one year at a time. A tenant usually stayed with the same landlord but each year would renegotiate the terms and the lands to be leased. It appears that landlords believed that this practice was both efficient and profitable, and that it was not just a way of exploiting surplus land (Blethen and Wood, 83-85). The lifestyle of small farmers and tenants must have been quite similar. Both cultivated small tracts of land to meet their household needs, kept livestock on the open range, and supplemented their incomes by hunting and fishing. But while tenants enjoyed a standard of living very much like that of the typical small farm owner, they were free from many of the worries connected with land ownership, particularly the payment of property taxes. And in a period characterized by considerable mobility, tenants found it easier to move on. The lifestyle of tenants and small farmers was often misunderstood and described in derogatory terms by travelers from outside the region. In 1848 Charles Lanman, a 44 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �journalist, described his journey up the Tuckaseigee River: The river to which I alluded is the Tuck-a-se-ja, which empties into the Tennessee. It is a very rapid stream, and washes the base of many mountains, which are as wild as they were a century ago. Whenever there occurs any interval land, the soil is very rich, and such spots are usually occupied. The mountains are all covered with forest, where wild game is found in abundance. The fact is, the people of this whole region devote more of their time to hunting than they do to agriculture, which in fact accounts for their proverbial poverty. You can hardly see a single cabin without being howled at by half a dozen hounds, and I have now become so well educated in guessing the wealth of a mountaineer, that I can fix his condition by ascertaining the number of his dogs. A rich man seldom has more than one dog, while a very poor man will keep from ten to a dozen. And this remark with regard to dogs, strange as it may seem, is equally applicable to the children of the mountaineers. The poorest man, without exception, whom I have seen in this region, lives in a log cabin with two rooms, and is the father of nineteen children, and the keeper of six hounds. (Lanman 1849, 84-85) Lanman, like many other observers, misunderstood the local economy, overlooked the importance of herding, and seemed oblivious to the existence of prosperous valley farmers. In fact, subsistence farmers and tenants in the mountains were very similar to small farmers found throughout the non-plantation South before the Civil War (Owsley, 90123). The small group of prosperous, market-oriented farmers who hired laborers and occasionally owned slaves also had their counterparts across the rural South. This recent research presents a more complex picture of mountain society, one which challenges long-accepted generalities and points the way to more fruitful paths for research. It also makes it much more difficult to generalize about the mountains. Finally, this recent research suggests that students of the region's history searching for an understanding of the "uniqueness" of the southern mountains might not find definitive answers in the antebellum period. Works Cited Blethen, H. Tyler and Curtis W. Wood, Jr. 1987. "The Pioneer Experience to 1851." ed. Max R. Williams. The History of Jackson County. Sylva, North Carolina: Jackson County Historical Society. Volume Three, 1991 45 �-. "James Patton: Adventures of a Frontier Merchant." ed. Robert Mitchell. The Appalachian Frontier. Forthcoming. Bode, Frederick A. and Donald E. Gunter. 1986. Farm Tenancy and the Census in Antebellum. Georgia. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Dunn, Durwood. 1988. Cades Cove: The Life and Death of a Southern Appalachian Community 1818-1937. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Dykeman, Wilma. 1955. The French Broad. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Earle, Carville and Ronald Hoffman. 1977. "The Urban South: The First Two Centuries." ed. Elaine A. Brownell and David R. Goldfield. The City in Southern History: The Growth of Urban Civilization in the South. New York: Associated Faculty Press. Hsiung, David C. The Population Distribution of Washington County, Tennessee, 1790-1845: An Appalachian Stereotype Examined," 5-6 -. 1989. "How Isolated was Appalachia? Upper East Tennessee, 17801885." Appalachian Journal 16: 1989, 336-49. Inscoe, John. 1989. Mountain Masters, Slavery, and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Jordan, Terry G. and Matti Kaups. 1989. The American Backwoods Frontier: An Ethnic and Ecological Interpretation.. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Kniffen, Fred. 1965. "Folk Housing, Key to Diffusion." Annals of the Associatio of American Geographers 55. Kniffen, Fred and Henry Glassie. 1966. Building in Wood in the Eastern United States, A Time-Place Perspective.. New York: American Geographical Society. Lanman, Charles. 1849. Letters from the Allegheny Mountains.. New York: G. P. Putnam. Lemon, James T. 1972. The Best Poor Man's Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. McKinney, Gordon B. "Subsistence Economy and Community in Western North Carolina, 1860-1865," unpublished paper. Mitchell, Robert D. 1977. Commercialism and Frontier: Perspectives on the Early Shenandoah Valley. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 46 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �. 1983. "American Origins and Regional Institutions: the 17th Century Chesapeake." Annals of the Association of 'American Geographers 73: 1983. Mitchell, Robert and Milton Newton. 1988. The Appalachian Frontier: Views from the East and the Southwest." Historical Geography Research Series 21: 20. Newton, Milton. 1974. "Cultural Preadaptation and the Upland South." Geoscience and Man 5: 1974. Owsley, Frank. 1949. Plain Folk of the Old South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Paludan, Philip. 1985. Victims: A True Story of the Civil War. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Reid, Joseph D., Jr. 1976. "Antebellum Southern Rental Contracts," Explorations in Economic History 13: 69-83. Turner, Fredrick Jackson. 1920. The Frontier in American History. Melbourne, Florida: Robert E. Krieger Publishing. Waller, Altina L. 1988. Feud: The Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Wood, Andy J. "Autobiography of Andy J. Wood." Small Ms. 80-38. Special Collections, Hunter Library, Western Carolina University. H. Tyler Blethen is Director and Curtis W. Wood is Senior Research Associate at the Mountain Heritage Center. Both are Professors of History at Western Carolina University. Volume Three, 1991 47 �The Enduring Legacy of the "Southern Rebellion": West Virginia's Well-Being David B. White Conventional history and mainstream thought perpetuate the theme that the state of West Virginia was born in the Civil War out of the overwhelming pro-Unionist sympathies of the entire population of present-day West Virginia. To be sure, there had existed in the Old Dominion sectionalist conflict between the more mountainous regions of the state and the lowland and tidewater areas. But the sectionalism conflict in antebellum Virginia had changed from the 1820s to the early 1860s. By the 1860s only the extreme Trans-Allegheny Northwest was at odds with Richmond's influence. Political reforms such as tax relief, voting rights and representation issues, and large appropriations for internal improvements had moved the Shenandoah Valley and Southwest Virginia areas closer to the Richmond orbit. Further, the geographic presence of the Allegheny mountains, and the commercial and industrial ties of the Northwest to Ohio and Pennsylvania (by the B & 0 Railroad and canal traffic) made that section of Old Virginia more northern than southern in influence. In short, the internal struggle in Old Virginia between the Trans-Allegheny Northwest and the rest of the State reflected the national struggle between the agrarian, state rights South and the industrialized, federalist North (Curry 1964). Few areas of the nation in the late nineteenth century more typified Jeffersonian society than did the agriculture-based southern Appalachians of which present day southwestern and southeastern West 48 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Virginia are a part. Self-sufficiency dominated, and agrarian versus mercantile or manufacturing concerns predominated. While the country was being transformed by urbanization and industrialization the southern mountains were relatively untouched: Throughout most of the nineteenth century there was little to attract capitalist development in Appalachia. The region's natural wealth of timber, coal, and other mineral resources was remote and inaccessible to the mercantile centers of the South and Northeast.... Only as the national economy entered a new stage of capitalist expansion in the years following the Civil War would the natural wealth of Appalachia attract outside capital. The sudden imposition of industrial capitalism at that time would bring dramatic changes to this rural area. By the third decade of the twentieth century, the Jeffersonian dream in Appalachia would become a nightmare of exploitation, corruption, and social tragedy. The Southern Mountains would remain a predominantly rural area, but changes in land ownership, economy, and the political system would leave the region's people dependent, impoverished, and powerless within a new and alien social order, (filler 1979, 84) The story of the military and political intrigue indicating how this occurred in West Virginia is both fascinating and tragic. A closer look at the political scene in the 1860s reveals a much different pattern of sympathies than that which current historical myth holds. Of the fifty counties which comprise present-day West Virginia, Unionism was confined largely to twenty-four relatively populated and industrialized Northwestern counties in geographic proximity to the Ohio River, the Pennsylvania border, and the B & O Railroad. However, at least twenty-four other counties representing two-thirds of the total area in the future state were unquestionably Confederate in outlook and voted for secession in 1861 (Curry), [see Map, page 51] When the Virginia legislature voted with the remainder of the Confederacy for secession, mass meetings in Northern Virginia resulted in a convention which was held in Wheeling on 11 June 1861. The agenda of the meeting concerned the dismemberment of Northwest Virginia toward the goal of separate statehood. The obstacle to this plan was Article IV, Section 3, of the U.S. Constitution which dictates the consent of the legislature to form a new state from an existing one. Of course, the Richmond government would not consent to such a proposal so a "restored" government of Virginia was formed which President Lincoln recognized as the "de jure" government of Virginia. "A rump Volume Three, 1991 49 �legislature, theoretically representing the whole state but in practice representing only the northwestern counties, thereupon elected two U.S. Senators from Virginia, who were seated by the Senate on 13 July 1861. Three Congressmen from Western Virginia also took their seats in the House" (McPherson 1988, 298). One of those elected to the U.S. Senate was John S. Carlile from Harrison County. Carlile's initial advocacy of statehood and his subsequent opposition are reflective of the mixed sentiments of the period, and also personify the growing distrust with which many moderate and conservative Republicans viewed the Radical Republicans as the war progressed (Curry; Davis 1970). Carlile had instigated the meeting in Wheeling for separate statehood upon his return from the secession vote in April 1861. Carlile and others who led the statehood movement were "Unionists," meaning they wanted to preserve the Union as it was and they appeared to be motivated more by "patriotism" and the concern of "self-murder" rather than abolitionist sentiment. However, secessionists initially recognized in Carlile a dangerous enemy, and he was vilified by Richmond editorials and states rights advocates (Davis). But by July 1862, Carlile was to become the primary obstructionist in the statehood political process. Understanding Carlile's change of heart is the key to understanding states rights and secessionist sympathies in general, and the bizarre beginning of West Virginia in particular. Carlile's actions must be interpreted—indeed can only be understood—in terms of Copperhead opposition to Radicalism and Lincoln's conduct of the war.... Carlile, as did all West Virginia Conservatives, consistently called for a vigorous prosecution of the war to suppress rebellion; but he was unwavering in his condemnation of "abolitionists fanaticism," whether in the form of the Emancipation Proclamation, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, violations of freedom of the press, arbitrary arrests, or the Willey Amendment [a gradual emancipation provision of the West Virginia Constitution]. (Curry, 139) In addition to the highly irregular course of action creating a "de jure" government and this political infighting, one must put the occurrences of the day in proper perspective. All of these events were taking place as a Union Army invaded Western Virginia. Three days following Virginia's formal secession from the Union, Major General George B. McClellan, Commander of the Department of the Army of the Ohio, invaded Western Virginia. The Union forces, far superior in number and 50 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �County by County Voting Pattern on the Secession Ordinance Referendum in (West) Virginia, May 23,1861. Voted for Secession Source: Richard Otr Curry, A House Divided: A Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia. Pittsburgh, Perm.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964, page 49. Used by permission of the publisher. �resources defeated a much smaller ill-equipped Confederate force (Catton 1961;1980; Curry; McPherson). This achievement was crucial to the success of the new state movement; without the presence of victorious Northern troops, the state of West Virginia could not have been born" (McPherson, 299). Or more succinctly stated by Curry, "without military occupation the reorganized government of Virginia could not have functioned effectively, and the statehood movement could not have succeeded" (7). The Union forces, portending events of the future, invaded western Virginia for strategic, as well as political reasons. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the Ohio River, and natural resources were vital to Union victory (Catton 1961; Curry; McPherson). Despite this invasion by overwhelming forces, the Confederate sympathies of much of the West Virginia population were to be painfully evident during and after the War. Indeed, during the war the military exchanges were transformed into fratricidal conflict and guerrilla war, with the reorganized "de jure" government never having effective control over more than half the counties in the state (Curry). Guerrilla war with neighbor against neighbor became the norm (Catton 1961; Smith 1927). West Virginia provided considerable numbers of troops to the Confederate cause as well. Aided and abetted by the Lincoln administration, the clamor and political wrangling for separate statehood continued. Boundary disputes regarding what counties to be included dominated the statehood process with some factions calling for the inclusion of many southern sympathy counties to increase territory. Others balked at this option recognizing that their Unionist and industrialist interests would be subject to dominance from those opposed to these positions. Large state enthusiasts were essentially against dismemberment or had mixed feelings. Indicative that northwest Virginia was not fanatically Republican is the indisputable fact that the Republican Party polled less than 4 percent of the votes cast in the 1860 presidential election (Curry). Carlile originally insisted that the boundaries of the new state be limited to counties which were predominantly Unionist. As noted, it appears, however, that he became increasingly disgusted by congressional interference and dictates of gradual emancipation (although slavery was virtually nonexistent in Trans-Allegheny Northwest Virginia) as a prerequisite for statehood admission. When the final senatorial vote came for statehood with the Willey Amendment intact, Carlile voted against it, but it passed. He previously had insisted on increasing the boundaries to include pro-Confederate counties. As had been concluded by Curry, Carlile and other "conservative Unionists in Northwestern Virginia became alarmed when the war for the preservation of the 52 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Union took on the added purpose of a crusade for the destruction of slavery and the subjugation of the South" (108-109). Conservative Unionists like Carlile could not countenance this intrusion into home rule and would not vote for separate statehood unless it was on unconditional terms. Nevertheless with the process of statehood initiated, the "de jure" government in control, and the military occupation a fait accompli, West Virginia became a state on June 20, 1863. Lincoln reluctantly, but for pragmatic and expedient reasons, concurred (Curry). As noted, the land and family were the dominant factors in preindustrial West Virginia, particularly in those sections which had aligned themselves with the Confederacy. Homesteading, farming, and trapping on the land were the characteristics of life, but that changed precipitously beginning with West Virginia's new-found statehood and accelerated after the war had ceased. The stable, idyllic, Jeffersonian dream was challenged by the demands of industrialization and the discovery of rich timber and mineral deposits. Outsiders flocked to the hills for wealth. Indeed, "the 'discovery* of the resources of the region brought renewed attention to the question of ownership and title. Hundreds of ambitious speculators and agents for eastern industrial and financial interests combed the West Virginia hills surveying timber stands and mineral deposits. . . .By the turn of the century the land ownership configuration we see today was essentially in place—a configuration created for the severance of natural resources and wealth with minimal responsibility to the social, economic and physical ecology of the area" (Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force 1980, 4). Ironically, the concerns viewed by conservative Unionists like John Carlile appear in retrospect to have been valid. Although apparently voting against their own economic self-interest and subjecting themselves to accusations of treason and disloyalty, they could not support the deal of increased capital investment for less home rule and increased radical Republican control (Curry). Unconditional Unionists supported by Union troops prevented opposition groups from holding rallies and conventions, and continued these strategies through the imposition of loyalty oaths well after the war was over. Finally, in 1870, a coalition of Copperheads and exConfederates was able to give Conservatives a majority over Radical Republicans and Unionists (Curry; Foner 1988). But by this time the transition to industrialization was already in process. The South in general was reduced to a conquered province without the services of its former antebellum leaders who were initially barred from politics. The country as a whole was prosperous but corrupt, depending on the largesse of opportune government agents and businessmen. In the South, economic recovery was impeded by vast destruc- Volume Three, 1991 53 �tion, the lack of leadership, and the presence of federal agents (Carman, Syrett and Wishy 1961, Vol I). As the first southern state to abolish slavery, West Virginia in a sense represented the beginning of Reconstruction. Certainly its population configuration, including former secessionist counties, embodied the ingredients of what was to be widespread throughout the South (Foner 1988). Almost every aspect of southern life was affected by the Reconstruction policies of the federal government. The course of Reconstruction was in large part determined by the outcome of the struggle between the Republican factions for the control of the nation's government. Conservatives led by Lincoln argued for presidentially-initiated moderation and forgiveness towards the South, while Radicals aligned with the growing industrial class wanted major congressionally-dictated political, economic, and social change—not without consideration of self-benefit. The abolitionists, who distrusted both the southern whites and the northern conservatives, had a powerful ally in the growing industrial class. The Civil War had stimulated the growth of industry and had driven planter-spokesman from Congress. If the former Confederates were now kept politically impotent, the way would be clear for the industrialists to push their schemes for transcontinental railroads, large-scale manufacturers, high tariffs, and the exploitation of the nations natural resources. (Carman et al., 719) The war had precipitously increased the power of the federal government and had increased the riches of northeastern businessmen beyond anyone's dreams. Concurrent with this expansion however was the reality of exploitation and corruption. "With the elimination of the menace of disunion the American people increasingly devoted their energies to developing industry, exploiting the country's mineral deposits, expanding its transportation facilities, and building up its financial powers" (Carmen et. al.,699). With Lincoln's assassination and Andrew Johnson's unpopularity preventing reelection, General U.S. Grant was elected president, in effect legitimizing the industrialists' grip on the nation. Much needed reforms were made in public education, tax laws, equal rights, and general public facilities, but the means employed often nullified the ends. And just as rapidly and as fervently as northerners had espoused reforms during the war, they became obsessed with the more practical reality of accumulating wealth. Output exceeded its preCivil War level manyfold, and the post-Civil War age gained the reputa- 54 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �tion of perhaps the most corrupt in the nation's history (Carman et al.; Foner; Smith). The Grant Administration was distinctive for the incompetence of most of its officials and the uninhibited fashion in which it, in effect, turned over the North and South to the country's special interests" (Carmen et. al., 739). The result was a business-run economy subsidized by government assistance, characterized by speculation, vast land acquisition and development, and general fraud—with the South being dominated by scalawags, carpetbaggers and radicals zealous in their vision of industrialization and progress at the southerner's expense. When reason, or accusation warranted it, the government used the ever-present military to impose it's will on former Confederate areas (Carman et al.; Foner) The radicalism of the 1870s had lost most of the idealism that had been a distinguishing feature of the movement during the Civil War and in the years immediately following the conflict... .they increasingly used Reconstruction to promote the interests of northern businessmen and the Republican Party" (Carman et al., 742). Whereas the original radical coalition had a reformer mystique, its successors were blatant spoils politicians who used Reconstruction to help themselves and their business associates. This mirrored the transformation of the Republican Party which had evolved from a militant reform movement to a front for business groups (Carman et al.; Smith 1984). The North's victory, the subsequent subjugation of the South, and the concurrent Republican stranglehold on American industrial and political events enabled, indeed ensured, the transition from a predominantly agrarian society to one characterized as industrial capitalism. Even when the Republican Party began to lose its monolithic power because of Democratic gains and the inevitable re-establishment of southern influence, the control by industrial capitalists and northeastern business interests was unmistakably complete. The consummation of this process appears to have been the Compromise of 1876 and the subsequent election of Rutherford B. Hayes as President of the United States. The Compromise of 1876, engineered by old Southern conservatives and determined Southern industrialists in league with Northern bankers, brought the railroads, and industry into the region to take advantages of widespread unemployment and abundant cotton, coal and timber" (Adams 1972, 503). The Compromise of 1876, which ended Reconstruction and any potential for positive change, was brought about by the disputed election between Rutherford B. Hayes (a Republican) and Samuel J. Tilden (a Democrat) and was ultimately settled by the support of southern Democrats who wanted an end to federal interference in local political affairs, Volume Three, 1991 55 �but wanted continued business growth. With Hayes" election, the old planter and landed classes (called Bourbons) established the reign over southern politics with control by northern capitalists who wanted to exploit the region's resources (Carman et al.). The impact of these events had a profound influence on the development or rather underdevelopment of West Virginia. From 1880 to 1930, the character of the West Virginia economy changed drastically because of the major growth in coal and other resource industries, as well as growth in manufacturing. This transformation was centered in coal counties and resulted in forceful control of the workforce rather than in increased benefits to the populace. The idyllic, independent agrarian life was transformed to one analogous to medieval serfdom with forced labor, company towns, company housing, company stores, company services, and, of course, company police/Pinkertons controlling management-labor relations. The coal industry was linked to the monopolistic sectors of the national economy and by extension the mining of coal was the appendage of the company store. Independent entrepreneurs were discouraged and prohibited, unions were forbidden, and the coal industry usurped total control of community life, which, in effect, stifled economic diversification and resulted in repression. The courts and the government were willing accomplices as well (Simon 1978; 1981). In essence, the process of industrialization in West Virginia brought on by the Civil War and the Compromise of 1876 emulated the Reconstruction practices in the South in general. Self-sustained growth and economic diversification were blocked by the selfish motives of industrial capitalists. The social relations they perpetuated actually hampered positive growth which was, ironically, the rallying cry of those who sought an industrialized nation. The coal industry, rather than leading the development of West Virginia by attracting other kinds of economic activity, constrained development by limiting the number of alternative profitable investment outlets" (Simon 1981,178). There was no internal market to generate growth other than in the northwest part of the state (the original Unionist stronghold) and this local capital initiated much development, "but it was inevitable that in the underdeveloped West Virginia economy in 1880 resources would be developed by absentee owners for export. West Virginia had lucrative natural deposits of coal, lumber, oil, and gas.. . .In the southern part of the state, which had remained agricultural, almost the entire initial investment had come from outside capital" (Simon 1981,180-181). From 1860 to 1900, 50 to 90 percent of West Virginia's coal production was shipped out of state (Williams 1976). Unrestrained absentee ownership and capitalism generated by the profit motive with minimal concern for the social, political, and economic 56 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �consequences to the local populace characterized West Virginia's initial development and has had a profound impact since. The colonial political economy which was sparked in 1880, has left an indelible mark on the state. New social relationships based on exploitation versus familial patterns precipitated the violence and labor disputes which have characterized the state's history (Amsden and Brier 1977; Lee 1969; McKinney 1977; Wheeler 1976). Former farms were disrupted, and timber and coal's irresponsible extraction rendered the watersheds unstable, prone to flooding, and subject to mud slides—strip mining has only exacerbated the damage (Appalachian Alliance 1982; Munn 1975). Within a thirty-year period (by the 1920s) the original forests were almost completely depleted (Clarkson). The litany of abuses and multicausal and synergistic effects are tragic, and have been thoroughly reviewed elsewhere, (Simon 1978; 1981; White 1982; 1987) but the Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force which documented land ownership patterns in Appalachia (and West Virginia) and analyzed their impact on local communities most poignantly encapsulates the dire reality of what is West Virginia: West Virginia is at the same time one of the richest and poorest states in the nation. By the late 1880s the fate of independent and self-sufficient mountain settlers was altered forever by the discovery of vast natural resources wealth, especially minerals. Since that time the state's timber, minerals, water resources, and natural beauty have been bought and controlled by interests with little or no accountability for the ongoing life of the region. This tremendous concentration of absentee land ownership is the key to understanding the paradox of severe social and economic disadvantage amidst almost limitless natural resources wealth . . . . Well over half of the land covered by the study is owned and thus controlled by interests other than local residents. Over 50 percent of the surface of the [surveyed] sample counties (2,315,419 acres) and almost 75 percent of the minerals (3,273,242 acres) are large holdings owned primarily by absentee and corporate interests. . . . In the sample counties at least 30 percent of the surface acreage and 55 percent of the minerals are owned by corporations; 32 percent of the surface and 54 percent of the minerals are owned by interests from outside the respective counties; 27 percent of the surface and 41 percent of the minerals are owned by interests outside of the state of West Virginia. The 1,091,234 acres of absentee corporate surface is taxed at an average of $1.67 an acre and the 2,144,456 acres of absentee corporate minerals is taxed at an average of $1.40 an Volume Three, 1991 57 �acre.... The state continues to suffer from grossly inadequate housing, above average unemployment, severe ecological disruption, below average per capita income, bloated welfare rolls, and serious deficiencies in health, transportation, and educational services. At the same time, the land and its wealth have been and continue to be acquired by interests more and more removed from any responsibility for the fate of those who live on or near these holding." (Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force 1980, 1-2) Such is West Virginia, a state born out of war and indelibly scarred ever since. There is no way of knowing whether or not West Virginia would have fared better had it retained its affiliation with Old Virginia. Virginia, like all southern states, suffered its share of indignation and subjugation after the Great Rebellion, but one must wonder whether the highly unique beginning of West Virginia's statehood initiated a process of colonial underdevelopment which may be irreversible. Given the facts, Henry A Wise (former governor of Virginia) appears to have been correct when he declared "West Virginia was the bastard child of a political rape" (Curry, 136). Works Cited Adams, Frank. 1972. "Highlander Folk School: Getting Information, Going Back and Teaching It." Harvard Educational Review 42 (4): 497-520. Amsden, Jon and Stephen Brier. 1977. "Coal Miners on Strike: The Transfer mation of Strike Demands and the Formation of a National Union." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 7 (Spring): 583-616. Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force. 1980. Appalachian Land Ownership Study: Vol. II, West Virginia. Boone, North Carolina: Appalachian State University and New Market, Tennessee: Highlander Research and Education Center. Appalachian Alliance. 1982. Appalachia In the Eighties: A Time for Action. New Market, Tennessee: Appalachian Alliance. Carman, Harry J.,, Harold C. Syrett, and Bernard W. Wishy. 1961. History of the American People Vol. I & II. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Catton, Bruce. 1961. The Coming Fury: The Centennial History of the Civil War Vol.1. New York: Washington Square Press. 58 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �-. 1980. The Civil War. New York: The Fairfax Press. Clarkson, Roy B. 1964. Tumult on the Mountains. Parsons, West Virginia: McClain Publishing Co. Curry, Richard O. 1964. A House Divided: A Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Davis, Dorothy. 1970. History of Harrison County West Virginia. Parsons, West Virginia: McClain Printing Co. Eller, Ronald. D. 1979. "Land and Family: An Historical View of Preindustrial Appalachia." Appalachian Journal 6 (Winter): 83-109. Foner, Eric. 1988. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (18631977). New York: Harper and Row Publishers. Lee, Howard B. 1969. Bloodletting in Appalachia. Morgantown, West Virginia: West Virginia University Press. McKinney, Gordon. 1977. "Industrialization and Violence." in J.W. Williamson, ed. An Appalachian Symposium. Boone, North Carolina: Appalachian State University Press. McPherson, James M. 1988. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press. Munn, Robert F. 1975. "The Development of Strip Mining in Southern Appalachia." Appalachia Journal 3 (Autumn): 87-93. Simon, Richard M. 1978. The Development of Underdevelopment: The Coal Industry and its Effect on the West Virginia Economy, 1880-1930. University of Pittsburgh, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. . 1981. "Uneven Development and the Case of West Virginia: Going Beyond the Colonialism Model." Appalachian Journal 8 (Spring): 165-186. Smith, Edward C. 1927. The Borderland in the Civil War. New York: The MacMillan Co. Smith, Gene. 1984. Lee and Grant: A Dual Biography. New York: McGrawHill, Inc. Wheeler, Hoyt N. 1976. "Mountaineer Mine Wars: An Analysis of the West Virginia Mine Wars of 1912-1913 and 1920-1921." Business History Review 50 (Spring): 69-91. Volume Three, 1991 59 �White, David. 1982. A Social Epidemiological Analysis of Central Appalachian Economic Distress. University of Pittsburgh: Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. 1987. "A Social Epidemiological Model of Central Appalachia." Arete 12 (Summer): 47-66. Williams, John A. 1976. West Virginia and the Captains of Industry. Morgantown, West Virginia: West Virginia University Press. David B. White is the Director of Health Administration in the Department of Education and Health Services at Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 60 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Forgotten Sisters: Mountain Women in the South Milton Ready As a discipline, women's history seems to construct a great many models and cults of women who never existed. Along with critical biographies and studies of clubs and social movements, models appear as a genre, a way of explaining women's roles to a larger public. A cursory reading of bibliographies in the field, for example, shows biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, Mother Jones, the Grimke sisters from South Carolina; Jane Addams studies of social settlements, the suffrage movement; and women in various reform movements from abolitionism to the ERA.1 Women who are not as outstanding as, say, Lydia Maria Child or Harriet Beecher Stowe, disappear into an antebellum model similar to that portrayed by Barbara Welter. They are pious, pure, submissive, and domestic (Welter 1966, 151-74). Unmodified models and stereotypes typically break down, telling us, as they do, of a much more complex story. In Anne Firor Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930, the figure that emerges is that of Scarlett O'Hara, the perpetually pouting adolescent belle who, transformed by the anvil of the Civil War, re-emerges as a southern matriarch, cruel and self-centered, as ambitious as any man (Scott 1970, 3-47). Such descriptions can never satisfy, of course, nor is that their intention. Wrenched out of history, Scott's southern lady reflects only one out of an immense variety of attitudes about the southern woman. Still, none of the interpretations reflect the role of Appalachian women in southern history. Appalachian women in the nineteenth century seldom affected the depiction of southern women. Indeed, the metaphor of the changing southern women, from the belle of the antebellum period to the total Volume Three, 1991 61 �woman of the Sun Belt era, stands apart from the experience of mountain women. They are, as Bill Cosby once said of the place of blacks in American history, lost, strayed, perhaps forgotten sisters of the South, even as stereotypes. The most outstanding feature of Appalachian women in the nineteenth century is the fact that we know so little about them. While southern women in general might have kept diaries, overseen slaves, joined clubs and groups, written novels, gone to school, traveled, and even infrequently appeared in political and social events, their Appalachian sisters toiled in obscurity. Their sphere almost entirely was private, usually consisting of family, home, and church. What information is available frequently is secondary, tacit, understood only within the context of songs and ballads, folktales and stories, of "Grandma lore," and from males who talked about "womenfolk" and, at a later time interviewed them as outsiders interested in special aspects of their lives. The outline of the Appalachian women that emerges depicts still another model of the "southern lady" of the nineteenth century, one almost entirely removed from the influence of Anne Scott's portrayal. Almost all accounts of men and women in the nineteenth century assume that they worked hard, carving out homesteads and farms in the wilderness, typically laboring from sun-up to sunset on an endless array of tasks and chores. Yet, a special case and a unique claim needs to be established for mountain women. Almost all accounts of the period— songs, stories, letters, and interviews—point to perpetual labor for women. Talking about the late 1800s, a Grandma Brown from Kentucky remembered that throughout her life, "The drudgery was unending, year in and year out" (Brown 1951, 284). Vesta Brown, a Tennessee woman, thought that when she married, "I wouldn't have to work as hard as I did at home, but I hadn't come down in the valley ... two days before I knew I had more work to do than ever" (Winter 1965, 31). In James Still's River of Earth, a twelve-year-old girl soon learned that she must get up early in the morning, help her mother with breakfast and chores, make the beds, labor in the garden, help with the laundry and meal preparation, and work in the fields if another hand was needed, all while "the son in the family could eat when he wanted, [and] sleep as late as he liked unless there was a specific chore he had been asked to do" (Fair 1976, 58). A typical mountain woman of the 1880s put in a sixteen-to-eighteenhour day, working, cleaning, spinning, sewing, canning, washing, milking, hoeing, and, at dusk, overseeing children who brought in the cows, lit the kerosene lamps, and did the supper dishes. Almost all nineteenth-century mountain women had in common a way of life covered by one word—toil—and symbolized by the constant tools of her sphere—the needle, ladle, and hoe. They were pictured as overworked, over-bur- 62 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �dened, always pregnant, always surrounded by children, with a babe in their arms, and a tired body and weathered face. Often they were lonely, generally unappreciated, and yearned for a shelter where there would be no work. Their refuge lay in church, in their fellow sisters who shared the same labors, and in the hymns they sang as they went about their endless tasks. A minister who promised "peace, rest, and eternal sleep" struck a resonant chord deep in the hearts of mountain women. The chorus of an old hymn reveals the hidden loneliness and despair in the lives of mountain women: Rest, sweet rest, and joy and gladness, Comes when toil, when toil is o'er. Sweetest resting comes when toil is o'er, 'twill be joy and rest eternal On the other shore. The words of the well-known song, "Sourwood Mountain," explain in part a mountain man's attitude toward women: Old Man, Old Man, I want your daughter Hey, didyum, didyum dum day To bake me bread and carry me water Hey, didyum, didyum dum day. To him, women were helpmates and contributors, frequently more valuable than oxen and horses, but seldom esteemed more than kinfolk and hound dogs. When Alpha Baldridge, the mother in River of Earth, pleaded with her husband, Brack, to turn out his two worthless cousins, Harl and Tibb Logan, and his great-uncle Samp Baldridge, because "It's all we can do to keep bread in the children's mouths. . . . Even if they are your blood kin, we can't feed them much longer." Noting that they were men down on their luck, Brack replied, "I can't turn my kin out." In desperation, Alpha moved her furniture and children into the smokehouse, a place too small to accommodate any but her family, and burned the house down (Farr 1976, 57). In novels and interviews by local-colorists, mountain men frequently described their dogs in lyrical terms, almost as if they were in love with them, and their women as if they were dumb creatures prized mainly for what they could produce in the way of sons and daughters, food, clothing, and crops. In this fashion, mountain men used up their lands and women with equal neglect and thoughtlessness. If it is valid to assert that both men and women, whether in the southern piedmont or mountains, labored long hours at arduous tasks, it is also important to note that mountain women, unlike their sisters in Volume Three, 1991 63 �the lower south and their menfolk within their own culture, had little existence outside their work. Almost all accounts of Appalachian women chronicle their labor if they are young, or, if they're very old, their roles as grandmothers, as cultural agents, storytellers, and folklorists. They can be teachers but not schoolteachers, active in the church but not missionaries, and they are allowed to have opinions only on a small range of subjects—the weather, folk cures and remedies, woodlore, having children but not childrearing, family but not individual morality, local preachers, and food processing. Unlike the southern belle, the mountain women cannot be pretty, soft, sensuous, or sexually alluring, yet, by their own testimony, they enjoyed sex to such a degree that Scarlett would faint at the mention of their bawdy stories, and mountain men raged at their "Jezebel ways" and grabbed their guns. While mountain men assembled after a meal to swap politics, stories, and drinks, women sometimes gathered to exchange news, talk about the family, and increase their knowledge of quilting, cooking, and the Bible. They also shared trashy talk. Frequently, the dirtiest old ladies were grandmothers. When, as Rayna Green observed, her grandmother stepped out of the bedroom and her sister commented that the hair on her "private parts" was thinning, granny chuckled that "grass don't grow on a race track," especially after seventeen children (Green 1977, 31). When arguing over whether older mountain men could satisfy younger women, Moms Mabley, a well-known black comedienne from Western North Carolina, maintained that, "Ain't nothing no old man can do for me 'cept bring me a message from a young man." Countless mountain mothers have warned their daughters that before they married "any ol' hairy-legged boy, be sure to look carefully at his genes" (31, 33). For women, bawdy stories served as sex education, as double entendres about life, as entertainment, as social criticism, and as a form of rebellion against a male-dominated society. Early murder ballads exhibited many of the same functions. Most had women as their victims, and were sung by women, "perhaps because the songs spoke of their feelings and needs" (Smith 1978, 5). Jealousy, unfaithfulness, and unrequited romantic love dominated the themes of murder ballads. In Tom Dooley," "Jellon Grams," and "Lula Viers," punishment, always death, comes from someone close to the victim—a family member, an ex-lover or husband, but always a male. While it is easy to speculate that murder ballads were part of the pattern of a patriarchal society that tended to chastise women who spoke out, rebelled, ran away, and in general threatened traditional roles: they also kept alive the idea that women could disrupt society, influence men's actions, and in this fashion become folk heroes and models. When women sang ballads to each other, the message might also be to empha- 64 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �size men's failures, boasts, and inadequacies, their "comeuppance for lack of comeuppance," as one woman put it. Murder ballads give evidence of another differentiative aspect of life for most nineteenth-century mountain women—physical abuse. While it seems obvious that women in general have suffered abuse throughout the centuries, and that southern women, whether plantation belles or town prostitutes, also endured injury and assault, the mistreatment of mountain women, even in consideration of harsh frontier life and primitive living conditions, seems inappropriate, even disproportionate to their sisters elsewhere. A great many ballads such as "Tom Dooley," "Lula Viers," and "Pearl Bryant" originated in the fact that men murdered women, usually by stabbing or drowning, and, with the exception of "Tom Dooley," perhaps the most popular ballad outside the region, they go unpunished. Given the random violence of the region—family feuds and fights—it is not unlikely that women also suffered mistreatment as well. A northern Alabama farmer echoed a sentiment toward abusing women common not only to the mountains but to the South as a whole. "A woman's like a dumb animal, like a cow or a bitch dog. You got to frail them with a stick now and then to make 'em look up to you" (Fallow 1978, 49). And frail they did, with fists, sticks, whips, "tools common to their gender," in the words of an old mountain song. Perhaps because of the unending toil and physical abuse, the rugged living conditions of mountain life, and the older tradition of arranged marriages, the apprehension, the very notion of romantic love seems inappropriate to any model of Appalachian women. For them, there were no Rhett Butlers and Robert E. Lees, no cavaliers and gentlemen, only country boys and hillbillies, men who were perpetual adolescents, immature in their feelings toward themselves and their women, failures whenever they had to deal with the outside world. Any researcher into the lives of early mountain women would be struck by the absence of any strongly romantic feelings toward men in any of the literature. From Annie Fallows Johnston to Ida Belle Marcum to Grandma Templeton Jones, mountain women talked about everything—religion, gardening, corn husk dolls, education, floods, canning, pie parties—except their men.2 When husbands and fathers were mentioned, it was usually a commonplace comment like "We married" or "He died." Even if many of the biases inherent in any selection process are taken into account, i.e., the interviewer is a male, many questions are predictive and closed in terms of responses, mountain women are reluctant to talk about menfolk, especially if it's personal; still, the absence of emphatic, strong, spontaneous feelings toward men, even if coded in expressions like "He was a good man," seems extraordinary. While researching dialects in Cumberland County, Kentucky, Linda White found that, far from Volume Three, 1991 66 �expressing romantic, even positive feelings, love, as a term, had a casual, unemotional, even negative meaning. Used mostly by women throughout southeastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina, the term would be used to persuade, to command indirectly, as in "Do you love pickle-beans?" or "I'd love to be able to buy a new dress," or "Wouldn't you love to stay for dinner?" They don't really mean it. Instead, nineteenth-century Appalachian women frequently found positive, loving relationships with other women, their family, their children, and their religion. On weaving days each week, women met to visit, exchange information and personal news, and, of course, enthusiastically talk and relate to each other. Visits—to family, the ill, and friends—were common, as were networks of nurses and health-care givers. Still, religion provided mountain women one of their strongest emotional outlets. At church they could "love Jesus" and be loved for it, sing and cry and clasp hands, hug and kiss each other along with anyone else, shriek for joy and weep with bliss—all with society's approval and blessing, and all on a day when little work was expected. In terms of religious intensity, but certainly not piety, mountain women appeared more emotional and less solemn or doctrinal than their lowland sisters. Descriptions of mountain women in the nineteenth century do not disclose a southern lady like Anne Scott's. While lowland women worked hard, their sisters in the mountains labored grimly at endless tasks and chores without the help of slaves or servants or of prospects of a better life. A southern belle might be frail and delicate, but such adjectives are unthinkable for mountain women. Both sisters were domestic, presiding over a complicated household and plantation, but in the mountains the lack of domestic skills imperiled the family and community itself. Survival meant ingenuity, from growing and processing food to digging for roots in the woods. While both women were submissive in a maledominated, patriarchal society, mountain women had almost no other significant authority figures in their lives except husbands and fathers. Purity, a virtue for southern women before and after the Civil War, had little value in the mountains. Expressions such as "planting the seed before building the fence" and "woods colt" to describe illegitimate children point to another system of values for the mountains. Mountain women of the nineteenth century do not seem to fit the model of the southern lady depicted by such writers as Anne Firor Scott and Jean Friedman. Indeed, many of the various interpretations that could be constructed from the model because of changing conditions of race, class, and geography also seem inappropriate. What emerges, or more properly, re-emerges from composite depictions is still another model, that of Anna Maria Reeves Jarvis, a nineteenth-century West Virginia woman who became the inspiration for Mother's Day (TylerMcGraw 1977, 28-34). The expression "but after all was she not a 66 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �masterpiece as a mother and gentlewoman," working hard all her life for others, singing, sewing and quilting, suffering and redeeming all women, all society by her endless labor and love, an ideal mother and grandmother, seems a popular, yet still inaccurate description of the nineteenth-century Appalachian woman. Whether depicted as a southern lady, albeit a crude one, or as an ideal Victorian grandmother, an example for mothers everywhere, whether real or mythical, models or stereotypes, Appalachian women still do not have their story told. They remain forgotten sisters in the South. Works Cited Brown, Harriet. 1951. "Grandmother Brown's Move to Iowa." The Heritage of America. Henry Steele Commanger, et al. Boston. Fallow, George. 1978. "A Woman's Like a Dumb Animal." Such As Us: Southern Voices of the Times. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Fair, Sidney S. 1976. The Appalachian Woman as Portrayed by James Still in River of Earth ." Appalachian Heritage 4 (Spring): 58, 57. Green, Rayna. 1977. "Magnolias Grow in Dirt." Southern Exposure 4 (Winter ): 31,33. Scott, Anne Firor. 1970. The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 18301930. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Smith, Betty to Rus Dowda. 1978 April 11. In Rus Dowda " 'He Took Her By Her Golden Curls and Throwed Her Round and Round," Appalachian Women in the Nineteenth Century," Manuscript, Berea College. Tyler-McGraw, Marie. 1977. "But After All Was She Not a Masterpiece as a Mother and Gentlewoman." Goldenseal 3 (October-December): 28-34. Welter, Barbara. 1966. "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860." American Quarterly 18 (Summer): 151-74. Winter, Oakley. 1965. "Vesta, A 'Modern Woman'." Mountain Life and Work 40 (Winter): 31. Milton Ready is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Volume Three, 1991 67 �Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on Appalachia's Economic Dependency Paul Salstrom The roots of Appalachia's economic dependency go back two centuries before the New Deal of the 1930s—back to the region's first white settlers in the 1730s. As Robert D. Mitchell mentions in Commercialism and Frontier, Appalachia's export-oriented production has been dependent on outside markets, and on outside investment money, from its first inception in the Shenandoah Valley of the 1730s (Mitchell 1977, 8, 15355, 228-29, 236-37). No such dependence, of course, characterized production within the region for use within the region. But we should bear in mind that neither family self-sufficiency, local self-sufficiency, nor regional selfsufficiency were common ideals among early settlers. It is only in hindsight—only since the 1930s re-thinking of neo-classical economics— that export-oriented development has been seen as helping to impoverish many of the world's exporters.1 No, it was not a commitment to avoid a "staples export" syndrome that characterized the economic values of Appalachia's early settlers, but rather a commitment to achieve what was called a "competency"—which meant enough productive property to allow one's family to maintain a comfortable living standard however that might be maintained. If production for export out of the region did help to sustain a competency (through the money or the in-kind payments received in exchange) then nothing in most pioneers' economic values prescribed the least hesitation to produce for export out of the region.2 68 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �And indeed, under preindustrial conditions (prior, that is, to industrialization anywhere in the United States), dependence on outside markets, and even on outside financing, was not likely to cause impoverishment. But after industrialization elsewhere in the U.S. led to far higher productivity outside Appalachia than within Appalachia in turning out many of the products consumed inside Appalachia, then what followed was "unequal exchange." What is unequal in "unequal exchange" is the amount of time and work required to produce the same unit of economic value—the same generic axe, for instance or an equivalent bushel of corn. Since work-time was required to produce equivalent economic value in Appalachia than in the industrial centers, Appalachia's market-oriented labor was thereby cheapened in economic value. And that entailed not only wage workers in Appalachia receiving lower wages, but also a cheapening of the value of the self-employed labor which went into producing axes or corn for local markets. When axes from the North got cheaper, Appalachian craftspeople had to sell their axes cheaper (or fail to sell them). There nonetheless still remained two possible ways for Appalachia's people to avoid impoverishment. One way was for Appalachia to become a financial center. This emphatically did not occur, however. The other way to avoid impoverishment was for Appalachia's people to maintain their "competencies"—to keep their family farms of sufficient size to sustain themselves in comfort through a mixture of self-sufficiency and exchanges within local networks. But unfortunately (from the perspective of maintaining competency), during the pioneer era of abundant land it had become customary for Appalachia's farmers to practice partible inheritance— that is, to divide their holdings among all their heirs or, at the least, among all their male heirs. This worked more or less satisfactorily so long as there remained new frontier areas in which the surplus population could re-settle. But after vast new farming frontiers ceased to open, family farms were often not large enough to support a competency. Household economics—the economics of competency—lost some of its households due simply to changing cultural mores—a hankering for store-bought goods. Many other households, however, tried to maintain their competencies and yet failed. They tended to produce many children to help with the farm work, and those children in turn became adults who also produced large families to carry out the many chores. Only vast new farming frontiers could provide all the new competencies this pattern demanded, and such frontiers ceased to open by the 1890s. It was no coincidence that this was also when local products were massively driven out of local markets throughout the U.S. by competing products (both agricultural and manufactured) which were mass pro- Volume Three, 1991 69 �duced in the North and the Midwest. By this time, those farmers who could neither mass produce food nor supply specialty markets were well advised to maintain as much self-sufficiency as possible. Recently, in Appalachian Studies, a few economic analyses have emphasized the pitfalls of export-oriented resource extraction, but of course, this by its nature is an exercise in macroeconomics.* Meanwhile, most social analyses have been quite "micro." Appalachian social analyses have emphasized family and neighborhood social mores and organization. And since the region's traditional ideology has enjoined patriarchy, evidence of de facto matriarchy (or we might call it a temporary matriarchy) has not been pondered as it deserves to be. If, at any time during the first three decades of this century, one had toured the purely agricultural sections of Appalachia, one would have found the region's preindustrial way of life apparently in full swing. And yet many men in their prime years would have been absent, for in many cases they were out working in mines, logging camps, etc. Women were often running the home places—women, usually in their own prime years, supervising their family's subsistence farming and looking after elders as well as children in the process.4 What this amounted to in macro terms was a process whereby subsistence farming, subsidized the industrialization of Appalachia by furnishing much of the income (nonmonetized income, this was) which supported the families of industrial workers. Permit me a disclaimer at this point. When I say that subsistence farming often "subsidized" Appalachia's industrialization, I am not talking about exploitation. Exploitation has no place in my analysis. It's not a term of reference for me. But subsistence farming "subsidized" Appalachia's industrialization by allowing many industrial operations to compete successfully in markets which they could not have entered had their wage costs been as high as their competitors' wage costs. To say this is not really the same as saying that industrialists or investors "appropriated" value created outside the market system by the families of workers. And I emphasize this because I believe that using "exploitation," "appropriation," and other Marxist categories of analysis might tend to conceal our present-day option of making constructive use of nonmarket economics—a subject which I will address. Granted that many coal operators, timber barons, etc., did get richer because their workers subsidized outside of market relations—but meanwhile, from the perspective of many workers, it was the industrial pay that was serving as a subsidy. Industrial pay was subsidizing their status as independent landowners by plugging gaps in their "competency" which had been opened by farm sub-division, by partible inheritance. And where—you may wonder—where does government aid fit into this story? Well, long before the New Deal initiated direct federal aid to 70 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �some of Appalachia's people, federal aid to midwesterners in the form of homestead and railroad land grants helped indirectly to impoverish Appalachia's people by hastening the exclusion of their farm and shop products from even their own local markets (not to mention markets outside the region). The immense production of food on federallygranted land west of the Mississippi River tended to make farming less profitable for everyone in the country who was already farming. Before the Midwest opened, all evidence indicates that Appalachia marketed a larger percentage of its food output than it was able to market after the Midwest's cheap food exports began invading Appalachia's stores.5 After the mechanization of the Midwest's export-oriented farming, and then within Appalachia the creation of extractive industries to export coal and timber, etc., most of Appalachia's remaining full-time farmers continued no less dependent than they had always been on their local non-market exchanges—their local networks of voluntary reciprocity that Mary Beth Pudup has called an "informal economy" and that I call "subsistencebarter-and-borrow systems." Even most wage-earning families continued subsistence farming on the side (Hall 1986, 359-61; Corbin 1981, 3335). How, then, did the New Deal's relief payments interact with this situation within Appalachia? First, the relief payments made to Appalachia's unemployed and underemployed miners and other wage workers were absolutely necessary—for wage workers were obviously dependent on money income for livelihoods. But full-time subsistence farmers—to the extent that they still maintained a competency (often a very large extent)—were not dependent on money income except for their land taxes, which were low. Nonetheless, their low money income could qualify them for New Deal relief even if their landholdings and other productive assets had substantial value. After the initial New Deal relief payments, many of Appalachia's farm people did not reapply for them but yet continued to receive relief checks. In April 1934, West Virginia's head relief administrator admitted to Harry Hopkins that local relief workers in "some counties have not investigated in six months. They keep sending checks week after week to the same people" (Beehler to Hopkins 1934). A month later that administrator warned West Virginia's relief personnel that thousands of dollars were being dispersed unnecessarily. "One rural county," he told them, "with 1,000 relief cases on April 1st [1934] which had been receiving relief for many months, found on the 20th of April that less than 300 of them had reapplied for relief*—leading the administrator to lament that "a tremendous amount of public funds had been utterly wasted" and in the process "many people pauperized thereby" (Beehler 1934, 1). Unfortunately, the administrator did not identify the county to which he was referring, but I suspect it may well have been my present Volume Three, 1991 71 �home county, West Virginia's Lincoln County. This was (and remains) a predominantly agricultural rather than industrial county. Indeed, the proportion of the population placed on relief (although not necessarily the size of their relief payments) often stood highest in the least industrial of Appalachia's counties. Already by July 1933, twelve West Virginia counties had seen over 45 percent of their households placed on relief, but only four of those counties had even 30 percent of their workforce in mining, whereas nine of them had at least 30 percent of their workers classified as agricultural. West Virginia's Lincoln County, for instance, with 84 percent of its households on relief as of July 1933, had a work-force classified as 60 percent agricultural. The amounts of relief payments then leapt enormously during the winter 1933-1934 work relief projects of the Civilian Works Administration. After that outlay ended in the spring of 1934, Lincoln County's head relief administrator allowed hundreds of ineligible households to be reinstated on non-worker relief. During the summer of 1934, that administrator was fired and the rolls were cut back 30 percent, but, as of June 1935, 44.5 percent of Lincoln County's households were still receiving relief. By that time, Wayne County (next door to Lincoln), had succeeded Lincoln as West Virginia's county with the highest percent of households on relief (47 percent, and receiving about $15 a month on average). Wayne County's workforce was classified as 45 percent agricultural. Lincoln County, with 44.5 percent of its workers on relief (averaging $9.70 a month) was as we've seen 60 percent agricultural. And Calhoun, the third-ranking county with 42.5 percent of his households on relief (averaging $12 a month) was 65 percent agricultural. (And it would take over $100 now to buy what $12 bought then.) Official indifference toward the region's low-money economic networks can be surmised from official reports.6 Of Wayne County, an October 1934 report asserted that the percent of local residents on relief "will probably run high until such time as constructive social planning makes possible the absorption of the population into self-supporting activities" (National Archives 1934, Box 311). While waiting for such planned "self-supporting activities," however, some people were being weaned by relief payments from their customary self-supporting activities which were not denominated in money and thus were not necessarily noticed by relief officials. For some few farm families, admittedly, an increased money income could underwrite self-help. At the well-funded level of the Rural Rehabilitation program's, for example, federal aid did often improve farm families' long-term economic security and living standard. But Rural Rehabilitation involved large outlays of supervised credit for each family 72 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �involved, and thus it could reach only a few thousand farm families per state.7 One of the macroeconomic regional results of massive federal aid was an increase in Appalachia's import surplus. Theoretically, relief funds were not all federally provided but included a significant contribution of state and local matching funds. Appalachian states, however, contributed far less in state and local matching funds than most states. From March 1933 through the end of 1937, $183 million was dispensed in West Virginia for relief—which in today's values would translate to over $1.5 billion. This outlay was divided among ordinary relief, work relief, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the National Youth Administration, Rural Rehabilitation programs, etc. And 87 percent of it was contributed by the federal government. Meanwhile, in the six other states that encompassed Appalachian sections, the federal contribution averaged still higher, 89 percent. But in the rest of the U.S. the federal contribution averaged much lower, below 72 percent.8 Not only was Appalachia's import surplus soaring, but ominously, by 1935 social workers in the mountain region were finding that (as one report put it) "most employers will not hire persons who have been on relief for extended periods" (Conley, 1935). And in May 1935, the demoralizing effects nationwide of unearned relief payments inspired the Roosevelt Administration to phase out unearned federal relief and to institute the Works Progress Administration (WPA). This was sound psychology, for subsequent studies have demonstrated that (in the words of one study) "charity wounds him who receives" (Mauss 1954, 63).9 But in macroeconomic perspective, the WPA's work relief continued (indeed hastened with its far higher payments) the rise of Appalachia's import surplus. And it also hastened another trend—the erosion of the mountains' low-money "informal economy," the region's "subsistence-barterand-borrow" networks. To full-time mountain farmers who often had little need for money, the WPA paid wages as high as it paid to anyone else—thirty cents an hour until June 1936, and forty cents an hour thereafter.10 Although rural WPA employees were allowed only fifteen hours of work per week (whereas urban WPA employees were allowed twenty-four hours per week), nonetheless fifteen hours a week at forty cents an hour yielded $26 a month. And if this income was supplemented by a further $25 a month (the minimum received by families with a son in the Civilian Conservation Corps), the total of $51 would have been equivalent in today's values to $433 a month. Please do not suppose that I begrudge those people that money. My point is that such relief payments, if made to full-time farm families, were often not serving as compensation for a shortfall in home-based competency but rather were tending to create a shortfall in home-based Volume Three, 1991 73 �competency. Although many mountaineers admittedly remember the WPA with fondness, others do not. Claude Dillon of the Marrowbone Creek neighborhood of Mingo County, West Virginia, came to feel that "the public works programs that were prescribed to put people to work, simply took them away from farm life, took them away from the selfsufficient way to do things" (Tierney 1983, 7). And a storekeeper in Lincoln County, West Virginia, reflected later that "it was the WPA that started farming on its downhill path all around here. The WPA paid farmers to work on the roads, and work on this and that, till they started counting on that money and neglecting their land" (Ray Gene Black, interview, June 1983). By 1942, when nine years of government aid terminated, many farm families found they had grown quite dependent on regular money income. Many of these farm families then followed the trail of government largess and took defense-related jobs outside Appalachia. From 1940 to 1960, net migration from the Appalachian region totalled 1.7 million people—which was 31.5 percent of the region's 1940 population.11 Now, it would be quite easy to make a case that the American economy had exploited these people more when their lives were centered at their mountain farms than it was able to exploit them later, when they had left Appalachia, and when thus their employers had to pay them a better wage, a more nearly family-supporting wage. But let me point out that to be less exploited is not necessarily to be better off. How gladly did these people undergo the transformation of their way of life? How willingly did they abandon a way of life suffused with voluntary reciprocity in economic relations and enter a way of life virtually devoid of voluntary reciprocity, a life mediated instead by binding contracts? In any case, the question is not whether to applaud or condemn the New Deal but how to analyze it (along with the rest of Appalachia's past) in such a way as to gain insights applicable to our own situation today. Today our national economic priority should be, I believe, to minimize our horrendously bloated production of U.S. dollars—which at an alarming rate are flowing out into the hands of foreigners who can use them to buy up productive assets within the United States. To minimize the production of dollars will require that a large percentage of intra-U.S. economic exchanges be de-monetized, or at least de-dollarized. But the question then becomes how exchanges within the U.S. should be dedollarized. Is it necessary that some new corporatist vision of "America, Inc." be propagated in the spirit of Louis Kelso?12 Or can a significant portion of our intra-U.S. exchanges be de-dollarized through a revival of voluntary reciprocity—of the kind of voluntary reciprocity that pervaded rural America before the twentieth century, and which still remains common in much of Appalachia. 74 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �The contrast between the New Deal and what we now need to do is twofold. First, we should be thinking now about grassroots economic development rather than primarily (like the New Deal) about reviving U.S. markets for major U.S. commodities. The problem now isn't simply to get purchasing power into American communities but also to get competitive products to come out of American communities. One of the main ways the New Deal injected purchasing power into American communities was through public works projects—and we should not dismiss public works as necessarily contradictory to getting competitive products out of American communities. But on a cautionary note, listen to these thoughts from E.F. Schumacher's 1973 book, Small is Beautiful: Poverty means that markets are small and there is very little free purchasing power. All the purchasing power that exists already, is, as it were, bespoken, and if I start a new production of, say, sandals or shoes in a poor area, my fellow sufferers in the area will not have any money to buy the shoes when I have made them. Production is sometimes easier to start than it is to fund markets, and then, of course, we get very quickly the advice to produce for export, because exports are mainly for rich countries and their purchasing power is plentiful. (203) Where Schumacher writes "rich countries" here, we can make his point relevant to the Appalachian situation by thinking of "rich regions" which possess plentiful purchasing power. But rather than assuming that Appalachia must produce for export only what rich regions want from us, there does exist an alternative means of starting to build up Appalachia's own internal purchasing power—and what this means is public works of the New Deal sort. Regarding this, Schumacher says: If you can get new purchasing power into a rural community by way of a public works programme financed from outside, see to it that the fullest possible use is made of the "multiplier effect." The people employed on the public works want to spend their wages on "wages goods," that is to say, consumers' goods of all kinds. If these wages goods can be locally produced, the new purchasing power made available through the public works programme does not seep away but goes on circulating in the local market, and the total employment effect could be prodigious. (204-5) All well and good, but how can a local "multiplier effect" be established and maintained? Schumacher points out that: Volume Three, 1991 75 �If I start new production in a poor country [read "region"] there can be no local market for my products unless I divert the flow of purchasing power from some other product to mine. A dozen different productions should all be started together: then for every one of the twelve producers the other eleven would be his market. There would be additional purchasing power to absorb the additional output. But it is extremely difficult to start many activities at once. (204) Yes, it is difficult to start many activities at once. In fact, to do this in a poor area like Appalachia might well require de-dollarizing a lot of how we think about "purchasing power" within the region. To do what's needed—to start many activities at once—may well require using monies-of-account rather than dollars for a lot of our intra-Appalachian economic exchanges. Back in 1933, when the Tennessee Valley Authority was created, the TVA's first chairman, Arthur Morgan, put his mind to this challenge in its particular Appalachian context. Here are some of Morgan's reflections from a famous speech he delivered at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in November 1933. Like E.F. Schumacher forty years later, Arthur Morgan used shoes to help illustrate his idea: Suppose you want to build and operate a shoe factory in some part of this region, and in another town, furniture, in another clothes, etc. You might think "We have people here doing nothing, and they might as well be producing; they might as well be making their own goods, lifting themselves out of the economic depression. If we make shoes, we can wear more shoes; we can make shoes for each other; and so with other goods which we go without now. We can have our own economy in our little world." But suppose the shoe dealer starts to make shoes; suppose he wants to sell them over where the furniture is made; the trouble is that he is not part of the existing industrial organization; his shoes have to go back to the jobber; but the jobber already has his arrangements with a big St. Louis manufacturer, so when you buy shoes at the local store in the community where furniture is made, you find they are from St. Louis and not from the nearby community. And the furniture dealer also has to go through the ordered channels, through the wholesaler, who is connected with the big factories; and so in the shoe town he is squeezed out. Because of these deeply worn channels of trade, nearly all leading into and out of the big business and industrial centers, it seems necessary to set up a new economy if we are to 76 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �deal with ourselves and for ourselves. When we talk of balancing agriculture and industry by making things which can be consumed in this country, when we talk about having the people consume what they produce, we run into these difficulties. There are no roads going our way. What is the answer to that situation? Does it mean that this region must always continue to be a vassal of the big centers? Is there any other answer? No single answer will do. I do not think starting a local shoe factory, trying to serve the neighbors with shoes, will do if it is done alone. I do not think any furniture factory for local consumption is going to do a satisfactory business alone. Either the product will go into the channels of trade and when the furniture gets back here it will have 50 percent to 75 percent overhead added and it will be crowded out by the products of big industry, or else we shall have create channels for ourselves. I think it is not impossible to create new channels. I believe that to a certain degree this region might well set up its own local economy. It can produce its own goods and deal with itself. But if a region is going to build up a new economy by making things it needs at home, it will in a limited sense have to build up a whole economy and not a fragment of an economy. If I were going to build up a whole economy, it would be somewhat in the following manner: I would build a cooperative of some sort. I would have a central purchasing organization, a central sales organization, a distributing organization, and I think I'd have that cooperative organization have its own tokens of credit—a sort of local money. If a local shoe manufacturer should sell shoes to a cooperative, he would get cooperative money, not United States money, at least for part of his payment. The same would be true of the clothing manufacturer, and of all the others. If a man should go to buy shoes he could use this kind of local money in which the shoes were paid for. That money would not be good at a distance, and so those who sell things for home consumption could be paid only by buying other things made for home consumption. In that way home shoes would in some degree outlaw St. Louis shoes. I would have everybody who was producing for home consumption as part of this cooperative paid at least in part in the money of the cooperative, so there would be a kind of money that would buy the things we made ourselves but not buy the things outsiders make. In that way we would be compelled to buy from Volume Three, 1991 77 �each other. Not all business would be done this way. Legal money would also be necessary. I believe this compulsion to buy from each other may be necessary in order to break across the deep worn channels of trade which all lead into and out of the great commercial centers. Such compulsion would be better than the present compulsion of sitting at home in idleness, buying nothing because we have nothing to sell. As I think it over, I believe it is going to be almost necessary to have this element of local exchange, because otherwise, after your shoe manufacture has made shoes and has turned them in to the Cooperative he will get money for them and will buy Grand Rapids furniture; and the furniture manufacturer, after he has made furniture, unless he were paid in credits good only for home products he would buy his shoes from the St. Louis trade and not the local shoes. Soon the local money would be gone, local goods would be unsold, local factories closed, and everyone idle and unable to buy. Now whether this thing can be done, I do not know. But if we are going to build up a local economy, if we are going to be somewhat independent of mass production, I believe we are going to have to go all the way and develop our own tokens of local credit, as well as our own distributing center, our own purchasing center, and our own credit system that will make the exchange. (Morgan 1933, vol. 1, sec. 4) The New Deal did not make use of Arthur Morgan's suggestions along this line, and in fact he later traced his eventual ouster from the TVA partly to this 1933 speech (conversation with author,1973; 1974). I quote the speech at such length because of its obvious relevance to the problems which still confront Appalachia almost sixty years after Morgan spoke. One bright spot among our present options is that computers have probably eliminated any need to issue a local currency in order to conduct local economic exchanges. In various parts of the U.S. and Canada, membership groups which call themselves Local Economic Trading Systems (LETS) are operating now like non-money banks which record their members' deposits that take the form not of money but of labor and goods provided to other members. Withdrawals then take the form of labor and goods received from fellow members. The groups generally expand only to about two hundred members, including individuals and households. The members receive monthly statements in the form of computer printouts which report their non-money deposits and withdrawals during the previous month, along with their running balance. Such systems are now functioning also in some cities under the name of "Service Credits" for hospital/health volunteers, whose hours of 78 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �service earn them the right to that many hours of received help when and if they themselves request help.14 All such arrangements help to minimize the number of dollars needed for economic exchanges within the U.S. The model for such voluntary reciprocity is the informal, non-monetized networking which helped to subsidize America's initial industrialization and which we need to revive if we are to regain our local, regional, and national solvency in an increasingly competitive world. Notes 1 On the 1930s origin of a critique of export-oriented development, see Love (1980) especially pages 47-63. 2 See the recent explication of these issues in Vickers (1990). 3 See, for example, Simon (1978). 4 See, for example, Hall (1986), pages 3-4, 13-29. On recent times, see Shackleford and Weinberg (1977). 5 On this question of competition from Midwestern food producers, see Pudup (1988), pages 72-74. Also see Cummings (1986-87) pages 70-75. ' West Virginia Relief Administration, "Monthly Bulletin of Relief Statistics," Vol. 2, No. 5 (May 1935), page 13 incl. map; and Vol. 2, No. 6 (June 1935), page 19 map, in National Archives, Federal Emergency Relief Administration (Record Group 69), State Files, West Virginia, Box 312, Folder series 401. The "percent agricultural," by county taken from "West Virginia July 1933: Counties Having Very High Percentage of Families of Relief Rolls," National Archives, Federal Emergency Relief Administration (Record Group 69), State Files, West Virginia, Box 312, Special folder "Materials taken by Mr. Hopkins on his S.W. trip in August [1933]." 7 On the Rural Rehabilitation program nationwide, see Baldwin (1968), pages 61-65, 91-94, 106-8, and 199-214. On the Rural Rehabilitation program in West Virginia see Beehler (1934), pages 1-4. 8 Calculated from data in Heinemann (1983), pages 202-3, table. ' In addition, for the 1930s see Charles (1963) page 101. 10 Surveys of the Rural Relief Situation for Johnson, Knox, and Rowan Counties, Kentucky, October 1935, National Archives, Bureau of Agricultural Economics (RG 83), Rural Relief Studies (RG 83, entry 156), Box 5. "Brown and Hillary (1962), pages 55-60 including tables. For the definition of Appalachia used, see page 4 in the same volume. Volume Three, 1991 79 �u See, most recently, Kelso and Kelso (1986). Also see Speiser (1977). 13 See "Credit for Good Deeds: Golden Rules of Barter," Newsweek 15 January 1990, page 61. Works Cited Baldwin, Sidney. 1968. Poverty and Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Farm Security Administration. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Beehler, William N. (West Virginia Relief Administrator) to Harry Hopkins. 4 April 1934. National Archives, files of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (Record Group 69), State Files, West Virginia, Box 312, Folder Series 400. -. 1934. Office of Administrator, General Bulletin. Copy in the papers of H.G. Kump (governor of West Virginia), West Virginia Collection, West Virginia University, A. & M. No. 1609, Box 45, Folder "1934, May 12-19." Brown, James S. and George A. Hillary, Jr. 1962. The Great Migration, 19401960." The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey, ed. Thomas R. Ford. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Charles, Searle F. 1963. Minister of Relief: Harry Hopkins and the Depression. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Cummings, Joe. 1986-87. "Community and the Nature of Change: Sevier County, Tennessee, in the 1890s." East Tennessee Historical Society's Publications 58-59: 63-88. Conley, Irene (County Worker). 1935. "Survey of the Rural Relief Situation for Johnson County, Kentucky." National Archives, Files of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Record Group 83, Entry 156, Box 5, Rural Relief Studies. Corbin, David Alan. 1981. Life, Work and Rebellion in the Coal Fields. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd. 1986. "Disorderly Women: Gender and Labor Militancy in the Appalachian South." Journal of American History 73: 359, 371. Heinemann, Ronald L. 1983. Depression and New Deal in Virginia: The Enduring Dominion. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Kelso, Louis O. and Patricia Hetter Kelso. 1986. Democracy and Economic Power: Extending the ESOP Revolution. Cambridge: Bellinger Publishing Co. 80 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Love, Joseph L. 1980. "Raul Prebisch and the Origins of the Doctrine of Unequal Exchange." Latin American Research Review 15 (3): 45-72. Mauss, Marcel. 1954. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Trans. Ian Cunnison. Glencoe, Illinois.: The Free Press. Mitchell, Robert D. 1977. Commercialism and Frontier: Perspectives on the Early Shenandoah Valley. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Morgan, Arthur E. 9 November 1933. "Group Industries' Problems and Their Solution" speech at Ferris Hall, University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Copy in the TVA Technical Library, Knoxville, in Arthur E. Morgan, "Speeches and Writings." -. 1974. The Making of the TVA. Buffalo: Prometheus Books. National Archives. 8-10 October 1934. Report on West Virginia's county-bycounty relief fluctuations. National Archives, State Files, West Virginia, Box 311, Folder series 400. Pudup, Mary Beth. 1990. "The Limits of Subsistence: Agriculture and Industry in Central Appalachia." Agricultural History 64: 61-89. Schumacher, E.F. 1973. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. New York: Harper & Row. Shackleford, Laurel and Bill Weinberg, eds. 1977, Our Appalachia. New York: Hill & Wang. Simon, Richard Mark. 1978. "The Development of Underdevelopment: The Coal Industry and Its Effect on the West Virginia Economy, 1880-1930." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. Speiser, Stuart M. 1977. A Piece of the Action: A Plan to Provide Every Family with a $100,000 Stake in the Economy. New York: Van Norstrand Reinhold. Tierney, Michael T. 1983. "Bread on the Water: Education in an Isolated Mountain Community." Human Services in the Rural Environment 8 (Winter). Vickers, Daniel. 1990. "Competency and Competition: Economic Culture in Early America." William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 47 (January): 329 Paul Salstrom is Visiting Assistant Professor of History at West Virginia University. Volume Three, 1991 81 �The New Deal for Tenant Farmers: Government Planning and Indigenous Community Development on the Cumberland Plateau Benita J. Howell New Deal farm policy responded directly to the agricultural crisis in the Cotton Belt of the lowland South, but rural rehabilitation programs of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Resettlement Administration, Subsistence Homesteads Division, and Farm Security Administration (FSA) also reached into southern Appalachia. Mountain View, the fictitious name used here for a small farming community in Grundy County, Tennessee, was founded in 1938 by tenant farmers displaced by TVA dam construction. With indigenous organization and only modest financial and technical assistance from FSA, Mountain View survived and has remained a center of successful family-operated truck farming. In contrast to Mountain View were the New Deal experimental communities established and run by the federal government in an effort to provide a sound economic and social basis for rural life. Families selected for these communities received impressive amounts of government assistance. Cumberland Homesteads just south of Crossville, Tennessee, and Skyline Farms in Jackson County, Alabama, were two such communities located not far from the home areas of the Grundy 82 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �County settlers. Rising political opposition forced liquidation of these and scores of similar rural communities in the late 1940s. By that time most of the communities had faltered economically; but equally important in their failure were tensions between the social vision of the planners and the cultural expectations of community residents and the general American public. This paper compares the difficulties experienced in Skyline Farms, Cumberland Homesteads and other federally-sponsored communities with the indigenous development of Mountain View. The comparison is an interesting commentary on Appalachian community development work of the 1920s and 1930s (see Shapiro 1978; Whisnant 1983), because it points up the extent to which uneducated rural Appalachians, who were generally assumed to lack the requisite leadership skills and civicmindedness, used traditional patterns of social and economic cooperation to form a new community with only modest federal loans and technical assistance. Throughout the 1920s, southern agriculture was ravaged by soil depletion and erosion, the boll weevil, and a growing gap between the farmer's cost of living and low commodity prices. The Great Depression and dust bowl days of the 1930s highlighted the plight of farmers, and the national economic emergency prompted federal government action to address the crisis in agriculture (Mitchell 1947, 179-227). Soon after President Roosevelt took office in 1933, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) was formed, ushering in plow-ups and acreage allotments, price supports, and government purchase of surplus commodities in an effort to restore farmers' purchasing power. Policy set by the Cotton Section of the AAA was generally favorable to landowners rather than tenants; acreage reduction contracts had negative consequences for tenant farmers (Conrad 1965, 204-9). Landowners who reduced their cotton acreage did not need as many tenants to farm their holdings; furthermore, eliminating tenants or lowering their status to cropper or day laborer allowed the landowner to avoid sharing government subsidies for crop reduction with tenants. Because AAA contracts with landowners did not protect tenants from displacement, many found it increasingly difficult to rent farms in the mid-1930s, and some were left homeless. Other causes of tenant displacement were the introduction of mechanization to cotton growing and the domino effect of foreclosures on farm owners' mortgages (Woofter and Winston 1939, 22). Although the problems of cotton farming affected primarily the Deep South, commercial cotton production and attendant problems extended into the southernmost sections of Appalachia. In north Alabama and southeast Tennessee, however, the Tennessee Valley Authority had even greater impact than federal farm policy on Volume Three, 1991 83 �rural families and communities. Between its founding in 1933 and 1940, TVA constructed eight dams in the Tennessee River Valley. TVA planners hoped that flood control and abundant electric power would attract industry to the region to balance its traditional dependence on agriculture, but farmers near TVA dams paid the costs of regional progress. Some had to be relocated because their land would be flooded, while others suddenly found themselves in competition with relocatees for land to rent or buy. Many experienced social and psychological trauma as they were uprooted from home communities that disappeared forever under the rising waters of the new reservoirs. TVA also sought to improve agriculture in the region by providing cheap fertilizer and technical assistance to increase production in areas most suited to farming, while soil conservation and reforestation programs would remove marginally productive, eroded, or worn out land from crop production (Whisnant 1980, 43-69). Coupled with the inundation of much prime valley acreage, this policy had a devastating effect on small farm owners and tenants near the dams.(McDonald and Muldowny 1982). Rehabilitation and Resettlement: The Government Response to Displaced Tenants The federal government responded to the problem of displaced farm tenants with outright relief and with special rural rehabilitation programs (Baldwin 1968; Mertz 1978; Woofter and Winston). The most popular program provided rural rehabilitation loans to finance the purchase of land, equipment, livestock, or subsistence goods. Along with these loans came technical assistance to develop a workable farm and home plan which would make it possible for the farm family to thrive economically, improve their standard of living, and pay back the loan. The federal lenders, first the Resettlement Administration (RA) and later the Farm Security Administration (FSA), controlled how these loans were spent by requiring that county supervisors countersign checks drawn against loan money deposited in special bank accounts (Baldwin, 195-202). The federal government also experimented with planned communities during the New Deal (Blakey 1986, 127-30; Conkin 1959; Eaton 1950, 5-12; Infield 1945). After the turn of the century when the increasing pace of urbanization and industrial mechanization seemed threatening and the old frontier no longer offered escape, social critics romanticized the nation's agrarian past (Twelve Southerners 1930). They felt that revitalizing rural economy, culture, and society could preserve traditional American values, stem migration from rural to 84 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �urban areas, and thus forestall the dehumanizing effects of industrial employment and urban life. Many currents in social science and social work in the first decades of this century reflected a common set of assumptions derived from this agrarian myth: the idealized folk image of anthropologist Robert Redfield (1930; 1947); historian Frank Owsley's (1949) documentation of the forgotten yeoman farmers of the Old South; the Country Life Commission which led to federal programs for agricultural education and extension work; the emergence of rural sociology as a discipline; and the folk school movement with its emphases on basic education, enhancement of community cooperation and quality of life, cultural revival, and economic security through a combination of improved farming and commercial handcraft production (Eaton 1937; Shapiro; Whisnant 1983). These ideas and ideals were reflected in New Deal rural rehabilitation efforts (Baldwin, 203-8; Forrest 1989) and in the planned rural communities (Campbell and Coombs 1983; Conkin). When the Resettlement Administration was created in 1935, it inherited thirty-three subsistence homestead projects from the Interior Department (Conkin, 98-129), and thirty-four planned farm communities begun by FERA (Conkin, 133-44). The RA began thirty-five additional farm communities, including five cooperative farms, before it was succeeded as administrator of the federal communities in 1937 by FSA (Banfield 1951, 18-20). These projects were created with long-term federal involvement in mind, but political pressure to dismantle the more controversial New Deal programs mounted as the national economy recovered. By the mid-1940s, Congress had declared its intention to terminate the planned community projects (Conkin, 185-207). The projects ended and their assets were liquidated over the rest of the decade. Cumberland Homesteads, begun as an Interior Department subsistence homestead project, and Skyline Farms, a FERA relief project for displaced tenants, were two of these short-lived experimental communities located not far from Grundy County and the original homes of the families who established Mountain View. Cumberland Homesteads (Krechniak 1956) and other projects in the subsistence homesteads program grew out of the belief that stranded miners and industrial workers could best be helped by putting them back on the land where they could combine subsistence farming for home consumption with cash income from wage labor in industry. Two hundred fifty-one homesteads were created south of Crossville, Tennessee, between 1934 and 1937 and settled by families who came from all walks of life, some from other sections of the state and nation. WPA workers cleared the land and built barns, which the project families occupied while helping to build their own homes. These were attractive four- to seven-room stone houses with electricity, modern bathrooms, and up-to- Volume Three, 1991 85 �date kitchens. Between 1934 and 1939, labor credits and cash payments were applied toward eventual purchase of the homesteads, but the exact terms of lease-purchase agreements were not spelled out to the government's tenants. Long-term federal ownership was being used to block development that did not fit into the community plan, and to prevent financial speculation on the improved land. In addition to their uncertainties about land ownership, the families at Cumberland Homesteads were saddled with a sizeable debt for their spacious, modern houses. Because the planners assumed that wage work would provide most of the families' income, the landholdings were small; many tracts contained fewer than ten acres. Several cooperatives were established to provide cash income, among them a dairy, cannery, sorghum mill, and coal mine; but the real hope was to attract private industry to the area. Social planners hoped to convince industry to locate in rural areas where jobs were needed, but in the absence of adequate services and transportation this plan was unrealistic. Efforts to attract outside industry to Cumberland Homesteads never bore fruit, nor did the local cooperatives succeed. Without opportunities for cash income, many homesteaders were stranded on landholdings too small for raising livestock and too poor and rocky to support truck crops. The Cumberland Homesteads families were in effect locked into the government's community plan so that there was little they could do on their own initiative to adjust to circumstances. The government tried to save the situation for Cumberland Homesteads and similar subsistence homestead communities by extending WPA jobs, subsidizing community cooperatives, and offering direct subsidies to the industries it was trying to attract to the communities. This latter action, in particular, brought complaints from the public and Congress that the subsistence homesteads were proving too expensive and were bringing government into undesirable competition with private enterprise. For Cumberland Homesteads, construction of Watts Bar Dam, Douglas Dam, and Oak Ridge finally created jobs within commuting distance; this outside source of income enabled many of the original homesteaders to purchase their places when the government began selling out in 1945. At Skyline Farms, the shift to private ownership was not so smooth. Skyline Farms (Campbell and Coombs ) was planned to give displaced tenant farmers a chance to improve their lot through cooperative farming in a carefully planned community. Before the settlers arrived, relief workers had already cleared the land, put in roads, and built a house, barn, and smokehouse for each forty to sixty acre farm. Families were chosen for this project from the relief rolls, but the applications were carefully screened in an attempt to find families of good character 86 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �who already had farming skills. The successful applicants moved into a house, were issued food stamps and clothing, draft animals, seed, and fertilizers. The community planners intended to train participants in cooperation as well as in home management and the latest farming practices. The community was organized into a number of cooperative associations, for example: a commissary co-op, a produce marketing coop, and later a co-op to build and operate a hosiery mill. The community included a progressive, non-graded school, a pre-paid health plan, and an array of social events and group craft activities which the planners believed would develop cooperative spirit and create community cohesion. Under mounting pressure from the critics of New Deal social and economic experimentation, administration of the experimental communities was shifted from one government agency to another, and in the process policies were constantly changing. It never was made clear to the settlers at Skyline Farms exactly when or how they would receive title to their land, but they believed their labor and rental payments were being applied towards purchase. Skyline Farms also experienced economic difficulties. The hosiery mill was a costly failure, even after a private concern was contracted to run it, and the farming operations failed to thrive. When federal ownership was liquidated, any tenant who was in debt to the government was ruled ineligible to buy his farm. Because many of the farmers had outstanding production credit loans, they found themselves evicted from their homes. Families who had stuck with Skyline Farms for as long as twelve years through the frustrations of government management and economic uncertainty felt cheated out of the equity they thought they had been building through rental payments. Establishment of the Mountain View Community Mountain View (Lane 1985), although created by private citizens rather than government plan, was a consequence of TVA activities in the region. According to TVA statistics (1940), 1,952 farm families, or 12.2 percent of the entire population of Jackson and Marshall counties in north Alabama, were displaced by the Guntersville Dam project; 649 rural families in the Chickamauga reservoir area in southeast Tennessee faced relocation, and the project affected others indirectly through inflated land prices. By the late 1930s, federal land acquisition coupled with rising private demand for land had pushed real estate prices beyond the reach of tenant fanners who had weathered the worst of the Depression and now hoped to buy their own farms. While "150' by 500' lots in Chickamauga Farms, fronting the paved road to the new Volume Three, 1991 87 �(Chickamauga) dam" sold for $350 (Chattanooga Times, 11 September 1938), the same $350 could purchase seventy acres of recently cut-over timber land north of Chattanooga in Grundy County, part of a twelve thousand acre tract put on the market when timbering was completed in 1937. This offer attracted East Tennesseans from Bradley and Meigs counties, part of the Chickamauga Dam impact area, and families from Marshall County in north Alabama who were affected by construction of the Guntersville Dam. While the obstacles the Mountain View settlers faced were daunting, their new start meant a way out of a hopeless situation. Many of the women took their first look at the desolate area and would have left, but as one said, "We had nothing to go back to." In 1935 and 1936 when TVA conducted social surveys prior to relocation, most farmers in the Guntersville purchase area produced cotton and food for home consumption on small farms averaging thirty-three cultivated acres. Only 30.8 percent of those farming were owner-operators; 40.7 percent were tenants, 21.8 pecent were sharecroppers, and 6.7 percent were farm laborers. In 1935, net real income (cash and produce) of tenant farms averaged only $507 as opposed to $645 for owner-operated farms (TVA 1940). The Chickamauga purchase area contained parts of Bradley, Hamilton, McMinn, Meigs, and Rhea counties in Tennessee. Throughout this five county area, which includes metropolitan Chattanooga, only about 16 percent of the work force was engaged in agriculture. Those who did farm raised primarily corn and hay, and many gained an income principally from dairying, raising livestock, or growing truck crops. Acres in cultivation averaged 38.9 for all farmers, although tenants actually managed larger farms than owner-operators, cultivating fifty acres on average. Nevertheless, in 1936 the net real income for these tenant farms averaged only $715 as opposed to $969 for owner-operated farms (TVA 1940). The Mountain View settlers were able to take advantage of rural rehabilitation loans to obtain seed, feed, and fertilizer. As stipulated in the terms of these loans, they worked closely with the county FSA supervisor to develop a diversified farming program and monitor each year's income and expenses; a home management supervisor taught the women modern canning methods and other domestic skills. Loans were not granted for land purchase in Mountain View, however. Federal policy supported the reforestation of marginal crop and pasture land, not the continued clearing of forest for crops; thus the new Mountain View farms did not seem a promising risk to the federal lenders. Mountain View was established in a period of great opportunity, however, just as Grundy County agriculture was beginning to recover from the effects of 88 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �the Great Depression. Between 1930 and 1935, the number of farms in the county had risen from 524 to 964 as workers displaced from other occupations went back to the land to eke out a living. Average farm size had fallen from seventy-nine acres in 1930 to only forty-five acres in 1935, and the percentage of tenant farmers had risen from 22 percent to 31% percent By 1940 the county had only 623 farms, but these had become more viable economic units as average farm size increased to seventy acres. The rate of tenancy as opposed to full or part ownership had fallen to 20 percent (U.S. Census 1945). Between 1929 and 1939, the number of Grundy County farms growing vegetables for sale had been reduced by almost half, from fiftytwo to twenty-seven, and acreage in truck crop production had fallen from seventy-nine to twenty-seven acres (U.S. Census 1945). Growth in Chattanooga and an expanding wartime economy created new markets for farm products. Once the Mountain View farmers had cleared sufficient acreage and their good results with cabbage and other truck crops became apparent, government agencies no longer considered their farms poor financial risks. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, some of the Mountain View farmers finally were able to obtain land purchase loans from the Fanner's Home Administration to increase their land holdings. By this time, however, the community's success already was fairly well assured. Largely through their own efforts, with only modest financial and technical assistance from New Deal programs, the citizens of Mountain View had established themselves economically. They also developed strong social bonds between families through cooperation and intermarriage, and built their school and church into focal institutions of community life. Indigenous Forms of Cooperation in Mountain View Stimulating cooperation was an explicit goal of the New Deal planned communities (Baldwin 1968, 203-27; Conkin), but if Edward Banfield's (1951) assessment is accurate, the social engineers' efforts to induce cooperation were largely ineffective. Banfield studied the social organizational aspects of the Casa Grande cooperative farm in Arizona, one of the most economically successful of the experimental projects. Participants in the Casa Grande project received food, shelter, all the material accoutrements of a decent standard of living, jobs, technical training, and the benefits of the community life planned for them, yet there was constant grumbling. Every incident and every decision aroused factionalism. The residents resisted participation in clubs and other activities which project managers organized to stimulate community cooperation and cohesion. Banfield concluded that the grumblers Volume Three, 1991 89 �and non-cooperators were trying to regain a sense of self-respect and assert status claims, that they resorted to this behavior because the stigma of relief, the regimentation of the project, and social engineering of daily life blocked more constructive means of self-validation. Resentment of government intervention and the atmosphere of discord and factionalism caused many participants to leave Casa Grande, and the same was true of other less collectively-oriented projects like Skyline Farms. The Mountain View farmers were grateful for their rehabilitation loans but didn't like being in debt to the government. They paid off the rehabilitation loans as soon as possible, even though they cooperated closely and enthusiastically in programs suggested by FSA county supervisors and have continued to work well with their county agricultural extension agents. Self-validation was hardly at issue in Mountain View, however, when every family that stayed on the mountain was fulfilling dreams of independence and showing a somewhat skeptical county populace that they had the right stuff to succeed. Aside from negative psychological consequences which may have been inherent in the kind of social engineering being attempted in the experimental communities, cooperation might also have been inhibited by more fundamental factors such as group composition. Social workers carefully screened candidates for government projects and selected families whom they judged to have desirable skills and potential for rehabilitation. Since the projects aimed to supplant maladaptive cultural patterns with new ones, common background, experience, values, and beliefs were not considered important. These were precisely the common denominators the Mountain View families shared. Although only some of the Mountain View settlers had been acquainted with one another before the move, all were poor ex-tenant farmers with similar aspirations, and all were Baptist. Several Guntersville residents saw the Grundy County land advertised for $5.00 an acre in The Progressive Farmer, and two who decided to buy became agents for the land company. One tenant farmer from Guntersville who had lost a farm in East Tennessee during the Depression, visited relatives there and struck a deal to sell an old Tennessee acquaintance a portion of the acreage he had just bought. Five families from Alabama and three from East Tennessee selected themselves and one another to form the nucleus of the Mountain View community. Interestingly, if they had been relief families eligible for Skyline Farms they probably would have been passed over because the household heads were well into middle age, and fathers of large families. But marriages between their grown children soon reinforced the bonds of shared background, values, and goals, knitting Mountain View into a 90 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �complex network of neighbor and kin relationships typical of older rural settlements. Moreover, these older household heads and their wives had accumulated the experience and wisdom necessary to organize community-wide cooperation. Their first goals were to obtain an elementary school from the county and build themselves a church. Although the county provided teachers and built the school building using a National Youth Administration labor force, community women formed an active Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), organized money-raising projects to pay for extra furnishings and supplies, and took over the responsibility of providing a hot lunch program. When county-wide consolidation closed the school in 1963, the community took steps to retain ownership of the building. It became the property of the Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church and became a center for church and community social activities. Even more than the school, the church has been the symbol of community identity and cohesion. The first church-building project was aborted when it became apparent that the man who donated land for the church intended to name it for himself. Once they obtained land from a disinterested party, community members, who had jointly saved money to buy materials, contributed their labor to erect the building. Buying a heater and a second-hand piano were projects taken on by the community women's club. While this club was first organized by the FSA home supervisor, the women themselves kept it active after her position was cut. It later became their Home Demonstration Club. As in traditional rural settlements of the region, the church became not only the spiritual center of the new community, but its social center also—the site of revivals and singings, monthly birthday dinners, holiday celebrations, family reunions, and the like. In the case of federallysponsored communities like Skyline Farms, the doctrine of separation of church and state prevented federal project managers from actively promoting the formation of churches, so the opportunity to build community using this traditional arena of social activity was lost to them. Campbell and Coombs make it clear, however, that the planners of Skyline Farms were steeped in country life and folk school ideas and had a theoretical commitment to developing community spirit through other means: folk music, recreation, traditional handcrafts, and collective enterprise. Unfortunately, their approach ignored or discounted the existence of traditional patterns of cooperation which operated effectively in Mountain View. (See Hicks 1976, 103-7 for a similar critique of the War on Poverty in Appalachia.) Banfield's observations at Casa Grande and events at Cumberland Homesteads and Skyline Farms suggest that the Mountain View settlers were lucky to have as little direct government support as they did. Volume Three, 1991 91 �Unlike the residents of Cumberland Homesteads and Skyline Farms, the Mountain View settlers were able to fit the size, location, and character of their landholdings to their needs through buying and selling parts of their original tracts and expanding their landholdings. Looking back fifty years to the beginnings of their community, the residents of Mountain View often speak of themselves as pioneers in a wilderness. Like pioneers, they endured many hardships in the early years and only gradually added modem conveniences to their homes. Paying off their mortgages to the land company and buying more land were more important to them than fancy housing. In contrast residents of Cumberland Homesteads and Skyline Farms were provided many amenities on the assumption that the economic development schemes planned for those communities would work, and that residents could easily handle the debt they incurred by participating in the projects. Neither Skyline Farms nor Cumberland Homesteads implemented its economic plan successfully; only outside developments saved the situation for residents of Cumberland Homesteads. The Mountain View farmers pursued traditional flexible strategies for supplementing farming with other sources of income. In the early years, some of the men worked seasonally at coke ovens located in Grundy County or took factory jobs in Chattanooga, Tullahoma, or Oak Ridge. "Public work" was a temporary expedient if a crop failed, a building burned, or if cash was needed for some specific purpose-to buy more land or complete a building project. Among the various incomeproducing activities that regularly supplemented farming were timber cutting, hewing crossties, operating a sawmill or a charcoal kiln, and selling furs or medicinal roots. For the people of Mountain View, however, this traditional diversified subsistence strategy was a means to achieve a new goal of successful commercial truck farming. The Alabama families first tried growing cotton, the crop familiar to them, but found the growing season too short. Then they tried corn, soybeans, and potatoes, but there were not strong markets for these commodities. Almost by accident, one farmer experimented with cabbage, discovered how well suited it was to the cool, moist plateau climate, and was gratified by the price he received in Chattanooga for his crop. Others followed his lead, gradually adding other vegetable crops and expanding their marketing to Nashville. By the 1960s certain crops, notably pimento peppers, were grown for canners as well as produce wholesalers. Sound financial management begun with FSA assistance, readiness to experiment, and cooperation with agricultural extension agents were important in this transition to commercial farming (Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service 19351940). Cooperation within the community was critically important also. 92 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Initial land purchases spread out the pioneer families across the top of the mountain. Through land swaps, subdivision of the larger tracts, and later purchases, however, the families brought themselves into closer proximity, realizing that they needed one another to survive. For women as well as men, swapping labor was a means of efficiently accomplishing onerous tasks and heavy labor, beginning with the work of clearing land and building houses and barns. To assist in land clearing, members of the community pooled cash to buy a stump-puller which was considered common property and available to all. Barter of services and surplus commodities was an essential ingredient in the local economy until the shift was made from subsistence to commercial farming. One man with blacksmithing skills, for example, repaired tools and equipment for his neighbors and might receive syrup or firewood in return. As the truck farmers became more prosperous and increased their cultivated acres, they began to invest in tractors and other expensive equipment. For tasks that were not mechanized, like planting cabbage seedlings, women and young people from the community were now paid to supplement family labor. But informal economic cooperation persisted in the form of joint equipment purchases, usually involving relatives, and equipment swapping throughout the community. At first everyone in Mountain View was poor and struggling to pay off a mortgage. But from the 1950s on, those who were able to expand their operations and become most successful as commercial operators have continued the pattern of cooperation. They still share equipment with part-time farmers who cannot afford their own. They also handle cooperative purchasing of seeds, plants, fertilizer and the like, for any farmers in the community who want to participate. And at times they assist young people trying to get started in farming to secure loans. By the 1980s, the operator of the largest farm in the community began pushing for a formally organized Vegetable Growers Cooperative. A specific project he advocated was a community packing shed which would help individual growers increase their leverage in marketing and free them from some of the pressures of grading, packing, and shipping their produce. Conclusion: Social Engineering vs. Indigenous Community Development The New Deal experimental communities were a worthwhile experiment in providing training and skills rather than just short-term relief, but their planners failed to win over either their clients or the general public to their views of cooperation, in fact achieving less cooperation than the unplanned community did drawing on its own supposedly Volume Three, 1991 93 �inadequate traditions. Historians of the New Deal agree that rural rehabilitation loans were generally a popular and successful program (Baldwin, 199; Blakey 1986, 124-5). These loans held out to tenant farmers the possibility of regaining control over their lives and destinies, while social engineering in the government projects only replaced the landlord with a more benevolent master. Pervasive government control denied the independence that has always been a prime attraction of farming; philosophically the social visionaries who planned these projects operated on the premise that individual enterprise and cooperative spirit were incompatible values. Mountain View, on the other hand, began with traditional modes of informal community cooperation such as mutual aid and barter of services, and transformed these into more modern guises—equipment swapping, cooperative ownership, and cooperative purchasing. The idea for a formally organized vegetable marketing cooperative developed naturally out of this context. The county agricultural extension agent then became a facilitator—someone to help the community explore its options and locate start-up funds. The focal point of community social interaction was the church, but although all of the pioneer founders shared similar religious values and identified as Baptists, in time there were disagreements between fundamentalist and more liberal viewpoints which produced schisms in the mid-1960s and again in the mid1980s. Ambivalence about taking on leadership roles and resentment of those who'd assume leadership (phenomena observed by Hicks in "Little Laurel") played a role in the schisms. Although Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church still symbolizes the community and its history for the children of the pioneers, they realize that it can no longer be an all-inclusive community institution. In search of another forum that would encompass the whole community and address general issues such as Neighborhood Watch, they began a Community Club in 1985. Interestingly, members of the pioneer families took the initiative getting the club going but nominated "outsiders" to serve as officers, people who moved to Mountain View ten to fifteen years ago and have gained the confidence and respect of the pioneer families (cf. Hicks, 97). Thus, throughout its history, Mountain View has worked hard to maintain the ties of social and economic cooperation which were essential to the survival of individual farms and the community in the early years. The Mountain View families, working out their own destiny without benefit of social engineering, faced physical hardships and risks that were unknown in the government projects; but they likewise faced possibilities to improve their lot immeasurably through their own persistence and hard work. Their experience revealed no dichotomy between individualism and cooperation; they found traditional patterns 94 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �of economic and social cooperation to be effective and adaptable means of enhancing the security of each farm family and forming a supportive community for all of them. Works Cited Baldwin, Sidney. 1968. Poverty and Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Farm Security Administration. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Banfield, Edward C. 1951. Government Project. Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press. Blakey, George T. 1986. Hard Times and New Deal in Kentucky, 1929-1939. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Campbell, David and David Coombs. 1983. "Skyline Farms: A Case Study of Community Development and Rural Rehabilitation." Appalachian Journal 10(3): 244-54. Conkin, Paul K. 1959. Tomorrow a New World: The New Deal Community Program. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Conrad, David Eugene. 1965. The Forgotten Farmers. The Story of Sharecroppers in the New Deal. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Eaton, Allen H. 1937. Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands. New York: The Russell Sage Foundation. Eaton, Joseph. 1950. "The FSA Cooperative Farms." Cooperative Group Living, An International Symposium on Group Farming and the Sociology of Cooperation. Eds. H.F. Infield and J.B. Maier. New York: Koosis. Forrest, Suzanne, 1989. The Preservation of the Village. New Mexico's Hispanics and the New Deal. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Hicks, George L. 1976. Appalachian Valley. New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston. Infield, Henrik F. 1945. Cooperative Communities at Work. New York: Dryden Press. Krechniak, Helen and Joseph Krechniak. 1956. Cumberland County's First Hundred Years. Crossville, Tennessee: Centennial Committee. Volume Three, 1991 95 �Lane, Patricia G. 1985. "Mountain View. An Ethnographic Account of Cooperation and Conflict in a Tennessee Community on the Cumberland Plateau." Knoxville Tennessee Anthropological Association Miscellaneous Paper No. 10. McDonald, Michael and John Muldowny. 1982. TVA and the Dispossessed: The Resettlement of Population in the Norris Dam Area. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Mertz, Paul E. 1978. New Deal Policy and Southern Rural Poverty. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Mitchell, Broadus. 1947. Depression Decade: From New Era Through New Deal, 1929-1941. (Economic History of the United States, vol. 9) New York: Rinehart. Owsley, Frank L. 1949. Plain Folk of the Old South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Redfield, Robert. 1930. Tepoztlan, a Mexican Village: A Study of Folk Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . 1947. "The Folk Society. American Journal of Sociology 52: 293-308. Shapiro, Henry D. 1978. Appalachia on Our Mind. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service. 1935-1940. Annual Reports of Extension Agents. Typescripts on file, University of Tennessee College of Agriculture. Tennessee Valley Authority. 1940. Department of Regional Planning Studies. "Social and Economic Characteristics of Six Tennessee Valley Reservoir Areas." Typescript on file, University of Tennessee Library. Twelve Southerners. 1930. I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition. New York: Harper. U.S. Census Bureau. 1945. Census of Agriculture. Whisnant, David E. 1980. Modernizing the Mountaineer. Boone: Appalachian Consortium Press. -. 1983. All That Is Native & Fine. The Politics of Culture in an American Region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Woofter, T. J., Jr. and Ellen Winston. 1939. Seven Lean Years. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 96 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Acknowledgements I am most grateful to the people of "Mountain View" and to Pat Lane, whose information on the community is incorporated in this paper. Pat and I became acquainted with "Mountain View" during a community history project completed in 1984 with support from the Tennessee Humanities Council. I presented an earlier version of this paper to the community during that project. Pat Lane continued research in Mountain View and completed her M.A. thesis the following year (Lane 1985); it is the primary source for the detailed descriptions of economic and social cooperation which are included in this paper. Thanks also to Jerry Walling and George Smith of the Agricultural Extension Service, who provided information and made AES reports available for study. Benita J. Howell is an Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Volume Three, 1991 97 �Lawrence Augustus Oxley: The Beginnings of Social Work Among Blacks in North Carolina Counties John L. Bell A remarkable event occurred in North Carolina in 1925: the creation of the Division of Work Among Negroes. Housed within the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare, this agency's purpose was to study black social problems, help blacks organize local social work agencies, and to support needed statewide agencies for blacks. This Division of Work Among Negroes was the first such state agency in the United States, and it became a model of its type. It secured black social workers in forty counties, encouraged the formation of charitable organizations, secured improved hospital care, mediated racial conflicts, pressed for prison reform, fought lynching, sought improved child care, helped wayward juveniles, enforced school attendance laws, and sponsored unemployment relief in the depression. Although the Appalachian counties of North Carolina had few blacks, this division was active in Buncombe County. The purpose of this paper is to examine the organization of statewide social services and the activities of the Division of Work Among Negroes in the Appalachian counties. This division's effectiveness in providing black social services would not have been possible without a changing climate of opinion on social issues. Before 1900, few people understood how black social problems had an impact on the larger society. Public opinion in the South began to change as the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, later called the National Conference on Social Welfare, held periodic meetings 98 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �in the South: at Louisville in 1883, Atlanta in 1903, Richmond in 1908, and Memphis in 1914, and focused attention on these problems. Prior to 1900, these national conferences looked condescendingly at the South, offering gratuitous solutions to its social problems, but the Atlanta conference of 1903 affirmed that the South was best suited to solve its social problems, and this affirmation spurred southern welfare workers to action. Social melioration was also a theme of the Southern Sociological Congresses that met in racially integrated sessions in Nashville, Atlanta, and Memphis before World War I to discuss the plight of blacks (Wisner 1970, 125-34). Public opinion also began to change in North Carolina when an annual state social welfare conference, meeting the first time in 1912, spurred the state to social action. The 1916 conference proposed a State Board of Charities and Public Welfare be charged with starting statewide social welfare programs rather than giving passive supervision to local initiatives, as it had been doing. A.W. McAlister and Alfred M, Scales, both of Guilford County, secured the creation of such a board in the 1917 legislature, supposedly the first proactive state welfare agency in the nation. This board had five subdivisions: county organization, child welfare, institutional supervision, mental health, and publicity. It appointed for each county a three-member board to advise the state board and local officials (Shivers 1935, 226-28; Bruno 1957, 298-99). Although the founders of the state board desired to improve black social conditions, the legislature would not fund black social services. Still, black speakers at the state conferences highlighted the need. A.M. Moore, who worked with Governor Thomas Bickett during the war to assure an equitable distribution of defense jobs to blacks, addressed the 1920 conference on their needs. Moore pleaded with the conference to help end lynching, restore the ballot, improve housing, abolish Jim Crow transportation, encourage white ministers to preach against racial injustice, provide equal access to education, obtain better benefits for black veterans, secure justice in the courts, and to end derogatory references to blacks. That he could speak so frankly indicated daring on his part and receptivity in his white listeners (North Carolina 1920, 2833). Moore's pleas fell on the receptive ears of the Commissioner of Charities and Public Welfare, Kate Burr Johnson. A native of Morganton in the mountain county of Burke, Johnson was the first woman appointed to head a state agency in North Carolina. She took assorted courses at Queens College, the University of North Carolina, and the New York School of Social Work, but she never took a degree. She learned leadership by presiding over women's clubs and heading the state office of child welfare. Appointed commissioner in 1921, she Volume Three, 1991 99 �supervised one social worker, two stenographers, and an annual budget of $15,000. When she resigned in 1930, she supervised a staff of sixteen and a budget of $30,000, and she had secured grants of $114,000 to support social services for blacks and rural people, no little achievement (Raleigh 1930, 1952). One grant which Kate Johnson secured (in 1924) was $60,000 from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Fund. Half of this three-year grant went to establish and operate the Division of Work Among Negroes, an agency of her board. The division's purpose was to study black social problems and then help blacks organize locally to solve them (Raleigh). To achieve these objectives, Kate Johnson's main task was to find an able person to head the division. She found a well-qualified person at St. Augustine's College, an Episcopal school for blacks in Raleigh. Her choice was thirty-seven-year-old social sciences instructor Lawrence Augustus Oxley, an "able and conscientious" (North Carolina 1929a, 7) man who headed this work for nine years until he became a member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Black Cabinet." Born in Boston, Oxley attended a preparatory school in Cambridge and was later tutored by Harvard instructors. He enlisted in the army in World War I and rose in rank from private to first lieutenant. Serving as a special agent for the War Department, he investigated the morale of black troops in training camps. Postwar opportunities drew him to work in the Harlem YMCA, with the War Camp Community Service as a field investigator, with the Episcopal National Student Council, and finally to St. Augustine's in 1920 (Who's Who 1950, 404-5; Washington Post 1973). Oxley was well prepared to work in the state's twenty-two Appalachian counties, but he was greatly hampered by the small black population and the racial attitudes of county officials. Some 30,000 blacks called Appalachia home in 1920, and about 38,000 in 1930, in each case, less than ten percent of the population. Although every Appalachian county had some blacks, only six counties had over 2,000: Buncombe, Burke, Henderson, McDowell, Rutherford, and Wilkes. By 1930, nearly half of the black Appalachian population was located in Buncombe County. 0x16/8 plan for social services required blacks to organize, set their own agendas, and hire a black social worker. Most counties did not have the size and concentration of black population to do this. So Buncombe's large black population, located mainly in Asheville, made it a focal point of 0x16/8 work in Appalachia (United States 1920, 735-45; 1930, 975-90). The racial attitudes of county officials also made it difficult to organize social work in Appalachia. As part of a child welfare study, Oxley surveyed the racial attitudes of clerks of court, superintendents of schools, farm agents, and county doctors in fourteen Appalachian coun- 100 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �ties with the fewest blacks (Rosenwald Study 1929). The forty officials surveyed unanimously believed blacks to be inferior beings who should be segregated from whites. Looking at education for blacks, about half of these officials believed that blacks could benefit from elementary education only, but about a sixth wanted no black schools at all, feeling that education only ruined blacks for menial work. Surprisingly, three officials wanted "educational and economic equality of opportunity" for them (Rosenwald Study). When asked about blacks owning land, six officials opposed it; the other thirty-four wanted blacks to own land, but in segregated areas; they believed that land ownership helped make blacks better citizens. The whites in two counties, Graham and Mitchell, were hostile toward blacks, and encouraged visiting blacks to depart before sundown. An official in Mitchell County wanted to employ a black cook, but he feared for her safety if he brought her in. The towns of Jefferson and Morganton prohibited blacks from owning land inside the town limits, so patterns of residential segregation were well established. Only a fourth of these county officials wanted blacks to vote; the other three-fourths opposed their voting. Officials in Cherokee, Macon, Jackson, and Yancey counties believed their black inhabitants to be above average in intelligence and behavior, and race relations were thought to be good. As a result of the survey, Oxley discovered few major social problems. The clerks of court reported no dependent children who were wards of the county. Black families took care of their own orphans. Children also were well behaved. The few delinquent children to appear in juvenile court were sent home with their parents to be whipped, a punishment never ordered for white children. This parental whipping was thought to be effective because there were few repeat offenders. School attendance was generally better than in white schools, and the pupils were generally "courteous and bright." One problem that emerged was a different standard of sexual mores. Two county officials noted that sexual liaisons between married black leaders and single women did not hurt the reputations of either. These liaisons did, however, result in a higher rate of venereal disease than among similar classes of whites (Rosenwald Study). The poor racial attitudes of mountain whites caused the first major problem for Oxley. In October 1925, Governor Angus McLean called him to defuse an explosive situation in Asheville. Since the 1890s, Asheville had attracted thousands of tourists and health-seekers, especially tubercular patients. Growing population and a real estate boom fostered a mushrooming construction industry. From 1920 to 1925 some 3,000 black workers from adjoining states flocked to jobs in Asheville, and they were inclined to crime. During 1925 some 70 percent of blacks convicted Volume Three, 1991 101 �of crimes in the county courts were from nearby states (North Carolina 1929, 13). These conditions produced two rapes and an assault on white women by black men in September and October, 1925. These incidents outraged the white community, and a lynch mob ransacked the county jail in September searching for a black suspect whom the sheriffhad moved to Charlotte only minutes ahead of the mob (Asheville 20 September 1925). Officers arrested 43 of the 200 in the mob, and 15 of them were later convicted and imprisoned (North Carolina 1929b, 53-54). In October a black man raped one white woman and assaulted another, and he was apprehended and identified. Again a lynch mob assembled, but the white victim refused to accompany the mob to the jail to identify the accused, and it disbanded (Asheville 27 October 1925). White community feeling ran high over these incidents, and black leaders, before the second rapist was apprended, were mortified to read in the 29 October 1925 Asheville Citizen an editorial addressed To Asheville Negroes." The editorial charged that the Citizen had appealed for help from the black community to apprehend the second rapist, but blacks had made "no substantial answer to an appeal, which should have stirred you. YOU HAVE FAILED IN YOUR DUTY." The editor believed that blacks had "inherited channels of communication that carries news swiftly and secretly to the Negro community." "YOU MUST DO SOMETHING," demanded the editor. "There must be no other assault on a white woman by a Negro—one more and peril will stare you in the face— a fearful peril. It will be no respecter of persons—the powers and influences which have restrained it will no longer avail." (Asheville 29 October 1925) The editor did not specify what the peril would be, but it seemed clear that it would take the form of indiscriminate, violent attacks on Asheville's 9,000 blacks. Black leaders were swift to react to this "negro-baiting." Representatives of Asheville's "better class" of blacks met on October 29, 1925, with a Citizen reporter and argued that they could not be held accountable for the actions of some 3,000 black workers recently arrived in the city. These "boll weevils," as the newspaper called them, had "shown a tendency to run riot and have exercised a bad influence on their fellows". (Asheville 30 October 1925). The black leaders pleaded "for Asheville to distinguish between the race and the individual" because they could not guarantee the good behavior of 3,000 itinerants (Asheville 30 October 1925). On October 30 these black leaders met with the city commissioners and presented a resolution condemning the Citizen editorial. The commissioners endorsed the leaders' plans for a mass meeting of blacks to be held the next Sunday to discuss ways of cooperating with law enforcement officers (Asheville 31 October 1925). 102 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �The Sunday mass meeting was anticlimactic. Blacks voiced "open resentment" that they were not employed on the city police force. The main speaker was Lawrence Oxley, sent by Governor McLean to defuse the hostility of blacks. Oxley stressed the need for "straight and sane thinking," and he urged the crowd to "co-operate to the fullest" with city officials. He also cautioned people to be "careful in the matter of making radical statements that have no foundation in truth" (Asheville 2 November 1925). The meeting adjourned without taking any formal action, and feeling in the white community subsided. Oxley's exact role in averting disaster is not fully known. It is known that he spent a week in Asheville working behind the scenes until danger passed. Although some of the black press criticized his role, others credited him with restoring sanity to the town. Closely related to this Asheville situation was Oxley's study of capital punishment of blacks in the state. Describing lynching as an extra-legal form of capital punishment, Oxley showed that lynching was subsiding. No blacks were lynched in the state from 1922 to 1928. He attributed this result to the strong resolve of governors Thomas Bickett, Cameron Morrison, and Angus McLean to oppose mob violence. His case study of an Asheville mob showed this gubernatorial resolve. In September 1925, a mob stormed the Buncombe County jail to seize and lynch Alvin Mansell, the suspect in the first rape case indicated above. The mob destroyed jail property and released prisoners to find Mansell, but the sheriff had whisked him away to Charlotte just minutes before the mob struck. Officers were able to identify and apprehend 43 of the 200 people in the mob. After their trial, Judge A.M. Stack sentenced four of the leaders to three to eight years in state prison and eleven of them to county road terms up to one year, and to another five he gave suspended sentences. In sentencing the men, Judge Stack said, "God save the state that has to depend on mobs to protect its women. .. . What the officers needed down there that night was a few machine guns" (North Carolina 1929b, 54). Some 6,000 Buncombe County petitioners pleaded with Governor McLean to grant clemency. The governor refused, saying that "those who are asking for clemency for these men should remember that the crime they committed was one of the most serious known to our law—serious because the sovereignty of all the people of the State was trampled under foot and insulted by the mob.... Our people are determined to suppress mob violence at any cost" (North Carolina 1929b, 55). This mob violence was directed against Alvin Mansell whose case Oxley used to demonstrate the injustices of the court system in his publication, Capital Punishment in North Carolina. In 1925 the seventeen-year-old Mansell moved from Pickens, South Carolina, to Asheville to live with his older sister and work in a sanatorium. Having only a Volume Three, 1991 103 �fifth grade education, the 120-pound Mansell had an I.Q. of fifty-three and the mental age of a nine-year-old. The thirty-five-year-old white woman who accused him of rape sold flowers at the sanatorium where he worked. After walking a mile away from the sanatorium one morning, she alleged that a mulatto attacked her. After the attack she walked to a friend's house where, before a deputy sheriff, she described her assailant as being a thirty-five-year-old mulatto wearing a blue shirt, yellow trousers, and a felt hat. Later that afternoon she went to the sanatorium and identified Mansell as her assailant although he did not match her earlier description in any particular. A court-appointed attorney defended Mansell, but the judge denied his motion for continuance to have time to secure witnesses. Mansell testified in his own behalf, denying his guilt and saying that he never left the sanatorium until midafternoon. Co-workers corroborated his testimony. The prosecutor introduced no evidence other than the victim's testimony, and nothing to corroborate her charges. After considerable deliberation, the jury found Mansell guilty, and the judge sentenced him to death. Some four thousand Buncombe citizens, believing a miscarriage of justice had occurred, petitioned the governor for clemency. At this point, Lawrence Oxley's duties required him to prepare the facts of the case for presentation to the governor, for the Division of Work Among Negroes reviewed all requests for pardons and clemency for black prisoners. Oxley pointed out discrepancies in the victim's description of her assailant. Two doctors who examined her and the deputy sheriff who first questioned her, none of whom the prosecutor called to testify, found her earlier statements at sharp variance with her testimony in court. Six patients at the sanatorium, none of whom testified at the trial, also contradicted her testimony. Six jurors, reading the affadavits of these witnesses after the trial, requested the governor to commute Mansell's sentence to life because they had reasonable doubt of his guilt. Even a prosecuting attorney, after reading the new evidence, appealed to the governor for clemency. After considering the new evidence and appeals, Governor Angus McLean commuted the sentence from death to life in prison. McLean refused to pardon Mansell because he believed that the jury could have heard the new evidence and still found Mansell guilty (North Carolina 1929b, 99-102). To Oxley, this case was an example of the miscarriage of justice that gave a higher percentage of death sentences to blacks. From 1909 through 1927, he discovered, the state convicted 198 people for capital crimes, 147 of them black and 51 white. Of these 198 convicted, 94 were electrocuted, 81 blacks and 13 whites (North Carolina 1929b, 54-5, 19-20). While seeking justice for blacks, Oxley also worked on the county level helping blacks organize themselves to identify and solve their own 104 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �social problems. To do this, Oxley needed the leadership provided by educated, middle-class, black citizens, concentrated in an urban area for ease of communication. By 1930, Asheville's black population numbered 14,255, about 40 percent of all blacks living in the mountains. It was an ideal place in the Appalachian counties for Oxley to focus his efforts. Accordingly, in 1925 Oxley encouraged the county to employ its first black social worker, Douglas Clarke, one of thirteen such workers in the state. By the summer of 1926, blacks had Faith Cottage operating to care for unwed mothers. Oxley also secured the appointment in 1925 of a seven-member state advisory board to Kate Johnson. Included on the board was Dr. L. O. Miller, an Asheville physician who led the opposition to the Asheville Citizen's race-baiting in 1925. Oxley also encouraged the development of the YWCA in Asheville. Its director was Adela F. Ruffin, who replaced Dr. Miller on the state advisory board in 1927 (North Carolina 1924-1926, 40, 109,132; 1926-1928, 110). Because of the extreme individualism of Asheville blacks, Adela Ruffin felt that she had experienced an uphill struggle to organize the community for social improvement. "Asheville is a small town grown quickly--too quickly—to the size of a city. It has the problems and responsibilities of a city — without wide vision. It is a smug town.. ..," complained Ruffin. "Its thinking is individualistic — to a surprising degree because, in most cases, the individuals have had so much training that we expect them to be different" (Ruffin 1927). Given the purported lack of social vision in Asheville, Oxley was able to help this mountain area develop some vision and compassion. In 1931, as the economic depression deepened, Governor 0. Max Gardner requested Oxley's services to help organize blacks for relief work across the state. Governor Gardner believed that all relief work should come from local effort, and that the relief efforts should be segregated where possible, white agencies helping whites and black agencies helping blacks. To assist the governor, Oxley secured the appointment of a statewide advisory council of blacks and twelve district committees. Dr. L. 0. Miller of Asheville was on this statewide committee also. One of the district committees was in Asheville, and it sponsored community mass meetings to enlist the active support of leaders (North Carolina 1930-1932, 100-101). One person on the committee acted as an agent to determine relief needs, and to minister to them through existing public agencies. The committee also contacted every employed black person to secure contributions to the Community Chest, the United Welfare Drive, and the Associated Charities. County and city agencies cooperated with white and black relief groups to operate a wood lot, community gardens, a small cannery, and street cleaning to provide relief for the unemployed. In return for working three days a week, the unemployed were Volume Three, 1991 105 �given groceries adequate to feed their families for a week (Raleigh 1931; 1932). By 1933, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation made some $5 million available to North Carolinians for unemployment relief. Oxley found it possible to enroll blacks in work relief programs "only and when trained, intelligent Negro workers are appointed as members of staffs of local relief agencies." He tried "to place such Negro leaders in strategic places throughout the State" (Oxley 1933) and thus help blacks get relief money. Oxley's relief efforts constituted a model national program and won for him appointment to an advisory relief council to President Hoover. Oxley provided other minor services for the Asheville area, especially as a contact person in state government. When the city cut teachers' pay in 1933, black teachers were not told the reason, and they were afraid to ask the white superintendent whether the cuts applied to both races. The teachers asked Oxley to get the needed information in Raleigh. Oxley also secured from the American Legion, to which he belonged, gifts for some forty-three black patients in the veterans' hospital at nearby Oteen. Oxley also referred requests for mountain summer experiences for black children to people in Asheville who took children into their homes in the summer (Swepson 1933; Oxley 1931; 1929). While Oxley's local initiatives were beneficial to Asheville, his work to establish and support statewide agencies and institutions also promised assistance to Appalachian blacks. A major concern of Oxley's was the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents. In 1925, the Federation of Colored Women's Clubs contributed $25,000 to establish the North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls at Efland. This home had a dormitory for twenty girls, and facilities for teaching domestic science and sewing. Juvenile courts committed twelve girls there in 1926. Oxley and an association of white women lobbied the legislatures from 1927 to 1933 to have the state assume control of the facility, but they were able to secure only a $2,000 annual appropriation. The state had more interest in the rehabilitation of delinquent boys, for the 1925 legislature created the Morrison Training School at Hoffman. The $25,000 appropriation provided for the purchase of 300 acres and the erection of four buildings to which the courts assigned 200 boys in 1933 and put 280 on the waiting list. The training school used a farm and a model dairy to teach the boys initiative and self reliance (Sanders 1933, 8-9). Assistance for crippled children was another concern of Oxley's. In 1921, the state established an orthopedic hospital at Gastonia, but it was for whites only (Brown 1928, 157). In 1925, Benjamin N. Duke contributed $15,000 to this hospital to build a ward for twenty black children. The need was so great that he contributed $25,000 more to add thirty 106 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �more beds by 1933. Social workers helped to organize local clinics to screen children whom the hospital might help (Sanders 1933, 9, 40-41). Another need was training for black social workers. Mecklenburg County hired the first black social worker, Hattie Russell, in 1919. By 1933 local governments employed about forty black social workers across the state. This was a completely new field for blacks, few of whom were educated in social work, and most of whom had, at best, only some college. 0x16/3 Division of Work Among Negroes sponsored annual three-day institutes to train social workers. The 1926 institute, for example, enrolled seventy-three students who listened to inspirational speakers and attended classes (North Carolina 1924-1926, 111-13). The classes were on the history and objectives of social work, community organization, case work and record keeping, school attendance, juvenile court, and mental defectives. Oxley also helped to meet the need for formal social work education. The Atlanta School of Social Work, established in 1920, was the first such school for blacks in the South. The University of North Carolina School of Public Welfare also was established in 1920, but it enrolled only whites. Its faculty did, however, teach at the annual institutes and contribute to the founding of a religious school of social work at St. Augustine's College in Raleigh. This school was the Bishop Tuttle Memorial Training School, established by the Women's Auxiliary of the Episcopal Church in 1925. Requiring two years of college for admission, the school provided a three-year curriculum, and some twenty students were graduated by 1930 (Ross 1978, 427, 433, 463; Shivers 1935, 209-11; North Carolina 1924-1926, 114; 1932-1934, 88). 0x16/8 work in North Carolina ended in 1934 when he accepted an offer from Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins to work in her department to improve employment opportunities for blacks. From 1925 to 1934 Oxley had directed a model state program to provide much-needed social services for North Carolina blacks. Included in this program were services for blacks in Appalachian counties. Concentrated mainly in Buncombe County, these services included mediation of racial conflict, support for anti-lynching activities, better treatment of blacks in the criminal justice system, inclusion of mountain blacks on state advisory committees, securing the employment of black social workers, and encouraging local unemployment relief. Oxley also encouraged the development of statewide social services agencies open to Appalachian blacks. These included training schools, an orthopedic hospital, and social work education. This period of 0x16/8 leadership ushered in a new era of society's concern for its black citizens. Volume Three, 1991 107 �Works Cited Asheville Citizen, 20,22 September 1925; 23, 24,28, 29,30,31 October 1925; 2 November 1925. Brown, Roy M. 1928. Public Poor Relief in North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Bruno, Frank J. 1957. Trends in Social Work, 1874-1956: A History Based on the Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work. New York: Columbia University Press. Bunche, Ralph J. 1973. The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR. Ed. Dewey W. Grantham. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kirby, John B. 1980. Black Americana in the Roosevelt Era. Rnoxville: University of Tennessee Press. North Carolina. 1920. State Board of Charities and Public Welfare. Bulletins (April-June 1920). Raleigh, North Carolina. . 1924-26. State Board of Charities and Public Welfare. Biennial Report. Raleigh, North Carolina. . 1925. State Board of Charities and Public Welfare. Division of Work Among the Negroes. Special Report, 1 January to 31 March 1925, in Commissioner's Office, Subject File, 1891-1952, Box 6, Records of the Department of Public Welfare, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, North Carolina (hereinafter cited as DPW). . 1926-1928. State Board of Charities and Public Welfare. Biennial Report. Raleigh, North Carolina. . 1929a. State Board of Charities and Public Welfare. North Carolina's Welfare Program for Negroes. Special Bulletin Number 8, Raleigh, North Carolina. -. I929b. State Board of Charities and Public Welfare. Capital Punishment in North Carolina. Special Bulletin Number 10, Raleigh, North Carolina. —. 1930-1932. State Board of Charities and Public Welfare. Biennial Report. Raleigh, North Carolina. —. 1932-1934. State Board of Charities and Public Welfare. Biennial Report. Raleigh, North Carolina. Oxley, Lawrence A. 1925. Correspondence to Gertrude Weil, 6 November 1925, Commissioner's Office, Subject File, 1891-1952, Box 5, DPW. 108 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �. 1929. Correspondence to Charles C. Middleton, 19 June 1929, Division of Work Among the Negroes, General Correspondence-M, Box 230, DPW. . 1931. Correspondence to J. M. Caldwell, 18 November 1931, Division of Work Among the Negroes, General Correspondence-C, Box 230, DPW. . 1933. Correspondence to Oscar DePriest, 8 April933, Division of Work Among the Negroes, General Correspondence-D, Box 230, DPW. Raleigh News and Observer. 19 February 1930; 26 February 1930; 29 May 1951; 18 January 1931; 8 February 1931; 1 November 1931; 2 January 1932. Rosenwald Study. 1929. "Attitudes Toward the Negro" in Alleghany, Ashe, Avery, Burke, Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Jackson, Macon, Madison, Mitchell, Watauga, and Yancey counties; Commissioner's Office, Subject File, 1891-1952, Interracial Cooperation, Box 6, DPW. Ross, Edyth L., ed. 1978. Black Heritage in Social Welfare, 1860-1930. Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press. Ruffin, Adela F. 1927. Correspondence with Lawrence A. Oxley, 13 January 1927, Division of Work Among the Negroes, General Correspondence-R, Box 230, DPW. Sanders, Wiley Britton. 1933. Negro Child Welfare in North Carolina: A Rosenwald Study. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Shivers, Lyda Gordon. 1935. "The Social Welfare Movement in the South: A Study in Regional Culture and Social Organization." Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina. Swepson, Beulah M. 1933. Correspondence to Oxley, October 9, 1933, Division of Work Among the Negroes, General Correspondence's, Box 230, DPW. United States. 1920. Bureau of the Census. Population (1920), 2: 735-745. . 1930. Bureau of the Census. Population (1930), 3: 975-990. Washington. Washington Post. 5 July 1973. Who's Who in Colored America. 1950, 404-405. Wisner, Elizabeth. 1970. Social Welfare in the South From Colonial Times to World War I. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. John L. Bell is a professor of history at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. Volume Three, 1991 109 �Religious Freethinkers in the Southern Highlands Henry J. Weaver I must be contented to be a Unitarian by myself, although I know there are many around who would gladly become so. .. .1 trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian. The writer of the above quote was far more skilled as a farmer, inventor, political philosopher, statesman, diplomat, and Chief Executive of the United States than as a prognosticator of religious denominational popularity. Thomas Jefferson's talents did not include predicting accurately the dominant religious movements of the future, especially those in the southern Appalachians that spread to the west and south from his "Little Mountain" home facing the Blue Ridge in Albemarle County. This paper will focus on the Unitarian and Universalist traditions that so attracted Mr. Jefferson and those traditions' experiences in the southern Appalachian region. Included is a look at Old World roots, the American foundings of both Unitarianism and Universalism, and some things that other denominations' scholars had to say about the two strains of religious "free-thinking." There is a brief state-by-state sketch about freethinking's history. The paper concludes with a short history of the religious experience of freethinking in the Holston Valley of upper East Tennessee from the time of Dr. William Hale in the mid-1800s to the end of the 1980s. The Christian view of church and state began in the benevolent protectorship of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor of Rome. Under him, Clement of Rome reminded the faithful that salvation is not by wisdom or works, but by faith. Soon, Tertullian warned against the 110 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �infiltration of Greek heresy (Murch 1962,10). Greek philosophy, widely accepted by the intelligentsia throughout the Roman Empire in New Testament times, had a tremendous influence upon religion. Religious philosophies seeking a satisfactory theory of God, explanation of nature, and codes of conduct formed the basics of many religious approaches that some branded as heresies and other viewed as viable alternatives (Murch, 9). In A.D. 190 Victor of Rome claimed to be "universal bishop," but he was ignored by most other churches (Mattox 1961). Departures from the emerging orthodox faith (a belief in the three-part nature of God, or Trinitarian" view) were largely responsible for the convening of the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325) and five other general church councils, at the last of which was held in A.D. 680. (Murch, 11). At Nicea, the doctrine of the Trinity was adopted by the established church—by means more political than religious. Thereafter, those who stressed the unity of God (later known as "Unitarians") were branded as heretics by the nowdominant Trinitarians (Provost). It's been an uphill battle for Unitarians ever since. From the fourth century A.D. on, the Greek-based idea of the unity of God spread across Western Europe. Incumbent in this philosophy was the idea that the Unitarian God is a God of mercy and universality. All humans, not just specified "elect" can expect to be lovingly viewed by that Diety. The Second London Confession, usually referred to as the "Confession of 1689," deserves note because it influenced future Baptist beliefs and led to the English rise of Unitarianism. The "Confession" was very dogmatic and became a kind of hyper-Calvinism. Its immediate effect was to seem to freeze the genial Christian spontaneity of Baptist thought, and brought a stiff formalism of expression. Soon, many Baptist leaders, as well as whole churches turned to the philosophies incumbent in Unitarianism, beginning about 1690 (Paschal 1930, 36-7). The great migration from the British Isles to the United States in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries found the seeds of Unitarian and Universalist theology taking widely scattered roots in the young nation. Both strains sought to provide Christians with a relevant, rational alternative to Trinitarianism. By enshrining reason, experience, and conscience at the heart of Christian life, and by declaring that revelation and salvation must be measured by human character rather than by dogmatic pronouncement, Unitarians genuinely sought the revered Christian loyalties and energies of a disenchanted with the orthodox, but productive and inventive segment of the American people (Mendelson, 163). John Murray arrived in coastal New Jersey in 1770, and is considered the American founder of the universal forgiving theology that became the Universalist Church (Miller, 3). Another coastal town, Volume Three, 1991 111 �Newport, Rhode Island, was the birthplace of William Ellery Channing in 1780. A watershed date for the modern American Unitarian Church is often considered 5 May 1819, when Channing preached on "Unitarian Christianity" at an ordination in Baltimore (Mendleson, 158-59). Unitarians tended to cling to the Atlantic seaboard and to their New England origins. If they ventured beyond, they settled in urban rather than rural environments. Universalists, on the other hand, although also associated historically with New England, were much more inclined to venture into the frontier (Miller, 233). In the lands of the frontier, the early itinerant Univerp«list preachers "rode the circuit," or wandered the country side much as did their counterparts in Trinitarian denominations. Their arrival was often greeted by indifference, if not hostility, and their influence ended with their departure. Yet they doggedly made their rounds and occasionally planted religious seeds that later matured into societies and churches that made all the effort seem worthwhile. The majority of Universalist itinerants in the pre-Civil War period were obscure even in their own day, and completely unknown to later generations. Appearances, particularly in the Midwest and South, were often unscheduled and the "discourses" strictly impromptu. Above all, the Universalists in the pioneering days of the denomination were handicapped by the lack of central or even regional headquarters to which to turn for material support. They had to depend on their own limited resources and ingenuity to a much larger extent than did most other itinerant preachers (Miller, 235). George Rogers (1803-1846) is an excellent example of the stressful life style of early Universalist itinerant preachers. Although he basically preached in the western Pennsylvania and southern Ohio regions, he also traveled and preached in the mountain sections of five states from Kentucky to Alabama. While in Tennessee, he saw and heard Andrew Jackson as "Old Hickory" made his triumphant return home after completing his second term as president in 1837 (Miller, 238). Rogers died of consumption at the age of forty-two, literally worn out. Meanwhile, a small but constant stream of converts who abandoned orthodoxy became Universalists, and an even greater number became Unitarians in the urban settlements of the upland South. Other denominations, predictably, did not react with great calmness to such conversions. In rural North Carolina in the 1780s, a Baptist minister named John Stancil became a Universalist and was described as being "arch, cunning, and insinuating, carried away many with his craft through the subtlety of Satan" (Paschal, 500). A Primitive Baptist lay scholar equated Unitarian denial of Christ's divinity to elements he found repulsive in Arianism, Roman Catholicism, and Mohammedanism 112 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �(Islam), (Hassell 1973, 380). He went on to condemn a Universalist college president who was described as seeing "the whole creation in one vast restless movement, sweeping toward the grand finality of universal holiness and universal love" (Hassell, 592). The Primitive Baptist who criticized Unitarianism dismissed that possibility, stating he only believed in the old-fashioned Bible, unmixed with Pagan philosophy and could see no such grand finality. Jacob Bower, a Baptist itinerant preacher who was a rare reverse convert from Universalist to Baptist, recalled in his autobiography of trying to sell Bibles to a houseful of Universalists. He was asked, "Are you one of those hell fire and brimstone preachers who go around heaping that on people and preach up Eternal Damnation to a part of the humain [sic] family? We are all Universalists in this timber and you cannot sell us any of your Bibles" (Sweet 1964, 224). No less a Christian churchman than Bishop Francis Asbury wrote John Wesley in 1783, stating among other things, "that the Calvinists and Universalists very much retard the work of God. . . .by keeping people from seeking "heart religion1" (Sweet, 15). For several decades after the American Revolution there was something of a revolt against prevailing orthodoxy that led to the limited acceptance of Unitarianism, Universalism, and Deism. The French Revolution became a popular topic of conversation, and the religious skepticism associated with that movement attracted in the West (remember, the southern mountains were "the West") numerous advocates of French "infidelity." The American Tract Society and other publishing houses printed and spread the religious literature of the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Unitarians, and concentrated on religion in the West. The Great Revival of the early 1800s was a watershed in the religious history of the South and originated in the mountains. It predetermined the eventual failure of the dominance Thomas Jefferson had predicted for Unitarianism. The deistic liberalism of the post-revolutionary era soon faded into the past, leaving only a few areas to continue to grow and most to wither. John Boles, in his definitive work on the Great Revival period, writes that Unitarianism (and presumably Universalism) was too philosophical to satisfy the emotional needs of the people—rural and mountain people were always an emotional lot, despite their often calm facade (189-90). In the religious denominational haggling after the Great Revival, one Baptist wrote about the Disciples of Christ leader, Alexander Campbell, "If I had evidence of his being a Christian, I should call him a spiritual Bastard; but that name is not appropriate. There is not a meeting-house except those of the Universalists or Unitarians that will admit him to their pulpit" (Posey, 58-59). One can discern from Volume Three, 1991 113 �these examples that Unitarians and Universalists were not always the recipients of great Christian love, understanding and patience. Of all those who criticized the movements, "Parson" William Brownlow of East Tennessee was perhaps the most severe. Brownlow was a combination Methodist preacher, politician, military rabble-rouser, and newspaper editor. His vicious attacks on Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Unitarians, and Universalists to a large degree stunted their efforts to grow in many parts of the southern mountains (20-21). Despite the widespread opposition created by orthodox Christian denominations, somehow the principles of Unitarianism and Universalism persisted. A scholar of the Disciples of Christ wrote that "in areas that scriptural teaching was not positive and clear, that Christians were free to follow their own private judgement" (Harrell 1966, 30). This distinction was theologically important to the disciples of Christ—the union of Disciples and Stoneites who were suspected of Unitarianism. Long before William James penned the thought below, American religious freethinkers were practicing his philosophy: I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible moral forces that work from individual to individual creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing water, yet which, if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride. William Ellery Channing's 1819 Baltimore sermon was an effort of greater subtlety than is widely acknowledged. There was not a single premise in the Calvinist system that Channing did not isolate, examine, discard, and replace. He did it as follows: - Dogmatic scripturalism was supplanted by a Bible accountable to human reason and experience. - The Trinity was superseded by a unified, integral Creator-Father. - Divine-human Christ became a stable, homogenous, suffering and conquering teacher; the Jesus of Nazareth's dusty roads. - God, capable of perpetrating the horrors of total depravity and predestination, was replaced by a paternal diety whose moral perfection was both understandable and imitable in human terms. - The ancient Anselmic notion that man, by sinning against 114 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �an infinite being, was poisoned by an infinite guilt was supplanted by the situational argument that a person's guilt must be measured by his/her nature and power of choice. - The supreme object of religious practice, therefore, was not to avoid punishment, but to cultivate and communicate virtue. (Mendelson, 162) Often called "heretical sects," Unitarians and Universalists, basing their beliefs on the image of a one-part Diety and ultimate salvation for all, struggled to survive in America in the years between 1770 and 1860. By the time of the War Between the States, they had grown sufficiently in strength and influence to become institutionalized as full-fledged churches providing a viable Christian alternative to the dominant theology of orthodox Trinitarianism. Ranging beyond ideas of the unity of God and universal salvation, both churches plunged into matters of social ethics, established academies and colleges (Harvard and Tufts, but none of note in the southern mountains), participated in such reform movements as temperance, women's rights, the abolition of slavery, and capital punishment. A quietly pervasive force in American society came out of the roughly parallel traditions of Unitarian and Universalist religious liberalism (Miller, coverleaf). While it is possible to overstate the ethical effects of Unitarianism and Universalism, even the most liberal Trinitarian denominations should be careful in claiming too much credit for social justice achieved in this country in the last century-and-a-half. Rarely do Trinitarians give due credit to freethinkers in matters of social justice and, to this day, members of the so-called "Moral Majority" delight in castigating religious freethinkers with the label "secular humanists" which, to the Jerry Falwells of modern America, is a buzz-word for a legal dirty name. While most liberal Trinitarians do not agree with the Moral Majority namecallers about freethinkers, they have not noticeably rushed to embrace the freethinkers high-priority concerns about social matters. An example is the nuclear arms insanity. Virtually all Unitarians and Universalists have had the nuclear arms race as a top social concern since August 1945 and the atom-bombing of Japan. It is instead a "come and go" issue with most Trinitarians—at least in their formal declarations. In formal meetings, much more of Trinitarian time has been spent on such "life and death" issues as banning dancing on college campuses, outlawing abortions, not ordaining women, selling and buying church property, seeking more extensive tax exemptions for church activities, and closing adult bookstores while more obscene situations exist all around in the living conditions of the disenfranchised. It is not argued Volume Three, 1991 115 �that many Trinitarians (probably the majority) are not interested in social justice to the degree that are freethinkers. It is rather obvious, however, that the social concerns of church members do not proportionately equal that of Unitarians and Universalists, demonstrated by the historical lack of social activism by the orthodoxy. Individual salvation and "gettin" right with God" seem to overshadow the blessed message of deep concern for all life taught by Jesus of Nazareth. Russell E. Miller, Professor of English and History at Universalist Tufts University, Chairman of the Department of History, and University Historian/Archivist, published in 1979 the to-date definitive history of the Universalist Church's first century in America, 1770-1870. The following sketches about freethinkers in those states that contain the southern Appalachians are taken from his work. There are few other well-documented accounts of freethinkers in the region prior to this century for reasons stated earlier in this paper. Mainly, the hardships, and the lack of regional headquarters support of the early itinerant preachers, stunted the growth of freethinking. Maryland: the state's large Roman Catholic population joined with the effective opposition provided by the German Reformed Church to limit freethinkers' growth mainly to Baltimore. Attempts failed to establish the denomination on either the Eastern Shore or the mountainous western part of the state (723). Virginia and West Virginia: Numerous efforts were made to form churches by freethinkers in the Shenandoah Valley, but with modest successes. A problem was the large-scale presence of Dunker congregations, who also believed in universal salvation and preferred to retain their German pietistic designation. Considerably more success was experienced on the Eastern Shore for a time, but ultimately, freethinkers did not flourish in urban or rural areas. The liberal scholar, Clarence Gohdes, wrote: "Had Thomas Jefferson lived in the 1840s, he would have bowed his head in futile rage as the power of religious conservatism (initially fueled by the Great Revival) cast a blacker and blacker cloud over the scattered lights of liberalism in the South" (Boles, 190). The few groups of freethinkers that were found in what became West Virginia were located mainly in the northern neck around Wheeling. They probably came to the area via an entirely different migratory pattern than did most of the peoples of the Southern mountains. The most distant from the central Virginia itinerant freethinking preachers was W.R. Chamberlin, who used Abingdon as a base and travelled up and down the "Great Valley." Between 1848 and 1850 he preached once a month at four designated stations. There is no way to know for certain, 116 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �but it is reasonable to assume that his work may have played some part in the later conversion of Dr. William Hale of Free Hill, Tennessee, to Universalism. Free Hill is in upper east Tennessee, and as part of the "Great Valley Extended," is only about fifty miles from Abingdon. The flow of information put out by Chamberlin could well have influenced Hale long after Chamberlin moved to Cincinnati in 1850 after he "was nearly starved out." Religious legacies are often hard to determine, but a geographical and cultural knowledge of the area portends the possibility of some tie between Chamberlin and Hale. Tennessee: Until late in the nineteenth century, Universalism was the only evident form of freethinking in this frontier state, and was strictly a bootstrap operation. George Rogers was of some renown as an itinerant preacher, and others came up occasionally from Alabama or down from Kentucky and concentrated their efforts on non-mountain counties. Later, churches grew in the "Valley Extended" areas of what are now Tri-Cities and Knoxville. Chattanooga got some attention from Alabama-based freethinking ministers (731-33). Kentucky: the Cumberland Gap route into the Bluegrass and the Ohio River route down to the western parts of Kentucky saw the majority of freethinker growth in "Kentuck." George Rogers travelled in the eastern mountains in 1836-37, and had little success. Among sects present, he discovered the "Live Forevers," who believed in man's eventual rejuvenation. They apparently saw nothing in Universalism more attractive than what they already possessed in the way of religious belief (733-35). North Carolina saw virtually no organized freethinker presence in the mountains. The Piedmont saw little influence either, but the Coastal Plain has a rather extensive history of Universalism. Towns like Richlands and Swansboro in Onslow County, Clinton in Sampson County, Chinquapin in Duplin County, and Edenton and Halifax in the northeast corner of the state, nourished fairly substantial Universalist congregations (753-64). A very probable explanation lies with the migration patterns of various ethnic groups. The coastal freethinkers almost surely can trace roots to the English Baptists that converted to Universalism in reaction to the hyper-Calvinism brought about by the Second London Confession (1689). South Carolina: While there was a large settlement of Bunkers who possessed theology similar to Universalists, freethinkers never made it to the mountainous counties of northwest South Carolina. Volume Three, 1991 117 �Georgia: The Georgia experience was much like that in South Carolina. The nearest to the mountains with a recorded effort is the town hall in Athens (described as "the headquarters of unorthodoxy in Georgia") (751-58). Alabama saw sort of a leap-frog effect as Universalists from South Carolina migrated there through Georgia and settled in the non-hilly parts of the state. In 1853, J.M.H. Smith of Huntsville, in mountainous Madison County, claimed to be the only public advocate of Universalism in all of northern Alabama. Mississippi: While Mississippi is hardly a mountainous state, it does touch the southern end of the Appalachians and the story of freethinkers there before the modern years was repeated in the same pattern as in most other states of the south; namely, isolated pockets of believers in a one-part Deity and universal salvation. They were scattered over a rural landscape, largely without organization, and depended on roving preachers who were small in number and often were based in other states. The congregations were usually the county-seat towns that were normally the larger communities and served as political as well as commercial headquarters (769-70). The preceding information illustrates the rather hit-and-miss nature of the formal history of organized freethinking churches in the southern mountains. For reasons already twice discussed, there is a dearth of information about specific church efforts in the mountains, however, there is not a total void. Through the excellent initiative and primary source scholarship of Mrs. Ida Metz Hyland of Johnson City, Tennessee, the writer is able to give considerable detail—more than I will include in this paper—about the history of the freethinkers' experience in the Holston Valley of upper east Tennessee from before the War Between the States to the 1980s. The beautiful and highly liveable hilly terrain of the Holston River Valley is geologically a part of the "Great Valley (Shenandoah) Extended." Western European religious thought has travelled with pioneers down the Valley from the original Colonial America settlements of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland since the first half of the eighteenth century. The ancestors of Dr. William Hale brought Universalist views to the Holston Valley from York and Lancaster counties in Pennsylvania by 1795. William Hale was born in northeastern Tennessee in 1838, and died in Washington County in that same area in 1906. Trained in medicine, he served as a full-time doctor for a number of years, and later in life was a part-time physician and a Universalist lay 118 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �preacher. Finally, in 1877, he because the first native-born Tennessean licensed to preach by the Universalist Church. He operated out of his home in the area called Free Hill, quite possibly a rural community of freethinkers, near the present-day town of Gray. A church was organized in 1880 with fifteen members. For the rest of his life, Dr. Hale balanced medicine and preaching. Hale also wrote about Universalism. In 1879, he wrote a series of articles entitled "Rise and Progress of Universalism in East Tennessee by a Universalist Pioneer," which appeared in the Universalist Herald, published in Alabama and currently on file in the State Department of Archives and History in Montgomery. In the article, Dr. Hale wrote that his uncle, Aman Hale was an early pioneer to the area, taught school, and was a Methodist preacher who converted to Universalism because of a belief in "final restoration." As a consequence, he was "handled roughly by some of the brethren." Dr. Hale considered his uncle the first professed Universalist in Tennessee (Hyland to Miller 1978). Dr. Hale was reared a Methodist and converted to Universalism in about 1860. This conversion happened after theological debates with his father while his father was reading a religious tract entitled, "Freedom in the West" (Hyland 1982). The War Between the States no doubt played a role in Dr. Hale's beliefs. Elderly family members recall he was drafted into the Union Army and served as a doctor in several campaigns, he met and conversed with Clara Barton, later of Red Cross fame. Captured by the Confederates, Hale escaped from a Tidewater Virginia prison camp and, after a harrowing time afloat on Chesapeake Bay, was repatriated by the Union Army. He made his way home and sat out the rest of the war (Hyland 1982). From 1865 until licensing by the Universalist Church in 1877, Hale preached on many topics. He often preached from the steps of, and handed out leaflets from, the courthouse in Jonesborough, the oldest town in Tennessee. Jonesborough has great symbolism within the basically Calvinist Presbyterian "Lost State of Franklin." A frequent theme was "King Alcohol bribes the tongue and leads you to utter folly" (Hyland, 5). Dr. Hale led a full family life, had nine children by his first wife, and a pleasant last few years with a second wife after his first wife died. He died on October 12, 1906, at home at Free Hill in his sixtyninth year. Death was credited to valvular enlargement of the heart (5). With his death, so died leadership of the Universalist Church in the area for over a half-century. In 1958, with rapid industrialization like Tennessee Eastman to the Holston Valley, and academia bringing in more people with a scholarly bent for work at East Tennessee State University, a group of independent, religious-minded individuals formed the Holston Valley Unitarian Volume Three, 1991 119 �Church. Institutionalized freethinking religion was once again in that part of the southern mountains. In 1968, Dr. Kale's long-obscure gravestone was discovered by a church member and Mrs. Hyland was told of the location. It has since served as an inspiration for the church, and Mrs. Hyland launched her investigation into the life and times of her freethinking predecessor in the Holston Valley. In 1978, a new church building was dedicated within a few miles of Dr. Hale's old haunts and, in 1979, a corner of the church sanctuary was made into a memorial to Dr. Hale and his spiritual legacy to the present congregation. In conclusion, it can be firmly stated that, while the formal experience of freethinkers in the southern mountains has often been hit-ormiss, off-and-on, and always uphill in the moral climate of the area, it has been a quietly pervasive presence with surely positive moral results. John C. Campbell sensed this when he wrote of something he experienced while doing mission work in the north Georgia mountains in the early 1900s. He was superintendent of a Union Sunday School and taught the Men's Bible Class. He recalled that the class contained men of diverse beliefs including a lone Universalist who waged a losing battle against all his fellow-members, steadfastly united through their belief in eternal punishment. The death of the Universalist brought the first break in the ranks of the Sabbath School class, and relaxed, too, for the time being the rigid hold of dogmas. The Missionary Baptist gave evidence of his kinship to the departed by making his rough casket. The Old School Presbyterian and the Campbellite combined their funds to send to the county-seat for black-calico and nickel nails to adorn the pine box fashioned by Baptist hands. The Methodist loaned his mules for the funeral cortege. The wives of other members united in making or loaning garments of mourning for the bereaved widow and daughters; and all lamented a brother and neighbor lost to class and community. (Campbell 1969) So, what does the history and the continued presence of freethinkers mean for the southern mountains? I think of human beings, on this cinder of a planet out at the edge of the universe, not knowing where they came from, why we are here, or where we might go after death— and yet we still laugh, and cry, and feel, and love. "Love," Thornton Wilder wrote, "will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the LOVE THAT MADE THEM [writer's capitalization]. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead 120 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning" (Morris 1981). Works Cited Boles, John. 1972. The Great Revival, 1787-1805. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Campbell, John C. 1969. The Southern Highlander and His Homeland. Lexing ton: University Press of Kentucky. Harrell, David Edwin, Jr. 1966. Quest for a Christian America: The Disciples of Christ and American Society to 1866. Nashville: Disciples of Christ Histori cal Society. Hassell, Cushing Biggs. History of the Church of God, From Creation to A.D. 1885 including especially the History of the Kehukee Primitive Baptist Assn. Middletown, New York: Tilber Beeke's Sons, Publishers. Revised and completed by Sylvester Hassell and reprinted by Old School Hymnal Co., Inc., Conley, Ga, 1973. Hyland, Ida Metz. 1979. Unitarian-Univenalism in East Tennessee. Johnson City, Tennessee. 11 April 1982. Conversation with author. Mattox, F.W. 1961. The Eternal Kingdom, A History of the Church of Christ. Delight, Arkansas: Gospel Light Publishing Co. Mendelson, Jack. Channing, The Reluctant Radical. Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association. Miller, Russell, E. The Larger Hope, The First Century of the Universalist Church in America, 1770-1870. Boston: Unitarian-Universalist Association. . 10 September 1978. Letter to Ida Metz Hyland. Morris, Willie. 13 September 1981. Parade Magazine. New York. Murch, James DeForest. 1962. Christians Only, A History of the Restoration Movement. Cincinnati: Standard Publishing Co. Paschal, George W. 1930. History of N.C. Baptists. Raleigh: The General Board of the N.C. Baptist State Convention Vol. 1,1663-1805. Provost, Gary. A Brief History ofUnitarian-Universalism. Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, pamphlet. Volume Three, 1991 121 �Sweet, William W. Religion on the American Frontier, The Baptist, 1783-1830. New York: Cooper Square Pub. Inc., Vol. 1. Henry J. Weaver is a graduate student in Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University. He was the winner of the 1988 Appalachian Studies Association student paper competitor! at the Radford University conference. 122 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Two-Party Politics in Appalachia? David Sutton W. J. Cash wrote in his Mind of the South in 1941 that the Democratic party "ceased to be a party in the South and became the party of the South, a kind of confraternity having in its keeping the whole corpus of Southern loyalties...." To Cash, the Democratic party had so smashed the Republican party in the region that "it either ceased altogether to exist or continued to exist only as a Federal-job-ring. .. ."(Cash 1941, 129, 132). Cash's portrait of the South failed to account for the diversity within the region and made no allowance for the dissenting experience of Appalachia. While students of southern political history recognized Republican strength scattered along the Appalachian highlands, some described the influence as comparable to that wielded by the Democrats in the lowlands and blackbelt. Leonard Ritt writes, for example, that "very little research has been published on the politics of the "Other Solid South,"—the highland areas of the southern Appalachians"(Ritt 1967, 2). Still a third point of view argues that a picture of Republican hegemony over the Appalachian region glosses over the significant variations in the degree of interparty competition in the mountain counties (Ritt; Sutton 1982). Many of the Appalachian counties, especially in North Carolina and Virginia, have been and are now highly competitive. Virginia's 9th Congressional District, for example, which covers all of southwest Virginia west of Roanoke, is known as the "Fighting Ninth", in part because of its tradition of fiercely competitive two-party politics. North Carolina's westernmost llth District which switched party hands four times in the 1980s (1980, 1982, 1984, 1986) is considered the Volume Three, 1991 123 �decade's most volatile congressional district. The Smoky Mountain district is the only district in the nation to throw out its incumbent representative in four consecutive elections. The jinx ended in 1988 when James McClure Clarke, the incumbent, won 50.4 percent to 49.6 percent. The highly competitive nature of North Carolina's llth, however, is not typical of congressional and presidential races in the United States today. The electoral order of the country has evolved into a highly distinctive two-tier system in which one party, the Republican, wins the White House, and the other party, the Democratic, runs the Congress. Instead of the two major parties competing vigorously for the presidency and the Congress, the United States has an electoral order in which the Republicans have a decided edge in contests for the presidency and the Democrats have a lock on the House of Representatives (Shafer 1989, 3-4). Accordingly, the thesis of this paper is that presidential and congressional elections in the South and in Appalachia are not characterized today by Democratic dominance, Republican hegemony, or by vigorous two-party competition, but by the Republican party sweeping the presidential vote and the Democratic party the congressional vote. A key proposition of the paper is that the contemporary electoral order has emerged in American politics because many voters, especially in the South and Appalachia, choose to split their tickets between a presidential candidate of one party and a House candidate of the other party. This cross-cutting voting in recent years has resulted in an extended period of divided control of government. From 1954 to the present, American elections more often than not have failed to resolve the question of who will govern, and instead have produced a system approaching dual sovereignty of the government with Republicans controlling the White House and Democrats the Congress (Sundquist 1988-89, 613-35). The paper will examine first recent election results in the region to ascertain the degree of support for its major thesis, and to explore the disparity in the frequency of split-ticket voting in Appalachia and the South and the rest of the country. Second, possible explanations for the split-ticket voting will be offered. Finally, the consequences of this crosscut nature of American politics for Appalachia will be examined. For this paper, the unit of analysis is the congressional district. Election results for twenty-one congressional districts in central and southern Appalachia were studied. In all but one of these congressional districts, a majority of the counties in the districts are defined as "Appalachian counties" by the Appalachian Regional Development Act. The one exception is Virginia's 6th District through which runs the 124 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Shenandoah Valley. Only four of the district's nine counties are defined by law as Appalachian. The congressional districts included in this analysis are: all four congressional districts in West Virginia; the 5th and 7th districts of eastern Kentucky; the 6th and 9th districts of southwestern Virginia; the 5th, 10th, and llth districts of western North Carolina; the 7th and 9th districts of northern Georgia; the 4th and 5th districts of northern Alabama; the 1st district of northern Mississippi; and the 1st. 2d, 3d, 4th, and 6th districts of the eastern half of Tennessee. Prior to 1982 and reapportionment, Tennessee had only four congressional districts in the Appalachian region. Consequently, there were only twenty congressional districts in the analysis of 1980 election results as opposed to twenty-one districts in the study of 1984 and 1988 results. Data for the district vote for president and general-election returns for House members are taken from various editions of the National Journal's The Almanac of American Politics and Congressional Quarterly's Politics in America. This analysis begins with a discussion of the marked Republican superiority in presidential elections. From 1968 through 1988, Democrats have had only one electoral college success. Jimmy Carter's victory in 1976 represents the only presidential contest during this time that the Democratic party's presidential nominee was able to win the South and most of central and southern Appalachia. Carter, with his rural southern background, carried sixteen of Appalachia's congressional districts in 1976. Although Carter in 1980 also won, although by a narrow margin, a majority of the Appalachian districts (eleven for Carter to nine for Ronald Reagan), he carried only one Southern state—his native Georgia. Republicans, on the other hand, have had three landslide vote victories (1972, 1984, and 1988) and four lopsided electoral college wins in the South and nation (1972, 1980, 1984, and 1988). In 1984, Ronald Reagan captured nineteen of the twenty-one Appalachian districts. He lost only Kentucky's 7th District (49 percent to 51 percent) and West Virginia's 4th District (49 percent to 50 percent). George Bush swept the eleven states of the South in the 1988 presidential election and won seventeen of the twenty-one congressional districts in central and southern Appalachia. Bush only lost Kentucky's 7th District and the 1st, 3d, and 4th Districts of West Virginia. Although the Republican party has become established as the dominant force in presidential elections in the South and Appalachia, Democrats continue to enjoy a decided advantage in races for the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1980, Republicans won 42 of the 115 House seats in the eleven states of the old Confederacy plus Kentucky, Volume Three, 1991 125 �or 36.5 percent. Almost a decade later, after reapportionment, Reagan, and a Bush sweep of the region, found the Republicans with 42 seats but only 34.1 percent of the region's 123 seats (after the 1982 reapportionment) in 1988. In House elections in the decade of the 1980s, Republicans went nowhere in the South, and in Appalachia experienced significant losses. Republicans in central and southern Appalachia could boast of an almost even split in the region's House delegation in 1980—eleven Democrats to nine Republicans. In 1984, Reagan swept the nation and the South, capturing forty-nine of the fifty states. As noted earlier in the paper, he won nineteen of the twenty-one Appalachian districts in this study. Yet, the Republican party's portion of the region's twenty-one member House delegation shrank to only five representatives, or 23.8 percent. The 1984 election results show a remarkable disconnection between presidential and House voting in the region. Although Bush won in seventeen of the congressional districts in 1988, his party captured only four of the region's twenty-one House seats, or nineteen percent. The four victories were in the most impeccably Republican districts in the region—the 1st and 2d Districts of Tennessee, the 5th District of Kentucky, and the 10th District of North Carolina. In three of the twenty-one districts, Republicans allowed the Democratic candidate to win unchallenged even though George Bush carried them (the 2d in West Virginia, the 4th in Tennessee, and the 4th in Alabama). A comparison of current Republican congressional strength in the region to its influence twenty years earlier, strikingly illustrates the extent of the debacle Republicans have suffered in House representation. In 1968, Republicans held eight of the area's twenty House seats, or double the number they have at present. What is the significance and extent of split-ticket voting in American politics today? Congressional Quarterly notes that if Republican candidates had won every congressional district that George Bush did in 1988, their party would command a better than two-to-one advantage in the House of Representatives. Instead, because of split-ticket voting, Republicans are on the downside of a three-to-two deficit (Cook 1989, 171016).1 In earlier times, congressional results were tied closely to the presidential vote. But today ticket-splitting is certainly in vogue, especially in the South and Appalachia. As Table 1 shows, in 1980 only four districts split their tickets between a presidential candidate of one party and a House candidate of the other party. In 1984, the number of split-ticket districts jumped dramatically to fourteen of the twenty-one districts, or 67 percent. All fourteen split-ticket districts were of the Republican presidential/Democratic House variety—a result congruent with the new electoral order. 126 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Table 1 Presidential- House Voting in Appalachia 1980 Voting (20 Districts) Split Ticket Districts Straight Ticket Districts Reagan / Republican House # % 7 35 Carter / Democratic House # % 9 45 Reagan / Democratic House Carter / Republican House # % # % 2 10 2 10 1984 Voting (21 Districts) Straight Ticket Districts Reagan / Mondale / Republican Democratic House House # % # % 5 24 2 9 Split Ticket Districts Reagan / Mondale / Democratic Republican House House # % # % 14 67 0 0 1988 Voting (21 Districts) Split Ticket Districts Straight Ticket Districts Bush / Republican House # % 4 19 Dukakis / Democratic House # % 4 19 Bush / Democratic House Dukakis / Republican House # % # % 13 62 0 0 Source: Calculated by the author from information in the 1982, 1986, and 1990 editions of Congressional Quarterly's Politics in America Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly. Volume Three, 1991 127 �In 1988, one out of every three congressional districts nationwide had a split result. As Table 2 shows, split-ticket voting in 1988 was the heaviest in central and southern Appalachia with thirteen of the twentyone districts, or 62 percent exhibiting a split result. Once again, voters in the thirteen districts went Republican for president while electing a Democrat to the House. Table 2 Split Ticket Congressional Districts in 1988 Total Districts Split Ticket Districts Bush/ Dem. House Dukakis/ GOP House # # % # # Appalachia * 21 13 62 13 0 NonAppalachian South** 106 51 48 50 1 NonAppalachian and Non-South 308 84 27 72 12 National Total 435 148 34 135 13 *Appalachia includes all four congressional districts in West Virginia; Georgia's 7th and 9th; Virginia's 6th and 9th; Alabama's 4th and 5th; Tennessee's 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th; and North Carolina's 5th, 10th, and llth. **The remainder of the districts in the eleven states of the Old Confederacy plus Kentucky. 128 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Table 3 Appalachian Democratic House Members Elected in Districts Carried by Bush in 1988 Bush Dem. House % % Ed Jenkins, Ga. District 9 71 63 George "Buddy" Darden, Ga. 7 70 65 Marilyn Lloyd, Tenn. 3 62 57 Jim Olin, Va. 6 61 64 Stephen Neal, N.C. 5 60 53 Bart Gordon, Tenn. 6 60 77 Jamie Whitten, Miss. 1 59 78 Ronnie Flippo, Ala. 5 59 64 James McClure Clarke, N.C. 11 59 50 Jim Cooper, Tenn. 4 57 100 Tom Bevill, Ala. 4 57 96 Rick Boucher, Va. 9 54 63 Harley Staggers, Jr., W. Va. 2 52 100 Volume Three, 1991 129 �Two of the Democrats—Ed Jenkins and George "Buddy" Dardin of Georgia—had to survive a Bush sweep of 70 percent of their district's vote. In nine other districts, Bush won by 55 percent or more while the Democrat was being elected to the House (see Table 3). After Appalachia, the next highest frequency of split-ticket voting was the non-Appalachian South with 51 of 106 districts having split results, or 48 percent (Table 2). In the rest of the country, there were split presidential - House results in 84 of the 308 districts, or 27 percent. Clearly, ticket-splitters in the South and Appalachia are playing a major role in giving the country its divided government. What explains the success of the split-ticket Democrats and of Democrats in general in House races? While the contemporary Republican party has achieved an ideological consistency which allows it to run a national campaign for the presidency, the Democratic party is perceived as multiple mini-parties that coalesce and divide depending on the issues at hand. At the congressional level, the heterogeneity of the Democratic party works to its favor in winning a House majority in the different geographical regions and demographically diverse districts. Democratic congressional candidates can be their own "enterprise" and adapt themselves to the prevailing ethos of their region. The key to their success is their ability to focus on local concerns—a skill that is more likely to be present in a coalition than in an ideologically consistent party (Elving 1989, 2674).2 Thus, the strength of the Democratic party in congressional elections becomes its weakness in presidential contests, and the strength of Republicans in presidential politics becomes a handicap at the subnational level. A second factor which works to the benefit of Democratic candidates is that elections to the House of Representatives, for the most part, are not about ideology or foreign affairs, but about social welfare and service provision. On these issues, Democratic candidates excel. Marilyn Lloyd of Tennessee's 3d is the "Oak Ridge congresswoman" who guards the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the defense-and energy-related contractors working around it. Harold Rogers of Kentucky's 5th district pushes forward the Cumberland Gap Tunnel and is a tiger on tobacco and coal issues while his colleague Chris Perkins of Kentucky's 4th fights for dollars for badly needed highway and bridge construction in his district. West Virginia's Nick Rahhal introduces bills to make it easier for miners suffering from black lung disease to claim benefits while Georgia's Ed Jenkins introduces measures to protect textile companies and workers from cheap imports. Mississippi's Jamie Whitten is touted by congressional observers as a shrewd trader in appropriations pork and a true believer in government's pump-priming potential.3 What are some of the possible consequences of divided government 130 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �for the people of the Appalachian region?4 First, as each political party has entrenched itself within its own governmental stronghold (the executive for Republicans and the Congress for Democrats), American politics has come to be about the efforts of each party to strengthen its particular institutional bastion and to undermine the institution controlled by its political adversary. In short, institutional combat has supplanted electoral competition as the desired form of political struggle in the nation. The Democrats attacking the drinking habits and sexual conduct of Defense Secretary designee John Tower, and the Republicans castigating the personal finances of House Speaker Jim Wright and Whip Tony Coehlo, are examples of weapons of institutional combat used by the parties to de-legitimate one another (Ginsberg and Shefter 1989, 33-4). Political campaigns become devoid of substance and the parties fail to offer voters any coherent rationale for why they deserve their votes. In other words, more and more politicians are providing voters with little opportunity or reason to participate in politics. As a consequence, the proportion of the electorate that votes in presidential and congressional elections has been dropping steadily over time. The decline in political participation, however, has not been uniform throughout the electorate. There is a large gap between the voting rates of Americans with more education, higher incomes, and white-collar occupations and those of working class and poor Americans. The disproportionate participation of those in the top one-third of the income scale results in public policies which cut top-bracket income tax rates, and provide more stringent needs tests for transfer programs for the poor. Consequently, the decade of the 1980s in the United States has been characterized by upper-tier Americans significantly expanding their share of the national wealth and low income persons losing ground. In the current electoral order, neither party is likely to make a major effort to bring into the electorate working class and poor Americans who presently stand outside the political process. A greater electoral mobilization of these groups would, most likely, create an electorate more receptive to a variety of broad social welfare initiatives. Each party can now win a part of the government, and expansion of the electorate could threaten that advantage. Moreover, current congressional and presidential politicians have learned their political skills in a low-voter environment. Still another consequence of this electoral order is that politicians in each branch of government are compelled to focus on the implications of programs and policies for institutional struggles (Ginsberg and Shefter 1989, 13-4). The Tennessee Valley Authority (although the brainchild of a Republican senator from Nebraska) is perceived as a part of the New Deal legacy. The Appalachian Regional Commission, earmarked for Volume Three, 1991 131 �termination by the Reagan Administration, is remembered as the first piece of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation and part of his War on Poverty. The social welfare establishment is perceived as an important institutional bastion of the Democrats in much the same way that the defense establishment is seen as being Republican. Republican administrations have come to accept unprecedented deficits as the chief constraint they can impose on Democratic congressional power. Thus, non-power programs of the TVA and the economic development programs of the ARC have limped along this decade on minimal funding. There is little evidence there will be any major new investment of social capital by government in Appalachia for education, housing, health care, or community development under the current divided government and its concomitant political deadlock and disarray. Notes 1 See also Richard E. Cohen (1989) pages 1048-54. 2 Also see John A. Ferejohn and Morris P. Fiorina (1985) pages 112-14. 3 The information on campaign issues and legislative interests of various Appalachian congressmen is taken from various editions of Congressional Quarterly's Politics in America. 4 For an excellent paper on the consequences of the present electoral order on American politics and public policy, see Benjamin Ginsberg and Martin Shefter (1989). Works Cited Cash.W.J. 1941. The Mind of the South. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Cohen, Richard E. 1989. "Lonely Runner." National Journal (29 April): 1048-54. Cook, Rhodes. 1989. "Key to Survival for Democrats Lies in Split-Ticket Voting." Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 47 (8 July): 171016. Elving, Ronald D. 1989. "Defining Democrats: Party or Coalition?" Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 47 (7 October): 2674. 132 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Ferejohn, John A. and Morris P. Fiorina. 1985. "Incumbency and Realignment in Congressional Elections." The New Direction in American Politics. Eds. John E. Chubb and Paul E. Peterson. Washington, D.C: The Brookings Institution. Ginsberg, Benjamin and Martin Shefter. 1989. "Mobilization, Demobilization and the Power of the American State." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 1 September 1989, Atlanta, Georgia. Ritt, Leonard G. 1967. "Presidential Voting Patterns in Appalachia: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Turnout, Partisan Change, and Selected Socioeconomic Variables." Dissertation, University of Tennessee. Shafer, Byron E. 1989. "The Notion of an Electoral Order: The Structure of Electoral Politics at the Accession of George Bush." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 1 September 1989, Atlanta, Georgia. Sundquist, James L. 1988-89. "The New Era of Coalition Government in the United States." Political Science Quarterly 103 (Winter). Sutton, C. David. 1982. "Party Competition in the South's Forgotten Region: The Case of Southern Appalachia." Eds. Laurence W. Moreland, Tod A. Baker, and Robert P. Steed. Contemporary Southern Political Attitudes and Behavior. New York: Praeger Publishers. David Sutton is Professor of Political Science at Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina. Volume Three, 1991 133 �Political Culture in Jesse Stuart's Appalachia and the South: From Agrarian to Industrial Development Glen Edward Taul The political culture of Jesse Stuart's Appalachia and of the South traveled similar paths. As in the South, Stuart's Appalachian culture had been shaped by the experiences of both the Civil War and the Great Depression. Both were being transformed from an individualistic, agrarian orientation to a progressive, industrial one. Despite strong influences of modernization to conform to a predominate culture, the agrarian ideology in the South and its Appalachian region continued to be an influential force in the political culture. The culture that Stuart describes in his prose existed approximately from 1900 to 1970. The roots reach experientially to the Civil War, but the taproot is embedded in the European heritage of the first settlers. The ideology of the people, as reflected by Stuart, has a traditional, grassroots orientation that is associated with an agrarian society. Its antecedents are located in the feudal history of Scotland; in the experiences of the Ulster Scots; and the oppressive conditions of the Palatinate Germans (Taul 1978,141). When immigrants settled the Appalachian frontier, they adapted many of their customs and folkways to the rigors of frontier life. Characteristics of individualism, intense partisanship, factionalism, and clannishness, which emerged from these customs and 134 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �folkways, became established in an era of isolation from the developing modern culture of the lowlands (Taul, 141). A manifestation of this adaptation is the Appalachians' adherence to a grassroots rural government. In feudal Scotland, the powerless central government of the monarchy was unable to maintain peace and promote economic prosperity because of the factional nature of the political culture. Powerful overlords continually fought among themselves, and cooperated with the king only when it furthered their personal ambitions. Appalachians generally believe that public affairs should be administered by a decentralized system within small political units. Basic problems of government are essentially local, and local problems are better resolved by local initiative. This belief produced a fragmented political system where factionalism also reigned (Taul,147-149). In the antebellum period, a homogeneous society developed in the Tug Valley from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. The mountain environment forced a blending of all cultural groups. Social cohesiveness was enhanced as the original influx slowed to a trickle. These families were prolific, intermarried extensively, and established complex kinship networks. The mountains insulated inhabitants from the economic, social, and political forces that were transforming the rest of America. By the Civil War, their differences in house styles, farming, dress, religious worship, and political allegiances were almost imperceptible (Waller 1988, 21). This process was probably repeated throughout Southern Appalachia. Family and land were the foundations of this agrarian society. The social structure was more egalitarian than the economically developing regions of America. Economic activity was virtually the same for everyone, and poverty was almost unknown. Social differentiation was determined by the quantity of land, animals, and the production of home manufactures. This differentiation did not, however, inhibit economic and social interaction (Waller, 21-23). The extended family has been the primary organizing unit of the community since the first settlements. Local political factions and other community institutions developed as extensions of the family. These institutions served as important agents for social control by legitimizing and sustaining the mores of the community, and they reflected the importance of personal relationships and local autonomy in their operation and structure. These personal relationships generated intense loyalties and also fueled rivalries (Waller, 81; Eller 1982, 9, 30). The mountain political culture reflected the values and social patterns of most pre-modern societies. The different stages of the democratic process were a series of social events. The culture valued intimate social interaction and community spirit in conducting their public affairs. Political leadership was given on the basis of kinship ties, Volume Three, 1991 135 �personality characteristics, and oratorical skills. Elections had a high rate of participation because campaigns and election days, with their speeches, intense competiveness, direct contact between voters and candidates, personal confrontations among candidates, and viva voce voting, were the height of entertainment and social interaction. In fact, the annual elections were the most important social event of the year for residents within a voting district because they formalized neighborhood networks that bound families together for the rest of the year (Eller, 9, 11-12, 36, 37; Waller, 26). County courts, the traditional form of local government in the South, were the most important and relevant governmental entity of the antebellum mountain political culture. The county courts, which performed the executive, legislative, and judicial functions of government, were the central foci for ordering community affairs, from land distribution to poor relief. Local officials and residents exercised almost complete control over their communities. Conflicts were resolved at the local level by individuals sharing similar perceptions of authority and justice (Waller, 23-24). A local official, elected by his family, or an alliance of families, put kinship interests as his most important debt. Nepotism became a privilege of election; it helped to cement the power of a family group. The power of a family group over individual lives was more overt than that of the government. The "system" was inefficient and incompetent, and it fragmented authority within local government, but it encouraged heavy participation and a feeling of local control (Eller, 30-31). This was part of the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian political ideology that dominated agrarian societies. The qualities of traditional grassroots political culture are portrayed as predominant in Stuart's Appalachia. Partisan loyalties are influenced by family ties. As in Foretaste of Glory; Stuart often identifies parties by the families who dominate local politics. The Greenough and Dinwiddie families alternately, have controlled politics in Blake County for more than 150 years; people join either the "Greenough Party"or "Dinwiddie" Party when they register to vote (Stuart 1946, 9). In this context, a winning combination for a candidate appears to be oratorical skill, a competitive, individualistic spirit, attention to local issues, use of Machiavellian campaign tactics, and the support of dominant families. Family patriarchs are the brokers of local political power. Dusty Boone, in "As the People Choose," blends these qualities to win the race for county prosecutor. To win, he must gain the endorsement of two patriarchs whose families have been feuding for seventy-five years. His purpose in running is to end the Boone-Reffitt feud. Since neither patriarch will work for him if he reveals his platform, he resorts to lying, 136 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �deception, and vote buying (Stuart 1974, 135-6). Dusty first receives Uncle Tobias Boone's endorsement by emphasizing his familial relationship; he does this by revealing the scars Boone supposedly received fighting Reffitts (but actually were inflicted when he ran into a barbed wire fence), and by saying that his opponent, the incumbent, boasts that he will get both the Boone and Reffitt votes. He next gains Uncle Roosevelt Reffitt's support by denying his kinship to Tobias: he says his opponent expects to receive the Boone vote, he points to the battle scars Reffitt received while fighting Boones, and promises to deliver "chop" (cracked corn) for Uncle Roosevelt Reffitt's stills a few days before election day (Stuart 1974, 128-48). Candidates emphasize their commonality with the people by stressing their lifestyles, and parochial issues. They promise direct personal benefits to an individual or group. A candidate for county judge, in "Road Number One," promises to construct gravel roads up every hollow. In "Uncle Casper," a senatorial candidate, in addition to promising improved roads and schools, pledges to place destitute drunks in "feather beds," provide old age pensions for men, homes for widows and orphans, and double the amount of food for indigents. He also will support laws to prohibit the carrying of pistols and bowie knives and those to re-establish the school trustee system (Stuart 1950, 133; 1974, 2-3). Although he lives in the county seat, Blake County Judge Allie Anderson, in Foretaste of Glory, cultivates a lifestyle with which rural people identify. His has a home just a block off Main Street with modest furnishings, a large family, and a large garden along with cows and hogs. He belongs to the church that most hill people attend. And he does not swear, smoke, or drink. As he feeds his hogs each evening, people from the county come to talk about farming and to seek favors. They would rather talk with Judge Anderson there than his plushly furnished courthouse office, because, despite his peculiar style of city living, the rural people see him as "just a common man." This strategy has revived the nearly defunct "Greenough Party" (Stuart 1946, 25-7). Election day has the characteristics of a festive community holiday celebration. It is the finish line for an intense contest. Candidates and their loyalists will commit fraud to win, and partisans observe the tabulation of votes to insure fairness. In the "Voting Goodlaws," Oscar Kimble, a county road foreman and a "Greenough Party" election worker, gets the maximum benefit from the Goodlaws' large family by proxy voting. One Goodlaw votes, and then votes again (in another precinct) for his brother who is in the hospital. Another Goodlaw comes by party headquarters to get his promised pint of whiskey before voting. After he votes, he votes again for another brother (who is late in arriving from Ohio, where he has lived for two years). When the Ohio brother arrives Volume Three, 1991 137 �and discovers that his brother has already voted for him, he becomes angry and threatens to expose all of them unless he votes. Oscar finds a cousin Goodlaw who has died, but has not been purged. The Ohio brother votes for him (1974, 271-84). In the days when paper ballots were used and votes were counted by hand, people congregated in and out of the courthouse to await the results. As days become weeks counting votes, in "He Saw the Sun This Time," Greenough and Dinwiddie partisans become irritable. Several attempts are made to invalidate the election results of a Greenough precinct by Dinwiddie supporters. When the results favor the minority Greenough, Sheriff Simpleton, a Dinwiddie election judge, threatens to invalidate the votes of three large Greenough precincts because of improper signatures by election judges. The sheriff is stopped by a determined Greenough partisan who says, "We'll count the votes or fight! .. .If they are thrown out well be counting the dead instead of votes" (1970, 22-26) Mountaineers saw themselves as law abiding. The court system was respected as vital in the smooth functioning of mountain communities. Its embodiment of social authority was recognized as long as mountaineers perceived its decisions as being rooted in local customs and traditions, and reflecting community values. The grand jury, in "Before the Grand Jury," was the guardian of these customs, traditions, and values. It asks Jasper Higgins about his knowledge concerning public decency and safety. It questions him about people carrying concealed deadly weapons, uttering public profanities, or selling poison moonshine. Jasper admits to knocking a boy unconscious when he interrupted a school program one night, yelling that he was the meanest man since Adam. Everyone in the schoolhouse was afraid of the boy, so Jasper challenged him; no sheriff was around to maintain peace. In its agrarian sense of justice, the grand jury vindicates Jasper. It agrees with his defense: "where there's not any Law to protect a man, there shouldn't be any to prosecute him. We have to protect ourselves in this County. You know that." He is not indicted (Stuartl956,). Even in an agrarian society partisanship determines decisions. Jasper complains before the grand jury that if a man is murdered, he is sentenced to one year in the penitentiary. "Steal a chicken, you get five years in the pen. No pardon on chicken stealin', but you have a chance for a pardon if you belong to the right party when you kill a man. They need your family vote. The family turns against them unless the killer gets a pardon. Sometimes it's already waitin' in the courtroom soon as the man is sentenced" (Waller, 90; Stuart 1956, 200-4). The agrarian flavor comes through especially in Stuart's descriptions of hangings and trials. Both events have the elements of being exciting, 138 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �entertaining, and festive. Both provide opportunities for socializing. During court day, in Beyond Dark Hills, people descend into the county seat to trade, to sell, and to listen to trials. Everyone seems to take a personal interest in the cases being tried. The seats, windows, and aisles are filled with people waiting to be entertained (1972, 215). In "Sunday Afternoon Hanging," execution of criminals is a public affair. People come from surrounding counties to watch. "Everybody got to see it and laugh and faint, cuss or cry, do just as he damned pleased about it." People get drunk, bands play, men have dates, and refreshments are sold. They like to hear the condemned confess their "sins," or trade insults (Stuart 1956, 100-1, 112). The county judge presides over a fragmented local government. He is the chief administrative and legislative officer of the county. Other county officials—county clerk, sheriff, jailer—are also elected. Each of these semi-autonomous individuals maintain a proprietary attitude toward their offices and lack direction either at home or from the state capital. The county judge is usually under-educated, lacking especially in any legal training for the judicial duties of the office. His powers are enhanced if he happens to be the governor's county patronage man. This is the profile of County Judge Toodle Powell in "Road Number One." Judge Powell is elected on the promise to gravel every road in the county. With a majority of the magistrates belonging to his party, he can deliver on this promise; he fails because of his incompetence in managing the county's affairs (Stuart 1950, 123, 141). As in the post-Civil War and the modernized Appalachian region, agrarian values and social patterns are or have been very evident in the southern political culture. These elements were established in the colonial and antebellum periods. There was a strong tradition of individualism. Local autonomy and a decentralized political system were valued over a federal or national government. Personalities overshadowed issues: the voters preferred personal contact with candidates and government officials. Electoral and governmental politics were a prized past-time, and a favorite source of entertainment (Grantham 1988, 55, 84). Unlike the southern Appalachian region, the South was essentially undemocratic in values and practice. The centralizing forces of a commercial economy, however, had a greater effect. It created distinct class divisions in which a wealthy, powerful elite maintained control through undemocratic means. Qualifications for voting and holding office were generally limited to propertied whites, and legislative districts were mal-apportioned where the older seaboard regions held a disproportionate share of power. The vigorous two-party system that emerged during Volume Three, 1991 139 �the 1830s was essentially a division between agrarian elites about whether or not government resources should be used to aid commercial development. Even some parts of Appalachia wanted government aid to construct railroads through their areas (Grantham xi; Burden 1985, 6, 45-46). The Civil War and the Great Depression altered the direction of politics in both regions. Throughout the post-Civil War and post-depression periods, a rural, provincial orientation remained. After the Civil War, single party politics (Democratic in the South and Republican in Appalachia) developed and industrialization sharpened class differences, concentrated wealth into fewer hands, disrupted the traditional culture, and caused social conflict. These trends continued in the post-depression period, but single party politics and the individualistic character declined. Southern mountaineers were the largest group of Southern whites who remained Republican until the 1950s. The Republican party became established as the dominant party after Reconstruction; before 1860, allegiance to either Democrats or Republicans depended on personal considerations. The war had awakened mountaineers to the common interests that needed to be defended. Support for the Union or Confederacy depended on whether or not either government could preserve the independence and autonomy of the mountaineers, or on the nature of the commercial links to the planter and regional economy. Most mountaineers supported the Republicans because they were credited with saving the Union, they promised government assistance to help the South recover from the war's devastation and financial chaos, and the Republican party was not controlled by the power elite of the lowlands (McKinney 1978, 3, 14, 12, 29; Waller, 29-31). Political affiliations were influenced by the Civil War in Stuart's Appalachia. The family and social environment that emerged from this conflict shaped the political character for two succeeding generations. In Two Worlds," Shan Powderjay and his siblings "were children of indecision" (Stuart 1969, 18). His parents argue about the North and South, Lee and Grant, Methodists and Baptists, and Republicans and Democrats. His maternal grandfather is an ex-Confederate and a Democrat, and his paternal grandfather, an ex-Union soldier and a Republican. "Each world was a powerful voice beckoning us to follow" (Stuart, 18). The Great Depression and the New Deal altered political alignments again in the mountains as well as in the South. Blaming Hoover for the Depression and the ready acceptance of Democratic relief programs, a once heavily Republican region was split into Democratic and Republican subregions (Caudill 1963, 207). The family of Press Tussie formerly voted a straight Republican ticket, but became Democrat when govern- 140 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �ment relief was first offered. "It looked like too good a thing to pass up," says Press (Stuart 1943, 37). In states like Kentucky, a three-party system developed. Statewide, the Democrats generally have controlled politics since the Civil War, with the Republicans giving strong opposition. There usually were two opposing factions within the Democratic ranks. Stuart's father, Mitchell, comments on how Republicans have been the minority party since the Civil War. Even when there has been a Republican governor in Kentucky, the Democrats have controlled the legislature. "And with one party in power all my lifetime, the net results are that we stand on the bottom of everything" (Stuart 1960, 120). Of course, he is probably expressing the frustration that a legislature, dominated by the Bluegrass and western regions of the state, has continuously ignored the needs of the state's eastern region. As the commercial culture grew to replace agriculture as the basis for the region's economy, jobs in the public sector became more important and were a source for building local political organizations. Press Tussie's ability to control votes in his family is dependent on his success in gaining benefits from New Deal programs for most members of his clan. Road construction was another major source of patronage, especially after World War II, when rural Kentuckians demanded allweather roads. Nearly bankrupt local governments depended on state funds to finance their construction. But the local men, in "Road Number One," who built the roads were hired more for their party affiliation than for their skills in operating equipment (Stuart 1943, 47-48; Caudill, 269; Stuart 1950, 142-143). Welfare benefits and roads were sources for federal and state largesse to communities but education was the major source on the local level. Bitter political battles were fought for the right to control these jobs. Whoever backed the winning candidate for governor became the administration's local patronage person. Governor Warburton, in "Governor Warburton's Right-Hand Man," faces a dilemma when he comes to Blake County to pick his patronage man. For the first time, the two factions of the "Greenough Party" backed the same candidate. If the governor chooses either the county clerk or another Greenough leader, he will alienate the loosing faction. He retains the loyalty of both by choosing an independent voter (Stuart 1950, 195-204). The commercial culture that developed between the Civil War and 1920 conflicted with traditional relationships and obligations. It recognized contracts as inviolable and enforceable without reference to circumstances surrounding an agreement. Traditional culture considered terms of a bargain within the context of customary rights. A commercial culture was antithetical to someone who was illiterate, who thought and Volume Three, 1991 141 �behaved in oral face-to-face terms: it required cash and a literate populace. The cash-free economy and illiterate environment of a traditional culture created many exploitative situations. There is a dispute over the "ownership of the law" in this kind of environment. Traditionalists expected the law to uphold customary rights and obligations. Modernizers viewed the law as a means to protecting economic development and profits (Waller, 47-48). Stuart portrays this conflict in the Trees of Heaven. A conflict between the law and the individual comes to focus in Anse Bushman, who defines ownership in terms of a deed and cash purchase. He declines morally when he attempts to manipulate the law. When he buys the Sexton land at a courthouse auction, he changes his image as an upright, law-abiding citizen to one who is against the community, only because the hill people oppose the sale of any land by court order. He declines further when he uses the law to evict Boliver Tussie, a squatter, from the land. Boliver's family is allowed to stay as sharecroppers, with his intention to manipulate them for his own profit. Boliver's family is eventually evicted because Anse wants Boliver's tobacco crop for himself. The New Deal, and the welfare system it established, has corrupted the traditional values and social patterns of the mountain culture. It has divided families like the Tussies. Press Tussie is patriarch of the Relief Tussies while Press' brother is head of the other Tussie faction. The New Deal also promotes waste, lethargy, and needless "rest," as in the case of Peter Farmer. He is participating in a government program that loans him more money than his farm is worth, and pays him not to raise tobacco, corn, or cane. The furrows of the once-plowed fields are welded together, and the plows are becoming rusty from disuse. Peter's brother chastises him for being a "sellout" because "there is not the honor of sweat" in what he is doing (Stuart 1943, 47-8; 1966, 61, 69-70; 1971, 3, 5-8). The New Deal poses a direct threat, for some, to the traditions of an agrarian political culture. It threatens local autonomy and the ability to decide how one should live. For Rev. Ezekiel Wrenhouse the blue eagle of the National Industrial Recovery Act is evil. It represents a despotic government trying to tell him what he can do. In "A Pilgrim Out in Space," the preacher's small assistant is prevented from buying eggs at the usual store because "it's not fair to the Government of America! Look at the window!. .. Where is the Blue Eagle!" says Jerry Sprouse. When Rev. Wrenhouse finds out what has happened, he confronts Sprouse and his friends, and tells them that he will buy his eggs where he pleases. After viewing the NRA symbol in the other store, he holds an all night vigil of prayer. By morning he has received a "vision" similar to one described in Revelations 13. He concludes that Roosevelt and the NRA, which have the number 666, have 142 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �the "Mark of the Beast." A Democrat for all of his life, Rev. Wrenhouse immediately begins campaigning against FDR. He campaigns full time, publicizing his vision and talking to any audience wanting to listen. He dies before the election, but his county votes two-to-one against FDR while the surrounding counties go the opposite direction for the "Mark of the Beast" (Stuart 1971, 156-73). In The Land Beyond the River, Stuart tells the story of how the welfare system has had a corrosive effect on the dignity, pride, and individualistic spirit of Appalachians. The Perkins family is wedded to traditional ways when they move across the river into Ohio to begin life anew. In their former Appalachian home, they were subsistence farmers who were forced to depend on government commodities, losing their pride and economic stability. They regain their pride as tenant farmers in Ohio. Just as the Perkinses begin to put their lives back together, a series of events cause significant change in their lives: the father (Gil) is partially disabled by a snakebite; Gil's wife (Sil) has her twelfth child; and their beneficit landlord dies. Worried about providing for the needs of his large family, Gil succumbs to the tempting advice of Uncle Dick and enters the welfare system. The traditional values weaken their hold on the family, especially with the children. The oldest two rebel against the family. They shift from their fundamental religious beliefs as Free Will Baptists to the more liberal Presbyterian. Cassie-Belle changes her name to Clarissa Jo at Ohio State University because her former Appalachian name hindered her adjustment to the new life. Pedike, as he begins working at the Dupont Chemical Plant, vows to keep his pride and never go on welfare. He will not follow the ways of his parents and have more children than he can feed and educate (Taul 1978, 144-46). Similar developments occurred in the southern political culture after the Civil War. A single party system evolved, but Democrats dominated it. The party organization was amorphous and transitory, dependent on the ascendancy of particular leaders and factions at any given moment. The New Deal encouraged the fragmentation of the Solid South. The national Democratic Party was changing in character. The importance of the South was receding, and the old assumption that support of the Democrats was synonymous with the defense of the "Southern" position also began to erode. The growth of centralized government and creation of the welfare state disturbed conservative southerners, who were inclined to attribute their apprehensions to Roosevelt's leadership. In 1948, the Dixiecrat Revolt resulted from Truman's promise to expand the welfare program and boldly sponsor federal civil rights legislation. The revolt was also a manifestation of the broader regional conservatism Volume Three, 1991 143 �that was a defensive reaction to rapid economic and social change (Grantham 1988,26, 123-24). There were also some contrasting trends in the two regions: the rate of decline for voter participation was slower in Appalachia. Although the power of the planter and commercial classes increased in both regions, the egalitarian ideal of Jeffersonian democracy prevailed in Stuart's hill region. Stuart's prose fails to reflect significant trends within his region and in the South, which also affect Appalachia. He does not write about the impact of coal mining and the development of company towns on the political culture, nor do his characters talk about their attitudes toward African-Americans, and consequently, the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Despite the centralizing forces of modernization, the political culture of the South and Stuart's region still favors an agrarian democracy. This democracy is oriented to the individual and local autonomy. It means a small government with direct access to candidates and officeholders, and is conducted on a direct, personal, intimate, informal basis. It is a belief that rural government is more efficient, effective, and democratic than a big distant government administered by a bureaucracy of a select group of men. Local government is for the common man; officeholders need no special training or qualifications. Their willingness to serve the community and conform to its system of values is enough. Works Cited Caudill, Harry M. 1963. Night Comes to the Cumberland*: A Biography of a Depressed Region. Boston: Little, Brown. Durden, Robert P. 1985. The Self-Inflicted Wounds: Southern Politics in the Nineteenth Century. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Eller, Ronald D. 1982. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1920. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Grantham, Dewey W. 1988. The Life and Death of the Solid South: A Political History. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. McKinney, Gordon B. 1978. Southern Mountain Republicans, 1865-1900: Politics and the Appalachian Community. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 144 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Stuart, Jesse. 1943. Taps for Private Tussle. New York: E.P. Button. . 1946. Foretaste of Glory. New York: E.P. Dutton. . 1950. Clearing in the Sky. New York: McGraw-Hill. . 1956. Plowshare in Heaven. New York: McGraw-Hill. -. 1960. God's Oddling: The Story of Mick Stuart, My Father. New York: McGraw-Hill. —. 1966. My Land Has A Voice. New York: McGraw-Hill. —. 1969. Come Gentle Spring. New York: McGraw-Hill. —. 1970. Seven by Jesse. Terre Haute: Indiana Council of Teachers of English, Indiana State University. —. 1971. Come Back to the Farm. New York: McGraw-Hill. —. 1972. Beyond Dark Hills. New York: McGraw-Hill. . 1974. Thirty-two Votes Before Breakfast: Politics at the Grass Roots, as Seen in Short Stories. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co. Taul, Glen Edward. 1978. "Kentucky Politics in Jesse Stuart's Prose." Master's Thesis, Baylor University. Waller, Altina L. 1988. Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Glen Edward Taul is a doctoral student in history at the University of Kentucky and works for the Christian Appalachian Project in Lancaster, Kentucky. Volume Three, 1991 145 �A Cure for the Malaise of the Dislocated Southerner: The Writing of Jesse Stuart Edgar H. Thompson Walker Percy, in his essay "Southern Comfort," asserts that the South has entered "the American mainstream and the old southern vein of oddities and exoticas" (1980, 348) have finally played themselves out. Though we might agree with Percy's assessment, the specific traits and qualities that anchor this new South and its literature in the American mainstream are not immediately clear. W. J. Cash, however, gives us some idea what these traits might be when he contends that throughout the highland and lowland South "it is easy to trace . . . a fairly definite social pattern . . . a complex of established relationships and habits of thought, sentiments, prejudices, standards and values, and associations of ideas" common to the region (1969, viii). It seems to me that these social patterns and habits of thought that Cash talks about come in large part from what Randall Stewart calls the Tidewater and the Frontier traditions in literature and geography. Both traditions commonly include a sense of place, a sense of community, and a sense of justice. An awareness of the positions within social classes is evident in both traditions, but in the Frontier tradition, an individual's social position is not given much importance. Even though both traditions have similar features, there are also elements which differ greatly. Stewart described them as follows: 146 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �TIDEWATER (TUCKAHOE) FRONTIER (COHEE) Good manners and decorum Crude behavior Wit and an interest in polite literature and art Slapstick and anti-in tellectuali sm Courtliness, sophistication and restraint Rough-and-tumble behavior Subtlety Straightforwardness Randall Stewart places Thomas Wolfe and Jesse Stuart in the Frontier tradition, writers like Eudora Welty, John Crowe Ransom, and Allen Tate in the Tidewater tradition, and William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren somewhere in between (1975, 420-421). Scholars have long used the traits of these two traditions as a way to separate the South and its literature into highbrow and lowbrow, with the Tidewater tradition most often being associated with the highbrow, the "real" South and "true" southern literature, i.e., writers like Welty, Ransom, and Tate. However, at this time in history, what is now accepted as outhern is changing, and this new concept of the South is broader than it used to be. As ties with the past are cut—by the distance from "home," by the loss of the "home place," and by the death of loved ones—many southerners, whether highland or lowland, feel alienated and disconnected from their past. The "successful grandchildren [of people who lived such a life close to the land]... are [now] going nuts in Atlanta condominiums" (Percy, 438). Economics prevent many of these people from actually picking up and moving "back home." Still, this economical reality does not remove the need, the tremendous desire that people feel to somehow capture what is being lost, and to understand what all of this has meant in the past and what it means now. It is at this nexus that the writing of Jesse Stuart becomes important. He provides a fictional world that captures enough of the substance and traditions of both the highland and the lowland South to reassure the current generation of dislocated southerners by his messages, his images, and his vision. At a time when many highland and lowland southern writers are trying to determine "how you hold onto what you have in the past world but live beyond it and balance the two" (Hoffert 1989, 49), Stuart is already there to provide at least a glimpse at what the past Volume Three, 1991 147 �was, and it is this vision that has the potential to help us come to grips with the malaise of dislocation people presently feel. At first glance, it would appear that the majority of Stuart's work clearly falls into the Frontier tradition, and thus we might assume that it has little relevancy for those who come from or find themselves living within the confines of the Tidewater tradition. However, if you look closely, there are some Tidewater traits in Stuart's work that give it a broader perspective. I am not trying to claim that Jesse Stuart is a southern writer in the Tidewater tradition; however, his writing does contain many of the "down home" elements that displaced highland and lowland southerners are trying to reclaim. To illustrate my point, I want to use one of Stuart's most popular yet also one of his least literary and most frontier-like novels, Hie to the Hunters. Consider the plot of this book: Jud "Sparkie" Sparks, from the Plum Grove Hills, rescues Didway Hargis, son of a wealthy Greenwood merchant, from a beating by spitting tobacco spittle with pin-point accuracy into the eyes of Did's attackers. Sparkie then convinces Did that he doesn't have to put up with this kind of abuse and invites Did to come home and live with him. Sparkie's parents, Peg and Arn, are happy to see Did. They won't turn away a stray hound from their door, so they are not about to turn away Did. As Did spends time in the hills with Sparkie, he undergoes a metamorphosis, which John T. Flanagan succinctly describes as follows: When Sparkie . . . takes young Did Hargis out to the mountain cabin of his parents, Did is rather puny, pale, nervous, unaccustomed to strenuous physical exertion. It is only a matter of weeks before Did, eating coarse food and deprived of all the amenities of a comfortable town home, is able to hoe corn, plow, drive a mule, follow a trap line, scythe brush, and skin animals to the complete satisfaction of his mentor. (1977, 80-81) Did has many adventures with Sparkie, including learning how to coon and fox hunt, going to mountain dances, and engaging in a harvest cornshucking, a Plum Grove community event on the Sparks' land. The cornshucking ends in an all-out battle between the hill folks and Did's father and his men who have come from town to rescue Did. In the end, Did's father's group loses. Finally, the last attempt by Mr. Hargis to take Did home ends with Mr. Hargis and his men side-by-side with the Plum Grove men as they try to save Peg Sparks' barn; it was set on fire by a barn burner who plagued the hills during a feud between the farmers and the fox hunters. After the fire is out, when Mr. Hargis talks with Did, he treats him as an adult who is able to make up his own mind. Mr. Hargis agrees that if Did will come back and finish school, he can spend his summers in the 148 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �hills with Sparkie, Peg, and Arn. Thus, Did becomes an active participant in both the town and the hill cultures. This book clearly illustrates traits of the Frontier tradition. There is roughness and crudeness of manners, e.g., Arn smokes a pipe [not very genteel], their language is coarse though not profane, etc. There is rough-and-tumble behavior in many places, for instance when all the men wear guns in holsters to the big dance, when dogs are poisoned and barns burned, when both men and women get involved in the "knock down, drag out" fight at the Sparks's cornshucking. There is certainly anti-intellectualism, which is revealed early in the book. When Did and Sparkie first meet and Sparkie finds out that Did is in his second year of high school, he says, "Ye're high up in l a r n i n ' . . . . To look at ye, one wouldn't think it" (Stuart 1988, 8). Sparkie had only gotten to the Second Reader when he quit school. Sparkie and Peg and Arn, who are essentially illiterate, value more practical things like hunting and farming and making a living off the land. There is certainly no courtliness or sophistication, and the characters in this book are presented in a straightforward manner, with little or no subtlety. All of these things are of the frontier. However, there is also a love of humor, e.g., the laughter when Did first appears in Sparkie's "hand-me-down" clothes. Though perhaps not wit, it isn't slapstick either. It is just human. Further, the people from Plum Grove always treat Did warmly, readily welcoming him into their midst. This behavior surely demonstrates good manners, decorum, and a sense of community. There \sjustice and restraint. In the opening event of the book, Sparkie comes to Did's defense because he is outnumbered in a fight, thus, illustrating a sense of fair play. Another example is how the hill people treat Did as an adult who is free to make his own decisions. Thus, they will not let Mr. Hargis "bully" Did into returning to Greenwood. To allow this to happen wouldn't be fair or just. Instead of fighting immediately, however, they show great "restraint" in avoiding violence, until they are left with no alternative; e.g., when they are surrounded by Mr. Hargis and his men in the corn field. In fact, the people from town are exhibiting more frontier-like behavior than the people from Plum Grove. They have no choice but to fight their way out. Thus, there are also elements of the Tidewater tradition, in a universal sense, in Stuart's work. Actually, a book as simple and straightforward as Hie to the Hunters is not totally at odds with Lee Smith's conception of a southern novel; i.e., a book characterized by "leisurely development, care lavished upon developing characters, the importance of place, and the use of history" (Hoffert 1989, 48), though surely Stuart's characters could use some fleshing out. In sharp contrast to many southern writers, who seem obsessed with exploring "the darker recesses of the human heart" (Percy 1980, 349), Volume Three, 1991 149 �Stuart inspires his readers by pointing out what is most basic and fundamentally good in life, particularly a life lived close to the land, close to the old home place, close to one's roots. Since so many contemporary southerners feel that these qualities have disappeared, reading the work of a writer like Jesse Stuart helps them to reclaim and to celebrate these qualities, at least vicariously. It is this vicarious connection with the past that, I believe, has allowed Jesse Stuart's writing to survive and to remain popular. Even though Stuart may not be a writer of the same skill and stature as William Faulkner, much like Faulkner, Stuart was trying "to talk about people . . . men and women in their universal humanity" (Brooks 1983, 2), and in so doing he captured qualities universal to both the highland and lowland South. Stuart's genuine love of family, of friends and acquaintances, of the land, and of local customs, his sense of fair play and justice, his eternal optimism in the face of despair and adversity, the simple descriptions of home, i.e., the people, the food, the smells, the behaviors, all connect him to both Tuckahoes [plantation farmers] and Cohees [mountaineers]. A vision such as Stuart's is frequently dismissed as lacking artistic depth and social importance. As Jim Wayne Miller points out, however, "literary works not overtly concerned with political and social conditions have often made contributions to social and political awareness" (1980, 66). In fact, historian Henry Steele Commager claimed that "the image of the American past and with it our national identity was . . . to an extraordinary degree a literary creation by poets and storytellers . . . " (66). As novelist John Gardner once said: Great [literature] can make us laugh or cry, in much the same way life can, and it gives us at least the powerful illusion that when we do so we're doing pretty much the same things we do when we laugh at Uncle Herman's jokes, or cry at funerals. Somehow the endlessly recombining elements that make up works of [literature] have their roots hooked, it seems, in the universe, or at least into the hearts of human beings. Somehow the [literary] dream persuades us that it's a clear, sharp, edited version of the dream all around us. Whatever our doubts, we pick up books at train stations, or withdraw into our studies and write them; and the world—or so we imagine—comes alive. (1984, 38) And this is what happens when we read Jesse Stuart. A literary dream is created, and a fictional world comes alive for us. It is a world that may not exist in reality, but a world quite real, at least in our mind's eye. This world is made vivid and rich by the images and details of plain living evoked by Stuart's writing. In a time when we are suffering 150 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �malaise, dislocation, and mourning the disappearance of the homeplace and the loss of the home-folks, reading what Stuart wrote soothes us and takes us home, at least for a while. Works Cited Brooks, Cleanth. 1983. William Faulkner: First Encounters. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cash, W. J. 1969. The Mind of the South. New York: Vintage. Flanagan, John T. 1977. "Jesse Stuart, Regional Novelist." JessejStuart: Essays on His Work. Eds. J. R. LeMaster and Mary Washington Clark. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Gardner, John. 1984. The Art of Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Hoffert, Barbara. 1989. "Writer's Renaissance in North Carolina." Library Journal 114:18, 44-48. Miller, Jim Wayne. 1980. "A Post-Agrarian Regionalism for Appalachia." Appalachian Heritage, Spring 1980, 58-71. Percy, Walker. 1980. "Southern Comfort." Popular Writing in America. Eds. Donald McQuade and Robert Atwan. New York: Oxford University Press. (Originally published in Harper's, January 1979, This was a shorter version of a draft published in The Georgia Review, Vol 32 1978.) Stewart, Randall. 1975. "Tidewater and Frontier." Voices from the Hills. Eds. Robert J. Higgs and Ambrose N. Manning. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co. Stuart, Jesse. 1988. Hie to the Hunters. Ashland: The Jesse Stuart Foundation. Herb Thompson is an Associate Professor of Education at Emory & Henry College, Emory, Virginia. Volume Three, 1991 151 �James Jones' Appalachian Soldier in His World War II Trilogy Loyal Jones James Jones is best known for his novel of the pre-World War II army, From Here to Eternity, but his other two novels which complete the trilogy, The Thin Red Line, about the Guadalcanal campaign, and Whistle, about the returning wounded, were also highly praised for their realism. Jones followed four soldiers through all three novels, although under different but similar names. They are the first sergeant, the company clerk, the mess sergeant, and a non-conformist, heroic rifleman from Appalachia. They are known in From Here to Eternity respectively as Firsf Sgt. Warden, Cpl. Mazzioli, Sgt. Stark and Pvt. Prewitt from Harlan County, Kentucky. Jones decided that Prewitt in Eternity must die as a result of his own non-conformity, pride and honor. Therefore, he had to re-create him in the other novels under different names—Witt (from Breathitt County, Kentucky) in The Thin Red Line, and Prell (from West Virginia) in Whistle. However, Jones made it clear that they were the same character. Alice Cornett, a Kentucky writer, tracked down Robert Lee Stewart, the Letcher County Kentuckian on whom Jones based his Robert E. Lee Prewitt, Witt and Prell, and published an article on him in 1982. Stewart had served with Jones in "F" Company, 27th Infantry ("The Wolfhound") regiment, 25th Infantry "Tropical Lightning" Division, at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii before Pearl Harbor and later on Guadalcanal. Like the fictional Prewitt, Stewart was the son of a coal miner, was a guitar player, a bugler, a boxer and "above all, a hard- 152 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �headed, independent mountain boy" (1982, 11-13). Stewart's life had not been as hard as Jones described Prewitt's, but his mother died when he was thirteen, and in 1936 at fifteen, lying about his age and signing his father's name, he joined the army. When he reenlisted in 1939, he was assigned to Hawaii (32-33). James Jones, from Robinson, a small town in southern Illinois, came from an entirely different kind of family: his grandfather was a lawyer, his father a dentist. However, the Joneses' fortunes were diminished in the stock market crash of 1929, and when Jones graduated from high school, there was not enough money for him to go to college. He joined the army in 1939 and ended up in the infantry in Hawaii. Jones noted that Robinson was settled by people from Kentucky and Indiana, and thus he felt some kinship with Kentuckians. His own behavio/ in real life is similar to that he ascribed to Prewitt. Jones proposed the idea for Eternity to Scribner's Maxwell Perkins in 1946, while he was trying to get Scribner's to accept an earlier manuscript. In a letter to Perkins, Jones proposed a novel on the peacetime army, and wrote that he would: draw Stewart's life in the army, his intense personal pride, his six months on stockade rockpile rather than admit he was wrong and accept company punishment when he felt he was right in his actions. The small man standing on the edge of the ocean shaking his fist, the magnificent gesture. . . . Almost a criminal, almost an artist, but not either . . . (1989, 55-59) Perkins asked Jones to set aside the earlier novel and offered a $500 advance for the first 50,000 words of what he called "the Stewart novel" (60). Jones went to work at once on the new novel. My purpose in this paper is to discern how Jones viewed and described the soldier based on Stewart and other Appalachians in his company and to reflect on the accuracy of his depiction of Appalachian characteristics. In a letter to Ben W. Griffith, Jr., who after Perkins' death became his editor at Scribner's, Jones explained his main purpose in From Here to Eternity: The main theme I basically wanted to show in Eternity —one which I saw often and which never ceased to amaze me—was that the Army had an infallible way of destroying its own best advocates and adherents. The type of which Prewitt was one are almost always the best examples of real combat soldiers, I have seen such men do absolutely unbelievable things in combat. And Volume Three, 1991 153 �yet—what amazed me—was that these very characteristics and ideas which made them the best possible soldiers in combat are the same things which always threw them into conflict with authority out of combat, or even in combat sometimes, for that matter. There seemed to me to be here a very ironic paradox which the smugness of the Army (i.e., society) does not allow itself to see. (203-4) Jones goes on to say something that shows his solidarity with Prewitt: I guess you could say that philosophically—though not politically—I am an anarchist. I am not fanatical enough to believe that such a way of life could be practicable. But I hate to see everywhere today the encroachments of control over the individual. . . .It does tremedous good for the many and hamstrings the superior few. (205) Jones was profoundly affected by being an enlisted man in the prewar regular army. Even though he was reared in a middle-class family, he came to admire and to accept the values of his fellow soldiers, who at the time were mostly working-class or who had been down-and-out in the Great Depression. Society and his microcosm of society, The Compny," had not dealt fairly with them. Yet, Jones saw in them a fanatical loyalty to the company. Prewitt, the Kentuckian, is the essence of an unbending pride and a sense of honor and integrity. And so, in the peacetime army, he is in trouble. He is the best bugler in Hawaii, but because someone else is made First Bugler for political reasons, he requests straight infantry duty. He is also a boxer and the company commander welcomes him with a promise of special favors and rank if he will box. He refuses because he once blinded a fighter in the ring. His life is made hell as the company tries to break him, but he will not give in. He winds up in the stockade after a fight with a sergeant. He is too proud to plead that he fought because the sergeant drew a knife on him. Stewart himself went to the stockade because of a fight with the Charge of Quarters. He also refused to join the boxing squad (Cornett 1982, 11-13; 32-33). Bill Curran, a boxer in the company said, "Stewart didn't want to fight. The rumor was that he'd fought before and had hurt someone" (Curran 1990). Jones wrote to Max Perkins about such men in 1946: Having known a number of these men, I am convinced that the great majority of real criminals—not petty thieves but criminals—are what they are because of a high personal integrity and 154 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �a high personal pride. . . (I have a strong feeling that most of the men in the recent Alcatraz riot were probably Prewitts; two of them were from Ky., two were Indians from the Cookson Hills in Okla.). (Jones 1989, 72) These characteristics are exemplified in Prewitt when he vows to kill Fatso, the sadistic stockade sergeant (who incidentally is from Breathitt County, Kentucky,) for his brutal beating of Maggio and cruelty to others. Prewitt has plenty of time to reconsider his promise and the consequences of such an act, but he kills Fatso. In the fight he receives a knife wound making it impossible for him to return to the company. While he is AWOL, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. He is shot as he tries to get back to his company and do what he knows he can do best— soldier. Stewart was a guitar player, and thus so is Prewitt In Eternity. Jones writes: Robert E. Lee Prewitt had learned to play a guitar long before he had learned to bugle or to box. He learned it as a boy, and with it he learned a lot of blues, songs and laments. In the Kentucky mountains along the West Virginia [sic] Line life led him swiftly to that kind of music . . . In the Kentucky Mountains. . . guitar playing is not considered the accomplishment it is most places. Every wellbred boy learns to chord a guitar when he is still small enough to hold it like a string bass. The boy Prewitt loved the songs because they gave him something, and understanding, as first hint that pain might not be pointless if you could turn it into something. . . (Jones 1951, 13) Another Kentuckian in Jones' T" Company was George H. Wilkinson, of Hazard, "a wonderful guitar player," and he turns up as Sal Anderson who often plays with Prewitt in Eternity. Jones described their music as Prewitt's kind of music "—blues songs and hillbilly music—the kind of music these bums and field laborers and factory workers who had tried to escape their barren lives by enlisting in the Army understood and always played" (68). Emory Toms, from western Pennsylvania, another boxer, guitar picker and First Bugler of "F" Company told of his first meeting with Stewart: I was working out in the ring one day. He came up and said, "Lefty, you ain't half bad." We got to drinking that night, and he found out that I played guitar. So we got to playing together. Volume Three, 1991 155 �We'd sit out on the quadrangle with a bucket of beer and play and sing all night. I'd sing tenor and he'd sing straight. Stewart liked the Delmore Brothers. A few years ago he sent me a tape of 50 songs of the Delmore Brothers. (Toms 1990) Yet another bugler and guitar picker was Frank Marshall, from Philadelphia, the Second Bugler of the company, whom Stewart nicknamed Friday. This name stuck on a character in Eternity.. Friday Clark, who made music with Prewitt and Sal Anderson. Alice Cornett attributes "The Reenlistment Blues," sung by Merle Travis in the movie, to Stewart and Wilkinson (11-13, 32-33). Accomplishment with music is one of the characterstics that Jones attributed to his mountain soldiers. Many good musicians have indeed come out of the mountains, although not every 'wellbred' boy learned to play the guitar and make up songs out of his travail. Prewitt, like Stewart, was orphaned at thirteen when his mother died of consumption. There was a big strike on that winter and she died in the middle of it.... Her husband, who was a striker, was in the county jail with two stab wounds in his chest and a fractured skull. And her brother, Uncle John, was dead, having been shot by several deputies . . . They said blood actually ran like rainwater in the gutters of Harlan that day.... The boy Prewitt saw the battle... .(Jones 1951, 15) And he hit the road, for his mother had told him, "from your father you got pride and endurance and I knowed that you would need it. But one of you would have kilt the other if it hatnt of been for me. And now I wont be standin atween you no more" (16). Before she died she extracted a promise from him, "Promise me you wont never hurt nobody unless its absolute a must, unless you jist have to do it." The gifts from his father and mother led him into trouble and kept him there in this novel. Prewitt will not be a boxer for the regiment because he has hurt someone boxing, and he is true to his mother's promise. But beyond that he has an innate sense of basic rights. "Every man has certain rights," he said; "in life, I mean, not in ideals. And if he dont stand up for his own rights nobody else is going to stand up for them for him" (209). In talking with Sgt. Stark, the mess sergeant, he tells how there was a sign in Harlan that read, "DON'T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU IN HARLAN, Nigger!" (Actually, I believe such a sign was posted in Corbin. Harlan County had many blacks.) When the sergeant tries to rationalize this, Prewitt interrupts and says that isn't what he means and goes on to 156 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �tell how as a kid on the bum he was threatened by a hobo and a black man protected him. "Out of that whole bunch of guys he was the only one who lifted a finger to keep me from gettin knifed. The rest of them just stood and watched" (194). Prell in The Thin Red Line is said to have hated Negroes, but he quits the company when Captain Stein, a Jew who has commanded well, is relieved of command by the battalion commander who dislikes Jews. Both Prewitt and Prell are called Bolsheviks, perhaps because of their mine union background. Prewitt is for the underdog and against the top dog. He had even made himself a philosophy of life out of it. So he had gone right on, unable to stop believing that if the Communists were the under dog in Spain then he believed in fighting for the Communists in Spain; but that if the Communists were the top dog back home in Russia and the (what would you call them in Russia? the traitors, I guess) traitors were the bottom dog, then he believed in fighting for the traitors and against the Communists. He believed in fighting for the Jews in Germany, and against the Jews in Wall Street and Hollywood. And if the Capitalists were top dog in America and the proletariat the under dog, then he believed in fighting for the proletariat against the Capitalists. This too-ingrained-to-be-forgotten philosophy of his has led him, a Southerner, to believe in fighting for the Negroes against the Whites everywhere, because the Negroes were nowhere the top dog, at least as yet. . . . It was, he realized, a very flighty philosophy, a chameleon philosophy always changing its color. You were a Communist one day and the next day you were an anti-Communist. . . . But where, you ask, does it put you politically? What are your politics? . . . I would say that politically you are a sort of super archrevolutionary, the kind that made the Revolution in Russia and that the Communists are killing now, sort of a perfect criminal type, very dangerous, a mad dog that loves under dogs. . . . But you better not tell that to anybody unless you have to, Prewitt. They'll put you in the nut ward. Because here in America . . . everybody fights to become top dog, and then to stay top dog. (Jones 1951, 275-77) First Sergeant Warden has harsh words for Prewitt and his kind, The only trouble with them guys is that they never learn. . . . They had rather let you kill them, than admit they're wrong. No Volume Three, 1991 157 �more sense than a goddam GI mule. . . . I seen too many of them mountain boys. They're a threat to the freedom of this whole country. (289) Warden represents authority and order. Prewitt and his kind are always a threat to that order. Jones presents the rifle company as a microcosm of society, and his message is always that society has no use for the Prewitts of the world except in some sort of emergency. Prewitt has to deal with a peacetime army to which he is fanatically loyal, but which is inept at dealing with such as him. Witt, in The Thin Red Line is in an entirely different setting— combat on Guadalcanal. He has been transferred out to a new company when the company has a chance to get rid of its misfits. Stewart himself stayed with the company through action on Guadalcanal, New Georgia, and after a rest in New Caledonia and training and reorganization in New Zealand, took part in the Philippines campaign and was wounded. However, Jones wishes to show Witt's devotion to C-for-Charlie. On Guadalcanal, he deserts his new company, which hasn't been issued weapons anyhow, and rejoins his old company out of loyalty and a sense of responsibility. He knows he is one of the best soldiers in the company. When I think of old C-for-Charlie goin up there into them Japs without me, it like to breaks my heart. . . . You know how I feel about this compny. . . . Its my compny. It aint right, thats all. It aint. Why, who knows how many of the guys, how many of my old buddies, I might save if I was there. . . . I belong to the compny. (Jones 1962, 104) When Witt rejoins C-for-Charlie, he volunteers to join an attack on a Japanese machine gun nest. He had made his decision to volunteer himself back into the old outfit, and he had made his decision to volunteer for this thing, and he was a free individual human being as far as he was concerned. He was free, white and twenty-one and had never taken no shit off nobody and never would, and as the prospect of action got closer and closer he could feel himself tightening all up inside with excitement, exactly like he used to do in the coal strikes back in Bloody Breathitt. The chance to help, the chance to save all his friends that he could. . . . He had not shot squirrel all his life for nothing. He had not made High Expert on the range for the past six years for nothing, either. (266) 158 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Witt leaves the company after the colonel relieves Captain Stein, the company commander, refusing to serve under an officer who would treat a good officer as he did. After rejoining C-for-Charlie, after the colonel is promoted, he volunteers to lead an ambush mission that he feels is foolish, and tells the new company commander so. However, he goes because he can protect his men better than anyone else. When the ambush goes wrong and only he and one other man survive, he cusses out the commander and once again leaves the company. When he learns that this commander is gone he returns, but the new company commander does not want him. One of his lieutenants argues for Witt: If you ever have to lead this outfit in combat, you'll wish to hell you had Witt with you. . . I was around there on The Elephant's Head when Witt went in with that assault force. I tell you you're makin a serious mistake if you don't take him back. You're denying yourself one of the best potential platoon leaders you'll ever get a chance at. (471) Whistle is the story of the returning wounded from Guadalcanal and New Georgia to a hospital in Luxor (Memphis, actually, where James Jones had been hospitalized after Guadalcanal). It is a story of the same four men whom I mentioned at the start, the First Sergeant (now named Winch), the Mess Sergeant (Strange), the Company Clerk (Landers) and the Appalachian soldier (Prell). Although they are not necessarily friends nor do they even like each other, they are bound to each other because they are from "The Compny." And the Company had been our family, our only home. Real parents, wives, fiancees did not really exist for us. Not before the fanatical devotion of that loyalty. Crippled, raging, enfeebled, unmanned in a very real sense and hating, hating both sides of our own coin and of every coin, we clung to each other no matter where or how far the hospital, and waited for the smallest morsel of news of the others to filter back to us, and faithfully wrote and mailed the messages that would carry it on to the other brothers. (Jones 1978, 4-5) No one is more devoted to the Company than Prewitt-Witt-Prell. He is not only willing to die for it or with it, he feels a mission (since he knows he is a very good soldier) to look after his brothers. He is a born leader in his world. He has been promoted to corporal and sergeant more than once but is busted repeatedly to private because of his uncompro- Volume Three, 1991 159 �mising nature. But, in the thick of battle on New Georgia he is there, and quickly becomes an acting sergeant again. He knows his business. Prell, in Whistle* is horribly wounded in both legs in the New Georgia campaign by a Japanese machine gun while leading a patrol. Even so he brings his men back safely. For his heroic actions he is nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor, which he modestly thinks he does not deserve. Stewart, a staff sergeant and platoon leader, was wounded in the Philippines campaign. Leading a patrol, he was shot in the legs by a machine gun, taking some 20 rounds, according to Emory Toms from "F" Company. Raymond Jordan, who was wounded on Guadalcanal and sent home, heard that Stewart was hit by "friendly fire." Doctors wanted to amputate his badly mangled leg, but he refused. The leg did heal, but he limped the rest of his life (Jordan and Toms 1990). Prell's hardest battle is before him in the hospital. His legs are not healing and the doctors fear gangrene. They want to amputate one leg and possibly the other also. Prell will not give permission. His story in Whistle is about the fight for his legs: It was not that Prell was depressed, or defeated, or suicidal. That wasn't Prell's style. . . . Prell was just as mean and ornery as he's ever been. He'd always been a stubborn, proud West Virginia hardhead. . . . There had always been a streak of the heroics-lover in Prell. With his unbending West Virginia pride, Prell was not a gay, carefree laughing-boy type. He was dead responsible and steady, cool calculating. But he was vain to a fault. He took bigger risks than a motorcyle-jockey, wild-assed kind. He had done unbelievable things on the Canal. Like walking all night through the jungle, alone out beyond the lines, to get back to the company which was cut off somewhere a mile up ahead. And he never blinked an eye about it afterwards. (Jones 1978, 37;40) Mess Sergeant Strange observed, "Prell was one of the people who should never be laid up like that. And yet Prell was one of the ones who would always get hurt the worst, and the most often, in his life" (40-49). Landers, the Company Clerk, said, "Well, he's one of the best men our outfit ever had. I guess you know, he saved his whole patrol after he got shot u p . . ."(129). Prell's wounds are excruciating, but he never complains. "Only sheer stubbornness had kept him from crying out a dozen times. But he had made up his mind he was not going to let anybody see him blubbering" (52). Prell hangs on and saves his legs, and he is allowed to, partially 160 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �because the Army doesn't want an amputee receiving the Medal of Honor. His legs begin to heal, his Medal is awarded, and he is chosen to speak at War Bond rallies. They intend to get him a commission. He meets a girl in the hospital and eventually marries her, but she is more in love with the Medal of Honor than with him. His life turns sour. In fact, all four men are doomed. They never recover from the war. M/Sgt. Winch ends up in the psycho ward. Landers, the clerk, and Strange the mess sergeant, commit suicide, and perhaps so does Prell. He is killed by another soldier in a fight he starts in a dingy bar and poolroom. Prell, the soldier's soldier, does not adjust to ordinary society. The character of Prewitt-Witt-Prell is strongly drawn. He comes from a deprived background, the coalfields of Appalachia with its labor strife that often was like a battlefield. He is a proud, stubborn person with his own set of values and principles. He is a person of aesthetics—a guitar player, a superb bugler who will not serve in an outfit that has elevated a lesser bugler to First Bugler, and he has a sense of social justice. He is willing to put up with extreme punishment rather than go back on a promise not to box again, and he is willing to go to the stockade rather than reveal the true reason for his fight with a sergeant. He vows to kill Fatso, the Stockade sergeant, and does, although as he fights Fatso he finds himself "wishing momentarily he had been born a different person . . ." (Jones 1951, 670) How typical of Appalachians is Jones' soldier? There is no question but what Prewitt-Witt-Prell is based on one Appalachian soldier— Stewart—and perhaps to some degree on other mountain boys in the outfit. It is obvious also that he is shaped to a degree by Jones' own values and attitudes. Members of T" Company attributed to Robert Lee Stewart some of the characteristics of the fictional soldier. Bill Curran, who won a commission on New Georgia, said, "Stewart was a damn good soldier" (1990). Frank Grzebinski, a New Yorker, thought that Prewitt in Eternity was about 80 per-cent true of Stewart. "Stewart was a good soldier, but he didn't volunteer any more than anyone else. It wasn't the thing to do. He was a tough little fellow. Prewitt didn't have nearly the character of Stewart" (1990). Frank Marshall, the model for Friday Clark, thought Eternity was about 80 or 90 percent true in regard to the company, although with the facts changed around. "Stewart was a good soldier. He was a tough guy and he could be mean," Marshall added (1990). "Stewart was a typical soldier of the Regular Army," said Raymond Jordan, now of Seminole, Florida. "The only thing he lacked was the normal build of an average man. He was a bantam weight. In his younger days he was a pistol! He had a gum band temper. It would snap, and he was ready to take you on. If he liked you, fine; if he didn't, stay away from him" (Jordan 1990). Volume Three, 1991 161 �Stewart's music was often mentioned by his company-mates. Jones made much of music-making in Eternity. Prewitt's ability with the bugle was an important aspect of the story, but also his guitar playing and singing. Emory Toms and Frank Marshall who played country-western music semi-professionally after the war, fondly remembered the musicmaking in the old company. "We played guitars and drank together," Toms recalled. "He [Stewart] could hold his own playing the guitar. We'd sit on the quadrangle with a bucket of beer and play and sing all night" (Toms, 1 February 1990). Bill Curran said, "Singing was a big deal. We'd get cofffee cans full of beer. We'd do this especially when someone was rotating back to the States. One of the kids wrote The Reenlistment Blues,' and we'd sing that" (Curran 1990). Alice Cornett thought Stewart and George Wilkinson had written the song, but Curran attributed it to one particular person. However, Raymond Jordan said, It came out of the guys sitting around at night. Toms and Stewart and Marshall would sit in the corner of the quadrangle and play and play and play. They played the old-fashioned hill music. One person would start a line, and another would add one. At our Atlanta reunion, Toms and Stewart were so happy. They brought their guitars, baloney, bread and condiments, and they'd just sit there in the hotel room and play. They made a tape which they sent to the rest of us. (Jordan 1990) In real life and through the pages of James Jones' trilogy, Robert Stewart and the fictional Prewitt-Witt-Prell emerge as an Appalachian type. They were a product of a hard and sometimes dangerous life in the coalfields of Central Appalachia, of the Great Depression and of the Regular Army. No doubt Stewart, like Jones' hero, was a good soldier and a complex man. However, it is not true that Prewitt-Witt-Prell, or Appalachians, were sole possessors of the traits that Jones admired. There were other heroes, like Bill Curran of the company, who was awarded the Dinstinguished Service Cross for bravery on Guadalcanal. The two Pennsylvanians Marshall and Toms played the guitar and the bugle, perhaps as well as did Stewart. Jones himself had a lot of the characteristics of Stewart. He was in fights. He went AWOL and ended up in the stockade until he was discharged. The politics attributed to Prewitt-Prell-Witt appear to be as much those of Jones as of Stewart. However, Jones perceived accurately that the attributes of fairmindedness, sympathy for the underdog, passion for social justice, and dogged independence were held to some degree by mountain people. There is a strong perception that southern mountaineers make good soldiers and often heroes. Frank J. Wendsen, First Sergeant of "F" 162 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Company from just after Pearl Harbor through the islands campaigns, said "Kentucky was my pride and joy. They were good soldiers. They'd do or die" (Wendsen 1990). Charles Earlywine, a West Virginian who was communications sergeant for "F" Company through the war, thought the southern mountaineers were exceptional soldiers. "I remember Ivy Jones, just an old hillbilly from North Carolina. He was there anytime you needed him. The Japanese used to cut our telephone lines, and when we went to find the break, they'd ambush us. When I called for volunteers, he say, 'I'll go with you, Earlybird.' He and a Sioux Indian named Russo saved my life many times" (Earlywine 1990). Harry Caudill recently wrote about three Appalachian heroes from World War I, the most notable being East Tennessean Alvin York, who singlehandedly "killed 25 Germans with 25 shots and accepted the surrender of another 132 officers and men" who were in possession of 25 machine guns. Willie Sandlin, of Leslie County, Kentucky, like York, was awarded the Medal of Honor. He, by himself, "assaulted one after the other three entrenched German machine gun nests," with grenades and his rifle, killing all those inside and capturing a battalion headquarters, thus creating a hole in the German lines. Another Kentuckian , Peter McCoy of Pike County was nominated for the Medal of Honor, but was given instead the second highest award, the Distinguished Service Cross, for breaking into a German trench and killing seven of the enemy and capturing 17 more. "At the end of that foray his uniform and the pack on his back had been slashed by an unbelievable 177 bullet holes." Only he and seven others from his company survived. Caudill went on to report that a total of thirteen Kentucky mountaineers have received the Medal of Honor since it was established in 1861 (Caudill 1988). Researchers at East Tennesse State University and the Veterans Administration have made a strong case for Appalachians being good soldiers. Steven Giles, chief psychologist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center at Mountain Home, Tennessee, said, "They chose to be in combat and they were chosen. . . . You can talk to Army officers and they'll tell you they chose Appalachians for point men and for patrols because they felt they were more motivated, more likely to be woods-wise and more familiar with the use of weapons." The result is that they are more likely to be killed in combat. "If you were from Appalachia, you were 50 percent more likely to have been killed in Vietnam," Giles reported. Pat Arnow, of the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services at ETSU, and Bert Allen, a professor of psychology at Milligan College, found that in the Korean War 18 percent of the Medals of Honor went to Appalachian soldiers although they made up only 8 percent of those who fought, and in the Vietnam War, Appalachian soldiers were awarded 13 percent of the Medals of Honor although only 7.3 percent of Volume Three, 1991 163 �the soldiers were from Appalachia" (Waxman 1989). These figures and public perception of Appalachians as good soldiers support James Jones' characterization of Prewitt-Witt-Prell as an ideal soldier. Rodger Cunningham, reviewing Grady McWhiney"s Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South (Cunningham 1990,176-82) warns us, however, about applying romantic notions too liberally to Appalachians or other groups , even in admiration, lest we extend the stereotypes that we decry. For example, Jones' belief that Prewitt-Witt-Prell is a type of person who is unable to fit into ordinary society needs further examination. We know that Appalachian people have been able to do all sorts of jobs here and wherever they have migrated. They have adjusted, adapted, and they've done well as thirty-year men in military service, most of it in peacetime. Robert Stewart adjusted to civilian life very well from all accounts. After working briefly in Arizona, he moved to Seattle to be nearer his wife's family. There he worked for an automobile tire wholesaler until he retired. Mrs. Stewart, who is not happy with Jones' portrayal of her husband, is quick to point out that, while "Bob was a gutsy soldier who did not kowtow to anybody, he was highly respected and had no trouble getting along when he came home." She added, "He was the best husband in the world and the best father" (Stewart 1990). Robert Stewart, who died in 1989, and Mrs. Stewart, reared six children. Yet, some Appalachian people have not chosen to become adjusted to mainstream society, but have lived life by their own set of values. Some religious groups, for example the Old Regular Baptist who are especially strong in Robert Stewart's native Letcher County, call themselves "a peculiar people," meaning they do not want to be like other people. Many Appalachians do possess the traits that Jones ascribed to his soldier, and society has not always been effective in dealing with such individualists. Jones saw such people as noble people, nevertheless. To him, organized society has many benefits, but those benefits do not justify the destruction of those with special qualities who do not choose to fit in. Works Cited Caudill, Harry M. 1988. "Hills Have Historically Produced Heroes." The [Whitesburg, Kentucky] Mountain Eagle, 21 September 1988, C3. Cornett, Alice. 1982. "From Kentucky To Eternity." The [Louisville] Courier Journal Sunday Magazine, 18 April 1982, 11-13 and 32-33. Cunningham, Rodger. 1990. "Eat Grits and Die: Or, Cracker, Your Breed Ain't Hermeneutical." Appalachian Journal, 17 (Winter 1990): 176-82. 164 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Curran, Bill. Telephone conversation with author. 5 February 1990. Earlywine, Charles. Telephone conversation with author. 31 January 1990. Grzebinski, Frank. Telephone conversation with author. 2 February 1990. Jones, James. 1951. From Here to Eternity. New York: Charles Scribner's. . 1962. The Thin Red Line. New York: Charles Scribner's. . 1978. Whistle. New York: Delacorte Press. . 1989. To Reach Eternity: The Letters of James Jones. Ed. George Hendrick. New York: Random House. Jordan, Raymond D. Telephone conversation with author. 6 February 1990. Marshall, Frank. Telephone conversation with author. 1 February 1990. Stewart, Mrs. Robert Lee. Telephone conversation with author. 2 February 1990. Toms, Emory "Leo." Telephone conversations with author. 31 January 1990,1 February 1990, and 6 February 1990. Waxman, Leanne. 1989. "Vietnam's Cost Was High for Appalachian Soldiers." The [Louisville] Courier-Journal, 15 March 1989. Wendsen, Frank J. Telephone conversation with author. 5 February 1990. Loyal Jones is director of the Berea College Appalachian Center and is a frequent speaker on Appalachian topics. He has published numerous articles and books. Volume Three, 1991 165 �Southern Gothic and Appalachian Gothic: A Comparative Look at Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy Louis H. Palmer III In these grotesque works, we find that the writer has made alive some experience which we are not accustomed to observe every day, or which the ordinary man may not experience in his ordinary life, We find that connections which we would expect in the customary kind of realism have been ignored, that there are strange skips and gaps which anyone trying to describe manners and customs would certainly not have left. Yet the characters have an inner coherence, if not always a coherence to their social framework. Their fictional qualities lean away from typical social patterns, toward mystery and the unexpected. —Flannery O'Connor, "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction" (1979, 40) "Southern Gothic" as a literary category is difficult to pin down. Most readers of southern literature recognize the term, and would be able to associate it with a canon of works of fiction, which would start 166 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �with Foe's The Fall of the House of Usher," continue through some of the more colorful of the local colorists, such as New Orleans' George Washington Cable, and result in modern works by William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, and others. We find a corresponding group of writers in Appalachian literature, from George Washington Harris' Sut Lovingood stories (which Faulkner acknowledged as an influence) to recent works by Breece D'J Pancake, Pinckney Benedict, Cormac McCarthy, and Lee Smith. In addition, the mountain region has been used as a setting for writers from the lowland South writing in the Gothic mode, a place to stage a journey into the irrational. Dickey's "Chautooga" is direct descendant of Conrad's "Congo." I want to look at two novels, and at the question: Is there a difference? That is, is Appalachian Gothic a sub-group of Southern Gothic? The critic Irwin Malin considers the latter a sub-group of what he calls New American Gothic, which he "charts" in a book of the same name. William Van O'Connor, in an essay entitled The Grotesque: An American Genre," extends the claim to modern literature in general. When he warns that "a frequent, and probably an essential, factor in this newer literature, especially in its more serious manifestations, is that one category tends to erupt inside another category (O'Connor 1962, 18)", he is using Grotesque as the larger category in which Gothic erupts, but the two could be reversed. I want to use Malin's paradigm to deal with the relationship of Southern Gothic to Appalachian Gothic. He defines the Gothic mode in terms of the isolation and narcissism of its protagonists and their antagonistic relations with the primary social unit, the family. Then he explores three reoccurring images or symbols in Gothic literature: the mirror, the voyage, and the house, which reinforce the themes of selflove and rejection of family. In this paper I want to focus these questions and criteria mainly on two novels: a classic of Southern Gothic, Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood, and a recent novel by an Appalachian author, Cormac McCarthy's Suttree. I have chosen them because of their obvious similarities of setting—the "underside" of Southern urban life in the immediate postwar period—and because they provide some interesting contrasts. I will deal with Malin's themes and symbols as well as with the authors' views of the natural world, and will attempt to show that this treatment is where, in this and other cases, one can distinguish between the two Gothics. In the history of fiction since the Romantic period, there are two distinct strands. Critics love to speak of highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow, as if to personify the novel or short story as a product to be aimed at a specific target audience. I find these distinctions to be Volume Three, 1991 167 �euphemistic and inaccurate, a backhanded way to distinguish between the two strands of fiction. Hawthorne distinguished between them as the novel and the romance. On the one hand is the bourgeois tradition of Austen and her descendants, and on the other are Mary Shelley and the Brontes, the sort of literature that Mann had in mind when he called the grotesque "anti-bourgeois." History and the crossing of the Atlantic have led us from a predominance of the first tradition to a predominance of the second. The amusement that Austen lavished on the Gothic mode in Northanger Abbey has been replaced by Faulkner's parody of the bourgoise perspective in "A Rose For Miss Emily." I would argue that both traditions are still alive, however, and that they can be distinguished from one another in basically social terms. The bourgoise tradition is concerned with the preservation of values within a community, with family and tradition, with the necessary sacrifices that the individual makes for the greater social good. Nature, per se and human, is a raw material that needs to be refined. The antibourgoise tradition concerns the individual's quest for value through freedom from and rejection of traditional structures. Nature is a force for change, both within and without the individual. The Gothic, as a mode, can be used to reinforce either perspective, although it lends itself to the anti-bourgoise. Early Gothic fiction, such as Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, concerned the exotic and the supernatural, along with strange deformed characters and violent events. This continued through Poe, but was refined by Hawthorne and Melville and later in James, so that unusual events could be seen as psychological expressions of the protagonist's inner state. By the turn of the present century, the mechanisms of the Gothic could be manipulated to fit into the constraints of realistic or even naturalistic fiction. Now let us take our historical survey to the South, a region divided in many ways, but most obviously into two geographic regions, Mountain and Lowland. These two areas have come to represent many of the same qualities as the two kinds of fiction. Jim Wayne Miller speaks of the mountains as a repository for our dreams and nightmares: fertile soil, obviously, for the Gothic. Mountaineers are supposed to represent a rebellious individuality coupled with bare-bones poverty. The Lowland South is associated with the antebellum myth of the plantation, with its qualities of wealth and family and stability which, despite its dark underbelly, lends itself to a glorification of the traditional. Much of Southern literature comes from the tension between these two geographies, and the associative auras surrounding each. For the purpose of this paper, I will call them "redneck" and "genteel." I do not mean to imply that these two poles of the Southern character actually are geographic. Quite the contrary. Like all contraries, to 168 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �paraphrase Coleridge's expression, they coincide. They do this in any one town, in any one novel, in any one individual character. The fact that Hazel Motes is a poor, white-trash Tennessee redneck places him in this continuum as an outcast, gives him a recognizable location in social and mythic terms. The Gothic apparatus requires the work to focus on one isolated character, whom we understand not only through the basic devices of characterization—what he does, thinks, says, and how others react—but also through mirror-image characters who work as reflections or foils. In Victorian Gothic, this character might be a ghost or supernatural creature, but we seem to require more realistic treatments. The doppelganger in Wise Blood is a contrived creature, but a crucially important one. The house, which someone has identified as the hero of the Gothic novel, has been likewise transformed: Suttree's is a houseboat, while Hazel's is a car. These mobile homes, if you will, also have their 'falls': again at crucial points in the plots. The third Gothic device is the voyage, and both of the protagonists take three of them, all somewhat unsucessful. Much of O'Connor's early work, of which Wise Blood is a central example, takes place in the redneck fringe of the Lowland South. The novel describes Hazel's attempt to escape from his tradition, that of backwoods evangelism. He has no family left, and no desire to create one. He is a rebel against the genteel society of Talkinham. And he is such an individualist that he rejects every offer of love or assistance given to him. Even though O'Connor claims that a character in her kind of fiction has "not always ... coherence to their social framework," at first Hazel does. He sees a car as a ready means of escape. He is quite consistent with street-preacher convention as he preaches his Holy Church Without Christ. He attracts equally dispossessed and redneck followers (although they have their own varied agendas). Despite his stubborn intransigence, he fits into the world of Talkinham's fringe. He is a quintessential redneck rebel, taken to and beyond the logical extreme— unlike the other characters, who are guided by self-interest, he rebels against himself, first symbolically, by murdering his alter ego, then completely, blinding himself and slowly torturing himself until he dies. His strength is in his fierce consistency, in his refusal to compromise. Talkinham's street community is not anti-bourgeois. Each member accepts the values of the society that has disenfranchised him. Asa Hawks wants money, so he pretends to have blinded himself. Enoch Emery wants friends. Sabbath Lily Hawks wants a normal family life, savagely expressed in her maternal treatment of the mummy corpse. The landlady wants more money and a husband, even a strange and Volume Three, 1991 169 �blind one. The false prophet has a family. Hazel is the only one who is so haunted (O'Connor's term) by Christ, or Christ's absence, that he will not compromise. Although she presents it realistically, O'Connor's world is theologically oriented; it is the fallen world. Neither the genteel flocks of moviegoers nor the strange and grotesque fringe dwellers can escape from this fact, so they ignore it. Hazel is the only one with the courage or vision to see it. He tries, twice, to escape, but finds that he cannot. There is no redeeming factor in the bleak countryside. Here is Hazel leaving town: The highway was ragged with filling stations and trailer camps and roadhouses. After a while there were stretches where red gulleys dropped off on either side of the road and behind them were patches of field buttoned together with 666 posts. The sky leaked over all of it and then it began to leak into the car. The head of a string of pigs appeared snout-up over the ditch and he had to screech to a stop and watch the rear of the last pig disappear shaking into the ditch on the other side. He started the car again and went on. He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him. (O'Connor 1949, 74) These are images of enclosure and limitation. The world is still enclosed within what Blake called "the mundane egg" of the sky. O'Connor presents us with a world, like Blake's, that can be transcended only through the vision that Hazel obtains, paradoxically, through blindness: Hazel's act of self-blinding allows him to escape from the self-blindness the others are trapped in. Unlike the traditional Gothic hero, obsessed with himself and/or a lover and isolated from the world, we see this protagonist's antagonistic relationship to self and to the world, which is just a larger version of the self, as an enclosure to break through to freedom. Hazel is "mirrored" by a series of other characters, genteel and redneck, from Mrs. Wally Bee Hitchcock to the brutal and insensitive policemen who pick him up, dying. The Gothic mansion is one "high, rat-colored car" which is a pulpit, an illusion of freedom, and finally a murder weapon. And the journey begins with Hazel trying to go home, goes through three thwarted escape attempts, and resolves in a true journey 'home', through redemption and death. The family that Hazel rejects is the company of other fallen souls, rejected because of their blindness. O'Connor uses the Gothic apparatus to give us a Christian vision that might be thought to be genteel, insofar as it is Christian, but one that is so demanding it rejects gentility. At their weakest and most depraved, her redneck characters are interesting. 170 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �I will not claim that O'Connor is typical of Southern Gothic. Her vision is too idiosyncratic, her agenda too divergent. In this, she may have more in common with Blake, another visionary oddball, than with Faulkner. Her later work transfers her themes to the more familiar (to her) world of the genteel South, partly, I think, because her depiction of anarchic and rebellious characters led her readers to assume she espoused their views. In later work she looks for the "mystery and the unexpected" (O'Connor 1979, 40) that defined her fiction closer to home. McCarthy's underrated novel, Suttree, shares much with Wise Blood. It takes place during the 1950s in Knoxville—like Talkinham a large industrial Southern town. The hero, Cornelius Suttree, like Hazel, has chosen a life without family. He lives in a shanty houseboat, and makes a meagre living as a fisherman on the Tennessee River. Unlike Motes, he is a college-educated scion of a prominent Knoxville family. Again the book contains a ragged but fascinating band of secondary characters— whores, drunks, ragpickers, 'inverts',—even a young watermelon molester. But McCarthy's language differs radically from O'Connor's. The book is described by Jerome Charyn in a review as a "horrifying flood . . . a poetic, troubled rush of debris" (1979, 15). Long descriptive passages use archaic and Latinate terms that contrast sharply with O'Connor's disciplined prose—except in conversation, where both authors have a definitive control of the colloquial and idiomatic speech. McCarthy has also been accused of disorganization. Again, Jerome Charyn: "[It is]... without that boring neatness and desire for resolution that you can get in any well-made novel" (Charyn, 15), but I would argue that it is as consistent with narrative integrity of Suttree as O'Connor's economy is within Wise Blood. Suttree centers around the river, described here during the flood season: Bearing along garbage and rafted trash, bottles of suncured [sic] glass wherein corollas mauve and gold lie exploded, orangepeels ambered with age. A dead sow pink and bloated and jars and crates and shapes of wood washed into rigid homologues of viscera and empty oilcans locked in eyes of dishing slime where the spectra wink guiltily. One day a dead baby. Bloated, pulpy rotted eyes in a bulbous skull and little rags of flesh like tissuepaper. (McCarthy 1979, 306) McCarthy's narrative organization alternates between floods of description and trickles of conversation, giving a concrete picture of his world and its inhabitants in a picturesque spread. The episodes, like Wise Blood's center around the main character Suttree, with occasional sidetrips to follow his comic sidekick, the 'melonmounter' Gene Volume Three, 1991 171 �Harrowgate. Cornelius Suttree is unlike Hazel Motes in the ability to reflect. In comparison he seems almost passive, falling into situations and relationships as if by accident. Like Motes, he rebels against his past—rejecting and deserting his parents as well as his own wife and child to live an outcast life. But his isolation is never really complete—he becomes responsible, in spite of himself, for helping a series of characters, including Harrowgate. As Anatole Broyard puts it, "People trust Suttree because he does not want anything they've got, he does not compete. He is interested, but he does not judge" (1979). His major motivation seems to be guilt: first, for living when his stillborn twin brother died, then for becoming less than he was expected to be. He visits the scenes of his past, filled with regret—the old decaying mansion, the school, the church. He travels to his son's funeral and fills in the grave by hand while the cemetery staff stand by with a bulldozer. He can be brutally honest with his mother's brother, whom the family have rejected as a drunk, but when his mother visits him in jail, he breaks down: " 'Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of s come to pass. . . . I can't', he said. Hot salt strangled him" (McCarthy 1979, 61). He has rejected his father's advice, "the world is run by those who are willing to take the responsibility for the running of it" (McCarthy, 13), but has internalized his father's image of him: "My case was always doubtful. I was expected to turn out badly" (McCarthy, 19). He is on the river doing a nameless penance, participating in what his father calls: "a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent" (McCarthy, 14). Self-love is not his problem. Suttree's character is mirrored by the many strange denizens of McAnally Flats—a sorceress, a transvestite called Trippin' Through The Dew, Billy Callahan—a shameless, goodnatured bully who takes several hours to die with a bullet between his eyes, and Ab Jones, a black bootlegger, "like a tree" (McCarthy, 202) covered with scars, whose refusal to bow down to authority results in frequent violent fights with the police and his status as a neighborhood hero. Suttree is accepted, but different. Indeed, the toleration of difference is what makes the characters of McAnally Flats different from their genteel counterparts. They may be foul and unhealthy, drunk and profane, but they are rarely deliberately cruel. The police always are. The Gothic elements in the story are profuse. There are many deaths, even though Suttree is allowed to escape. There is a decaying mansion, Suttree's childhood home, but his castle is the houseboat, which, although it does not have the symbolic significance of Hazel's car, seems, like his friends, to suffer when he is gone—one time it almost sinks, another it gains a corpse. The doppelganger theme recurs again 172 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �and again, from Suttree's vision of his dead twin: "He saw his brother in swaddling, hands outheld, a scent of myrrh and lilies" (McCarthy, 113), to two mirror-image possumhunters who appear out of the woods. Suttree's social position between the two worlds brings into being by implication the "Antisuttree" (McCarthy, 28) he glimpses in a glass door—the genteel person he might have been (just as an Antihazel would have been the preacher his grandfather wanted him to be). It is the element of the voyage or journey that is especially significant in this novel. Hazel's three escape attempts, thwarted by the Bible verse on the rock, Sabbath Lily Hawks and the state trooper, offer him nothing apart from what he might have experienced in the city. Suttree's forays are otherwise. They are attempts to come to terms with his life. The first is to his son's funeral, where he fills the grave, gets attacked by his wife's family, and is escorted out of town by the local sheriff. This is an ineffective attempt to deal with his past. The next trip is to the Great Smoky Mountains, where he starts off hiking and ends up u..run[ning] crazy in the woods" (McCarthy, 290), having visions of "some doublegoer, some othersuttree" (McCarthy, 287) and "old spectral revenants armed with rusted tools of war colliding paralactically upon each other" (McCarthy, 287). He is surprised out of this bemusement by a seeming divine intervention: Clouds lay remote and motionless across the evening sky like milk awash in some backwater of the planet's seas and a white woodcock rose from the ferns before him and dissolved in smoke. A curling bit of down cradled in this green light for the sake of my soul's sanity. Unreal and silent bird albified between the sun and my broken mind godspeed. (McCarthy, 291) This death-and-rebirth ordeal left him ready for his third trip, up the river with a family of mussel gatherers. He becomes involved with the daughter, but when she is killed by a rockslide he returns to the city. The mountain trip is transformative. He is no longer obsessed with his twin or his former family, and so the attempt to become a family member, although it is a redneck family. After this he falls in with a whore, and lives well on her earnings. But the essential instability of this relationship finally throws it off balance, and at the end we see a corpse in Suttree's houseboat—the old Suttree? the past? the twin?—and Suttree leaves his town of ghosts and dependents for parts unknown. He has done his time in hell. The world of nature, as McCarthy presents it, is different in kind from the world of men. Represented by the river and by the mountains, it is a powerful and transformative force, which can be deadly, but which Volume Three, 1991 173 �can have a positive effect on those who come into contact with it. This is the major difference between the worlds of these two novels. Suttree depicts a fallen world, but it is the human world, human structures, human relationships, that are flawed, and human effort can find "...vengeances for the wrongs of the world" (McCarthy, 290). Suttree's vocation, fishing, is in concert with that world, and being alone with nature gives him strength. This seems to be characteristic of Appalachian Gothic literature in general—the Romantic belief in the essential innocence and purity of nature, contrasted with the depravity of humans. Finally, I can't resist pointing out the similarity of the two humorous 'sidekick' characters, Enoch Emery and Gene Harrowgate. Who says the novel hasn't learned from the movies? O'Connor dismisses her secondary character as "a moron and chiefly a comic character" (O'Connor 1979, 116), but he functions dramatically as a foil to Hazel, compelled by a need to belong that is so strong he finally puts on a gorilla suit. He becomes less than human just as Hazel attempts to become more than human. Harrowgate has a similar function in Suttree, providing both comic relief and a character who—in contrast to Suttree—does not reflect on his lot, just on schemes by which he can better it. He exists on a level of basic gratifications. Both secondary characters are endearing in their depravities, for example, when Harrowgate quizzes Suttree on the niceties of seduction: "How do you get em to take off their clothes? That's what I'd by god like to know." "You take them off." "Yeah? Well what does she do when you're doin that? I mean hell, does she look out the winder or somethin? I don't understand it at all Sut. The whole thing seems uneasy to me." (McCarthy, 316) Much of the humor comes from the reaction of other characters to these two, such as when a bartender compliments Harrowgate on his shirt, which is an inverted pair of shorts with the seam ripped out, or when Enoch observes that he: "...was not very fond of children but children always seemed to like to look at him" (O'Connor 1949, 177). Both characters distort the genteel idea of enlightened self-interest. I read Enoch's gorilla suit as a parody of the naturalistic novel's social Darwinism. The defining characteristic of the Gothic hero, according to Malin, is self-love or narcissism. Neither Suttree nor Hazel fit this definition. They are defined by contrast to a series of characters blinded by selflove. Both are self-willed and stubborn, and both choose exile from and 174 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �confrontation with the representatives of genteel society. Perhaps this is an inversion of values from the traditional Gothic novel, or perhaps it is historic—do we not now generally identify the genteel with the narcissistic? These novels do. Both novels can be interpreted in Christian terms, or at least as chronicles of spiritual growth. The operation of grace is, as O'Connor claims, a mystery, and each protagonist comes into contact with that mystery in the course of the novel. Both go through trials and penance, time done to justify a purpose higher than the individual self. The primary differences between the two concern the geography of the imagined world—its open or closed quality, and they differ in their interpretation of the state of nature rather than that of man. O'Connor writes: "The novelist is required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it, and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in a larger universe" (O'Connor 1979, 175). I have no idea whether McCarthy considers himself to be an orthodox Christian—but I think it is obvious that Suttree inhabits the larger universe. Here Suttree speaks to "any soul to listen": No final word? Last words are only words. You can tell me, paradigm of your own sinister genesis construed by a flame in a glass bell. I'd say I was not unhappy. You have nothing. It may be that the last shall be first. Do you believe that? No. What do you believe? I believe that the last and the first suffer equally. Pari passu. Equally? It is not alone in the dark of death that all souls are one soul. (McCarthy, 414) Works Cited Broyard, Anatole. 1979. "Where All Tales Are Tall." New York Times. 20 January 1979. Charyn, Jerome. 1979. "Doomed Huck." New York Times Book Review. 18 February 1979, 14-15. Volume Three, 1991 175 �Malin, Irving. 1962. New American Gothic. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. McCarthy, Cormac. 1979. Suttree. New York: Random House. O'Connor, William Van. 1962. The Grotesque: An American Genre. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. O'Connor, Flannery. 1949. Wise Blood. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. 1979. Mystery and Manners. Eds. Robert and Sally Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. Tersh Palmer is completing a master's degree in English at Appalachian State University. His thesis is on Cormac McCarthy. He taught in public schools for thirteen years. 176 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �The Roots of Appalachian English: Scotch-Irish or British Southern? Michael Montgomery In the popular television series The Story of English and the resulting best-selling book (McCrum et al. 1986), the idea of tracing varieties of American English back to the British Isles has recently renewed attention. One episode of the series, A Muse of Fire, featured a New Englander dropping in on an East Anglian pub, purportedly in search of the speech patterns of his Puritan ancestors. A later show, The Quid Scots Tongue, examined the English of Scotland, exemplified by a Scotsman reading from William Lorimer's 1983 translation of the New Testament into Scottish English. In the course of an hour this program made the case for how the language of Lowland Scotland and Northern Ireland evolved into the English used today by North Carolina's denizen mountaineers, those latter-day descendants of hardy "Scotch-Irish" frontiersmen, and even into the Citizens Band Radio slang of longdistance truck drivers.1 American linguistic scholars have long been interested in exploring the roots of American English in the British Isles, notably in the early days of the well-known Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada project in the 1930s and 40s (Kurath 1929, 1949).2 But for a variety of reasons the progress of the Linguistic Atlas has been slow, and in recent decades linguists working on the project have had little to say about tracing these connections, as it has become clear that more than was originally foreseen is required to pin them down.3 Determining whether, and to what extent, Appalachian speech may Volume Three, 1991 177 �be linked to the British Isles has been part of larger questions of drawing specific trans-Atlantic connections ever since the late nineteenth century, with commentators variously labeling the region's language as "Scotch-Irish," "British," "Elizabethan English," or the like. Yet, while folklorists and historians have made significant progress in describing the diffusion of cultural patterns into Appalachia, for language patterns this has hardly been the case for either the Linguistic Atlas or any other effort to date. For decades, hosts of researchers and collectors have prowled the hills of southern Appalachia to study the spread of Scottish, Irish, and English traits and to capture the echoes of early American immigrants in song, in story, and in voice. One early example was the Englishman Cecil Sharp, who sought child ballads in Eastern Kentucky in 1916 and 1917 with his assistant Maud Karpeles (Sharp 1932). Many others could easily be cited. One of the most recent efforts is that of Civil War historian Grady McWhiney, who, in Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways of the Old South (1988), has claimed that such personality traits as hospitableness, love of leisure, propensity for violent behavior, and aversion to work were carried over from Ireland, Scotland, and the "Celtic Fringe" areas of the British Isles to the American South as a whole and were significantly reinforced to steer the "Celtic" South onto a collision course with the "English" North, most of whose early immigrants came from the south and east of Britain, in that fateful year of 1861. Closer to home, many authorities within Appalachia, such as John C. Campbell (1921), Josiah Combs (1943), and Gratis Williams (1961), the latter two native to the region, have devoted a good deal of energy to untying the early settlement patterns in an effort to determine the collective genealogy of the region's inhabitants, and to assess the relative proportions of Scotch-Irish, English, and German population groups in the region. To do this, Campbell and Combs examined patterns of surnames, Campbell of 1,200 old families from the Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina mountain areas and Combs of his Eastern Kentucky schoolchildren from local families. Campbell (65) found equal portions of English and Scotch-Irish, while Combs' smaller sample included predominantly English names. 4 One explicit purpose of such efforts was, in addition to the straightforward calculation of national stocks in Appalachia, to temper the extravagant statements about how the Scotch-Irish almost single-handedly settled and subdued the frontier, statements being made around the turn of the twentieth century by such writers as Theodore Roosevelt in The Winning of the West. But an implicit goal, for Campbell and Williams, was to provide, by exploring the history of the region, a cultural identity for the people of Appalachia—an identity connected directly to Old World forebears—in the face of a prevailing 178 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �national view that saw the region in negative terms, having little culture and an unflattering history. Of course, this goal of cultural affirmation also has been held by many of the ballad-collectors and other researchers who have written about the region. The Lack of Research However, despite much work by folklorists and cultural historians to identify the formative immigrant groups of Appalachia and to itemize their contributions, and despite the assumption that the same should be possible for language, it is a fact that there has yet to be a systematic effort to make the language connection to regional varieties of British English. The Linguistic Atlas has, for better or worse, spent its energy largely on mapping individual words and has never developed a framework for making a comparison. As a result, only impressionistic, cursory statements have been made, and we are hardly any closer than a half century ago to an objective determination of the extent to which the distinctive features of Appalachian speech are from Scotch-Irish settlers or from English settlers coming from southern Britain—the basic research question of this paper. Gratis Williams often claimed that they were the former, but others have more often claimed the latter, producing the familiar statement that Appalachian English is "Elizabethan." Neither Williams nor anyone else, including linguistic scholars, has yet attempted the careful sorting out of the major strands woven together into Appalachian English and to calculate more precisely the significance of each one.6 The present paper, an initial report of a much larger effort to explore the history of Appalachian English, examines a range of grammatical features that have been noted in the literature as characteristic of Appalachian speech. This is an attempt to identify which are most likely Scotch-Irish and which are English (very little, if any, German influence on Appalachian grammar turns out to be detectable), and to compare the relative significance of these two linguistic ancestries. The Scope of the Challenge Before continuing, it is necessary to say a few things about the scope and significance of such a project. Why, despite frequent comments in the literature, has a concerted assessment of the relative linguistic contributions of the aforementioned groups not been undertaken, especially given the keen interest over the past century in determining the ancestry of Appalachian people? There are basically two reasons for this. Volume Three, 1991 179 �First is a problem of knowledge and sources. American researchers tend to know quite little about the earlier stages of English spoken in Scotland and Northern Ireland (the general familiarity with the writings of Shakespeare and his contemporaries has no doubt led many writers to believe that Appalachian English is more "Elizabethan" than it actually is). Very few, if any, of those who have written on Appalachian speech are acquainted with the fact that there is not one, but two multi-volume historical dictionaries of Scottish English, the Scottish National Dictionary (Grant and Murison 1931-84) and the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (Craigie and Aitken 1933- ). The question at hand cannot be addressed by using the Oxford English Dictionary, the bestknown and most comprehensive historical dictionary of the language, because its coverage of non-literary and regional varieties of English is quite limited. All historical dictionaries, moreover, have built-in handicaps; they are only as good as their written citation files, and they are heavily biased toward literary language, offering little direct evidence on the speech patterns of the common people. Also, they suffer from the problem of negative evidence; that is, while we may discover from the entry of a word in a dictionary when and where that word was used, we cannot necessarily conclude from the absence of a word that it did not exist, or from the absence of a citation that a word was not used at a certain time and place. Thus, it is necessary to go beyond dictionaries and to consult other types of material—linguistic studies and the original sources themselves. An extensive literature on Scottish English does exist, although it is largely tucked away in the nooks of major British libraries and no good bibliography yet exists. The problem for the English language of Northern Ireland is compounded by the problem that most of the few studies that have been done are unpublished.6 The second reason why such an assessment has not been achieved is that previous claims that Appalachian English was basically "ScotchIrish" or basically "Elizabethan" lacked a methodology for making a determination. The present paper draws on an extended research effort to identify the roots of Appalachian English, an effort that uses, as well as a wide range of reference works on American and British English 7 , primary sources (local dictionaries and archival material from the 17th and 18th centuries, and consultations with local authorities in both Northern Ireland and Scotland). It bases the comparison of Appalachian English and Scotch-Irish English on a variety of sources not used heretofore by American linguists. As far as the Appalachian material is concerned, the published resources have recently been marshaled in an annotated bibliography 180 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �(McMillan and Montgomery 1989), and unparalleled unpublished resources (e.g. Joseph Hall's recordings of Smoky Mountain speech from the 1930s) are now being used to fill in the gaps between present-day Appalachian English and the language of the immigrant period (Montgomery and Hall, in progress). In short, for the first time the research tools and materials are available to address the question of the ancestry of distinctive Appalachian speech patterns in a valid way. This project uses principles of historical linguistics that establish linguistic and sociolinguistic standards by which individual features may be judged as deriving from one part of the British Isles or another (Montgomery 1989a). Thus, it offers a principled basis for saying whether a feature like a-prefixing (in "that bear come a-runnin at me") is Scotch-Irish, Southern British, German, or none of these. From the comparison undertaken in this paper, we can state much more precisely how "Elizabethan" and how "Scotch-Irish" Appalachian English is than has been the case before now. This paper focuses on grammatical features rather than on vocabulary or pronunciation. Grammar has been shown by linguists to be "deeper" in a language and more resistant to change, at least rapid change, than the vocabulary and pronunciation of a language. Because grammatical features and forms usually exist in relation to one another and participate in certain systems like the expression of verb tense or noun plurality, this makes them more likely to preserve traceable elements. By comparison, vocabulary is much more easily and quickly borrowed across languages and dialects. Pronunciation is also less stable, as linguists have shown; even in isolated communities it continually evolves according to the social dynamics of the speakers. Grammatical features have two further advantages: they can be clearly determined from old written documents, and they are quantifiable. Beyond the motivation for undertaking this study—to pin down the ancestry of Appalachian language patterns—lies an important and more general linguistic question of whether an assessment can be made. The most common view in American dialect studies is that features distinctive to one British dialect or another were probably brought to the American colonies, but they were more or less leveled out and lost in the colonial period. Thus a few items, it is thought, may have lingered on as "colonial lags" but most distinctive grammatical patterns in American English represent general patterns of rural and old-fashioned speech that have been inherited from the folk speech of Britain and were to be found throughout much of the U.S. in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at least for the white population. In other words, historians of American English are generally skeptical about how many older elements of specific British dialects have been preserved in the U.S., and Volume Three, 1991 181 �especially about how many of these elements have been confined to a specific region of North America such as Appalachia. Thus, to linguists, undertaking the comparison discussed here and as a result answering the questions about the roots of Appalachian English will do at least three things: a) tell us about processes of dialect migration, contact, and change; b) show us how individual features of American English have evolved from their Old World progenitors; and c) fill in the gaps in the evolution of American English, particularly in the colonial period. Methodology We turn now to the grammatical data, which are assembled (with examples) in a list in the appendix to give the broadest view of characteristic Appalachian grammatical features. These forty features, listed by part of speech, are the primary items examined in this project so far. A "characteristic Appalachian grammatical feature" is a grammatical structure or category whose occurrence is more or less limited to the Appalachian or to the Midland territory (as defined by Kurath 1949, 27) or which occurs to a significantly higher degree in these regions than anywhere else in the U.S. Not every feature in this list is unique to the region (in fact, a number of features discussed in studies of Appalachian English are also characteristic of older-fashioned American English in general, such as blowed and growed as past-tense forms). It is also not argued that all forty features are used by all Appalachian speakers or are found throughout Appalachia. Many of them are quite rare, many others definitely recessive, but all have been identified in the literature by several sources as occurring in the southern mountain region.8 Using the published and unpublished resources cited earlier, a determination has been made, for each feature, as to whether its historical currency in Britain was general or limited to a region of the British Isles. The designation "Scotch-Irish" is applied to features either unique to Ulter or traceable to Scotland but not attested in England. "Southern British" refers to a feature attested in England but not in Scotland or Ulter. Space limitations prevent the explication of more than three individual features. Feature Al, the suffix -S, which is common in Appalachian English on present-tense verbs after plural nouns {people knows) but does not occur on present-tense verbs after plural personal pronouns (they know), has historically been limited to Scottish and northern British speech, and by extension to the English of Northern Ireland. In the present day, so far as an exhaustive search of the literature shows (Montgomery 1989a), it occurs with frequency only in Appalachian 182 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �speech. Much the same can be said for feature A4, multiple modal verbs (Montgomery 1989b) such as might would, might can, may would, and might should ought to; although these are not documented in Scottish English until the mid-18th century and in American English not until the mid-19th century, they are or have been attested only in Scotland and Northumbria in Britain, in Northern Ireland, and in mid-Atlantic and southeastern regions of the United States. Like the plural -s suffix for verbs, multiple modals are indisputably a Scotch-Irish feature. Feature A6, a-prefixing, is historically almost unknown in Scottish English outside ballad style, while in southern Britain it was a feature of folk speech for centuries; in the U.S., its use is now largely confined to Appalachia and to the Ozarks, the latter a cultural area largely derived from Appalachia. This is thus classified as a southern British feature. The detailed investigation of the origin and history of each of the forty features shows the following results: 1) Seventeen are Scotch-Irish: Al, A4, A7, A9, A10, B1-B4, B8, D3-5, E2, E4, Fl, F5. 2) Four are southern British: A2, A6, B5, C2. 3) Thirteen are general British: A5, B6, B7, B9-B11, Cl, D2, D6, El, E5, F3, F4. 4) Six are of uncertain origin (i.e., dictionaries and other reference works provide no information): A3, A8, B12, Dl, E3, F2. From this, perhaps the broadest, point of view, two things are clear: 1) the Scotch-Irish contribution to the grammar of Appalachian English significantly outweighs the southern British contribution and appears to be much more responsible for the grammatical features distinguishing Appalachian English today; 2) many grammatical features were shared by both major immigrant groups that settled in Appalachia. This compilation views each of the forty grammatical features as equal in significance and level of structure. Another way to classify these forty features is according to five types of grammatical structures: 1) inflectional forms (word endings): Al, A2, B5, Cl, C2, one of Scotch-Irish, three of southern British, and one of general British origin. 2) word order patterns (the combination of two or more words in a distinct way): A4, A8, A9, A10, B4, BIO, Dl, E4, Fl, F2, six of Scotch-Irish, none of southern British, one of general British, and three of questionable origin. 3) categorical differences (involving a grammatical category not found in other dialects; often a familiar form such as done is employed in a way unfamiliar to other dialects): A3, A5, A6, A7, Volume Three, 1991 183 �Bl, B2, B7: three of Scotch-Irish, one of southern British, two of general British, and one of questionable origin. 4) morphological forms varying from other dialects: B3, B6, B8, Bll, B12, two of Scotch-Irish, none of southern British, two of general British, and one of questionable origin, 5) function words (preposition, adverbs, and conjunctions whose function is to relate other words or elements in a clause to one another): B9, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, El, E2, E3, E5, F3, F4, F5, five of Scotch-Irish, none of southern British, seven of general British, and one of questionable origin. Discussion and Conclusions Scotch-Irish English has contributed to Appalachian English in all categories of grammatical features. This is particularly true for word order patterns (like A4, "We might should go on," and AlO, That boy needsjaught a lesson") and function words (like D4, till, and D, "wait on"). Only four items (A6, a-prefixing, and three inflectional features— the long plural in nouns like posies (C2), pronouns in-n like hern (B5), and regularized past-tense forms like blowed (A2) can be traced back specifically to southern Britain and have been current in neither Scotland nor northern Britain. Although this might suggest a minimal contribution from southern British English, we must remember that southern Britain and Scotland shared seven grammatical features that are now identified as Appalachian, including liked to (A5) and the ethical dative (B8). Moreover, the majority of grammatical features—the hundreds not in our tables—are also shared. Of particular note is that many of the Scotch-Irish features are now general Southern, indicating they spread throughout the South: multiple modals such as might could, perfective helping verb done, pronoun y'all, and preposition till, among others. Doubtless this is because they were carried into the lower South by Scotch-Irish who came directly to Charleston and Savannah, as well as by descendents of the earlier backcountry and piedmont Scotch-Irish. Settlers were constantly on the move, looking for their "main chance," often crisscrossing each other's paths as they sought a better situation. Not only do dialect forms often not confine themselves to one area for very long; more importantly, they take lives of their own, migrating according to such social factors as prestige, status, and so on. While it is not very often that we can document the migration of speech forms before the modern age of audio recordings, an unusual emigration of southerners in the postbellum period allows us to verify the spread of such grammatical patterns as the combination of modal 184 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �verbs like might could, and pronunciation tendencies as the identical sounding of pen and pin. Specifically, in the decade following the Civil War, around twenty thousand ex-Confederate Americans from the lower South (mainly from Texas, Georgia, and Alabama) who decided they could not tolerate living in the reunited United States moved to Brazil. Their descendents today, while bilingual, continue to speak English with a distinct southern accent; they have no recognition of might could, nor do they ever pronounce ten as tin (Montgomery and Melo 1989; Bailey and Smith 1989). These upper South/Appalachian linguistic features must have spread into the lower South after the ex-Confederates left, later in the 19th or early in the t20th centuries. Thus for speech patterns Appalachia is demonstrably a part of the South—a region within a region. Our analysis and discussion have focused on tracing connections in grammatical patterns between Appalachian English and varieties of British English. Such an effort even at a relatively shallow time depth of less than three hundred years obviously faces a number of analytical and documentary challenges that the current investigation has tried to meet through consulting an exhaustive range of published and unpublished sources. By comparison, previous attempts to make the connection have been small-scale, unsystematic, and tentative. If we assume the relative homogeneity of what we have been calling Scotch-Irish English and Appalachian English and if we assume the correct identification and comparison of grammatical forms in context from our work with dictionaries and grammars, local linguistic literature, original documents, and consultation with local observers, we can posit a strong link in the grammatical systems of Scotch-Irish English and Appalachian English, a link that extends across a range of types of grammatical features. Moreover, we can see some of the outlines of how Scotch-Irish English extended into the lower South. It is hoped that these results will be relevant not only to linguists, but also to cultural geographers, historians, folklorists, and other scholars concerned with the diffusion of Old World patterns into the New World. It may just be possible, as a result of the type of research outlined and begun here, that we will finally be able to say how "Elizabethan" or "Scotch-Irish" Appalachian English in fact is. Volume Three, 1991 185 �Appendix: Appalachian Grammatical Features A. Verbs 1. Third Plural -S (including IS) with Noun Subjects but not with Pronoun Subjects: People knows vs. They know; People is vs. They are. 2. Regularized Past - ED in BLOWED, THROWED, etc.: Who blowed up the churchhouse? 3. GET TO/GO TO ( = BEGIN TO): Just after he left, the roof went to leaking again; We got to laughing and giggling. 4. Multiple Modal Verbs: We might should break the bad news to him. 5. LIKED TO ( = ALMOST): I got lost and liked to never found my way out. 6. A-prefixing: All of a sudden that bear come a-runnin' at me. 7. Perfective DONE: They have done landed in jail again. 8. Preposed USED TO: Used to Pa wouldn't have done a thing like that. 9. USED TO + WOULD, COULD: I can't do it now but I used to could. 10. NEED + Past Participle: That boy needs taught a lesson. B. Pronouns 1. VALL/YOU ALL: Can y'all I you all give me a hand with this load? 2. YOtrUNS/WE'UNS, etc.: You'uns come down with me. 3. YOU/YE variation: I told ye to keep away from there. 4. Combinations with ALL: You-all, we-all, us-all, they-all, who-all, what-all, where-all, why-all, ye-all, you-all's, your-all's. 5. HISN/HERN/THEIRN/OURN/YOURN: I didn't like that look of hern. 6. HISSELF/THEIRSELVES: You can meet Mister Jones hisself. 7. Ethical Dative: I bought me a dog. 186 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �8. THEY existential ( = There): They'a about five people in that house. 9. IT existential: It's many people that think so, 10. Deletion of Subject Relative Pronoun: They's about five people 'o could have done it. 11. HIT ( = IT): Hifs a long time since I tasted it. 12. EVERWHAT/EVERWHICH/EVERWHO: Ever who was here sure left in a hurry. C. Nouns 1. Zero Plural after Quantifier: five bushel, many mile away. 2. Syllabic Plural after SP, ST, SK: postes, nestes, waspes, deskes. D. Prepositions 1. Compounding: Come out from up under the table; Cal, ain't you a-going across down over to Rose's? 2. ANENT ( = OPPOSITE, NEARBY): He was layin' the road anent the springhouse. 3. FORNENT/FERNENT ( = AGAINST, NEXT TO): It's over fernent the wall. 4. TILL ( = TO): It's quarter till five. 5. WAIT ON ( = WAIT FOR): Would you mind waiting on me? 6. AGAIN/AGAINST ( = BEFORE, BY THE TIME THAT): Shell be back again five o'clock. E. Conjunctions: 1. AGAIN/AGAINST ( = BEFORE, BY THE TIME THAT): 111 be ready again you are. 2. WHENEVER ( = AT THE TIME THAT OR AS SOON AS): Whenever I was young, people didn't do that; Whenever I heard about them, I bought one right away. Volume Three, 1991 187 �3. TILL ( = SO THAT): They . . . got 'em in a good jail there till the mob can't get 'em (Jesse Stuart). 4. AND in Absolute Phrases: They all wore mother hubbard dresses, and them loose. 5. NOR ( = THAN): He's better nor you. F. Adverbs 1. Positive ANYMORE: It's a pretty skilled job anymore. 2. ALL THE FAR ( = AS FAR AS): That's all the far I want to go. 3. RIGHT (intensifier): It's right airish this morning. 4. YONDER: That's my field down yonder. 5. YAN: Snakes was everywhere going here andean. Notes 1 The research on which this paper is based was supported in part by travel grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Southern Regional Education Board and by a Research and Productive Scholarship grant from the University of South Carolina. The author would especially like to thank A. J. Aitken, John Kirk, Caroline Macafee, and Philip Robinson for their advice and observations on Scottish and northern Irish English. Any errors of interpretation, however, are strictly those of the author of this paper. 2 Three branches of the atlas cover states within Appalachia: the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia), the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama), and the Linguistic Atlas of the North Central States (Kentucky). 3 One might compare Kurath (1949), whose first chapter, "The English of the Eastern States: a Perspective" (1-10), focuses in detail on British and Continental European sources of American vocabulary with Carver (1987), a work comparable in scope written a generation later. Carver has almost nothing to say about such sources. •These calculations have questionable reliability. Surnames often reveal nothing about ancestry. Among other problems, as Campbell states, is the fact 188 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �that many English names have been used by the Irish or the Scottish for centuries. 'The only exceptions to this are two brief studies by Wylene Dial (1969) in West Virginia and Alan Crozier (1984) in Western Pennsylvania. 8 A trove of these is on deposit at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum at Cultra Manor, Holywood, County Down, Northern Ireland. 'Carver (1987), Cassidy (1985), Craigie and Aitken (1933- ), Feagin (1979), Grant and Murison (1931-84), Hall (n.d.), Hunter (1925), Jesperson (1954), McDavid (1958), Visser (1970), Wentworth (1944), Wilson (1952), Wolfram and Christian (1976). "It must be emphasized that these assessments reflect information from reference works (dictionaries, historical grammars, etc.) and original documents. They are only as reliable as the sources on which they are based and cannot be claimed to be definitive. As stated earlier in this paper, reference works do not give negative information on whether a certain form does not occur at a particular time and place. While the number and range of sources from which information is drawn enhances the reliability of assignment of features to categories according to origin, for some forms (such as get to and go to meaning "begin to") no information has been found on the regional demarcations either in Britain or in America. They are included in this assessment because they are quite common in Appalachian speech, are discussed in studies of Appalachian speech, and are apparently not widely found in rural and old-fashioned speech elsewhere in the U.S. In some cases the classification of grammatical features has a degree of subjectivity, but grammatical forms widely used throughout the U.S. are excluded even if common in Appalachia. These include ain't, the combination of objective pronouns (e.g., me and him) used as a subject, the use of was with plural subjects (they was, etc.), and a number of others. Works Cited Bailey, Guy, and Clyde Smith. 1989. Southern English in Brazil. Campbell, John C. 1921. The Southern Highlander and his Homeland. Reprinted in 1969. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Carver, Craig M. 1987. American Regional Dialects: A Word Geography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Cassidy, Frederic, ed. 1985. Dictionary of American Regional English. Volume 1, A-C. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Combs, Josiah. 1943. The Kentucky Highlands from a Native Mountaineer's Viewpoint. Lexington, Kentucky: J. L. Richardson. Volume Three, 1991 189 �Craigie, William and A. J. Aitken, eds. 1933- . A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue: From the Twelfth Century to the End of the Seventeenth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Crozier, Alan. 1984. "The Scotch-Irish Influence on American English." American Speech 59: 310-331. Dial, Wylene. 1969. "The Dialect of the Appalachian People," West Virginia History 30: 463-471. Feagin, Crawford. 1979. Variation and Change in Alabama English: A Sociolinguistic Study of the White Community. Washington: Georgetown University Press. Grant, William and David Murison, eds. 1931-84. The Scottish National Dictionary. Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association. Hall, Joan B. n.d. [DARE items labeled "Appalachian," "Scottish," or "Irish"]. Hall, Joseph S. 1942. The Phonetics of Great Smoky Mountains Speech," American Speech 17: part 2. Hunter, Edwin R. 1925. The American Colloquial Idiom, 1830-1860. Chicago: University of Chicago dissertation. Jesperson, Otto. 1954. A Modern Grammar on Historical Principles. 7 vols. London: Allen and Unwin. Kurath, Hans. 1929. "The Conference on a Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada," Bulletin of the Linguistic Society of America 4: 20-47. 1949. A Word Geography of the Eastern United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Lorimer, William L., translator. 1983. The New Testament in Scots. Harmondsworth: Penguin. McCrum, Robert, et al. 1986. The Story of English. New York: Viking. McDavid, Raven I. 1958. The Dialects of American English. The Structure of American English, by W. Nelson Francis: 480-543. New York: Ronald Press. McMillan, James B. and Michael Montgomery, eds. 1989. Annotated Bibliography of Southern American English. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. 190 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �McWhiney, Grady. 1988. Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways of the Old South. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Montgomery, Michael. 1989a. "Exploring the Roots of Appalachian English," English World-Wide 10: 227-78. . 1989b. "Multiple Modals and the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States." Paper read at the Forty-first meeting of the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics, Atlanta. Montgomery, Michael, and Cecil Melo. 1989. "The Phonology of the Lost Cause." Montgomery, Michael and Joseph S. Hall. In progress. "The Grammar of Smoky Mountain English." Sharp, Cecil J. 1932. English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. Ed. Maud Karpeles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Visser, P. Th. 1970. An Historical Syntax of the English Language. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Wentworth, Harold, ed. 1944. American Dialect Dictionary. New York: Crowell. Williams, Gratis. 1961. The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction. New York: New York University dissertation. Wilson, George P., ed. 1952. Folk speech. The Frank C. Brown collection of North Carolina folklore. Durham: Duke University Press. Wolfram, Walt and Donna Christian. 1976. Appalachian Speech. Arlington, Va.: Center for Applied Linguistics. Michael Montgomery is Associate Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. He was Contributing Editor for the "Language" section of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. He is working on two books on Smoky Mountain English and plans a book examining the linguistic connections between Scotland, Ireland, and Appalachia. Volume Three, 1991 191 �"Shall We Teach 'Em or Learn 'Em?" Attitudes Toward Language in Appalachian Children's Literature Roberta T. Herrin In Kenneth Grahame's British children's classic The Wind in the Willows, a scene develops where Badger, Rat, Mole, and Mr. Toad plan to oust the stoats and weasels from Toad Hall. Mr. Toad "picked up a stout stick and swung it vigorously, belabouring imaginary animals. Til learn 'em to steal my house!' he cried. 'I'll learn 'em, I'll learn 'em!"5 He is immediately chastised by Rat: "Don't say 'learn 'em,' Toad.. . . It's not good English." Badger counters with, "But we don't want to teach 'em. . . . We want to learn 'em—learn 'em, learn 'em!" (Grahame 1969, 197). Such discussions are common among characters in classic children's books — Peter Pan, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. If concern for language propriety is so common in classic children's books, what about Appalachian children's literature where dialect and "nonstandard" features are so prominent? My reading of dozens of Appalachian children's books—only eight of which are treated here—has produced three major observations: The first is that false representations of Appalachian speech abound in children's books. The second is that, in spite of these misrepresentations, two cultural phenomena are accurately demonstrated—assimilation and isolation. The third observation is that the language features 192 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �most often singled out—might could, for example—are the common ones which purists and schoolmarms have sought to stamp out for decades with no success. Of all the phony depictions of Appalachians and their speech, the most ridiculous is Beverly Courtney Crook's 1978 novel, Fair Annie of Ole Mule Hollow, set in 1965 on the West Virginia-Kentucky border. Fair Annie has never been out of the hollow, has never ridden in a car or seen a building taller than one story, doesn't know what a traffic light or an elevator is. Yet, she is a bright girl with an eighth-grade education, and she aspires to be a lawyer. Immediately, in the first few pages of the novel, the reader is assaulted by the difference between her speech and her brother's: Sweet William teases her, "Yore spendin' so much time with them pigs, yore beginnin' to look like "em." Her prim retort is astounding: "They're still prettier than any of your girlfriends! You could kiss one of my pigs and not know the difference" (Crook 1978, 3). Fair Annie has been singled out by her father as the only child to get some "learnin." According to Pa, "Somebody in this family's got to keep ahead of the govermint and all them papers they're a-wantin' you to sign. . . . Might sign the wrong ones if you cain't rightly read. And somebody's got to talk good, too. That lights a fire under them govermint people . . ." (Crook,5). Pa is adamant about Fair Annie's education: "Nary bug-brained boy's goin' to bust up your schoolin' " (4). Beverly Crook never addresses the issue of how Fair Annie learns to talk "proper" or where she gets her instruction. It is a simple, accepted fact that her language is grammatically correct, free of dialect features, and good enough to deal with the "govermint." And the father's generous attitude toward standard English is absurd. Every English teacher knows that the use of "proper" English in a home such as Fair Annie's would prompt ridicule, not praise. But I am intrigued with the notion that good English helps Appalachians deal with "govermint" people. A slightly more realistic, but still romanticized, depiction of Appalachian language is found in Blue Ridge Billy. Written in 1946 by Lois Lenski, it is a typical portrayal of Appalachian dialect. Lenski collected material for this book in Ashe County, North Carolina, and in the foreword she says, "When I remember . . . the mountain people with fine old forgotten Elizabethan phrases on their lips, it seems to me sacrilege to transfer their speech to correct grammatical, School-Reader English. . . . To me, this would be a travesty on all the beauty and character in the lives of these people" (Lenski 1946, xv). Her belief that Ashe Countians speak the "fine old forgotten Elizabethan" English of Shakespeare is a common attitude, but one which linguists have rejected for decades. The following is a typical conversation from Blue Ridge Billy: Volume Three, 1991 193 �"Been yarbin' lately?" asked Billy, using the usual mountain expression for 'gathering herbs.' "Law, yes, we been out all evenin'," said Sarey Sue.... "Where'd you go? Back up on Laurel Mountain?" "Law, no" said Granny, "over to the Peak. There was some certain roots there I'd a mind to get." "Why that's a fur piece?" exclaimed the boy. "Must be nigh five miles, ain't hit? You-all must be tired in your bones." (Lenski, 7) Among the characters themselves, there is no self-consciousness regarding speech. The reader, however, is always aware that Lenski labors to render the "fine old forgotten Elizabethan" language. Another book which romanticizes the mountain dialect is Mildred Lee's The People Therein, published in 1980. It opens in 1910 in Dewfall Gap, Brightwater County, North Carolina, fifty miles south of Bryson City. This is the story of eighteen-year-old Ailanthus "Lanthy" Farr— who is lame, but beautiful and scholarly—and Andrew "Drew" Thorndike, a botanist from Boston. In a letter to his sister, Thorndike comments on the language of the mountain people: I have grown accustomed to the speech of the people, which at first was like a new language to me; actually it is in some instances an ancient one become corrupted, confusing to an outlander like myself. The word "ill" does not mean sick but cross or irritable (possibly a shortening of "ill-tempered"?), and one with an unpleasant disposition is often called "feisty"—a feist being a yappy little mongrel dog. The past tense of "help" is frequently "holp" (one of Chaucer's, I believe). (Lee 1980, 45) Just as Drew is attracted to the speech of North Carolinians, Lanthy Farr is attracted to the speech of outsiders. She "had set great store by the way Mr. Colver [the schoolteacher] talked; sometimes, after she quit going to Peavine School, she had walked over there just to have a little conversation with him. They laughed at home about it, but she hadn't cared" (Lee, 12). This passage prompts two observations. Unlike Fair Annie, Lanthy is ridiculed at home for her interest in "proper" English, and unlike Blue Ridge Billy, she perceives that Mr. Colver's language is superior to her own, an attitude which linguists such as Marckwardt, Leonard, and Joos have documented. In American culture in general—not just in Appalachia—when an individual or group accepts its social position, there is indifference toward language and no concern for correctness. But when 194 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �an individual becomes conscious of his place in society, or aspires to a higher social level, correctness in language becomes paramount. In Fair Annie's family, for example, only Annie is expected to "better herself; thus, language propriety is a must for her. Blue Ridge Billy never expects to live anywhere but Ashe County, so he has absolutely no concern for language. Lanthy Farr, though she accepts her place, had once desired to go to the high school "in town" and eventually marries Drew Thorndike. All three of these characters—Lanthy Farr, Drew Thorndike, and Fair Annie—are engaged in the social processes of assimilation and its ironic opposite, isolation. A book which illustrates both of these conditions is the 1963 novel The Rock and the Willow, also written by Mildred Lee. Thirteen-year-old Earline "Enie" Singleton, who lives in Tired Creek, Alabama, in the 1930s, is the central character. Enie makes straight A's and wants to go to college, but her father is suspicious of education. It fills "younguns . . . full of notions, making 'em dissatisfied with what they've got" (Lee 1963, 13). Enie studies words: " 'Restraint. Crystallize. Fascination. Epitomize. Manifestation. Delectable. Inimitable.' Someday she would speak words like these with ease. She practiced a lot, already, when no one was around to mock her" (17-18). She thought she could feel her mind growing... . She knew she had improved herself; she no longer had to think before she spoke grammatically, or stop to correct in embarrassment a word too hastily used.. . .(90) Enie expects correct grammar and a good vocabulary to be her tools in the outside world. Unlike Fair Annie, however, she struggles to learn "proper" English and she is mocked at home. Her desire for assimilation produces isolation and ridicule. Ironically, she expressly wants to avoid such embarrassment—embarrassment at home when she uses good English and embarrassment abroad when she does not. John Henry McCoy is a 1971 Appalachian children's book that focuses on a ten-year-old boy's struggles with assimilation and isolation. John Henry has been thoroughly assimilated. He has moved around so much that he doesn't know what grade he belongs in. He has moved "from the head of a hollow . .. right smack-dab to one or two rooms in the middle of a big city"—Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Chicago—Then back to another hollow, where it was too lonesome for even a hoot owl... . Then to another town when Henry McCoy had found another job" (Chaffin 1971, 1-2). John Henry is ridiculed because his language has been affected by living "in town." The children of Hatfield Branch tease him about "being Volume Three, 1991 195 �stuck-up" (Chaffin, 77). But John Henry has learned how to avoid embarrassment: "He would say a flat /, if he said it, not roll it around and make two syllables, the way people said it in Cleveland" (78). Unlike Enie, who wants to leave Tired Creek, Alabama, John Henry wants a home in Hatfield Branch, Kentucky. He has no interest in assimilation. Unfortunately, he is just as isolated as Enie Singleton. Most Appalachian children's books make it clear that attitudes toward grammar and usage are controlled by parents and teachers. Typically, children are urged to use verbs and pronouns correctly, and not to end sentences with prepositions. A good example is Juliette Ann Holley's 1975 book, Jamie Lemme See, the story of James Edward Riley Pettigrew, a six-year-old black boy living on Peel Chestnut Mountain, West Virginia. Jamie has the habit of asking, "Where is it at?" His mother's response is amazing: "You're using bad grammer [sic]. You should say, if you must, Take me where it is' " (Holley 1975, 9). On first thought, Jamie's mother's correction seems absurd. On second thought, it seems entirely realistic. My own mother who routinely says "hit" corrected me as a child on the different pronunciations of pin and pen, Joy and Joey, and where to put the accent in Eli and Elijah, none of which have anything to do with Appalachian dialect. She simply felt it her duty to make corrections. Appalachian children's books routinely show teachers performing the same function. John Henry McCoy's teacher, Miss Day, runs a fairly universal English class: "Sometimes we hear people use the wrong word for burst. Who can give the right forms for burst and rise?" She gets a typical answer. A student uses the verb burst in this sentence: "When it's time for breakfast, Mommy lets me bust the biscuits," meaning that her mother lets her open the canned biscuits (Chaffin 1971, 100). Then another child conjugates the verb rise: rise, rose, riz. Miss Day makes all the usual corrections. She tells John Henry, "The word is ghosts, not ghostes" (Chaffin, 101). And she has the typical problem with I: When John Henry and Silas are caught fighting, Miss Day asks them to explain. Si begins, "Me and John Henry" and is quickly interrupted by Miss Day with, ""John Henry and I.. . .it was John Henry and I." Si rolled his eyes at John Henry. "You was in the house, Miss Day. It was me and John Henry a-wrestling, and he's a pretty good hand at it." "All right, I'll take your word for it." (Chaffin, 122) Miss Day will not get much help from John Henry's mother. When his sister Sara uses the double auxiliary might could, John Henry responds, "You know Miss Clay told us not to say might could." Sara 196 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Mrs. McCoy answers, "Not that I know of. So's people understand what you're saying's all that matters to me" (Chaffin, 42). Though the attitudes toward language in this book provide much of its humor, they strike the reader as realistic. A novel which takes a similar attitude is Queenie Peauy, by Robert Burch, published in 1966. Set in the 1930s in rural Georgia, this novel is the story of thirteen-yearold Queenie and an entourage of other school children. One of the most unusual characters is Martha Mullins, called Little Mother because she tries to "promote good will and understanding for the whole world" (Burch 1966, 36). When Cravey Mason ridicules Queenie's lunch which consists of "biscuit and sowbelly," Little Mother instructs him to say "home-grown bacon," not "sowbelly." "Call it anything you please," said Cravey. "—sidemeat, fatback, city chicken, streak-'o-lean, 'streak-o'-fat," it's still "lousy stuff (34). Later on Little Mother announces that she lives in "a remote rural area." Cravey replies, "Remote rural Area! . . . Is that a new term for 'the sticks'? . . . How come you to put on airs?". Little Mother insists that she doesn't mean to sound "affected," but that "it seems almost disrespectful of nature not to use a dignified term for countryside that's so beautiful". Cravey yells, "Hey, everybody! Guess where Little Mother Martha Mullins lives. She lives in a remote rural area" (55-56). The effect of this interchange is obviously to ridicule the Little Mothers of the world who expect euphemisms to improve life. But it also makes an important point about the children. They soundly reject— isolate—those who are concerned with language propriety, be it a peer, parent, or teacher. From the ridiculous Fair Annie of Old Mule Hollow to the realistic Queenie Peavy, Appalachian children's books promote standard English and condescend toward Appalachian speech—even when such books praise the common language of the region. It is true that many of these books address the emotional effects of assimilation and isolation; that in itself is of great value to the child reader who has endured ridicule from within and from without his own culture. But what is absent from all these books is any understanding of the language these children actually speak. I began with the 1908 British classic The Wind in the Willows. I will end with another turn-of-the-century masterpiece, Peter Pan, by J. M. Barrie. The narrator opens chapter five with this comment: Feeling that Peter was on his way back, the Neverland had again woke into life. We ought to use the pluperfect and say wakened, but woke is better and was always used by Peter. (Barrie, 47) Volume Three, 1991 197 �Did Barrie and Kenneth Grahame know something that we in Appalachia do not? If Mr. Toad, Badger, and Peter can misuse verbs, who is to criticize? Works Cited Barrie, J. M. 1984. Peter Pan. New York: Bantam. Burch, Robert. 1966. Queenie Peavy. New York: Viking. Chaffin, Lillie D. 1971. John Henry McCoy. New York: Macmillan. Crook, Beverly Courtney. 1978. Fair Annie of Old Mule Hollow. New York: McGraw-Hill. Grahame, Kenneth. 1969. The Wind in the Willows. New York: Signet. Holley, Juliette Ann. 1975. Jamie Lemme See. Radford, Va.: Commonwealth. Joos, Martin. 1961. The Five Clocks. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Lee, Mildred. 1980. The People Therein. New York: Houghton Mifflin. . 1963. The Rock and the Willow. New York: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard. Lenski, Lois. 1946. Blue Ridge Billy. New York: Lippincott. Leonard, Sterling A. 1938. "Current English Usage." In Facts About Current English Usage. Eds. Albert H. Marcwardt and Fred G. Walcott. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Roberta T. Herrin is Assistant Professor of English at East Tennessee State University where she teaches children's literature and Appalachian children's literature. She also directs the National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored institute in children's fantasy literature— Journey Through Fantasy Literature. 198 Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association �Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association Subscriptions and Order Form Detach, fold, and staple this form and mail to: Appalachian Consortium University Hall Boone, NC 28606 No. of Copies Please make checks payable to the Appalachian Consortium. 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Title A name given to the resource Southern Appalachia and the South: A Region Within a Region - Volume Three Description An account of the resource This volume of the <em>Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association</em> explores the intersections between Southerners and Southern Appalachians and the theoretical and practical implication of regional identity, marginality, ethnic commonalities, and comparative perspectives during the 19th and 20th centuries. <br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1t8l3tMp5uqzb78f9da-WL9Tr4IiwzhTu" target="_blank">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636962/journal-of-the-appalachian-studies-association/" target="_blank">UNC Press Print on Demand</a> Subject The topic of the resource Appalachian Region, Southern--Social conditions--20th Century Appalachian Region, Southern--Social conditions--19th Century Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Inscoe, John C. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991 Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Appalachia Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Periodicals Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/12212302/appalachia.html Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a> Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1990s Multidisciplinary/ Appalachian Studies https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/a8e1acbf8b97272029dfb5f4779e7bfb.pdf 6a3edad300b4aae0f5f8bf05e8086ef7 PDF Text Text �APPALACHIA AND THE POLITICS OF CULTURE Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association Edited by Elizabeth C. Fine 1995 Volume Seven �The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From 1973 to 2004, its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program, Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press. www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Original copyright © 1995 by the Appalachian Consortium Press. ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-3693-1 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-3695-5 Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press www.uncpress.org �Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association Volume 7 1995 Appalachia and the Politics of Culture TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Elizabeth C. Fine 1 Appalachia: The View From San Francisco Key Note Address Archie Green 6 Out in the Mountains: Exploring Lesbian and Gay Lives 18 Kate Black and Marc A. Rhorer "You've Got to Get the Music in Your Feet:" Old Time Dancing in African American and European American Communities in Southwest Virginia Susan Eike Spalding 29 Two Gardeners of Song: Exploiters or Preservers? 41 Fabric and Fiction: The Clinch Valley Blanket Mills, 1890-1950 Kathleen Curtis Wilson 50 Before Albion's Seed: Other Influences on Appalachian Culture Donald Edward Davis 57 Linda Plaut and Lyn Wolz 111 • •• �Connecting Appalachia: A Survey of Recent Work in Early American History with Reference to Southern Appalachia Tom Costa 67 Property, Gender, and the Sale of Mineral Rights in Pre-industrial Eastern Kentucky Robert Weise 79 Recollections About Life in Appalachia's Coal Camps: Positive or Negative? Mary LaLone 91 Storming Heaven in the Decade of Greed Kim Gillespie 101 Speech Acts and Cultural Resistance in a Rural Eastern Kentucky Community Anita Puckett 111 Southwest Virginia High School Graduates: Crossing Cultural Terrains in the University Setting Pam B. Cole 121 Teaching for Democracy: Reflections on Teaching Appalachian Studies Shaunna L. Scott 131 Gender and Schooling in Appalachia: Lessons for an Era of Economic Restructuring Sally Ward Haggard 140 Scotland, Appalachia, and the Politics of Postmodern Culture Richard Blaustein 152 iv �1994 Appalachian Studies Association Officers Alice Brown Ronald Lewis Elizabeth C. Fine Ken Sullivan Sandy Ballard Howard Dorgan Gerald Roberts Rebecca Hancock President Vice-President Conference Program Chair Program Vice-Chair Secretary Treasurer Archivist .Immediate Past President Steering Committee Program Committee Alice Brown, Chair Nyoka Hawkins Steve Fisher Grace Toney Edwards Jerry Williamson R. Chesla Sharp Pat Arnow Andrew Garrison Elizabeth C. Pine, Chair Ken Sullivan, Vice-Chair Rosemary C. Goss Jim Mi nick Karen Morgan Deborah Thompson Ricky Cox Barry Whittemore Keith Webb Melinda Wagner Norma Myers, Ex-officio Alice Brown, Ex-officio Local Arrangements Committee Rosemary C. Goss, Chair Mary Holliman, Exhibits Chair Elizabeth C. Fine Paul Lancaster Keith Webb Clyde Kessler Kate Briody Anita Puckett Sandy Ballard Clifford Boyd Alice Brown Ricky Cox Howard Dorgan Grace Toney Edwards Steve Fisher Nyoka Hawkins Youth Conference Coordinator Jim Mi nick Editorial Advisory Board Ronald Lewis Sally Maggard Jim Minick Anita Puckett Gerald Roberts R.B. Rosenburg Jean Haskell Speer V Ken Sullivan Deborah Thompson Melinda Wagner Peter Wallenstein David Whisnant Barry Whittemore John Alexander Williams Jerry Williamson �This page intentionally left blank �Introduction Elizabeth C. Fine When Pat Buchanan called for a cultural war at the 1992 Republican National Convention, he attested to the heightened awareness of the politics of culture in American life. In this last decade of the twentieth century, many cultural choices—the food we eat, the materials we wear, the products we buy, the language we use, the medical choices we make—all have political interpretations and repercussions. "Cultural space is contested space," someone once said, and those who study the Appalachian region have become keenly aware of the political dimension of culture, which is no longer conceived of as a taken-for-granted, "natural" given, but as a socially constructed, emergent, and often highly contested phenomenon (Banks, Billings, and Tice 1993; Maggard 1983, Clifford 1988). Ever since Henry Shapiro's classic study of the representation of Appalachia in American consciousness (1978), scholars have been much more aware of the political dimensions of culture and the complexities that go along with studying it or promoting cultural programs. The often negative images conveyed by local color writers and home missionaries served well the exploitative goals of early industrialists, who could pat themselves on the back for bringing "progress" to such benighted people. And these same images no doubt fed into the subcultural model of poverty, which as Helen Lewis and Edward Knipe point out, had political consequences in the War on Poverty (Lewis and Knipe 1978). The cultural models and programs developed by government bureaucrats during the War on Poverty contributed to subsequent media representa- 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 1 �tions of the region, which in turn, stimulated more adherents to the subcultural or culture of poverty model of Appalachia (Bowler 1985). Not just social workers, but educators and cultural workers have used culture for political ends, as David Whisnant has documented in All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (1983). The 1994 conference on Appalachia and the Politics of Culture was well attended, attracting over 400 scholars, students, and activists to Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg. The conference featured forty-four programs, with 101 individual presentations. Forty-one participants submitted papers for publication. Regrettably, not all of the very fine submissions could be published here. Slightly over a third of the articles submitted were selected by members of the program committee, other appropriate scholars, and the editor. In defining the theme for the 1994 Conference of the Appalachian Studies Association, I wrote in the call for papers that the politics of culture or cultural politics refers to "Social and political forces that influence what elements of a culture are featured or suppressed, promoted or ignored, sanctioned or censored." The keynote speaker, folklorist Archie Green, identified with uncanny foresight a number of critical issues dealing with the politics of culture that are developed by the contributors to this volume. Looking at the theme from many angles, Green raises questions about who has authority to write about Appalachia and the rift between insiders and outsiders of the region over its portrayal. Moving from the politics of who studies Appalachia to what is studied, Green challenges us to push our history of mountain images back before the local color movement and industrialization to the European antecedents of Appalachian culture. Examining the political impact of the concept of cultural politics, Green juxtaposes it with political action outside the academy, challenging us to engage not only in the political process in the United States, but in the world. "Perhaps the deepest question we all face," says Green, "is whether Appalachians can to any degree live with dignity both inside and outside mainstream America, while mountaineers across the globe are brutalized." The contributors to this volume have all addressed the conference theme, albeit in different ways. In "Out in the Mountains," Kate Black and Marc A. Rhorer focus our attention on an ignored area of Appalachian Studies—the lives of lesbian and gay persons and their experiences within a mountain region. These oral histories forcefully attest to the cultural hegemony of heterosexism and the political consequences of "coming out" in Appalachia. Three essays examine the cultural politics surrounding musical and material culture. In exploring the differences in vitality between the dance traditions of an African American and an European American 2 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �community, Susan Eike Spalding discusses the impact of the War on Poverty, the folk revival movement, and the Black Power movement on African American old-time fiddlers and square dancers, calling attention to the effects of cultural programs and movements on dance traditions. In a critique of the work of two early female folk song collectors, Linda Plaut and Lyn Wolz examine the motivations and methods of Annabel Morris Buchanan and Ann Geddes Gilchrist. Did they exploit their informants for selfish ends, or did they treat them with respect in a genuine effort to preserve their music for future generations? Just as purveyors of musical culture act politically, so do purveyors of material culture, as Kathleen Curtis Wilson shows in her analysis of the coverlets woven and marketed by the Clinch Valley Blanket Mills. Although the coverlets were made by machines, Wilson shows how the proprietors skillfully used folk images of handwoven coverlets to market their wares outside the region and thus helped perpetuate a static and false image of Appalachia. Just as Archie Green challenges us to push our historical studies of the region back to earlier ages, two studies admirably expand our understanding of the past. Donald Edward Davis, in "Before Albion's Seed," examines the three hundred years preceding the eighteenthcentury Appalachian frontier and the impact of the Mississippian, Cherokee, and Spanish cultures. He argues that Appalachian culture evolved in relationship to the complex interactions between social and environmental forces. In "Connecting Appalachia," Tom Costa also turns the historical lens from the industrialization period to the colonial and antebellum periods, placing Appalachia in the broader context of American and southern frontier and rural history. His synthesis of recent work in early American history that pertains to Southern Appalachia corrects the essentialist view of a homogeneous Appalachian culture. This new body of research defies the traditional image of Appalachia as a backwater region and corrects political stereotyping. The impact of gender roles in Appalachia has largely been ignored, but Robert Weise's exploration of the gender divisions and conflicts over property within pre-industrial households in Eastern Kentucky shows how these conflicts sometimes encouraged property owners to part with the minerals underlying their land. Thus, Weise's work helps correct the image that mineral sales in Appalachia were solely the result of outsiders taking advantage of an unsophisticated public. Two studies in this volume deal with representations of coal town experiences—one based on oral histories and the other on literary interpretation. In an effort to further understand some of the conflicting interpretations of the quality of life for residents of coal towns, Mary La Lone has conducted oral histories with over fifty residents of a number of coal towns in southwest Virginia. Her essay identifies both positive and 1995 - Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 3 �negative experiences and points to the reasons why residents express complex attitudes toward the company towns. While the novel Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina is ostensibly about life in the West Virginia coal fields during the mine wars of the 1920s, Kim Gillespie shows how the novel can be read as a political commentary on and national allegory of the 1980s "decade of greed." When individuals from differing cultural groups communicate, differences in using and interpreting speech often lead to socioeconomic and political repercussions, as Anita Puckett demonstrates in "Speech Acts and Cultural Resistance in a Rural Eastern Kentucky Community." Based on ethnographic studies of speech usage in a variety of work situations, Puckett shows how inappropriate usage of imperatives in work situations can result in labor relations problems. Language use is also an issue in Pam Cole's essay on how Southwest Virginia high school graduates fare when they cross the cultural terrain of a large university in the region. Through ethnographic interviews with four Appalachian high school graduates who entered a large university, Cole documents the oppression they experienced and shows how the students struggled to resolve the ambivalence they felt toward their Appalachian dialect and identity. Just as language usage has social and political repercussions, so does teaching and education. Two essays explore the political dimensions of education. In 'Teaching for Democracy," Shaunna L. Scott argues that teaching is a political act. She then evaluates texts and suggests pedagogy that further the goals of understanding regional social problems, debunking stereotypes, and empowering students. While Scott addresses the concerns of those who teach Appalachian Studies courses, Sally Maggard evaluates the complexity of designing new job training and education programs in Central Appalachia in an era of global economic transformation. Based on structured interviews with forty-four eastern Kentucky women about work and educational experiences, Maggard identifies gender as a factor in school dropout rates, low skill level of the labor force, and unsuccessful job training programs. She goes on to make practical recommendations for designing effective job training programs for Central Appalachia. The last essay by Richard Blaustein takes up Archie Green's challenge to internationalize our perspectives on Appalachian culture. In "Scotland, Appalachia, and the Politics of Postmodern Culture," Blaustein reviews David McCrone's Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation to help understand developments within Appalachian Studies. He finds striking parallels and important differences between the politics of culture and identity in Scotland and Appalachia. Taken together, these fifteen essays represent the interdisciplinary 4 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �nature of Appalachian Studies and the broad range of interests within the Appalachian Studies Association. They also represent a maturing field that is engaging itself in a critique not only of the political forces affecting the region, but of its own role as a political and cultural agent. Works Cited Banks, Alan, Dwight Billings, and Karen Tice. 1993. "Appalachian Studies, Resistance, and Postmodernism." In Fighting Back in Appalachia: Traditions of Resistance and Change, ed. Stephen L. Fisher. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Bowler, Betty M. 1985. "'That Ribbon of Social Neglect': Appalachia and the Media in 1964." Appalachian Journal 12 (3): 239-247. Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Lewis, Helen, and Edward Knipe. 1978. "The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case." In Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case, ed. Helen Matthews Lewis, Linda Johnson, and Donald Askins. Boone, N.C.: The Appalachian Consortium Press. Maggard, Sally Ward. 1983-84. "Cultural Hegemony: The News Media and Appalachia." Appalachian Journal 11 (1-2): 67-83. Shapiro, Henry. 1978. Appalachia On Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Whisnant, David. 1983. All That Is Native And Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Elizabeth C. Fine is an associate professor in the Center for Programs in the Humanities and the Department of Communication Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She is coordinator of the Appalachian Studies Program at Virginia Tech. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 5 �Appalachia: the View from San Francisco Archie Green To open with a question: why does the Appalachian Studies Conference invite a keynote speaker from the nation's Pacific edge; particularly, from a city in which Appalachia does not appear on cognitive screens? To compound this initial query: why should happy banquet guests be harangued by an out-of-region senior citizen with a topic as open ended as 'The Politics of Culture?" At gatherings such as these, keynoters habitually wear ribbons of Pollyanna or Jeremiah—cheery platitudes or doomsday calamity. Tonight, avoiding both modes, I would feel most comfortable with a straight case study, a report on empirical research, or the analysis of an expressive construct or event. However, custom places such descriptive papers in daily sessions, saving the dinner evening for mood or vision. What, then, spills from the visitor's pack? At home, I hear San Franciscans who identify themselves constantly by life-style, ethnicity, occupation, or new-age belief, but never region. No acquaintance of mine uses Westerner, a brand that signifies saddles and spurs, guns and guitars. A few friends know vaguely my affection for hillbilly music, understood as a distant region's amusement far from the Golden Gate. These friends dismiss the rhinestone aberration as a tic, perhaps picked up while wandering east of the Sierra Nevada range. I live in The Castro, a neighborhood seen frequently in television features commenting upon American sexuality. My recent published studies treat "laborlore," the expressive culture of working people across our country rather than in a single region. This research choice and place of residence have not disqualified me from commenting upon Appalachia. In short, the keynote invitation to a traveler, itself, counters conventional inside/outside polarity often built into our discourse. I do not invoke this "we/they" dichotomy as a rhetorical device to 6 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �exaggerate my distance from mountain life, but rather to mark troublesome concerns within academic and public agencies. One such issue touches each scholar's charter. Who grants and who obtains the license to penetrate the cultural briar patch? Where do critics go to obtain their tags? At times, we elevate race or class dialogue to matters of cultural jurisdiction. Can whites "dig" black blues? Should whites teach in African American campus programs? Do white scholars, by instinct or imperial design, distort black experience? Can intellectuals appreciate workers' anxieties? Should youths from comfortable quarters advance political platforms for working people? Why do traders in theory assert superiority over blue-collar artisans? To what extent do these questions alter if posed as other than race or class constructs: North/South, lowlander/highlander, mainstream/Appalachia? In the formal call for papers, conference conveners used one definition for two interchangeable rubrics, cultural politics Ipolitics of culture: "social and political forces that influence what elements of a culture are featured or suppressed, promoted or ignored, sanctioned or censored." Our readings reveal parallels: political culture, culture of politics, political-cultural dialectic, cultural-political exchange. Writers inflect these rubrics variously—synonymously or antithetically. Eventually, a lexicographer will sort out differences, search for cognates, and cite examples of initial appearances. We shall hear conference panelists label our governing theme with diverse tags. Nevertheless, all labels imply a set of beliefs about power enacted/power represented. To illustrate: cultural arbiters make conscious choices in the manner of a Roman emperor presiding at the gladiatorial arena—winners, thumbs up; losers, thumbs down. In contemporary practice, the National Endowment for the Humanities approves a grant to study Emersonian transcendentalism but not transcendence in the poetry of Hank Williams. Is Hank's fan merely an unlucky applicant, or a pathetic victim of hegemonic forces relentlessly pulverizing vernacular culture? Clearly, across the United States, deans, directors, philanthropists, curators, critics, editors, pundits, and panelists make political decisions every day. Hence, we watch the gestures, hidden or open, of such "commissars," regardless of their identifying letterheads. In recognizing the need to decode up/down judgments by American cultural "czars," Appalachians reach for "The Politics of Culture" as a fresh paradigm. Armed with insight on political-cultural connections, some Appalachian activists assert a corollary belief: mountain natives make wise decisions; distant dwellers make unwise, if not evil decisions. I reject this position when uttered on matters of race by Leonard Jeffries or Khalid Abdul Muhammad. Should I overlook mountain chauvinism, unwilling- 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 7 �ness to listen, and defensiveness raised to a high-art form? Ultimately, to cope with sanction and stigma, we begin to judge our judges, to question their origins, to name their political values. Thus, we return to the us/them divide and ask whether or not this facile formula, geared to kinship, helps or hinders efforts at justice. Challenge jumps from every corner. Are race and class more useful guides than region, ethnicity, religion, language, age, gender, occupation, health, or ethical code in gripping Appalachian experience? How do such diverse elements intersect and combine to shape everyday identity? Upon hearing Appalachians actually name themselves as Scotch-Irish, Cherokee, Baptist, Holy Roller, lawyer, teacher, home-nurse, Tar Heel, West Virginian, or as believing in the moral majority, holding membership in the National Rifle Association, marching under Right-to-Life banners, or living way up the holler, do we reject these categories as false, as subordinate to class and race dogma? How does Appalachian fascination with the links of land to lore complicate issues of cultural politics within the region? Lest my questions seem abstract, I note remarks by Jerry Williamson on the film Deliverance: "The movie was angrily denounced in mountain institutions and at regional professional conferences as an impious return to hillbilly stereotypes, which had been used by past generations of corporate exploiters to justify land theft and wage slavery" (Forthcoming). By extension, some mountain critics viewed this film's novelist, script writers, and, above all, Hollywood producers, as the mutant offspring of hostile intellectuals and greedy moguls. Does a reference to Deliverance seem outdated in 1994? Bobbie Ann Mason's and Gurney Norman's views on The Kentucky Cycle reveal the depth of mountain sensitivity to external portraiture (Mason 1993; Norman 1993). Should we advocate a Khomeini fatwa on Robert Schenkkan because he lacks Kentucky birth credentials, conducted research at UCLA, or, perhaps, because Greek drama's demands overwhelm him? How do we move from matters of a playwright's genes to those of literary style and structure, imagination and discipline? No easy answers spring to mind. Before turning to a new passage in the maze, I touch on a personal aspect of any outsider's authority. While writing Only a Miner (1972), I remained conscious that I had worked on the San Francisco waterfront; never in a mountain coal mine. Should I have refrained from exploring "Dark as a Dungeon" or "I Am a Girl of Constant Sorrow" and from seeking out Merle Travis or Sarah Ogan Gunning? As a stranger to the region, I could have restricted studies to items recorded or composed by a set of cultural modernizers strangely categorized as "folksong revivalists." Such a path would have violated my soul as a worker and scholar, clouding esthetic code and moral pulse. In the 1960s, I did not set out with a glossy agenda for Appalachia. 8 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Then, I conceived Only a Miner as a ballad scholar's offering stemming from affection for songs by and about coal miners. The poetry of the lines, "While he was working for those whom he loved/The boulder that crushed him came down from above" reinforced shivery scenes of industrial accidents on "my" jobs. Did God above or a careless crane operator below send deathly power from high voltage line to crane boom to cement bucket to roof pour to city morgue? What power locked into song bridged a continent, thus linking Kentucky coal drift and California construction site? Why did mountain students see my book as contributing to regional dialogue and consciousness raising? If a lesson can be extracted from my digging for fossil roots, for truth long buried underground, it lies in the complex interchange of creativity and agency locked into mine-camp song text, and, by extension, fiddle tune, duck decoy, and coverlet pattern. We can restate the politics of culture issue by resorting to a metaphysical abstraction: solipsism. The self only knows itself; one lives alone in an isolated den; consign blues to blacks; leave the ballad "The Hard Working Miner" to hard-working miners. Painfully, I learned the word solipsism at age sixteen, and have spent the subsequent six decades scaling its slippery walls. I shall not be pushed into a prison cell in the name of any party-line agenda, or, for that matter, by campus seers who walk the walk and talk the talk of canonicity, master narrative, essentialism, binary opposition, science of society, dialectical materialism, or post-modern praxis. I am painfully aware, and share openly with conference colleagues, that I, too, revel in "big words." Familiar words bring pleasure; strange words, terror. Logically, my verbal choices are not superior to those of others. Hence, I must struggle to distinguish speech shield from sword, as I return to the challenge of understanding language as it supplies the building blocks of identity and community. Here, I segue from questions of who studies Appalachia to those of matters studied. As a pluralist, I see no bounds to this conference's discourse—we lay claim to all academic fields, and some not yet named. Fortunately, in the years since our group first met in Berea in 1977, planners have not acted as stern gatekeepers determined to restrict sessions only to problems in political economy. By asking who fills the purse to film The Dukes of Hazard, or who manipulates zoning codes to place Alpine ski villages on Blue Ridge heights, we jump disciplinary fences. It seems obvious that cultural choice should involve interpretation by political scientists, economists, and sociologists. It may not be clear to political activists that specialists in language and literature, arts and philosophy, necessarily contribute to explicating cultural metaphysics. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 9 �From many fields, I select an esoteric area, art history, to comment on identity—Harlan to Boone, Cumberland Gap to Sourwood Mountain. At the Pacific rim, when Appalachia rises from the mist, it appears as an upland island, an enclaved land mass, locked in the North American continent. This island seems better known to Californians who read novels and watch movies than to those who examine geography texts. At times, political junkies supplement fiction with reportage on resistance—for example, brave miner defies cruel operator and deflects strip-mine 'dozers. Documentary film footage, muckraking expose, editorial column, and local-color sketch merge. Do we visualize the platonic miner with a French liberty cap, Daniel Boone coonskin cap, decal-adorned plastic hard hat, or a Vietnam vet's combat helmet? For many Americans, fine artists with brush at easel stamped other regions memorably. William Sidney Mount favored Long Island's bucolic haymakers and eel catchers. George Caleb Bingham limned boatmen and stump speakers at the Mississippi-Missouri confluence. Further west, Frederic Remington and Charles Russell charted the West with cowboy portraiture. George Catlin, Carl Bodmer, and Alfred Jacob Miller vivified native life from the Great Plains to the Rockies. Catlin and his peers honored stoic Indians who defied confinement to canvas. By contrast, Thomas Cole reduced humans to miniature scale within Hudson River Valley mystical landscapes. In 1929, Grant Wood transformed an Iowa farm couple into mid-American icons. Finally, Thomas Hart Benton elevated Ozark sorghum makers and string-band musicians to Jefferson's pantheon. Benton's student Jackson Pollock, who had sketched Appalachian miners, helped bury regional art by turning eyes away from hilly contours to the hieroglyphs of psychic tension. Although Appalachian artists, either native-born or attracted to the Southern Highlands, have limned their region, no mountaineer has achieved the fame of a Bingham or Benton as a genre or regional painter. Why? Who among us comments upon the setting in which artistry flourishes and gathers criticism? For too many years, visitors have approached Appalachian art as a series of bright quilts or a set of swirling hoe-down skirts. A lonesome ballad's inner lines seem more familiar to mountain fans than does an Appalachian painting. To whom does "missing" fine art matter: museum curators or students of Appalachia? We have treated Li'l Abner and Jed Clampett as the alpha and omega in mountain imagery. We have devoted at least one session in each of seventeen conferences to archetype and stereotype— surely invented by outsiders to shame us. I suggest that time's a-wastin' in the task of mustering attention to the word image as literal picture, political emblem, and mythic paradigm. I plead with friends to go back ages before Manhattan magazine 10 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �editors asked a staff artist to illustrate a Mary Murfree story. Does anyone know who first drew the Appalachian as a bean-pole-thin figure (taciturn, generous, distant) or as a moonshine-swigging fool (idiotic, treacherous, lusty)? Do we really want our pictorial chronology to open in the 1880s? Rodger Cunningham served colleagues well, and with considerable flair, in scaling the time plateau before Harper's Weekly emerged. Pushing Appalachia's time line back thousands of years, Apples on the Flood opened eyes to long-dim scenes (1987). Who will undertake a picture book to complement Cunningham's gift? Where are the art folios of European depictions of wild men, backwoodsmen, and outlaws before 1492? Who seeks John White's renditions of Celts and Picts as England's primitive ancestors, as well as precursors of Indianized colonists (half-breeds, renegades, squaw-men) on the Allegheny Front (Hulton 1984)? Did not Natty Bumppo, Deerslayer, and Leatherstocking anticipate Boone and Crockett? Does James Fenimore Cooper stand at Denise Giardina's elbow? I do not wish to divert colleagues into art or literary history, or involve them in editing coffee-table anthologies. Mountain imagery has a convoluted pedigree—one that we ignore at the expense of sophistication in endeavors. A parenthetical note adds a bit of glamour to our topic: campus critics chant a mantra, "the politics of representation," much as we call up "image" and "stereotype." Thus, I plead, let's turn the kaleidoscope of Appalachian representation—newspaper cartoon, magazine engraving, post-office mural, cinema poster, television-program publicity kit, oak-splint basket, roadside death memorial. For those to whom pictorial imagery seems digressive from realpolitik, I return to the social dimensions of regionalism. This very meeting attracts participants versed in science, humanities, communications technology, and community action. The first Appalachian Studies Conference organizers, guided by Loyal Jones, deliberately brought together advocates and scholars. Over the years, during which labels have fluctuated, conferees have divided both on degrees of commitment to political position and willingness to highlight cultural expression. Some conference "steadies" have dealt with regional marginality not by an agreed-upon political creed, but rather by an informal consensus to treat culture broadly—dialect, folk art, bluegrass music, individual spirit, pride-in-land, and egalitarianism. Appalachians do not constitute a religious, ethnic, racial, linguistic, occupational, political, or genderbased enclave. What, then, except a cultural construct of emblematic strength such as "Appalachianality" can tie the region's knot? We return, willingly or not, to land-lore connections. Regional boundary and sub-regional contours become persistent conference topics as no Appalachian map satisfies all mountain advocates. We do not fault skilled cartographers who recognize ridge and 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 11 �cove; we ask why they find it difficult to chart cultural material. Over the years, I have seen meeting maps contract and expand, and have welcomed panels on "out-migrants" to Cincinnati. From my perspective, we need also to encompass Appalachians from Cascade Range forests to Southwest sunbelt malls. Harriette Arnow's dollmakers now carve in Calaveras and Clackamas counties. Conference panelists do not call for dismembering the United States, for raising a sovereign flag at Sevierville. Essentially, I do not fear mountain secessionists; I do fear men of power distant from Blacksburg—figures, who in pernicious ways, may influence political culture in Appalachia for decades ahead. Four scarecrows make the point: Slobodan Milosevic, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Rush Limbaugh, Ollie North. If these names seem grotesquely juxtaposed, please substitute others. The scroll unrolls from Tiananmen Square and Hebron mosque to mountain school yard. Why do I relate global tragedy to Appalachian discourse? When in the name of the Serbian Socialist Party, Milosevic employs ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and, in the name of Marxism, Chinese communists destroy temples in Tibet, few Appalachians will seek Belgrade or Beijing for advice. Shall we look to Belfast, Gaza, Kabul, Soweto? Does it matter to the child mowed down that the juggernaut holds a decorative red star, a star of David, a crescent moon, or a silver cross? Perhaps the deepest question we all face is whether Appalachians can to any degree live with dignity both inside and outside mainstream America, while mountaineers across the globe are brutalized. Television did bring into our parlors the boom of Serbian guns pounding Sarajevo. We did see Kurdish families tenting on snow-clad peaks. But TV cameras cannot climb every slope of misery. I commend Anna Tseng's ethnographic book, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen, for its report on an elusive group of hill folk in Kalimantan (Borneo). Indonesian elites denigrate this tribe as "Bukits" (hillbillies) while politicians clear-cut their timber for export to Japan (1994). Anna Tsing might well address our assembly, for she shatters conventional anthropological notions of backwards people frozen in time. Yet the best command of cultural theory by the most advanced scholar does not stem tribal destruction. Kalimantan's Ishmaelites conjure ritual, narrative poetry, and shamanistic vision to ward off dams, oil rigs, and helicopters. Our Bukit cousins survive temporarily in margins between forest and field. Who will mourn their passing in an Indonesia racing to the Future? I am far from the best person to offer alternate politics to conference guests, for I distrust packaged platforms. I must confess that except during the New Deal election when I cast an early vote for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I have a long record of favoring losers. Similarly, in 12 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �hard-headed trade-union forums, I have advanced left-libertarian (Wobbly) visions, usually put down as romantic or antiquarian. In short, I am brother to a long line of mountain cranks, whittlers at the courthouse square, idlers in the country store. In his current study of America's regionalist impulse, Revolt of the Provinces, Robert Dorman treats several interwar (1920-1945) movements proclaiming the Utopian reconstruction of society: Harlem Renaissance, Manhattan elitism, Vanderbilt agrarianism, and rural populism (1993). Strange bedfellows, indeed, when Lewis Mumford, Howard Odum, Constance Rourke, J. Frank Dobie, Marie Sandoz, and Donald Davidson gathered under the tent of "cultural radicalism." Dorman uses this key term to distinguish those idealizing a "rural, frontier, decentralized, producerist, farm and village society—the older America—[from] the modern commercialized, consumerist, and mechanized mass society of the metropolis" (1993, xi-xii). Appalachians seldom appear in Dorman's book, yet "cultural radicalism" serves to describe much of the philosophy inherent in our assembly. We know that which we oppose. We do not like outsiders in Pulitzer Prize-winning plays or daily comic strips who mock speech, deplore taste, or denigrate belief. Moving from statements of opposition, we challenge those who judge us by scrutinizing their credentials. Who grants them power? Why do they spend our tax dollars to reject our artistry? Because radical has become an American pejorative, we seek alternative language to mask anger. With cultural politics and its twins, we blur direction and neutralize position. We divert attention from recognized labels (such as liberal, socialist, progressive, conservative, rightwinger, fundamentalist) to "The Politics of Culture," at its heart, an academic pursuit. Ironically, this conference's formal theme marks failure by each main political party to write a platform with planks on vernacular art, bed-rock demographic diversity, or cultural equity. Although President Clinton has appointed new chiefs at the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, dedicated individuals within these agencies still struggle to devise programs that might alter dominant cultural strategies. Further I ask, will the president's faith in global competition and an information-highway-bound work force help castaway mountain folk, or, indeed, any dwellers stranded in American shoals? I cast no stones in this gathering. Appalachians do associate as environmentalists and preservationists—causes which engage my energies. Mary Hufford's Conserving Culture gathers essays to describe how public servants report gains and losses in deflecting development, constructing "heritage corridors," or challenging tourism's benefits 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 13 �(1994). Citizens who have suffered political slings know the perils in integrating concern for the snail darter with the right of mountain basket makers to sell their wares profitably. Here, I find exemplars of the presentation of regional issues, naming a few or noting their achievements. I salute John Sayles for the film Matewan (1987). I wept at the belief embedded in his artistry. Seen by me only in television moments, the camouflage-clad miners (including mothers, wives, sisters, daughters) who held Pittston at bay reaffirm my faith in trade unionism. Julia Ardery, approaching Edgar Tolson, Kentucky wood carver and folk artist, demonstrates that fresh inquiry can bring edge to tools long dulled by careless use (1995). Bob Cantwell, another outsider, stretches the elegant language of cultural criticism to describe the Smithsonian's folk festival, a stage upon which Appalachians and their cousins turn American identity inside out (1993). Among others, David Whisnant and I have parsed political culture, word and deed, in all its permutations. Whisnant's All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region helped transform a sub-title into an Appalachian guide (1983). His message makes sense—turn inward with critical insight and outward to forge fresh alliances. We see the breadth of such double vision in the studies Steve Fisher has gathered for Fighting Back in Appalachia. His essayists document a dance of dominance and resistance in the Southern Highlands (1993). The figures who emerge from this book view themselves alternately as patriots or guerrillas. Each contributor also points ahead to continued conflict over strategies (neo-populism or class-based politics), agents (workers or intellectuals), and discourse (abstract or plain). We enjoy crediting companions, students, and mentors as we take pleasure in exchanging conversion stories. Strangers seek words to measure their attraction to the mountains. Youngsters within the region search for similar words to describe their flowering of consciousness. At some mysterious point in personal growth, one finds the connection of local dialect to school-board policy, or recognizes the tension between a neighbor's safety and a land developer's clout. We can judge political culture as a verbal pennant by its bearing at the point where personal knowledge and action converge. Bluntly put, does our conference theme, "The Politics of Culture," encourage or displace engagement? Do we expect this catch phrase to trumpet a specific political program shifting power from the Potomac to the New River? Some activists charge that attention to cultural expression leads to political exhaustion. I know of no easy way to merge the roles of culture explicators and political activists, or the styles of those who come together at academic gatherings with those beyond campus walls. Yet, this conference's existence demands conversation at the barriers. 14 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Perhaps attention to a particular problem can insure vitality in future gatherings. In meetings to come, let us explore the Appalachianization of America. I do not suggest that this catch phrase connotes only a moonscape of eroded land and stranded people—stump farmers at Puget Sound, flood refugees at the Mississippi, homeless/workless souls at chained factory gates in countless hamlets. Cannot mountain modes of intertwined self-reliance and sharing serve as national templates? I return to pictures on the cognitive screen of Twin Peaks' flanks as well as those in Big Stone Gap, Hiwassee, Red Jacket, and Laurel Bloomery. To close: although my studies occupy old-fashioned space, I confess an occasional stroll down deconstruction's path. With such liberty, it seems proper to question our conference rubric. Am I the only one present who finds 'The Politics of Culture" semantically unstable? Do its dual elements combine easily? Does it convey clear meaning? Many Americans use politics to signal campaign hoopla, within-theBeltway intrigue, or White House broken promises. Others hear politics as naming a mansion that holds a "Do Not Enter" sign. Culture, too, fares poorly, calling up long-hair music, formless poetry, and abstract art, as well as exclusionary prestige. Both words rumble dissonantly. Although social scientists try to rescue their respective guides from debasement, the gulf remains deep between the language of town and gown. Here, one falls back upon anecdotal rather than quantitative data. I do not sense that citizens (other than at professional meetings) join culture to politics in everyday speech. I doubt that wide currency will validate our usage. In assessing the rubric's future, we shall have to look at other earcatching coinages such as Partners for Peace to deny or delay NATO membership to former Soviet captive nations, and sustainable development to suggest compatibility between extractive industry, economic growth, corporate greed, and regard for the earth's finite capacity. The phrase 'The Politics of Culture" does not reach the status of a recognized oxymoron, yet it whispers ambiguity. Despite concern for problems in speech and print usage, a term may yet emerge to describe the state's multiple power-granting and powerdenying drives that encircle ordinary lives. New words, in time, do fill social vacuums. Metaphorically, we need to open a tool box for cross-cut hand saws and honed chisels that march across the grain of soft and hard woods, that aid the mechanic in cutting through knots and pitch pockets. Let's not put our conference on hold until the right blades appear at the local hardware store, or until the final word hitches a ride on the next space ship. Ultimately, 'The Politics of Culture," as a rubric, will dissatisfy leftist partisans for obscuring direct action. Similarly, rightists will reject the phrase for its threat to "family values" and other verities. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 15 �No single formula can, or should, promise all Americans access to one shining path. With the best tools at hand, with or without adequate vocabularies, and conscious of danger, some Appalachians will demystify their cultural constructs by placing them on the widest bench of social force, while others will attend these same expressive forms with minute details of craft. Together, mountain artisans of large and small hand must build constant dialogue on imagery, power, and community. Our meeting participants—in order to mark and hold the core of Appalachian identity—shape seals and grails. We use such jeweled ornaments to name bunkers in America's political jungle, to find coalition partners, or to frame formulas for ending poverty or insuring peace. We seek respect for diversity, clarity in expression, and cheer in companionship. Whether crafting a plain wooden seal or a decorated silver grail, we need to step away from work-shop or tool-bench. We need to stake out a vantage point on these mountains, verdant or denuded, from which to see as far as Port-au-Prince and Phnom Penh, Sarajevo and San Francisco. Works Cited Ardery, Julia. 1995. Edgar Tolson, Woodcarver. Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky. Cantwell, Robert. 1993. Ethnomimesis: Folklife and the Representation of Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Cunningham, Rodger. 1987. Apples on the Flood; The Southern Mountain Experience. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Dorman, Robert. 1993. Revolt of the Provinces: The Regionalist Movement in America, 1920-1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Fisher, Stephen. 1993. Fighting Back in Appalachia: Traditions of Resistance and Change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Green, Archie. 1972. Only a Miner: Studies in Recorded Coal-Mining Songs. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Hufford, Mary. 1994. Conserving Culture: A New Discourse on Heritage. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Hulton, Paul. 1984. America 1585: The Complete Drawings of John White. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Mason, Bobbie Ann. 1993. "Recycling Kentucky." New Yorker 1 November: 50-62. 16 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Norman, Gurney. 1993. "This Side of the Mountain: The Kentucky Cycle." Appalachian Heritage 21(Winter): 3-5. Sayles, John. 1987. Matewan. Film, 132 min. Cinecom Intl. Released on video 1988, VHS/Beta, Warner Home Video, Inc. Tsing, Anna. 1994. In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Outof-the-Way Place. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Whisnant, David. 1983. All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Williamson, Jerry. Forthcoming. Hillbillyland: What the Movies Did to the Mountains and What the Mountains Did to the Movies. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Archie Green, who lives in San Francisco, is a retired professor of English and folklore at the University of Texas, Austin, and the author of Only a Miner: Studies in Recorded Coal-Mining Songs and Wobblies, Pile Butts, and Other Heroes: Laborlore Explorations. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 17 �Out in the Mountains: Exploring Lesbian and Gay Lives Kate Black and Marc A. Rhorer This research focuses on the lives of gays and lesbians and their experiences growing up in the mountains. The idea for this project began when Marc wanted to do a research paper on lesbians and gays in Appalachia and asked Kate, curator of the University of Kentucky Appalachian Collection, about prior research on the subject. Kate said, There isn't anything." A few months later, while returning from the 1993 Appalachian Studies conference, we decided to present something about lesbians and gays at the 1994 conference. Though neither one of us is from the mountains, we both grew up in the rural South. Being gay and lesbian, we both knew other lesbians and gays in Lexington who grew up in the mountains. We hope that this exploratory work-inprogress will stimulate other researchers to include gays and lesbians in the conversation of Appalachian Studies. We talked with five lesbians and four gay men from Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, East Tennessee, and Western North Carolina ranging in ages from twenty to forty-five, in focused interviews. Only one of the interviewees continues to live in the mountains; the other eight live in Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky. All are white. We plan to interview others who have remained in the mountains. Participants were asked to allow their recorded interviews to become part of the oral history collection at the University of Kentucky, and most agreed. Before the interviews, we agreed on areas to explore: coming out experiences, homophobia, AIDS-phobia, and community building. Using a grounded research approach, an inductive method, we found several common themes in the rich stories of the participants: feelings of isolation, the 18 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �importance of community, fears from inside and outside the closet, various forms of oppression and discrimination, and identity. Feelings of Isolation When we asked people to talk about the differences between being gay in the mountains and in urban areas, every interviewee expressed feelings of isolation in the mountains. While growing up, participants said, they had no one to turn to for guidance, support, and information when they began realizing they were homosexual. People felt there were no others with same-sex attractions, even to the extreme that some did not know gays or lesbians existed. When some participants mentioned the possibility of moving back to the mountains, they noted that the most difficult part would be coping with the isolation from other gays and lesbians. One interviewee made contacts in Lexington before moving back home to insure some access to the gay community. Among a few participants there was a sense that mass-communication technology (particularly cable/satellite television) has the potential to reduce feelings of isolation by providing young lesbians and gays in the mountains access to non-heterosexist images. The interviewees expressed feelings of isolation in a variety of ways. A lesbian put on academic probation her first year at Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky, said, "A lot of the problem was I discovered the gay community. I never knew one existed. It was unbelievable! Every other person was gay" (5 1993). A gay man, speaking of his high school friends whom he now knows are gay, said, "At the time I thought they were people I got along well with, but I didn't realize why . . . I didn't know people who were gay" (7 1993). One of the interviewees often gives talks on homophobia at Kentucky colleges. Once when she was at Morehead State, a young man came up to her afterwards and asked, "How old did you say you were?" She answered, "Forty-two." Then he said, "You're the same age as my Mama. I didn't know there were any gay or lesbian people as old as my mama!" (2 1993). Another lesbian said, "The saddest part to me about growing up in the mountains as a gay person is that. . . you end up feeling like an outsider; you've got no one to talk to about these strange feelings you have and you have to end up like lots of young people growing up gay, being isolated, and you think about killing yourself 'cause you're so strange" (6 1993). One lesbian who came out to herself when she was thirteen found out the definition of lesbian when she "went to the public library and looked up 'homosexuality'... . There was absolutely no one to talk to" (5 1993). One young gay man explained, 'To be gay in Clay City [Kentucky], it's hard" but it is harder out in the county where there isn't access to cable TV. He said, "MTV is preaching 'Free Your Mind' [but] your mind is not going to be free if you don't live inside the city limits" (9 1993). 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 19 �Finding a Community This sense of isolation greatly diminished when people moved from the mountains to the city because in the urban setting they could meet and be with other gays and lesbians. While finding a community of other gays and lesbians was crucial, ironically, an increased feeling of anonymity in the city was equally important. Anonymity, which many could not obtain at home, allowed greater freedom from the scrutiny of those who might condemn them; most people expressed a much greater sense of comfort about being out in the city. In contrast, at home people felt as if they were under surveillance and subjects of the gossip networks, even after moving away to the city. However, several people mentioned a positive aspect of the tightly-knit nature of rural community: if a person came from an established family lineage in the mountains, she or he was less likely to be harassed for being lesbian or gay. While discussing the differences between being gay in the mountains and in Lexington, one gay man said, "When you move to a bigger city, your reputation doesn't necessarily have that much weight. . . ." (3 1994). A lesbian summed it up this way: "Appalachian queers migrate out of there . .. the few that do live there are usually not totally rejected by the family but rejected by the community. They'll be real kind [to your face] but still say stuff behind your back" (5 1993). A woman who came out in the late 1960s and came often to the gay bar in Lexington said, "You had community [at The Bar], which gave you family, family of choice" (6 1993). A gay man made a similar assessment about his life in Lexington two decades later: "Living here, there's a lot more opportunities . . . to meet those of your kind—a lover, a boyfriend, a fuck buddy. ... to live in Clay City, I wouldn't want to do that. . . it's just not open enough" (9 1993). One interviewee sees himself as both insider and outsider, a perspective from which he can examine the tension between the two. When he was eight he and his mother moved back to her family's community after years of living in Ohio. He described both his parents as coming from old Eastern Kentucky families. He said, "If someone comes in from the outside—straight or gay—it doesn't make any difference. They are going to have a very difficult time fitting into the community. If, however, they are from this long lineage, they will find it much easier to be who they are, regardless if they're gay or straight" (3 1994). All the interviewees were asked to talk about how they found other lesbians and gays, either in the mountains or in their city homes. We found a variety of creative responses: "You go to the gym, you find gym rats" (6 1993). "[I]t takes one to know one" (9 1993). "In Boone [North Carolina], there was a lesbian softball league. It wasn't an official lesbian softball league, it just happened that most people on it were probably lesbian. . . . There was a student group. A lot of people would go 20 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �to a regional gay bar.. . . Recently, I know of people in Boone who get on e-mail and try to meet people that way" (7 1993). "Gaydar" (2 1993).1 Finally, several people mentioned being invited to lesbian and gay parties, especially in mountain college towns. Identity and Community We believe that identity and community are intricately linked. Since they can sometimes be in opposition, we were curious about how people reconciled this. For instance, we wondered if people identified themselves as both gay and Appalachian. While everyone readily identified themselves as gay or lesbian, we found that many people seemed to avoid directly addressing their Appalachian identities. In addition, some of the interviewees had not resolved their sense of conflict over being from the mountains. One man referred to his "trapped" life in the mountains, equating living in the mountains with cultural isolation: "If I was trapped in Clay City, I would be myself, just like I was when I was trapped there. . . . Information and exposure to different cultures and different people is what really changes minds.. . . That's what causes accents, when people are trapped up in the mountains" (9 1993). The youngest of the interviewees, who is twenty, proudly said, "People are surprised when they find out where I'm from. . . . [My friends] say, 'I can't believe you turned out the way you did'" (8 1993). The one participant who has continued to live in Eastern Kentucky readily identified herself as Appalachian: "It's home, this is where the roots are" (6 1993). Another lesbian, describing what being Appalachian means to her, said, "It's the family, the heritage" (5 1993). One man, who used to live in Boone, expressed conflict over wanting to move back to the mountains but was not sure it is possible for him. Yet, in Boone, he feels a certain freedom not found in Lexington. "I feel sometimes people [in Boone] know me more as a person than as a gay person" (7 1993). Facing Fears Since all the interviewees expressed an overwhelmingly greater sense of freedom and ability to be out in the city, we wanted to know how the dimensions of the "closet" change with a move to the city. We asked people to talk about what was scary or fearful about being out at home versus being out in the city. Though fear of being out was experienced in the city, the participants all noted that the situation was more hostile in the mountains for gays and lesbians. Males experienced much more physical aggression at home and seemed to have a limited definition of the term "fear," equating it with the threat of physical violence. We also found that males endured much verbal taunting in junior high and high school. Males and females both told stories of physical violence and 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 21 �verbal taunting directed toward gay males in the mountains. For females fear included psychological as well as physical violence. Women seemed to sustain more social ostracism (i.e., from family, friends, and church) and/or were forced into psychiatric care for a "cure." None of the men reported being sent to a therapist. Men were tormented because those around them suspected they were gay, while women were more likely to face threatening conditions if they were caught being sexual with a woman. However, one interviewee contradicted this representation when she told of local police cruising places where teenagers parked. She said when she was caught making out with her girlfriend, the police would generally laugh and tell them to go home, but when her gay male friends were caught, they were likely to be brutalized. When asked about fear, a man said, "I've been scared that people would find out. I've been scared that if people knew I was gay, I would lose my job, people would say something to me, that I wouldn't have any recourse, wouldn't have any place to go." He went on to say how he was scared to kiss his lover good-bye when he dropped him off for work. Also, he feared "they'd hear my partner and I and they would come and bust down the doors and get us," a fear grounded in the North Carolina sodomy law (7 1993). Another gay man said, "I've heard stories of incredible physical violence against [gay] people." Then he told the story of a man in Breathitt County, Kentucky, who was killed and dismembered by local people because he was thought to be gay (3 1993). A lesbian said that one of her gay male friends was stabbed twenty-seven times while shopping in a country store in West Virginia, solely because he was homosexual. Several males noted they were persistently taunted with words like "fag" and "sissy" throughout their adolescent schooling. A lesbian, who left her truck overnight at a body shop, said, 'While it was there someone painted on the tailgate [near the pink triangle and rainbow decals] 'die fag5 and slashed the two back tires." She explained that the perpetrator probably thought the truck was owned by a man because of the reference to "fag" (4 1994). While describing the social ostracism she experienced, one lesbian said, "When I was in the eighth grade .. . because I came out to a couple of my friends . . . that proceeded to get me ostracized from overnight parties and church. . . ." (4 1994). One of the participants had a relationship during high school that was discovered by her girlfriend's parents. The parents came to a motel room where the two young women were staying for a softball tournament and pulled their daughter out of the room at 4:00 A.M. Another lesbian, who had a relationship with her teacher at Berea College, said "It turned out to be pretty devastating for both of us. She lost her job over it. I became this crisis point in my family. They decided I needed psychiatric help." After Berea College 22 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �officials exposed her to her parents, she was caught by her mother at her lover's house at 1:00 A.M. She ended with: "Here was this woman corrupting some poor little Appalachian girl who obviously didn't know what she was doing." At this point Kate and the interviewee started giggling and Kate said, "Yeah, you're supposed to be making brooms." Then she finished, "yeah, or spoon bread at the Tavern!" (6 1993). Levels of Discrimination Gays and lesbians face discrimination both in the mountains and in the city. We defined "discrimination" as the public/civil face of homophobia, as did interviewees. Not surprisingly, gays and lesbians who work with children or young adults appear very susceptible to discrimination. We heard the story of two teachers in the mountains who were fired because they were rumored to be homosexual. One participant, who is out in most parts of her life, says she would never come out at her job working with school children in Eastern Kentucky because she "would be fired in a heartbeat" (5 1993). Many people expressed fear of being out at their jobs in the city, even when they did not work with children, because they were afraid of being fired or passed over for raises or promotions. Two of the participants told stories about gay bars that involved discrimination or the threat of it. These incidents gain even more importance because bars as public meeting places are historically central to the gay and lesbian community. One woman told of police surveillance behind The Bar in Lexington to observe those who went in and out. A man spoke about a gay bar owner in Huntingdon, West Virginia who did not want to be associated with anything "political," in this case having an AIDS literature table in his bar. The interviewee said the bar owner felt too vulnerable to actions of the local authorities and, therefore, did not want to do anything to call attention to his bar or his clientele. A gay man told the story of how a lesbian high school teacher in North Carolina lost her job. One of her students believed the teacher was a lesbian and "prayed for her" publicly at church. She was fired "on the pretext that she cussed in class . . . but it was well known that it was because she was a lesbian" (7 1993). Recently in Lexington, a woman noted, "I can't prove anything from this, but I would swear I'm being discriminated against at my job. After I'd been working there for three months, one of the people who was in middle management took me into his office and told me that I shouldn't be working there because of my sexual orientation and that there was no reason for me to come back . . . apparently he forgot to tell anyone else this and the next time my shift rolled around I got a call asking me where I was. So I went in, didn't say anything about it, and I've been working there ever since" (4 1994). Several of the interviewees told stories of discrimination at public 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association - 23 �meeting places. In Boone in the late 1980s, a group of gays who were not students wanted to start an off-campus gay organization and meeting place. Bomb and death threats were made. The police provided protection and "were pretty good about dealing with i t . . . people would have to come in around the police when these meetings first went on" (7 1993). A lesbian who went frequently to the gay bar in Lexington during the early 1970s said, "it was frightening, going to The Bar. It was rough, tough. Police cars parked out back. People said, 'don't drive your car, they're taking down license plate numbers,' so there was all that harassment. So coming to the bar was not only an act of celebration, but an act of defiance" (6 1993). AIDS-phobia We also asked people to talk about AIDS. We included AIDS-phobia in the discussions about various forms of homophobia, since the two have been viciously linked ever since the early days of the epidemic when AIDS was called GRID—Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. Surprisingly, one of the gay men interviewed did not know anyone who is HIV positive or has AIDS. Everyone acknowledged that AIDS-phobia exists, but did not seem to think it was more rampant one place or the other, except for one man who said he'd experienced more AIDS-phobia in Lexington—by both the straight and gay community—than in the mountains. He correlated AIDS-phobia with a higher HIV incidence in Lexington. Two people said that because they stick closely to the lesbian and gay community, or are outspoken advocates for the lesbian/gay community and for people with AIDS, they are not as likely to hear AIDS-phobic remarks and discussions. When asked if she heard AIDS-phobic statements at home, one woman said, "More than anything else. More than homophobia, more than racist things . . . it's not really [expressed] as trashing people with AIDS, it is just terror that they're gonna get it" (5 1993). There were a few who said they had experienced people relating AIDS directly with homosexuality. One man noted that when he told his grandmother he was gay, the first thing she said was, "You're gonna get AIDS!" He noted that she is an intelligent, politically aware woman, yet she immediately connected being gay with AIDS (8 1993). A lesbian said that when she comes out to people, they often respond with "Aren't you afraid of AIDS?" This same woman, who works at an urban YMCA, stated employees must take an AIDS awareness class. The Y*s policy is to notify the supervisor if an HIV positive person is in a class or program. This information is passed up the ladder to the executive director. The interviewee pointed out to her co-workers at a post-class discussion that no one needed to know this information. The purpose of the AIDS awareness course was to treat anyone who is injured as if they were infected to 24 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �prevent infecting anyone else. "[I] was . . . knocked down by everyone else in the room, saying that it didn't matter, they [YMCA employees] deserve to know because they work with these children and adults and if they were infected they [YMCA employees] were going to treat them differently," she said (4 1994). Internalizing Homophobia Like racism, homophobia is not only perpetrated by those who dominate, but is also internalized by those who are dominated. The internalized homophobia was sometimes acted out in religious proselytizing. One of our participants noted she knew a lesbian couple and used the Bible to try to convince them that their sexuality was a sin, prior to her own coming out in high school. Organized religion played an important part in most of the interviewees' lives—socially, morally, and spiritually. We found that many had deep inner struggles over their homosexuality, rooted in religious notions of sin and guilt. Two of the lesbians, however, resisted the oppression and repression of the church by questioning and railing against it. One woman, at a young age, was able to transform her questioning into a belief in social justice. For most of the interviewees, the extreme isolation contributed to their internalized homophobia. Many spoke movingly of the need to help lesbian and gay young people in the mountains know they are not abnormal or alone. Many suggested lesbian and gay visibility as a partial solution to this problem. Here are some of the responses of the interviewees about these internalized conflicts: "[T]he church was the only social outlet in the town. So I wasn't going to church so much for religious/spiritual reasons as I was for social reasons. In fact, I learned quite early to keep my mouth shut when discussing the Bible and other issues because I asked too many questions that the answer was always 'pray about it and you'll see the truth'" (4 1994). "I really struggled with religion and going to hell . . . I really did not want to be gay. I've had a hard time accepting it. ... probably the last five years it has gotten easy" (5 1993). A gay man, one of the youngest interviewees, went to Mass every day when he was thirteen and prayed, "Why do I have to be different? Why can't I be like everyone else?" He concluded, "I would hate for another generation of gay people to have to grow up and feel alienated, to feel like they are outcasts. . . . I consider myself, in a way, one of the lucky people who have finally been able to draw themselves into another community and find other people like themselves, so that they don't end up being drug addicts, or jumping off a bridge, or hanging themselves just because they have no role models, have no other friends that they can come out to. ... They need someone to show them that they're OK, that they're not bad, that they're not going to hell " (9 1993). 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 25 �Some Last Words Marc A. Rhorer: We have examined various aspects of the lives of gays and lesbians from the mountains. All of our participants addressed issues that revealed difficulties related to growing up homosexual in Appalachia. There are several areas which need further attention, specifically class differences and race. The differences in educational backgrounds of participants' families deserves further exploration. A few interviewees noted that their families were more racist than homophobic. All of those who participated in this project have exhibited courage in many aspects of their lives. They have overcome a multitude of obstacles in their paths and have emerged to lead positive lives that are a reflection of their true selves. Though some participants were reluctant to identify themselves as Appalachian, they still expressed a sense of compassion for the gay and lesbian youth who inhabit the region. This expression of humanity came at the close of our interviews when we asked if there was any issue we had not covered that they would like to speak about. In some way, perhaps the sincerity of these people's stories can pave the way for a better understanding of what it is like to grow up gay or lesbian in the mountains, and foster the acceptance of future generations. Kate Black: Several gaps and some problems emerged from our research methods. For example, class differences and perspectives appear in the interviews, yet we did not really probe our interviewees with questions about class. We did not address the subject of gender with the interviewees, but we did extract gender differences from the material. Several people brought up the categories of "butch" and "fern" for lesbians and "butch" and "queen" for gay men and these need to be explored further. For example, one gay man said, "People [he means gay men] in rural areas of Kentucky and North Carolina tend to be queenier. It is like they try to mesh with the stereotype of gay people more than people in larger cities who feel free to emulate other things" (7 1993). The statement possibly provides a window into class and gender differences, roles (both chosen and prescribed), internalized homophobia, varying notions about power and resistance, and, maybe, rural and urban dissonance. Even with the additional voluminous work that this research requires, begs really, the stories of these lesbians and gay men growing up in Appalachia are important for their own sake. Each person we interviewed, in his or her own way, contributes to the spirit conveyed by that favorite Queer Nation chant, "We're here, we're queer, we're fabulous, get used to it." 26 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Finally for me as a lesbian researcher, doing this work was often very emotional and, at times, painful. After all, the struggles of the lesbian and gay participants were not really any different from my own. But there was another potent theme in all the stories: desire. Together, the pain and the desire seemed to produce this incredible resistance to the ever-lurking and pressing homophobia and heterosexism. I think I finally understand, in a very rooted way, Foucault's statement, "Where there is power, there is resistance." Note 1 Ed. Note: "Gaydar" is a "sixth sense" many gay people have developed and is a pun on the word "radar." Interviews Cited 1. 1993. Female, twenty-eight years old. Interview with authors. Lexington, Ky., 16 December. 2. 1993. Female, forty-five years old. Interview with authors. Lexington, Ky., 27 October. 3. 1994. Male, thirty-seven years old. Interview with authors. Lexington, Ky., 23 January. 4. 1994. Female, twenty-one years old. Interview with authors. Lexington, Ky., 15 February. 5. 1993. Female, twenty-eight years old. Interview with authors. Lexington, Ky., 12 August. 6. 1993. Female, forty-three years old. Interview with authors. Lexington, Ky., 19 October. 7. 1993. Male, twenty-eight years old. Interview with authors. Lexington, Ky., 15 December. 8. 1993. Male, twenty years old. Interview with authors. Lexington, Ky., 10 December. 9. 1993. Male, twenty-three years old. Interview with authors. Lexington, Ky., 14 September. Kate Black is a graduate student of sociology and the curator of the Appalachian 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 27 �Collection at the University of Kentucky Library. Marc A. Rhorer is a graduate student of sociology and an academic advisor in the College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. 28 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �"You've Got to Get the Music in Your Feet:" Old-Time Dancing in African American and European American Communities in Southwest Virginia Susan Eike Spalding Old-time square dancing and footwork dancing, variously known as flatfooting or clogging, have, since Cecil Sharp's visit to the Central Appalachian region, been perceived as purely Anglo-Saxon dance forms. However, Sharp himself describes movement and musical attributes with African sources, such as the backbeat, but never mentions African American Appalachians performing the music or dancing (Cantwell 1984, 130-131). Bascom Lamar Lunsford collected music and probably observed dancing among African Americans in the Asheville, North Carolina area, but never presented African American performers at his Asheville Dance and Folk Festival (Whisnant 1979-80). In living memory old-time dancing has, at least in Southwest Virginia, been popular among both African Americans and European Americans. Presently, oldtime dancing is a regular entertainment in only a few communities of each ethnic group. This paper considers factors contributing to the continuity of the square dance in one European American square-dance community in Fancy Gap, Virginia, and one African American square-dance commu1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 29 �nity outside of Martinsville, Virginia. I use the term "dance community" to refer to people drawn together for the dancing. The group in each case is interest-based rather than geographically-based. Though most dancers live near each other, all members of the geographical community are not involved, and some dancers come from outside the immediate area.1 Aside from their ethnicity, the two communities, which are only about an hour's drive apart, are demographically similar, being primarily composed of working individuals with an attachment to the land and to the agrarian lifestyle in which they grew up. Many work in furniture or textile factories, in sawmills, or in small businesses, and keep a small farm or large garden on the side. As the city of Martinsville has grown, the rural areas surrounding it have become more suburbanized. Near Fancy Gap several large manufacturing towns such as Fries and Galax provided entertainment during the first half of the century, but in recent years many plants have closed and the towns have become smaller, leaving the area more rural. In both cases, old-time dancing grows out of the local neighborhood and involves a network of interlocking families. In looking at the dancing of these two communities, the stylistic and structural similarities suggest adherence to cultural values that cross ethnic lines. In fact, it would be easy to identify many of Loyal Jones's Appalachian values embodied in the dancing of both communities (1973).2 The differences in style and structure suggest two variations on regional culture, one African American and one European American. In the European American community of Fancy Gap, square dancing has become increasingly popular during the last quarter century, and now weekly dances draw as many as three hundred people of all ages. In an African American community near Martinsville, the form remains a passion for a small group, but fewer and fewer have participated so that today it exists as an occasional, spontaneous, home- and family-based recreation. Examination of the reasons for these changes has implications for the study of the continuity and evolution of traditional cultural expression in general, and Appalachian traditions in particular. The line of analysis presented here moves from specific features of the dancing in each community to its immediate context, and finally to the influence of national trends upon local choices. My work is predicated upon the concept that in movement, particularly structured movement such as dance, a group enacts beliefs about itself. This concept is related to Allen Batteau's assertion that "the logic of Appalachian culture is a logic of underlying structures, or paradigms. These structures are shared understandings, embodied in social arrangements" (Batteau, 1979-80, 18). Batteau refers to large organizational 30 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �structures such as kinship networks and neighborhoods. One might also look at square dancing as a micro-social arrangement because it is an organizational structure in which a group of people chooses ways to define itself in space and to establish relations among its members. Square dancing can be seen as enacting a community's idealized vision of its structure, what the role of the individual should be within that community, and how the community should relate to the individual. Analysis of the movement is the core of this examination. In the description which follows, it becomes apparent that in Martinsville the dance seems to exist to support the individual, while in Fancy Gap the individual seems to dance in order to reinforce the community. These facts may impact upon the contracting of the former and the growth of the latter dance community. The Dancing Described3 As it appears today, old-time dancing has developed over the course of three centuries, as dancers have made choices from available movement vocabularies—European, African, and Native American—and have included elements of popular dance forms such as the Charleston (Spalding 1993). The dancing of both African Americans and European Americans shares formal and stylistic elements, with some distinctive variations, and may have evolved in part through mutual influence (Szwed and Marks 1988). At both Fancy Gap and Martinsville, old-time square dancing consists of a circle for any number of couples (Johnson and Spalding 1990; Lornell 1979). The middle portion of the dance incorporates patterns for two couples dancing together. For each community, the center of the circle is very important, but in different ways. Improvisational footwork, which in both cases is intimately connected with the music, continues throughout the square dance. The style is similar: dancers keep their feet very close to the floor, close together and directly under the body, with minimal leg gestures. The dancer is reserved, keeping the torso almost vertical with no visible movement of shoulders, and letting the arms swing easily by the sides. Knees bend and stretch resiliently on every beat.4 In Martinsville's African American square dance, dancers maintain the shape of the circle throughout, with individual solos and interaction of couples and sets of four taking place in the center.5 The dancers in the circle pat their hands and move their feet continuously while others dance in the center. The most important part of the dance is the solo in the center, called "Choose Your Partner," after which the soloist picks someone of the opposite sex to dance with in the center of the circle. The partner swing lasts as much as thirty-two counts, and is almost equal in intensity to the "Choose Your Partner" solo. Each square dance includes 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 31 �the same two-couple set, "Change Partners," in which men and women take hands and pass around each other in a figure eight, and then swing the opposite partner. In the European American square-dance community of Fancy Gap, after the initial circle, all couples join in sets of four for the "main dance," often diving into the center of the circle to find others to dance with. They sacrifice the shape of the circle for maximum interaction. They choose different partners for almost every one of the eight square dances in an evening. The partner swing, a fluid transitional four-count movement, leads from the end of one four-person pattern into the beginning of the next. The four-person pattern is the most important part of the dance, the main dance. Several are performed in an evening, but only once during each square dance, repeated many times, each time with a new couple. "Georgia Alabam," similar to Martinsville's "Change Partners," is the favorite. Others include "Chase the Squirrel," "Lady Round the Lady," and 'The Golden Gate." The end of the square dance is characterized by two or more large group patterns. For example, the entire group may parade down the floor in ranks of two, four, and eight, weave around each other in snakelike patterns, or loop around the space in giant figure eights, single file or with a partner. Why has the Fancy Gap dance community grown while the Martinsville dance community has diminished, despite demographic similarities and shared stylistic and structural elements in the dancing?6 To attribute the difference strictly to social and economic disparities due to ethnicity is too facile. I believe that the answer lies in part in characteristics of both the dancing and the dance event,7 in the strength of the supporting institution, and in the expectations of the communities influenced by regional and national trends. My examination is informed by the work of two sociologists: Wendy Griswold and Michael Schudson. Schudson in particular offers a scheme for determining the potency of a cultural object—in this case, old-time square dancing—examining retrievability, institutional retention, resonance, rhetorical force, and resolution.8 Martinsville In the African American community near Martinsville, square dancing has been retrievable in homes within an interlocking network of families. Now one family in particular—headed by fiddler Leonard Bowles and his wife, dancer Naomi Bowles—serves as the retaining institution and carries the tradition. Those who square dance grew up in the country. Some continue to live outside of town on small farms, although the city has grown to the point that its boundaries almost touch the Bowles's property. The community had its own lodge halls and club 32 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �houses, and occasionally held square dances in those locations, but this never became a regular practice. The single exception was Martinsville's Black Fiddler's Convention, hosted annually by Doctor Dana Baldwin from 1928 to 1945, which included old-time dancing (Virginia Traditions 1978). By contrast, three hours west of Martinsville, in the Coalfields of Southwest Virginia, square dancing was regularly held in African American schools as recently as the 1940s (Kincaid and Kincaidl992). This was not the case in the Martinsville area or in the Blue Ridge where square dancing and old-time music have continued to be homeand family-based entertainment in African American communities (Lewis and O'Donnell 1990, 178). Though economic disparity may play a role in this circumstance, I feel that the definition of square dancing as a private, family, and community-centered event also has an impact. According to Leonard Bowles, square dancing in the home was "in full bloom" in the 1960s. With the assistance of the Blue Ridge Institute, members of their dance community performed at the National Folklife Festival and elsewhere in the late 1970s, but in recent years square dancing has become rarer, occurring today only at occasional family gettogethers (Bowles and Bowles 1992). The rhetorical force which draws people back to the dancing results from two things: the footwork, of which Naomi Bowles says, "You can feel the music within your feet" (Bowles and Bowles 1992), and the solo in the center of the circle, called "Choose Your Partner," which serves as competition with other dancers in terms of skill, and also as display to attract a partner of the opposite sex. Leonard Bowles points to the solo in the center as the most distinctive feature of this square dance, making it "altogether different" from European American square dancing. The circle contains and witnesses both individual virtuosity and partner interaction. The resolution of the dancing is the idealized social arrangement which establishes community support of the individual and the couple. As is the case throughout Southwest Virginia, many young people have moved away from the community and established families and professional lives. When they come home, they frequently initiate dancing with its individual footwork in the circle, and the Bowles's grown son instructs his students in square dancing in the school where he teaches. However, because young adults are not a large part of the dance community, the construction of the couple within the supportive community circle no longer has the importance it once did. For the Martinsville dance community, old-time square dancing resonates with the tradition of cooperation and individuality which pervades the agrarian lifestyle of the region as described by Ron Eller (1982). Discussion of the dancing is always surrounded by descriptions of older ways of farming and communal work such as quilting and corn- 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 33 �shucking. Into the 1940s, square dances here served the function of rent parties (though they were not so-called) with a different family claiming each weekend and charging money for refreshments as a way of supplementing income. The community thus supported the couple through the dance event as well as in the dance itself. The dance event no longer provides the opportunity for community material support of individual families, but its structure carries some of the same individual-community interaction. Improvisational footwork is encouraged and said to be important to good dancing, but it must never disrupt the rhythm and interaction of the whole group. Even the virtuoso solo must not "run on too long," according to caller Ernest Brooks. He describes the importance of everyone working cooperatively together for the success of the dance (Brooks 1992). Community support for the individual and the individual's responsibility to the community resonate with other aspects of their traditions. However, the dancing's rural cooperative heritage may have resulted in a certain negative resonance, causing the square dance to wane, since many African Americans in the region attribute lower status to "country," and higher status to "city." Mr. Bowles makes reference to people moving to town and leaving square dancing behind. Fancy Gap The European American Fancy Gap dance event is eminently retrievable. Old-time dancing moved permanently from the home to public venues such as stores and lodge halls in the 1950s. One particular dance event has been held every Friday night since 1971, drawing 300 or more people weekly. Its reputation has spread beyond the local community, and people travel up to an hour to attend. Newcomers are readily welcomed, and regulars are pleased to teach the dancing. It is easy to find and easy to learn. The retaining institution is the Fancy Gap elementary school and its PTA. The school is literally (geographically) and figuratively the center of the community. The event is organized by Charlotte Bevil, the daughter of a caller, and member of a generations-old dancing family. An important outcome of this dance event is fundraising for the PTA. By paying admission to the dance event, individuals support the future of the community through its children. In the Fancy Gap area, no dance event run for private gain has enjoyed longevity of more than a year or two, while this one has endured for 23 years (Bevil 1989). Two structural features provide the rhetorical force which keeps people coming back. The community as a whole defines itself in space in many different ways, as spirals, figure eights surrounding the cafeteria, and arches for the others to go under. The square dancing demonstrates that the community provides ever-changing but familiar patterns 34 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �through which the individual can move fluidly and with confidence. Improvisational footwork is encouraged throughout, as long as it does not disrupt the group rhythm. Calvin Cole describes the footwork by saying, "you just pat a tune with your feet" (Cole 1989). The other significant feature contributing to rhetorical force of the dancing is that the square dance is organized to ensure interaction among all individuals. In the four-person patterns, called "the main dance," each couple dances with each other pair, never joining the same couple twice. Each group of four establishes its own pace, independently of the many others who are doing the same pattern at the same time. Calvin Cole used to say, "I like to go, like the music, like to dance, like the people—like to grab first one and then the other" (Cole 1989). All the couples dive into the center of the circle to find another pair to dance with, dissolving the circle. The implication is that interaction is more important than maintaining a visible structure in space, and more important than having witnesses to the interaction. Each individual, as a member of a couple, dances curving paths around each other individual in the group, making sure to dance with as many other individuals as possible during the course of the dance. The success of the dance relies on each individual being responsive to each other individual nearby, since the pace and spacing is established cooperatively through nonverbal cues. The resolution of the square dance comes from the individual's contribution to the weaving and re-weaving of the bonds of the community, never becoming the focal point of the group as a unit. The current dance event at Fancy Gap resonates with the perceived cooperative agrarian past, having grown out of the practice of wagontraining. During the 1960s, with salaried jobs providing disposable income and leisure time, people in many Central Appalachian communities joined together in groups to ride their farm horses and wagons from one location to another. For up to a week, these wagon trains would travel by day and camp at night, often at a school ground, where the PTA might provide food and old-time music and dancing. The Carroll County Wagon Train typically concluded its annual week-long trip at Fancy Gap Elementary School. Because of the success of this event, in 1971, the PTA instituted year-round dances (Bunn and Bunn 1989). Through its association with the wagon train, old-time dancing connects with the agrarian traditions of the area. Remote Experience/National Trends Remote experience may also have had significant impact on the growth of the one and the decline of the other square dance. National trends reflected and reinforced certain aspects of, and expectations concerning, old-time music and dancing, while contradicting others, influencing the growth of the forms in one community and their near 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 35 �demise in another. During the 1960s the War on Poverty created two populations in the public mind: the poor white Appalachian, and the poor African American urban dweller. While European American Appalachians became stereotyped as subsistence farmers, African American Appalachians were largely ignored by the War on Poverty (Turner and Cabbell 1985). Around this same time, the folk revival movement took root, drawing public attention to older styles of music and dance. African American music was cast as Blues, overlooking string band traditions and square dancing, which were stereotyped as European American Appalachian (Zwigoff 1991). David Whisnant documents the exclusion of African American performers and audience members from the White Top Festival (1983). The nationally known Galax Old-time Fiddlers Convention has never included African Americans, according to Leonard Bowles, though African American fiddlers are in the region. He expresses disappointment that local African American guitarists received the attention of music collectors, and fiddlers did not, because the guitarists fit the collectors' preconceived image. In his book, Blacks, Whites and Blues, Tony Russell corroborates Mr. Bowles's experience. Documenting the ways in which the recording industry affected folk traditions, he says, "blues played a less dominant role among Blacks than recordings suggest" (Russell 1970, 25). Local European American old-time musicians and dancers were encouraged by the folk revival movement while local African American old-time musicians and dancers were discouraged. In 1971, in the climate of the folk revival, the Fancy Gap dance began as a regular event. It employed local old-time musicians, rather than revivalists, and attracted local dancers. However, the emerging national interest in old-time music and dancing reinforced the local preferences. The principal of Fancy Gap Elementary School proudly displays a 1978 publication of the Smithsonian Institution which includes descriptions of a square dance at Fancy Gap. Also during this period, the Black Culture and Black Power Movements were growing, focusing on urban experience and defining the African roots of that culture. African American old-time fiddlers and square dancers found themselves "doubly invisible" as Edward Cabbell says, reflected in images of neither Appalachian culture nor African American culture (Arnow 1986). Naomi Bowles identifies with the "country" or "country-Western" culture when she says that the Martinsville dancers, in preparation for their videotaping by the Blue Ridge Institute, made costumes so that they could "look like the square dancers on TV" (Bowles and Bowles 1992; Lornell 1979). Conclusion By examining significant details of the square dancing and its 36 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven -1995 �immediate context in each of these two Southwest Virginia communities, and by seeing these details in the light of national trends, it is possible to explain the growth of one dance community and the contraction of the other. The Fancy Gap dance community has maintained itself because the resolution of the dance reinforces the bonds of community through the interaction of each dancer with all others and in support for the local school. It has grown because of the dance community's easy availability and the rhetorical force of the large group patterns and the main dance, both of which allow for the incorporation of more and more people. Additionally there was resonance through the wagon train with the local agrarian lifestyle intersecting with the national folklore revival. These factors may explain why old-time dancing has thrived here, while it occurs rarely in other European American communities. Concerning the Martinsville dance community, one might ask two questions. Why has the circle become so small? And, why has the square dance continued to the present without the support of a retaining public institution such as a school? The circle has become smaller because the resolution in the support of the couple is no longer relevant with a dwindling youthful population. Also the resonance with a former agrarian way of life has worked against the circle. The sharing of financial burdens used to be an important outcome of the dance event, but today, families have become more financially independent of each other. As a result, the retaining institution, the kinship network, has dwindled to one family. The dance has remained private and home-based, not easily available to newcomers, and has further been made invisible by national images of African American culture. The Martinsville dance community continues at present, however, because of the rhetorical force of the footwork with the opportunity for individual expression supported by the community and because of the tenacity of the Bowles family as the retaining institution. Notes 1 Por further discussion of the concept of dance community, see Paul Tyler (1992, 1-7). 2 Loyal Jones has identified the following as Appalachian values: individualism, self-reliance and pride; neighborliness and hospitality; family solidarity; personalism (relating well with others); love of place; modesty and being one's self; sense of beauty in which artistic expression is tied to functional necessities; sense of humor; religion; and patriotism (1973). 3 In both cases, I have relied on interviews with dancers, callers, and musicians to guide me in highlighting significant features of the dancing. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 37 �4 For comparison, old time dancing in the Coalfields of Southwest Virginia is characterized by stomping footwork, sideward-kicking leg gestures, sharp arm movements led by the elbows, torso tilted forward from the hip joint as much as forty-five degrees, and considerable shoulder mobility. It is almost exclusively a partner or solo dance, with square dancing being a rare occurrence. 5 This matches the form of the Juba and of African American ring plays. See Jones and Hawes (1972). 6 Neither continuity nor discontinuity is good or bad in itself. Both communities choose square dancing from among many other kinds of dancing such as ballroom, Western square, hiphop, swing. This study simply examines existing situations. 7 The dance event is the occasion at which dancing occurs. It can be examined for structural, stylistic, and contextual details, separately or together with the dancing itself. 8 Griswold offers a scheme for explanation of cultural objects such as old time dancing through specification of object, agent, time frame, local sensibility, and expectations influenced by proximate (direct) and remote (distant or secondhand) experience (1987). Schudson defines the following parameters: 1) Retrievability: the cultural object must reach a person and be available socially, economically, spatially, temporally. 2) Rhetorical Force: the cultural object must have the persuasive impact to make the individual mindful of the cultural object—something which attracts attention and causes people to want to participate repeatedly. 3) Resonance: the cultural object must connect with other aspects of the traditions of the society in which it occurs—belief systems, comfort zones, other arts. These connections may be with past and present aspects, and near and distant aspects. 4) Institutional Retention: the cultural object must be supported by a local institution such as a school or church, which preserves and passes on elements of culture. 5) Resolution: the cultural object gives direction for action, or in some cases contains the resolution within itself, as in the reading of a sacred text (1989). Works Cited Arnow, Pat. 1986. "A Part and Apart," Now and Then 3 (1): 9-11. Batteau, Allen. 1979-80. "Appalachia and the Concept of Culture: A Theory of Shared Misunderstandings." In Process, Policy and Context: Contemporary Perspectives on Appalachian Culture, ed. David E. Whisnant. Appalachian Journal 7 (1-2): 9-31. Bevil, Charlotte. 1989. Interview with author. Fancy Gap, Va., 18 July. Bowles, Leonard, and Naomi Bowles. 1992. Interview with author. Martinsville, Va., 24 July. 38 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Brooks, Ernest. 1992. Interview with author. Martinsville, Va., 12 August. Bunn, Pearl, and Roncie F. Bunn. 1989. Interview with author. Fancy Gap, Va., 18 July. Cantwell, Robert. 1994. Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Cole, Calvin. 1989. Interview with author. Hillsville, Va., 30 June. Eller, Ronald. 1982. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: The Modernization of the Appalachian South 1880-1930. Knoxville.: University of Tennessee Press. Griswold, Wendy. 1987. "A Methodological Framework for the Sociology of Culture." Sociological Methodology 17:1-35. Johnson, Anne, and Susan Spalding. 1990. Step Back Cindy: Old-time Dancing in Southwest Virginia. 1/2" VHS Videotape. Whitesburg, Ky.: Appalshop, Inc. Jones, Bessie, and Bess Lomax Hawes. 1972. Step It Down: Games, Plays, Songs and Dances from the Afro-American Heritage. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. Jones, Loyal. 1973. "Appalachian Values." In Appalachians Speak Up, ed. Irmgard Best. Berea, Ky.: Berea College. Kincaid, Earl, and Eleanor Kincaid. 1992. Interview with author. Dante, Va., 30 July. Lewis, Helen, and Suzanna O'Donnell, eds. 1990. Ivanhoe, Virginia: Telling Our Stories, Sharing Our Lives. Ivanhoe, Va.: Ivanhoe Civic League. Lornell, Kip. 1979. Way Out West. 1/2" VHS Videotape. Ferrum, Va.: Blue Ridge Institute. Russell, Tony. 1970. Blacks, Whites, and Blues. New York: Stein and Day. Schudson, Michael. 1989. "How Culture Works: Perspectives from Media Studies on the Efficacy of Symbols." Theory and Society 18:153-180. Spalding, Susan Eike. 1993. "Aesthetic Standards in Old-time Dancing in Southwest Virginia: African-American and European-American Threads." Ph.D. diss., Temple University. Szwed, John F., and Morton Marks. 1988. "The Afro-American Transformation of European Set Dances and Dance Suites." Dance Research Journal 20:29-36. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 39 �Turner, William H., and Edward J. Cabbell, eds. 1985. Blacks in Appalachia. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Tyler, Paul Leslie. 1992. "'Sets on the Floor': Social Dance as an Emblem of Community in Rural Indiana." Ph.D. diss., Indiana University. Virginia Traditions: Non-Blues Secular Black Music. 1978. Album and accompanying booklet. Ferrum, Va.: Blue Ridge Institute. Whisnant, David E. 1983. All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. . 1979-80. "Finding the Way Between the Old and the New: The Mountain Dance and Folk Festival and Bascom Lamar Lunsford's Work as a Citizen." In Process, Policy and Context: Contemporary Perspectives on Appalachian Culture, ed. David E. Whisnant. Appalachian Journal 7 (1-2): 135-140. Zwigoff, Terry. 1991. "Black Country String Bands." American Visions February: 50-5. Susan Eike Spalding, president of the Congress on Research in Dance, holds her doctorate from Temple University and is a certified movement analyst. She currently directs the state Dance Initiative for the Minnesota Center for Arts Education. 40 - Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Two Gardeners of Song: Exploiters or Preservers? Linda Plaut and Lyn Wolz Recent scholarship on the folksong revival in both Great Britain and the United States has emphasized the interventionist nature of the movement. A series of charges has been made against professional folklorists: that they exploited informants for their own gain, that they used an imagined age of innocence as an excuse to keep the lower classes in their place, and that they exploited folk melodies for scholarship or composition. While we recognize the harm done by many collectors, this paper examines the work of two women who represented folk music research at its best: Annabel Morris Buchanan (1888-1983) of Marion, Virginia, and Ann Geddes Gilchrist (1863-1954) of Lancaster, England. One of the leading critics of folk intervention in this country is David Whisnant, who wrote extensively on Buchanan's work in All That Is Native and Fine. While Whisnant is careful to avoid blaming Buchanan for the racist excesses of the other leaders of the White Top Folk Festival, he does include her in the circle of city slickers who he feels manipulated the music of poorer rural folk for their own profit (Whisnant 1983). Two books present criticism similar to Whisnant's but concern the folk revival in England. Georgina Boyes, in The Imagined Village, suggests that the English Folk Revival is in fact a construction of an idyllic past that never existed: On the one hand, urban popular culture, its context and consumers, could be demonstrated to be inferior, because folk culture had such high aesthetic, academic, and historical connotations. Conversely, on the other hand, as a form of workingclass expressive culture, folksong could also be presented as evidence of the artistic creativity of the proletariat. . . . From its earliest inception, what differentiates [the Folk Revival] from 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 41 �earlier publication of songs and dances collected from the people is its directly interventionist nature. Folk song and dance are not to be transcribed for archival purposes or popular entertainment but used as an instrument to effect a cultural change (1993, 3-4). In his book Fakesong, Dave Harker carries the arguments of Boyes and Whisnant into a specifically Marxist context. Noting that preservation of folk culture is encouraged by repressive governments in Eastern Europe, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Great Britain, he concludes that these states reinforce nationalism in an attempt to "fend off danger of the only power which can challenge them—international working-class solidarity" (1985, xi). While Harker does not specifically attack Gilchrist, concentrating on more famous figures such as Francis James Child and Cecil Sharp (1985, xiv), he makes his goals clear: Even in a sane world, after the revolution, it will not be possible to take concepts such as "folksong" and "ballad" out to be shot. However, they stand a fair chance of being put on trial, and then being locked up, or subjected to a lengthy period of political reeducation . . . there is no point in attempting . . . to rehabilitate such concepts. They are conceptual lumber, and they have to go (1985, xii). Against such formidable opponents, then, we spring to the defense of our two gardeners of song. It is all too easy to underestimate the contributions of Gilchrist and Buchanan to folk music research. Gilchrist, in remote Lancaster, was never as visible as the London folklorists, and she did not leave major manuscripts or published books as Cecil Sharp did, but between 1906 and 1952 she contributed more articles and annotations to the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society than any other single member. As Margaret Dean-Smith pointed out, "a very great deal of Anne Gilchrist's genius—her incomparable knowledge of melody—found expression in a vast correspondence rather than in published work" (1955, 218). Cecil Sharp, Lucy Broadwood, and John Masefield are only a few of those who deferred to Gilchrist's expertise in British folk song. Buchanan, in addition to doing the lion's share of the work of organizing the White Top Folk Festival in southwestern Virginia from 1931 to 1936, gathered together almost a thousand folk songs, tunes, and variants for the National Federation of Music Clubs' American Music Project. These items were donated to the Archive of Folk Music at the Library of Congress in the early 1960s. Buchanan is similar to Gilchrist in that much of her stature as a folklorist does not depend on published works, though she did have one book and several articles published during the active part of her career. The main influence Buchanan had, 42 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �however, was through her correspondence with other folklorists and through the contacts she made with classical musicians, folk musicians, composers, conductors, teachers, music club women, and publishers during the years of the White Top Folk Festival and the Virginia State Choral Festival. She was the catalyst for many a project in her efforts to bring together her two worlds—the worlds of folk music and classical music (Wolz 1983). Annabel Morris Buchanan was a composer whose involvement with folk music transformed her career. While studying the work of English folklorist Cecil Sharp, she discovered that he had adapted his modal classification of Appalachian folk songs from a system developed by collector-scholar Ann Geddes Gilchrist. In the early 1930s, the two women commenced a long and productive correspondence. Buchanan, the daughter of a minister, heard folk hymns as a child but soon began studying classical music. Specializing in piano and composition, she received a certificate from Landon Conservatory in Dallas, Texas, at the age of eighteen. The young woman married and moved to Marion, Virginia, where she became active in a variety of organizations, including gardening and music clubs. As a gardener, she transformed "three acres full of poison ivy and tin cans and wild blackberry vines" into a flower-filled paradise (Buchanan 1935, 13). As a musician, she quickly moved into positions of leadership in local, state, and regional branches of the American Federation of Music Clubs (Wolz 1983, 4). It was as president of the Virginia federation that she first met Richmond pianist and composer John Powell. In a 1928 letter to Powell, Buchanan wrote, "I am working hard now on the state chorus and music in Virginia's rural schools. . . . P.S. I've written two new songs" (Powell Papers 12 October 1928). The combination of organizational and creative work is a constant theme in her letters. At the time she met Powell, Buchanan was already a successful composer. Her songs had been published by G. Schirmer and Carl Fischer, and several had been performed by singers with national reputations (Wolz 1983, 2), but her style was based entirely on the European art song. Powell's interest in Anglo-American folk music introduced her to a new field of melodic sources as well as the study of folk rhythms and modes. The two became frequent correspondents and Buchanan often submitted songs or sketches to Powell for criticism. In an undated letter, Buchanan writes, "I let composition go absolutely for folk study, for months, and then only a little, in folk style as far as possible, and I don't believe I could ever write a poor tune again, after being so steeped in these things" (Powell Papers n.d.). Meanwhile, a young woman of Scottish ancestry had grown up in 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 43 �Lancashire, England. A 1935 interview with Margaret Dean-Smith describes Anne Gilchrist's childhood: [She lived] . . . outside Lancaster in a spacious Victorian house high above the estuary of the Lune. Its windows looked westwards to the lakeland mountains, the sea, and the countryside where as a girl she had walked, sailed and fished, and exchanged plants with the future Regius Professor of Botany. . . (1957-58, 43). Anne Gilchrist was a distant cousin of the Scottish minister Neil Livingstone, who was responsible for the reprint in 1864 of the Great Scottish Psalter of 1635 (Dean-Smith 1957-58, 43). Although she had classical music training, including a thorough exposure to the "obsolete ecclesiastical modes" (Dean-Smith 1957-58, 44), Gilchrist traced her interest in folk music to a much earlier time: I might claim that my interest in folk-song began while I was still illiterate (which some collectors seem to think an advantage in a folk-singer). Our mother came of a musical family and sang often in the nursery, generally with the latest baby on her knee. . . . At the age of six I began to store folk tunes in my mind, beginning with singing-games learnt during Christmas revels in our grandfather's house in Cheshire. . . . Later, I became familiar with old Scotch traditional songs sung by my father and mother. One favourite of my father's had a fascinating refrain of "Sing yarrady airrum . . . " sung with a strong "burr." This was, I think, the first tune I ever noted from a singer. But by this time, having made the acquaintance of the modern major and minor modes, I lost for the time being my early innocence of ear, falling foul of the unsharpened seventh of my father's tune, and suggesting that the note should surely be sharp, not natural. "No, no, no," he replied, with a vigorous shake of the head, adhering with conviction to his "flattened" note. . . . So I conceded the "flat seventh," and learnt to note tunes as I heard them—"My version, right or wrong!" (Gilchrist 1942, 62). One of the fruitful products of the Buchanan-Gilchrist correspondence was a refinement of the system of modal scales used to transcribe folk tunes. Gilchrist, who collected extensively from native singers, observed a similarity between their "irregular" pitch patterns and the modes used in notating Medieval chant. She codified this transcription system (Gilchrist 1911) and Cecil Sharp made adaptations to it. While this whole approach to folk music may be perceived as Eurocentric, it enabled collectors to transcribe tunes into notation which could be performed by classically-trained musicians. Boyes objects that "songs 44 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �with tunes in the 'ancient church modes' were privileged and treated as representative rather than unusual forms," while more recent songs were rejected (Boyes 1993, 14), but both Buchanan and Gilchrist found many examples of modal tunes in their collecting. If they were guilty of being less than statistically fair to the non-modal variety, this is likely to be an example of a taste for the exotic rather than egregious flaunting of class privilege. Buchanan, building on the work of Gilchrist and Sharp, developed her own system of analysis and presented it to the first International Congress of the American Musicological Society in New York in 1939. Called "A Neutral Mode," Buchanan's system acknowledged that certain tones in the melodies sung by native musicians did not fit even the church modes, but were "neutral" or halfway-between (for example) Bflat and B-natural (Buchanan 1944). Buchanan found that one of the greatest changes the "folk work" made in her life was that it changed the way she composed original music. In Folk Hymns of America (1938), she collected fifty melodies— many of which she had learned from her parents—and published them with simple harmonizations. She also made more elaborate settings of folk tunes for mixed chorus and these works were sung by amateur and professional groups throughout the U.S. Lastly, she composed original works which utilized folk modes and rhythms. Whisnant speaks critically of collectors who exploit folk tunes as raw material for original creative work (1983, 236). Buchanan, on the other hand, was quite clear that she was operating within a Western tradition in which Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Bartok, and countless others had used their national folk heritage in the same way. In her opening statement as National Federation of Music Clubs chair of the American Music Project, she said, "Great composers of all nationalities have turned to their native folk music as the inspiration for some of their greatest works, being familiar with it from their cradles. Ours, which includes some of the most beautiful in the world, has been neglected. . . " (Buchanan Papers). Rather than exploitative, Buchanan saw herself as atoning for the sins of omission of other American composers who showed insufficient respect for their own national heritage. Boyes, Harker, and Whisnant all criticize folklorists for exploiting their informants rather than assisting their sometimes desperate financial conditions. All three authors find examples of the crassest insensitivity on the part of the leading collectors. Boyes, for example, says: But proposing to fellow members of the Folk Song Society, in agreeable West End surroundings, that the only way to avoid racial catastrophe was to collect folksongs was one thing. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 45 �Actually journeying to rural areas to knock on unknown cottage doors with a request that the inhabitants sing to you, proved to hold fewer attractions (1993, 41). Harker provides a much more damning example. In describing the comfortable "field work" of Sabine Baring-Gould, a vicar and country gentleman who invited the "peasants" to come to his house just long enough to sing a few songs, he quotes this story: "I had in old Hard. Then and there I obtained from him a further crop of ballads. That was the last reaping, for in the ensuing bitter frost the aged man was found dead, frozen on a heap of stones by the roadside" (Harker 1985, 159). Harker reacts in justifiable rage: "I had in old Hard." It's as though the crippled ex-stone-breaker, living with his wife on four pounds a year, was rather like a dumb animal in Baring-Gould's eyes, or even the inanimate natural force, the "field," which that image of "reaping" a "crop" implies. What the tenant or landowner had to do, presumably was to extract all that was left of Hard's cultural property, and then let the forces of nature do their worst, while parsons and gentlefolk sat round their blazing fires, enjoying the "treasure" that had been preserved for their own kind (Harker 1985, 159). Once again, Gilchrist and Buchanan provide examples to counter these accusations. Both journeyed into the countryside, relishing a chance to experience a sense of adventure which was seldom available to women in their societies. In a letter written to Gilchrist on 4 September 1936, Buchanan described her feelings: I am enchanted at the opportunity this summer and fall to run around some in the mountains, having grown fond of the joys of "hitch-hiking"! I have had a MARVELOUS time gypsying and vagabonding through the summer in three states, maybe sleeping in some mountain cabin or the car. It was such an adventure, I shall never forget it. And I collected such splendid material (Buchanan Papers). Gilchrist loved to tell of "[an] old sailor at Southport, from whom I took down shanties and sea songs in a dark little cave of a shop . . . encrusted with dog-collars and tools and gadgets of all kinds . . . always ready to search his memory for songs" (Gilchrist 1942, 62). Gilchrist described herself as being "on friendly terms with all my singers," and she told of her own failure to get a song she badly wanted from a man who was said to sing it frequently to his wife. Although the wife and Gilchrist tried valiantly to persuade him to sing, "he sat as mute as an oyster, though not without an 'I-could-an-I-would' twinkle in 46 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �his eye" (Gilchrist 1942, 63). Buchanan invited folk musicians to her home and established warm, caring relationships with them. On one occasion, she wrote to John Powell that a child named Virginia Russell (the daughter of one of Buchanan's informants) had died; the doll Buchanan had given her at Christmas was in her arms. "It seems so strange that I started out as a collector, and am gradually finding myself adopted as an intimate family friend by first one, then another of these folk musician families" (Powell Papers 9 January 1932). She often went on intuition to find her informants: " . . . a man just came to the door to sell blackberries. I sized him up instantly, and carried on my maidenly advances toward him, with the result that he's coming tomorrow with four gallons of berries, a guitar, and some folk songs" (Powell Papers 6 August 1931).1 Buchanan argued vehemently with other White Top organizers that the musicians deserved better pay and better working conditions, and she often employed or found employment for folk musicians. One of her favorites was a singer named Council Cruise. On 5 January 1932, she wrote to John Powell that Council Cruise was in jail, and several other "folk" were ill and in trouble. In February, Cruise was released, and Buchanan tried to find suitable work for him. "How could he settle down in a factory after running a still? And personally, I'd lots rather he'd run his still. . . . We can't make him over" (Powell Papers 7 February 1932). • • • In an article published in Better Homes & Gardens in 1935, Buchanan describes the earlier failures and later successes of her gardening ventures that culminates in a vision of Eden: A wild garden and rock garden have been planted at the rear, with myrtle-carpeted stepping-stones along a woodland trail in the "Forest of Arden," thru hemlock, rhododendron, dogwood, redbuds, ferns, and many plants and trees brought in from the mountains. . . . Here may birds sing and children play and elders read and dream (1935, 15). Intervention, yes; destruction, no. Plants may be taken from the forest and continue to grow in both forest and city. So may songs. In several ways, Buchanan and Gilchrist stand in strong contrast to the exploiters whom Whisnant, Boyes, and Harker criticize: they did not make large personal profits from their "folk work," they got to know and appreciate their informants as individual human beings, and they grew up in households which honored the oral transmission of old songs. To complete the analogy: while large-scale, for-profit farming can represent a very destructive intervention in nature, few would criticize the efforts of those whose flower gardens preserve little havens of beauty for family 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 47 �and community. Let us not fail to appreciate those whose collections of old songs preserve a treasure which can be enjoyed by all. (The authors wish to extend their thanks to Michael Plunkett at Alderman Library at the University of Virginia, Malcolm Taylor of the Vaughan Williams Library at Cecil Sharp House in London, England, and the staff of the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.) Note 1 It is interesting that the humorous "seduction" depicted here represents a reversal of the gendered convention described by Debora Kodish. In the Kodish encounter, a male folklorist depicts himself as the fairy-tale hero who awakens the silent female informant to song (Kodish, 1993, 43). Works Cited Boyes, Georgina. 1993. The Imagined Village. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Buchanan, Annabel Morris. Papers. Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. . 1935. "The House That Jack Built." Better Homes and Gardens March: 13-15. . 1938. Folk Hymns of America. New York: J. Fischer. . 1944. "Modal and Melodic Structure in Anglo-American Folk Music—A Neutral Mode." In Papers Read at the International Congress ofMusicology in New York, September llth to 16th, 1939, eds. Arthur Mendel and Gustav Reese. Richmond, Va.: William Byrd Press. Dean-Smith, Margaret. 1955. "The Gilchrist Bequest." Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society 7: 218. . 1957-58. "The Work of Anne Geddes Gilchrist, O.B.E., F.S.A." Reprinted in Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association lxxxiv:43-53. Gilchrist, Anne G. Papers. Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Cecil Sharp House, London. . 1911. "Note on the Modal System of Gaelic Tunes." Journal of the Folk Song Society 4:150-53. . 1942. "Let Us Remember." English Dance and Song 6: 62-63. 48 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Harker, Dave. 1985. Fakesong: The Manufacture of British "Folksong" 1700 to the Present Day. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Kodish, Debora. 1993. "Absent Gender, Silent Encounter." In Feminist Theory and the Study of Folklore, eds. Susan Tower Hollis, Linda Pershing, and M. Jane Young. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Powell, John. Papers. Alderman Library, University of Virginia. Whisnant, David E. 1983. All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Wolz, Lyn A. 1983. "White Top Folk Trails: Annabel Morris Buchanan's Folk Music Legacy." Master's thesis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Linda Plaut teaches in the Center for Programs in the Humanities at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and is a concert violinist who specializes in performing works by women composers. Lyn Wolz is the reference librarian at Ferrum College in Ferrum, Va. She is also a consultant to the Blue Ridge Heritage Archives and music director of the annual Blue Ridge Folklife Festival. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 49 �Fabric and Fiction: The Clinch Valley Blanket Mills, 1890-1950 Kathleen Curtis Wilson The Clinch Valley Blanket Mills, owned and operated by C.E. Goodwin and his four sons, was a model of clever marketing, crafts revival, and quality workmanship for sixty years. The mill influenced how people outside the Southern Appalachians would perceive mountain crafts and mountain craftsmen for nearly one hundred years. In order to understand the reason for this influence and its impact, we must look at the marketing techniques used to sell the mill's products and what was happening to the handweaver's market during the same period. The Development of the Clinch Valley Blanket Mills Charles Eugene Goodwin followed in the weaving trade he learned from his English father, James, who came to the United States about 1837. Charles Eugene, called C.E., ran mills for absentee owners or for his own business in Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. In the late 1880s, Goodwin moved to Cedar Bluff, Virginia from West Virginia to run the Scott Bros. Klondyke Cotton and Woolen Mill. The Cedar Bluff Woolen Mill, a carding wool business, was also located in Cedar Bluff. Over a twenty-five year period, Goodwin either leased or managed two mills in Cedar Bluff, the Cedar Bluff Woolen Mill, owned by the McGuire family, and the Klondyke Cotton and Woolen Mill, founded by Thomas Scott and later purchased by members of the McGuire family. Goodwin finally purchased both mills about 1916 and changed the names to Clinch Valley Blanket Mills. When the smaller mill burned in 50 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �1924, Goodwin moved all his equipment to the larger facility up the Clinch River and expanded his operation.1 Mechanization increased production in the weaving industry at the turn of the century. Goodwin used local labor and materials to weave on looms powered by water, steam, and electricity. Over the years, the mill employed from thirty to 120 workers to weave colonial reproduction coverlets and blankets, using factory spun cotton, commercial dyes, and huge quantities of wool processed in-house (Dickenson and Dickenson 1993). The "blanket mill," as it was locally called, was an important industry in the small town of Cedar Bluff and for Tazewell County. Nearly every citizen had a family member who either worked for the mill, did the hand-finish work at home, traded or sold wool to the mill, or supplied coal to keep the furnaces going. Local women used "side cut" scraps from the mill blankets to weave throw rugs on hand looms in their homes. Wool was gathered in horse- or ox-drawn wagons in the early days. Later, a truck pulled the "wool wagon" to farms in Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Elderly men and women still remember the disagreeable job of shearing dead sheep in the field or the excitement of riding on the farm wagon to the mill with a load of wool. Frequently, they recall their own employment running the "mule," quillers, or looms, inspecting army blankets, or shipping finished goods. The "mule" was a mechanism mounted on a frame that traversed back and forth, keeping proper tension on carded wool when wound onto bobbins. What color the mill was dyeing wool that day was easily ascertained by the color of the river. When prices were low, farmers traded all their wool for coverlets and blankets to furnish bedding to the extended family or to put away for the next generation. Even in good times, many families used a little wool in trade. The woven goods were not only functional and warm, but beautiful as well. Without the "trade," most families could not have afforded such luxurious items. The mill-woven items became prized wedding gifts and baby presents, and were especially desirable since the giver usually had some association with the weaver or worker involved in its production. These coverlets and blankets still remain in families as treasured keepsakes passed from generation to generation. Goodwin, and later his sons, negotiated government contracts for the mill to weave thousands of all wool army blankets to ship overseas during both world wars. They wove the linings for army sleeping bags, puttees (gaiters) for World War I soldiers, and blankets for the British Royal Navy (Pierce 1941). When John Goodwin, C.E.'s youngest son, enlisted in 1914, he was considered too valuable to the production of army blankets and the government sent him home after basic training. The mill employed many wives and daughters of service men stationed 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 51 �away from home. In a region that offered little employment opportunity for women, the income earned made farm payments and put food on the table. The mill ran three shifts a day to meet government demands and employed additional women from outside the community. Local citizens earned extra money by boarding young women from West Virginia and Kentucky who came to work in the mill (Whitt 1993). In peace time, the mill wove colonial coverlets, lap robes for horse drawn buggies and automobiles, table linens, and baby blankets. C. E. and John Goodwin went into the community to borrow handwoven coverlets and pattern drafts to copy. According to their advertising, Goodwin produced the first seamless coverlets, appealing to northern buyers who didn't like that "unsightly" seam down the middle (Robertson 1949). The end result was a product of quality and durability. To sell these household goods, Goodwin avoided revealing his factory production capacity and focused on selling a concept of tradition. While using modern equipment of the day, Goodwin marketed the nostalgic idea of old women spinning and weaving in remote mountain cabins. He put together "the story" of his silk weaving background in England, simple mountain people, and faithful adherence to the handwoven coverlets of a bygone era. Coverlets, blankets, and table linens were sold through sales agents in Marion, Virginia, Bloomfield, Illinois, and other states. The mill also published a catalog for direct mail order sales. Goodwin watched home decorating trends outside the region and dyed some goods the fashionable colors of mint green, pink, gold, aqua, and lavender. The Handicraft Revival and Impact on Marketing For most of the 1800s, handcrafted household items were a necessity and the pride of mountain people. However, by 1890, many craft skills had been put aside and forgotten as factory items became available and more desirable. About 1893 the stirrings of a handicraft revival began in Berea, Kentucky and Asheville, North Carolina. The newly elected president of Berea College, Dr. William Goodell Frost, noticed the interesting woven bedcoverings used in many cabins. He determined that the college could preserve the handwork of an earlier period and find new markets for idle mountain looms. With few old timers to teach the new generation, it took a while to renew the art of coverlet weaving. In 1896 homespun fairs were started where competition and comparison to the old coverlets inspired young students. More than thirty years after the first revival of southern highlands handicrafts, the crafts centers in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky united to improve their crafts and to use the marketing advantage of a cooperative effort. Weaving was, and still is, an important part of the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild, founded in 1929 (Barker 52 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �1991). The guild established a market for unique handmade mountain products that were inexpensive and reminiscent of pioneer times. These crafts appealed to city dwellers who knew little about rural mountain life. Northern housewives were anxious to purchase coverlets similar to the ones woven in New England fifty years earlier. By the late 1920s, there was a growing demand for all kinds of woven and handmade products. In 1930 Mrs. Riley Fox, Mrs. Finley Mast, and Mrs. Owenby traveled by train to Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, and Chicago on a tour of major department stores. All three were native mountain women with long family weaving traditions. Mrs. Mast was famous throughout the entire Appalachian region for her coverlets made for the Woodrow Wilson White House. The trip, sponsored by Frank E. Rudd of Louisville, Kentucky, manufacturer of rayon and cotton coverlets, was undertaken to acquaint northern women with Southern Appalachian coverlet weaving (Galloway 1930). The women traveled with an ancient hand loom, spinning wheels, handmade furniture, and coverlets to illustrate various patterns. In the stores they set up a display representing a "typical" mountain cabin. Dressed in homespun and weaving in their stocking feet, these women gave the impression that handwoven coverlets were still abundantly available throughout the Southern Appalachians. Mrs. Ovvenby explained the work being woven on the loom to the enthralled crowd that gathered at every stop. The onlookers perceived that mountain life was still as simple and backward as it had been a hundred years before and they were determined to furnish their homes with this quaint handmade weaving. During this same time period, the Clinch Valley Blanket Mills was weaving approximately fifty coverlets and blankets per day (Dickenson and Dickenson 1993). (The best handweaver can only weave one or two coverlets per month.) One of the mill's best accounts was Rosemont, an early handmade mountain crafts cottage industry in Marion, Virginia. Rosemont was widely known for its hand-hooked rugs, hand-tied bed canopies, and woven coverlets. Everything sold under the Rosemont label was purchased or commissioned in the surrounding communities. Their weaving was purchased from the Clinch Valley Blanket Mills. Rosemont's mail order booklet did not say the coverlets were woven on hand looms; instead they addressed the issue of hand weaving versus factory weaving as follows: They [coverlets] are not made in a modern factory but in the original old mill in the mountains to which the farmers still bring their wool for exchange and from which the mountain women take the coverlets home for hemming and fringe-making. Our looms are not the ordinary jacquard looms of the textile 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 53 �mills but are specially adapted to our process (Rosemont brochure). Another Rosemont booklet states: The spinning, dyeing, and weaving are all done in a primitive mountain community where living conditions are simple. Every purchaser of one of our Colonial Coverlets may be sure, not only of having an exact and exquisite reproduction of early American weaving, but also of helping the mountain people to help themselves (Rosemont brochure). While sales markets were being established by the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild, which only allowed hand weavers to join, the actual production of guild members was not large enough to fill the demand. The Clinch Valley Blanket Mills' vast production capacity, coupled with its quality and authentic 19th century designs, allowed the company to sell thousands of coverlets and blankets to customers who thought they were buying handwoven items. While this marketing sold the product, it also influenced the outside world's perception of the people in Southwest Virginia. At a time when industries were using the latest equipment and inventions to speed production, it was thought that the Virginia mountain craftsmen were using old fashioned methods. The myth of simple mountain people living simple lives and making simple crafts with simple mountain tools was a successful marketing technique that resulted in a negative stereotype which Southwest Virginians argue against to this day. Much has been published to expand public awareness of the 1895 Arts and Crafts Movement and subsequent revivals in Southern Appalachia. The Clinch Valley Blanket Mills never joined the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild because it used power looms. Nonetheless, the company affiliated itself so closely with this movement that it was perceived to be a part of it. With innate marketing skills, the Goodwin family successfully sold its products in distinctly different markets. The Goodwins influenced the attitude toward Virginia mountain weaving from 1890 to 1950 and for many years beyond. At the same time, the Clinch Valley Blanket Mills played an important role in the social and economic life of Cedar Bluff and the surrounding counties. The old production mill is long silent. The records are scattered and only the foundation of the original mill remains to photograph; but across the country, families still possess the woven fabrics to weave the story of an early mountain industry. 54 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Note 1 As this paper goes to print, I have uncovered letters that shed new light on the ownership of the mills. More analysis is needed to completely unravel the whole story of ownership versus management. What is known is that two generations of Goodwin men were running textile mills in Cedar Bluff, Virginia, Cumberland Gap and Harriman, Tennessee, and Campbellsville, Kentucky. What is not known is if C.E. Goodwin owned any mill prior to 1916, when he purchased both mills in Cedar Bluff. For many years there has been a good deal of confusion about the ownership of the two woolen mills located on the Clinch River. Local people refer to "the blanket mill," "the woolen mill," or "the Goodwin mill" whenever they mention the weaving that was done in Cedar Bluff. The Goodwin name was linked to the mills after 1890, but it wasn't until 1916 that Goodwin purchased both the Klondyke Cotton and Woolen Mill and the Cedar Bluff Woolen Mill. At that time both mills were owned by the McGuire family. Goodwin renamed the entire operation the Clinch Valley Blanket Mills. He used this name on his letterhead, publicity, and mail-order booklets, but locally this name was rarely used or remembered. Works Cited Barker, Garry G. 1991. The Handcraft Revival in Southern Appalachia, 19301990. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press. Galloway, Carrie C. 1930. "Mountain Women Advertise Park In Big Cities Of America With Their Looms And Spinning Wheels." The Knoxville Sunday Journal, 2 March. Dickenson, Tommy, and Rufus Dickenson. 1993. Interview with the author. Milledgeville, Ga., 30 October. Pierce, Eleanor G. 1941. "A Rare Art." Norfolk and Western August: 342-343. Robertson, Dorothy. 1949. "Tazewell County Family Preserves Ancient Craft of Coverlet Weaving." Richmond Times-Dispatch 5 June: 8-D. Rosemont brochures. Nancy Goodwin Hagy papers. Personal collection of the author. Asheville, N.C. Whitt, Mary Sue. 1993. Interview with the author. Washington, B.C. 16 October. Kathleen Curtis Wilson, a textile historian and writer, is currently developing and teaching courses in Appalachian arts and crafts appreciation at A-B Tech Community college, Asheville, N.C. Using slides of textiles handed down from generation to generation, she lectures to diverse audiences telling the stories of 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 55 �19th century Appalachian women, ordinary and extraordinary. Wilson was a 1994 scholar in residence at the Center for the Humanities in Charlottesville, Va. while writing the history of the Clinch Valley Blanket Mills. 56 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Before Albion's Seed: Other Influences on Appalachian Culture Donald Edward Davis Scholars studying Appalachia largely ignore the three hundred years of human history that preceded the eighteenth century frontier. Most who have written about the settlement of the southern mountains have not recognized the important contributions that the Mississippians, Cherokees, and even Spanish explorers made to the history of the region. While specific European skills and Old World land-use practices were certainly important to the settlement and social development of the region, the Europeans settled lands with a long history of human habitation. The Appalachian environment coupled with the cultural legacy already in place created new and difficult challenges for the settlers. In the southern mountains, culture evolved in relationship to both social and environmental influences. Major Periods of Cultural Change The process of culture formation and change is an extremely complex phenomenon. In the Southern Appalachians, no fewer than three major periods of cultural change occurred prior to 1820.l The Spanish started the process during the sixteenth century, introducing important new crops and initiating trade in furs and other goods (Crosby 1972, 35-63; Waselkov 1989, 117-120, Hann 1988, 182-183, 239). The Spanish also brought deadly microbes into the region, destroying a large percentage of the native Mississippian population. The social chaos that resulted forced native peoples to migrate both to and from the area, weakening cultural traditions and practices. Within a century, pre-Columbian Mississippian life had all but vanished from the Appalachian South 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 57 �(Smith 1987, 55-60; Smith 1990, 1-7; Hudson 1990, 52-60; Hudson and Chaves 1994). The second period of social and environmental change occurred after the English and French initiated trade with the Cherokees during the early part of the eighteenth century. Initially the Cherokees saw the fur trade as beneficial to their people and participation in it was not necessarily discouraged. As game became scarce, the Cherokees became more and more dependent on English goods for their sustenance. Debts were often paid in large tracts of land, which further decreased access to wild game. Fur traders became the first Europeans to actively live among the Cherokees and their presence in the region had a profound influence on the lives of the natives (Logan 1859; Rothrock 1929; Goodwin 1977; McLoughlin 1986; Hatley 1993). Fur traders married Cherokee women and introduced cattle and hogs into the surrounding countryside (Bays 1991). When the French encouraged Cherokee warriors to fight against the British in the 1760s, English armies retaliated by destroying Cherokee dwellings and grain supplies. As a result of these losses, natives found it harder and harder to maintain their traditional cultural practices. White settlement of the region represents the third and final era of cultural (as well as ecological) change in the southern mountains for this period. As early as 1745, Europeans cleared and settled land in what is today Southwest Virginia. However, Cherokee control of the mountains made it difficult for settlers to push deeper into the area until after the Revolutionary War. The first settlers to the region were mostly of English, Scotch-Irish, or German extraction, and they brought a variety of European grasses, plants, and livestock with them. Many introduced plants (particularly weeds and grasses) flourished in the rich soils of the mountain river valleys, overtaking some indigenous species. As timber was cut for fences, dwellings, and pasture, more and more openings appeared in the mountain forest. By 1820 only the most remote mountain coves and ridge tops had not been settled by whites. Because Cherokees continued to occupy the region throughout the frontier period, Native American influence on mountain culture remained significant. When many Old World crops proved unproductive in mountain soils, settlers began cultivating native Cherokee varieties. Corn, pumpkins, squashes, gourds, beans, and melons became popular and necessary substitutes among the white settlers, as did Cherokee preservation methods. Hunting and fishing techniques were also routinely borrowed from the natives. Pioneer women adopted Cherokee use of medicinal herbs and soon were making home remedies in a similar manner. Likewise, Cherokee women learned how to milk dairy cows, tend poultry flocks, and spin and weave European fabrics. Some of the 58 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �invading plants (such as upland cresses) brought by the settlers also became popular with Cherokees. It is clear that culture change after European contact went both ways. The three seemingly distinct historical periods did not occur in isolation of each other. Peaches, watermelons, and sweet potatoes, all Spanish-introduced crops of the seventeenth century, became central to the diets of the Cherokees and later became important to the first European settlers (Williams 1984, 425-427; Davis 1993, 160-175, 211212). The building of weir-dam fish traps, a common subsistence practice of the Mississippians, was taken up by the Cherokees and later by the pioneer settlers. In fact, the early Cherokees inherited a considerable amount of material culture from the Mississippians, including wattle and daub building construction and the making of cane mats and baskets. Cherokees preferred sites formerly inhabited by the Mississippian Indians and settlers regularly sought out lands farmed by the Cherokees. Settlement Patterns Rivers played an important role in the early settlement history of the region. The Mississippians, Cherokees, and the eighteenth-century white settlers all chose to live along rivers, largely because river bottoms have the most productive and easily cultivated soils. Rivers provided transportation networks for canoes and keelboats and water power for grist- and sawmills. Site selection obviously changed from century to century, since each social group preferred some locations over others. During the sixteenth century, Mississippians preferred to settle along the largest rivers of the region, so the majority of villages were found either in the Ridge and Valley or Blue Ridge provinces of Southern Appalachia. Archaeologist Roy Dickens recorded the existence of more than three hundred Mississippian sites in the Blue Ridge province of western North Carolina, all along sizable mountain streams (Dickens 1978, 13-17).2 On the Cumberland Plateau, Mississippian occupation was somewhat less prevalent, although sizable villages were present along the Cumberland and Kanawha rivers. The largest Mississippian townships, however, were those located in East Tennessee and northern Georgia, in the southern end of the mountain region. Here the soils of the Ridge and Valley were extremely suited for corn and bean production and proximity to the slower-moving rivers provided convenient access to fish, mussels, and waterfowl (Smith 1990). Because the Mississippian settlement pattern was generally organized around a large central chiefdom, distances between villages were often very large. The Spanish displacement of the Mississippians through warfare and the spread of disease greatly altered the social organization and settlement pattern of the region. The Cherokees, who moved into the 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 59 �area, occupied former Mississippian village sites and established new ones as well. Cherokee social organization was less centralized and their numerous villages, much smaller. The Cherokees spread out linearly along rivers, generally close to one another. As populations increased during the seventeenth century, more and more river systems became occupied by the Cherokees. On the Tuckaseegee river in western North Carolina, for example, five Cherokee towns existed along a single thirtymile stretch of the river. Cherokees also burned the woods, leaving numerous clearings and adjoining canebrakes that provided important browse for livestock. The fur traders and first frontier settlers gravitated toward Cherokee villages in the level, rich river bottomlands. Because the bottomlands of the largest rivers were the first areas occupied, smaller streams became the preferred destination of later arrivals (Wilms 1991, 2-8). Gristmills, used to grind grain into meal and flour, were erected along these creeks and rivers and served as important centers of commercial activity. Those who could not find or afford land along streams built homesteads near small springs or, as a last resort, settled away from water on hillsides and ridge tops. The Role of External Forces Prior to the sixteenth century, the Appalachian South remained largely outside the world economic system. From the sixteenth century on, population pressures, warfare, land scarcity, and external economic relations all had a major impact on the settlement of the region. The desire for gold and silver brought the Spanish to the area, the fur trade brought the fur trader, and many European settlers came seeking refuge from servile living conditions in the Old World. By the early seventeenth century the native population was feeling the effects of an expanding global economy. There was trading in furs, albeit largely through middlemen to the south, some Old World crops from Europe and Africa had been introduced into the mountains, and thousands of natives had perished from introduced diseases. As the Mississippian case demonstrates, world commerce and trade profoundly affected the culture and ecology of the region as early as the seventeenth century.3 During the eighteenth century, the Cherokees were drawn even deeper into world economic relations. By the early 1700s, Charleston, South Carolina, had become an important center of trade, exporting skins, ginseng, and other commodities from the region to the European continent. Hunting deer had long been part of Cherokee traditional culture and the killing of surplus animals for the fur trade did not immediately bring significant changes to their lives. The Cherokee bartered furs for weapons, tools, and other Europeans goods and the rate of exchange was largely controlled by the natives. In the 1720s, as 60 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �competition for furs increased, traders made permanent settlements in the area, enticing the Cherokees into acquiring more skins by offering them such items as durable fabrics, colorful glass beads, and alcohol. Because of their proximity to Charleston, Cherokees living in the southern Blue Ridge were the first to engage in the trade networks, and also the first to experience the resulting ecological changes. As their participation in the fur trade increased, Cherokees began to lose skills such as the making of bows and arrows and the crafting of stone celts and arrowheads; they became increasingly dependent on European weapons and ammunition (which could only be obtained by killing more deer). As deer became harder to find locally, the Indians had to make longer and longer excursions into the upland forests in order to supply their own villages with meat and skins. In 1760, after relations between the Cherokees and the English—the primary purchaser of southern Appalachian furs—became strained, warfare broke out among the two groups. The British were largely successful in defeating the Cherokees, destroying their most valuable orchards, granaries, and croplands. The British victory insured the acquisition of thousands of acres of prime Cherokee hunting land (Williams 1927, 96; Williams 1928, 235-236; Mooney 1900, 41; Schroedl and Ross 1984, 12). The extraction of natural resources for European markets did not end with white settlement. Fur trappers and long hunters, in direct competition with the Cherokees, traded elk, buffalo, deer, and beaver skins to exporters from Charleston, and Augusta and Savannah, Georgia. Frontier settlers also collected and sold ginseng, which was shipped to France and then China. Because overland travel across the mountain region was often difficult, river settlements became important outposts for commercial trade. On the Cumberland Plateau, products were regularly sent down the Cumberland River to shipping ports as far away as New Orleans. From there, goods from the southern mountains might find their way to the Caribbean, Spain, England, France, or even Asia. Process of Culture Change While external economic forces were certainly powerful in shaping the subsistence culture of the region, they do not tell us everything about the process of culture change. For the Cherokees, cultural change was both proactive and reactive. When Overhill Cherokees became political allies of the French in the early 1760s, they were partially directing the course of world trade (Williams 1927; Corkran 1962, 225). Because certain Cherokee factions always resented European presence in the region, there was also conflict. However, despite devastating military defeats, the Cherokees retained agency in governing their affairs. Cherokee women—devoted agriculturalists, basket makers, and weavers of native fabrics—maintain many of these cultural traditions even today, 1995 - Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association - 61 �well into the twentieth century. Appalachia was, in many ways, a "middle ground," a place historian Richard White has described as "between cultures, peoples, and in between empires . . . the area between the historical foreground of European invasion and occupation and the background of Indian defeat and retreat" (White 1991, x). From my own perspective, culture change in Appalachia was a syncretic process. No single culture group avoided absorbing aspects of the other. The Spanish armies of De Soto and Pardo survived excursions into the Appalachian backcountry by eating Indian corn, a New World crop that quickly became the agricultural mainstay of the Iberian peninsula (Hudson 1990; Milanich and Hudson 1993). The Cherokees eventually adopted the practice of cattle-raising, and the white European borrowed a great number of subsistence techniques from the Cherokees. Unlike the one-dimensional acculturation theories of David Hackett Fischer and others (Fischer 1990; Greene 1988), cultural syncretism suggests that all culture groups, not just dominant ones, share in the process of cultural change.4 Proponents of syncretism focus attention almost entirely on social relationships; that is, the cultural dynamics that occur between two or more groups. But often the physical environment remains the fulcrum upon which cultural identity rests. As powerful as they may have been, members of colonizing groups generally found themselves strangers in a strange land. Having little knowledge of their new surroundings, they relied heavily on the ecological knowledge of native peoples, which, in turn, changed the nature of the relationship between the two groups. Cultural stability of the native population was dependent on a balanced relationship with the environment (Goodwin 1977; McLoughlin 1986, 3391). When the balance changed due to introduced demands, dependency on other groups increased. Ecological forces and cultural dynamics are equally important to the culture change equation—in the southern mountains culture did not arise in a social vacuum, it was the product of both human and natural history. Before European contact the living landscape of the region was less a resource to be consumed than a matrix for sustaining individual and community life. Pre-contact Mississippians and Cherokees certainly found ways of changing the local landscape, but their subsistence methods did not, in the long view, vastly alter the ecology of the region. This is not to say they didn't have an impact on the environment but that, more accurately, the impact differed from that of the Europeans. Human beings have been altering the environment in the southern mountains for the last 10,000 years. It is the magnitude of the interaction that ultimately affects the degree and rate of environmental change. In the final analysis, culture must be viewed as a product of both social and environmental forces. By emphasizing the environment in our 62 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �cultural investigation, a more complex story of social evolution and environmental change is told. Culture is never simply the outcome of social and environmental forces: it is, more accurately, the product of complex interactions between the two. When humans and the environment came together in the southern mountains, both influenced the other. Notes 1 Certainly there were human beings and Native American cultures (e.g. Woodland and Archaic) in the Southern Appalachians prior to 1500. However, because of the absence of historical data prior to the sixteenth century, and the nature and scope of cultural and environmental change that occurred over the next three hundred years, this paper focuses solely on the post-Columbian era. 2 Dickens defines the Mississippian period occurring between 1000 to 1650 A.D. The extremely large number of sites is partly explained by settlement movement over this extended time period. Mississippian refers not to a single cultural group, but to a variety of cultures sharing certain characteristics. 3 The incorporation of southern Appalachia into the world economic system has produced a lively debate among scholars in the field of Appalachian studies. Stemming from the work of Imrnanuel Wallerstein (1989) and others, proponents of "world-systems theory" argue that the region contributed greatly to the development of the world economy prior to its settlement by white Europeans. For a synopsis of this view, see Baker (1991) and Stotik (1990). 4 Not a formal school, advocates of syncretism belong to a variety of disciplines and credit a number of thinkers in their scholarly work. One of the most frequently cited is Clifford (1988), an ethnologist who has studied cultural change in both primitive and modern societies. Other relevant works promoting syncretic models of cultural evolution include Billington (1977), Axtell (1985), Otto (1989), and White (1991). Works Cited Axtell, James. 1985. The Invasion Within: The Context of Cultures in Colonial North America. New York: Oxford University Press. Baker, Christopher. 1991. "East Tennessee Within the World-Economy: Precapitalist Isolation or Peripheral Capitalism?" Master's thesis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Bays, Brad Alan. 1991. "The Historical Geography of Cattle Herding Among the Cherokee Indians, 1761-1861." Master's thesis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 63 �Billington, Ray A. 1977. America's Frontier Culture: Three Essays. College Station, Tex.: Texas A & M Press. Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Corkran, David H. 1962. The Cherokee Frontier: Conflict and Survival, 1740-62. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press. Crosby, Alfred. 1972. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Company. Davis, Donald E. 1993. "Where There Be Mountains: Environmental and Cultural Change in the Appalachian South, 1500-1800." Ph.D. diss., University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Dickens, Roy. 1978. "Mississippian Settlement Patterns in the Appalachian Summit Area: The Pisgah and Qualla Phases." In Mississippian Settlement Patterns, ed. Bruce D. Smith. New York: Academic Press. Fischer, David Hackett. 1990. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Goodwin, Gary. 1977. Cherokees in Transition: A Study of Changing Culture and Environment Prior to 1775. Chicago: University of Chicago, Department of Geography. Greene, Jack P. 1988. Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press. Hann, John A. 1988. Apalachee: The Land Between the Rivers. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Hatley, Thomas. 1993. The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians through the Era of Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press. Hudson, Charles. 1990. The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Explorations ofCarolinas and Tennessee, 1566-1568. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. Hudson, Charles, and Carman Chaves, eds. 1994. The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American South, 1521-1704. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Logan, John H. 1859. A History of the Upper Country of South Carolina From the Earliest Period to the Close of the War of Independence. Charleston: Courtney & Company. McLoughlin, William Gerald. 1986. Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic. 64 - Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Princeton: Princeton University Press. Milanich, Jerald T., and Charles Hudson. 1993. Hernando De Soto and the Indians of Florida. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Mooney, James. 1900. Myths of the Cherokees. Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington, B.C. Otto, John. 1989. The Southern Frontiers, 1607-1860: The Agricultural Evolution of the Colonial and Antebellum South. New York: Greenwood Press. Rothrock, Mary W. 1929. "Carolina Traders Among the Overhill Cherokee, 16901760." East Tennessee Historical Society's Publications 1:3-18. Schroedl, Gerald P., and Kurt C. Ross. 1984. "An Introduction to the Archaeology of Chota and Tanasee." In Overhill Cherokee Archaeology at Chota-Tennessee. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology Report Investigations 38, Tennessee Valley Authority Publications in Anthropology 42. Smith, Bruce, ed. 1990. The Mississippian Emergence. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. Smith, Marvin T. 1987. Archaeology of Aboriginal Culture Change in the Interior Southeast: Depopulation During the Early Historic Period. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Stotik, Jeffrey. 1990. "The Political Economy of Appalachia: A Critique and Synthesis of Radical Approaches to Underdevelopment." Master's thesis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1989. The Modern World-System HI: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730-1840s. New York: Academic Press. Waselkov, Gregory A. 1989. "Seventeenth-Century Trade in the Colonial Southeast." Southeastern Archaeology 8:117-133. White, Richard. 1991. Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. New York: Cambridge University Press. Williams, J. Mark. 1984. "The Joe Bell Site: Seventeenth Century Lifeways on the Oconee River." Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, Athens. Williams, Samuel Cole. 1927. Lieutenant Henry Timberlake's Memoirs, 17561765. Johnson City, Tenn.: Watauga Press. -. 1928. Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 1540-1800. Johnson City, Tenn.: The Watauga Press. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 65 �Wilms, Douglas C. 1991. "Cherokee Land Use in Georgia Before Removal." In Cherokee Removal: Before and After, ed. William L. Anderson. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press. Donald Edward Davis, Ph.D., a native of north Georgia, teaches sociology at Dalton College in Dalton, Georgia. He is the author of Ecophilosophy: A Field Guide to the Literature and was a historical consultant for the book Hiking Trails of the Smokies. He is currently revising for publication "Where There Be Mountains: Environmental and Cultural Change in the Appalachian South," his doctoral dissertation at the University of Tennessee. 66 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Connecting Appalachia: A Survey of Recent Work in Early American History with Reference to Southern Appalachia Tom Costa In his seminal study Appalachia on Our Mind, Henry Shapiro describes the creation of a myth of Appalachian isolation and "otherness" initially based on the writings of local color journalists who "discovered" the area in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Their depictions of the mountains as an isolated, rural backwater were reinforced by the attentions of Protestant home missionaries who invaded the region, shifting their focus from blacks to spiritually impoverished white mountain folk in order not to alienate other white southerners. In the view of these do-gooders, Appalachian "peculiarity" became the basis for attempts at "denominational uplift," despite the fact that many of the mountaineers were already Christians (Shapiro 1978, 4, 60). Ronald Eller, in Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers, modifies Shapiro's thesis by showing that Appalachian economic stagnation, traditionally seen as a historical and geographical development which contrasts with the massive changes wrought by industrialization after the 1870s, was in reality a result of the rapid and uneven pace of the late nineteenth-century economic change (Eller 1982, xx, 6). Not surprisingly, both Shapiro and Eller see the crucial period in the history of Appalachia as the period of industrialization, from roughly 1870 to the 1920s, when the arrival of the railroad and coal industries 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 67 �had their greatest impact. There is no doubt that the effects of industrialization form a significant theme in Appalachian history. By shifting the focus to the roots of mountain history in the colonial and antebellum periods, however, recent works have added significantly to Shapiro's and Eller's work by placing Appalachia in the broader context of American and southern frontier and rural history. Echoing an earlier call for connecting Appalachia to the mainstream of history, these revisions significantly alter the traditional picture of Appalachia as a backwater, bypassed by the main forces of history (Wilhelm 1977). There is no synthesis of pre-industrial Appalachian history, which may be part of the problem. Older histories tend to view mountaineers as peripheral to the main story—an isolated, ornery folk who wanted nothing better than to be left alone. According to these versions, these dirt farmers or herdsmen, imbued with precapitalist values, worked marginal lands no one else wanted. Through choice and/or circumstance, they engaged in a subsistence agriculture by which they barely managed to scratch out a living. According to this thesis, coal mining brought capital, jobs, even civilization to the hillbilly (Gray 1933, 884, 867; Owsley 1942, 24, 26-7; Weise 1991). Recent works provide a valuable corrective to the picture of antebellum southern Appalachia as a static, impoverished region. Antebellum southern mountaineers practiced a more diversified agriculture than once was assumed. According to Tyrel G. Moore, Eastern Kentucky farmers participated in a range of economic pursuits which augmented their farming, including milling and tanning, as well as locally extracting salt, iron, and coal. In an important work on antebellum North Carolina highlanders, John Inscoe has described "a thriving, productive, and even a progressive society" on the eve of the Civil War—certainly not the poor dirt farmers of the older image. In these works, southern Appalachia is placed in the context of antebellum rural America as a whole (Moore 1991; Inscoe 1989, 11-12). On the other hand, the counterpart to the hillbilly dirt farmer stereotype—the sturdy, self-sufficient yeoman who lived in an idyllic Eden later spoiled by industrialization—also proves problematic. Paul Salstrom contributes to the scholarly debate over the self-sufficient versus entrepreneurial models of rural America by shifting the emphasis to agricultural production as a causative factor in the move from acquisitiveness to a more cautious self-sufficiency. Salstrom's Kentucky farmers have always been entrepreneurial. He turns the rural mentalites argument on its head by pointing out that Appalachia's declining agriculture actually dates from the 1840s and is the key factor in transforming the mountain farmer from a middling entrepreneurial producer to a cautious, self-sufficient grower (Salstrom 1991). Salstrom's article forms part of a larger debate over the mental 68 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �world of rural Americans. Were eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury farmers essentially communal, self-sufficient, and anti-capitalist? Or were they aggressive, profit-maximizing proto-capitalists? Much of the recent work dealing with Appalachia indicates that the latter view is probably closer to the truth. In a work dealing with the Shenandoah Valley, for example, Robert D. Mitchell attacks the self-sufficiency thesis head on by pointing out that the American westward movement was from the beginning spurred by a commercial ideology. By extension, Appalachian settlers, like the other frontiersmen, headed west with one eye on the profit potential ahead of them and the other on from where they had come (Mitchell 1977, 8).1 Livestock, in particular, often proved a valuable source of income for preindustrial mountain farmers. Frank Owsley's classic stages of settlement of the southwest, with herdsmen followed by farmers, is misleading. Livestock and crops were raised by mountain farmers. Moore's Kentuckians herded cattle, sheep, and swine in significant numbers. In colonial western Pennsylvania and Virginia, cattle formed an important part of the mixed farming that was characteristic of the region. For some eighteenth-century Shenandoah Valley farmers, cattle raising was the primary occupation. Valley cattlemen were an aristocracy comparable to the low country tobacco planters (Owsley 1942, 45-46; Moore 1991, 2267, 233; McMaster 1991, 130). Such economic diversification led to increasing social stratification, but it was access to land which provides the key factor in the formation of frontier elites. Recent studies of land acquisition in early American history may prove especially rewarding to the student of early Appalachia. In colonial times, the key figure in controlling access to land was the county surveyor. For colonial Augusta County, Virginia, for example, Turk McClesky detects a pattern of settling land in which a small, interconnected local elite, acting on their own behalf or as agents for provincial leaders, monopolized the best land (McClesky 1990; Hughes 1979, 89, 170; Hofstra 1991; Hofstra 1990, 427-29). Such a pattern of elite accumulation of land may have persisted into the ostensibly more democratic nineteenth century. Mary Beth Pudup demonstrates the formation of a native social, political, and economic elite in three counties in southeastern Kentucky beginning in the 1820s. Land ownership proved an important criterion for ascent. This group also based its prominence on establishing political and economic networks with the rest of Kentucky (Pudup 1991). The importance of kin in facilitating the formation of local elites, enhancing ideas of community in backcountry regions, and tying mountain people to the wider world is the subject of a number of recent works. For example, Warren Hofstra describes the importance of family, ethnicity, and religion in fostering a sense of community in the northern 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 69 �Shenandoah Valley settlement of Opequon, even for the increasing numbers who departed for Kentucky and Tennessee in the years following the Revolution (Hofstra 1990, 423-448). In Southwest Virginia, the kinship connections crucial in gaining the powerful Preston family local dominance helped them capture state office in the early national period. Later, a branch of the same family, residents of isolated Burkes Garden in Tazewell County, Virginia, also used family connections in a vigorous system of local and external exchange. Kin networks were as important in preindustrial Appalachia as they were elsewhere in colonial and antebellum rural America (Terry 1992; Mann 1992; Dunn 1988). Family provides one important theme in recent works on colonial and antebellum Appalachia; ethnicity represents another. The stereotype of a predominantly Scotch-Irish Southern mountain frontier is addressed by several authors. While the Scotch-Irish element is significant, the term itself is problematic. It is important to distinguish the differences among Irish Presbyterians of Scottish origin (Ulster Scots, the main ethnic group called Scotch-Irish), Irish Catholics, Presbyterians from Wales, Scotland, or northern England, and Irish Anglicans of English origin, all emigrants from the margins of Britain to American backwoods (Mitchell 1991, 9-10; Blethen and Wood 1991, 150-1; Keller 1991, 72; Nobles 1989, 651-2; Berthoff 1986, 525-30; Jones 1991, 286-7). Identifying the ethnic backgrounds of Appalachian settlers is one thing; attributing cultural characteristics to their ethnicity is another. Older accounts posit a group of characteristics as the "frontier type"— hardy, independent, aggressive, often violent. In examining the background of the "Scotch-Irish" immigrants to Southern Appalachia, Kenneth Keller asserts that it was only with the growth of nativism and anti-Catholicism in the 1840s and 1850s that a real sense of Scotch-Irish ethnicity began to appear among western mountaineers. Of all immigrant groups to the frontier, the Scotch-Irish adapted most readily to the dominant English cultural norm: they were the most rapidly assimilated of any of the frontier ethnics (Keller 1991, 83-4; Jones 1991, 311-13). Furthermore, an examination of the career of one Western North Carolina merchant, James Patton, "a key figure in linking the small farms of the southern mountains to the urban markets both north and south," emphasizes the advanced social standing of the Ulster immigrants in that region (Blethen and Wood 1991, 152-3). Even Hofstra's ethnic Scotch-Irish of Opequon traded with Germans, English, and native Virginians (Hofstra 1990, 424). Politically, mountain stereotypes also give way to a more diversified picture of early national and antebellum Appalachian public life. In Revolutionary Southwest Virginia, for example, a more complex reading of local politics replaces the traditional view that mountaineers were 70 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �unanimous in their support for independence. While many of the area's patriots marched under Colonel William Campbell of Abingdon to defeat the British at King's Mountain, South Carolina, in 1780, local loyalists created such turmoil that patriot leaders reported that perhaps as much as half of the area's population had British sympathies (Selby 1988, 2156, 219; Evans 1985, 179-212). Following the Revolution, Van Beck Hall has found that, in contrast to older notions of a socially, economically, and politically retarded area, Appalachian Virginia between 1790 and 1830 "generated political programs that attempted to reform the state while using its power to implement economic development and social change. . . ." Hall proposes the existence of "two Appalachias": one, rural and isolated farming counties; the other, vital and town-centered, with newspapers, banks, and nascent industry. This latter area produced politicians who led efforts for political and social reform and economic development which proved an anathema to easterners. Hall's mountain politicians generally remained suspicious of the slave-owning, planter-dominated east (Hall 1991, 166, 172). On the other hand, John Inscoe's examination of antebellum North Carolina mountaineers provides a revision to the common view that they were unionist, and in the process corrects a series of misconceptions regarding southern mountaineers. Although the inhabitants of Boone and Buncombe counties owned fewer slaves than their eastern counterparts, their defense of the southern way of life was no less profound. Inscoe's Carolinians inhabited Hall's town-centered Appalachia, with the additional advantage of a growing tourist industry (Inscoe 1989, 25-58). Taken together, the two works reveal an Appalachia which defies political stereotyping. These recent examinations of preindustrial Appalachia form part of the larger question of the meaning of the frontier in American history. Frederick Jackson Turner's picture of independent and egalitarian settlers is largely discredited. Yet what replaces Turner's frontier is not clear. One concept which may prove more fruitful than Turner's tired frontier thesis is the concept of antebellum Southern Appalachia as a borderlands rather than a frontier. According to this model, western settlers migrated to an increasingly ragged periphery. Using such a concept, several themes emerge from the above works which have been made explicit in three recent attempts at a grand synthesis of early American history. Geography offers one key to gaining a more balanced perspective on Appalachian history, as many of the above-mentioned works attest. The starting point in any definition of Appalachia must be geography. The first volume of D.W. Meinig"s ambitious geo-historical approach to 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 71 �American history emphasizes geographic character, structure, and system, which he defines as the "the human creation of places and of networks of relationships among them" (Meinig 1986, xv). Another fruitful method lies in an examination of the folks involved in the settlement process itself. This process is called "peopling" by Bernard Bailyn in his recent synthesis. One of the most significant developments of the late colonial and early national period is population growth. According to the most recent estimates, in the years from 1750 to 1775 the population of North America grew from 1,300,000 to 2,300,000. The bulk of this increase, coming as it does after 1760, "became so great that it constituted a social force in itself. . ." This explains much of American history, including perhaps even the American Revolution (Bailyn 1986(a); 1986(b), 7; Meinig 1986, 288). David Hackett Fischer stresses the persistence of cultural factors as the organizing theme in the first volume of his ambitious survey of American history. Fischer sets forth four regions of Britain whose distinctive cultural traits migrated to four separate regions of North America. Fischer's book has been attacked, however, for a variety of reasons, one of which is his essentially static view of culture. For all of his prodigious research, his thesis of cultural persistence in Southern Appalachia remains problematic (Fischer 1989; "Forum" 1991; Landsman 1991, 253-259; "Culture Wars" 1992). Reviewing these three syntheses, one theme emerges which may prove productive in dealing with the history of the Appalachian South. The concept of networking represents a combination of the approaches of Meinig, Bailyn, and Fischer—geography, peopling, and culture. According to Barrett and Anita Rutman, networking involves a number of preconceptions. First is "the assumption that people inevitably associate in groups." Associations have some order; they come together at what the Rutmans call "nodal points." Geography, in both a negative and positive sense—presenting limits as well as opportunities— is also a vital element in forming associations. Physical topography is important; so too is social topography—associations are hierarchical, involving power relationships. Finally, associations are observable, having limits and forming networks. An important outcome of using this approach is that we see how the communities under study are connected to the wider world (Rutman and Rutman 1984, 25-30). How does networking apply to the history of early Appalachia? In Robert Mitchell's view, historians must "envision the Appalachian area as 'becoming,' as a place in process, defined both by its physical presence and by its mode and timing of pioneer settlement" (Mitchell 1991, 3). Using networking to see Appalachian history as a process can help reconcile seemingly disparate themes of geography, peopling, and degree of cultural persistence. 72 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �For example, Meinig clearly focuses on all of North America, including the mountains, as part of a wider Atlantic world. His geographical approach views the colonies as parts of a whole—the movement of goods, people, and ideas from metropolitan European centers, each with its hinterland, through Atlantic ports, across the ocean to colonial ports, to colonies, to frontier entrepots, to outposts, and finally to Indian core lands. Meinig's schemata thus represents a network along which a spectrum of power relationships, interaction, and social character works itself out (Meinig 1986, 258-65). Bailyn, too, emphasizes networking. His masterful analysis of the lists of emigrants from Britain during the years 1771-1773 demonstrates the dual nature of British migration to the New World during those years. A primarily individual, servant migration from the midlands and southern England through London combined with an overwhelmingly family-centered migration from northern Britain (Bailyn 1986(b), 201-3). Family connections in this case may have maintained cultural norms for a longer period in the southern backcountry than in areas where individuals settled as servants. Fischer's work, focusing as it does on the near total retention of lifeways in the settlement process, proves more of a problem. Although his analysis of the British background to the settling of North America provides a wealth of detail, his examination of the transferral of culture to the backcountry is too rigid. The work is useful in its emphasis on the British background of the settlers, but provides a too static picture of the settlement process itself. If modified, however, by a closer examination of the networks between Old and New World regions, Fischer's analysis can provide important insight. For example, his emphasis on one specific characteristic of the northern British borderlands, namely a propensity to violence, attracts much of the criticism of his book. Just how this propensity toward violence may have changed in the process of settling the southern mountains remains the crucial question which Fischer's approach tends to obscure. A recent article by Ned Landsman offers a more subtle thesis, maintaining that borderers' violence may have generated the commitment to civil order which characterized the Scottish Enlightenment. Such a commitment then transferred to America through a network of settlers from northern Britain (Landsman 1991, 258; Cunningham 1992; Waller 1992). Applying the concept of networking to correct Fischer's emphasis on cultural persistence also serves to debunk the older view of the persistence of an ethnic Scotch-Irish "type" in Appalachia. As Maldwyn Jones points out, even if one accepts the distinctiveness of "Scotch-Irish" as a discrete group, by the time of the Revolution, except in the most isolated places, the Scotch-Irish on the American frontier had become largely 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 73 �assimilated into an Anglo-American cultural framework (Jones 1991, 313). The works discussed here repeatedly emphasize the value of networking as an approach to Appalachian history. There have been numerous connections between the inhabitants of Southern Appalachia and the wider world. Mann's inhabitants of Burkes Valley sought contacts with the outside world through a network of family and commercial connections (Mann 1992, 413). McClesky's colonial speculators acted in close cooperation with provincial leaders in Williamsburg, luring the large numbers of migrants which moved southward from Pennsylvania into the Shenandoah Valley (McClesky 1990, 485-6; Meinig 1986, 159-60). In the northern valley, Hofstra and Mitchell detect an integrated towncountry "system" which developed as the area joined the wider commercializing trading system in the early nineteenth century (Hofstra and Mitchell 1993). Inscoe's Western Carolinians, too, act "as parts of a larger whole." The Appalachia of Inscoe and Hall is a more complex region than any older picture of rural isolation. Mountain towns, "where the world got out. . . and where the world got in," as Inscoe so aptly quotes Thomas Wolfe, served as nodal points where news and institutions from the outside penetrated the mountain region (Inscoe 1989, 25-58). Many questions remain. Religion as a network receives less attention than it deserves, although Hofstra makes some effort to include religion in his analysis of the Shenandoah Valley (Hofstra 1990, 423448). The earliest networks of the region, among Native Americans and between Native Americans and European settlers, also warrant attention. But such questions represent significant research opportunities. Ongoing work in the history of colonial and early national Southern Appalachia will continue to add to our knowledge of Appalachian networks. Eventually a synthesis of early Appalachian history will appear, connecting Appalachia with the mainstream of American history, and the bogey of Appalachian isolation and otherness will finally rest. (The research for this paper was supported through a grant provided by the Faculty Development Committee of Clinch Valley College.) Note 1 It should be noted, however, that several historians, writing what has been labeled "the new rural history," dispute the entrepreneurial interpretation of American fanners. Their contributions lie beyond the scope of this essay, but see the introduction to The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation (Hahn and Prude 1985) and "Theoretical Perspectives on the New Rural History: 74 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �From Environmentalist!! to Modernization" (Swierenga 1982). Works Cited Bailyn, Bernard. 1986a. The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. . 1986b. Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Berthoff, Rowland. 1986. "Celtic Mist Over the South." Journal of Southern History 52:525-530. Blethen, H. Tyler, and Curtis W. Wood. 1991. "A Trader on the Western Carolina Frontier." In Appalachian Frontiers, Settlement, Society and Development in the Preindustrial Era, ed. Robert D. Mitchell. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. "Culture Wars: David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed." 1992. Appalachian Journal 19:161-200. Cunningham, Rodger. 1992. "Second and Third Thoughts on Albion's Seed." Appalachian Journal 19:174-5. Dunn, Durwood. 1988. Cades Cove: The Life and Death of a Southern Appalachian Community, 1818-1937. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Eller, Ronald. 1982. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Evans, Emory. 1985. "Trouble in the Backcountry: Disaffection in Southwest Virginia During the American Revolution." In An Uncivil War: The Southern Backcountry During the American Revolution, eds. Ronald Hoffman, Thad Tate, and Peter Albert. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Fischer, David Hackett. 1989. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford University Press. "Forum: Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America—A Symposium." 1991. William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 48:223-308. Gray, Louis Cecil. 1933. History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860. 2 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. Hahn, Steven, and Jonathan Prude, eds. 1985. The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 75 �Hall, Van Beck. 1991. "The Politics of Appalachian Virginia, 1790-1830." In Appalachian Frontiers, Settlement, Society and Development in the Preindustrial Era, ed. Robert D. Mitchell. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Hofstra, Warren. 1990. "Land, Ethnicity, and Community at the Opequon Settlement, Virginia, 1730-1800." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 98:423-448. Hofstra, Warren. 1991. "Land Policy and Settlement in the Northern Shenandoah Valley." In Appalachian Frontiers, Settlement, Society and Development in the Preindustrial Era, ed. Robert D. Mitchell. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Hofstra, Warren, and Robert D. Mitchell. 1993. "Town and Country in Backcountry Virginia: Winchester and the Shenandoah Valley, 1730-1800." Journal of Southern History 59:619-646. Hughes, Sara Shaver. 1979. Surveyors and Statesmen: Land Measuring in Colonial Virginia. Richmond: Virginia State Library. Inscoe, John C. 1989. Mountain Masters, Slavery, and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Jones, Maldwyn A. 1991. "The Scotch-Irish in British America." In Strangers Within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire, eds. Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Keller, Kenneth. 1991. "What is Distinctive About the Scotch-Irish?" In Appalachian Frontiers, Settlement, Society and Development in the Preindustrial Era, ed. Robert D. Mitchell. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Landsman, Ned. 1991. "Border Cultures, the Backcountry, and 'North British" Emigration to America." William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 48:223-308. McClesky, Turk. 1990. "Rich Land, Poor Prospects: Real Estate and the Formation of a Social Elite in Augusta County, Virginia, 1738-1770." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 98:449-486. McMaster, Richard K. 1991. "The Cattle Trade in Western Virginia, 1760-1830." In Appalachian Frontiers, Settlement, Society and Development in the Preindustrial Era, ed. Robert D. Mitchell. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Mann, Ralph. 1992. "Mountains, Land, and Kin Networks: Burkes Garden, Virginia, in the 1840s and 1850s." Journal of Southern History 58:411-434. Meinig, D.W. 1986. The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 76 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven -1995 �Years of History. Vol I, Atlantic America, 1492-1800. New Haven: Yale University Press. Mitchell, Robert D. 1977. Commercialism and Frontier: Perspectives on the Early Shenandoah Valley. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Mitchell, Robert D., ed. 1991. Appalachian Frontiers: Settlement, Society and Development in the Preindustrial Era. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Moore, Tyrel G. 1991. "Economic Development in Appalachian Kentucky, 18001860." In Appalachian Frontiers, Settlement, Society and Development in the Preindustrial Era, ed. Robert D. Mitchell. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Nobles, Gregory H. 1989. "Breaking Into the Backcountry: New Approaches to the Early American Frontier." William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 46:64170. Owsley, Frank. 1942. Plain Folk of the Old South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Pudup, Mary Beth. 1991. "Social Class and Economic Development in Southeast Kentucky, 1820-1880." In Appalachian Frontiers, Settlement, Society and Development in the Preindustrial Era, ed. Robert D. Mitchell. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Rutman, Darrett, and Anita H. Rutman. 1984. A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia, 1650-1750. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. Salstrom, Paul. 1991. "The Agricultural Origins of Economic Dependency, 18401880." In Appalachian Frontiers, Settlement, Society and Development in the Preindustrial Era, ed. Robert D. Mitchell. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Selby, John E. 1988. The Revolution in Virginia, 1775-1783. Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg. Shapiro, Henry D. 1978. Appalachia on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Swierenga, Robert P. 1982. "Theoretical Perspectives on the New Rural History: From Environmentalism to Modernization.".<4gricM/tora/ History 56:495-502. Terry, Gail. 1992. "The Preston Family of Southwest Virginia." Paper presented at a conference on the Southwest Virginia frontier, Emory and Henry College, Emory, Va., November. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 77 �Waller, Altina. 1992. The Power of Culture." Appalachian Journal 19:180-181. Weise, Robert. 1991. "Big Stone Gap and the New South, 1880-1900." In The Edge of the South: Life in Nineteenth-Century Virginia, eds. Edward L. Ayers and John C. Willis. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Wilhelm, Gene, Jr. 1977. "Appalachian Isolation: Fact or Fiction?" In An Appalachian Symposium: Essays Written in Honor of Gratis D. Williams, ed. Jerry W. Williamson. Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press. Tom Costa is assistant professor in the department of history and philosophy at Clinch Valley College in Wise, Va. He also serves as moderator for H-Load, an electronic discussion list for state and local history. 78 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Property, Gender, and the Sale of Mineral Rights in Pre-industrial Eastern Kentucky Robert Weise Before corporate coal mining introduced full-time wage labor into the area, Central Appalachia's farm economy functioned primarily within the context of individual households. While the rather extensive local timber industry brought a large percentage of the Appalachian population in direct contact with regional and national markets and with rationalized credit systems, farming continued to maintain household subsistence (Merrill 1977; Henretta 1978; Clark 1979; Clark 1990; Hofstra and Mitchell 1993). In Eastern Kentucky, deep generational and gender conflicts over the control of property divided households in the years before industrialization, and those intra-household divisions were entangled with extensive credit relationships formed with merchants and with other households. The opportunity to sell mineral rights to coal speculators in the late nineteenth century suddenly opened up new avenues to women and men for resolving both intra-household and interhousehold conflicts. Eastern Kentucky's industrial development, then, dependent for its success on the sale of mineral rights, is linked not only to the colonial aspirations of outside mining corporations but also to gender relations within Appalachia's farming households (Eller 1982). Landed property formed the base of pre-industrial Appalachia's farm economy. Consequently, control of that property defined power relationships and shaped the ways those relationships became reproduced in successive generations. Property owners, generally men, managed the transfer of real estate through deeds of sale and through inheritance. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 79 �While Kentucky law tried to protect some rights of married women and female descendants to property ownership, Appalachian cultural norms tended to privilege the power of men to control property over protections granted women by law. In Floyd County, Kentucky, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, men often sidestepped or disregarded women's legal property rights and preserved for men command over the productive resources of the county. Until 1894, married women in Kentucky did not have legal powers over land or business transactions conducted by their husbands (Salmon 1986; Basch 1982). All such transactions, and the profits gained from them, belonged exclusively to husbands, and husbands had full rights to their wives' personal property and to the use and rents of whatever real estate their wives brought into the marriage. Nonetheless, Kentucky law did protect women's ownership, if not use and control, of their own landed property, and it gave women an interest in property accumulated during their marriages. Wives' own estates were free from liabilities their husbands incurred either before or during the marriage, and their estates could not be sold to satisfy their husbands' debts. Wives, furthermore, had to consent to and acknowledge any sale of land; a wife's refusal to sign a deed in front of a notary public invalidated the transaction. Wives could also, with the support of their husbands, petition the circuit court to be given the status of feme sole, to be considered in the eyes of the law an unmarried woman with full powers over all her real and personal property. Statutes enacted in 1894 eliminated the legal concept of feme sole by granting all women, married or single, full rights to property ownership and rights to conduct business independently from their husbands. Kentucky laws upheld common law protections of widows and daughters by ensuring their share of the property left by husbands and fathers who died intestate. A widow received the customary one-third dower interest in land and a full interest in personal property for her use during her life. Upon her death, however, her dower descended to her husband's heirs. A widow, then, had full use of her dower, but she could not sell it or bequeath it. The 1894 laws gave husbands a one-third lifetime dower interest in their wives' estates, and gave both husbands and wives absolute control of one-half of the personal property. Daughters, before and after 1894, had as complete an interest in their fathers' estate as did their brothers. After court administrators determined the size and contents of the widow's dower, the rest of the estate went in equal shares to each of the children, male and female (Dembitz 1890; Bullock and Johnson 1873; Russell 1909). Pre-1894 inheritance law, then, codified some measure of independence for women by protecting their rights to ownership of separate property. Nonetheless, by prohibiting widows from disposing of their dowers as they saw fit, inheritance 80 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �law still upheld the principle of male control over household business. Gender conventions in the Kentucky mountains placed men in positions of authority over women and over their children, creating what must be called a patriarchal hierarchy. At meals, women often waited on the men of the family before sitting at the table themselves; children labored under the strict discipline of their fathers; religious services had separate seating for men and women and restricted leadership positions to men alone. If those situations did not at all preclude genuinely loving relationships and did not signify Victorian submissiveness among wives, they did serve to underscore the power of husbands and fathers in the household and in the larger society (Caudill 1962; Mann 1993; Dorgan 1989; Tyson, Peacock, and Patterson 1988). That power generally meant that husbands, unaware of and unconcerned with the 1894 changes in property law, ran the business affairs of the household and expected their wives to acknowledge land deeds when necessary. One woman testified in 1912 that she knew nothing of the value of her farm or the timber on it because she had never investigated it, noting that "women are generally in the house, you know." When her husband sold the tract, he insisted she sign off on the deed even though she understood nothing of the document and knew none of her husband's plans, because "like all other women I always attend to my business in the house, and didn't pay any attention to them" (Floyd Circuit Court Files #5644, 22 January 1912). This woman took domesticity to an extreme that most Floyd County women did not share, yet her role was well within the gender norms of mountain culture. Those norms defined the proper relations between husbands and wives in the household. When Floyd County marriages fell apart, the party suing for the divorce did so on the grounds either that the husband failed to provide adequately for his family or that the wife, by some lewd and lascivious behavior, proved herself unchaste. Petitions in divorce suits tended to copy the wording of the Kentucky statutes that set out the grounds for a legal divorce, making it difficult to determine whether Floyd Countians shared the same gender conceptions held in the rest of the state, or if they felt they had to phrase their complaints that way to obtain the divorce. Fortunately, the details of the suits do make clear what each party expected of the other in the marriage. Women often pointed to habitual drunkenness or plain laziness as the cause of their husbands' inability to provide for their families' subsistence, and that failure was too often accompanied by severe abuse. One woman claimed that, although she was always "obedient, submissive, and kind" to her husband, he "cruelly, whipped beat and abused assaulted and injured . . . her with a large club." At the same time, her husband had "within the last few years wasted and extravagantly disposed of some twelve or thirteen hundred dollars without adding 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 81 �anything to his property" and was now trying to dispose of the rest of it so his wife could not claim alimony or gain control of his estate. Another woman suffered similar violence from her husband, who refused to provide her with food and clothing. Her husband, witnesses said, "would not buy Clothing for her" and "would not work and support her .. . the People had to throw in provisions to keep her from Starving" (Floyd Circuit Court Files #4860, 31 December 1906; #4823, 8 October 1906, among many others). Gender divisions of labor, even in Appalachia's subsistence farming economy, were apparently sufficiently well drawn that a husband's failure to do his part threatened not only the household's use and control of property but also its ability to feed itself. Either party could, and often did, accuse the other of adultery, most often occurring "on divers occasions and with divers persons." Men generally limited their complaints to adultery and abandonment, indicating that they expected their wives, in addition to their contributions to household subsistence, to provide them with a respectable home. Divorce suits based on adultery could get extremely ugly, especially since circuit and county courts accepted all manner of hearsay as evidence. Witnesses, both men and women, routinely testified as fact what was only neighborhood rumor and proffered to the court their opinions as to the moral character of one party or the other. One witness told the Court that "I have saw deft winking at men and squeezing mens feet and I have seen her Hug men I have seen her have vulgar talk to men . . . other than her husband." Another based her certainty as to a woman's unchastity on the grounds that "I have seen her knocking about with Zack Johnsonf;] report says they have taken up together" (Floyd Circuit Court Files #2545, 20 September 1886; #1404, 15 January 1872; #2173, 6 September 1881; #2218, 31 August 1882). Suits all too often degenerated into a sordid set of assertions, counterassertions, threats, and bribery as women tried to justify their claims to alimony in land, while their husbands sought to establish grounds for not paying any alimony at all. Divorce suits and accusations of male wastefulness were ways that Appalachian women contested male control of productive resources. Men tried to perpetuate their authority by passing control of property to their sons and sons-in-law. While most Floyd County wills written in the late nineteenth century merely specified which tracts of land would go to each child, son or daughter, some granted all land to the sons and gave personal property or cash to the daughters. None gave daughters any more land than they would have received had the bequeather died intestate, and only a few stipulated that the daughters' inheritance was to be free from the control of their husbands. One will insisted that daughters could sell their shares only to their brothers, who had no restrictions placed on their shares, and others gave daughters or sisters only a lifetime interest in their inheritances (Floyd County Will Book A 82 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �1812-1931). Most Floyd County farmers left no wills at all and disposed of their property by deed instead. These deeds either did not go into effect until the grantor died, or else they specified that the grantee support the grantor and his wife on the property until their deaths. Deeds often went to sons alone, while others went directly to sons-in-law, under the assumption that daughters' welfare was served best by allowing their husbands full control of the households' resources (Floyd County Land Deed Books K:403-410; N:394). Fathers' attempts to control the distribution of their property did not always succeed, especially where an unusually forceful daughter insisted on retaining the estate for herself. Sometime around 1880, Christopher Patton tried to draw up a will giving much of his land to his sons-in-law Micajer Spradlin and Abner Hackworth. Christopher's daughter Pheba, however, in the words of her sister Polly Spradlin (wife of Micajer), "got into a mighty fret" over Christopher's plans and compelled him to write a new will giving Pheba ownership of virtually the whole estate. Christopher "told [Pheba] she would have all & had got all and yet she was not satisfied, and that if she did not quit [illegible] over him so much, he was going to be taken away from there." Abner Hackworth further testified to Pheba's influence over her father. On the day Christopher wrote his new will, Hackworth went to his house. "[I] stepped in the entry & the old woman [Pheba] stoped me & told me not to go in there they had the door bared against me . . . The evening before he died, he said that he did not have his business fixed up as he wanted i t . . . Pheba rushed in the house and told him to hush Mouth that everything was fixed up right." Hackworth concluded that "Pheba was the controller of everything so far as i know . . . I think she ruled over him in every thing, is my opinion" (Floyd Circuit Court Files #2649, 11 July 1887). Patriarchal authority had its limits, especially in the mountains where rugged living for both women and men mitigated against the idealization of the meek and domesticated woman. A handful of women, then, did manage to gain control of household property, and some even became a part of Floyd County's small but influential group of merchants and speculators. Most businesswomen, however, achieved their position as extensions of their husbands, by supporting them in their businesses or by taking over the businesses after their husbands' deaths. Christina Hatcher, for example, took control of her husband's general store when he died in 1851 and ran it with aplomb until her own death 35 years later. Hatcher never remarried, a move which would have ended her mercantile career. Instead, she concentrated on building up the family fortune by buying and selling 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 83 �several tracts of land and by extending store credit to neighboring farmers. Hatcher had no qualms about suing those farmers if they failed to repay their debts (Floyd Circuit Court Files #516, 8 December 1856; #688, 12 October 1858; #853, 19 November 1860; #970-#972, 17 November 1865; Floyd County Land Deed Books, esp. K:351, L:217) Nannie J. Honaker worked alongside her husband in his mercantile and timber operations. Around 1900, Honaker bought up several pieces of property and secured a lease on ten acres on which to build a log yard and sawmills. She also made at least three timber contracts with her neighbors, buying from them over one thousand trees for under one dollar each. In 1906, Honaker bought up the holdings of the bankrupt Winston Lumber & Manufacturing Company of Louisville, and three years later, in a joint deed with her husband, she purchased mineral rights under a 43-acre tract (Floyd County Land Deed Books X:475, 4:282, 14:339, 17:155, 22:621). Arty Akers built on her husband's extensive landholdings after his death in 1870. Like Hatcher, Akers, though an uneducated farm woman, lent money to farmers throughout the county at interest, not hesitating to file suit when the need arose. When she died in 1900, Akers left her children sizable estates. She was, in the words of a neighbor, "a fine business woman, fine" (Floyd Circuit Court Files #4149, 22 August 1901). Other women petitioned the Circuit Court to be granted the status of feme sole, allowing them to "use enjoy sell and convey for her own benefit any property . . . she may own or acquire free from the claims or debts of her husband and to make contracts, sue and be sued as a single woman and to trade in her own name". Mary L. Hatcher (only indirectly related to Christina Hatcher), supported by her husband, made such a petition in 1877 and from then on ran successful stores in at least two different locations (Floyd Circuit Court Files #1794, 17 March 1877). More often than not, however, what may look like a woman's effort to secure property for herself or to conduct business outside the dominion of her husband was actually a ploy to protect the husband's property from being sold for unpaid debts. Creditors regularly complained to the courts that their debtors had fraudulently sold all their property to their wives in an effort to "cover up his property." Other creditors believed that feme sole petitions themselves smacked of fraud, and they delved into the personal affairs of their debtors to determine whether their wives actually were managing their property on their own. So even though Lydia Mayo received feme sole status from the court, creditors of her husband, Lewis, still tried to force the sale of real estate that was in her name. Lewis Mayo, they said, traded in livestock and cultivated the whole of the farm on his own and received the benefits from his labor, and therefore the property legally belonged to him. Neither his creditors nor the judge believed Mayo when he told them that he was only a hired 84 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �hand of his wife and that he turned all farm proceeds over to her in exchange for room and board (Floyd Circuit Court Files #1794, 17 March 1877; #1255, 13 February 1869; #2514, 1 April 1886; #1762, 25 April 1876; #1865, 25 April 1878; #1901, 4 December 1878). Only rarely was feme sole used as a mechanism to advance women's independence in the household. More often, those legal measures to protect women's property were manipulated to facilitate and safeguard men's business affairs, to perpetuate male control of household resources. Feme sole was a legal device useful mostly to households directly involved in commercial activities and with direct connections to creditors. In those farming households operating on a basically subsistence basis, men used more straightforward means of maintaining their dominion over household affairs. Cultural assumptions of male authority gave men de facto control of all property and all property transactions, sometimes in conflict with the protections granted women by law. Although husbands' power over their wives' property was meant to benefit the household as a whole, men sometimes simply turned it toward their own pleasures, causing more than one woman to complain to the Circuit Court that her husband was "spending and making away with her property and . . . never has made any provision for her and her children for their support and maintenance" (Floyd Circuit Court Files #1810, 30 July 1877). Wives' legal rights to real estate—their ownership of what they brought into the marriage and their interest in household transactions— fell victim to the real power of husbands, who commonly resorted to "fraud, threats, duress, and coercion" to gain their wives' legal assent to land sales. Women often signed deeds they did not understand and sometimes had their names forged to deeds; one woman signed a deed while delirious with a fever. "I had been sick, " she said. "I was sick a long time. . . . They pulled me off the bed and made me acknowledge one deed, but after I come to myself I never acknowledged any more" (Floyd Circuit Court Files, #5413, 11 June 1910; #5644, 22 Dec. 1912). Other men used force rather than deceit to obtain their wives' signatures. Anzie Hall claimed that her husband, "a very bad & dangerous man," threatened to kill her if she refused to sell the piece of property she inherited from her father. Hall's petition to the Circuit Court stated that: at the time she signed the deed . . . her husband & two of his brothers was armed with guns & pistols and compeled her to sign the deed. She says that she cried and beged [sic] and . . . says that this was her own land that she did not intend to sell i t . . . that all she did do was through fear of her life or greate bodily harm (Floyd Circuit Court Files #3447, 6 March 1894). 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 85 �Another woman claimed that her husband threatened to abandon her if she did not go along with his plans to dispose of her property. Julia Erasure told the court that her husband sold her inheritance to a neighbor without her consent just before they left Kentucky for Texas. While in Texas, Erasure's husband coerced her into signing the deed to that sale, saying that he told her that if she did not sign it, "he would leave me there without any money or friends and I would have to get back home the best way I could" (Floyd Circuit Court Files #4055, 18 July 1900) All these women tried to use the courts to protect the rights their husbands had violated, and there were certainly many more cases that went unreported. Occasionally, lawsuits did secure women's rights to property against the usurpations of husbands, fathers, or brothers. In one case, three sisters brought suit against their eight brothers for failing to pay the sisters' shares in the family inheritance. Apparently, just before his death, their father had divided his property among his eight sons on the condition that the sons would pay the daughters in cash one-thirteenth the total value of the estate. After eight years had passed without payment, three of the five daughters tried to force payment by filing suit (Floyd Circuit Court Files #2714, 4 April 1888; the court's judgement in the case does not appear in the case file). Legal action, however, generally did not present a challenge to male household authority. Anzie Hall had to wait until her husband died before she could safely ask the Floyd Circuit Court to invalidate the sale of her land, and the court ruled against her. Julia Erasure's husband supported her lawsuit, possibly because when he made the sale, he did not recognize the value of the timber that stood on his wife's land. The Erasures, too, lost their case and the transaction remained in force. As with feme sole petitions, husbands often benefitted from wives' legal claims to property, since, if successful, they gave husbands control of those additional resources. Wives, of course, could not sue their husbands, and if a married woman wanted to bring suit against anyone else, her husband had to file the petition on her behalf. So of the three sisters who sued their brothers for their inheritance, two did so jointly with their husbands, who took the legal initiative, while the third, a widow, filed independently. The documents in the file do not make clear whether the wives sued at the instigation of their husbands or vice versa, but, either way, the lawsuit served the interests of both. When mineral speculators, starting around 1890, approached Floyd County farmers about buying the rights for mining and drilling of coal, oil, and gas, they encountered households already fractured from the inside. Speculators' overtures became incorporated into household gender dynamics and gave greater urgency to the longstanding conflicts over control of property. Mineral sales greatly increased the value of 86 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �mountain property, raising the stakes of competitions over property ownership. In Floyd County, women and men both seemed eager to sell their mineral rights, especially in later years when prices for minerals soared to ten, twelve, and even fifteen dollars an acre. The high dollar values attached to minerals encouraged women more than ever to assert their legal rights to their inherited property. One woman divorced her husband in 1910 because he had squandered the $3000 in proceeds obtained from mineral sales on their jointly held land, and because he sold the minerals on her own inherited property without her consent. In the settlement, the woman received all the land and the rents from it that the couple still owned (Floyd Circuit Court Files #5397, 1 June 1910). In a similar situation, five sisters brought suit against their brothers, claiming that the brothers had "coaxed, threatened, importuned and besought" their father shortly before he died to convey to them the whole of his estate, leaving neither land nor personal property for the sisters. The case gained especial importance because, the sisters said, the estate contained "some fifteen hundred acres of valuable Coal and timbered [sic] situated in the imediate locality where oil and gas is being found." Land that had been valued at about $1800 in 1880 was now, eleven years later, worth at least $7000 (Floyd Circuit Court Files #3014, 25 February 1891; Floyd County Tax Assessor Books 1880). In those cases, mineral sales gave women incentives to push their legal rights to their limits, but those rights still did not challenge husbands' control over household business. In some rare instances, however, women did use mineral sales to acquire greater power over property management for themselves, and they often had help from coal industrialists in doing so. A few women now decided to petition the courts to allow them to sell their minerals independently of their husbands, should their husbands refuse to sell the minerals jointly. One elderly woman, for example, found herself deeply in debt, and she wanted to sell the minerals off her farm to pay her creditors. Her husband, however, who had abandoned her several years before, refused to join in the deed conveying the minerals. The woman petitioned for and received from the court a divorce from her husband and title to the property vested in her name alone so she could sell the minerals. The woman's lawyer, Walter S. Harkins, was not only her creditor but also Floyd County's most influential booster of coal industrialization, and it was he who purchased her mineral rights (Floyd Circuit Court Files #4692, 5 February 1906). In situations like this, legal rights that had been meant to provide wives protection from husbands' misuse of their property now became a way for women to demand some control in making decisions over the disposal of household resources. Mineral sales certainly did not convince women to free themselves from the dominance of their husbands in the 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 87 �household, but they did, along with the 1894 changes in married women's property rights, become part of a wider trend that acknowledged in women separate and independent decision-making powers. That capitalists like Walter Harkins, who endorsed money and development over traditions of patriarchy, would support women's enhanced power to sell mineral rights is hardly surprising. Wherever it has occurred, agents of industrialization have sought a reformulation of "traditional" social relationships, and women, too, have sought to direct that reformulation toward their own benefit. Elsewhere in United States history, as in Appalachia, women saw in capitalist development, for better or for worse, an opportunity to create for themselves an identity independent of the household (Kulikoff 1992). Mineral sales in Eastern Kentucky did not take place in a vacuum, solely the result of outsiders taking advantage of an unknowing populace. Rather, gender divisions within pre-industrial households created a fertile ground for such transactions, encouraging property owners to part with the minerals underlying their land. Gendered conceptions of property ownership had always been associated with household subsistence and financial gain, and mineral sales simply added a new dimension to that old association. If feme sole petitions generally represented a collaboration between men and women manipulating gender conventions to protect the household from insolvency, other negotiations of gender claims were more divisive. Women often staked their claim to property control through divorce suits by accusing their husbands of squandering household resources, while men resorted to violence to prevent their wives from interfering with their business decisions. Mineral sales underscored those fissures by giving men greater reason to control land transactions and women greater reason to demand their legal rights. Floyd County women and men, then, understood mineral sales in the context of pre-industrial gender and property relations, relations which included conflicts over land, the bedrock of household subsistence and intra-household power. Works Cited Basch, Norma. 1982. In the Eyes of the Law: Women, Marriage, and Property in Nineteenth-Century New York. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Bullock, Edward, and William Johnson, eds. 1873. The General Statutes of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Frankfort: The Kentucky Yeoman Office. Clark, Christopher. 1979. "The Household Economy, Market Exchange, and the Rise of Capitalism in the Connecticut Valley, 1800-1860." Journal of Social History 13:169-89 88 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �. 1990. The Roots of Rural Capitalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Caudill, Harry M. 1962. Night Comes to the Cumberland*: a Biography of a Depressed Area. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Dembitz, Lewis N. 1890. Kentucky Jurisprudence. Louisville: John P. Morton & Co. Dorgan, Howard. 1989. The Old Regular Baptists of Central Appalachia: Brothers and Sisters in Hope. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Eller, Ronald. 1982. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Floyd Circuit Court Files. Kentucky State Archives. Frankfort, Kentucky. Floyd County Land Deed Books. Floyd County Courthouse. Prestonsburg, Kentucky. Floyd County Tax Assessor Books. 1880. Kentucky State Archives. Frankfort, Kentucky. Floyd County Will Books. Floyd County Courthouse. Prestonsburg, Kentucky. Henretta, James. 1978. "Families and Farms: Mentalite in Preindustrial America." William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser. 35 (January): 3-33. Hofstra, Warren R. and Robert D. Mitchell. 1993. "Town and Country in Backcountry Virginia: Winchester and the Shenandoah Valley, 1730-1800." Journal of Southern History LI (4): 619-646. KulikofF, Allan. 1992. The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Mann, Ralph. 1993. "Guerrilla Warfare and Gender Roles: Sandy Basin, Virginia, as a Test Case." Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association 5:5966. Merrill, Michael. 1977. "Cash is Good to Eat: Self-sufficiency and Exchange in the Rural Economy of the United States." Radical History Review 3 (Winter): 42-71. Russell, Lev, comp. 1909. Statutes of Kentucky. Lexington: James E. Hughes. Salmon, Marylynn. 1986. Women and the Law of Property in Early America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Tyson, Ruel W. Jr., James L. Peacock, and Daniel W. Patterson. 1988. Diversities 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 89 �of Gifts: Field Studies in Southern Religion. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Robert Weise is a graduate student at the University of Virginia. He lives in St Louis and is finishing his dissertation on the history of pre-industrial Eastern Kentucky. 90 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Recollections About Life in Appalachians Coal Camps: Positive or Negative? Mary B. La Lone What are people's recollections of their lives in the coal mining camps of Appalachia? Did they consider life in the coal camps a harsh and mean existence as portrayed by the popular fictional images of Storming Heaven (Giardina 1987) andMatewan (Sayles 1987), and to some extent in the work of scholars such as Eller (1982), Gaventa (1980), and Corbin (1981)? Or did life in the mining camps include positive, rewarding experiences and choices for the participants, as suggested in recent works by Shifflett (1991) and Fishback (1992)? While scholars may be tempted to characterize the experience in either black or white terms, ethnographic interviews with people who lived in the coal camps rarely give this simplistic perspective. Rather, people frequently express both positive and negative attitudes toward the coal camp within the same interview. Additionally, they often sort out both positive and negative features of each experience, whether it was working for the company, drawing scrip, or living in a coal camp. Some of the positive statements may, at first, surprise us. This paper examines the recollections of people who lived in mining camps within an eleven-mile radius of the town of Appalachia, located in the heart of the Southwest Virginia coal fields. Appalachia served as the commercial center for the study area which encompassed eighteen different coal mining camps in Wise and Lee Counties. These camps operated under three coal mining companies: Stonega Coke and Coal (SC&C), Blackwood Coal and Coke, and Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke. The three-year research project studied life in these coal camps, combining ethnographic/oral-history interviews with archival research.1 Exten- 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 91 �sive ethnographic interviews were conducted with over fifty men and women who lived in the eighteen coal camps during the 1930s through the 1950s. The most frequently stated, clearly negative attitudes 1) Miners had to endure very poor conditions prior to unionization in October 1933. 2) The companies strongly responded with anti-union activities, 1933-34. 3) It took hard work to feed and maintain a family in the Depression years of the 1930s. 4) Mechanization in the mid-1950s led to massive job decline. 5) There were major difficulties getting black lung compensation. Negative sentiments focus on the low wages, hard work, and long hours that characterized mining in the pre-union period prior to 1934. Before union contracts, miners did not have access to 1) old age retirement or pensions, forcing elderly men to continue working to feed their families; 2) black lung assistance, forcing miners to continue working in the mines even if they could hardly breath; 3) widows' pensions; 4) paid vacations; and 5) long-term compensation for major injuries (Flanary 1992; Mabe 1993, 1; Skorupa 1992, 2; Stanley 1993, 1). Unrest over unionization in the Appalachian region was especially heavy from July to October 1933, and continued periodically during the year following the signing of the first union contract in October 1933 (The Post, 1933; WCCR). People recall the retaliation against miners who joined the union and who went on strike. Tommy Skorupa, a miner who struck against the company in 1934, states "the company was quite mean; they didn't want the unions in the camps" (1992, 1; WCCR). Many people remember that any man caught organizing would be fired and would have his family's furniture put on the street (Fields 1993, 1; Bobroski 1993, 1). According to SC&C records, the company fired a number of miners from 1 July to 2 October 1933, the period of heaviest unrest, confirming this recollection (WCCR). While the overall feeling about the unionization period may be negative, some people qualify their statements. Extremes in violence took place on both sides, by union supporters as well as company representatives. People recall that non-union miners' homes were stoned and that they were run out of the camps. Many mention that people they knew had fought for the union (Bobroski 1993, 2; Fields 1993, 1; Santelli 1992, 2; Stanley 1993, 1; Skorupa 1992, 2). Also, some interviewees made the qualification that the unionization conflict in this region was not nearly on the same scale of violence as the battles fought across Black Mountain in "Bloody Harlan," Kentucky (Stanley 1993, 1). 92 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Memories of the 1930s are also integrally bound up with hard times caused by the Depression. People recall the Depression era as a time when it took a lot of hard work to feed and clothe a family. Everyone, including the children, worked in family gardens to supplement wages from the mines (Flanary 1992, 1; Mabe 1993, 1-2; Santelli 1992, 1-3; Stanley 1993, 1). Yet some pointed out that nearly everybody in the camps was in relatively the same economic situation, so they did not know what they were missing. For example, after talking about taking over primary household duties for her family at age eleven and scrubbing her fingers to the bone on the washboard, Mary Santelli says: "Time was, for me, growin' up as a child I found it very hard, but yet I didn't suffer any hardness in it too bad because you see at that time I thought everybody on this earth was living the way we were living" (1992, 2). Negative recollections primarily focus on the early 1930s, especially 1933-1934, the period surrounding UMWA organizing. Fewer negative comments refer to the 1940s and 1950s. While some people speak about the company owning and controlling everything in the camps, this is generally expressed in the form of an acknowledgment rather than as a negative sentiment. Only two issues relating to the latter decades left people with strong negative sentiments. One was the mechanization of the mines around 1954-1955. People see the resulting loss of jobs as the beginning of the end for the coal camps. Men and their families had to migrate out of the region in search of jobs, while in the camps, the companies started selling houses and closing down essential facilities such as the stores and schools (Mabe 1993, 1). The other issue raised, one which touches many people deeply, was the often lengthy fight of miners and their families to obtain black lung compensation. The most frequently stated positive attitudes 1. The coal camp had a strong sense of community. Neighbors were like family; they interacted with one another, and helped each other out. 2. The personal qualities of people who lived in the camps were admirable: honesty, a capacity for sharing, ingenuity, and pride in their work. 3. The company was "fair" and "good" to employees: it "provided" for workers by "furnishing" jobs, camp facilities, sources of entertainment, and credit. Without a doubt, the most commonly expressed positive statements revolve around the strong sense of community that existed in the coal camps from the 1930s to the 1950s. The most frequently mentioned elements are: 1) everyone knew each other, neighbors were like family, and there was a great amount of visiting and social interaction in the 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 93 �community; 2) the spirit of sharing and reciprocity was strong in the camp, where everybody helped each other out; and 3) there was relatively little crime in the camps. Interviews abound with discussion of these issues, clearly pointing to the shared qualities that made the coal camps feel like true "communities" to their residents. In addition to community, many people attribute positive aspects of living in the coal camps to the personal qualities and ethics of the people who lived in the camps, especially honesty, sharing, ingenuity, and pride in their work (Bobroski 1993, 2; Flanary 1993; Santelli 1992, 2). As Louis Henegar emphasized, it's the "type of people you got" in the coal camps (1992, 2). A sampling of testimony gives a sense of the strength of feelings about the coal camp community. In a representative statement about the camp as community, Clint Mabe says, "Why, I think a real coal camp was one of the closest people anywhere in the world. Cause you take the neighbors, they were neighbors. They wasn't just good to you [today], and mad at you tomorrow. But something happen to you, I don't care how mad your neighbor is at you, I guarantee, he'd be the first to get to you" (1993, 2). His statements, like those of many others, attribute much of the special nature of the community to a strong orientation toward generalized reciprocity. "Helping our neighbors out, anytime, I don't care what it was. Course there wasn't a whole lot of money to be loaned or anything like that back then. But, anytime, and it didn't matter what it was, if they needed help with anything, if we could possibly help 'em, we would. And they would do us the same" (Mabe 1993, 2). Louis Henegar says "the community was more or less just one large family" and he speaks of specific types of reciprocity within the camp: Now don't get me wrong. It don't mean that people didn't disagree and have problems. But yet still, it was more like, it wasn't just you having a hard time or me having a hard time. Everybody lived the same way and I think it made them more close knit, you know more of a family-type thing. Then if you were destitute to the point that maybe you didn't have food in the house or something like that, then I would be there to see that you had it. And the rest of the neighbors would be there to see what they could do. If you were sick, then everyone would come and offer assistance. If your husband had gotten hurt and no income and no food, the neighbors would see that you didn't go hungry. You know, make sure you got food and stuff like that (1992, 2). Henegar refers to the ethical "code" that supported reciprocity as "a way of life." "This was just a way of life here. You didn't have to organize it, you know. There was—it was just a code. If you were in need, it was my job to help you. And vice-versa. It was that way, you didn't have to 94 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �ask, people knew what was going on" (1992, 1). In addition, people speak of the high degree of social interaction and visiting that gave the camp its sense of community. Some, like Mary and Henry Fields, emphasize that people didn't have to go out of the camp to enjoy themselves because there was always plenty of visiting and events taking place within the camp (1993, 1). Others, like Rose Herron, spoke of neighbors regularly visiting with one another and pointed out that the houses were so close together that on a typical summer night, women visited with one another as they did their ironing on the porch and watched their children playing down the road (1992, 1). The coal camps were inwardly focused on life in the community, a focus that remained until the late 1940s. This was reinforced by two conditions: the camp was set up with all the facilities necessary to the mining family, and lack of cars and other forms of transportation didn't support mobility out of the camps. But even in the 1940s and 1950s, testimony indicates that the sense of community, comprised of generalized reciprocity and neighborliness, remained exceptionally strong (Reece 1992, 1; Van Winkle 1993, 1). What might be most surprising is the large number of positive statements that many former coal camp residents make about the coal companies. These positive statements are often mixed with some of the negative remarks already mentioned. Many people had favorable things to say about the coal companies' actions in providing for employees and their dependents. People support their view of the company as a "provider" with what they consider to be very concrete reasons, citing jobs, facilities, and the credit extended to them by the company. Clint Mabe feels "fortunate" that the company kept him working during the mid-1950s when mine shutdowns were forcing many people he knew to leave the region to search for work. He says, "Well, I can't complain much [about the company] because they kept me in a job" (1993, 1). Similarly, Tommy Skorupa says, "I worked for them all these years [fifty], but I never was mistreated by them; so I can't say nothing but good about 'em." He goes on to specify that the company kept him working even when the mines were shut or operating only a few days per week. He feels fortunate that he was provided with other jobs, such as delivering coal to homes, painting houses, and repairing plumbing. Additionally, the company provided jobs for his children in the company store and on camp clean-up crews during the summer months. Skorupa was not blind to the fact that those were minimum wage jobs and, in fact, acknowledges this in his interview. What is significant to him is that the company helped him out by providing jobs for him and his family (Skorupa 1993, 1-2). People speak about the coal companies being "good" because they provided services and facilities for people living in the camps. Nearly 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 95 �everyone describes the variety of facilities that were available—the stores, schools, movie theaters, dance halls, and churches. Others also describe the entertainment that the companies organized for the camps including Fourth of July and Christmas events, baseball teams, and Saturday night concerts with big bands (Bobroski 1993, 1-2; Fields 1993, 2; Herron 1992, 1, Stanley 1993, 1). Their use of words is interesting— they often say that the company "provided" and "furnished" them with these facilities and activities. Having the company store, other facilities, and entertainment right in camp was seen as a convenience by many. You could take the trip to Appalachia, "but really, you didn't have to get out of camp 'cause the company had everything" (Skorupa 1992, 1). For some people, this sense of the company "providing" for camp residents even extends to the scrip system and other ways in which credit was extended to miners. The company is seen as being "fair" because, people say, it continued to support miners, those known as hard-working miners, by carrying their rent and extending them credit even during the slack times when the mines were shut down. Tommy Skorupa speaks of the 1930s when the mines operated two to three days per week and idled the rest: If you didn't have enough money in payroll, see, the company could furnish you the scrip according to your family [size]. If you had a big family, you'd get so much a day, and you could go in the commissary and trade. So the company was very good on that. And I remember one time we was on strike, and there would be some days you know, the company would give scrip to us. When you went back to work, you'd pay them back, see. They was pretty good to people (1992, 2; 1993, 1). Clearly, Skorupa sees the positive aspects of getting credit in the company store. Additionally, he talks of the benefits of not having to come up with down payments to either rent a house or buy an automobile. To him, it was a benefit to be able to buy a car by getting a loan from the company bank and paying it off over time (Skorupa 1993, 2). He is not alone in viewing scrip credit as a positive feature. Mary Fields says, "the company store was good to us too. The company was real good to us. When he's off work [referring to her husband, Henry] they give us food" (1993, 2). In Rose Herron's words, "the company [SC&C] was wonderful to work for, in one sense of the way because they would give you a dollar a day scrip and two dollars on Saturday, whether you had it in there or not." This was especially important to her family in the first years after she "set up housekeeping" in Imboden in the late 1930s. Herron also valued the opportunity to use company credit to acquire the furniture and other large items needed to establish her first household (1992, 1). 96 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �How can we explain the presence of these positive attitudes along with the negative? They are not necessarily incompatible. The positive sentiments expressed may come into better perspective if we make some comparisons with our own behavior and attitudes today. Should we be surprised that coal camp families, like many people today, appreciated the convenience of having stores and services nearby in the coal camps? Today, many of us shop at the closest grocery store, even when we know that the prices there are higher (as in the company store), because we value the convenience. Or should we be terribly surprised that coal camp families appreciated the opportunity to be able to furnish their homes and buy cars using credit, even if it meant getting in debt to the company? Many of us today are aware of exploitation in the credit card and bank loan system, yet we are still pleased to have the opportunity to immediately purchase a TV or VCR on credit, rather than waiting until some future time when we could pay cash. When we make these comparisons, we can better understand how coal camp families might have viewed opportunities for convenience and credit positively, even while being quite aware of the overall exploitation in the system. It is important to re-emphasize that nearly every person interviewed recognizes and acknowledges the negative as well as the positive aspects of coal camp life. While there may be some nostalgia involved, overall the responses are quite pragmatic. The interviewees recognize the negative, exploitative aspects of the company-run system, but weigh them against the positive personal experiences they had living in the coal camps. Tommy Skorupa recognizes that the company controlled things and "had their own rules," but he also appreciates the conveniences and credit offered by the company (1992, 1; 1993, 2). Rose Herron knows that it was to the company's advantage to give credit, but she is grateful she had the opportunity to get her household established using scrip and store credit (1992, 1, 3). Even though Henry Fields organized for the union against the company, he still enjoys the sense of community that he experienced living in the coal camps (1993, 1). The documentation from this case study suggests at least two areas needing further clarification and research in Appalachian coal camp studies. First, we need to be more clear in distinguishing temporal and regional variations within Appalachia. The Matewan image of extreme violence and hardship is primarily derived from a particular time period and region, specifically applicable to parts of Kentucky and West Virginia before and during unionization efforts. That situation cannot be generalized to include all times and places in Appalachia. In Southwest Virginia, former coal camp residents have negative recollections of hardship and exploitation on a more limited scale, primarily associated with the period just prior to and during unionization in the 1930s. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 97 �People who lived in the camps in the 1940s and 1950s, after the struggles of the Depression and unionization, reaped the benefits of better working conditions, greater transportation mobility, and prosperity in coal production during World War II. While they recall the rigors of coal camp life in the 1940s and 1950s, they also speak eloquently of the strengths of the coal camps as true communities. Second, more study needs to be done on the micro-level. Oral testimonies portray 1930s to 1950s coal camp life as far more complex than a simple black or white, positive or negative experience. Anthropologists recognize two different, but complementary, views on any cultural situation: the "emic" or cultural insider's perspectives on his/her own life experiences as a participant immersed within the situation and the "etic" or cultural outsider's perspectives derived from examining that participant's experiences within the context of wider networks of interaction and power relationships (e.g. as in dependency theories). Both perspectives represent part of the cultural reality. While scholars, from their "etic" vantage point, might tend to generalize the Appalachian coal camp experience in simple terms, we are finding that the people who actually lived in the coal camps have shaped their "emic" perspectives by more intricately intertwining both the perceived positive aspects with the negative aspects. People disliked the hardships but also appreciated what they considered to be positive personal encounters with family, community, and even, at times, the company. The shaping of the "emic" perception may be a survival strategy in itself, enabling the participant to adjust to life within an exploitative system. Clearly, microlevel case studies might help us better understand how people thought, behaved, and shaped their identities from within the coal camp experience. The strongest investigations of coal camp life will incorporate and integrate multiple types of analyses to get a fuller picture of the coal camp experience. They will integrate micro-level analyses of people interacting and making sense of their lives within their families, communities, and immediate regions with macro-level analyses which view the interaction of economic and political forces within and among larger regions. Each type of analysis portrays a part of the reality; together they would work as complementary pieces in reconstructing the whole reality of life in the Appalachian coal camps. Perhaps Clint Mabe provided the best conclusion for this paper when, in reference to life in the camps in the 1930s, he says, "We had a good life. It wasn't rich like most people. But it was richer than most people think" (1993, 1). 98 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Notes 1 1 would like to thank the coal mining families of the town of Appalachia who contributed their oral histories to the project. I would also like to thank my research assistants on the project, Lin Usack, Matt Laferty, Liz Godoy, and Audrey McDowell, and my colleagues at Radford University and Virginia Tech who provided comments and critique as the research progressed. Funding for this research was provided by grants from the Radford University Foundation and the Hagley Museum and Library. Works Cited Bobroski, Paul. 1993. Interview with Matt Laferty. Keokee, Va., 3 June. PBobrosk\6393PBl-2. Coal Camp Oral History Project, Sociology and Anthropology Dept., Radford University, Radford, Va. Corbin, David Alan. 1981. Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880-1922. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Eller, Ronald D. 1982. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Fields, Henry, and Mary Fields. 1993. Interview with Matt Laferty. Appalachia, Va., 10 June. Fields\61093HFl-3. Coal Camp Oral History Project, Sociology and Anthropology Dept., Radford University, Radford, Va. Fishback, Price V. 1992. Soft Coal, Hard Choices: The Economic Welfare of Bituminous Coal Miners, 1890-1930. New York: Oxford University Press. Gaventa, John. 1980. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Flanary, Maxi. 1992. Interview with Liz Godoy. Appalachia, Va., 2 February. MFlanary \2892MF1. Coal Camp Oral History Project, Sociology and Anthropology Dept., Radford University, Radford, Va. Giardina, Denise. 1987. Storming Heaven. New York: Ballantine Books. Henegar, Louis. 1992. Interview with author. Appalachia, Va., 8 February. Henegar\2892LHl-2. Coal Camp Oral History Project, Sociology and Anthropology Dept., Radford University, Radford, Va. Herron, Rose. 1992. Interview with author. Appalachia, Va., 28 February. Herron\2289RHl-4. Coal Camp Oral History Project, Sociology and Anthropology Dept., Radford University, Radford, Va. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 99 �Mabe, Clint. 1993. Interview with Lin Usack. Appalachia, Va., 19 July. Mabe\7193CMl-2. Coal Camp Oral History Project, Sociology and Anthropology Dept., Radford University, Radford, Va. The Post. 1933. Big Stone Gap, Va. July 1; September 21; October 5. Reece, Diane. 1992. Interview with author. Appalachia, Va., 20 March. Reece\32092DRl-3. Coal Camp Oral History Project, Sociology and Anthropology Dept., Radford University, Radford, Va. Sayles, John. 1987. Matewan. Film, 132 min. Cinecom Intl. Released on video 1988, VHS/Beta, Warner Home Video, Inc. Santelli, Mary. 1992. Interview with author. Appalachia, Va., 8 February. Santelli\2892MSl-4. Coal Camp Oral History Project, Sociology and Anthropology Dept., Radford University, Radford, Va. Shifflett, Crandall A. 1991. Coal Towns: Life, Work, and Culture in Company Towns of Southern Appalachia, 1880-1960. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Skorupa, Tommy. 1992. Interview with author. Appalachia, Va., 6 March. Skorupa\3692TSl-3. Coal Camp Oral History Project, Sociology and Anthropology Dept., Radford University, Radford, Va. . 1993. Interview with Lin Usack and Jennifer Armsey. Big Stone Gap, Va., 19 August. Skorupa\81993TSl-3. Coal Camp Oral History Project, Sociology and Anthropology Dept., Radford University, Radford, Va. Stanley, John (Aut), Sr. 1993. Interview with author. Appalachia, Va., 8 July. Stanley\7893JSl-2. Coal Camp Oral History Project, Sociology and Anthropology Dept., Radford University, Radford, Va. VanWinkle, Leona. 1993. Interview with author. Appalachia, Va., 8 July. Vanwinkl\7893LVWl-2. Coal Camp Oral History Project, Sociology and Anthropology Dept., Radford University, Radford, Va. Westmoreland Coal Company Records (WCCR). Hagley Library, Wilmington, Delaware. Ace. 1765, Box 426. Mary La Lone is associate professor of anthropology at Radford University. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA in 1985 and specializes in historical and economic anthropology. She has spent the past three years studying the socio-economic survival strategies of families that lived in the coal-mining camps surrounding the town of Appalachia, Va. 100 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Storming Heaven in the Decade of Greed Kim Gillespie At one point in Oliver Stone's film Wall Street, leveraged buy-out artist Gordon Gecko addresses the shareholders' meeting of TelDar Paper, a company he plans to buy. To convince shareholders his ownership is beneficial, Gecko gives the following speech: The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms—greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed—you mark my words—will not only save TelDar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Eventually destroyed by a fellow broker in cahoots with the federal government, Gecko represents the 1980s as the decade of greed. Many now share this view. For example, in the April 1994 issue of Mother Jones, economists trying to explain the lack of job creation in the post1990-91 recession felt compelled to refer to the 1980s as the greedy decade. Lester Thurow, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor, said, "In the 1980s, we had a speculative bubble followed by a financial crash. Right now we're cleaning up the mess," and John Kenneth Galbraith, a Harvard economist, said, "There were a variety of insanities in the 1980s . . . All left the basic economic institutions in poor condition" (Clark 1994, 34-5). At first appearance, Denise Giardina's Storming Heaven does not comment on the 1980s. After all, it recounts the destinies of characters involved in the 1920-21 labor insurrection which culminated in the Matewan Massacre and the Battle of Blair Mountain near Logan, West Virginia. However, in the afterword to the novel, the reader is intro- 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 101 �duced to the fictional author, Dillon Freeman, the son of Carrie Bishop, a nurse who worked an aid station at Blair Mountain, and Rondal Lloyd, a labor organizer who fought there. By introducing a contemporary fictional author at the end of the novel, Storming Heaven focuses the reader's attention on the relevance of the novel's historical narrative for the present. Dillon, also a union man, has collected the stories which make up the novel during time down from picket duty. The strike which absorbs Dillon is the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) strike in 1984 against A. T. Massey. The Massey strike was a part of the process of economic restructuring which occurred in the coal industry in the 1980s. At a coal trade conference in North Carolina in 1989, Allen Born, president and chairman of AMAX, Inc., the largest mining company in the United States, described this process. During the 1970s, Born said, the coal industry expanded because rising oil prices made coal competitive. However, when the price of oil dropped in the early 1980s, so did the demand for coal. Faced with falling prices and excess capacity, the coal industry responded by closing and downsizing mines, reducing staff, mechanizing, and shifting more and more production to Western mines and to stripmining, all methods to reduce cost. From these changes in the coal industry, Born draws lessons for coal operators. The successful coal company will be low cost, will apply new technologies, and will be flexible in its ability to respond to market pressures, to the needs of customers, and to international competition. It will be (what he calls) "quality"—that is, highly profitable. Looking forward into the 1990s, Allen Born recommends the coal industry as "a good place for a young person to build a career" (Born 1989, 13). In West Virginia, economic restructuring was characterized by a simultaneous shift from manufacturing and mining to service jobs, from relatively high to low pay jobs, and from male dominated to female dominated jobs. During the decade the state suffered continuous outmigration and population decline as natives went out of state to find employment. By the end of the decade, West Virginia finished 50th of all the states in per capita income (down from 47th in 1979), and by the early 1990s, one quarter of West Virginians lived in poverty (Maggard 1994). The coal industry was especially involved in restructuring. Between 1980 and 1990, the number of coal miners in the United States declined by about 40 percent; in West Virginia, by about 45 percent (from about 53,000 miners in 1980 to about 29,000 in 1989). Naturally, rapid declines in the work force produce social discord. On 1 October 1984, UMWA struck the mines of A. T. Massey located in the Tug River Valley, which includes portions of Eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia, because A. T. Massey refused to sign a recently concluded contract between UMWA and the Bituminous Coal Operators Associa- 102 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �tion. A. T. Massey contended that because it faced international competition it had to reduce labor costs through decentralization in which each unit of a parent company would be treated as a separate company and would negotiate a separate labor contract with the union (Lubove 1985, 6). "You can't discipline union miners and you can't discharge them," said Don Blankenship, who eventually became chairman and CEO of A. T. Massey in 1990. "You have to be able to purge your work force of unproductive elements in some way" (Mills 1986, 176). According to owner E. Morgan Massey, decentralization was the way. On the union side, purges meant problems. First, by negotiating separate contracts, the company would eliminate panel rights. Panel rights give union miners the right to transfer to another mine should their present mine close down. If Massey won separate contracts, then no such obligation would exist from one Massey mine to another. The loss of panel rights would allow the company to "cherry pick" which miners they wanted by transferring the congenial miners after a mine closure and firing the uncongenial. Secondly, while E. Morgan Massey worried about "decentralization," the union was concerned with what it called "double breasting," in which a parent company transfers assets— in this case, coal mines—from a unionized to a non-unionized subsidiary. Then, union miners can be fired and replaced with non-union miners. In a variation of this practice, a company closes down a union mine, laying off all the workers, then rehires non-union workers at the same mine ("Coal Miners in Bitter Strike Against A. T. Massey" 1985, 4). On 20 December 1985, the strike ended in a union victory, after the National Labor Relations Board ruled all of A. T. Massey's mines belonged to one company and therefore had to be governed by a single contract, though E. Morgan Massey referred to the end of the strike as an "unconditional surrender" on the part of the union (Wolford 1986, 5). In short, then, the struggle was between an attempt on the part of a company to reduce labor costs and increase flexibility in work rules against workers' attempts to preserve job security. Since Giardina uses the fictional name American Coal for A. T. Massey, against which two generations of characters struggle, I think it is possible to read Storming Heaven as what Fredric Jameson calls a national allegory—in this case, a national allegory of the 1980s. While the literature of the metropole can devolve into the psychological musings of isolated individuals bereft of community and historical consciousness, argues Jameson, the literature of the Third World cannot, where the telling of the story of individuals necessitates the recitation of "the primordial crime of capitalism" (Jameson 1986, 84).1 It is my argument that Storming Heaven is a national allegory of the 1980s to the degree that the lives of individual characters represent the combative social relations of the decade, understood not as isolated experiences 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 103 �or events but as constitutive of the national identity. I would like to show the relationship between Storming Heaven and the decade of greed by pointing to two features of the novel. First of all, although Giardina reports that Storming Heaven was produced through archival research and that no incident is without historical antecedent or precedent, the novel relies on a narrative of Appalachian colonization, codified, for example, in Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case (Lewis, Johnson, and Askins 1978).2 In Storming Heaven, Appalachian colonization is a two-staged process. Initially, characters are wrenched off their land by violence and economic compulsion. Railroads buy up the land, demanding local farmers sign away mineral rights, then sell the mineral rights to coal companies which in turn begin to exploit these resources. For example, one of the characters involved in this process is C. J. Marcum, who becomes a surrogate father for Rondal Lloyd. C. J. Marcum's own father, one of the farmers who will not sign away his mineral rights, is shot in the head while working in his garden (Giardina 1987, 16). Though C. J. becomes a small businessman, most families are driven off the land and into the mines. This is what happens to Rondal's father and to Rondal himself. Once in mining communities, the miners organize against a gang of rapacious British, New England, and local coal operators. The miners are forced to resist operators because wages plummet in the coal glut after World War I and because the operators attempt to control them through what was called the thug system. If we were discussing El Salvador, we would identify these thugs as death squads: an oligarchy of coal operators employs a private paramilitary security force of detectives from the Baldwin-Felts agency to brutalize a recalcitrant work force. To end the thug system, Rondal joins the union, is forced to flee southern West Virginia, then returns as an organizer with a nom de guerre— Lloyd Justice. When he is wounded at Blair Mountain, it is in a fight with a crew of thugs, police, and newly deputized college students and American Legionnaires, amassed in defense of the right of multinational corporations (for example, the manager of Imperial Collieries makes an appearance) to rule the lives of miners by fiat and the local constabulary to jail without writ those miners who complain. For Giardina, who participated in the Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force in 1979-80, absentee land ownership is the sine qua non of colonialism.3 That is, the narrative of Appalachian colonization relies for its coherence not only on the existence offeree and fraud to deprive agrarian communities of their land base, and of economic compulsion and death squads to transform displaced populations into miners, but also on the presence of an external force (here, the multinational corporation) whose ownership of the land confers on it a virtually sovereign 104 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �power over the lives of Appalachians. To understand the emphasis Giardina places on absentee ownership of land, we ought to recall she grew up in McDowell County, West Virginia, which has one of the most extensive concentrations of absentee ownership in Appalachia (Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force 1983, 17-26). The explanatory power of the narrative of Appalachian colonization can been seen in the last line of the novel, spoken in Dillon Freeman's voice: "the companies still own the land" (Giardina 1987, 312). Connecting the historical narrative of the novel to current events, this line indicates thejjower of colonization to produce continuous labor struggles across generations. Against any suspicion that Giardina is engaged in hyperbole, it is important to note that during the A. T. Massey strike, the company—the eighth largest coal operator in the United States and the second largest exporter of coal—was partly owned by Fluor Corp. and partly owned by Royal/Dutch Shell. That is, it was a multinational corporation. More importantly, its relationship to southern West Virginia was a familiar one. Commenting on the role of multinationals in West Virginia, E. Morgan Massey said "Multinationals do not have a great deal of national loyalty and even less loyalty to southern West Virginia" (Mills 1986, 488). Giardina's narrative of Appalachian colonization is set against another more widely recognized narrative in which the violence of the region is treated not as endemic but alien to U.S. culture. Appalachia has long been a pocket within the contiguous United States where violence has been consistently rediscovered by metropolitans. For example, a 26 August 1986 Time magazine article on the A. T. Massey strike reports that: A stranger coming upon the gorgeous green mountains soaring over the Tug Fork Valley of West Virginia near the Kentucky border would not, at first glance, suspect that a combat zone was at hand. Yet for more than a century, bloody civil strife has roiled the region embraced by Mingo County, W.Va., and Pike County, Ky. There in the late 1800s, the Hatfield and McCoy families began a feud so lethal and long that it became legend. Then in 1920 the early struggles of the region's coal miners to unionize exploded into a fray that left nine people dead and is still remembered as "the Matewan massacre." Now the area around the same little town of Matewan (pop. 822) is living up to its turbulent reputation: a coal miners' strike that is now in its eleventh month is well on the way to becoming the longest and meanest since before World War II (Trippett 1985, 17). In this narrative of the history of southern West Virginia, a stranger regards a beautiful landscape, momentarily empty of people. This 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 105 �stranger, which I take to be the reporter's construction of his audience (that is, Time magazine's national readership), then learns that despite the beauty of the mountains the people of southern West Virginia are historically and culturally violent. I want to make three brief comments about this construction of the relationship of the reader to West Virginia. First, it repeats a familiar image of Appalachia as an alien place physically internal but culturally external to the borders of the United States, an image reported by Henry Shapiro in Appalachia on Our Mind (1978) as going back to the local color movement in the late nineteenth century. Second, the construction of the metropolitan traveler with his preference for a landscape without people and his fear of violent natives is a common one in colonial travel narratives, according to Mary Louise Pratt's Imperial Eyes (1992). Third, the absence of a historical context for the events shows that the Hatfield-McCoy feud and the Matewan Massacre are not cited as historical incidents. Rather, they are cited to reduce the strike to an internecine struggle between feuding clans, a reduction which dismisses any substantive issues in the labor conflict by appealing to a middle-class loathing of violence in all forms and to a metropolitan sense of superiority to rural regions. Storming Heaven debunks the myth of Appalachian backwardness, still at play in reportage of the A. T. Massey strike, by uncovering the multicultural, cosmopolitan, and global nature of the coal camps: they were ethnically and racially diverse, they were visited by Duke Ellington, and they expanded and contracted with changes in the world economy. In addition to the use of the narrative of Appalachian colonization, there is also a second way in which Storming Heaven interprets the decade of greed. Storming Heaven describes the ability of communities divided by race and gender to achieve solidarity, itself an effect of both the agency of individual actors and of the oppressive social conditions of colonialism. The importance of solidarity amid difference is one of the crucial issues faced by social movements in the 1980s, an issue not taken up in Wall Street but one which prompted a good deal of concern among labor historians (for example, Mike Davis 1986; Rick Fantasia 1988; Michael Goldfield 1987; and Kim Moody 1988), who treated gender and racial divisions as two of the most significant realities underwriting the decline of unionism in the 1980s. In Storming Heaven, while coal communities are segregated and culturally racist, African Americans play a particularly important role in the growing resistance to coal operators. For example, Dr. Toussaint L'Ouverture Booker is a Marxist intellectual who first brings a labor organizer to Annadel, the fictional town in which much of the action takes place, helps Carrie Bishop become a nurse, and works as a doctor of wounded miners at the Battle of Blair Mountain. Also, probably the most gripping scene of the entire novel (one which Giardina admits is 106 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �the only scene she has written which has given her nightmares) is the death of Johnson, a black union organizer, thrown into an oven by some thugs at the behest of Malcolm Denbigh, the manager of American Coal. Not only is this scene gut-wrenching in itself, but it moves Rondal Lloyd to recall it later in a speech in front of a congregation of miners. "Johnson wouldn't be a slave no more!" says Rondal. "He died a free man. They's slaves today in Justice County, both white and black. Hit's time to break them chains" (Giardina 1987, 193). Clearly, Johnson's death in the fiery furnace has provided Rondal with an example of the difficulties of unionizing and with a paradigm of how to interpret the events of his life. Like African Americans in Storming Heaven, women also play an important role in the growing resistance to the coal operators. Although the coal communities are segmented by gender (the men mine; the women housekeep) and although even Carrie Bishop, atypical because she works outside the home, is employed in the traditional female profession of nursing, women sustain the continuity of the labor struggle. At one point after the food in a tent city has been depleted, a group of women raid a store for food. When the women are accosted by a gang of thugs, Carrie Bishop fires on them with a machine gun, securing the women's retreat. Like Doc Booker, Carrie treats miners wounded in the Battle of Blair Mountain and after Rondal is severely wounded is instrumental in transporting him out of the combat zone to safety. In fact, his life is saved through Carrie's intercession with her brother Miles, who, at great personal cost, allows him to ride on a coal company train. Most importantly, in contrast to the coal operators who seek to homogenize men and nature, Carrie and her female relatives value human particularity. On the one hand, human particularity is manifest in the notion of kin in which each person has a place in an elaborate set of relationships, conferring obligations on all. The obligation produced by kinship necessitates a respect even for those who appear odd or abnormal. For example, after asking about an aunt who is reputed to have no pubic hair, Carrie is told, "Your Aunt Becka is funny turned, but she's a good woman. And she's kin. Aunt Becka cant help the way God made her, and she has a right to be the way she is. ... As for you, you just be like your own self" (Giardina 1987, 49). On the other hand, human particularity is manifest in Carrie's relationship to the land. At one point, Carrie meditates on her relationship to her homeplace, the farm where she was born and raised. She thinks that "if there was no place of my own to be, no ground where my bones could be laid beside my kin's, would I not be the most miserable creature in God's world?" (1987, 141). An appreciation of the importance of kinship and of home constitute solidarity as much as the mobilization of miners at Blair Mountain. In 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association -107 �fact, in terms of the continuity of struggle, they are more important. Carrie lives to pass the story of the struggles of the 1920s down to the next generation, thus helping to produce the latest strike against American Coal. The 1980s have come to be interpreted as a time when conservative governmental elites gave the green light to speculation, through antiunionism, deregulation, and a diminution of governmental oversight. Oliver Stone's Wall Street is an early popular example of this interpretation, an interpretation advanced by representatives of very powerful and wealthy groups themselves, which lacks an acknowledgment that some communities resisted the process of economic restructuring. Storming Heaven remedies this lack. By providing an imaginative historical context to a contemporary conflict, it offers a lesson for the present. Multinationals will always face global competition. They did in the 1920s, they did in the 1980s, they do in the 1990s. The only bulwark against the ability of companies to slough off workers like dead skin and dismantle working-class communities like tinker toys is the strength of communities to overcome their internal divisions and stand together. Notes 1 Aijaz Ahmad has taken Jameson to task for this article, insisting that Jameson reduces any nation's aesthetic response to only the national allegory, a reduction Ahmad repudiates, and that Jameson unfairly does not apply his reduction to the literature of the metropole (Ahmad 1992). As far as I can tell, none of these criticisms impinge upon my use here of the concept of national allegory. 2 All references to Giardina's biography and opinions are derived from conversations with her between October 1993 and March 1994, including an extensive conversation while traveling through McDowell County, West Virginia. Throughout these conversations, Giardina showed remarkable candor and patience and was quite generous with her time and attention. I should note that for Giardina, Storming Heaven is not particularly a novel about the 1980s. Her only conscious response to the 1980s, she reported, was to shift from the firstperson narration of an early version of Storming Heaven to the multiple firstperson narration of the final version. She reasoned that "the message from the Reagan administration was to divorce yourself from people with problems and look after Number One, to be numb when it came to relating to things people were going through" and that "telling it in the first person was a direct attack on that in terms of forcing the reader to identify with the characters by being the characters." Prom the point of view of her biography, the economic restructuring of the 1980s was not peculiar but was in fact one more example of the social discord produced by the hubris of coal operators, the utility maximization of multinational corporations, the disloyalty of absentee ownership, and the vicissitudes of West Virginia's monoeconomy buffeted by the winds of global 108 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �competition. Giardina's own direct experience with economic restructuring came not in the 1980s but in the 1960s when the collapse of the coal industry depopulated McDowell County where she was born and raised. In addition, Giardina discounted the importance of the afterword, explaining that her editor suggested it, insisting readers would want to know what happened to characters after the Battle of Blair Mountain. If Giardina had her way, she would cut or revise the afterword. However, although the editor demanded an afterword, she was not specific. The details are Giardina's own. 3 Giardina's assessment of the importance of land in understanding the colonial situation is seconded by Edward Said, who, in his discussion of Yeats's poetry, argued that If there is anything that radically distinguishes the imagination of anti-imperialism, it is the primacy of the geographical element.... For the native, the history of colonial servitude is inaugurated by the loss of the locality to the outsider; its geographical identity must thereafter be searched for and somehow restored" (1993, 225). Works Cited Ahmad, Aijaz. 1992. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. New York: Verso. Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force. 1983. Who Owns Appalachia? Landownership and Its Impact. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press. Born, Allen. 1989. "Optimizing for the 90s: Lessons Learned from the 80s." Executive Speeches 4:10-13. Clark, Josh. 1994. "No Good Jobs?" Mother Jones March/April: 34-38. "Coal Miners in Bitter Strike Against A. T. Massey." 1985. Labor Notes 7:1, 4. Davis, Mike. 1986. Prisoners of the American Dream. New York: Verso. Fantasia, Rick. 1988. Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action, and Contemporary American Workers. Berkeley: University of California Press. Goldfield, Michael. 1987. The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Giardina, Denise. 1987. Storming Heaven. New York: W. W. Norton. Jameson, Fredric. 1986. "Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism." Social Text 15:65-88. Lewis, Helen Matthews, Linda Johnson, and Donald Askins. 1978. Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case. Boone, N.C.: The Appalachian Consortium Press. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 109 �Lubove, Seth H. 1985. "Massey Coal Strike Is Testing UMW Strategy." The Wall Street Journal 3 June: 6. Maggard, Sally Ward. 1994. "From Farm to Coal Camp to Back Office and McDonald's: Living in the Midst of Appalachia's Latest Transformation." Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association 6:14-38. Mills, Nicolaus. 1986. "A New Kind of War for the UMW." The Nation 8 November: 486-8. ---- . 1986. "A Victory for Miners' Rights." The Nation 15 February: 175-8. Moody, Kim. 1988. An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism. New York: Verso. Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes. New York: Routledge. Said, Edward. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Shapiro, Henry. 1978. Appalachia on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Trippett, Frank. 1985. "Violence in the Coalfields: A Strike Roils the Area Where Hatfields and McCoys Feuded." Time 26 August: 17. Wolford, Michelle. 1986. "Mine Workers End Massey Strike—Dispute Unsettled, Will Go to Court." Labor Notes 8:5. Kim Gillespie is a graduate student in the Program of Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University, Stanford, Calif, and is presently finishing his dissertation, "Literature and Money: The Structure of Feeling in the Age of Diminished Expectations." 110* Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven -1995 �Speech Acts and Cultural Resistance in a Rural Eastern Kentucky Community Anita Puckett In a now classic community study in North Carolina, John Stephenson offers the following anecdotal narrative concerning the work "habits" of many mountain men: One local story that has been handed down with embellishments over the years tells of a man who helped build the "scenic," a parkway through the mountains nearby. Although this was not a factory job, the story illustrates well the local attitude toward close work supervision. The man's job involved hauling loose dirt and rock away from a construction site and dumping it over a nearby cliff. After dumping each load, he would lean on his wheelbarrow and watch the dirt cascade to the bottom of the cliff. The supervisor, after watching the worker enjoy several episodes of this time-wasting spectator sport, walked over to him and said gruffly, "Why don't you get another and watch it chase the first one down?" To which the worker is said to have replied, "Why don't let's watch the wheelbarrow chase it?" At this he pushed the wheelbarrow over the cliff and "went to the house" (walked off the job) (Stephenson 1968, 27-28). This type of work behavior in which a laborer responds to a command or "order" given by a work superior with non-compliance of one form or another routinely supports popular non-local conceptualizations of a recalcitrant, hostile labor force in rural Appalachia. These 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 111 �conceptualizations in turn frequently legitimate a politics of labor in which differences in interpretations of labor relations become opportunities for those in control or power to denigrate or at least misunderstand those who question or contest their ways of organizing work (Anglin 1992, 1993; Kingsolver 1991, 1992; see also Bourdieu 1977, 1984). For example, Stephenson's comment that this narrative reflects the "local attitude toward close work supervision" is in itself an interpretation by some one not local to the community which reflects his view about the cause of the work problem. It may or may not be in accord with how the laborer operating under his cultural models would view this same situation, as he may not view the problem as one of close supervision at all. He may indeed be operating under a very different set of meaning structures regarding work and work relations than is either Stephenson or this man's supervisor, differences that probably are not idiosyncratic to him, but culturally normative for his local area. The question I wish to address is how speech-in-use functions to create these differences in meanings and what role these differences play in perpetuating cultural misunderstandings. I propose to focus on speech-in-use because of its power to convey a multiplicity of meanings simultaneously and precisely. Speech can map on to action, it can refer to work activities, and it can index, or point to, key elements present in work contexts. It is therefore the richest source of information available for exploring differences in cultural meaning. A category of speech acts called speech directives are speech forms that have an explicit goal of directing the behavior of others and are known to communicate especially rich and salient cultural meanings in addition to linguistic ones (Ervin-Tripp 1976; Searle 1976). I focus specifically on imperatives, the most obvious form of speech directives, because they are often construed by mountain residents to be "orders," or bald commands, and are well known to elicit highly negative affect through their explicit function of asserting control over others (for discussion see, for example, Hicks 1976, 88-98; Williams 1992, 31-36). The data used for this analysis comes from rural Eastern Kentucky speakers living in a community historically dominated by logging and farming (rather than a coal camp). The community has been given the pseudonym of Ash Creek. Data were collected ethnographically as I lived and worked in the community for two years and in the surrounding area for six. I sampled speech using techniques now common to linguistic anthropology.1 In general, the data were collected using similar strategies articulated by other anthropologists performing extended ethnographic sampling in mountain communities (for example, Batteau 1983; Beaver 1986; Hicks 1976; Pearsall 1959). I participated as fully as possible in community life. I taught community college classes and eventually acquired a role as "teacher."2 112 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Data collection focussed upon the speech and other communication used within work contexts, whether the labor was performed for wages or for some other purpose. As such a broad definition of work applies to most daily activities, this focus required that I note speech in every setting likely to be encountered by most community residents, whether they be at home, at work, in town, at the courthouse, or within state or federal agency contexts. Most residents are highly routine in their daily habits, so repeated sampling from similar settings was indeed possible, given the time frame and an eventual sample size of about 100 residents of all ages. Strong social pressure also existed for long-term non-locals such as myself to conform to communicative norms in order to be incorporated into community life. Such expectations of conformity further reinforced how I interpreted the data, as misuses of speech forms resulted in social misfires or corrections from friends and associates. These metacommentaries about what should have been said or done offered me a framework for a culturally acceptable analysis of how to "talk country" appropriately (Puckett 19933). Since the data were sampled from routine, normative laboring situations, I could expect residents to be creating and recreating their own systems of labor relations within an appropriate cultural setting and under minimal influence of non-local corporate or formal institutional laboring systems. Minimizing the effect of non-local corporate laboring systems on community speaking patterns was especially important to determine what were the interpretations local residents assigned to speech in work contexts. Non-local corporations frequently introduce their own language-use patterns, including corporate training session discourse, business jargon, or electronically-mediated communications which are unfamiliar to most community members and, therefore, are a potential source of analytical bias. Critical to understanding how differences in work communication occur is to recognize that residents organize work communication into different types of speaking practices, each having its own speech structurings, setting preferences, task-type, and participant role configurations. The speaking practice most similar to the one implied by Stephenson's anecdote is a subtype of "work talk" that I have labeled "helpin' out" situations, that is, situations in which culturally-recognized co-equals assist, or "help out" someone in completing a task or set of tasks.4 Wages may or may not be involved. "Helpin' out" situations do permit certain kinds of imperatives, and they also require that the participants preferably be of the same gender because members of the same sex can be presumed to have access to similar knowledge and skill bases (Beaver 1989; Hicks 1976; Ray 1983). This requirement reproduces a culturally-valued genderization of labor 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 113 �in which men tend to do men's tasks and women tend to do women's tasks, and it perpetuates assumptions of a gendered task egalitarianism in which participants are presumed to be fully equal in their ability to perform them and in which no participant has the "right" to direct the actions of another.5 The actual work should be performed with a minimal number of speech directives of any form, as an absence of commands, orders, demands, or any other form of directive indexes a higher level of work skill and ability among the laborers, showing that they all know what to do and when. It also frees them to engage more fully in other forms of speaking such as conversation, jokes, or gossip. When directives are used, the preferred form is a "let's" or "we" clause form in which the speaker includes himself through use of the first person plural pronoun and suggests the asking of permission through a "let" form: (1) Let us pray, [preacher at church service] (2) Let's, let's us three go upstairs an I can tell some jokes. [18 year-old boy in joke-telling session with younger siblings and researcher] (3) Can you sit down a few minutes? Let's sit down, [cook to other kitchen worker] (4) Come on Pedro, let's go git a load a boxes, [teenage male mover to other teenage male mover; no compliance—considered joking in response to overhearing an exchange between two other men] (5) Let's git out a here Clyde fore we git drove. (51B:272) [same as (4)] (6) Let's see, mostly I guess, insurance, [clinic receptionist to researcher in giving instructions] • (7) Let's see, do you reckon we could throw this at Bill? [teenage mover to another teenage mover, both male] (8) Let's not trap Bill in thare, he might not like it much [same as (7)] (9) Let's see if we can tighten this stuff up. [same as (7)] (10) Let's git all this stuff squared away, [same as (7)] (11) We could move it over thare. [same as (7)]6 When work-related imperatives are used, they must reference some aspect of doing the task itself, and the speaker must either be in a position such that he cannot perform the task himself (for example, "pass the salt" at the dinner table) or be performing a complex task with others so that labor coordination is necessary (for example, building a house). Failure to use imperatives under these task constraints when in a helping out situation results in the addressee interpreting the directive as an "order," which in turn violates task-egalitarian constraints: 114. Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �A cook at the environmental center entered the dining area to sweep, a routine task performed by whoever was "free" to do it. A guest lingering in the dining area told her she "ought to wipe the tables." The cook entered the kitchen area angry, saying the woman "had no right to tell me what to do."7 In this example, the guest was not a co-participant in the task and therefore violated the cook's helping-out imperative rules of use. The result was a violation of the cultural norms of the cook regarding imperative use. When such interpretations of work imperatives as orders occur, some form of non-compliance behavior invariably results, whether it be anger and withdrawal, as with the above example, or hostility and property destruction, as with the Stephenson anecdote. It is not enough to know about the necessary structurings of imperatives and other speech forms that constitute "helpin' out" discourse; we must also understand the mechanism by which the speech itself recreates cultural norms within the actual events in which it is used. The assumption here is that there are signaling properties of routine "helpin' out" discourse forms which reproduce key contextual meanings every time they are uttered, creating strong associative relations between the utterance and the contextual meanings it signals. These routine forms, such as an appropriately used "let's," become sound units which evoke expectations of mutually present non-speech components or factors. These learned associations created or reproduced time and time again in situations of speech use are different from the referential (or semantic) meanings of the words in a clause or sentence. Just as a policeman's wearing of a uniform signifies his assumed law enforcing role, these associative meanings become invariant and expected. In the case of "helpin' out" imperatives, they construct core and constitutive relations between speech, type of task, task behavior, and participant relations. For "helpin' out" discourse forms, these associations, or indices (Levinson 1983), center around configurations of "rights," "place," and "claims" relations.8 "Rights" focus around divinely-sanctioned behavior according to gender as legitimated by consensual interpretation of King James scripture. A work situation such as house building, for example, must index a man's "right" to perform such a task. As the most primitive of indexical relations created in work contexts, "rights" relations must be met in order for a culturally normative work relation to be in effect. If a person's actions aren't "right," as when a woman wants to do "men's work," then these pragmatic indexical relations are broken and "helpin' out" discourse becomes inappropriate or must be reconfigured into another speaking practice in which different but appropriate relations are constructed. "Place" relations, on the other hand, are socially constructed as 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 115 �residents negotiate over time a position or role within a task network, usually made up of extended family members. These relations often determine who takes the task-directing initiative in a "helpin' out" context, and reproduction of these pragmatic indexical relations in work contexts facilitates replication of a cohesive working unit and of a synchronization of effort according to individual skills, abilities, and personalities. "Claims" relations, the third relation indexed in "helpin" out" work discourse, is a relationship based upon reciprocity associations in which the participants have performed valued services or given valued goods to each other without monetary charge. Ash Creek residents "claim" various neighbors and kin according to the value given to these exchanges and the frequency with which they occur. "Helpin'" someone "out" creates or reinforces these relations by the simple act of laboring. Wage-laboring situations, as in local trucking or coal mining, replicate these rights, place, and claims relations as most workers are from the area and enculturated into these "helpin' out" patterns. Consequently "helpin' out" contexts are core socioeconomic events within Ash Creek, replicating bonding relations among task participants which ensure future expectations of return services. When imperatives occurring within these contexts are inappropriately used, the resulting "order" interpretations break these relationships, resulting in potential threats to the social order and calling into question the cultural identity of the addressee. As "orders" are appropriately used only between marked cultural unequals, such as parents to children or, under certain contextual conditions, men to women, these reconfigurations are interpreted by the worker as an attempt by the addresser to imply that the worker, if male, is either a child or a woman; if female, that she is a child. These interpretations then result in worker non-compliance due to failure to acknowledge a culturally appropriate identity, as evidenced in the Stephenson narrative which began this discussion. Returning to this narrative, we can now reanalyze it as a situation in which the indices, or pragmatics, of the work situation were violated. In a government construction job in which long-term mutual knowledge about the role or roles of task participants within a working network is probably absent, place and claims relations can be presumed to be weak, so a "helpin' out" context cannot be configured by the participants in this instance. Nor can they be created through the speech used within it if participants do not a share a common system of pragmatics when they make requests of each other. From a culturally-normative perspective, money alone would be an insufficient motivator in such task-focused contexts to create or replace the place and claims relations demanded by appropriate imperative uses.9 Therefore the worker had little cultural motivation to perform the task at hand, a motivation which was not 116 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �increased by the supervisor's inability to use imperatives in a culturally appropriate manner. Consequently, the supervisor's remark, "Why don't you get another and watch it chase the first one down?" was reinterpreted as an order by the local man. (The embedded "you get another and watch it chase the first one down" is an imperative construction. Despite the initial tag "why don't," the sentence is therefore presumed to be an imperative by its intonation, as indicated by the gloss "gruffly," making the "?" inserted by Stephenson a transcriptional error.) The local man refused to accept the cultural meanings he associated with inappropriately-used imperatives. He then proceeded to correct the supervisor's use of requesting language by echoing the supervisor's order-like phrase "why don't"10 and then amending it with the "let's" form in "why don't let's watch the wheelbarrow chase it," providing a lesson in culturally-accepted work language before abandoning an impossible work situation led by a man totally ignorant of how to construct appropriate work directives. Currently, when those representing formal, hierarchically-organized institutional or corporate patterns of working behavior interface with those coming from rural Appalachian communities similar to Ash Creek, the common result is perpetuation of labor relations problems that encourage contestation and conflict, often similar to this incident recorded by Stephenson. Through examining how speech functions pragmatically within situations such as this one, a rather different explanation of Appalachian work relations emerges, one which is culturally sensitive and which offers a normative explanation for work behavior rather than a psychological or idiosyncratic one. It will be difficult to have a full understanding of how to communicate the nature of the problem to all involved or to promote recognition of work interpretation differences until we begin to focus on how speech itself conveys not just one cultural meaning but a plethora of cultural meanings when it is actually used by members of that culture. Studies of language in use do have direct applications for understandings of socioeconomic issues and for the political acts which invariably follow mis-interpretations of working behavior. Notes 1 These techniques include audio-taping of speech in work settings, with the permission of the speakers, as well as hand-written recordings of speech instances and other cultural data commonly done in anthropological applications of participant observation. To conform to speakers' wishes and to ensure as much confidentiality as possible, no video recordings were made. A total of about 160 usable hours of audio tape was obtained, involving approximately one hundred different speakers. Most audio data were collected from a core of about twenty- 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 117 �five speakers under similar sampling conditions such as time, location, and setting. Audio data were subjected to classification into an inventory of discourse types, such as work talk, conversation, story-telling, gossip, and greetings. Pertinent data applicable to speech acts under work conditions were transcribed using a linguistically-sensitive system which recognized key dialectal features. 2 What data were actually available to be collected was influenced by gender, as would be expected in rural mountain communities. In terms of collecting speech act data, I was able to watch men work, help them with fetching supplies or tools, or simply listen in as I performed another task at the periphery of their activity. At the same time, I was able to participate fully in women's activities, obtaining data that would have been excluded to a man should he have attempted to visit homes or other women's domains without other men being present. 3 Support for this research was provided by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Grant, BNS-8516273, and by Berea College through a Mellon Foundation Appalachian Studies Fellowship. 4 Labels for types of speech used in work contexts are derived from what residents themselves call such events. For example, talk used when a group of workers are actually performing a task together occurs in a context that residents routinely label as "helping [NAME OF PERSON RECEIVING THE BENEFIT OF THE LABOR] out." If a group of local men, usually kin, assist someone named Joe in building a shed, they are likely to refer to this activity as "helpin' Joe out." 5 This assumption of egalitarianism does not mean that task specialization is avoided. Indeed, most residents assert special skill at one or a few types of work. Rather, the presumption is that any man (or woman) has equal access to the knowledge and skill necessary to perform a task. This assumption leads to such statements as "I could do that if I had to" or "I reckon I can figure it out." 6 These speech examples are segments transcribed from confidential audio tapes of community residents recorded from June 1985 through August 1987. Efforts have been made in the transcription process to mask both the identity of the speakers and the time and location in which the speech was recorded. In keeping with standard linguistic anthropological procedures, these tapes are not available in "raw" form to anyone without written permission from the recorded speakers and the author. Should a reader wish to make further inquiries about these tapes, please contact the author. 7 This example is an edited excerpt from fieldnotes recorded in late summer of 1985. As with audio-recorded speech examples, this passage has been edited to protect the name, location, and time of the event. Fieldnotes are also confidential; inquiries should be directed to the author. 8 The terms "rights," "place," and "claims" were derived from expressions or phrases used repeatedly by residents in conversation about others' laboring 118 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �behavior. For example, I was told early in my fieldwork by a local woman that it may be my "right" as a woman to "help her out" by taking her home from a church picnic, but it really wasn't my "place" to do so; it was the place of a family member to assist her. Others, however, were more willing to "let" me transport them or their children, especially as I became more known in the community. This variation allowed me to ask about "place" relations and to elicit discussions about it. Similarly, as the field time become extended, I was able to ask about "claiming" someone and elicit discussion about this term as well. 9 Even today, nearly thirty years after Stephenson's North Carolina study, many residents in Ash Creek will not willingly wage-labor in situations in which rights, claims, and place relations cannot apply, preferring instead to work locally under someone who can be "placed" or to network regionally to work with kin or through the recommendation of kin. 10 A number of studies on English imperatives have noted that certain intonation forms and embedding of imperative forms within interrogative structures can all be interpreted in speech as imperatives, even if the grammatical form does not appear to be one on the surface (see, for example, Davies 1986; Ervin-Tripp 1976; Levinson 1983). Works Cited Anglin, Mary. 1992. "A Question of Loyalty: National and Regional Identity in Narratives of Appalachia." Anthropological Quarterly 65:105-116. ——. 1993. "Engendering the Struggle: Women's Labor and Traditions of Resistance in Rural Southern Appalachia." In Fighting Back in Appalachia: Traditions of Resistance and Change, ed. Stephen Fisher. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Batteau, Allen. 1983. "Rituals of Dependence in Appalachian Kentucky." In Appalachia and America: Autonomy and Regional Dependence, ed. Allen Batteau. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Beaver, Patricia. 1986. Rural Community in the Appalachian South. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press. —— . 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. R. Nice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Davies, Eirlys. 1986. The English Imperative. London: Groom Helm. Ervin-Tripp, Susan. 1976. "Is Sybil There? The Structure of Some American English Directives." Language in Society 5:25-66. 1995 - Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 119 �Hicks, George. 1976. Appalachian Valley. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston. Kingsolver, Ann E. 1991. "Tobacco, Toyota, and Subaltern Development Discourses: Constructing Livelihoods and Community in Rural Kentucky." Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts at Amherst. 1992. "Contested Livelihoods: 'Placing1 One Another in 'Cedar,' Kentucky." Anthropological Quarterly 65:128-136. ——. Levinson, Steven. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pearsall, Marion. 1959. Little Smoky Ridge: The Natural History of a Southern Appalachian Neighborhood. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Puckett, Anita. 1993. "Seldom Ask, Never Tell: Speech Acts and Socioeconomic Relationships in a Rural Eastern Kentucky Community." Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin. Ray, George. 1983. "An Ethnography of Speaking in an Appalachian Community." Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, Seattle. Searle, John. 1976. "The Classification of Illocutionary Acts." Language in Society 5:1-24. Stephenson, John. 1968. Shiloh: Case Study of a Mountain Community. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Williams, Gratis. 1992. "Mountaineers Mind Their Manners." In Southern Mountain Speech, eds. Jim Wayne Miller and Loyal Jones. Berea, Ky.: Berea College Press. Anita Puckett is assistant professor in the Center for Programs for the Humanities at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She is a linguistic anthropologist who recently completed her dissertation examining Appalachian language and economic relationships. She has published in Anthropological Quarterly and Journal of American Folklore. 120 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Southwest Virginia High School Graduates: Crossing Cultural Terrains in the University Setting Pam B. Cole Introduction Mom graduated high school, but Dad, he just made it to the third grade; he skipped school a lot because he had to work in the fields so they would have food to eat. I think he was fifteen and in the third grade, and he just quit. And I see how it's affected him. He's never read a book before, and I can't imagine that, and I just want to do so much better than him. He always led me to believe that I was smart, and that I could do anything that I wanted to do. I want him to be proud of me (Chris 1993). The words above were spoken by a first-year university student who grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia. Chris and three of his high school classmates—John, Sandy, and Jarrod—enrolled together in a large university immediately following graduation from an all-white high school located in a small coal mining community.1 During their first semester as freshmen, these four students became participants in an ethnographic study of the ways in which they constructed their identities in the university setting. Chris and his classmates initially talked quite exuberantly about the encouragement they received from family, friends, and former teachers to attend the university. Chris's father was an illiterate, disabled coal miner who wanted to see his son "do so much better" than he himself had. His positive attitude toward education played an instrumental role 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 121 �in Chris's decision to pursue a degree in engineering. Likewise, Jarrod's decision to pursue a career in architecture was initially supported by his father who had spent his entire life working inside a coal mine and, as a result, wanted a better life for his son. Jarrod talked about watching his father labor and "grow old before his time" under the oppressive conditions of a coal miner's life. His mother, too, was a tremendous influence. At the time of the study she worked as a school janitor to help finance his education. All in all, these students brought to the university a strong sense of family, neighborliness, and personal identity. They had a great deal of pride in their Appalachian identities and were greatly motivated to do well in college.2 Nonetheless, pride in their Appalachian identities began to subside shortly after they entered the university. The students found themselves immersed in a dominant group that was less paternalistic and more bureaucratic, more elaborate in its speech codes, and more diverse in its thinking and experiences than their high school peer group. In this new environment, the students had to renegotiate their identities. Kondo points out that "identity is not a fixed 'thing,' it is negotiated, open, shifting, ambiguous, the result of culturally available meanings" and is heavily influenced by the power relations of the group (1990, 24). Though individuals constantly construct identities within their own cultural groups, neophytes, unfamiliar with the prevailing ways of a "new" group culture, renegotiate their identities in ways that are frequently in opposition to the norms of their native group. In so doing, they often acquiesce to prevailing group norms in order to gain acceptance. These students, unfamiliar with the university, renegotiated their identities in ways that were in opposition to their Appalachian identities. The differences they encountered frequently made them feel marginalized, disempowered, and stigmatized. As they renegotiated their identities, they struggled between remaining loyal to their stigmatized Appalachian identities and trying to pass as "normal" in order to gain membership in the dominant group. As a result, they began feeling ambivalent toward their native culture. Displacement Research findings suggest that schools are a source of identity and pride in more homogeneous rural communities (Gotts and Purnell 1986). By participating in high school events the students affirmed community membership and life. However, they felt overwhelmed by the bureaucratic nature and the size of the university. After attending a rural high school serving approximately 230 white students (Grades 7-12), they were shocked by the number and diversity of students enrolled in university classes. It was common for classes to have three hundred to six hundred students from various ethnic backgrounds. 122 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Many of their high school classes had fewer than ten pupils. Consequently, the students frequently received one-on-one attention from their teachers, with whom they had developed close relationships. This level of attention was absent at the university. Classrooms, Jarrod remarked, were "movie theaters" where students simply observed "an act in motion" (1993). The impersonal nature of the university setting affected the way they viewed themselves. As Sandy put it, she was no longer "an individual. I was just one of many numbers on the university campus" (1993a). Professors, John asserted, never seemed to have time to talk with them. Professors sometimes told the students their names were irrelevant, and they should not even bother putting them on their papers—social security numbers were sufficient (Group Interview 1993). These students also struggled with renegotiating their peer identities. Though they were frequently viewed as being "asocial," they assumed their hesitancy to establish new friendships was actually a result of the way they viewed friendships. The students felt that because they came from a community where "everyone knows everyone else" and where the unvarying nature of the community allowed friendships to deepen and evolve over time, they made friends quite differently than did many of their university peers. They were surprised by how quickly other students either joined or created cliques. Friendships, they believed, were lifelong commitments, not to be taken superficially and not to be developed too hastily. The students, therefore, approached new relationships in an ambiguous manner. Though Jarrod and Sandy were more extroverted than Chris and John and moved into new relationships quicker, they described their newfound friends as "acquaintances" and made apologetic comments concerning their new relationships. "I know it's a shallow way to be," Jarrod would frequently remark when discussing his new friendships. Sandy agreed: I'm makin' a lot of new friends, well, not really friends. Hopefully, one day they will be as close as my friends at home. But new people can't replace friends that I went to kindergarten with and played sports with and basically spent my entire childhood and adolescence with (1993b). John and Chris, more cautious in establishing new friendships, sometimes alienated themselves from other students. They hesitated becoming friends with "strangers" for fear they would make friends with the wrong crowd. Instead, they sought reassurance in one another's company. "The reason we're taking this so well," John asserted, "is because we have each other to talk to. I don't know if they [indicating the other three] weren't up here, if I would have stayed" (1993a). In addition to struggling with peer identity, these students quickly began viewing their educational identities as inadequate when compared 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 123 �to those of others; as a result, they felt displaced and marginalized in the classroom. Though all four students came to the university with high marks and were very much concerned about their academic performance, they began acknowledging academic experiences other students had which they lacked. John commented, for example, that other students were better prepared for lab work and, because his school lacked the materials to perform experiments, he was behind the other students. Sandy talked about the lack of advanced math courses in her high school. If she had been given the opportunity to take additional math courses, she would not be struggling in her college calculus class. All of them reported feeling "slighted" or "cheated" when other students made comments like "Oh, this is going to be easy" or "We did this in high school" when they themselves had been denied that experience. In one group interview, John summed up their feelings: We haven't did that stuff. They [other students] have on-hand experience with stuff that we don't have, so we have to work that much harder than they do because they've already had some knowledge that we have to learn new—which gives them an edge over us which isn't really fair, and sometimes it makes us angry, but there's not much we can do about it. Just work harder, I guess (Group Interview 1993).3 The students' greatest challenge dealt with renegotiating their intellectual and linguistic selves. They recounted a number of situations in which other students teased them about their intelligence and/or manner of speaking. Typical comments were "We thought all you people were stupid" and "We all thought that all of you talked real slow, and you didn't know anything." The students remarked that though their peers made the comments in a cordial manner, they sometimes felt marginalized by the statements. An early interview with two students illustrates the manner in which they felt put down for their style of speaking: Jarrod: When you get up here you like say somethin', and they go "Did you hear that? Say that again. Did you hear that?" John: Yeah. This one guy said, "Say somethin'." I said, "Like what?" And he goes, "Did you hear that? LIKE WHAT!" It just gets on your nerves sometimes, and then when I first got up here nobody could understand the way I pronounce my first name, and I finally just had to let pronounce it for them, and they still didn't get it. I mean, what's so hard about ? Jarrod: This one guy thought that 's last name was Musilix. I don't know how he got Musilix from . 124 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �John: Me and are gettin' used to answerin' to . [Both young men, though unrelated, have the same last name. In their community, the accent is placed on the first syllable; outsiders place the accent on the second syllable.] Jarrod: Yeah. So whenever somebody asks me my last name, I say [Places accent on the last syllable.] I always said in elementary and high school that I would never do that, but when you're up here you don't have any choice. John: Yeah. It's no use. Jarrod: If you say , it's like "What did you say?" So we have to change it (Group Interview 1993). Though the students believed they did not encounter any situations in which they felt blatant acts of ridicule, they admitted that subtle forms of ridicule—exemplified by the previous dialogue exchange— reminded them they were different and made them feel put down and disempowered.4 Thus, to gain membership and acceptance, they felt the need to readjust their speech patterns to match those of the dominant group. Juxtaposing the experiences and/or opportunities they had at home with those of their university peers also made the students feel inferior. Phrases such as "more culturally rounded," "less culturally developed," and "culturally deprived" laced their discourse about their own personal experiences. "I did not realize how little I had never done in my life," Chris remarked, "until I came to college and started listening to other students around me talking about where they had been and what all they had done" (1993). Jarrod commented: I was talkin' to a bunch of friends last night, and it made me realize that bein' from a small place we're like so much further behind, you know, than all these other people, and we're so much less rounded than they are. I talked to them for about three hours, and they were just talkin' about so many things they had did and so many places they had went. In a way I feel cheated that they've did stuff that I've not, but, you know, I just try to put it out of my mind because there's really nothin' I can do about it, so I try to not let it bother me (1993). Forging an Identity All four students enrolled in the university with some understanding of the negative stereotypes that are associated with the Appalachian region. Despite this knowledge, none of the students initially believed they would have ever felt stigmatized because of their Appalachian 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 125 �identities. As Jarrod remarked, "I thought that they [society] thought that we were really stupid, but it never really bothered me before. But now, they make me feel so insignificant and dumb. And I don't like that" (1993). Goffman (1963) explains that people who deviate from the norm acquire techniques to manage what he calls "spoiled identities." The students reported ways in which they began managing the stigmatism associated with their "spoiled" identities. They learned to conceal their uniqueness by forging socially acceptable identities, one of many management strategies pointed out by Granfield (1991), Marshall (1985), and Pfuhl (1986). The students, for instance, often found themselves hiding their Appalachian identities by saying as little as possible about their home communities. Though the students could refrain from talking about their home communities, their distinct Southwest Virginia dialects were much less avoidable. Though they perceived dialect as a veneer feature of the cultural world, an inflated way of seeking membership in an "elite" group, the students agreed that in order to gain membership and status in their new setting, they had to alter their dialect. Not gaining membership in the dominant group, as Chris said, "was the worst curse of man." Thus, the students began copying the language of those around them. They talked quite frequently about "hearing their own language change" and how they began finding themselves almost subconsciously shifting to what they called a more "proper" way of speaking when they were talking with those outside their indigenous cultural group. By the end of their first semester, all four students had altered much of their Appalachian dialect.5 Ambivalence Goffman (1963) coined the expression "identity ambivalence" for describing the emotional conflict that arises when an individual tries to embrace one culture and release another. Early in the first semester, the students began talking about the difficulties of returning home. Once these students experienced the social norms of the university setting, returning to their indigenous roots became problematic. Though they generally felt good about their new identities, they felt far removed from their high school peers and their former lives when they returned to their home communities. "I feel like I'm living in a sound proofroom when I'm back there; no one actually hears me, and really, I'm not so sure I hear them," John remarked (1993b). For all four students, their changing dialect and their more diverse ways of thinking created a barrier between them and their former friends. Time away from home, they realized, marked them as elite outsiders. Jarrod problemized his situation: 126 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �I've already noticed though that my accent has changed some since I've been up here. 'Cause they [high school friends] like make fun of me. And I went home last weekend and and —— [high school friends] would hear me say some stuff, they would make fun of me. They would say like "You think you're bad now, don't you? You've changed your accent!" (Group Interview 1993). The identity transformations that the students began experiencing also created tensions between the students and their family members. Chris mentioned his struggle to understand what he now felt were his parents' racist attitudes. Though he tried to discuss his feelings with his parents, he no longer felt capable of "talking on the same wave length with them" and insisted that there was no longer a place for him in his former community. John talked about how he now felt more open to different religious beliefs, but his parents were simply devastated that he wished to attend a nondenominational church. Overall, the students felt helpless in dealing with these conflicts. Despite their best efforts, the students had difficulty disengaging from their previous identities. "Sometimes," Chris remarked, "it's a relief for just the four of us to be together. 'Cause then we can let our guard down and be ourselves" (Group Interview 1993). Though the students conceded that a shift in dialect was inescapable, such a shift created dissension between their Appalachian identities and the new identities they were constructing. The students saw this vernacular shift as a disloyalty to their Appalachian identities but, at the same time, they felt powerless to do anything about it. As Jarrod said, "You understand that you are betraying who you are, but you want to be more accepted." John made a similar point: "I know at times that I talk different on purpose. I guess it's really bad. I shouldn't be like that, but I just don't want to be made fun of" (Group Interview 1993). All in all, the students felt a sense of guilt as they forged "acceptable" identities. Resolving Ambivalence All four students sought membership in the university setting by "passing," by forging socially acceptable identities. As they did this they began to resolve the ambivalence they felt by constructing negative views of their Appalachian identities. They began seeing their former identities as "fixed" realities and began appreciating multiple perspectives. As John remarked, "Now, I don't judge others. I wasn't as open minded in high school. I'm more so now" (1993b). In a final interview, Chris made a similar point when talking about how he felt he had changed: 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 127 �Chris: One thing, I was culturally deprived. Like black people .. . or anything you don't know anything about you're afraid of. Before I never had any contact with any of them. But I've met probably more nice black people here than I have white. Before I used the stereotypes. I didn't trust them. I didn't trust anybody. Just the people I already knew. That was just me; now I know that was wrong. Interviewer: What's made you change? Chris: I guess just actually experiencing. Just being around them. And just talkin' to them. They're just like we are. Skin color doesn't mean anything (1993). As the students observed their own attitudes changing, they began critically observing attitudes in their native culture. Sandy remarked: I don't wanna go back there. Just being here makes me see how narrow-minded everyone is at home. That's ridiculous. And I don't think kids should be brought up in a place like that. People there are too old-fashioned and are just not up for new ideas. At home everything has to be one way, and people can't be different. You have to be like everyone else or you're ridiculed because you're not (1993b). The students felt negatively about the lack of diversity in their home town and characterized their indigenous culture as narrow-minded. Thus, they felt ambivalent about returning home and raising their own families. Conclusion This paper has demonstrated the oppression that four students from Southwest Virginia experienced as they crossed cultural terrains in the university setting. Stigmatized by their Appalachian identities, the students sought membership in the academic setting by forging identities that were socially acceptable. However, in their efforts to "pass" as members of the dominant group, the students experienced identity ambivalence. They resolved their ambivalence by constructing negative views of their former identities and of their cultural heritage. Limitations exist to this study. The small number of participants makes it impossible to generalize the findings to other Appalachian youth. Others may have had similar or quite different experiences. Further research needs to be conducted with larger populations of students to see if the findings of this study are common to Appalachian youth and/or other children with rural identities. Furthermore, the duration of the study was limiting in itself. Can the students resolve the 128 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �negative feelings about their Appalachian identities? A longer study would address this question and might see how the students' attitudes toward their Appalachian identities evolve with time. Notes 1 Students' names have been changed to protect their privacy. 2 Both Sandy and John talked about how it was always "understood" that they would attend college. Their parents always emphasized the importance of a college education in securing a good job. 2 Ed. note: Due to the nature and content of this paper Standard English corrections have not been made to quoted dialogue. 4 Sandy stated on a number of occasions that she felt she was less affected by comments than were the other students. 5 Sandy and Jarrod entered the university with a less pronounced Appalachian dialect; consequently changes in their dialects were less noticeable. Works Cited Chris. 1993. Interview with the author. 8 October. Goffman, E. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Granfield, R. 1991. "Making It By Faking It: Working-class Students in an Elite Academic Environment." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 20(3): 331351. Group Interview. 1993. Interview with the author and Chris, Jarrod, John, and Sandy. 16 September. Gotts, E., and R. Purnell. 1986. "Families and Schools in Rural Appalachia." American Journal of Community Psychology 14(5): 499-521. Jarrod. 1993. Interview with the author. 14 September. John. 1993a. Interview with the author. 12 September. ——. 1993b. Interview with the author. 4 November. Kondo, D. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 129 �Marshall, C. 1985. The Stigmatized Woman: The Professional Woman in a Male Sex-typed Career." The Journal of Educational Administration 22(2): 131153. Pfuhl, E. 1986. The Deviance Process. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth. Sandy. 1993a. Interview with the author. 8 September. ——. 1993b. Interview with the author. 27 October. Pam Cole received a Ph.D in curriculum and instruction from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in December 1994. She currently teaches adolescent literature and writing for teachers in the Department of English at Radford University in Radford, Va. 130 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven * 1995 �Teaching for Democracy: Reflections On Teaching Appalachian Studies Shaunna L. Scott A long tradition of thought in the fields of education, social theory, and Appalachian studies conceives of education as the cornerstone for the construction of a democratic society and for the achievement of social justice and human liberation (see, for instance, Agger 1991; Dewey [1927] 1988; Freire [1968] 1983; Gramsci 1971; Habermas 1971, in social theory; and Einstein 1982; Fisher, Foster, and Harnish 1982; Lewis 1982, in Appalachian studies). According to arguments advanced by these writers, education provides students with the information and skills necessary for them to function as citizens in a democracy: to make informed policy and electoral decisions, to engage in dialogue, to solve problems, to think critically, and, perhaps most important, to imagine alternatives to the status quo. Teaching, then, is a political act. What we teach and how we teach it has important political consequences. In my own discipline of sociology, the politics of teaching is particularly transparent. Classical theorists such as Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons reaffirm society, while others like Karl Marx and Max Weber critique it. In spite of these differences, it remains the case that all of the dominant theoretical perspectives are elitist, ethnocentric, and androcentric. Put simply, they were written by, for, and about a relatively privileged group of white, European men. During the 1960s and 1970s, the field of sociology moved beyond an intellectual recognition of this fact and began to engage in rather vigorous debate over the discipline's political implications and, more specifically, over how socio ogy should be practiced and taught. This debate, though ongoing, has transformed our field in significant ways. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 131 �First, there has been a rapid growth in sociological self-critique, which has resulted in an expanding body of literature on the sociology of knowledge. Second, as teachers, sociologists have sought to replace hierarchical, authoritarian pedagogical models which place professors in an expert role, requiring us to dispense knowledge to passive students via lectures. We have furthermore modified our curriculum: first, by adding components on race and gender to the standard courses on social inequality and stratification; and second, by formulating independent courses and sub-disciplinary specialties which concentrate primarily upon race and gender. Over the last decade, sociologists have pushed the project one step further, arguing that race, gender, and, as always, class are constitutive of U.S. society, academia, and sociology as well as our own individual experiences and identities as educators and students. Therefore, they must be integrated into the very core of our curriculum, not ghettoized into separate courses or a single week of the semester. There are obvious parallels between sociology and Appalachian studies, owing both to the nature of these intellectual enterprises and to their co-existence in similar social and cultural contexts. The same social forces and intellectual currents responsible for the diversification of sociology throughout the 1960s and 1970s were also responsible for the institutional emergence of the interdisciplinary field of Appalachian studies. The timing and context of Appalachian studies' emergence accounts for a remarkably widespread use of experiential, democratic pedagogical and research methods. I argue this, in spite of Helen Lewis's complaint that Appalachian studies had become "academized" (1982, 166). Compared to other academic programs, Appalachian studies programs have maintained an activist-applied orientation and have consistently struggled against the forces which push educators toward elitist, authoritarian teaching and research (see, for instance, Banks, Billings, and Tice 1993; Couto 1986; Couto et al. 1986; Fisher, Foster, and Harnish 1982; Lewis and Gaventa 1988; Lewis and O'Donnell 1990a, 1990b; Silver 1991; Tice, Billings, and Banks 1993; but also Einstein 1982). Appalachian studies has also provided us with a rich critical literature addressing questions of underdevelopment and poverty, regional and ethnic identity, cultural difference, stereotypes, and other issues surrounding Appalachia's relationship with the "outside" world: the national and global economy, the federal government, and American popular culture (often accessed through mass media). Books which I regard as classics in our field—Harry Caudill's Night Comes to the Cumberlands (1962), the Lewis et al. volume on the colonial and world systems models (Lewis, Johnson, and Askins 1978), Henry Shapiro's intellectual history of the conceptualization of Appalachia (1978), Ron filler's work on the industrialization of the region (1982), David 132 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Whisnant's work on the politics of culture (1983), and Altina Waller's investigation of the Hatfield-McCoy feud (1988)—all offer Appalachian students relevant information and, equally important, critical and potentially empowering frameworks through which to view their region and themselves. Texts such as these open up a terrain upon which Appalachian students may challenge culturally- and environmentally-deterministic paradigms which locate the source of regional problems either with the people or with an intractable mountainous terrain. Obviously, such paradigms are politically paralyzing to us as citizens. Grounding regional poverty and powerlessness in the environment naturalizes social inequality to the point at which it seems almost inevitable. It does so by turning our attention away from the ways in which regional problems are also socially constructed through a particular pattern of capitalist development and its articulation with outside sources of capital and outside markets. Such environmental determinism leaves us with two alternatives: radical alteration of our landscape or out-migration. The logic of the second discourse, which places the blame for regional problems on the people and their culture, stigmatizes Appalachians and disqualifies us from participating as equals in a democratic, public discourse on the fate of our nation, region, and selves. After all, who cares about the opinions of backward, impoverished, uneducated, clannish, and overly-violent hillbillies? Thus, by linking conceptualizations and stereotypes of Appalachia to the broader structural and ideological processes through which American national identity was forged (Shapiro 1978) and through which certain groups acquired wealth and power in an expanding capitalist state (Caudill 1962; Eller 1982; Lewis, Johnson, and Askins 1978; Waller 1988; Whisnant 1980, 1983), the Appalachian studies literature helps us to foster a critical consciousness amongst Appalachian students. And, since this critical consciousness is necessary for the construction of a democratic polity at the local, state, regional, and national levels (Agger 1991; Habermas 1971), I value the contribution of this segment of the Appalachian studies literature greatly. Indeed, these books continue to form a core element of my Appalachian studies courses. Yet, I would argue that Appalachian educators should not stop with the construction of a positive basis for regional identity and a critique of American democracy and economy. As important as these goals are, they are not sufficient. Indeed, if we do stop here, we run the danger of acquiring a self-congratulatory, culturally-based superiority complex, in which we appear as virtuous and blameless "folk" while all of our problems are blamed upon "outsiders," as others have previously argued (see, for instance, Whisnant 1982). This is a tendency I must constantly fight in my own Appalachian studies courses where students alternate be- 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 133 �tween embracing the "Appalachia is good" paradigm or elaborating an extreme cultural relativism in which no value judgments or political decisions can be made. Both positions, while attractive and understandable, undermine the project of local and regional critique which is also requisite for the construction of critical consciousness, democratic polity, and transformative change. One way to facilitate such a local and regional critique is to engage willingly and honestly in our own self-critique, thereby offering a model of self-critique and self-reflexivity to our students. For example, I usually share with students my own elitist, middle-class, town-based biases which once caused me to be embarrassed by my paternal grandmother's lack of education and her use of non-standard English. These biases also provided me with a basis upon which to feel superior to my poorer, less educated, rural-dwelling kin and neighbors whom I was more than willing to stereotype and dismiss. Since my students come from similar backgrounds and usually share these biases, this self-critique usually leads them to recognize and discuss how they, too, participate in and benefit from the place-based and class-based hierarchies created through American capitalism and culture. There are so many excellent resources for initiating a discussion of class and town-country inequality in Appalachia that it is not possible to list them all here. Excellent sources include Stephen Fisher's "Life with Father: Reflections on Class Analysis" (1983-4), Allen Batteau's "Mosbys and Broomsedge: The Semantics of Class in an Appalachian Kinship System" (1982), and Robert Coles's Migrants, Sharecroppers, Mountaineers (1967) in conjunction with his Privileged Ones (1977). Of course, the consideration of class-based inequality and exploitation as well as the structural relationship between core and periphery has always been at the center of Appalachian studies discourse. One would be hard-pressed to teach a course on the history, politics, or sociology of Appalachia without attending to these topics. On the other hand, the consideration of two other important axes of inequality and exploitation in the United States—gender and race—have not always been so high on our interdisciplinary agenda (Maggard 1986).1 To teach about gender and race in Appalachia, then, is to extend even further our original projects of understanding regional social problems, of explaining, contextualizing, and debunking Appalachian stereotypes, and of empowering our students. In short, we must facilitate and articulate a critique of Appalachian studies. An obvious method of accomplishing this task is to examine critically Appalachian studies classics, both for their inclusion of women, African Americans, and other ethnic minorities and for their recognition of gender and race as culturally constructed systems of social stratification. Springboards for this endeavor include the work of Mary Anglin (1993), 134 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Jacqueline Dowd Hall (1986), Sally Maggard (1990), Mary Beth Pudup (1990), Michael Yarrow (1986; In progress), and myself (Scott 1994; 1995) on gender as well as the work of Edward J. Cabbell (1985), Ron Lewis (1987), Joe William Trotter, Jr. (1990), and William H. Turner (1985) on race. To bring these issues to life for the students, however, intellectual exercises such as these should be supplemented with other activities: discussions of current newspaper articles or letters to the editor; reflections on sexism and racism in our Appalachian home towns, institutions of higher learning, and American society in general; oral histories, fieldwork, or internships related to these topics; or discussions of fiction, TV shows, or films depicting race and gender in Appalachia. Films such as "Harlan County, U.S.A." (Koppel 1976), "Harriet Simpson Arnow" (Smith 1987), and "Fast Food Women" (Johnson 1991) help us recover an active presence and voice for Appalachian women who so often appear marginal to historical and sociological works on the region. The 1990 film "Trouble Behind," which documents the racist legacy of Corbin, Kentucky, is quite helpful in eliciting discussion and debate among students (Henson 1990). And, last but not least, Appalachian novels, short stories, and poetry provide those of us in history and social science with additional opportunities to encourage discussion and reflection on women and gender amongst our students. I, for instance, have always found it quite instructive to juxtapose literary images of women, such as James Still's character Mother in River of Earth ([1940] 1978) and Harriet Arnow's character the dollmaker ([1954] 1985), with the "real live" women in our students' lives and with women as they appear in ethnography, oral history, and other academic representations. Integrating race and gender into the Appalachian studies curriculum involves more than just adding units on women, blacks, Cherokees, or eastern and southern European immigrants to our syllabi, as Steve Fisher advocated over a decade ago (Fisher, Foster, and Harnish 1982). It means that we recognize that race and gender are at least as important as Appalachian ethnic identity in organizing social relations, informing personal identity, and propelling systems of social stratification within our region, communities, and homes. The integration of race and gender into Appalachian studies programs is particularly important in light of the economic shifts and public policies of the 1980s, which have resulted in a regional transformation of gender roles and a national increase in xenophobia and race hate crimes. The integration of race and gender into our curriculum, therefore, represents a very important step in our journey toward creating a more inclusive, democratic, and relevant Appalachian studies curriculum for our students and ourselves. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 135 �Note 1 My list is not exhaustive, of course. We should also consider other axes of inequality and exploitation, most obviously sexual orientation and age. Works Cited Agger, Ben. 1991. A Critical Theory of Public Life: Knowledge, Discourse and Politics in an Age of Decline. New York: The Fallmer Press. Anglin, Mary K. 1993. "Engendering the Struggle: Women's Labor and Traditions of Resistance in Southern Appalachia." In Fighting Back inAppalachia: Traditions of Resistance and Change, ed. Stephen Fisher. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Arnow, Harriet. [1954] 1985 . The Dollmaker. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Banks, Alan, Dwight Billings, and Karen Tice. 1993. "Appalachian Studies, Resistance and Postmodernism." In Fighting Back in Appalachia: Traditions of Resistance and Change, ed. Stephen Fisher. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Batteau, Allen. 1982. "Mosbys and Broomsedge: The Semantic of Class in an Appalachian Kinship System." American Ethnologist 9 (3): 445-466. Cabbell, Edward J. 1985. "Black Invisibility and Racism in Appalachia: An Informal Survey." In Blacks in Appalachia, eds. William H. Turner and Edward J. Cabbell. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Caudill, Harry. 1962. Night Comes to the Cumberland^: A Biography of a Depressed Area. Baltimore: Little, Brown and Company. Coles, Robert. 1967. Migrants, Share Croppers, Mountaineers. Children of Crisis, Vol. 2. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ——. 1977. Privileged Ones. Children of Crisis, Vol. 5. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Couto, Richard A. 1986. "Failing Health and New Prescriptions: CommunityBased Approaches to Environmental Risks." In Current Health Policy Issues and Alternatives: Applied Social Science Perspective, ed. Carole E. Hill. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Couto, Richard A., Pat Sharkey, Paul Elwood, and Laura Green. 1986. "Relevant Education: Sharing Life's Glories." Southern Exposure 14 (SeptemberDecember): 60-61. 136 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Dewey, John. [1927] 1988. The Public and its Problems. Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press. Einstein, Prank H. 1982. "Theory Si Practice No! Appalachian Studies Comes Full Circle." In Assessing Appalachian Studies, ed. Thomas A. McGowen. Appalachian Journal 9 (2-3): 195-201. Eller, Ronald. 1982. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Fisher, Stephen, Jim Foster, and Mary Harnish. 1982. "From Nonsense to Good Sense: A Collective Reflection on Appalachia and Appalachian Studies." In Assessing Appalachian Studies, ed. Thomas A. McGowen. Appalachian Journal 9 (2-3): 149-61. Fisher, Stephen. 1983-4. "Life with Father: Reflections on Class Analysis." Appalachian Journal 11 (1-2): 154-62. Freire, Paulo. [1968] 1983. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans M.B. Ramos. New York: Continuum. Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith, eds. and trans. New York: International. Habermas, Jiirgen. 1971. Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press. Hall, Jacqueline Dowd. 1986. "Disorderly Women: Gender and Labor Militancy in the Appalachian South." The Journal of American History 73 (2): 354-82. Henson, Robby, dir. 1990. "Trouble Behind." VHS video. Cicada Films. Johnson, Ann, dir. 1991. "Fast Food Women." VHS video. Whitesburg, Ky.: Appalshop. Koppel, Barbara, dir. 1976. "Harlan County, U.S.A." VHS video. Cabin Creek Films, Columbia Pictures. Lewis, Helen, Linda Johnson, and Donald Askins, eds. 1978. Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case. Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press. Lewis, Helen M. 1982. "Appalachian Studies—The Next Step." In Assessing Appalachian Studies, ed. Thomas A. McGowen. Appalachian Journal 9 (2-3): 162-71. Lewis, Helen, and John Gaventa. 1988. The Jellico Handbook: A Teacher's Guide to Community-Based Economics. New Market, Tenn.: Economics Education 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 137 �Project, Highlander Center. Lewis, Helen, and Suzanna O'Donnell, eds. 1990a. Ivanhoe, Virginia: Remembering our Past, Building Our Future. Ivanhoe, Va.: Ivanhoe Civic League. ——. 1990b. Telling Our Stories—Sharing Our Lives. Ivanhoe, Va.: Ivanhoe Civic League. Lewis, Ron L. 1987. Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict 1780-1980. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Maggard, Sally Ward. 1986. "Class and Gender: New Theoretical Priorities in Appalachian Studies." In The Impact of Institutions in Appalachia: Proceedings of the 8th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference, eds. Jim Lloyd and Anne G. Campbell. Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press. ——. 1990. "Gender Contested: Women's Participation in the Brookside Coal Strike." In Women and Social Protest, eds. G. West and R. Blumberg. New York: Oxford University Press. Pudup, Mary Beth. 1990. "Women's Work in the West Virginia Economy." West Virginia History 49:7-10. Scott, Shaunna L. 1994. "They Don't Have to Live by the Old Traditions: Saintly Men, Sinner Women and an Appalachian Pentecostal Revival." American Ethnologist 21 (2): 227-44. —— . 1995. Two Sides to Everything: The Cultural Construction of Class Consciousness in Harlan County, Kentucky. Albany: State University of New York Press. Silver, Roy. 1991. "The Struggle Against the Poisoning of Harlan County's Dayhoit: Fighting the Good Fight." Paper presented at the American Sociological Association meeting. Cincinnati, Ohio. Shapiro, Henry D. 1978. Appalachia on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Smith, Herb. E., dir. 1987. "Harriet Simpson Arnow." VHS video Whitesburg, Ky.: Appalshop. Still, James. [1940] 1978. River of Earth. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Tice, Karen, Dwight Billings, and Alan Banks. 1993. "Sustaining Our RegionWide Conversation: Founding Hopes and Future Possibilities of the Appalachian Studies Association." Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association 5:3-11. 138 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Trotter, Joe William, Jr. 1990. Coal, Class and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915-32. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Turner, William H. 1985. "Between Berea (1904) and Birmingham (1908): The Rock and Hard Place for Blacks in Appalachia." In Blacks in Appalachia, eds. William H. Turner and Edward J. Cabbell. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Waller, Altina L. 1988. Feud: Hatfields, McCoys and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Whisnant, David. 1980. Modernizing the Mountaineer. New York: Burt Franklin and Company. ——. 1982. "Second-Level Appalachian History: Another Look at Some Fotched-On Women." In Assessing Appalachian Studies, ed. Thomas A. McGowen. Appalachian Journal 9 (2-3): 115-23. —— 1983. . All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Yarrow, Michael. 1986. "Capitalism, Patriarchy and 'Men's Work': The System of Control of Production of Coal Mining." In The Impact of Institutions in Appalachia: Proceedings of the 8th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference, eds. Jim Lloyd and Anne G. Campbell. Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press. —— . In progress. Voices in the Mines: Class and Gender in the Consciousness of Mining Families. Book manuscript. Shaunna L. Scott, a native of Pikeville, Ky., is currently an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Kentucky and an associate of the Appalachian Center there. Her book Two Sides to Everything: The Cultural Construction of Class Consciousness in Harlan County, Kentucky was published by State University of New York Press in January, 1995. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 139 �Gender and Schooling in Appalachia: Lessons for an Era of Economic Restucturing Sally Ward Maggard Introduction A central tenet of the Clinton administration policy for economic improvement is to retrain the existing work force and educate new labor force entrants for jobs in a high wage, high skill, high productivity economy. It is argued such labor force preparedness will attract and hold internationally mobile capital investment. The multiple threats to workers and communities of factory relocation, wage and benefit reductions, and part-time, contingent jobs will be reduced or eliminated. This assumption that workforce preparedness will anchor mobile capital is untested, but even if one accepts it, many questions remain. What does it mean to "retool" a labor force for the jobs of the future? What is the mix of programs for training existing workers and educating new entrants? Can the decentralized American education system respond? In Central Appalachia, the overpowering question is how does one connect the national agenda to communities once dominated by natural resource extraction where unemployment today runs as high as 25 percent of the work force? This article considers the complexity of designing new job training and education programs in Central Appalachia in an era of global economic transformation. It examines patterns of economic change and educational attainment, women's experiences as they attend school and try to acquire marketable skills, and lessons from previous job training 140 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �and educational programs. From this it draws conclusions about ways to link national policy to the realities of Central Appalachia. A major portion of the article analyzes the public school and job training experiences of working class women in Eastern Kentucky. The author's original research on women's participation in two union organizing drives in the early 1970s generated data on schooling and work histories pertinent to new educational and labor force training initiatives. Recent Economic Change in Appalachia Economic problems in Central Appalachia1 resemble problems in other parts of the country, but the impact of restructuring here is often more acute than it is elsewhere. Data from West Virginia, the only state located entirely within the region, provide good examples of current economic trends in Central Appalachia. Where have all the "good" jobs gone? While the total number of jobs in the West Virginia economy remained fairly stable from 1980 to 1991, the mix of jobs changed dramatically. High paying jobs in coal mining, manufacturing, construction, transportation, and financial services declined by 22.5 percent, while lower paying jobs in agriculture, retail and wholesale trade, and services increased 24.4 percent (WVTFCYF 1993, 16). From 1985 to 1990 mining employment fell 21.7 percent. Miners and communities dependent on mining wages suffer, but with the shift to new automated mining technology, productivity is at an all-time high in the industry (Maggard 1994a). In contrast, West Virginia jobs in amusement services, apparel and accessory stores, eating and drinking places, and health services each increased by over 20 percent from 1985 to 1990 (Gulp, Bingaman, and Witt 1991). With the recruitment of "back-office" operations to the state, new jobs opened up in data entry and processing, market research, telemarketing, customer service, and financial services (Maggard 1994a). In each sector experiencing job growth, jobs tend to be part-time, temporary, subcontracted, and non-union, and they tend to pay low wages, lack benefits, and lack job security. Employers hire "contingent" workers on a part-time, temporary basis to avoid the costs of health insurance, sick leave, unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, pensions, and retirement. Costs can be reduced an estimated 20 to 40 percent by hiring contingent labor (Callahan and Hartmann 1991). But recent data indicate that these labor force trends translate into poverty inside Appalachian households. Median family income in West Virginia dropped by 3.9 percent from 1980 to 1990 (WVTFCYF 1993, 16), and households experienced an 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 141 �overall reduced standard of living. West Virginia fell from 47th to 50th in per capita income over the decade (Center for Economic Research 1991, 3) and female headed families living in poverty increased by 11.6 percent (Lubman 1993a). The state's "coal counties" are in crisis. Located in what used to be called the "Heart of the Billion Dollar Coalfields", McDowell County, for example, lost 72 percent of its high wage jobs from 1980 to 1991. This is a truly alarming statistic, but the county also lost 22 percent of its low wage jobs. Unemployment is 22.7 percent higher than the state average (11.4 percent in 1992) (Yoder 1993), and median income fell by 27.5 percent, from $21,729 to $15,756 in the county (WVTFCYF 1993, 43). Where have all the people gone? Many people leave. Forty-four of West Virginia's fifty-five counties lost population over the last decade (U.S. Bureau of Census 1990), but new data indicate a reversal of this trend (Thompson 1993; Isserman and Sorenson 1994). Recent southern destination states and historical migration points such as midwestern cities are also experiencing restructuring, and migration is failing as an alternative to bad times in Central Appalachia. When laid off workers see their jobs relocated to countries like Mexico, they are deciding not to follow the jobs and to stay home (Ansley 1993). Although some experts argue that labor mobility is a special strength in the U.S. economy (Passell 1992), Appalachian workers increasingly disagree. Who is the family breadwinner? Since early in the century, males have been the predominant household "breadwinners" in the region, but today they are joining the ranks of "discouraged" unemployed workers who give up looking for jobs and are officially counted as out of the labor market. In contrast, women in the region are moving into the paid labor force in ever larger numbers (Maggard 1994a, 19-20). The rate at which West Virginia women are entering the formal labor force may soon outstrip the rate of increase nationally among women. These shifts disrupt traditional household relationships. Fragmented data from literacy teachers, women's shelters, and social service agencies link these trends to an increase in domestic violence. What is a "real" job today? The traditional model of employment in the U.S. has been of fulltime, long-term, and family-waged work. White male working class, white collar, and professional workers have generally held such jobs (Ansley 1993, 1768, 1842-1843), and restructuring challenges this presumed norm for these groups. Today the dominant employment 142 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �model more closely resembles the work experiences of minority populations and women whose jobs have not provided economic security. In response to the increase in economic insecurity, a wide range of non-standard economic activity is taking place at a grassroots level in Appalachia and other parts of the country.2 This includes illegal work (marijuana and moonshine production, prostitution, drug sales, poaching), "self-provisioning" (picking berries, gardening, preserving food, raising livestock, hunting, cutting wood for fuel, scavenging coal, sewing), and other informal production and bartering (gathering ginseng and rattlesnakes, making crafts, repairing automobiles and machinery). Flea markets and yard sales have expanded into a thriving alternative economy, and other non-reported work is expanding. Reciprocal work is wide spread, especially along kinship and neighborhood lines, as people share elder care, child care, invalid care, transportation, cash loans, job referrals, home repair, and home building. At a community level, people organize health clinics, child care, and youth programs, as well as oral history projects, industrial recruitment programs, economic seminars, and community self-assessment projects. People combine these activities with other sources of income such as unemployment, worker's compensation, disability, welfare, food stamps, black lung benefits, and social security. Transfer payments rarely cover minimal household needs, so this "creative" but technically "illegal" combination of non-standard and other income is necessary to keep households solvent. Barriers to a High-Skill Work Force Upgrading the skills and educational levels of the labor force are at the heart of federal economic growth policies. But Central Appalachia's educational attainment record and the experiences of its residents in public schools and manpower development programs suggest that new programs face severe challenges in the region. Low educational attainment Central Appalachia has struggled for many decades with poorly funded public schools and high dropout rates. Challenges to school finance formulas in West Virginia and Kentucky have resulted in an infusion of new support for some poor school districts, and in West Virginia there has been progress since 1980 in reducing the percentage of high school dropouts (WVTFCYF 1993, 6-7). Still, in 1993 West Virginia ranked 48th nationally in the percentage of adults completing four years of high school (Zeller and Smith 1993). In McDowell County, 47 percent of men and 25 percent of women in the labor force in 1990 had not completed high school. Among men, 34 percent had not gone beyond high school. For women, the comparable figure was 46 percent 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 143 �(U.S. Bureau of the Census 1990). In McDowell and seven other coal counties, less than 55 percent of the population aged twenty-five and over had graduated from high school (Lubman 1993b). The special case of women Recent Appalachian scholarship demonstrates the importance of analyzing gender relations and gender ideology in the region's history, culture, economy, and problems (Maggard 1994b). In terms of education, gender relations and their supportive ideologies create specific difficulties which push women to drop out of school and which hamper their efforts to return to school or benefit from job training programs. Structured interviews conducted from 1986 through 1988 by the author with forty-four Eastern Kentucky wo.men about work and educational experiences point to gender as a factor in school dropout rates, the low skill level of the labor force, and unsuccessful manpower programs. The research was part of a larger comparative study of women's involvement in two union organizing drives in Eastern Kentucky in the early 1970s (Maggard 1988). Both drives resulted in strikes: the United Mine Workers of America strike vs. Duke Power Company at its Brookside coal mine in Harlan County and the Communications Workers of America strike vs. Pikeville Methodist Hospital in Pike County. Twenty women from the coal strike and twenty-four from the hospital strike were interviewed. At the time of their strike involvement, the women were working as homemakers, nurse's aides, cooks, kitchen helpers, housekeepers, and clerical workers. Some had never held paying jobs. Most had worked in a wide array of low-wage, service sector jobs. Only six had completed high school; ten had one-to-three years of high school; twenty had completed only the eighth grade; eight had less than eight years of school. Ten of the women had been enrolled in some kind of manpower training program. Analysis of their life history data reveals that schooling gets sacrificed to gender roles and expectations about women's work. Women's education is rarely a priority, and family needs supersede women's desires to stay in school, enroll in semi-professional or professional courses of study, enter job training and technical skills programs, or pursue advanced degrees. Dropping out of school and not getting back The most common reason cited for quitting school was poverty. "I had started high school," one woman explained. "They'd be seven of us in the family and I really couldn't afford [school]. So I just got a job. Started doing restaurant work."3 Another woman quit school in the eighth grade because, ". . . my grandmother couldn't afford to send me to high school. That's the reason I didn't go." One woman from Harlan County recalled, 144 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �"I didn't get no education, for people were poor. I had to walk off the top of that mountain, come over here to school. I got the primer, half the fifth and half the sixth." One of the leaders in the coal strike quit school to take a $35-a-week job baby sitting: "I had to buy all the school clothes [and] any food I had at school . . . because Dad just couldn't make it. When the mines worked, they didn't work enough for the men to support the size family that my mother and daddy had." Women described crises which worsened financial situations in their families. A nurse's aide said, "I left home to work for people because our home burnt up and we lost everything we had." A strike created the family crisis that led another woman to quit: "I was going to high school . . . [I got] three years. Wished I'd went plumb through, but dad was on strike, and they didn't have much money. I knew I couldn't afford it, so I just quit." And a woman who worked over thirty years as a nurse's aide quit school because of her mother's illness: "My mother got real sick and had to have surgery. For two years [she] wasn't able to do anything. [I] took all the responsibility of the family." Usually families interpreted crises in gender terms. Female children quit school to assume work necessary to keep households viable. One woman, who still dreams of becoming a nurse, said, "I went about two weeks [high school] and quit. Daddy was sick. When he couldn't work we couldn't afford to go. I stayed home and helped Mommy out with him." Another woman, who worked many years as a hospital cook, quit school after the eighth grade: "After my mother died I didn't get to go. See, I was the only girl among six brothers. I was the only girl at home." Although she loved the small country schools she had attended, there was no question that she, rather than one of her brothers, would quit school when her mother died. As adults, the women repeated this childhood pattern of school sacrifice for family roles. One woman made several attempts to become a Registered Nurse. Most recently her husband's struggle with black lung stood in her way: "Somebody is all the time blocking me for what I've always dreamed about." Another nurse's aide gave up her dream to train to become a licensed practical nurse. "I went and signed up and was accepted," she said. "My youngest son had to have his appendix taken out. . . . So that knocked me out there. I couldn't leave my baby. I'd a went on and made a LPN if it hadn't been for that." One of the most extreme examples of the way gender ideology restricts women was given by a woman who worked for years as a hospital kitchen helper. "Mommy didn't believe in girls getting a education," she said. "I turned sixteen, and I had to quit and stay home. I don't know why she believed that girls shouldn't get an education, but she just wouldn't let us go. She's got five girls and not a one of us graduated from high school." 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 145 �Some of the women quit school to get married, but in each case marriage was seen as a solution to other problems. One woman quit the eighth grade to escape an abusive home situation: "I wasn't allowed to go anywhere by myself. Dad would whip me good. Dad was pretty rough on m e . . . . I guess, you know, when you're young—I took o f f . . . . Mom signed the papers for us to get married." In other instances a married daughter meant one less child to support in stressed households. One woman married soon after her family was evicted from their home during a coal strike. 'They [coal company] started giving house notices. So people had to move," she said. "We did have it rough for a while. [My dad] applied for his miner's pension and the black lung, and that took time. My mom had to go out and do housework for people in order to make ends meet." Soon after her family was evicted she quit school. There was three of us in high school at that time, and it was rough going. As far as making expenses meet, it was really hard." In some cases social class distinctions made school problematic and prompted women to drop out. "I passed two years in the sixth grade, and I didn't like that teacher," one Harlan County woman said. "I threatened to whip her. Me, a young kid, wanting to fight her. I didn't like her attitude." She explained that, "it was like she was better than the students. She had things, and she'd flaunt it. She just showed off. It turned me off. So I finally just married." Another woman fought a consolidation plan which would move her own children into a school dominated by middle class children. She wanted to protect them from the "class pain" she had experienced. These interviews parallel the findings in research with working class women in rural North Carolina and urban Philadelphia (Luttrell 1993) and working class males (Sennett and Cobb 1972). Difficulties of trying to overcome barriers After the strikes were over, most of the women either renewed their educational efforts, took job training, or became politically active in their communities. Participation in the strikes disrupted traditional understandings of women's roles and created a kind of free space in which women changed their lives. Change was most dramatic among women who had worked primarily as homemakers. Many of these women went back to school or trained at nearby community colleges and area vocational schools. One woman enrolled at a community college under a federal support program and had nearly completed an undergraduate degree at the time of her interview. Another woman went to college after the coal strike, finished an undergraduate degree, and had almost completed a master's degree at the time of her interview: "My two brothers and a sister, they had associates [degrees], but I was the first one to get a bachelor's. I'm going 146 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �to be the first to get a doctorate. Let me tell you!" All of these women value education. Gender status, poverty, sexism, classism, and domestic abuse interfered with educational attainment. Still, their active pursuit of new skills, education, and political involvement after the strikes testifies to their desire for educational opportunities. If new federal programs address the problems described by these women, this research predicts high participation rates. Past training programs Ten of the forty-four women interviewed had been involved in Manpower Development and Training programs in the 1960s. One had participated in a sewing project, and the others had trained for various positions in health services. In most cases, this helped them get low wage service jobs, but even so, none utilized their technical training in the new job. One woman who wound up with a hospital kitchen job described her training experience this way: I went to the unemployment office for work. Me and my husband separated, and I didn't have no way of keeping up the kids. They told me about this program they had going up at the hospital. They'd pay me for going to school. Special diet course: how to fix diets for diabetics and people with heart trouble and high cholesterol, and stuff like that. I really enjoyed it. After the training she was hired at the hospital. "I was making just about the same as they was paying me through that government— minimum wage," she said. "I didn't use that [training]. It didn't help me a bit. The only way it helped me was getting the job." Federal workforce training in this era resulted in an underemployed labor force. Participants were unable to find jobs which used newly acquired skills or which paid above-minimum wages. Research on the more recent Job Training and Partnership Act (JTPA)4 reveals similarly disappointing results. Participation in JTPA programs tends to be low. A survey of one hundred women who lost their jobs when a Tennessee apparel plant closed reveals that many women did not enroll because of their financial and health insurance concerns (Merrifield, Norris, and White 1991, 8, 36-38, 61-62). One woman said, "I had to go back to work to get insurance. My husband's medicine is very high priced" (Merrifield, Norris, and White 1991, 38). Another woman felt she could not afford to participate. "I wanted to get into the medical field, to have something stable," she said. "I signed up for LPN classes but didn't go because I needed a job, and didn't know how long it would be funded or if I could draw unemployment. . . . I didn't think I could afford to go (Merrifield, Norris, and White 1991, 37). 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 147 �Women who do participate in programs find that they are not trained for growth occupations in technical and paraprofessional fields. In Tennessee, women were trained in stereotypically "female jobs," like clerical work and nursing. The survey concluded that the training made no difference in the ability of participants to get full-time, well-paying jobs. Similarly, a recent Government Accounting Office analysis of the JTPA reveals that in over half of the regions studied, only 9 percent of the women who participated received training for jobs which paid $7.00 or more an hour (GAO 1991). Conclusions and Recommendations New programs for labor force preparedness need to be connected to the present and future economic context. Problems particular to Central Appalachia in an era of profound economic change and lessons from past labor force programs and public school experiences suggest four recommendations. First, any educational upgrade, job training, and school-to-work programs must be linked to changes in labor markets and economic growth policies influencing labor market change. Unless training is linked to economic development with a dual emphasis on education and occupations, earlier failures will recur and programs will prepare people for non-existent jobs. Second, a "self-sufficiency standard" (Rose 1993, 7) should apply to job training. The Coalition on Women and Job Training, an alliance of twenty-seven national women's job training, labor, education, civil rights, and economic development organizations, urges development of training programs which estimate regionally specific wage and benefit needs for participants, assess job opportunities, and enroll participants in training specifically directed to meeting those job needs (Rose 1993). Third, an array of support services must accompany programs. Child care, transportation, health insurance, and family income support are necessary to sustain economically distressed participants. Counseling and crisis intervention may be needed. Programs must be particularly sensitive to location-specific social and cultural factors—including gender, class, and racial ideologies—which affect educational attainment. Fourth, desirable forms of non-standard economic activities should be strengthened with training, funding, credit, technical assistance, marketing, and licensing and regulatory assistance. This support can move innovative grassroots development projects into viable economic options. Without attention to these recommendations, the labor force may well segment into at least four tiers. At the top are highly skilled and well-educated workers of the "information age." At a second tier there 148 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �are people who complete training and education required for technical occupations. At the third tier there are displaced workers who "retrain" for inadequate jobs and make up the "contingent" labor force. Finally, outside of the formal labor market, there are people who piece together the resources to survive through non-standard activities. It is no simple task to create a "world class workforce" based on sustainable economic activity which translates to economic security. It is imperative that we intentionally address the needs of displaced workers, new entrants to the work force, and communities. It is also imperative that we do this with broad-based, democratic participation in planning new economic policy and in designing the programs which will equip people to be active participants in the emerging economy. Notes 1 A federally defined subregion of the larger Appalachian Region, Central Appalachia consists of sixty counties located in four states: Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee (Appalachian Regional Commission 1964). 2 Literature on the "informal economy" is growing and conceptually diverse (see Brown and Scase 1991; Fortes, Castells, and Benton 1989; Christensen 1988). Here the term "non-standard economic activity" describes grass-roots economic strategies emerging in response to de-industrialization in Appalachia. Much is highly organized, "informal" only in the sense that it may fall outside traditional employer-employee wage relationships and government regulation. Discussions in this article of "non-standard economic" activity and segmentation of the labor force draw heavily from my collaborative work on economic restructuring with University of Tennessee law professor Fran Ansley. 3 A11 quotations in this paper are from the author's interviews with women who participated in these two strikes, unless otherwise noted. To protect privacy of respondents, names of interviewees are not published here. For similar reasons the exact dates and places of interviews are not published. All interviews were conducted in respondents' homes, work places, or mutually arranged sites during 1986 and 1987. Respondents signed special interview release forms setting the terms of use of their interviews. The interviews and additional strike documents are housed in the "Women and Political Protest" collection of the Appalachian Collection, University of Kentucky. 4 The 1982 Job Training Partnership Act was intended to retrain dislocated workers in new job skills. In 1989 this mission was transferred to the Economic Dislocation and Worker Adjustment Assistance Act. Works Cited Ansley, Fran. 1993. "Standing Rusty and Rolling Empty: Law, Poverty, and 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 149 �America's Eroding Industrial Base." Georgetown Law Journal 81 (5): 17571896. Appalachian Regional Commission. 1994. Appalachia. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. Brown, Phillip, and Richard Scase, eds. 1991. Poor Work. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Callaghan, Polly, and Heidi Hartmann. 1991. Contingent Work: A Chart Book on Part-Time and Temporary Employment. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute. Center for Economic Research. 1991. West Virginia: Data File. July. Morgantown: West Virginia University. Christensen, Kathleen, E., ed. 1988. The New Era of Home-Based Work Directions and Policies. Boulder: Westview Press. Gulp, Linda, Fred Bingaman, and Tom Witt. 1991. "State of the West Virginia Economy." Prepared for Governor's Office of Community and Industrial Development. August 27. Morgantown: Center for Economic Research, West Virginia University. Isserman, Andrew M., and David J. Sorenson. 1994. "State, County, and City Population Change." West Virginia Demographic Monitor (Regional Research Institute, West Virginia University) 1 (2): 1-3. Lubman, Alex. 1993a. "One in Five West Virginians in Poverty." West Virginia State Census Data Center Newsletter (Office of Health Services Research, West Virginia University) 4 (fall): 3, 5. . 1993b. "Educational Attainment in West Virginia." West Virginia State Census Data Center Newsletter (Office of Health Services Research, West Virginia University) 4 (fall): 2, 4. Luttrell, Wendy. 1993. "The Teachers, They All Had their Pets': Concepts of Gender, Knowledge, and Power." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 18 (3): 505-546. Maggard, Sally Ward. 1988. "Eastern Kentucky Women on Strike: A Study of Gender, Class, and Political Action in the 1970s." Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky. . 1994a. "From Farm to Coal Camp to Back Office and McDonald's: Living in the Midst of Appalachia's Latest Transformation." Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association 6:14-38. . 1994b. "Will the Real Daisy Mae Please Stand Up? A Methodological 150 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Essay on Gender Analysis in Appalachian Research." Appalachian Journal 21 (2): 136-150. Merrifield, Juliet, Lachelle Norris, and Loretta White. 1991. "I'm Not a Quitter!" Job Training and Basic Education for Women Textile Workers. Knoxville: Center for Literacy Studies, University of Tennessee. Passell, Peter. 1992. "Workers Who Follow the Jobs Are the Keys to Economic Health." New York Times 5 July: 6E. Fortes, Alejandro, Manuel Castells, and Lauren Benton, eds. 1989. The Informal Economy. Baltimore: The John's Hopkins University Press. Rose, Kalima. 1993. "Women & Job Training: A New Agenda." Equal Means 2 (1): 5-8. Sennett, Richard, and Jonathan Cobb. 1972. The Hidden Injuries of Class. New York: Vintage Books. Thompson, Eric. 1993. "Long-Term Economic Forecasts for West Virginia: 19932002." West Virginia Business and Economic Review (Center for Economic Research, West Virginia University) 1:1-10. U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1990. Characteristics of the Population. Washington, B.C.: Government Printing Office. U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO). 1991. "Job Training Partnership Act: Racial and Gender Disparities in Services." GAO/HRD-91-148. Washington, B.C.: United States General Accounting Office. West Virginia Task Force on Children, Youth and Families (WVTFCYF). 1993. Kids Count Data Book: 1993 County Profiles of Child Weil-Being. Charleston: West Virginia Task Force on Children, Youth and Families. Yoder, Belmar R. 1993. "State Employment Update." Community and Economic Development Newsletter (West Virginia University Extension Service) 2 (1): 6. Zeller, Frederick A., and Wil J. Smith. 1993. "The West Virginia Economy Tomorrow." Community and Economic Development Newsletter (West Virginia University Extension Service) 2 (3): 2-3. Sally Ward Maggard is assistant professor of sociology, adjunct assistant professor of history, and faculty research associate of the Regional Research Institute at West Virginia University. She is a Pro Cultura professor at Godollo University in Hungary. She is currently studying the impact of economic restructuring in coal regions in Central Appalachia and Hungary. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 151 �Scotland, Appalachia, and the Politics of Postmodern Culture Richard Blaustein Since the early seventies, the idea of Appalachia as internal colony has captured the imagination of regional scholars and activists (Lewis, Johnson, and Askins 1978; Williams 1979; Simon 1981; McKenzie 1989).1 The critique of the internal colonialism model within Appalachian Studies has become increasingly sophisticated over the years. In their recently published essay, "Appalachian Studies, Resistance, and Postmodernism," Alan Banks, Dwight Billings, and Karen Tice (1993, 284-285) observe that a central theme in the cultural politics and literature of present-day Appalachia is the resolution of the internalized colonial struggle between a dominant mainstream and a subordinated periphery.2 They characterize Rodger Cunningham's Apples on the Flood as "a sophisticated and deeply probing application of the colonial model of Appalachia and an extended essay on the cultural and psychological consequences of peripheralization" (1993, 294). Seeking to recapture an authentic sense of identity by returning to an idealized homeplace to "heal the divided self," as Rodger Cunningham puts it in Apples On The Flood (1987, 171), and coming to terms with what Allen Batteau calls "double otherness" in The Invention of Appalachia (1990, 37) are not uniquely Appalachian experiences. Rather, it can be argued that the Appalachian identity movement and the field of Appalachian Studies itself, are local expressions of global trends which developed at the end of the twentieth century. These trends include the fragmentation and diversification accompanying the devolution of modern centrist states and colonial empires which have historically sought to superimpose metropolitan elite cultural standards upon their 152 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �peripheral subjects and subordinates. The very notion of universal standards is under attack in the emergent postmodern world, not only in the academy but in everyday life. Support for this position can be found in David McCrone's Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation. McCrone constructs a theoretical framework to explain the Scottish struggle to preserve a sense of distinct identity despite centuries of English political and cultural dominance. He proposes that the Scottish experience provides a particularly British example of separatist and fragmentary movements spawned by the decay of nation-states, colonial empires, and other forms of central authority at the end of the twentieth century (McCrone 1992, 3). Much of what McCrone has to say about the contemporary Scottish neonationalist movement and its relationship to the revival and study of Scottish folklore, literature, and language directly applies to analogous developments in Appalachia during the same period. There are striking parallels between the politics of culture and identity in Scotland and Appalachia, but important differences as well. Appalachian identity is much more problematic and tenuous than Scottish identity: Appalachia never had a monarch, capital, or parliament. Few people designated as Appalachian, apart from regional activists and intellectuals, use that term to identify themselves; most think of themselves as Americans first, not Appalachians or southern mountaineers. By contrast, seven out often modern Scots think of themselves as Scottish rather than British (McCrone 1992, 198), and there are millions of nationals of other countries who consider themselves Scottish, even though their ancestors may have left Scotland generations ago. Though Scotland lost its political sovereignty following the Union of the Parliaments in 1707, it has preserved a high degree of civil and religious autonomy and experienced a continuous succession of cultural revitalization movements. For nearly three hundred years, Scots at home and abroad have asserted their distinctive communal identity through literature, language, and folk culture. The romantic reconstruction of Appalachian culture is a much more recent phenomenon, no more than 120 years old. Nonetheless, the similarities between the politics of culture in Scotland and Appalachia merit careful examination, especially in view of the postmodernist approach to Appalachian Studies advocated by Banks et al. McCrone describes his own approach to Scottish neonationalism as postmodern. McCrone's vision of postmodernism stems from his rejection of the classical rationalist premises upon which modernism is based: that scientific and industrial advancement inevitably lead to cultural and social homogeneity, and that universal cultural standards (including modes of discourse) are desirable or even sustainable (Banks, Billings, 1995 - Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 153 �andTice 1993,291-292). Postmodernism is a fact of life for McCrone, not a theoretical construct. Multinational corporations and international political organizations are undercutting the sovereign powers of the classical nation-state; neonationalism, neoregionalism, religious neofundamentalism, neofascism, and a bewildering array of cultural, social, and sexual identity reformulation movements are confounding old line economic and social class determinists. Postmodern personal and cultural identities are plural and complex, varying from one social context to another. Counter-hegemonic movements, such as cultural revivals, are an inherent feature of postmodern life. Increasingly, cultural identities are voluntarily assumed rather than externally ascribed (Abrahams 1993). Competing languages and clashing styles are the postmodern norm; claims of cultural universality are increasingly suspect. The politics of postmodernism is basically the struggle of contending countercultures to invalidate what Rodger Cunningham, borrowing a phrase from Raymond Williams, calls "the internalized dominative mode" and authenticate themselves by redefining the terms of cultural discourse to suit their disparate desires (Cunningham 1989, 132). The Appalachian identity movement and Scottish neonationalism derive from comparable sources and have struggled with very similar questions. McCrone describes how neo-Marxist intellectuals in Scotland attempted to apply Immanuel Wallerstein's concepts of world capitalist systems to Scotland by classifying it as a periphery of the metropolitan English core, just as Appalachia was similarly characterized as an internal colony in the 1970s. McCrone summarizes a debate between Wallerstein and Scottish social historian T.C. Smout, who contends that Scotland was not peripheral to the British economy, but fully integrated within it, although undeniably politically subordinate. Dependency did not condemn Scotland to permanent poverty, says Smout, but enabled it to achieve a high degree of industrial productivity (McCrone 1992, 4249). McCrone challenges the portrayal of Scotland as an underdeveloped periphery, though it is definitely subordinate to the core of British political and economic power. McCrone also critiques Michael Hechter's Internal Colonialism: the Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536-1966 (1975), an attempt to apply Wallerstein's ideas to Britain. Basically, Hechter divides Britain into a metropolitan English core and a Celtic periphery: Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Following Gramsci and Wallerstein, Hechter asserts that ethnic groups are socially and economically stratified, with the English maintaining hegemony over the subordinate groups. McCrone writes: Celtic nationalism is the political response to the persistence of 154 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �regional inequality, and in particular to the process of anglicisation, especially in language and religion.. .. While diffusion models predict the demise of peripheral ethnicity, the internal colonial model is justified insofar as ethnicity has persisted and grown (1992, 59). Uneven development accounts for social and cultural distinctions between periphery and core (1992, 60). While McCrone feels that Hechter's model does not fit the historical facts of Scottish industrial development, he nonetheless stresses the attractiveness of the internal colonialism metaphor to Scottish, neo-Marxist, nationalist intellectuals. McCrone's own analysis of the relationship of Scotland's economy to that of the entire United Kingdom concludes that while the Scottish economy is not significantly distinct from the British mainstream, Scottish rejection of British hegemony is nonetheless definitely increasing (1992, 86-87). This conclusion creates serious problems for old line material determinists who view culture as peripheral to economic forces. Culturally speaking, Scotland has always been a complex society characterized by competing traditions and mythologies: 'There are, of course, competing versions of Scotland, using distinctions which have a mythological base. . . . At any point in history, some versions of Scotland win out over others" (McCrone 1992, 31). McCrone's discussion of Scottish cultural images and icons centers around the antipathy of Scottish neo-Marxist intellectuals, especially Tom Nairn (1977), to romantic, nostalgic, folksy, kitschy manifestations of Scottishness like tartanry and the Kailyard school of late nineteenth and early twentieth century local color popular literature. Scotland is supposedly a more open and upwardly mobile society than England (McCrone 1992, 89-92). This is reflected in the idealization of the Gaidhealtachd and the Kailyard: the "idyllised" folk communities of the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and Western Islands and the Anglophone Lowlands of Scotland, comparable to the supposedly egalitarian, self-sufficient Appalachian homestead of the preindustrial period. (Rhetorically, these imagined folk communities serve very similar functions; historically, it really doesn't matter if they never existed in pure form.) The Kailyard ("cabbage patch") school celebrates petit bourgeois values in an idealized rural setting. The success of the "lad of pairts," the Scottish equivalent of Horatio Alger's nineteenth century American "rags to riches" heroes, is a central motif in this literature, which mythologizes industrialization and urbanization while ostensibly celebrating rusticity. The underlying message is that Scots with get up and go literally got up and went, leaving their less energetic kinfolk at home to vegetate in the Kailyard. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 155 �It would be instructive to compare these interpretations of the Scottish Kailyard genre with analyses of Appalachian local color literature, such as Allen Batteau's depiction in The Invention of Appalachia3 of the novels of John Fox, Jr. as parables of the sacrifice of nature for the sake of the advancement of civilization, and also Rodger Cunningham's "Signs of Civilization: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine as Colonial Narrative" (1990). The literature of the Kailyard school, engrossing though it may be, is much less visible to the world at large than bagpipes, kilts, and tartan. Tartan is so strongly associated with Scottishness in the popular imagination that it comes as a shock to learn that some modern Scots despise it as a symbol of Scottish complicity in British colonialism. Scottish neo-Marxists coined the derisive term "tartanry" to describe the complex of romantic cultural symbols that developed following the failure of the Jacobite Movement. Tom Nairn calls tartanry "the tartan monster" (McCrone 1992, 180-81). McCrone says: Tartanry was not a literary movement, but a set of garish symbols appropriated by Lowland Scotland at a safe distance from 1745, and turned into a music hall joke (Harry Lauder represented the fusion of both Tartanry and Kailyard—the jokes and mores from the latter, the wrapping from the former). . . . [T]artanry has come to stand for tourist knick-knackery, visits to Wembley, and the Edinburgh Tattoo. Oddly, no serious analysis of tartanry, the sets of symbols and images, has been carried out by Scottish intellectuals though there are a number of studies of the history of tartan (1992, 181). The subject of tartanry is so emotionally loaded for modern Scots that many scholars shy away from coming to terms with it. Tom Nairn's scorn for tartanry is palpable: 'Tartanry will not wither away, if only because it possesses the force of its own vulgarity—immunity from doubt and higher culture" (Nairn 1977, 165). Nairn views tartanry and the Kailyard school of literature from an orthodox Marxist perspective as forms of false consciousness: Scottish culture is schizophrenic; its low culture a bastard product, partly indigenous and partly maintained by British imperial mechanisms (the Scottish soldier is the obvious example). This sense of separation, of fragmentation runs through much intellectual analysis of Scotland (1977, 184). Compare Nairn's statement with Batteau's assertion that "Appalachia represents the convergence of two traditions, each of which contains its own contradiction" (Batteau 1990, 27), and one finds very similar philosophical premises underlying their interpretations of cultural 156 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven * 1995 �expressions of romantic subnationalism such as tartanry and folkloric revivals. Nairn and Batteau reveal intense antipathy to folklore scholarship and folk revivalism, which they consider to be forms of romanticism promoting false consciousness. Though much gentler in tone than Nairn or his American counterpart Batteau, McCrone is nonetheless critical of the modern folk revival in Scotland. Scholars and amateur proponents of Scottish folklore, language, and literature have been primarily concerned with selectively preserving the cultural legacy of an idealized past while overlooking contemporary political, economic, and social realities: "The task was too readily defined as one of conservation rather than development, of protecting the legacy of the past rather than planning the future" (McCrone 1992, 4). Appalachian Studies is similarly divided (Miller 1982; Fine and Speer 1983). Some Scottish intellectuals have detected an element of self-hatred in folklore-bashing and the debunking of Scottish romantic nationalist symbology. Beveridge and Turnbull, in The Eclipse of Scottish Culture: Inferiorism and the Intellectuals, accuse Nairn of "a deep aversion to everything native and local" (1989, 59). Allegedly, Nairn has absorbed "metropolitan" (i.e., elite Anglo-British) values and has sacrificed nationalism for the supposedly higher goal of socialism. McCrone believes that pure, isolated national cultures and identities don't exist in the postmodern world: More radically, we might suggest that the search for a single carrier of national identity is doomed to ignore the pluralism and complexity of identity in the late twentieth century. The search for such a single identity in contemporary nationalism seems increasingly time-bound and anachronistic (1992, 191). Nonetheless, the myth of the pure, primordial folk culture is a central feature of romantic nationalism in the past and present: "Lying behind the deformed image is a sense of her 'golden age,' pre-independence, when society and the state were one" (McCrone 1992, 192). This statement evokes the French phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard's archetypal images of infantile reverie and the Dream House (the home of the primordial commune) explored by Parks Lanier, Jr. and other critics of modern Appalachian literature in The Poetics of Appalachian Space (Lanier 1991). Representations of the primeval Golden Age are found in the mythologies of all revival movements. The rhetorical function of the Golden Age motif is to stand in opposition to the unsatisfying present (Chapman 1992; Williams 1958). Like Jim Wayne Miller and Gurney Norman in Appalachia, McCrone believes that individuals as well as societies can be multicultural (1992, 194). "British" and "Scottish" identities are not necessarily mutually 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 157 �exclusive, no more than "American" and "Appalachian." In the postmodern world, multiple cultures and plural identities are normal. To support this assertion, McCrone cites a student of contemporary Scottish literature, Cairns Craig, who observes: The fragmentation and division which made Scotland seem abnormal to an earlier part of the 20th century came to be the norm for most of the world's population. Bilingualism, biculturalism, and the inheritance of a diversity of fragmented traditions were to be the source of creativity rather than its inhibition in the second half of the 20th [century], and Scotland ceased to measure itself against the false norms, psychological as well as cultural, of the unified national tradition (McCrone 1992, 194). Ultimately, McCrone believes that debunkers like Nairn and Batteau are missing the point about cultural politics in the postmodern world when they try to expose the presumed historical falsity of tartan and similar icons of national, ethnic, and regional identity. McCrone states: "national myths survive because they function to make sense of the present rather than the past. . . . What we see are new versions of Scottishness emerging, with different political and cultural resonances" (1992, 199-201). "Ethnicity did not wither but revived as a source of identity to meet new emergent needs. . . ," he says. "The resurgence of local or ethnic nationalisms came to be seen not as in direct contradiction to increasing globalisation of economic, political and cultural power but as part of the process itself" (1992, 10). Like Appalachia, "Scotland has what we might call a rich myth-history, which is often at odds with 'history' proper" (1992, 10). Scots have constructed countermythologies, some which, like the famous case of MacPherson's Ossian, have been exposed as forgeries. Neal Ascherson, in "The Religion of Nationalism," says: We talk easily about the forging of a nation, but forgery has played a real part in the foundation and revival of many nations. In Scotland we should know that better than most. Ossian was a forgery, but the emotions about nations and history roused by James MacPherson's pastiche of genuine Gaelic myth cycles was real enough. Finland's national epic, the 'Kalevala' emerged rather later, but doesn't bear close inspection either (1988, 61). In the final analysis, McCrone's pragmatic understanding of the fabrication of cultural identity symbols agrees with the American folklorist Alan Dundes' conclusion in the chapter titled 'The Fabrication of Fakelore" in Folklore Matters (1988) that folklorists cannot prevent the folk from believing that fakelore is folklore. 4 Understanding Scotland offers a corrective to the rigidly anti-romantic stance assumed by Allen 158 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Batteau in his review essay, "An Agenda for Irrelevance: Malcolm Chapman's The Gaelic Vision in Scottish Culture," in which he urges the Appalachian Studies community to read Chapman's study of Celtic romantic nationalism in Scotland, even though it doesn't contain a word about Appalachia in particular: It ought to be read for its warnings against the traps involved in such romantic constructions as the True Highlanders (or the True Appalachians), and its discussion of the intellectual dishonesty and political irresponsibility involved in nostalgia for a past that never existed (Batteau 1981, 212). In postmodernist terms, Batteau's efforts to explode romantic myths that presumably obscure historical truths can be classified as essentialism, "the tendency to treat historical and social constructions as fixed, natural, and absolute" (Banks, Billings, and Tice 1993, 292). This also defines ethnocentrism, the antithesis of the inherently pluralistic anthropological concept of cultural relativism. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Batteau ought to know that symbols mean what people need them to mean, in Scotland, Appalachia, or anywhere else in the world, and that complex societies have conflicting countercultures and clashing countermythologies. As McCrone says, a community is ultimately a symbolic construct: "it does not reside in geographical or even social territory so much as in people's minds" (1992, 32). The emotional investments people make in myths and other cultural identity symbols, not antiquity or pedigree, give them power to bind communities together and distinguish them from other communities. Traditions are not simply passed along from generation to generation, they also evolve to satisfy changing needs and desires. As McCrone puts it: Traditions may be invented; symbols of national identity are manufactured. Perhaps there is a suggestion in the word 'invented' that myths and traditions are fabricated; what seems to happen is that the cultural raw materials are refashioned in a manner that gives coherence and meaning to action. The task is not to debunk these inventions, but to show how and why they are put to such telling use (1992, 3). The pragmatic approach to the politics of postmodern culture and identity presented in McCrone's Understanding Scotland can provide Appalachianists with an agenda for relevance that goes beyond debunking and folklore-bashing, as well as enlivening discourse concerning the "Celtic Question" on both sides of the Atlantic. (The support for my research during the summers of 1993 and 1994 as CASS Senior Research Fellow by the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services at East Tennessee State University is gratefully acknowledged and deeply appreci- 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 159 �ated. Special thanks to Elizabeth Pine for her cogent editorial comments and suggestions. I also want to express appreciation for the helpful comments following the presentation of the first draft of this paper at the 1994 Appalachian Studies Conference by Pauline Cheek, Cecelia Conway, Rodger Cunningham, Archie Green, Jack Higgs, Michael Montgomery, Marie Tedesco, and John Alexander Williams. Thanks also to my colleagues at ETSU—Lon Pelker, Paul Kamolnick, and Niall Shanks—for taking time to read and critique earlier drafts of this paper. The author takes full responsibility for any factual errors or stylistic flaws remaining in this paper.) Notes 'John Alexander Williams says: "The main problem with the internal colonialism model is not its misuse but its relative inutility. We may be guilty of stretching some of the analogies to compare the region with colonies dominated by another country,' admits Lewis. 'A very real difference is the ability of the dominated country to eventually throw the invaders out.' Precisely. Appalachia has no prospect of independence, either in fantasy or in fact. Why then cast the analysis of its grievances in what are essentially nationalistic terms?" (1979, 158-159). Roberta McKenzie traces the history of the influence of Antonio Gramsci's regionalist neo-Marxism, Immanuel Wallerstein's world systems theory, and the anti-colonialism of Frantz Fanon on Appalachian intellectuals in the 1970s (1989). 2 See Cunningham 1987, also 1989. Accardo (1984) outlines the resolution of the internalized crisis of conflicting identities experienced by hillbilly/hippy David Ray "Divine Right" Davenport: "His mind was very neatly divided in two. Half of it was clear and half of it was muddy, but it was hard to keep up with which side was which because both sides claimed to be clear, and each denied that it was muddy" (Norman 1971, 78). 3 The theme of civilizing the Appalachian wilderness is metaphorically expressed in sexual terms in Batteau's analysis (1990, 64-69) of John Fox, Jr.'s first published Appalachian story "Mountain Europa" in which an educated urban gentleman courts and transforms a mountain maiden who embodies nature and wildness. Batteau's analysis can be visualized in the following table of bi-polar oppositions: as male civilization modernity industry lowlands order is to is to female wilderness backwardness self-sufficient agriculture mountain chaos Some intriguing phallic/serpentine imagery rears its neo-Freudian head in Batteau's reading of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1990, 70-74). Hero Jack Hale drags "the ancestral chain" across the mountains, sheds the "snake skin" of civilization and recovers his primordial (Anglo-Saxon) vitality (1990, 70). Hale 160 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �fails in business, goes native, and marries June Tolliver, a light-skinned "dusky maiden" (1990, 71). According to Batteau, Appalachia is an arrested civilization, "... a representation of the chaos and disorder on the periphery of commercial and industrial expansion" (1990, 72). 4 For a highly relevant discussion of the "invention" of cultural traditions and romantic nationalism comparing Ossian and the "Kalevala" see Alan Dundes (1988). Works Cited Abrahams, Roger. 1993. "Phantoms of Romantic Nationalism in Folkloristics." Journal of American Folklore 106 (419): 3-37. Accardo, Annalucia. 1984. "Divine Right's Trip: A Polk Tale or a Postmodern Novel?" Appalachian Journal 12 (1): 38-43. Ascherson, Neal. 1988. "The Religion of Nationalism." The (London) Observer 4 December: 61. Banks, Alan, Dwight Billings, and Karen Tice. 1993. "Appalachian Studies, Resistance, and Postmodernism." In Fighting Back in Appalachia: Traditions of Resistance and Change, ed. Stephen L. Fisher. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Batteau, Allen W. 1981. "An Agenda for Irrelevance: Malcolm Chapman's The Gaelic Vision in Scottish Culture : A Review Essay." Appalachian Journal 8 (3): 212-216. ——. 1990. The Invention of Appalachia. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. Beveridge, C., and C. Turnbull. 1989. The Eclipse of Scottish Culture: Inferiorism and the Intellectuals. Edinburgh: Polygon. Chapman, Malcolm. 1978. The Gaelic Vision in Scottish Culture. London: Groom Helm and McGill-Queens University. —— 1992. . The Celts: The Making of a Myth. London: Routledge. Cunningham, Rodger. 1987. Apples On The Flood. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. —— . 1989. "Appalachianism and Orientalism: Reflections on Reading Edward Said." Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association 1:125-32. — . 1990. "Signs of Civilization: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine as Colonial Narrative." Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association 2:21-46. 1995 • Volume Seven • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • 161 �Dundes, Alan. 1988. Folklore Matters. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press. Fine, Elizabeth, and Jean Haskell Speer. 1983. "Beyond The Quaint and Curious." In The Appalachian Experience: Proceedings of the 6th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference, ed. Barry Buxton. Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press. Hechter, Michael. 1975. Internal Colonialism: the Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536-1966. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Lanier, Parks, Jr., ed. 1991. The Poetics of Appalachian Space. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press. Lewis, Helen Mathews, Linda Johnson, and Donald Askins. 1978. Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case. Boone, N.C.: The Appalachian Consortium Press. McCrone, David. 1992. Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation. London and New York: Routledge. McKenzie, Roberta. 1989. "Appalachian Culture as Reaction to Uneven Development: A World Systems Approach to Regionalism." Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association 1:93-104. Miller, Jim Wayne. "Appalachian Studies Hard and Soft: The Action People and the Creative Polk." Appalachian Journal 9 (2-3): 105-14. Nairn, Tom. 1977. The Break-Up Of Britain. London: Verso. Norman, Gurney. 1971. "Divine Right's Trip." In The Last Whole Earth Catalog, ed. Stewart Brand. Santa Cruz: Portolo Institute. Simon, Richard M. 1981. "Uneven Development and the Case of West Virginia: Going Beyond The Colonialism Model." Appalachian Journal 8 (3): 165-86. Williams, John Alexander. 1979. "Appalachia as Colony and as Periphery: A Review Essay." Appalachian Journal 6 (2): 157-61. Williams, Raymond. 1958. Culture and Society, 1780-1950. London: Chatto & Windus. Richard Blaustein earned his Ph.D in folklore from Indiana University in 1975. He is professor of sociology and anthropology and senior research fellow of the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services at East Tennessee State University. He served as director of the center from 1983 to 1992. 162 • Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association • Volume Seven • 1995 �Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association Back Issues Order Form Qty. Issue Price Total Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association Volume 7, 1995, "Appalachia and the Politics of Culture" Volume 6, 1994, "Appalachian Adaptations to a Changing World" $8.00 $8.00 Volume 5, 1993, "Diversity in Appalachia: Images and Realities" $8.00 Volume 4, 1992, "Environmental Voices: Cultural, Social, Physical, and Natural" $8.00 Volume 3, 1991, "Southern Appalachia and the South: A Region Within a Region" $8.00 Volume 2, 1990, "Transformation of Life and Labor in Appalachia" $8.00 Volume 1, 1989, "Mountains of Experience" $8.00 Proceedings of the Appalachian Studies Conference (10) "Remembrance, Reunion, Revival" $8.00 (9) "Contemporary Appalachia" $8.00 (8) "The Impact of Institutions in Appalachia" Out of Stock (7) "The Many Faces of Appalachia" $8.00 (6) "The Appalachian Experience" $8.00 (5) "The Critical Essavs" $8.00 Subtotal $ Handling and Shipping Total Enclosed $2.50 $ Name Address Phone Detach, fold, and staple this form and mail to: Appalachian Studies Association Regional Research Institute PO Box 6825 West Virginia University Morgantown WV 20506-6825 In 1995 The Journal of Appalachian Studies became the official journal of the Appalachian Studies Association superceding the JASA. 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Title A name given to the resource Appalachia and the Politics of Culture - Volume Seven Description An account of the resource This volume of the <em>Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association</em> includes fifteen essays that represent the interdisciplinary nature of Appalachian Studies and the broad range of interests within the Appalachian Studies Association. They also represent a maturing of the field that is engaging itself in a critique not only of the political forces affecting the region, but of its own role as political and cultural agent in the 20th century.<br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lCeb3UMMd6dih6pO-cqx4u7elT0cLCAR" target="_blank">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636931/journal-of-the-appalachian-studies-association/" target="_blank">UNC Press Print on Demand</a> Subject The topic of the resource Politics and culture--Appalachian Region Appalachian Region--Social conditions Popular culture--Appalachian Region Appalachian Region--History Appalachian Region--Social life and customs Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fine, Elizabeth C. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995 Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Appalachia Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Periodicals Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/12212302/appalachia.html Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a> Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1990s Multidisciplinary/ Appalachian Studies https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/807076cdcb62a5832352bc7cd23829f1.pdf 95ea462ea42d02a0742b1de5ecdff62c PDF Text Text �Appalachia/America �The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From 1973 to 2004, its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program, Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press. www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Original copyright © 1981 by the Appalachian Consortium Press. ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-3690-0 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-3692-4 Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press www.uncpress.org �TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction, Wilson Somerville I II. III IV V Appalachia: Labor and the Economy The Wheeling Convention of the Miners for Democracy: A case Study of Union Reform Politics in Appalachia, George W. Hopkins The Roles of Transnational Corporations and the Migration of Industries in Latin America and Appalachia, Helen M. Lewis and Myles Horton Appalachia and the Third World: Eco-Development as an Alternative in the New Economic Order, Gene Wilhelm, Jr. The Economy of West Virginia and the Oppression/Liberation of Women, Rick Simon and Betty Justice Land in Appalachia Where American History Began: Appalachia and the Small Independent Family Farm, John Opie Losing a Bit of Ourselves: The Decline of the Small Farmer, Stephen L. Fisher and Mary Harnish Comparative Regional Issues: Land Use and Environmental Planning in the Adirondacks and the Appalachians, Peter G. Marden et al. Community Development Perspectives of Ohio Appalachians: A Regional Study, Ted L. Napier and Elizabeth G. Bryant The Experience of Urban Appalachians Appalachian Youth in Cultural Transition, Clyde B. McCoy and Virginia McCoy Watkins The Impact of Urban Housing Programs in Appalachian Neighborhoods, gary L. Fowler Elderly Appalachians in Cities: A Case Study of Cincinnati, David P. Varady Education in Appalachia Innovative Approaches to Vocational-Technical Education in North Central Pennsylvania, Robert A. Rusiewski Cora Wilson Stewart and the "Moonlight School" Movement, James M. Gifford Untying Some Knots in Knott County: Two Educational Experiments in eastern Kentucky, William Terrell Cornett Values and Culture in Appalachia Poetry at the Periphery: The Possibility of People's Culture in Appalachia, P.J. Laska Alther and Dillard: The Appalachian Universe, Frederick O. Waage Women Folk Healers of Appalachia, Karen Shelley and Raymond Evans Religious Language and Collective Action: A Study of Voluntarism in a Rural Appalachian Church, Michael V. Carter Goals for the Collection and Use of Appalachian Oral Materials in the 1980s, James Robert Reese 1 6 22 34 44 58 68 89 99 114 126 139 158 169 179 190 200 209 218 230 �VI Abstracts Mary Breckenridge and the Frontier Nursing Service: The Appalachian Rural Experience, Carol Crowe-Carraco The Blue Ridge Parkway: A Unique Part of Rural America, Granville B. Liles A Heritage of Regional Landscapes: Appalachian Baptistry Paintings, Jack Welch Bringing Sister Home: The Fight For Job Equity in Appalachia, Leslie Lilly Multiculturalism in Southern Appalachian Schools: A Diagnosis and Attempted Prescription, David N. Mielke Appalachian Youths in the Juvenile Justice System: Clues in the Search for a Distinct Culture, Phillip Obermiller and Dan McKee Problems of Urban Appalachian Youth in Cincinnati, Larry J. Redden Struggling to Stay Together: Black and White Miners in West Virginia and Alabama, 1880-1910, Richard Straw The Assimilation of Appalachian Migrants, Frank J. Traina The Cultural Context of Philosophic Criticism, Frans van der Bogert; Some Special Problems of Teaching Introductory Philosophy and the Occasional Essential Relevance of Appalachian Studies for Teaching Philosophy, H. Phillips Hamlin; Academic Philosophy and Appalachian Culture, Richard A. Humphrey; Teaching Philosophy in Appalachia: An Existentialsist Approach, Gary Acquaviva. Film Reviews: "They Shall Take Up Serpents," "Gandy Dancers," and "Buna and Bertha" 238 239 240 241 241 242 243 243 244 245 247 �Introduction The third annual Appalachian Studies Conference was held March 21-23, 1980, on the grounds of East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee. Sponsors, along with the host institution, were the Appalachian Consortium, Inc., and the Appalachian Studies Conference. Scholars, teachers, and regional activists began the Appalachian Studies Conference in 1977 in the belief that "shared community has been and will continue to be important for those writing, researching, and teaching about things Appalachian." To this end, the organization held its first meeting at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, in 1978 and its second at Jackson's Mill, West Virginia, in 1979, under the sponsorship of Davis and Elkins College. The ongoing efforts of conference planners have made this annual event an important opportunity for interested citizens of varying occupations and disciplines to exchange information and ideas on regional issues. As a beginning to the 1980 conference, the Appalachian Consortium Press held an open house in the Down Home Pickin' Parlor in Johnson City to honor Jim Wayne Miller and the publication of his new book of poetry, The Mountains Have Come Closer. Miller read selections from his book which deals with a mountain man, the Brier, who comes to the realization that he is thoroughly disoriented by contemporary culture. The poems describe how the Brier, by taking a fresh look at his heritage, works past the vapid, throwaway clutter of mainstream America to a new affirmation of himself. This reading fittingly evoked the aim of the conference, which was to encourage a new look at the region in a national and international context. The conference title, "Appalachia/America," raised the question of the uniqueness of the "Appalachian experience." To what extent could Appalachia be viewed as a microcosm of America and the world, mirroring the problems and potential of a global community? Behind this purpose and the line of questioning which evolved from it, lay the continuing concern in Appalachia over regional autonomy. Self-determination for communities and individuals was the bedrock issue in the reading of papers and in the special events of the conference. Alternative methods of achieving such self-determination were evaluated in the light of national and global events. While this publication exists to record the contribution of authors to this dialogue, some mention should be made of conference events, other than the presentation of papers, that, likewise, drew attention to major issues in Appalachia. The following brief overview of these special events indicates the diverse ways in which this meeting promoted the examination of regional concerns in a larger context. Darrell V. McGraw, Jr., Justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, spoke on the topic of "Appalachia: Resources and People." He depicted the influence that non-indigenous people have upon West Virginia government and observed that many top level officials in the state are trained outside the area to serve national economic interests with no commitment to the needs of the region. McGraw felt that the West Virginia picture was not entirely dismal, but that Appalachians need to decide whether they prefer "distant, absentee corporate ownership and direction or fundamental economic change that gives people a right to participate in decisions which affect regional development and lifestyles." In another speech, Robert J. Higgs, professor of English at East Tennessee State University, lamented the state of contemporary American humor, which he found to be mostly insipid and sentimental. He maintained that a culture 1 �that is alive and well is always in tension — a tension which exists at the archetypal level between the Hero and the Natural. However, Higgs sees no one capable of playing the natural today: "We are afraid to speak out on anything. We need fools in Congress again," fools whose wit has traditionally been a curb to the powerful. Higgs's antidote to the current crisis was the example of Appalachia's own "last of the naturals," Sut Lovingood, the creation of Tennessee humorist George Washington Harris. Drama, presented by the Road Company of Johnson City, raised questions about Western man's ability to come to grips with his own inventions. The play by Jo Carson, entitled "Horsepower: An Electric Fable," chronicles the changes brought about in an Appalachian family by technological advances. The action takes on mythic overtones when the son, Isaac, tears through the fabric boundary of this dream world in pursuit of a symbolic horse. This act designates his personal culpability in a society where the pursuit of power and its benefits separates man from his own internal resources. This show came together after months of public workshops and private conversations in which hundreds of people shared their perceptions of the current energy situation. The Appalachian Regional Commission and the Tennessee Arts Commission subsidized the conference performance. In another event, the Six State Land Ownership Task Force, which also received funding from the Appalachian Regional Commission, gave a preliminary report on its survey of ownership and taxation patterns in more than eighty counties of Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and West Virginia. The researchers, trained at the Highlander Center in New Market, Tennessee, with help from Appalachian State University's Center for Appalachian Studies, have been compiling data on those land and tax patterns that apply, in particular, to large corporate and absentee landowners. In twenty counties, case studies will correlate these patterns with the migration of industry, the availability of land for housing, the ability of the tax base to support needed schools and services, and the viability of small farms to remain in operation. Hence, this survey will provide essential facts to community groups that are struggling to assert themselves in determining the allocation and use of resources within the region. In short, these findings will give extra underpinning to the argument for local initiative, as put forward by Judge McGraw in his speech. Beyond its application within Appalachia, the final report will offer other regional groups a basis for conducting similar studies. In their conference remarks, task force members expressed concern about the problem of poorly kept records in some Appalachian counties and emphasized the need to make land ownership information more accessible and to maintain it more accurately. Other special features at this conference included two new film documentaries by Appalshop, Inc., a regional educational media center located in Whitesburg, Kentucky. The first, called "Oaksie," portrayed basketmaker, fiddler, and harp player Oaksie Caudill from Cowan Creek, Letcher County, Kentucky. The other film, "Strip Mining: Energy, Environment, and Economics," measured the social, environmental, and economic costs of a highly visible and controversial type of mining, which accounts for over 50 percent of the coal produced in Appalachia. In addition, the Roadside Theater, a touring group and part of Appalshop, Inc., entertained conference participants with their skillful and uproarious renditions of jack tales. The Institute for Appalachian Affairs at East Tennessee State University, in conjunction with Appalachian Community Arts, held a workshop on "Art as Community Expression," with music, storytelling, a slide presentation, a photographic display, and general discussion on the importance of art as a community development 2 �tool. Rounding out this exploration of Appalachian culture were a display of books and magazines from regional presses and educational groups, a quilting demonstration by members of the Clinchfield Senior Adult Center of Erwin, Tennessee, an exhibition of Appalachian quilts and crafts, and a photographic portrayal of "The Appalachian Farm at the Turn of the Century," assembled by the Archives of Appalachia and the B. Carroll Reece Museum of East Tennessee University. As for the proceedings which constitute this volume, thirty-two authors read their papers in sessions that touched on virtually every aspect of the Appalachian experience. For the purposes of publication, their articles have been grouped into broader categories than those used in the conference format, with an abstract serving as an introduction to each one. The section headings highlight five major issues in Appalachia: labor, land, urban life, education, and culture (from folk to literary). A final section of this volume includes abstracts of papers which were not published, along with a review of a threepart film session. An editorial decision was made not to publish papers that had appeared previously. Three articles were not published for this reason, and abstracts for them appear in the final section, as well. They are as follows: Carol CroweCarraco, "Mary Breckenridge and the Frontier Nursing Service: The Appalachian Rural Experience," published in slightly different form in The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 76 (July 1978): 179-91; Granville B. Liles, "The Blue Ridge Parkway: A Unique Part of Rural America," printed as a booklet by the Appalachian Consortium Press, Boone, North Carolina, 1980; and Jack Welch, "A Heritage of Regional Landscapes: Appalachian Baptistry Paintings," Goldenseal 6 (April - June 1980): 40-46. P. J. Laska's article was accepted for publication prior to its appearance in another journal, and, therefore, is included in this volume with acknowledgment to the West Virginia Art News and Hyperion for permission to reprint it here. Thanks are due to many people for work on the conference and the publication of the conference proceedings, but they are first and most gladly given to Martha McKinney, program coordinator, and Richard Kesner, head of local arrangements and member of the program committee. Both were instrumental in organizing the conference and were encouraging and helpful at every stage in the production of this volume. Others who played an essential role in planning the conference were officers Joan Moser, chairperson; Anne Campbell, secretary/newsletter editor Polly Cheek, treasurer/membership secretary; and program committee members Jane Horton, Gordon McKinney, Milton Ready, Carl Ross, Linda Scott, and Rose Mary Tennant. The publication of these proceedings was made possible through the financial assistance of the Appalachian Regional Commission. Dennis Pelletier created the graphic design for the cover, Gail Powell and Pat Fitzpatrick worked swiftly to turn out clean, typed copy, and Rosemary Barson gave special care to the layout and printing of this volume. The various authors deserve major acknowledgment for their contributions and cooperation during the editing process. Finally, some recognition, however inadequately it may be noted here, belongs to all those who attended the conference and who contributed to this inquiry by their interest. Wilson Somerville Editor 3 �This page intentionally left blank �I. Appalachia: Labor and the Economy �THE WHEELING CONVENTION OF THE MINERS FOR DEMOCRACY: A CASE STUDY OF UNION REFORM POLITICS IN APPALACHIA George W. Hopkins Abstract After the murder of insurgent leader Joseph "Jock" Yablonski in late 1969, the reform movement within the United Mine Workers of America continued its struggle to oust the administration of Tony Boyle. When federal courts finally cleared the way for a new election in May 1972, the dissidents quickly organized a convention in Wheeling, W. Va. This paper will focus on the efforts of union reformers at the convention to reconcile enthnic tensions and divergent policy interests within the rebel movement. Not until the Wheeling convention did the various reform groups in the union unite under the banner of Miners For Democracy and merge their strength. Because of the pragmatic politicking at the convention, the insurgent coalition was able to present a united front against Boyle and the loyalist faction. After a bitter campaign, the MFD slate won the Labor Department-supervised election in December 1972. The legacy of John L. Lewis dominated the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)—and much of Appalachia-after the union chief's retirement in 1960. While Lewis had helped build the CIO in the 1930s, and had won a Welfare and Retirement Fund for the miners in the late 1940s, he had stabilized the coal industry in the 1950s by sacrificing the jobs of three fourths of his soft-coal miners to automation. This decision allowed the industry to meet the threat posed by alternative fuels; however, it also forced many miners in southern Appalachia to work in small, unsafe, non-union mines or remain unemployed. While Lewis may have hoped that other industries in Appalachia would absorb his discarded miners, the union patriarch did little to help them through job retraining or relocation programs. During the 1950s, as his sensitivity to rank-and-file concerns further dimmed, Lewis endorsed the tightening of Welfare and Retirement Fund eligibility rules, thus denying benefit and pension payments to many miners and their dependents. Lewis was able to make these ecisions and enforce them without significant internal opposition because of s dictatorial control over the union.' When Lewis's chief administrative assistant, W. A. "Tony" Boyle assumed the UMWA presidency in 1963, he ran the union even more autocratically. Boyle tried to stifle and then, failing that, to co-opt the "black lung" rebellion of miners in the southern coalfields in 1968. Meanwhile, dissatisfaction grew in the northern coalfields. Retired anthracite miners in eastern Pennsylvania despaired over their thirty-dollar-a-month pensions, little more than a quarter of what bituminous pensioners received. Many working miners in the northern fields resented their district officials, most of whom were appointed by Boyle instead of being elected by the men in the pits. By 1969, the UMWA leadership had become so bureaucratized and unresponsive to its members that the Boyle administration met the electoral challenge of insurgent leader Joseph "Jock" Yablonski with blatant intimidation of his supporters and vote fraud on election day. While Boyle claimed victory, Yablonski refused to concede, declaring that the contest had been "the most dishonest election in the history of the American labor movement." He pledged to file suit in federal court under the Landrum-Griffin Act to have the election over turned because of the 6 �numerous irregularities at the polls. Three weeks later, hired assassins murdered Jock Yablonski, his wife, and daughter. But the rebels vowed to continue the struggle to oust Boyle and clean up the union. 2 However, the reformers faced several problems, the foremost being their own internal divisions. Yablonski's campaign had temporarily brought together northern and southern miners opposed to Boyle and various policies of the union and its Fund. With the fiery, charismatic Yablonski dead and his running mate, Elmer Brown, unable to fill the void, the two wings of the reform movement drifted apart. Rebel miners in the northern coalfields-western Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, and northern West Virginia-were mainly of eastern European extraction and were primarily concerned with moralistic/abstract goals such as union democracy and an end to corruption in union affairs. Dissident miners in the southern coalfields-southern West Virginia, southern Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama-were generally of Anglo-Saxon and Afro-American origin and were primarily interested in practical benefits such as compensation for "black lung" and pensions for disabled miners and their widows. A majority of miners lived in the southern coalfields. Several organizations emerged in the coalfields which reflected these diverse interests and constituencies. In the northern coalfields, Miners For Democracy (MFD) began as a loosely organized internal union reform group in April, 1970, after a series of meetings which had begun at Yablonski's funeral. Mike Trbovich, Yablonski's national campaign manager in 1969 and long-time personal friend, became chairman of the group. During the next two years, MFD would run a slate of candidates in the District 5 (Pittsburgh area) election, keep alive the issues of the 1969 campaign, and work with attorneys Joseph Rauh and Chip Yalbonski (Jock's son) in filing suit to overturn the election. MFD leaders also testified before Congressional committees about fraud and intimidation during the 1969 election and the 1970 District 5 election as well as commenting on various health and safety bills before Congress.3 In the southern coalfields, three different organizations fought for rankand-file interests. The Association of Disabled Miners and Widows, Inc., had filed a class action suit against the UMW Welfare and Retirement Fund in 1969 on behalf of all union miners and their dependents who had been unjustly denied hospital and disability benefits as well as pensions. While this group waited for its legalistic strategy to work, a more militant organization, the Disabled Miners and Widows of southern West Virginia, led by black miner Robert Payne, used direct action tactics against the union. In the summer of 1970, Payne and his group led a strike against the union, shutting down mines in the southern fields by picketing, in an unsuccessful effort to win benefits and pensions from the UMWA Fund. Meanwhile, the Black Lung Association (BLA) became the dominant insurgent group in the southern coalfields. Arnold Miller became the chief spokesman for the group. The BLA built a grassroots network of independent chapters throughout southern Appalachia. Working with sympathetic lawyers and social workers, BLA organizers trained miners and their wives and widows about the regulations and procedures involved in the federal black lung, workmen's compensation, social security disability and union pension programs. These people then assisted others in filing claims. BLA members helped guide their constituency through the maze of union, state, and federal bureaucracies.4 All of these groups considered themselves part of the UMWA reform movement, but they found it hard to work together in practical terms. Northern rebels (except in the eastern Pennsylvania anthracite region) tended to be active, working miners while southern dissidents tended to be retired and/or 7 �disabled miners and their wives/widows. Leadership and personality problems complicated the internal politics of the reform movement as well. After two years of education and agitation, the reformers still had no realistic chance of overthrowing Boyle from within. But in May, 1972, a federal judge finally voided the results of the fraudulent 1969 election and ordered a new election. That same month, another federal judge ruled illegal the district trusteeships through which the UMWA hierarchy maintained its tight grip on most of the union. Suddenly the insurgents had the opportunity to remove Boyle and his appointed district officials from office.' The obvious key to a winning ticket would be a slate that represented the strength of Miners For Democracy in the northern coalfields and the strength of the Black Lung Association and the disabled miners and widows groups in the southern coalfields. Only by reconciling the ethnic tensions and divergent policy interests between the two regions could the insurgents present a united front against Boyle. A convention of rebel miners would have to select a balanced ticket and draft a platform fusing the concerns of the various dissident reform groups. The formerly defunct MFD Steering Committee reactivated itself in the wake of the court rulings. At a meeting held in Charleston, W. VA., on May 6, the Steering Committee decided on Wheeling, West Virginia, in District 6, as the site of the rebel convention. Wheeling was roughly equidistant from the various areas of reform movement strength-southern West Virginia, northern West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and southern Ohio. The miners had also considered a proposal offered by attorneys Chip Yablonski and Clarice Feldman to adopt a weighted delegate vote system based on the number of dues-paying members, and an approximation df the amount of election fraud in 1969. The weighted vote system competed with several alternatives. To base voting solely on the number of union members in a district would inflate the strength of the reform movement in some districts. Conversely, giving each district an equal number of votes would underrate rebel strength in some districts. A majority vote of those attending the convention would give the home district undeserved influence. There also existed a slim possibility that Boyle supporters might try to pack the convention and nominate Boyle and embarrass or discredit the reformers. Though some delegates quibbled about the allocation of votes, the steering committee gave tentative approval to the weighed vote system. The delegates at Wheeling, chosen at district meetings, would have to give the system final approval.6 Although the steering committee had decided that no individual should announce his candidacy for international office, that an open convention should democratically choose the insurgent slate, Harry Patrick recalled that "there was a lot of jockeying for position, a lot of campaigning before the convention started." The stakes were high-trie future of the reform movement, the presidency of the union, power, and status. The very nature of an open convention meant that there would be pre-convention politicking and maneuvering, a testing of the possibilities by some and attempts by others to influence the final outcome. The role black miners would play was unclear. Another major imponderable was the role the Yablonski brothers would play. Sons of the martyred leader, they were both lawyers, not miners, and thus were prohibited by the UMWA Constitution from running for office. But especially to MFD supporters in the north, their opinions and feelings would count. In the northern coalfields, Mike Trbovich, MFD chairman, seemed to be the heir apparent. He had spoken at innumerable rallies and demonstrations. His name headed the lawsuit that finally overturned the 1969 election. Trbovich 8 �believed he had earned the presidential nomination of the rebel group because of his work within the reform movement. However, Trbovich also knew that several key dissidents in various northern districts disliked him personally. To guarantee his nomination at the top of the insurgent ticket, Trbovich reached a private understanding with BAL President Arnold Miller--in return for Miller's support for his presidential bid, Trbovich pledged to support Miller for the vice-presidential slot. When Miller accepted the offer on the eve of the convention, Trbovich seemed certain of his reward for his service to the rebel cause.* However, Trbovich lacked the support of the Yablonski family. Chip and Ken Yablonski, the lawyer-sons of the slain leader, had worked with Trbovich during the preceding two years. They had distributed press releases and brought litigation in Trbovich's name, "things of that nature which were entirely proper and Mike deserved a lot of credit for sticking his neck out." On the other hand, Chip Yablonski noted that, "We had been partially responsible for Mike Trbovich's identity within the reform movement and his viability as a candidate." The Yablonskis decided not to endorse Trbovich because they doubted his abilities; he was from a small district in western Pennsylvania, and they were convinced that the ethnic prejudice his name would incur in the southern coalfields would seriously jeopardize any chance of the insurgent slate beating Boyle.9 Instead, the Yablonskis supported Tom Pysell from District 6, the host district for the MFD convention. Pysell was president of the seven-hundredman UMWA local at Consolidation Coal's Ireland Mine near Moundsville, West Virginia-one of the largest locals in the union. The average age of miners in his local was twenty-five and almost one third of them were Vietnam veterans. The local showed its militance and aggressiveness by its frequent wildcat strikes over safety grievances—and they were backed up by their local president. This had earned Pysell favorable publicity in the reform movement. The Yablonskis were concerned that none of the insurgents held offices at the district level or higher. With Pysell's solid base of support, the Yablonskis believed he could be a winner. They had confidence in his abilities; moreover, his name was easily pronounceable and would not be a liability for ethnic reasons. With Yablonski backing, Pysell was definitely a contender. Northern reformers would not come to Wheeling united behind one candidate.10 In the southern coalfields, Arnold Miller had emerged as the leading spokesman for the reform movement. A retired miner with black lung, Miller was president of the Black Lung Association, current Chairman of the MFD Steering Committee, Chairman of his home district 17 MFD and was actively involved in both disabled miners and widows groups. He knew that a divided reform movement in the southern fields would seriously weaken the reform movement as a whole. By working with all of the reform groups Miller not only bridged the gap between the two wings of the movement but he also personified what they had in common-opposition to a union leadership unresponsive to the felt needs of both working and disabled miners and their widows. " Miller had of course sought-and-received~a fair amount of publicity for his activities. He also knew the political implications of his actions. Miller seemed to be on friendly terms with black miner Levi Daniel, who headed reform efforts in nearby District 29. However, Miller faced opposition within his own District 17 from reformers in Logan County who thought Miller's relocation of BLA headquarters to Charleston was too remote from the coalfields. They also felt that Miller spent too much time courting the media and prominent 9 �West Virginia politician John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV. John Mendez, one of the few active miners in the southern coalfields who identified with Miners For Democracy as well as the Black Lung Association and disabled miners and widows groups, emerged as Miller's chief critic and rival. However, a majority of southern reformers reluctantly concluded that Mendez's Mexican heritage limited his potential voter appeal in the region as much as a Slovakian background would have. Miller would go to Wheeling with his home base relatively secure and a covert deal with Trbovich guaranteeing him the second spot on the rebel slate.12 In northern West Virginia, an area allied more with the northern coalfields than with the southern but with contacts in both, Harry Patrick had been a National Co-Chairman of Miners For Yablonski in 1969 as well as Yablonski's campaign manager in District 31's Morgantown-Fairmont area. Patrick had emerged as a spokesman for rank-and-filers dissatisfied with the 1971 contract. He was now Chairman of District 31 MFD and a National Co-Chairman of Miners For Democracy. He also knew Arnold Miller, Robert Payne, and other southern reformers. While he had not considered running for national office, he received encouragement from a number of miners within and outside of his district. Patrick headed for Wheeling with a new perspective on his possible role at the convention. " Other MFD supporters in various districts were also politically ambitious. However, none of the insurgent leaders held a major union office. This meant that the slate selected at Wheeling to oppose Boyle would be an all rank-andfile ticket. Journalist Tom Bethell found that, "some reporters are having trouble taking such a slate seriously-thinking, apparently, that unless a highranking official like Yatjlonski makes the race, it isn't for real." He tried to counter this attitude with Arnold Miller's statement that, "You could pick the next three men at random to come up out of any mine, and they'd be an improvement over Boyle, Tiller, and Owens." Don Stillman, editor of The Miner's Voice, expressed the same attitude in even stronger terms: The media and some liberals parrot the same mistaken line back and forth that the reform movement doesn't have any real leaders. They appear to be searching: for the same type of flashy, well-dressed labor bureaucrat with a rose in his lapel [Boyle] that the rank-and-file is so dissatisfied with. Arnold Miller, Mike Trbovich, Karl Kafton, Harry Patrick, Lou Antal, Ed Monborne, Tom Pysell, and a host of others are names familiar in the coaifields-they are coal miners who traveled and campaigned with Yablonski. The rank-and-file in the UMW wants leaders who understand what working in the pits means. Because it is a legitimate reform movement composed of working miners, the money and the time to travel have hurt MFD some. But there is no lack of leadership at the top of the movement. These MFD leaders and their supporters gathered at the field house of Wheeling College in Wheeling, West Virginia, to select the rank-and-file slate that would oppose the "labor bureaucrats" whom they had fought for so long. 14 On Saturday, May 27, 1972, the insurgent convention began its deliberations. Three hundred and eighty-seven delegates from the sixteen largest and most important of the union's twenty-three districts assembled in the field house; by Sunday, over 450 miners would take part in selecting the insurgent slate. The delegates were either working miners or pensioners who had come to the convention at their own expense. No salaried staff officers or appointed officials were present. The hardships the insurgents had endured were reflected in their 10 �serious, purposeful behavior. With one leader murdered, the possibility of a bomb at the convention, and the knowledge that whoever was nominated to oppose Boyle might be exposed to violence, miners well understood the importance of this gathering." Karl Kafton, from the host District 6, served as Permanent Chairman of the convention. He introduced Pittsburgh's famed "labor priest," Monsignor Charles Owen Rice, who delivered the invocation. Chip Yablonski spoke next, telling the miners that, "If my dad could have had his way in 1969, he would have wanted a convention like this to nominate him." Yablonski commented on the trial that overturned the 1969 election: "We went through 6,700 pages of transcript and 10,000 pages of exhibits, and I can tell you that that was the crookedest election that was ever held." After brief speeches by Ken Yablonski, Representative Ken Hechler (D.-W.Va.), the only Congressman to support the insurgents, and Robert Payne, MFD attorney Joseph Rauh delivered the keynote address: "I recall, in a lifetime in the labor movement, of no precedent for this meeting." Rauh declared that, "Not in our lifetime has there been a rank-and-file convention of union members to choose the candidates who will run against an entrenched union bureaucracy and to write the platform upon which those candidates will run." Rauh refused to endorse any individual but pledged to "work like hell for whoever [sic] you choose."" After receiving praise from the mainly non-miner speakers who had helped them in many ways, the insurgents settled down to hear the Platform Committee report. This committee had been authorized at the May 6 MFD Steering Committee meeting to draft a platform that would include the interests and concerns of all the major groups in the reform movement. Subtitled "The Miners' Bill of Rights," the MFD platform began with the issue of primary importance to underground workers: safety, "the first and most basic right of all coal miners." Declaring that "Safety must never be arbitrated," the platform demanded strict enforcement of safety laws backed up by union* officials. Dust levels in the mines must be strictly controlled. Moreover, welfare and retirement benefits should be raised. Pensions should be increased. Eligibility rules should be liberalized so that all victims of the mines could receive necessary health care. Meanwhile, the platform compromised on strip-mining, stressing that "BOTH jobs and land" should be protected; non-union strip-miners should be unionized while reclamation laws should be sternly enforced." The insurgents indicted Boyle and the UMWA hierarchy, declaring that the reign of "union leaders who refuse to leave their mahogany-paneled offices in Washington, D.C." was over. The rebels announced an end to "sweet heart contracts and sell-out unionism . . ."To make the union leadership responsive to the membership, MFD called for the relocation of UMWA headquarters to the coalfields, an end to nepotism in hiring, the restoration of district autonomy, and rank-and-file ratification of all contracts." The MFD platform disappointed some observers. Compared to Yablonski's 1969 platform, the rebels said little or nothing about reviving UMWA support for regional and national social reform efforts. Nor did the MFD platform say much about increasing taxes on coal companies to redistribute wealth or pressuring government agencies to do more to reduce unemployment in Appalachia. Yet the situation in 1972 differed from three years earlier. Yablonski had run for the UMWA presidency without any serious individual or organizational rivals to his postition as Boyle's chief opponent. Moreover, Yablonski hoped for financial contributions from non-miner liberal supporters and drafted his platform in part with that group in mind. While Miners For Democracy also hoped for outside liberal financial support, the primary problem facing the 11 �reformers revolved around finding the best way to coordinate or merge the strength of the various dissident groups into a united movement against Boyle. More than one insurgent candidacy would split the reform vote and guarantee Boyle's re-election. Individual and organizational jealousies as well as genuine differing interests and priorities among the rebels had to be resolved without alienating or angering important individuals or groups in the insurgent camp. Therefore, reconciling these differences amicably led to the almost exclusive focus on internal union problems in the MFD platform." The MFD platform was unanimously approved. While some observers found this dismaying, wondering why so little debate occurred, others noted that "there was nothing much to argue about." Because the platform had been carefully worked out in committee, the concerns of all the various reform groups had been voiced, as well as the interests of the constituencies to whom the rebels must appeal. Union democracy, district autonomy, and an end to corruption in the UMW reflected issues in western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, and southern Ohio. Assistance to black lung victims and pension relief for disabled miners and widows expressed demands in southern West Virginia, southern Virginia, and eastern Kentucky. Both regions supported strong health and safety law enforcement. The platform demonstrated understanding and sympathy for the problems of pensioners and made special mention of the plight of pensioners in the anthracite district. The need to organize non-union miners to gain royalties for the welfare and retirement fund was discussed. The compromise on strip-mining was not so controversial since few delegates were abolitionists. Moreover, the reformers hoped to unionize strip-miners in Appalachia and the West in order to bring their production under union contract-not eliminate their jobs. If any group had felt its concerns had been omitted or threatened and had staged a floor fight, the platform could have been a divisive force fragmenting the reformers. That may also have been the reason that the platform was silent on ethnic and racial tensions within the union. MFD played it safe by omitting any mention of the subject-perhaps a victory of pragmatism over principle. However, because all the reform groups had their interests acknowledged and no group felt its interest was threatened, the platform served as a strong cohesive force uniting the insurgent movement. 20 Beneath the orderly facade of the convention proceedings ran an undercurrent of tension and excitement. Politicking was the name of the game. Miners discussed the various reform leaders and speculated about possible slates. Rumors of deals and offers swept through these gatherings. While more experienced participants and observers found nothing unusual in the political maneuvering going one, some miners, especially those attending their first convention, were upset at the politicking they saw and heard. Some had naively expected a "clean," open, apolitical contest for political positions. Moreover, the political skills of most of the miners at the convention were not especially subtle. But while the politicking of the Miners For Democracy may have been a bit crude at times, it was proof positive that this was truly a rankand-file convention, a rough-hewn example of grass-roots union democracy in action.!1 The MFD chairman became the main issue frankly discussed in various caucuses and meetings. And Trbovich was vulnerable. Ethnicity was a key factor - his name alone caused concern among his friends as well as his critics. "Trbovich" was hard to pronounce; when Mike was introduced at rallies in the northern coalfields, his last name had often been garbled. "Yablonski" had been easier to pronounce. Moreover, many Slovak miners in the northern fields did not believe a "hunky" could win southern votes for his presidential 12 �bid. In addition, to some miners Trbovich represented an ethic stereotype: "a man with a rough and chiseled countenance and thick silver hair, who favored loud shirts and boldly patterned suits. . . perhaps too much of a dandy." The clash of regional and cultural styles between northern and southern Appalachia would clearly be a factor in selecting a candidate.22 Trbovich's record as MFD chairman could also be viewed critically. As the visible symbol of the reform movement for the past two years and the acknowledged front-runner for the presidential nomination, Trbovich had to accept responsibilitity for MFD's failures as well as successes. Miners For Democracy as an organizational entity was still very weak throughout the coalfields. Some miners thought that Trbovich lacked the intelligence and charisma necessary for the leader of a movement. Others thought Trbovich too often reacted to events instead of creating them. One observer summed up much of this criticism: "he had angered many with his interim management of MFD by alledgedly speaking too much and organizing too little."21 To complicate matters further for Trbovich, personality conflicts and feuds with other reformers eroded his support. Trbovich's small home District 4 in western Pennsylvania backed the MFD chairman without hesitation. But next door in the larger and more important District 5, Trbovich faced stiff opposition from Lou Antal, the key MFD leader in the area. Antal was not challenging Trbovich for the MFD presidential nomination; Antal coveted the District 5 presidency. But Antal disagreed with Trbovich on the role and scope of a district officer's authority vis-a-vis the national leadership. Moreover, Antal simply did not believe that Trbovich had the necessary qualities to win the election and lead the union. Antal spent much of his time at the convention criticizing Trbovich's performance as MFD chairman. While District 5 delegates would support Trbovich, Antal's words would influence delegates in other districts. 24 Added to Trbovich's troubles was his loss of support by the Yablonskis. This had an unfortunate whipsaw effect on Trbovich's candidacy. Some delegates, especially in the northern coalfields, looked to Chip and Ken Yablonski to indicate their choice for president. Because they were the sons of the martyred leader, their wishes would receive special consideration. For these delegates, the Yablonskis' rejection of Trbovich and support for Pysell caused them to reconsider the chairman's candidacy. On the other hand, many miners, especially in the southern coalfields, had always been suspicious of the Yablonski brothers and all the non-miners aiding the reform effort. To these delegates, Trbovich had been associated in their minds with the Yablonskis, Rauh, Hechler, and others for so long that they were already quite alienated from him. The whipsaw effect of this put Trbovich in a classic damned-if-youdo and damned-if-you-don't situation: spurned by some miners for his close ties to the Yablonskis, he also lost support when they shifted their support to Pysell.25 Northern miners disenchanted with Trbovich considered Tom Pysell. The youthful, militant president of a large local, Pysell was an attractive candidate. But he too had deficiencies: Pysell was an outside employee at his mine; he was not a deep miner; he did not go underground to confront coal dust, methane gas, cave-ins, and explosions. That might easily work against him in a campaign. He was also seen by some miners as the pawn of the Yablonski brothers. His candidacy seemed too sudden. These miners respected the Yablonskis, but they felt that the brothers were attempting to manipulate the convention to "put their own men in office." Moreover, Pysell came from District 6, which was also the home of well-known rebel Karl Kafton, the permanent chairman of the convention. Again it might look manipulative to some if Kafton worked 13 �hard for Pysell while chairing the convention. A final obstacle for Pysell was that, despite the publicity he had garnered in the last few months, he was still not widely known throughout the coalfields." Those nortnern delegates who would not vote for Trbovich and who believed that Pysell did not have enough support to get the nomination then considered a man many southern delegates had been talking about-Arnold Miller. The southern reformer possessed a number of attractive qualities. In contrast to Trbovich, his name posed no problem. As one participant stated: '"Arnold Miller' is a good Anglo-Saxon name and would have heavy support in the heaviest voting areas." Another observer put it more bluntly: "You don't have to be a genius to remember that one." Moreover, Miller had not antagonized any of the key people in Miners For Democracy, mainly because his work had been confined to the southern coalfields. His personal feuds also seemed to be under control; after John Mendez failed to get majority support from his and Miller's home District 17 delegation, Mendez left the conventionand the mantle of southern reform leadership -- to Miller. " And many northern delegates were impressed by Miller's record as a reform leader. Miller had been one of the original founders of the Black Lung Association. He had helped expand the BLA into a service organization functioning in seven states. His work with Designs for Rural Action, a federally funded antipoverty program for which he had worked part-time, had helped link Appalachian activists and miners together. His skill in trying to unite an effective coalition of dissident active miners, black lung victims, disabled miners and their wives and widows, anti-poverty workers and other non-union reform supporters in the southern fields had been reflected in part in the publicity he had received. And that publicity was important — while some southern reformers might carp that Miller had received an excessive amount of credit for work done by others, that people like Bill Worthington, Hobert Grills, Charles Brooks, John Mendez, and others deserved as much recognition as Miller, that Miller had cultivated the media and arrogated too much authority or power to himself, northern reformers tended to dismiss such talk as "sour grapes." All that most northern reformers knew was that Miller headed the reform movement in the southern coalfields. Moreover, Miller's restrained conduct at the convention had made a favorable impression on those put off by Trbovich's style of leadership.21 And, finally, from a geopolitical point of view, Miller came from the area with the heaviest concentration of votes. Of all the caucuses and factions meeting that Saturday night, no group was more impressed with this fact than the one composed of Chip and Ken Yablonski, Tom Pysell, Ed Monborne, Ken Dawes, Bill Savitsky, and others who were the core of the anti-Trbovich movement among the northern delegates. Their districts included the bulk of northern votes and population, having twice as many convention votes as proTrbovich northern districts, 49 to 24, and representing twice as many miners as their opponents in the northern fields, 62,000 to 30,000. That statistic alone was strong criticism of Trbovich's leadership and activity as chairman aside from any geo- and ethnopolitical calculations. By Saturday night, it became apparent that Tom Pysell could not win the nomination. This gathering of district leaders, who could influence or control of the votes in their delegations, was looking for someone to support. 29 The group appraised the situation. The convention had approved the weighted vote system tentatively agreed to at the May 6 MFD Steering Committee meeting in Charleston. Thus there were 130 votes to be cast Sunday morning. The candidate with more than 65 votes would carry the Miners For 14 �Democracy banner against Boyle. If the northern forces at the convention had been united, they could have easily nominated their candidate: Districts 2 (central Pennsylvania),4 (southwest Pennsylvania), and 5 (northwest Pennsylvania), 6 (southern Ohio and the western panhandle of West Virginia), 8 and 11 (Indiana), 12 (Illinois), 25 (eastern Pennsylvania), and 26 (Nova Scotia) together had 73 votes, 8 more than the minimum needed. If they picked up swing District 31's (northern West Virginia) 11 votes, they would have a landslide. Conversely, if the southern forces at the convention were united, they still could not win. Districts 17 (southwest West Virginia), 19 (eastern Kentucky), 23 (western Kentucky), 28 (southwest Virginia), 29 (southeast West Virginia), and 30 (northeast Kentucky) only totaled 46 votes. Even if they picked up District's 31's 11 votes, they were still short of the mark. However, while southern delegates seemed united behind Miller, northern delegates were clearly divided.30 The anti-Trbovich group decided that a successful insurgent presidential candidate had to meet at least two basic requirements: he had to be from a big district and he had to be Anglo-Saxon. Fearful of prejudice within the union, the group concluded that neither miners of Afro- erican or eastern European origins should head the rebel slate. While the cau us agreed rather quickly that a black presidential candidate might limit support for the dissidents, extended debate took place over the other prohibition. The Yablonskis were convinced that a "hunky" could not win the southern coalfields and thus the reform ticket would lose. They had experienced ethnic prejudice in their hometown of Clarksville, Pennsylvania, where there was a strict dividing line between the Anglo-Saxon population and those of eastern European descent. If ethnic bias was still quite evident in an area containing many ethnic residents, what would it be like in southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, Alabama? Their father had known that his ethnicity was a problem in the southern fields in 1969. One retired Kentucky miner but put it bluntly: "I ain't going to vote for no hunkie." The Yablonskis did not think the situation had really changed since then." Edgar James, a non-miner graduate student serving as assistant editor of The Miner's Voice, totally disagreed with that ethno- and geopolitical view. James thought the Yablonskis overemphasized anti-ethnic sentiment in the southern coalfields. He noted that a significant number of people of eastern European heritage lived in the area, although they were a minority. James believed that such an ethnic candidate for union president could win majority support in the south. But the bottom line for the Yablonskis, as they expressed it in a moment of frustration during the deliberations, was their conviction that, "Those fucking hillbillies won't vote for a hunkie." The tenacity of the ethnic and cultural stereotypes by which many miners in each region viewed the other - or at least the perception of such rigid stereotypes by these northern delegates — settled the issue. The ethno- and geopolitical argument remained convincing to the group. 32 Given the prerequisites of a big district and an Anglo-Saxon, how well did Arnold Miller fill the bill? His ethnic background was correct, and he came from the second largest district in the union-it contained more miners than any of the districts represented in the anti-Trbovich group. Moreover, as a retired miner, Miller would appeal to many pensioneers—and Yablonski had only been credited with 7 percent of that group's vote. Arnold Miller's District 17 had 16 votes at the convention. Those plus the anti-Trbovich coalition's 49 votes made a total of 65. The minimum needed to win the presidential nomination was any fraction over 65. Surely Miller would get other southern votes to offset any slippage that might occur in the anti-Trbovich coalition. The ethno- and geopoliticians had found their man. " 15 �Once the group had decided on Miller for president, the rest of the slate had to be balanced. With Miller's strength in the southern fields heading the ticket, support from Pennsylvania was the next consideration. Trbovich seemed the likely choice for vice president. Not only would his selection assuage his hurt feelings but having the MFD chairman on the slate would symbolically unite the two wings of the reform movement. District 31 in northern West Virginia was a crucial swing district and its mix of cultural and ethnic backgrounds also made it problematic. But young Harry Patrick had emerged as a militant rankand-file spokesman during the 1971 contract strike. The group would support Patrick, a member of the MFD Finance Committee, for secretary-treasurer." Chip Yablonski later recalled: "I got far more involved in it than I wanted to be." But with the vindication of their father's sacrifice seeming to hang in the balance, the Yablonskis discussed the candidates with rebel leaders and reached a consensus that "the winning combination would be with Arnold, Mike, and Harry." Hillbilly, Hunky, and Hybrid -- the stereotypical slate was an ethno- and geopolitician's dream ticket for Appalachia. 3! The Yablonskis had not controlled the Saturday night meeting. They were not delegates and could cast no votes on the convention floor. Their original choice for president had fizzled out. They were respected, they had influence -but they could not dominate. Monborne, Pysell, Dawes, Savitsky and the others had come to the meeting because they were opposed to Trbovich. They had chafed under his leadership and believed that if he carried the MFD banner, the reform movement would lose and perhaps suffer irreparable damage. Convinced that none of them could win, they looked elsewhere. Their decision was not so much pro-Miller as anti-Trbovich. They did what they thought was best for the reform movement. They were not particularly happy at the end of the meeting. They did not really know Miller, nor did they believe that they could control him—they just knew that he fit the criteria which they had agreed was a prerequisite for victory against Boyle. Arnold Miller had merely been the beneficiary of some cold, hard, pragmatic calculations. Northern men were going to support a southern candidate. Meanwhile, Miller, who had reached an understanding with Trbovich before the convention about the vice presidency, learned that many northern delegates now preferred him for the top spot on the slate instead of Trbovich. 36 Sunday morning came too early for many of the miners who had spent much of the night discussing the candidates. Tension began to build as the miners filed into the Wheeling College field house to select a slate to represent Miners For Democracy against Boyle and the hierarchy. Six men were nominated for the presidential slot on the MFD ticket: Levi Daniel, Arnold Miller, Harry Patrick, Tom Pysell, Bill Savitsky, and Mike Trbovich. Patrick declined in favor of Trbovich, as did Daniel. But Miller accepted the nomination. As he did, murmurs spread throughout the convention. The deal with Trbovich was off. A few delegates shouted, "Doublecross!" Pysell and Savitsky then declined in favor of Miller. Trbovich, who had expected everyone else to decline, which would have brought him the nomination by acclamation, had a surprised look on his face as he accepted the challenge from Miller." Each district caucused, discussed the candidates, and voted. The results were double-checked and finally announced: Miller, 70 and 9/10; Trbovich, 57 and 1/10 (2 votes were not cast). Northern men had nominated a southern man as their presidential candidate. The northern votes split dramatically: 46 and 9/10 for Miller (Districts 2, 6, 12, and 25) and only 26 and 1/10 for Trbovich (Districts 4, 5, 8 & 11, 26). Southern votes had also shattered: 24 for Miller (Districts 17, 19, 28, and 30), 18 for Trbovich (Districts 23 and 29). District 16 �31's border area 11 votes had swung to Trbovich. Only Pysell (District 6) and Miller's (District 17) delegations had split their votes-both overwhelmingly for Miller. 38 Neither region had voted as a bloc. Insurgents in both areas seemed less impressed by the men they knew and hoped the other region's leader would be an improvement. The major southern defection from Miller was Levi Daniel's District 29 in Southeastern West Virginia. Perhaps Daniel hoped that Trbovich would reward him with the second spot on the ticket-or perhaps he had privately faulted Miller's leadership until now. But the southern split could not prevent Miller from winning. With over half the southern votes and almost two thirds of the northern votes, Arnold Miller won the presidential nomination of the Miners For Democracy. While Miller had skillfully maneuvered himself through the convention, the anti-Trbovich coalition in the northern coalfields had also succeeded in their aim-and Trbovich knew who had engineered his defeat. A chagrined Trbovich then won the vice-presidential spot, despite competition for that nomination as well. Harry Patrick defeated two other candidates to garner the secretary-treasurer position. That left six minor offices to fill: three international auditors and three international tellers. But in the celebration that followed the major nominations, little strategic thought was given to selecting the nominees for minor offices. Harry Patrick recalled: "When the top three was filled, everything just kind of went haywire after that. No one sat down and gave any real thought . . . I think we should have recessed for like two hours and got our heads screwed back on right and took this into consideration." Instead of a recess, nominees were hastily picked-three from Pennsylvania, two from Ohio, and one from Virginia. With hindsight, the major nominees wished that a broader geographical and racial balance had been reflected among the minor office nominees. An auditor or teller from Alabama, Colorado, eastern or western Kentucky, or other areas would have increased chances for victory. The selection of a black miner would also have strengthened the slate.39 Almost three years to the day after Jock Yablonski had announced his candidacy challenging Boyle, a grass-roots convention of rebel miners chose a full rank-and-file reform ticket to oppose Boyle again. The process of fusing together an effective, coherent reform organization from dissident groups sharing the same interests but have quite different cultural and political attitudes and styles was no easy matter. Although there had been some communication and cooperation between the northern and southern wings of the reform movement during the previous two years, no merger of their respective strengths occurred until the Wheeling convention. Then a platform fused the northern concern for union democracy with the southern concern for black lung and pension reform. That fusion was then personified in a slate which represented southern Appalachia in Arnold Miller, western Pennsylvania in Mike Trbovich, and the border area of northern West Virginia in Harry Patrick. Continuity with Yablonski's effort was also evident in that all three major nominees had played active roles in the 1969 campaign. While the convention left some scars-Trbovich, who felt betrayed by his own organization and by Arnold Miller, who internalized his anger and bitterness until after the election; some black miners wondered about the reformers' commitment to racial equality when they looked MFD's "lily-white" ticket-no serious damage had been done to the rebel movement. Harry Patrick spoke for the insurgents after the convention when he declared: "We came out unified and strong and we're ready to go." 40 17 �Miners For Democracy was now a reality. The pragmatic, strategic decisions reached at the Wheeling convention resulted in an ethnically and geographically balanced slate and an inclusive reform platform that allowed the insurgents to focus all their energies against Boyle and the heirarchy. After an intensive sixmonth campaign, the MFD slate won the Labor Department-supervised election in December 1972 -- and democracy was finally re-established within the United Mine Workers of America. NOTES The author gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance provided by the American Council of Learned Societies and the College of Charleston for this study. 1. This essay is a substantially condensed version of the paper presented at the Appalachian Studies Conference. The most recent scholarly study of Lewis is Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, John L. Lewis: A Biography (New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co., 1977), especially pp. 469-517 for background on Lewis's post-war policies. A partial list of significant secondary works on Lewis would include Saul Alinsky, John L. Lewis: An Unauthorized Biography (New York: Vintage Books, 1970); Morton Baratz, The Union and the Coal Industry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955); Harry Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area (Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1963); Joseph E. Finely, The Corrupt Kingdom: The Rise and Fall of the United Mine Workers (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972); Brit Hume, Death and the Mines: Rebellion and Murder in the United Mine Workers (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1971); Bill Peterson, Coaltown Revisited: An Appalachian Notebook (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1972); J. B. S. Hardman, "John L. Lewis, Labor Leader and Man: An Interpretation," Labor History 2 (Winter 1961): 3-29; Nat Caldwell and Gene S. Graham, "The Strange Romance between John L. Lewis and Cyrus Eaton," Harper's Magazine 223 (December 1961): 25-32; A. H. Raskin, "John L. Lewis and the Mine Workers," Atlantic2\l (May 1963): 52-57; T. N. Bethell, "Conspiracy in Coal," The Washington Monthly 1 (March 1969): 16-23, 63-72. 2. Hume, Death and the Mines. 3. See George W. Hopkins, "The Miners For Democracy: Insurgency in the United Mine Workers of America, 1970-1972," Ph. D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1976, pp. 66-201. 4. George W. Hopkins, "Southern Coal Miners and Union Insurgency, 1968-1972," in Gary M. Fink, Leslie A. Hough, and Merl Reed, eds., Essays in Southern Labor History, Volume 2 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), forthcoming. On April 28, 1971, Federal Judge Gerhard Gesell found the UMWA and its Welfare and Retirement Fund guilty of willful mismanagement and misuse of Fund assets. Boyle was cited for violating his fiduciary trust to UMWA members. Boyle, the union's trustee for the Fund, and the allegedly "neutral" trustee, Josephine Roche, an old Lewis crony, were ordered to resign their postions. After careful study, Judge Gesell awarded $11.5 million in damages to disabled and retired UMWA miners and their widows, to be paid by the union and its bank, the National Bank of Washington, in which UMWA and Fund monies had been kept. New York Times, April 29, 1971, p. 1; Coal Patrol (independent newsletter), April 16-30, 1971, pp. 1-2; New York Times, January 8, 1972, pp. 1, 37. 18 �5. The federal court decision overturning the 1969 UMWA election is available in the Miners For Democracy Collection at the Wayne State University Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs, Box 18, File 2; for a brief summary, see the New York Times, May 2, 1972, pp. 1, 28; the demise of district trusteeships appeared in the Wall Street Journal, May 12, 1972, p. 6, and the New York Times, May 25, 1972, p. 29, as well as the rank-and-file newspaper of the Miners For Democracy, The Miner's Voice, May 1972, p. 12, and ibid., June, 1972, p. 11. 6. Ibid., May, 1972, p. 3. 7. Interview with Patrick. There is no official record of the proceedings of the Wheeling conventon; nor is there a detailed account of the internal politics of the convention. Press coverage, with a few exceptions, tended to be superficial. Thus, source material for much of this paper is composed of interviews, substantiated where possible in the written record, and compared to the recollections of other participants and observers to determine as clearly as possible the internal dynamics of the rebel convention. 8. Interview with Trbovich; interview with Edgar James, former associate editor of The Miner's Voice; Edgar James, "UMW Still Subject to Lewis Legacy," signed article in the weekly newspaper In These Times, March 1-7, 1978, Vol. 2, No. 15, p. 11, includes details on the Trbovich-Miller deal. 9. Interview with Joseph A. "Chip" Yablonski 10. The Miner's Voice, February-March, 1972, p. 1; Don Stillman, "Murder and the Mines," New Politics, May 1972, p. 28. 11. Interview with Miller. 12. These criticisms of Miller were aired in an interview conducted by sociologist Paul Nyden with Charles Brooks, a black miner who was the first president of the Black Lung Association and who had to resign the post because of poor health. See Paul Nyden, "Miners For Democracy: Struggle in the Coal Fields," Ph. D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1974, pp. 700-701, 705-706. My own interview with Richard Bank, a former VISTA, attorney in West Virginia, and an aide to Miller, also touched on those issues. 13. Interview with Patrick. 14. Other possible MFD rank-and-file candidates included Bill Savitsky, Chairman of District 25 MFD, a long-time reformer in the anthracite fields who had been a strong Yablonski backer; Ed Monborne, Chairman of southwest Pennsylvania's District 2 MFD, an early Yablonski supporter; Lou Antal, a veteran rebel and the MFD candidate for the District 5 presidency in 1970 who had been counted out in a mini-version of the 1969 election; Karl Kafton, another long-time rebel and a friend of Yablonski; and Levi Daniel, Chairman of southern West Virginia's District 29 MFD, a black miner who helped lead the struggle for black lung compensation and had built support of Yablonski in the southern fields, Wheeling College was a liberal Catholic school, many of whose students had worked in the 1969 campaign of Catholic insurgent Jock Yablonski. Quotations from Coal Patrol, May 20, 1972, p. 7; Stillman, "Murder and the Mines," p. 28. 15. The presence of federal bomb detection experts from the Treasury Department's Alcohol, Firearms, and Tax Division as well as Wheeling City Police underscored the threat the convention posed to Boyle. After Yablonski's murder, the safety of rebel miners had to be taken seriously. However, no bombs were discovered at the convention. Observers, press, and staff would bring total attendance to approximately 750. New York Times, May 28, 1972, p. 45; Coal Patrol, June 1, 1972, p. 1; H. W. Benson, "Miners For Democracy: A Report from West Virginia," Dissent 19 (Fall 1972): 632. 16. Coal Patrol, June 1, 1972, p. 2; Phil Primack, "Miners For Democracy: 19 �Closing In On Tony Boyle," The Nation, June 19, 1972, p. 787; Benson, "Miners For Democracy," 637-638; a copy of Rauh's keynote address is available in the Miners For Democracy Collection, Box 66, File 37. 17. The Miner's Voice, May 1972, p. 3, 7-10. 18. Ibid.,9-10. 19. Nyden, "Miners For Democracy," 547-548. 20. Coal Patrol, June 1, 1972, p. 1; Benson, "Miners For Democracy," p. 634. 21. Wall Street Journal, May 30, 1972, p. 5; Coal Patrol, June 1, 1972, p. 1; interview with Patrick; Joseph Rauh, "Internal Union Problems: A Study of the United Mine Workers Union," in Emanuel Stein and S. Theodore Reiner, eds., Proceedings of New York University Twenty-Sixth Annual Conference on Labor (New York: Matthew Bender, 1974), p. 299; interview with Stillman; interview with Patrick; interview with Yablonski. 22. Don Stillman definitely thought Trbovich's name could be a liability for the rebel ticket. Because he and Ed James would have major responsibilities in coordinating campaign advertising and images for whomever won the nomination, Stillman recalled: "We decided if it was Trbovich, all our stuff would have to say 'Vote Mike' and build it around 'Mike' rather than his last name because it was going to be a tough one to deal with." Interview with Stillman; interview with James; interview with Bank; Coal Patrol, June 1, 1972, p. 2; James Humphreys, "Miller Vs Boyle: Revolt in the Coal Fields," New south 28 (Winter 1973): 41. 23. Interview with Tom Bethell, editor of Coal Patrol; interview with Stillman; interview with Lou Antal of District 5; Humphreys, "Miller Vs Boyle," 41. 24. Interview with Antal; interview with Trbovich; interview with Yablonski; interview with Bethell; interview with Patrick. 25. Interview with Trbovich; interview with Yablonski; interview with James. 26. Interview with James; interview with Trbovich; Coal Patrol, June 1, 1972, p. 1. 27. Interview with Bank; interview with Stillman. 28. Interview with Miller; interview with Bank; Nyden, "Miners For Democracy," pp. 547-48. 29. Interview with Yablonski; interview with Antal. Table 1 represents the anti-Trbovich northern districts, their convention votes, and district population. Table 2 represents the pro-Trbovich northern districts. Table 1 Chairman Ed Monborne Tom Pysell Ken Dawes Bill Savitsky District Convention Votes 2 6 12 25 11 11 10 Chairman Mike Trbovich Lou Antal unknown Jake Campbell District 17 49 Population 15,730 13,202 15,210 17,832 61,974 Table 2 Convention Votes 7 12 2 3 24 4 5 8&11 26 20 Population 8,047 13,096 4,946, 4,331 30,420 �30. The Miner's Voice, June, 1972, p. 3, shows the weighted votes allotted to each district at the MFD Steering Committee meeting in Charleston on May 7. 31. Interview with Yablonski; interview with James; interview with Bank; Peterson, Coaltown Revisited, p. 105. 32. Interview with James. 33. Ibid.; interview with Yablonski. There was another reason for supporting Miller. A three-way race between Trbovich, Miller, and Pysell might produce a deadlocked convention. Several observers saw that as a potentially dangerous situation because these "people hadn't had that much experience working with each other. You didn't have a very natural cement." Given the tensions already evident at the convention, a deadlock might result in "the very bad spectacle of the reform wing of the mine workers engaged in barroom brawl" at the convention. Selecting a winning ticket would also eliminate the threat of a deadlock. Interview with Bethell. 34. Interview with Yablonski 35.Ibid. 36. Confidential statements of MFD participants; Primack, "Miners For Democracy," p. 787. 37. Confidential statement of an MFD participant; The Miner's Voice, June 1972, p. 3. 38.Ibid. 39. Ibid.; interview with Trbovich; interview with Patrick. 40. Ibid.; interview with Trbovich; interview with Miller; interview with James; interview with Stillman; Paul Nyden, "Black Coal Miners in the United States," Occasional Paper No. 15, American Institute for Marxist Studies (AIMS) (New York: AIMS, 1974), p. 57. After the election, Miller appointed Daniel the provisional president of District 29 until an election could be held. However, Daniel lost the election. 21 �TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND THE MIGRATION OF INDUSTRIES IN LATIN AMERICA AND APPALACHIA Helen M. Lewis and Myles Morton Abstract The growing role of transnational corporations in the world is the subject of this study. Special comparisons are made between their activities in Latin America, particularly Brazil and Peru, and Appalachia and the rural South. The analysis concludes with suggestions of community and worker response to the changing shape of industry. The pace and extent of multinational activity is increasing. Corporations are changing the nature of their activity or entering a new stage and, thereby, reshaping the competitive context which portends enormous consequences for communities and workers in America/Appalachia. Our paper is designed to stimulate discussion and will deal with aspects of multinational activity under the following headings: I. The nature of transnationals and the direction of change in their activities. II. Understanding the process: dependency and colonialism models. III. Development in Latin America (Brazil and Peru). IV. Similarities and differences of development in Appalachia and Latin America (Brazil and Peru). V. What difference does this perspective make in Appalachia, and how can communities and workers most effectively organize in response to the changing shape of industry? I. The nature of transnationals and the direction of change. I have long dreamed of buying an island owned by no nation and of establishing the world Headquarters of the Dow Company on truly neutral ground of such an island, beholden to no nation or society. -Carl A. Gerstacker, chairman of Dow Chemical Company 1 The growth of multinational corporations or transnationals represents a new stage in capitalist development and poses new problems for third world and exploited regions, internal peripheries or colonies, such as Appalachia. Transnationals can also turn whole countries into "Appalachias" or "Latin Americanize" the United States. The international corporation has interests separate and distinct from the interests of every government including its own government of origin. The dependence of the leading United States based corporations on foreign profits has been growing greatly since 1964. United States corporations have been shifting more and more of their assets abroad: about one third of the chemical industry, one third of the Pharmaceuticals, three fourths of the electrical industry, and two fifths of the consumer-goods industry. 2 Although the United States is still the dominant transnational, Germany, Japan, France, Holland, and Great Britain are actively involved. Some of these are investing in the United States at the rate of 15 percent a year. 3 What is happening is not just the old pattern of runaway industries looking for new raw materials or cheap labor, although that is part of the total process. The industrial system is changing from national or regional operations 22 �to a globally integrated production system. The large corporations are developing a global grid of producing subsidiaries which utilize labor, raw materials, markets, and political systems throughout the world. It is estimated that by 1985, three hundred giant multinationals will produce more than one half of the world's goods and services." This triumph of multinationals is made possible by jet aircraft, international telecommunications, and computers. Some of the characteristics of transnationals are: 1. The corporations are large, capital intensive, technologically oriented and managerially intense. They are looking for greater growth and profitability through world markets. 2. They seek growth centers -- countries which are developing and willing to cooperate politically and economically and follow the capitalist path. 3. Global corporations have destroyed the concept of market. They conduct most transactions with themselves. 4. Profit maximization is the major guiding principle. Decisions are based on hard, cold business facts. 5. They develop global standardization of business procedures and measures, and a uniformity in work habits, products, and services. 6. Corporations transform production techniques to make for manufacturing flexibility: shifting tooling, interchangeable parts, and multiple sources of goods. 7. The internationalization of the division of labor allows the rational placement of plants according to type of labor available. The experience of the Ford Motor Company in Europe demonstrates the advent of this sort of manufacturing flexibility. Ford developed a uniform European car with standardized interchangeable parts, thereby making manufacturing flexibility possible. They placed the labor intensive assembly in countries with the lowest labor costs, and the engines and more complicated parts where a skilled labor force existed. In addition, multiple sources existed for each component; so that if there was labor trouble in one source, overtime at the other source could keep assembly lines going. Assembly was placed in Saarlous, Germany, which had high unemployment and a concentration of migrant workers dependent on the employer to stay in the country. Wildcat strikes were illegal as well. The Ford plant could rely on the needs and fears of the workers to ensure docility, and on the involuntary scab labor of migrant workers. In addition to manufacturing flexibility and internationalization of the division of labor, there has been a revolution in production technique. A transformation of the production process has occurred, encouraged by the development of smaller cars. It has resulted in new machines, new plants and new routines, more robots (Unimate Welders), highly automated machines, and the use of shifting tooling (including computer tapes) which can be transferred to a job site to replace labor or avoid labor disputes.5 8. They have shaken off traditional sources of countervailing power: outgrown trade unions, consumer groups, and local and national governments. 9. Nations now compete for corporations and use their legal and financial resources, raw materials, and labor to attract foreign capital for development. 10. The free flow of goods, investments, and technology may eventually 23 �equalize standards of living and wage scales. In each country where a corporation concentrates wealth, the gap between rich and poor widens. 11. Transnational use foreign countries to avoid ideological barriers to sales-i.e., weapons sales by Brazil. Carl A. Gerstocker, chairman of Dow Chemical, told a White House Conference on Industrial Worlds Ahead: We appear to be moving in the direction of what will not really be multinational or international companies as we know them today but what we might call "Anational" companies-companies without any nationality, belonging to all nationalities.6 12. Migration of industries or "going transnational" is encouraged when big changes in production are needed. These give an industry the impetus to move to a more congenial environment to recoup capital investment sooner. Changes which facilitate or encourage companies to go international are: a. Modernization of existing facilities such as oil refineries or steel mills. b. Installing environmental safeguards or changing to pollution-free procedures. c. Requirements for new safety devices. d. New or different products being introduced. e. Major changes in design (large cars to small cars). f. The saturation of a market, as with the ratio of one car per two persons in the United States, prompting the development of markets elsewhere. g. Decline or depletion of a resource such as gasoline for cars — and the subsequent move to a locale with the resources or substitute (i.e., land for gasahol). An example of such a business exodus is U.S. Steel in Youngstown, Ohio, which is closing down and investing in more profitable areas such as oil, chemicals, and banking. In 1974-79, the company spent only half the $7.6 billion needed to maintain plant and equipment. They refused to modernize and closed. It was "too old to save." No major expenditures to modernize were made after World War II. In order for the plant to be rebuilt, the government would now have to subsidize the industry, grant tax concessions, restrict imports, and ease pollution controls. While the government puts money in to rebuild the industry, the company can still use its own money to diversify and buy into other industries, a policy aimed at taking nothing less than the largest possible profit margin. II. Understanding the process: dependency, underdevelopment, colonialism. Latin American scholars have developed several models to explain the role of transnationals in Latin America and the development of underdevelopment in peripheral societies. Some of these theories have influenced Appalachian scholars.7 Andre Gunder Frank's essays on the development of underdevelopment emphasize the relationship between transnationals and patterns of development in Latin America. He concludes that transnational development has resulted in a dependency relationship (subjection and economic dependencies) and a transformation of the class structure and culture. Transnationals support the class interests of the local dominant bourgeoisie who make and change policy to support dependence. Local capitalists produce an unbalanced, dis24 �articulated economy, as well as repressive and economically active central governments. F. H. Cordosa also points to the ways the dominant class tries to impose upon the whole society that form of domination which serves their own interest, and Samir Amin in Accumulation and World Scale further points to the asymmetrical relationships resulting in the dependent country where there is a distortion toward exports and unequal specialization to the advantage of the dominant country. Dos Santos also comments on the structure of dependence.' Most often dependent countries use harsh repression to keep labor working and to cut down on peasant revolt or worker uprisings. The state becomes very involved in the economy and uses its power to serve the interests of the capitalists and to insure a favorable investment climate. Foreign investors make alliances with conservative agrarian and military elites and help reactionary groups control the state. This state of dependence is natural to the economic system of transnational: monopolistic control of large-scale capital and complex technology which leads to unequal development. It benefits few and results in misery and social marginalization for many. Andre Gunder Frank points to the difference between earlier colonialism and exploitation by transnational capitalism.9 The earlier form of exploitation was colonialism with outside countries controlling and exploiting raw materials. The industries were largely agricultural or extractive: minerals, timber, coffee, bananas, and sugar cane. Earlier colonialism was not interested in using the area as a market for goods. It sought only to control and exploit the mineral and agricultural products without seeking to industrialize the area. The transnational, however, wants to industrialize the country, internationalize the market, and orient the production toward high income consumption to develop and support a middle class market. III. Development in Latin America: Brazil and Peru. The "Brazilian Model" of development has been praised by development economists. Also called the "Brazilian Miracle," it has been characterized by a rapid rise in gross national product and a heavy emphasis on foreign investment through multinationals. The greatest growth was between 1968 and 1974. By 1978, Brazil was the ninth largest automobile producer in the world. It exports both parts and finished vehicles, having increased export from $7.9 million in 1969 to $514 million in 1976. Brazil began encouraging automobile development in 1956, hoping to promote a local industry. However, it created no obstacles or restrictions on operation for foreign capital and provided tax incentives and subsidies. There was cooperation between the transnationals, the Brazilian bourgeoisie, and state capital. However, there was little development until 1964 when the military regime "stabilized" the work force by destroying the working class radical movement, neutralizing unions, and mandating sacrifice on the part of the workers. The new labor climate, with a quiescent labor force, attracted industrialists, and both Brazilian and foreign capital investments increased to produce a big boom with spectacular profits. United States investments increased five hundred percent between 1964 and 1977. Labor costs were kept very low, but income of the middle class technical staff increased to provide a local consumer market for cars and other goods. In the process there was a concentration of production and many local entrepreneurs were forced out as too small or inefficient to compete. The state joined with foreign investors in joint ventures. In addition to automobiles there has been a big increase in chemical manufacturers and weapons. Brazil exports $500 million a year in weapons-missiles, 25 �tanks, tank destroyers, amphibious landing vehicles. The government does not restrict resales, there are no ideological strings, and the equipment is low cost and designed for less well trained soldiers.10 In petrochemicals Brazilians have received new Inter American Bank loans to increase production. They are producing ethylene, propylene, benzene, and butadiene to further produce thermoplastics and synthetic rubber. They also produce PVC (polyvinyl chloride), styrene, and polystyrene. Union Carbide, Dow, Solvay, Phillips, and Koppers are involved. Benzene, PVC, and butadiene are cancer-causing. Many other companies produce health hazards for workers and the community. As environmental and health protection legislation limits production in the United States and other western countries, the industries are moved to less-developed and less regulated countries. Third world nations are being used as dumping grounds for hazardous products and polluting industries." Aldrin, dieldrin, ehptochlor, and chlordane are banned in the United States but are made for export and come back to the country on imported foods. Of United States pesticide manufacture, 40 percent is for export. To avoid regulations, much asbestos manufacture has moved to Mexico, India, and Brazil. As a beneficiary country, Brazil has a preferential tariff on United States imports, and some of the asbestos textiles enter the United States free or at very low tariffs. Brazil also provides a hazard-pay increment for workers in hazardous industries. If the hazard is controlled or eliminated, the pay increases are discontinued. By making hazardous work economically attractive and by making workers suffer pay cuts in exchange for improved working conditions, the law undermines all efforts to improve working conditions in hazardous industries. Brazil like many other Latin American countries has new coalitions of young military officers, young businessmen, and technicians—all middle-class, foreign educated, dedicated to modernization, development, and efficiency. This cadre has given rise to authoritarian governments with technocratic and development aspirations.'2 In Brazil the military has embraced industrialization and developed an authoritarian regime to promote the development process and work for full integration of the Brazilian economy in the structure of international capitalism. In addition to the increase in manufacturing in Brazil, multinational corporations are carving out "homesteads" from hundreds of square miles in the Amazon, dispossessing and destroying native populations." One example of multinational entrepreneurship supported and encouraged by the government may be seen in Daniel K. Ludwig, an American businessman, who owns three million acres of the Amazon. He is investing one half billion dollars in planting rice and Cmelina trees for pulp paper. He moved a power plant and paper mill from Japan, and the Brazilian techno-military bureaucracy works with Ludwig to bring growth to the unexplored areas, to increase reserves of foreign currency, and to attract foreign investors. He has been allowed to move out Indian populations, which has resulted in their death. Approximately eight thousand Yanomamo Indians have been displaced by road construction crews, lumbering and mining companies, and prospectors who have brought environmental destruction and disease. A huge network of roads has now opened up the Amazon. Ludwig has created an agro-industrial enclave disregarding the ecology of the region or the needs of the people. The lumber project may disrupt the native forest and the costly rice project may bring about a food shortage. The Amazon area also contains the world's largest reserves of iron ore and enormous amounts of manganese, as well as oil, timber, gemstones, and hydro- 26 �electric potential. A recent bank loan is financing a floating sawmill to move up and down the river exploiting the timber. Agricultural production has been diminishing for the past thirteen years as Brazilians have concentrated on producing commercial crops for export. Both urban and rural workers are malnourished. Emphasis has also been placed on airports and roads, so transnational may export their products. Poor farmers, semi-proletarians, and peasants have a hard time surviving. Even the middle farmers and rich land owners are losing power to transnational and Brazilian corporations. Five percent of the rural population owns 69 percent of all cultivated land. Large sugar and coffee growers are allies of transnationals. In expansion and modernization of exports, industries, agriculture, land, and capital is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and more and more small producers have gone under. Concentration and modernization have resulted in a large number of landless, dispossessed peasants who work as day laborers. They are now the mass of unemployed who live in slums of towns and cities. They were expelled from plantations by owners to avoid minimum wage for agricultural laborers. They are highly exploited and receive fifty cents to one dollar per day. Agriculture is developing in Latin America capitalist style, and millions are being impoverished in the process. Brazil is the world's second largest exporter of food while 40 percent of its population suffers from malnutrition.14 Northeastern farm workers in large sugar cane operations suffer from malnutrition, and 66 percent of the children die before age five. The worker must work twice as long as in 1964 to earn enough for food. There has been recent labor activity, and the plantation owners, for the first time, have signed a labor agreement with 250,000 laborers who have been virtual slaves to the owners. These are some of the negative effects of the large agribusiness development in Brazil: 1. Marginalizes the national investor. 2. Introduces foreign technology and know-how (capital intensive). 3. Creates unemployment for rural workers. 4. Displaces rural people. 5. Increases urban unemployment through regional migration of landless peasants. 6. Destroys small and middle farmers. 7. Proletarianizes the Brazilian rural labor. The "Brazilian miracle" has also produced great tensions and hardships for industrial workers. Brazilian industrial workers made sixty-six dollars a month in 1977. As Brazil concentrated income in the upper classes and controlled labor, the disparity between rich and poor increased, and repression became a necessary part of the development. Industry grew at the expense of the majority of the people. Even with strong control there was considerable unrest and numerous strikes broke out in 1978-79. The state has intervened in many ways to promote exports and enlarge or decrease local buying power depending on the import/export balance. Inflation was 75 percent in 1979, and Brazilian money was devalued by 30 percent to further increase exports and investments. Inflation has further resulted in a decline of real salary of the workers. In Peru one can see the ways in which international corporations must change local patterns of health care, farming, and diet in order to develop a consumer market for Pharmaceuticals, medicines, hospital-clinic-medical care equipment and supplies, fertilizers, pesticides, and processed foods. Peru has 27 �one of the oldest and most sophisticated non-Western "folk medicines" which serves a large proportion of the population, not only rural, but urban as well. The medicine relies heavily on local herbal prescriptions, and to change the population into consumers of Western goods, the local healers and herbalists must be discredited or retrained and credentialized. The first International Congress on Folk Medicines gave lip service to the great folk tradition but clearly came out for the superiority of scientific medicine. In many cases this official line is destroying the only available medicine and health care for the very poor. Retrained midwives now charge more and use sterile practices in non-sterile situations which are less safe than the traditional methods. The displacement of traditional healers by Western trained scientific practitioners, which happened in the United States over one hundred years ago, is now happening in Peru. There are some who are fighting against the invasion of petrochemical fertilizers and herbicides and are seeking to maintain traditional farming and nutrition practices, but the powerful advertising and popular appeal of processed foods, such as Pepsi, Coke and fast foods, is hard to counter without full support of the state. The many exhibits and demonstrations at agricultural fairs for fertilizers and pesticides compound the problem. IV. Similarities and differences of development in Appalachia and Latin America. Among the twenty-five largest United States' based transnational are companies familiar to Appalachia: Exxon, Gulf, Continental Oil, Eastman Kodak, Occidental, Union Carbide, Ford, DuPont, all of which own and operate mines and factories in the region. Appalachia and the rural South have been the traditional sources of cheap labor for runaway industries. Early, there was a great migration of New England textiles. When the industries needed modernizing, the old plants were closed and new plants built in the South, and the cheap southern labor paid for the remodeling. One of the first "foreign" transnationals, Bemberg, came to Tennessee for cheap labor, and others such as Enka followed to Tennessee and North Carolina. Appalachia has also been the source of raw materials, and the timber and coal were "developed" in the traditional colonialexploitation pattern by American and British companies, more recently joined by German and Japanese firms. Most of the coal companies have now been replaced by large transnational oil companies: Exxon, Gulf, Standard Oil, Continental; and the area is now being more thoroughly integrated into the international economy. In particular, we are seeing the coal industry integrated into the worldwide energy industry as large oil (energy) companies have bought out the coal companies. We see what looks like contradictory behavior: new mines being developed, mines closing, new growth expected, large numbers of miners unemployed, coal production increased in the West, a big push for synfuels investment by the Federal government. In terms of international energy corporation needs and goals, it makes sense. The Appalachian coal fields are being integrated into the international economy, and decisions are made in those terms: profit is being maximized, labor is being stabilized, the government is pushed to invest in expensive ventures, local elites are mobilized, and areas and communities and workers are traded off against each other. Beginning in the sixties, the area, which fit the colonial pattern of exploitation (export of raw materials and cheap labor), was geared up for more industrialization with the building of roads and infrastructure services by the Appalachian Regional Commission. The area was also developed as a market for consumer goods, and all the major retail stores and fast-food outlets came to Appalachia. There was an increase in local entrepreneurs, 28 �especially in strip mining, which cut in local capitalists, and there has been the development of technocrats and managers with the help of local colleges. An increase in income in the middle class has come about, but the poor have lost ground, and there are wider divisions between the rich and poor. Actually, the integration of the United States into the international economy is making the whole country into Appalachia, an underdeveloped society. Former industrialized communities of New England and the Midwest are now Appalachianized: exploited but not developed. Michael McKale sees the United States being "Latin Americanized" through the effects of wage leveling, a decreased standard of living, and growing lack of democratic participation." Manual labor operations are being exported to low-labor-cost countries, and the income distribution and trading patterns of the United States are beginning to resemble underdeveloped countries. The United States' major exports are agricultural products, timber, and coal-raw materials rather than finished products. There have been dramatic layoffs and plant closures in Detroit, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh. This is all part of the integration of the United States' industrial system into a modular global economy. As industries need to modernize, change style or product, or install pollution devices, it becomes profitable to move and make the changes (or avoid controls) in another country. Although Appalachia and the rural South may still be the recipients of some runaway industries which come for lower wages and docile (right-to-work, non-union) labor, other labor intensive industries are also leaving Appalachia and the South for cheaper labor in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mexico, and Brazil. Chemicals and oil refineries are looking for clean, uncluttered land with less health or environmental controls in Mexico, Brazil, or other Latin American countries. As production workers are being displaced in the United States, there is some growth in managerial, research, and service jobs. Research and development planning still takes place in the home base of the transnationals. As transnationals, especially banking institutions, helped engineer a devaluation of the United States dollar, european transnationals began to invest more in the United States now own Borax, Bic, Ovaltine and Good Humor. Industrial wages in the United States are now iower than many European countries, and labor is forced to accept lower wages or no-strike, no-wage-increase deals to attract foreign industries such as VW to Pennsylvania and West Virginia. States and regions now compete against each other to attract industries and advertise their low labor costs and tax incentives. Although there are some specific similarities between Appalachia and third world countries-such as, (1) absentee ownership of industry and land, (2) receivers of runaway plants, (3) low local tax base because of tax incentives, (4) development of native managers to control for the owners, (5) development of a consumer market, (6) growing control of labor by legislation, injunction, court orders and state police to provide a stable labor force-it is best to see Appalachia/America in the context of global capitalism. Appalachia remains as a part of the United States, home base of many transnationals, and shares with others some of the surplus value derived from the exploitation of lowerpaid workers in other parts of the world in terms of cheaper consumer goods and exported raw materials. We are part of the home base of transnationals and are called on to assist with their operations in foreign countries. In Latin America the United States has been involved militarily and economically since the Monroe Doctrine in 29 �1823. All military interventions are accompanied by the establishment of financial institutions, including, the Export-Import Bank, 1934; the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, 1944; the Alliance for Progress, 1961 - all developed to assist corporate ventures of the United States in Latin America. The government sometimes ends up underwriting loans or investments both at home and abroad (i.e., Lockheed, Chrysler). The World Bank, UNESCO, and other international organizations also become agents, perhaps inadvertently, for the multinational developers, and work to pave the way or facilitate their entry into third world countries. The United Nations Economic Commission on Latin America has pushed for development of roads, power, and basics for heavy industrialization to foster economic independence and national development, but the penetration and control by multinationals makes economic independence impossible. The consolidation of capitalism on an international basis requires armies, diplomatic corps, state bureaucracies, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and international planning and coordination which is the role of the Trilateral Commission. Carter may be considered the first multinational president, since he was a member of the Trilateral Commission and is considered by many as "their candidate." The Trilateral Commission was formed in 1973 by a group of bankers, corporate leaders, and intellectuals from the United States, Japan and Western Europe. Zbigniew Brzezinski was named director and David Rockefeller was financial backer. They are equipped to take over bankrupt cities, as they did New York City, as well as nations. When they do so, they organize the government efficiently and gear it to serve the business community. Social services are cut to a minimum. Corporations are now in a position to have cities, states and countries compete for their "jobs." The local government is asked to foot the bill on roads, water systems, airport modernization, and transit systems, in order to make development possible. The government may also be asked to provide tax relief, subsidies, buildings, and training for the labor force. The corporations pit countries against countries, and within countries, states or counties or regions against each other, to provide cheaper labor, better tax relief, and more subsidies than the next locale. Corporations also want the state to use welfare policies to resolve social conflicts and protect the corporate system. V. What difference does this perspective make in Appalachia, and how can communitites and workers most effectively organize in response to the changing shape of industry? In Appalachia we have just begun to understand the nature of corporate control, outside ownership, and the effects of exploitation. Now we must try to understand what it means to be integrated into the international capitalist system. This seems far more complex; yet we must try to understand how this reality changes the nature of the problems and the ways of dealing with them. We will continue to have large numbers of absentee owners of land and minerals and industries. A recent newspaper article reported that large timber owners are returning to the area to do again what they did before, as mountains have been reforested and can provide a new crop. Oil, gas, and uranium will be developed along with the coal, since the energy conglomerates own it all. We are now the site of runaway or expanding industries from other countries such as the VW plant in Charleston. As our wages decline, unions weaken, and state and local governments and unions "sell" their workers. This trend can be expected to continue. As a region, Appalachia will compete with other regions and the thirteen Appalachian states will compete with each 30 �other for runaway industries and new industries. Workers may be able to take over some discarded plants, but will be left with outmoded, unsafe, and unprofitable operations and the burden of competing with the newer operations from other parts of the world. We can expect government services to become fewer and weaker as the state takes on a role of caretaker and opts for a free market economy. The government will use welfare, social services, and education to serve the needs of business, and will be encouraged to invest in expensive developments such as synfuels or other energy development. We can expect growing attempts to control the labor force through "union busting" or more sophisticated legal maneuvers and psychological strategies. The large oil companies seek to employ more technically oriented, skilled middle-class miners to avoid militant trade unionists. The destruction of coal camps and homogeneous communitites is designed to produce less militant workers. The "line" is that one is not a coal miner but a skilled technician, and class consciousness is destroyed or avoided. The use of Appalachia as a market and the development of a local bourgeoisie to operate banks, fast-food franchises, markets, and regional offices has led to a growing role for local colleges in the training of managers for industry. The developing middle class must be trained, and colleges and universities have received funds and encouragement to meet the needs. As a result, the business education programs are the largest programs in almost every school, replacing teacher training. Business and economics are being merged in some places as skills and "right thinking" economics are taught together. Again, Appalachian colleges are serving the needs of the economic system in educating the local bourgeoisie who serve the needs of the multinationals which employ them. Today they are not "teachers" but "managers." Their adaptation to this role makes progressive social change more difficult. The rising middle-class managers are trained to serve the needs of their employers, with allegiances to the multinationals. It becomes much harder to identify the "outside exploiter." The semblance of prosperity keeps the middle class loyal, and it is more difficult to educate about global issues and problems. The Appalachia/American middle class receives dividends as they profit from the cheaper labor of third world countries and purchase low cost luxuries. Appalachian studies in Appalachian colleges have a responsibility to research and educate around these changes and the impliations of the integration of the region into the international economy. Cross-cultural studies are important and necessary. Workers in Appalachian industries need to understand their connections and kinship with workers in other parts of the world. The possibility of an international labor organization seems remote. Some argue that the internationalization of industry and labor forces makes possible linkages between workers all employed by the same company. While capital can defend itself against isolated, national laborers through multiple sourcing, an organized global work force could stop production worldwide." An international workers' organization could support workers' struggles against repressive regimes and fight against second-class status immigrant workers, no-strike legislation, and government mandated "sacrifice" on the part of the working class. There are some signs of change in Brazil. In 1978-79 workers at Brazilian autoworks struck for wage increases, trade union rights, job security, and democratization of the political system. The union bypassed the state bureaucracy and forced the firms to negotiate directly. The State control of labor was broken. 31 �The organization of an international work force would be difficult. Cultural and language differences are hard to overcome, but understanding the interrelationships and interdependencies is a first step. The development of coalitions of workers within Appalachia, especially in the energy field, would add great strength to the battles of coal miners, oil workers, and nuclear workers who are often employed by the same corporations. Such would be a first step for the region. Communication between communities and workers trying to deal with environmental and occupational health hazards would begin to develop international networks to fight such hazards. There is an urgent need for systematic monitoring and reporting of the national and worldwide movements of hazardous industries and hazardous wastes. In Appalachian studies, we must not limit our programs to the exotic, romantic Appalachian cultural history. It is important to develop pride in the region's rich heritage, but it is also important to see Appalachia as part of a worldwide process of development and change. We must deal with economic and political questions and build an understanding of what is happening in the region and how it is related to the global economic system. We also must try to influence our regional educational institutions to develop broader courses in political economy. They must not concentrate only in training managers and technicians to keep the system running, but must provide a broader education so the managers and technicians can understand what they are doing, why and to and for whorn. NOTES This paper grows out of a variety of contacts the authors have had with individuals in Latin America and Appalachia. Morton has been in communication with a number of non-formal educators in Latin America over the years and has been interested in the workers' and peoples' movements throughout the area. Various delegations of workers, educators, and religious workers have visited the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee, a resource for community groups founded and directed by Morton, and through which Lewis has conducted programs in health care. In 1979 Morton visited Brazil, Argentina, and Peru, attending a conference called by the Catholic Bishops in Brazil, and in his visit met and talked with people concerned with the problems of domination and exploitation by multinational corporations. Together, Morton and Lewis attended an International Congress of Folk Medicine in Peru in October 1979, at which they met people from throughout South America and took the opportunity for travel in Peru. -Ed. 1. Carl A. Gerstacker quoted in Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. Muller, Global Reach, The Power of the Multinational Corporations (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), p. 16. 2. Ibid., p. 56. 3. James Cook, "A Game Any Number Can Play," Forbes, June 25, 1979, pp. 49-55. 4. Harvey D. Shapiro, "Giants Beyond Flag and Country." New York Times Magazine, March 18, 1973, pp. 20-35, 32 �5. Merg Hainer and Joanne Koslofsky, Introduction to "Car Wars", NACLA 's* Latin America and Empire Report, July-August 1979, pp. 3-10; and Rick Knonish and Ken Mericle, "Mapping Out Auto: Latin AmericaWheels, Deals, and Class Struggle," Ibid., pp. 10-22. (*North American Congress on Latin America) 6. Shapiro, "Giants Beyond Flag and Country." 7. See Ph. D. dissertations by David Walls, Doug Arnett, and John Wells, and an Office of Technology Assessment report by Lee Balliet, "A Pleasing Tho' Dreadful Sight': Social and Economic Impacts of Coal Production in the Eastern Coalfields," Appalachian Center, University of Kentucky, 1978. For a review of theorists see Steven Jackson, Bruce Russett, Duncal Snidal and David Sylvan, "An Assessment of Empirical Research on Dependencia," Latin American Research Review 14 (1979): 7-28. 8. Theotonio Dos Santos, "The Structure of Dependency," American Economic Review, May 1970, pp. 231-36. 9. Frank, Andre Gunder. Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution, (New York: Modern Reader, 1969). 10. News articles in The Times of the Americas, December 1979, and January 1980. 11. Barry I. Castleman, "The Export of Hazardous Factories to Developing Nations," International Journal of Health Services 9 (1979). 569-606. 12. Victor Alba, "Technocrats and Militarists, "A new 'Conquest' of Latin America," Secolas 1, March 1970. 13. Marcos Arruda, H. de Sousa, and C Afonso, The Multinational Corporations and Brazil (Toronto: Brazilian Studies, L.A. Research Unit, 1975). 14. Roger Burbock and Patricia Flynn, "Seeds of Hunger-Roots of Rebellion," NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report, January-February, 1978, pp. 2-10. 15. "For a Society Overcoming Domination," Project Secretariat, International Study Days, 101, Paris, January 1980, p. 11. 16. Merg Hainer and Joanne Koslofsky, "The World Car—Shifting into Overdrive," NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report, July-August, 1979, pp. 22-37. 33 �APPALACHIA AND THE THIRD WORLD: ECO-DEVELOPMENT AS AN ALTERNATIVE IN THE NEW ECONOMIC ORDER by Gene Wilhelm, Jr. Abstract This essay proposed that it is only reasonable and just that everyone on the planet earth is entitled to a basic minimum share of the earth's air, water, land, and mineral resources. This eco-share, or minimum level of living for everyone, is best expressed in social rather than economic terms. The concepts of eco-development and eco-growth are positive approaches to solving the basic needs ofAppalachia and and the Third World. They concentrate upon the positive viable assets of particular environments and local resources, both human and natural, for meeting the basic needs of the people without altering or destroying the environment. INTRODUCTION The twentieth century has been a period of unprecedented economic growth and technological progress which, while bringing benefits to many people, also have caused severe social and environmental consequences.' Inequality between the poor and the rich among and within nations is still growing and there is ample evidence of increasing deterioration of the biophysical environment on a world-wide scale.2 Such conditions affect all of humanity and the entire ecosphere but are epitomized by Appalachia and the Third World. 3 When discussing the relationship between Appalachia and the Third World, it is evident that there are important differences between regions and countries, and between poor countries and poor regions in wealthy countries." The simple truth is that the world is not environmentally homogeneous. Countries differ in their renewable and non-renewable resources. Some nations always will be struggling against poor soils, unpredictable climates, and extremes of heat and cold. Others never will be self-sufficient in food, energy, or raw materials.' The environmental inequalities in the world are paralleled by socioeconomic and political ones, which are a major obstacle to the satisfaction of basic human needs, especially in Appalachia and the Third World, and a barrier to the harmonious development of mankind. 6 As Schumacher observed: One of the unhealthy and disruptive tendencies in virtually all the developing countries is the emergence, in an ever more accentuated fashion, of the "dual economy," in which there are two different patterns of living as widely separated from each other as two different worlds. It is not a matter of some people being rich and others being poor, both being united by a common way of life: it is a matter of two ways of life existing side by side in such a manner that even the humblest member of the one disposes of a daily income which is a high multiple of the income accruing to even the hardest working member of the other. 7 34 �The relief of the poverty affecting so large a part of humanity is hampered by the present concentration of the world's economic strength in the developed nations and by the considerable waste of natural resources there. The western nations, Japan, and Russia, for example, account for only one fourth of the world's population but use 90 percent of the entire world's natural resources. The United States of America, with 6 percent of the world's population, uses over one third of the world's resources and produces half of the world's pollution.' As a result, the typical American consumer has from twenty-five to fifty times as great an environmental impact on our world life-supporting sytems as a peasant in any developing country.' Therefore, it is the thesis of this essay that regardless of such environmental, social, economic, and political differences, Appalachia and the Third World are members in the "commonwealth of poverty, dependency, maldevelopment, and ecology."10 Further, it is only reasonable and just that everyone on the planet earth is entitled to a basic minimum share of the world's air, water, land, and mineral resources. This eco-share, or minimum level of living for everyone, is best expressed in social rather than economic terms. In this regard the concepts of eco-development and eco-growth are positive approaches to solving the basic needs of Appalachia and the Third World. They concentrate upon the positive viable assets of particular environments and local resources, both natural and human, for meeting the basic needs of the people without altering or destroying their environment." DEVELOPMENT THEORY Debate over the nature of change in Appalachia and the Third World has been growing among scholars since the 1960's. One scholar has examined recently the contemporary explanatory models of Appalachian poverty and underdevelopment and has drawn an analogy between peripheral countries in the Third World system and peripheral regions, such as represented by Appalachia, within developed nations. 12 Many social scientists, in fact, have questioned recently the so-called "development-modernization paradigm." That particular model, developed in the 1950s and refined during the 1960s, was based, among other things, on the belief that people in an undeveloped country or region could attain a modern outlook through education and work. It stressed the development of institutions in which the modernized citizens could lead their country or region from their traditional attitudes into a "westernized" society. The role of missionaries, teachers, health personnel, engineers, and lawyers in this process has been evident both in Appalachia and the Third World. 13 The modernization theorists argues, in essence, that when certain conditions involving education, employment, and organized institutions prevailed, a society would begin the process of moving from a traditional to a modern condition. The development-modernization approach was challenged in the late 1960s, especially by leftist social scientists who argued that it put too much emphasis on individuals and institutions in isolation and ignored the economic and historical conditions under which social change took place. They advanced, instead, the "dependency theory," which stressed the dominance of Third World countries by the capitalist economics of the West, and argued that those economics prevented developing nations from taking independent action. In its simplest form, the dependency theory maintains that developing countries are puppets incapable of controlling their own destiny. 35 �Neither the modernization nor dependency models have adequately explained the process of socioeconomic and political change in the Third World or in Appalachia, for that matter. The modernization theory places inordinate attention on the borrowed institutions that are bought to a society rather than on the exerience of the society receiving those structures. On the other hand, the dependency model suggests that all Third World nations are locked in irrevocably as agents of a global system. However, it has been shown in Iran, as elsewhere, that such nations can and do revolt from the global system. On close examination many concepts, attitudes, and values expressed in these two paradigms are found in the subculture of poverty, regional development, and internal colonialism models often applied to Appalachia.'4 Most recently a wide-ranging debate has materialized over different paths to development. Third World countries are talking about "self-reliant change," or "culturally rooted change," or "alternative development." In fact, there has been a growing demand, especially since 1972, for a coordinated and comprehensive world approach to the problems of poverty, food and nutrition, trade and commerce, investment, industry, and technology." This, in turn, has led to developing countries demanding fundamental structural changes. The developing world does not want a new deal but a new order. It wants an organized system of new relationships based on a global recognition and acceptance of the principle of interdependence in economic influence, collective responsibility, and shared decision-making." The recent "awakening" among people of Appalachia demands similar recognition of authority. Thus the United Nations Declaration for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) was proclaimed on May 9, 1974, at the Sixth Special Session of the UN General Assembly in order to mitigate the economic difficulties of the developing nations by immedite and effective international measures. Again, the NIEO was reinforced in September 1975 at the Seventh Special Session of the UN General Assembly." The NIEO demands were essentially: transfers of technology from the West; price indexing; energy development; either a debt moratorium or a minimum of an additional one billion dollars in aid for the poorest nations; and many associated programs. Viewed in detail, the NIEO appeared to be a drastic solution. A black writer who favored the changes stated candidly at the time: "The demands are so fundamental that they pose very grave problems for the future of capitalism and ultimately for the political stability of the constitutional democracies of the West." 18 Proponents of the NIEO also called for a new international standard of conduct in law as well as in economics and politics. The very fabric of international law was seen to be biased in favor of the developed world. In the economic arena, for example, it was suggested that the terms of international trade be changed and controls of the conduct of multinational corporations made more comprehensive. Politically, greater power of decision was to be given to the poorer, newer nations through increased authority wielded by international organization." Although a confrontation occured between the developed and Third World nations in 1975-1976 through a series of encounters in the United Nations, a new terrain of international relations has been gradually revealed. Both the developed and Third World nations seem to have moderated their positions somewhat in extended and difficult negotiations, but it is too early to know the final outcome. Regardless, even if the NIEO could be fully implemented, there is still an apparent lack of awareness, sensitivity, and comprehension on the part of all nations about world ecosystems and man's role in them and too much emphasis on economic determinism. 36 �ECOLOGY VERSUS ECONOMICS In determing the appropriate size and growth rate in development, we encounter some of the basic differences between economic and ecological viewpoints. Different ecological cycles have different optimal rates, which must not be exceeded if we are to avoid overload or breakdown. But the tendency in our present linear economic system is to maximize growth rates by using and abusing these natural cycles in our air, water, and land. As the rate of production increases, supplies of finite resources diminish and the amount of waste and heat pouring into the air, water, and land increases." To prevent ecosystem breakdown, economists would pay maintenance costs while continuing to increase production rates. Ecologists agree that this solution would work if mankind had infinite resources, infinite energy, unlimited funds, were not governed by the second law of energy (which automatically yields more environmental disorder or entropy per unit of order established by man), and had a clearer idea of the actual limits of the ecosphere.21 To be both economical and ecological, man must stablize, not maximize, growth by deliberately operating some environmentally disruptive activities (such as strip mining in Appalachia) at a slower rate so that energy consumption is reduced. Further, optimum growth for private profit is not necessarily the optimum for the social economy and quality of life, because many external costs, such as pollution, are shifted to the consumer. The "ideal goal" is simultaneously to optimize both growth and the quality of life for all. 22 This ideal focuses attention on two other major differences between economics and ecology: a difference in time perspective and a difference over the best means for justly distributing the world's resources and wealth. Economics is centered on the short term while ecology is focused on the long term. Economics deals with day-to-day activities and thus economists find it difficult making five-year plans. Yet ecologist insist that 25, 50, or 100-year plans be made. Many western economists think that the best way to get a reasonable distribution of the world's wealth and resources to the poor is to increase the economic growth rates of the industrialized countries (maximizing the linear system for a few), so that the spillover that trickles down from this growth will raise the absolute level of living for everyone. Ecologists challenge this view. Because resource supplies and allowable recycling rates cannot exceed certain natural limits, man must find a better, quicker, and safer way for fairly distributing the world's wealth than letting it trickle down. The closer man comes to the limits of the system, the less effective the conventional cure for poverty becomes, and the more maldistribution of wealth becomes the key environmental and political issue. It appears that all existing economic systems (capitalism, socialism, and communism) have the same fatal flaw: the need to increase growth and pollution continually. Increasing pollution, for example, is a problem in both industrialized capitalist countries and industrialized socialist and communist countries. In truth, as Echeverria states, "the destruction of the environment is a universal tragedy." 23 The author continues: Much of today's problems arise from the concept that humanity's first priority is economic growth. Growth we must have...But a nation's growth is more than the abstract and complacent statistics of Gross National Product. Rather than this narrow economic growth our own objective must be an all-embracing human development.... 37 �Economic growth with its meaningless figures has come to dominate our social mentality. It has created one of the most serious problems of our century: the acceptance of natural destruction as an inevitable sacrifice to economic development....At present we are sold ecology in tiny doses, like pills from a chemist. This is a totally inadequate response. We need a truly ecological programme, one which ceases to regard our planet as just another consumer object. 24 DEVELOPING A NEW MODEL Present growth patterns and practices are self-destructive and cannot be sustained. On the other hand, there is no society that is likely to accept "no growth" as an option. The only real alternative then is a new approach to growth, what I call "eco-growth," both in developed and developing societies. The eco-growth approach is based upon removal of the artificial and selfdefeating conflict between ecology and-economics which is now built into our system of economic decision-making. Man must make ecology and economics the allies they can and should be in evolving an approach to growth, the prime goal of which will be to produce a better quality of life for people.2' A promising approach towards environmentally sound eco-development and eco-growth is the application of the concept of self-help in Appalachia and the Third World. This is designed to aid the people of a developing region of a country or the world by relying as much as possible on local resources, both natural and human, to meet the basic needs of the people without harming their environment.26 After all, development does not start with goods; it starts with people and their education, organization, and discipline. If aid is given to introduce certain new economic activities, these will be beneficial and viable only if they can be sustained by the already existing educational level of fairly broad groups of people, and they will be truly valuable only if they promote and spread advances in education, organization, and discipline.27 One must look outside the developed and Third World nations for an example of present-day eco-development and eco-growth. The Peoples' Republic of China has to a considerable degree been able to integrate ecological and social objectives i her economic development strategy. This has been a natural outcome of a s tematic plan to mobilize large numbers of people and make them participate in the development process and influence the necessary changes.2' China's development strategy includes two concepts which are almost lacking in most other developing countries where the approaches to economic development have been heavily influenced by models from already industrialized countries. First, China's manpower has been efficiently mobilized in nearly all spheres of economic activity, but in particular for rural development. Second, China has systematically utilized local resources and waste materials of all kinds in order to optimize the economic results. The mobilization of large numbers of people for various development projects has its basis in a system of well-organized local planning with a considerable degree of local control. This has established an environment which can efficiently control some of the undesired effects of economic development and growth and provide long-term viability for modern technology. 29 Underlying the Chinese concepts of local planning and control of development are at least three major factors which were nearly recognized by the central government. First, the natural environments within each locality 38 �(region, county, commune) have differences in climate, topography, soil, vegetation, and mineral resources. Naturally these have important implications for economic and social planning. Second, there is no uniformity in the level of economic and social development and identical treatment of the localities would lead to difficulties in determining the priorities. A third and possibly more important motivation for local planning lies in China's normative development strategy which stresses the improvement in the general well-being of people throughout the country, access to services, culture, educational opportunities, and a high degree of participation. The meaning of development consequently includes much more than mere economic growth. People become involved in the decision-making process and determine their own development priorities and strategies. The present Chinese view on environment and development is apparent in the following statement: Economic development and environmental protection are interrelated and promote each other. The former gives rise to the environmental problem and the latter constitutes an important condition for developing the economy; economic development increases the capability to protect the environment, and environmental improvement in turn promotes economic development. This is the independent relationship between the two. 30 This interaction is obvious in the area of irrigation and flood control, where the cumulative effect of massive farmland construction is now beginning to add a considerable degree of stability to China's agriculture. In the past five years, more than 100 million people in China have in the winter-spring seasons taken part in construction work to improve farmland and establish irrigation and drainage facilities. These rural masses, mainly organized by brigades and communes although coordinated at higher levels, have, on the average, been able to extend the irrigated area every year by more than 1.3 million hectares and achieved flood control in another 1.3 million hectares." Similarly, mass mobilization has been used for the successful eradication fo schistosomiasis. Here too, large numbers of people have been mobilized and organized to drain and collect the snail-infested muds and dispose of them in other places. In this way it has been possible to achieve an almost complete eradication with little or no use of chemicals. China's soil cover was extremely poor in many areas of the country when the new regime took over. In order to reduce the silt content in the rivers, it was necessary to plant trees or other types of vegetation so as to prevent soil erosion or sand drifting. This has been done on a very considerable scale, particularly after the introduction of the peoples' communes which made it possible to mobilize large rural manpower forces to improve conditions to their own long-term benefit. In fact, the area covered by trees and other forms of natural vegetation has almost doubled since 1949 when forests covered roughly 9 percent of the total land area. This would, of course, not have been possible if the bushes and tree saplings were collected for firewood. Consequently, the development of local coal mines and an efficient distribution of coal at low prices has been a major contributing factor." Making use of various types of waste products has parallels in almost all areas of Chinese economic planning. The use of night soil as fertilizer is wellknown and has until recently provided Chinese agriculture with a major share 39 �of added riutrients. The use of local resources and waste materials has immediate economic benefits aside from their ecological considerations. In sum, the Chinese leadership has opted for retaining a majority of the country's population in rural areas for a considerable period of time. Accordingly, the countryside has been provided with the necessary infrastructure and financial resources for self-sustained development. Eco-development and eco-growth demand that conservation become a way of life and incentives for it must be built into our economic system. In practical terms, this will mean a redesign of industrial systems in which the residues of one process become the raw materials of another. Technologies for recycling and reusing materials and abatement of pollution must be integrated into such systems, not merely added onto them. On the local, regional, national, and international levels, the eco-growth approach will require new dimensions of cooperation between one sector of society and another. It will require a revamping of the present system of arrangements and institutions to enable them to better support and serve the interests and aspirations of the developing world, whether it be in Appalachia or the Third World. A New International Economic Order is a necessity as much for the industrialized countries which are resisting it as it is for the developing countries which are pressing for it. The healthy functioning of our interdependent technological society requires the full participation and active cooperation of the people who live in the developing world. This dictates that we heed their demands for a more just and equitable share of the benefits which this modern technological civilization makes possible. Finally, we need an additional concept to help organize our affairs, one that would directly measure the quality to life resulting from our total activities and environment. Certainly this would require some subjective measurements. As one example of an attempt being made throughout the world to develop new means of measuring progress, the Overseas Development Council has established an index of the physical quality of life that uses infant mortality, life expectancy, and literacy as measures. The index shows, for example, that Sri Lanka, whose GNP per capita is near the bottom of the scale at $130, has a physical quality of life index of 83, well above the 67 average for the uppermiddle-income countries whose average GNP per capita is many times higher." Other authors have suggested a Gross National Quality Index in which we would list and put a price tag on all the "deficits" included in the GNP. The total of these undesirable effects would be subtracted from the GNP to obtain the Gross National Quality or GNQ." Fortunately, a small number of scholars are working on this crucial facet of eco-development.3! An eco-growth society will require important changes in the attitudes, values, and expectations of the people, particularly of the industrialized world and the more privileged sectors within the developing world. As Strong indicates: We must rediscover our communal values and downgrade our competitive drives. We must learn to applaud and look up to those who adopt lifestyles that are modest in terms of the amount of space they monopolize or the amount of materials and energy they consume; ostentatiously wasteful and indulgent living should become socially reprehensible in all our societies. There should be an acute sensitivity to all activities which create risks of damage to our natural heritage, or impair the quality of life for others. 36 40 �The new thinking and doing required for aid and development in Appalachia and the Third World must be different from the old because it will take basic needs of mankind seriously. It will not go on mechanically saying: "What is good for the rich nations certainly must be good for the poor." It will care for people because people are the primary and ultimate resource of any country. Development cannot be an act of creation; it cannot be ordered, bought, or planned. Development requires a process of evolution, education, organization, and discipline. It follows from this that development is not primarily a problem for economists, least of all for economists who follow the linear economic model so common today. Economists have their usefulness at certain stages of development, but only if the general guidelines of a development policy "to involve the entire local population" are already firmly established. 37 As Strong concluded:3' Today, for the first time in history, we do have the knowledge, the resources and the technology and management capacity to assure that every person on this planet has access to the basic resources and environmental conditions required for a good and satisfying life. Our future really turns now on whether we will have the enlightened moral and political will and the sense of our own ultimate self-interest that is needed to enable us to change our ways before it is too late. CONCLUSIONS What is urgently needed today is a New International Development Strategy that would examine, evaluate, and eventually select appropriate development patterns and lifestyles everywhere in the world. Such development patterns and lifestyles cannot be uniform for all countries or even all regions within countries. Since prevailing conditions differ from place to place and culture to culture, alternative approaches become necessary. What is at issue is not only the need for alternative approaches but also the need for a choice between them and the bases of such choice. It is clear that rational choices must stem from a process of harmonization of social aspirations, particularly of economic policies and considerations with environmental goals and objectives. If environment is thought of as the frame of the resource base available to man, development is the process by which resources are used to give man a better quality of life, a better environment. In short, substained development needs a sustained resource base. There is an emerging consensus in the United Nations Environment Programme that environmental protection and economic development are not only compatible but also interdependent and mutually reinforcing in character. Conflicts, options, and trade-offs are more apparent than real and exist only if objectives of both development and environmental protection are considered within an inadequate time frame. A certain poignancy is added to the situation by the fact that, while the developed countries have the technology and the financial means to retreat from a wrong decision, the developing countries have none. High consumption societies or sectors of societies in developed and developing countries must take stock of the world's nonrenewable resource base and the carrying capacity of the biosphere as a whole. It is becoming increasingly 41 �clear that the pressure on the resource base of the planet and the deterioration of the environment is multiplying at such a rate as to threaten an eventual col lapse of life-sustaining systems. The balance of responsibility, in this situation, would appear to rest more with the developed countries which account for the lion's share of the consumption of energy, minerals, and chemcials and also for a large share of pollution. Two of the essential steps needed for the realization of alternative, and hopefully more acceptable, development patterns and lifestyles for the next decade are being considered in 1980 by the UNEP: 1. A realistic, long-term, and truly scientific assessment of the risk and uncertainties involved in all processes of change which result from the interaction of man on life-supporting systems; and 2. Patterns of development and lifestyles, covered political, economic, and social structures, production and consumption patterns, transfer and adaptation of appropriate technology, and energy/resource use, are being identified. Through a series of seminars in various parts of the world, patterns can thus be geared to minimize or negate environmental damage and help avoid the emergence of hard options between economic and ecological considerations. NOTES 1. "The Belgrade Charter: A Global Framework for Environmental Education," Connect 1 (January 1976): 1. 2. The State of the Environment, 1976 (United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya); The State of the Environment: Selected Topics, 1977 (United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya); The State of the Environment: Selected Topics, 1978 (United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya); and The State of the Environment: Selected Topics, 1979 (United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya). 3 See David S. Walls, "Central Appalachia: A Peripheral Region within an Advanced Capitalist Society," Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 4 (November 1976): 232-246; and David S. Walls, "Three Models in Search of Appalachian Development: Critique and Synthesis," a paper originally presented at the joint session of the Rural Sociological Society and the Society for the Study fo Social Problems, Montreal, August 25, 1974, and revised i May 1976. 4. John Friedman, "Poor Regions and Poor Nations," Southern Economic Journal 32 (April 1966): 465-470. 5. Lester R. Brown, The Twenty-Ninth Day (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978), pp. 202-205. 6. See Luis Echeverria, "The Ecological Rights of Man," Uniterra (October 1978): 4-5 Echeverria was the President of Mexico (1970-1976) and "father" of the New International Economic Order. 7. E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered (New York: Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1975), p. 164. 8. G. Tyler Miller, Jr., Living in the Environment: Concepts, Problems, and Alternatives (Belmost, California; Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1975), p. 13. The author recently published a second edition (late 1979) of this book in which he states on p. 1:" . . .the 220 million Americans, who make up only 5 percent of our total (world) population, used about 35 percent of all our supplies and produced over one-third of all our artifical pollution last year." 42 �Regardless of the exact statistics, it is still obvious that the USA is singly most responsible for impairing our earth's life-supporting system. 9. Ibid., p. 13. 10. Wayne M. Clergern, "What is the Third World?" paper presented at the First National Conference on the Third World, Omaha, Nebraska, October 1977, p. 3. 11. "UNEP Paper Offers New Development Concepts," Uniterra (August 1977): 3. 12. Walls, "Three Models," pp. 1-74. 13. See Gene Wilhelm, Jr., "Folk Culture History of the Blue Ridge Mountains," Appalachian Journal 2 (Spring 1975) pp. 210-212; and Gene Wilhelm, Jr., "Appalachian Isolation: Fact or Fiction?" in An Appalachian Symposium, ed. J. W. Williamson (Boone, N.C.: Appalachian State University Press, 1977), pp. 77-90. 14. Walls, "Three Models," pp. 1-74. 15. "The New International Economic Order: Policy Implications for African Agriculture," Ninth FAO Regional Conference for Africa, Item 16 of the Provisional Agenda, Freetown, Sierra Leone, November 2-12, 1976, p. 1. 16. This plea started as early as the mid-1960s; see United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Towards a New Trade Policy for Development (New York: United Nations, 1964). 17. Clegern, "What is the Third World?," p. 13. 18. Preston Green, "The New World Economic Order: Capitalism's Greatest Challenge," First World: An International Journal of Black Thought 2 (Spring 1978): 6-10. 19. Joseph S. Nye and Robert Keohane, "Transnational Relations and World Politics: An Introduction," International Organization, No. 25 (1971), pp. 329-349. 20. Gene Wilhelm, Jr., "Eco-Development and'the New World Order," paper presented at the First National Conference on the Third World, Omaha, Nebraska, October 27-29, 1977, p. 6. 21. Miller, Living in the Environment, pp. 325-326. 22. Ibid., p. 326. 23. Echeverria, "The Ecological Rights of Man," pp. 4-5. 24. Ibid., p. 5. 25. Maurice F. Strong, "New Growth Policy," Uniterra (August 1978): 4-5. 26. "UNEP Paper Offers New Development Concepts," p. 3. 27. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful, p. 168. 28. Jon Sigurdson, "Eco-Development Chinese Style," Uniterra 1 (November) 4-5. 29. Ibid., p. 4. 30. Kee-ping Chu, "Environment and Development," Peking Review, No. 20,1976. 31. Sigurdson, "Eco-Development Chinese Style," p. 5. 32. Ibid., p. 5. 33. Russell W. Peterson, "Impacts of Technology," Uniterra 4 (October 1979): 5. 34. U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, A Report On Measurement and the Quality of Life (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1972). 35. Miller, Living in the Environment, p. 332. 36. Strong, "New Growth Policy," p. 5. 37. Wilhelm, "Eco-Development and the New World Order," p. 12. 38. Strong, "New Growth Policy," p. 5. 43 �THE ECONOMY OF WEST VIRGINIA AND THE OPPRESSION/LIBERATION OF WOMEN Rick Simon Betty Justice Abstract Women in West Virginia historically have participated in the paid labor force at a rate less than women in the United States as a whole and at a rate less than women in all other individual states. This fact is explained by the dominant influence of the coal industry on the state's economy. Women have been excluded from direct participation in the coal industry, but more significantly the structure of the industry industry hindered the development of a diversified economy which included work of the type traditionally performed by women. By June 1979, 50.7 percent of women in the United States sixteen years of age or older were in the paid labor force.' Unlike technology which creates an infrastructure and a potential for change in social relations, the emergence of women from the family into the paid labor force and the absorption of previous family economic functions into the commodity market necessarily change the very patterns of social life-how we spend time together, raise our children, have our fun-in fact our basic values. However, a discussion of the scope of such changes is not our object. Rather we want to examine a tiny aspect of this phenomenal change-the failure of West Virginia to conform to this pattern, in fact to lag to such an extent that it has for all of this century engaged less of its female population in the paid labor force than has the United States as a whole and for the most part at a rate less than all the individual states. (See Table I) To understand the female labor participation rate in West Virginia, we believe that it is necessary to analyze the role/oppression of women within the capitalist mode of production generally, i.e., the social organization of the economy and of social classes. Our view of the status of women within the capitalist mode of production is that: 1. The role of women in the capitalist mode of production has been in the home performing unpaid labor in the maintenance and reproduction of the society's labor power. Their role in the paid labor market has historically been that of a reserve army of labor. 2. Women, particularly since World War II, have increasingly been incorporated into the paid labor market; this increased participation is in part a response to changes in the structure and needs of capitalist production. 3. The history of women in West Virginia clearly illustrates the twofold oppression of women, as workers within the home and as wage laborers. 4. In Appalachia, particularly in the coal fields, there is also a relative oppression of women in the labor market. First, women have been excluded from employment in the largest and highest paying industry. Second and more significant in terms of women's current rate of participation in the paid labor market, the coal economy does not stimulate but actually hinders the development of a diversified economy which includes "women's work"-jobs in the clerical, service, sales, and light manufacturing occupations which account for the overwhelming proportion of women engaged in the paid labor force in the United States. 44 �Two conclusions follow from this analysis: 1. To increase the job opportunities for women in West Virginia, it is not enough to open up the traditional male occupations to women. Rather, to correct the labor force participation deficiency for women, it is necessary to restructure the entire economy. 2. In order to eliminate sexual oppression both in West Virginia and the United States as a whole, it is necessary to change the mode of production. This does not mean that women should submerge the goals of their sex, nor the immediate struggles for women's rights are unimportant, but rather that systemic problems are corrected only by systemic change. ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE CAPITALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION The capitalist system of production is characterized by wage labor wherein a worker sells time to an employer. In the labor process, a good or service is produced which may satisfy some social need but more importantly must be sellable in the marketplace at a profit, the motive force of the capitalist system of production. The analysis of the role of women within the society is therefore incomplete without an examination of their position in and relation to production for profit. The economic oppression of women under capitalism is twofold: "outside the market place" through the indirect production of profit in the home and "inside the market place" in the direct production of profit. Historically, under capitalism, the man has engaged in paid labor, earning an income to maintain a family of "workers." Women's labor, traditionally within the home, has been unpaid and officially considered "non-work" since it is performed outside the "market" context.2 However, women's work within the home has been a necessary function for the maintenence and continuance of capitalism. The woman within the home has played an important role in maintaining the workers who produce profit directly and a primary role in the physical and nutritive reproduction of the future labor force. "Every individual man is forced to use his wife's expenditure of herself in the family in order to 'earn' money in the form of wages. He is dependent for his survival on her. 3 The extent of this non-work has been estimated by the Chase Manhattan Bank to take 99.6 hours per week.4 By utilizing the unpaid services of the wife, the cost of reproducing and maintaining labor is reduced and profits correspondingly increased. Although the primary role of women has been in the home, women have also participated in the direct production of profit, particularly serving as a reserve army of labor. Women from the poorest groups in the society, especially black women and recently immigrated women, have long experienced attachment to the paid labor market. For instance, as early as 1900, 20 percent of all women in the United States were in the paid labor force. Women, however, have found (as have men to a lesser extent) the labor market open to them only in certain places, sectors, and times. Much of women's work outside the home has been and yet is an extension of work previously performed within the home. Examples are the production of clothing, hospital work, restaurant work, and jobs required in the socialization of the young, such as teaching. "The predominance of women in the lower grades of teaching and social work is no coincidence. These are capitalism's human face in labour...Women are the soft cops..."5 As the nature of work has changed with the impact of technology and as expanded consciousness and economic 45 �necessity have encouraged long term attachment to the labor market, the range of occupations open to women have changed. However, the capitalist mode of production is not necessarily evenly developed throughout a society, and it is sometimes necessary to examine the particular form of the mode of production within a region to understand the role of women in its economy. The capitalist mode of production was introduced into West Virginia in the late 1800s with the advent of the coal industry. This mode of productin dominated the organization of production in the state by World War I. But in West Virginia, the development of the capitalist mode of production was limited by the class structure of the coal industry which impeded the development of internal markets and limited capitalist penetration of new spheres of production. The role/oppression of all workers in West Virginia, but particularly of women, has been and is yet affected by this new but incomplete expression of capitalism within the state. Women in West Virginia have faced the same two fold oppression in the home and in the paid labor market. But as the development of the capitalistic mode of production in West Virginia has been limited, the rate of participation by women in the paid labor force has remained throughout the twentieth century one of the lowest of all the states in the United States. For instance in 1970, the state's women had a labor force participation rate of 29.4 percent the lowest in the nation (See Table 1). By 1976, the rate had increased to 28.1 percent but yet remained the lowest in the United States. This backwardness is demonstrated not only by the participation rate of women but by that of men as well.' Despite massive out-migration of workers of both sexes, a pattern resulting in a higher participation rate for the remaining population, West Virginia has for much of this century ranked near the bottom in terms of the male labor participation rate. For instance, 1976 figures indicate that West Virginia had a rate less than that of all other states other than Florida where a massive retired population pulls down the rate (See Table 1). This figure for West Virginia is especially significant since it reflects the rate during a period of boom in the coal industry. In order to understand its impact on women, capitalist production in West Virginia is examined in its initial period of development from 1880 to 1930, in the transitional period following mechanization and the consolidation of wage labor relations, and in the period of the last two decades characterized by the penetration of capitalism into all aspects of Appalachian life, particularly the family. LABOR PARTICIPATION IN THE COMPANY TOWN ERA The development of the coal resources in West Virginia led to significant social and economic changes. In 1880, the state was characterized by a subsistence agricultural economy with some commercial trading. By 1930, the economy was characterized by capitalist relations, particularly the development of wage labor in the mining of coal. Industrialization increased, though not significantly, the participation of women in the paid labor market (See Table 1). This fact is attributable to the impact of the dominant industrycoal-on the West Virginia econony. First, the coal industry itself did not directly employ women, not as miners nor as clerks in company stores or offices. Second, the coal industry was located primarily in rural areas where labor participation rates generally tend to be lower. Moreover, the coal industry limited the development of an internal market and the expansion of 46 �capitalism into new spheres of production. The coal operators adopted policies which monopolized the use of the land and the labor force.7 Access to land and labor, even if not consciously prevented by coal operators, was difficult in the environment of closed coal towns. The lack of a diversified economy, manufacturing and retailing and wholesaling, further limited the job opportunities for women since the lack of a consuming population meant that the service, clerical, and sales industries (women's work) remained at a primitive level. Requiring large numbers of workers most of whom were male and many of whom had wives and daughters, the industry created a concentration of women in communities with virtually no job opportunities for them. The very low labor participation rates of women in West Virginia, in fact, hide the crucial role of women in the coal economy. Responsible for producing and reproducing a labor force for coal mining, women produced goods within the home. Though not unlike the role of women in working class families throughout the country, women's significance in the coal field economy was probably much greater. Profitability in the coal industry, routinely characterized by overproduction until 1930, was based on the direct reduction of wages to or below a cultural subsistence.' In this context, home production meant sheer survival. Maintaining profits through the reduction of wages required tight control of the labor force and an ability to prevent unionization. One aspect of this policy was the elimination of competing demands for the labor force. Another was relocation to avoid unions. For instance, there were important shifts in production from unionized coal fields in Illinois and Pennsylvania to "wilderness" West Virginia following the first UMW national agreement in 1898 and again in the 1920's.9 Locating in "wilderness" areas provided several advantages, particularly the opportunity to recruit a labor force10 and the opportunity to establish company towns suited to the control of labor either through repression or paternalism, and was by design meant to limit job opportunities for miners and their families. A study of women in coal miners' families based on the 1922 United States Coal Commission investigation states: Women are naturally an important fact in an industry like coal mining which of necessity is carried on in many instances in isolated localities. The presence of the family is essential to keeping the mine workers in these regions, and help of the wives in maintaining normal homes means greater efficiency on the part of the mine workers themselves.'' This study interprets the structure of the coal town as a geoeconomic necessity; we assert that it is a social necessity of the mode of production. Both views agree that the family was necessry for the production and reproduction of an efficient work force. 12 Women provided to the family and to the coal economy the production of goods within the home. Though there is no data to quantify the extent of this production, it is safe to assume that activities such as gardening, food preservation, baking, and domestic textiles were considerable. Many wives also contributed directly to family income through work performed in the only place of opportunity-trie home.13 In 1922, 21.3 percent of the wives of West Virginia miners were engaged in some paid work. 14 Of these, 97 percent of them were employed in the home, most providing for boarders and lodgers 47 �and a few doing only laundering or other services. In the more isolated bituminous mining regions, this involves not only cooking and the care of sleeping quarters but doing the laundry for boarders and lodgers. In many camps it is customary for boarders to bring their own food, the wife of the household cooking for each boarder as well as her own family. While this system probably makes for greater satisfaction among the boarders it must entail much more cooking on the part of the housewife than if the same food were cooked to be eaten by family and boarders alike." Thus it is clear that women in coal communities worked-often without pay and when for pay, in the home performing work of the same kind. Women worked out of the economic necessity created by an industry which directly required the families of its employees to absorb some of the costs of production while at the same time, both by intention and by its inherent structure, limiting the job opportunities of family members, particularly those of women. TRANSITION TO A "MODERN" ECONOMY In the 1930's, the coal operators were no longer able to prevent the unionization of their labor force. Moreover, coal operators competed not only with each other but increasingly with the oil and gas industries as well as for markets. Faced with these changes, the operators initiated mechanization through the adoption of machine loading technology. A corollary development was the increase of profits through increased productivity and less reliance on the reduction of wages to create profits. Along with these changes, operators sold company houses to miners and loosened the tight control that they had formerly held on coal communities. The increasing use of the automobile also encouraged the decline of the company town. These changes had two important implications for women in the coal fields. First, the unionization resulted in wages equal to or above the subsistence level, thereby reducing the necessity for supplementing the family income. Secondly, the quality of life in coal communities improved with the introduction of public services such as running water. Both of these changes eased the burden of women. The changes in the coal economy were part of national changes which were reducing the role of the family within the capitalist mode of production. First, there was a decreased scope of production within the family unit. Second, the separation between home and work was expanding. Third, decreased time was required for procreation." Capitalism survives by incorporating ever more spheres of production into commodity production-production for exchange in a market for a profit. As a result, the scope of production within the family declines and the separation of home and work expands. As to the first, the introduction of laborsaving devices (which are themselves often new commodities) has reduced the time required for the care of a family. For instance, innovations make the preservation an preparation of food a minor task today compared to the efforts it required a century ago. But beyond these innovations, capitalism penetrated the family further and produced, as a commodity, foods that are essentially fully prepared, leaving only the labor of heating, serving, 48 �and cleanup. But more recently, the drive for profit has penetrated even further into the family. It is estimated that today American families eat more than one third of all their meals in restaurants. Thus the heating, serving, and cleanup have now been incorporated into the profit system. The increasing commoditization of functions previously performed within the family has meant it has become almost entirely a consuming rather than a producing unit. This pattern is as true for leisure and entertainment activities as it is for the more primary survival functions. Other than church activities, fun and fellowship are pursued almost entirely in a market context. Increased penetration of capitalism into the home has decreased the economic functions of the family and particularly those of the wife who, under capitalism, had performed a majority of domestic economic functions. With the expansion of commodity production has come an increased demand for labor, and women have thus become more integrated, albeit at the margins, into paid commodity production. THE MODERN ERA Women's participation in the paid labor market has expanded significantly since World War II. Nationally the increase has been from 35.8 percent in 1945 to 50.8 percent in early 1979. In West Virginia the increase has also been apparent, but as compared to the national figure, the overall labor participation of women in the labor market remains the lowest of any state. In this section we examine the sectors in which women's employment has increased and the reasons for the continued low rate of participation of West Virginia in the paid labor market. The occupation structure for women in 1960 and 1970 in West Virginia is shown in Table 2. The concentration of women in traditional "women's work" is obvious. Service workers (including household), clerical and kindred, sales, and profession and technical make up 80.8 percent of the state's employment of women in 1970. Although participation of women in the labor force in West Virginia increased overall by 23.1 percent from 1960 to 1970, the largest gains in actual number of jobs were in those categories where women were already employed. There were some shifts reflecting trends in the national economy such as the decline in the proportion of women employed in private household work and the increase of women employed in clerical and kindred occupations.'' What explains the low labor participation rate of women in West Virginia in 1970? Unlike the earlier part of this century, the coal industry no longer dominated the State's economy. Employment in the coal industry was in 1970 about 10 percent of total employment. The company towns had long since been transformed into "independent" communities. Although the link between the coal industry and labor participation rates is not as clear now as it once was, the relationship still exists. Although there have been important changes in the coal economy, they have not changed the nature of the mode of production in West Virginia relative to other regions of the national economy. The lack of industrial diversification which characterized the coal fields in the pre 1930s perists today." The lack of industrial diversity in West Virginia today is a legacy of the past. Even after fifty years of expanding coal production which ended in 1927, West Virginia by the 1940s was still relatively deficient in its social infrastructure (roads, schools, health facilities) and in its small internal market. The decreased demand for coal and the huge out-migration of the population in the 1950s served to intensify the state's deficiencies. 49 �Even the recent growth of coal employment has not changed the industrial structure nor increased the job opportunities for women. The coal industry is still characterized by a blue collar work force accounting for more than 90 percent of its employees, the highest proportion of any industry. "Women's work"-office work, clerks, sales-is virtually nonexistent in the industry, certainly within the state where extraction is done primarily by corporations based outside the state. Moreover, coal does not generate much of a demand for suppliers to the industry nor does it attract an "industrial complex" centered on coal inputs." Finally, much of the value-added tax generated by coal mining leaves the region in the form of interest dividends, royalties, and rents, limiting the internal market in its size and diversity. The structure of the coal economy is such as to limit the job opportunities for, and labor participation of, women. This point is illustrated in Table 3, wherein counties are classified as either coal or non-coal counties, the former producing at least 2.4 million tons of coal in 1970. The counties are also classified as rural or urban, the latter if at least 30 percent of the population live in urban areas. Using the County and City Data Book, the labor participation rates of women were computed and averages for four different types of counties determined.20 Table 3 illustrates that in rural counties, the labor participation of women is lower in the coal counties than it is in the non-coal counties. This shows that the extent to which a county is rural does not alone explain the nonparticipation of women in the labor force. Rather the nature of the coal economy itself is an important variable affecting female labor participation in coal and non-coal counties. 21 The impact of the coal industry on industrial structure can also be seen by an examination of the industrial structure itself. The 1970 census data reveals that the central Appalachian economy is less diversified in terms of population employed in different industries. 22 Central Appalchia had less of its labor force employed in retail and wholesale, professional services, manufacturing, domestic and entertainment, finance, insurance and real estate, business and repair services and construction than did the nation as a whole. However, central Appalachia had more than thirteen times the national average in forest and mining industries and, curiously enough, educational services. The impact of the coal economy on job opportunities for women is illustrated in the number of women employed in professional and technical (including educational) occupations. Nationally, the figure was 15.4 percent, whereas West Virginia had a higher rate of 16.6 percent. Amazingly, the statistics for rural coal counties had an even higher percentage of women workers in this occupational category. Five rural coal counties (Logan, McDowell, Mingo, Raleigh-no longer rural-and Wyoming) actually had more than 20 percent of their women workers in this occupational category. In fact, membership in this category was probably made up almost entirely of school-teachers and health professionals. Ironically, in counties where health and educational services were notoriously lacking, that occupation accounted for a higher percentage of the female work force than was true of the rest of the state and of the nation. This anomaly is explained, not by the fact that there was an exceptional number of professional and technical workers in an absolute sense or a high per population ratio, but by the fact that there were so few jobs available to women in other occupational categories that their access to participation in this particular category skewed the percentages.23 Clearly, the dominant mining industry has not engendered a balanced economy within the region. 50 �CONCLUSIONS Women within the capitalist mode of production suffer a twofold oppression, in the home and in the labor market. In West Virginia, women suffer a twofold discrimination within the labor market. They have until recently been excluded from the primary source of employment in the state, the coal industry. Moreover, the coal industry has influenced the structure of the economy such as to prevent diversification and thus has reduced further the opportunities for employment available to women. The entry of women into blue collar jobs in West Virginia in industries such as mining, basic steel, chemicals, and construction will not significantly change women's labor participation rates relative to the national average. There are a limited number of jobs in any of these industries, and the numbers are increasing in only a few of them. Moreover, since women's entry is at the bottom of seniority systems in the state's highly unionized basic industrial sector, they are subject to layoffs and will not become fully integrated (under present practices and laws) for decades. Finally, though entry into the blue collar sector will increase the labor participation rate of women, that is a national trend and does not mean an improvement in the state's rate relative to the rest of the country. Opening of blue collar jobs to both sexes does mean an opportunity for women to engage in more remunerative employment and probably over the long run will create attitudinal changes as to the appropriateness of thinking of certain work as "women's" work. But the opening the blue collar jobs to women does not affect the basic industial structure. The unavailability of work for either six continues to be a persistent problem in the West Virginia economy. Until the structure of the economy changes, West Virginia clearly will not have jobs for all of its citizens. This conclusion is equally applicable to rural counties, as to the industrial counties in Appalachia. In rural counties where few traditional male jobs; exist, breaking down the traditional sexual occupational boundaries will not have a significant quantitative effect on women's employment. In rural counties, as in coal counties, it is necessary to change the economic structure of the local economy in order to provide job opportunities for women. One final conclusion, only suggested in this paper, is that to eliminate sexual oppression both in West Virginia and the United States as a whole, it is necessary to change the mode of production. The history of West Virginia shows that the sexual discrimination of female labor was not simply attitudinal but served the existing mode of production. In the company town era, women's work underpinned the profits of coal employers in allowing lower paid wages to miners. In the modern era, the segregation of women's work serves the profits of their employers in that job discrimination reduces the level of remuneration necessary to attract workers. In order to remove the financial incentive in sexual discrimination, it is necessary to change the mode of production based on production for profit. 51 �TABLE 1 Male & Female Labor Force Participation Rates* United States and West Virginia, 1900-1977. Female Male United States West Virginia United States West Virginia 20.4% 9.3%A 80.0% 1900 87.7% 13.2B 84.1 72.4 + 1930 24.3 29.0 1950 78.9 74.619.6-1960 37.1 82.4 67.824.329.4B 1970 42.8 79.2 66.949.4 72.0A 38. IB 1976 78.5 *Male or female labor force divided by male or female population above some age; for 1900-1930, it is population ten years old and over: for 1950, fourteen years old and over: for 1960-1977, sixteen years old and over. A second lowest of any state B lowest of any state + third lowest of any state - Rankings not determined SOURCE: U. S. Census of Population, 1900 & 1930 and Statistical Abstract of the U.S. Data for 1976 are from "Marital and Family Status of Workers State and Area," Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, Report 545, Spring 1976, pp. 3 and 9. 52 �TABLE 2 OCCUPATIONAL STRUCTURE OF EXPERIENCED LABOR FORCE, WEST VIRGINIA, 1960 AND 1970 OCCUPATION Professional Technical and Kindred Managers and Administrators Sales Workers Clerican and Kindred Craftsman and Kindred Opeatives, Except Transportation Transportaton Operatives Laborers, Except Farm Farmers and Farm Managers Distribution of Women Workers U.S. West Virginia 1970 1960 1970 15.4% 17.2% 16.6% 4.5 12.0 25.9 1.0 ( (12.0 0.6 0.6 4.5 8.3 30.0 1.9 11.5 3.6 7.4 34.5 1.8 14.6 0.4 1.5 0.5 1.0 0.2 ( (0.4 0.4 Farm Laborers and Foreman 17.0 20.1 Service Workers Private Household Workers 8.7 4.9 TOTAL 100.0 100.0 Source: Census of Population, U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1960 and 1970 0.6 16.6 3.9 100.0 Females as a Percentage of Total Labor Force, Percentage Change by Occupation West Virginia West Virginui, 1960-1970 1970 Female Employment Male Employment 24.5% 43.9% 19.1% 22.9 -14.8 41.9 123.0 ( (22.1 -3.4 -20.1 26.6 5.1 ( 18.8 44.5 69.7 3.4 22.3 185.5 -27.1 2.3 7.3 (-62.8 ( (7.9 ( 1-51.1 45.8 -30.3 23.1 (-8.5 ( 24.7 -33.2 -7.8 60.0 97.1 31.9 �TABLE 3 Female Labor Participation Rates*, by type of County, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Virginia, 1970 Appalachian Portion of Virginia Type of County* * West Virginia Pennsylvania Kentucky 7.2 6.7 Rural Coal 8.3 11.5 Rural Non-Coal 9.2 13.2 8.9 11.8 Urban Coal 12.2 9.0 NA 12.5 11.4 12.4 13.8 Urban Non-Coal 14.3 *Female Labor Participation Rates are defined as the number of women in the labor force divided by the total population times 100. Thus these figures are not comparable to other tables. **Coal counties are counties which produced 2.4 million tons or more of coal in 1970. Urban counties are counties in which at least 30 percent of the population lived in urban areas in 1970. Source: County and City Data Book, 1970, Appachian States Data File, Division of Environmental and Urban Stystems, Virginia Tech. 54 �NOTES We gratefully acknowledge the research assistance of John Taylor, the computer assistance of Bruce Carveth and Dr. Tom Watts, and the typing of Jo Anne Smith and Nancy Marosy. We also think Jane Horton and Connie Mahoney for their comments at the Appalachian Studies Conference. 1. Bureau of Labor Statistics. U. S. Department of Labor, Report 572, 1979. 2. Sheila Rowbotham. Women's Consciousness.: Man's World (N. Y.: Penquin Books, 1973), p. 68. 3. Ibid., p. 68. 4. Ibid., p. 84. 5. Ibid., p. 89. 6. Interestingly, the deficiency in that participation rate is not accounted for by an excess in the elderly population. That portion of West Virginia in central Appalachia had 10.6 percent of its population age sixty-five or over in 1975 while Appalachian New York had 11.4 percent of its population in that category. Population 65 years of age and older, Appalachian Region and Untied States, 1970-75, Appalachia~A Reference Book (Washington: Appalachian Regional Commission, 1977), Table 8. p. 26. 7. See Richard M. Simon, "The Lablor Process and Uneven Development: The Appalachian Coalfields, 1880-1930," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 4 (March 1980): 46-71. 8. One method of producing profit is to increase the productivity of labor. In steel, for example, productivity was increased through the organization of work and capital investment. Most of the productivity gains were appointed by the owners of the factories, but part of the productivity gains were distributed to workers in the form of increased wages. The coal operators, however, faced with intense competition and declining or unstable prices adopted policies to increase profit through the indirect and direct reduction of wages such as shortweighing and overcharges in company stores and housing. The earnings of many miners were estimated by the Bureau of Labor in the early 1920s to be inadequate to provide a minimal subsistence. For a further discussion of the role of coal in the West Virginia economy see Richard M. Simon, "The Development of Underdevelopment." Ph.D dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1978), especially chapter 6. 9. Simon, "Development of Underdevelopment," pp. 76 and 77. 10. Baily, "A Judicious Mixture, "West Virginia History 34 (January 1973): 141-161. 11. "Home Environment and Employment Opportunities of Women in Coal Mine Workers' Families," Bulletin of the Women's Bureau, No. 45, U. S. Department of Labor, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1925). 12. The sons of miners often became miners. The daughters of miners, however, did not have a role to play in the coal town, other than in marrying a male miner. Therefore, unlike the sons, the daughters were forced to leave the family and the community in order to find work. In only 26 percent of the families that had daughters, were the daughters still living at home at age fifteen and over. See Ibid., pp. 39-42. 13. In fact, it is essential in a mode of production that is paying wages less than the familial subsistence wage that the family have a means of increasing its total income. Carmen Diana Deere argues that the non-capitalist mode of production within the family absorbs the cost of production and reproduction of labor power; in developing countries, this would most often take the form 55 �of subsistence agricultural production by women. In "Rural Women's Subsistence Production in the Capitalist Periphery," Review of Radical Political Economics 8 (Spring 1976): 9-17, 14. "Home Environment and Employment Opportunities." It is interesting to note that West Virginia had the highest percentage of miners' wives gainfully employed; the average throughout the bituminous coal fields was 17.1 percent. The percentage of wives gainfully employed is related to the percentage of the mine related population housed in company towns. West Virginia had the highest percentage-about 80 percent. 15. Ibid., p. 37. 16. See Rowbotham, Women's Consciousness, pp. 103-115. 17. The very large percentage increases in the employment of women in the crafts and laborers are misleading because the large percentage are due to the very small number of women in those occupations in 1960. They do represent, however, the opening to women of jobs previously traditional to male workers, among these the employment of women in the coal mines after 1974. 18. West Virginia has never been a complete mono-economy. As early as the 1900s, glass and metal fabrication co-existed with coal in the northern West Virginia, and since World War I chemical production has coexisted with coal in the Kanawha Valley. However, these operations, primarily branch plant operations, have not materially changed the structure of the West Virginia economy. 19. See Nasser Sherafat, Angelos Pagoulatos, and Kurt R. Anschel, "The Exploitation of Coal as an Engine for Growth in Eastern Kentucky-An InputOutput Study," Southern Journal of Agricultural Economics, December 1978, pp. 81-86. 20. In this table, labor force participation of women had to be defined as the female labor force divided by the total population of the county, rather than the female labor force divided by the female population sixteen years of age and older. Thus, the figures are not comparable. There is some variation between counties in the participation rates due to the variation in the proportion of the total population which is female. However, this variation will not affect the comparison of the averages among the four groups of counties. 21. It is interesting to note that in West Virginia, the urban coal counties have higher female labor participation rates than do the non-coal urban counties. This is not true in Kentucky or Pennsylvania where urban coal counties, as rural coal counties, have lower female participation rates than do the urban non-coal counties. This is explained in that the West Virginia urban coal counties are also the most highly industralized and diversified. For example, the state university is located in Monongalia County and the state capital is located in Kanawha County. 22. See Appalachia—A Reference Book, 2nd Edition, Appalachian Regional Commission, February 1979, p. 50. 23. As a way of comparsion, highly industrialized counties had a significantly lower percentage of women in that category. Brooke had 15.7 percent; Hancock had 14.2 percent; Ohio had 15.8 percent; Harrison had 15.8 percent and Wood had 15.3 percent. Of these, Harrison and Ohio had some production. Kanawha with the state capital had 17.1 percent and Monongalia, with the university and its hospital dominating its economy, equalled Mingo for the highest rate with 22.8 percent. 56 �II Land in Appalachia 57 �WHERE AMERICAN HISTORY BEGAN: APPALACHIA AND THE SMALL INDEPENDENT FAMILY FARM John Opie Abstract Some historians, including F. J. Turner, believed that the independent yeoman farmer was the first uniquely American figure. A strong case can be made that this symbol first emerged in the southern Appalachian region. The small-scale independent farmer remained the most important symbol of American success from approximately 1720 to 1880, but could not cope with new agricultural conditions on the arid Great Plains. The result was a massive civilizational failure (1870-1940). That, together with endemic poverty and instability in Appalachia itself, has raised questions about the durability of one of the most powerful archetypes of American life. This essay explores the difficult and ambiguous, but crucial and un-examined, links between the specific geography of a region, the kind of people attracted to it, the quality of life carved out a region, and the influence of a region and its people upon a national consciousness today. When we look at Appalachia and its role in the development of the American people, the geography is so commonplace and the way of life so routine that it does not attract extraordinary attention. But a landscape has human meaning, no matter how ordinary, or how inhospitable and poor. Significant features of a society are exposed by reading its landscape. The historical geographer, Peirce F. Lewis, writes: Our human landscape is our unwitting autobiography, reflecting our tastes, our values, our aspirations, and even our fears, in tangible, visible form. We rarely think of landscape that way, and so the cultural record we have "written" in the landscape is liable to be more truthful than most autobiographies because we are less self-conscious about how we describe ourselves. Grady Clay has said it well: "There are no secrets in the landscape." All our cultural warts and blemishes are there, and our glories too; but above all, our ordinary day-to-day qualities are exhibited for anybody who wants to find them and knows how to look for them.' As farmers settled frontier regions, they themselves changed as much as the wilderness. To create a human landscape out of wilderness represented an enormous investment of skills, energy, time, and emotions. The natural features of a piece of land, the mechanics or technology of working and living on it, all suggest that a quality of life is intimately related to the geography one starts out with, and the "built landscape" one comes up with. Since Roman and medieval times, farmers have tested the agricultural potential of an undeveloped piece of land by its natural vegetation cover. The most desirable farmland, tradition said, was covered by a thick forest. 58 �When frontier farmers first encountered the southern Appalachians, its forest cover surpassed all expectations and may have been the greatest stand of trees and vegetation encountered since Roman time. At the bridge between the southern Great (Shenandoah) Valley of Virginia and the all-important Cumberland Gap stands the greatest and most varied deciduous forest in North America. A long history of climate and glacial movement, together with rich soil and wide range of altitute (nine hundred to six thousand feet) compressed into this region an extraordinary treasure of twenty-five hundred trees, shrubs, and other plants. No wonder the famed early American botanist William Bartram wrote in 1791 of the "sublime forest" he encountered here, and that the region attracted a special visit from the French naturalist Andre Michaux early in the nineteenth century.2 Bartram excitedly described black oaks 30 feet in circumference, massive chestnut trees 13 feet thick at the base, and beeches and gum trees which towered to 150 feet. This promising land stood at the base of the Great Valley and settlers poured into the top of the Valley by the 1720s. Fertile limestone soils, cheap land, and accessibility from the north but not the east drew frontier farmers. The Valley also lacked permanent Indian settlements, as would Kentucky seventy years later. Earlier native burning and hunting created a region which was fire resistant with significant, open grass covered meadows.3 Primary agricultural needs were fully satisfied: fertile soil, water, vegetation cover, flat or rolling terrain. Limited markets, lack of capital, and labor intensive farming kept Valley farmers on a subsistence level into the 1760s, a major achievement, nevertheless, where once there had been only wilderness. Fields covered ten acres, planted in corn, wheat, or rye, yielding ten to seventeen bushels per acre. Between 1760 and 1800 the Valley shifted into a cash crop economy, changing from frontier conditions to a rural society. Frontiersmen searching out forest land with good farming potential in the southern Appalachians had already been primed not only by the Great Valley, but also by the extraordinary agricultural successes in southeastern from its original twenty to forty acres. The family also used its cash to acquire salt, tea, coffee, iron goods, perhaps some textiles, and services when needed very rich."4 The bounty of nature was being used as a test for good land: a temperate climate, rich soil supporting a vast forest, flat or gently rolling terrain, and an adequate water supply. But the superiority of the southern Appalachian forest to Pennsylvania and the Great Valley established a new standard for agricultural potential. This same southern Appalachian forest would become the setting for another American standard. The historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, when he searched for a uniquely American identity, turned for his answer to the westward frontier expansion of the new nation. In most frontier epics, heroic stature belonged to the mountain man, explorer, fur trader, hunter, or backwoodsman. But when he wrote his all-important 1893 essay, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," Turner gave his attention to "the advance of the more steady farmer.'" This was Turner's "representative frontiersman." The sequence of waves of agrarian advance into the wilderness is constant: first, backwoods settlement, then, permanent clearings that open the forested land, and finally the extensive fields of a recognizable rural American landscape.6 According to his 1908 essay, "The Old West," published by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, this representative frontier farmer first appeared in the Great Valley and the colonial background: today's southern Appalachia. Turner concentrated his attention to that flow of settlement which ran through the Valley and penetrated into the Cumberland Gap. His classic statement in the 1893 essay: recalls the migration. "Stand at 59 �Cumberland Gap and watch the procession of civilization, marching single file-the buffalo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian, the fur trader and hunter, the cattle raiser, the pioneer farmer-and the frontier has passed by." 7 Southern Appalachia was part of Turner's "Middle Region," which "was democratic and nonsectional, if not national; [it was] easy, tolerant, and contented; rooted strongly in material prosperity....the Middle region mediated between East and West as well as between North and South. Thus it became the typically American region."8 Aside from Turner, a strong case can be made that this small family farmer in the southern Appalachians did become the model, even ideal, by which Americans identified themselves, and which rang true to foreign observers. Westward agricultural expansion dominated the American experience in the early nineteenth century. Alternative outside influences were few: only 250,000 immigrants were added at a time when the population grew from 4,000,000 to 9,600,000. Americans turned inland and inward; in the process they arrived at a national identity. 9 The frontier family farm became a distinctively American way of life. The farmer, on his piece of land, formed the basis for major American ideological beliefs: freedom, opportunity, individualism, pragmatism, growth, and optimism. We can consider this agrarian experience, from Appalachia in 1800 to its collapse on the arid Great Plains in 1880, as the emergence and persistence of "Original America." "Original America" established, perhaps for the first time, a specifically American standard of living and quality of life. The standards established for farm land in the southern Appalachians, together with the independent family farmer of the region, became fixtures in American history. By 1820 the magnet which pulled settlers across the Alleghenies and through Appalachia into the Midwest was the promise of land so fertile that the wheat went to straw unless you had several seasons of corn. The modern ecologist, Aldo Leopold, writing of the rich cane lands of central Kentucky, which would become the classic bluegrass country, asked, Would Boone and Kenton have held out? Would there have been any overflow into Ohio? Any Louisiana Purchase? Any transcontinental union of new states? Any Civil War? Any machine? Any depression? The subsequent drama of American history, here and elsewhere, hung in large degree on the reaction of particular soils to the impact of particular forces exerted by a particular kind and degree of human occupation.10 The transappalachian midwestern forest apparently stretched endlessly, the soil was rich and black, and most attractive of all, utterly stoneless. Whether in the Great Valley, the vast southern Appalachian forest, or the flat, deep soils of the Midwest, basic necessities had to be adapted out of the environment with the resources the farmer could bring from civilization. Frontier settlement was like a long-term expedition into the wilderness with wife and children rather than other able-bodied, skilled men. Most adapting of raw materials depended upon muscle power, a variety of basic agricultural skills, and simple tools, the majority of which had not changed substantially since the dawn of agriculture—axe, grubbing hoe, spade, rake, sheath knife, wedge, and mallet.'' In this regard, the ever present rifle was a new fangled device. The technological revolution and mechanical equipment would come later. Agriculture was still based on traditional, European hand tool dirt farm- 60 �ing upon land cleared from a dense deciduous forest in a temperate climate. In the first year, three to five acres were cleared of forest, mostly down to stumps left to rot, and fifteen more acres with trees, girdled or "deadened." The clearing was planted first in corn. By the second year, eight to ten acres were open, planted again in corn or at best half corn and vegetables, and half wheat for some cash.12 All too often an unexpected burden for the wilderness farmer was his dismayed discovery that his livestock could not or would not survive on native American grasses for pasture. He was compelled to import English grasses with him, notably red clover and timothy, or in Kentucky, bluegrass. If any cash was available it would often be a downpayment for more land (the interest rate was twelve to twenty per cent) to enlarge the farm from its original twenty to fourty acres. The family also used its cash to acquire salt, tea, coffee, iron goods, perhaps some textiles, and services when needed of a lawyer, minister, miller, blacksmith, shoemaker, and part-time laborer. The frontier self-sustaining farm family was typically settled on eighty acres within three to five years. This settlement usually remained unchanged for about ten years before it was transformed into a post-frontier, middle America, farm community. Contrary to the standard myths about American growth and prosperity, this small farmer had no great urge to improve his condition above a certain basic standard of living which he saw as good and which we would call subsistence.13 But we must remember that in the long seven thousand year history of agriculture, with ninety percent of the humans of that era being farmers, this American farmer, roughly between 1750 and 1840, became one of the world's most successful agriculturalists. We must see his "subsistence" economic level in a global perspective. By modern standards, according to the naturalist Betty Flanders Thomson, life for the pioneer farmer was hard, raw, and lonesome. In the Midwest the first farms were scattered at random all over the area, most of them far from neighbors and further isolated by the widespread swampiness of the land and the impassable condition of what roads there were....there is little reason to believe that life at that time and place offered any advantages beyond independence, owning one's own land, and a hope that the future would be better. 14 The settlement cycle was the same-clearing timber and brush, breaking the primeval soil, first corn and later wheat crops, within a ten-year span, rarely less. The attraction, likewise, remained the same: self-sufficiency and independence-at a subsistence level, to be sure, but that seemed enough. In contemporary writings, affirmations of agricultural success far out-numbered reports of disappointment and failure." Reports of agricultural disillusionment and downright collapse came later, and from other places. So little value was attached to treeless land that in the 1780s when settlers reached the first large prairie in Kentucky, the one referred to above by Aldo Leopold, they called it the "Big Barrens."16 James Madison was convinced that Jefferson had squandered federal funds when he acquired the vast, treeless Louisiana Territory in 1803. The prairie repelled farmers; it was monotonous, empty, uninviting, and presumably barren. When they encountered the midwestern open country at roughly the Indiana-Illinois border, farmers were stymied by their tradition that open treeless country was not good farming country. 17 Conditions were wrong on the prairie; it was not like the southern Appalachian forest model. There was no protection from wind, cold, or heat. Wood was not available for fences, buildings, and fuel. And the sod was so dense and tangled that it was unplowable with available technology: the traditional, heavy, tough, iron-sheathed wooden plow. By all rights, westward 61 �movement of the Appalachian formed small farmer should have ended at the Illinois-Indiana line. But the prairie soil was too rich to be ignored. "Sodbusting" demanded the new, thin, lightweight, highly polished steel shear plow devised by John Deere. The resulting crops exceeded all previous bounty. Unlike the East, where farms have been carved out of the forest, cultivated for some years, and then later abandoned, very little prairie country has ever lain idle. The prairie frontier farmer had a subsistence crop of corn in his first year and often a cash crop of wheat by the third to fifth year. The symbolic act on this near perfect farm land took place in 1839, when Lyman Dillon plowed a furrow a hundred miles long across the prairie to lay out the road from Dubuque through the site of Iowa City to the Missouri line." It now seemed that the small farmer in America was invincible; even the old traditions about the best land being forested land had been laid to rest in Iowa's rich black moist "gumbo." His westward advance was not only inevitable, it became the major force in America's "manifest destiny." The next challenge would be the land west of the hundredth meridian, a north-south line, lying roughly half way between Chicago and Denver today if one is traveling Interstate 80, and dividing the nation into approximately equal east-west halves. East of the line are the rich prairies just discussed. West of the line stands one of the grasslands of the world-the arid high plains country. The high plains had had a historic reputation as a dry unfarmable region since the early nineteenth century. And dry land regions, because of the limits of existing agricultural techniques, made American farmers as uncomfortable as open, treeless country had earlier until the prairie country had been opened up. An incredible event took place in the 1870s which seemed part of the small farmer's destiny to succeed in his westward movement. For the better part of a decade, unusually heavy rains covered the arid high plains, and the "Great American Desert" became the "Great American Garden."" News spread rapidly that the small farmer could change the climate by plowing the land and planting trees. The famous maxim, "Rain follows the plow," carried farmers into the inhospitable region. But by the late 1880s, wagons of farmers retreated eastward carrying the bitter slogan, "In God we trusted, in Kansas we busted." The region, when its typical dryness returned, became a largescale example of human failure. The agriculturalist's victory was brief; the farming traditions learned in the east failed dismally. A sizeable American landscape was depopulated, including massive emigration from many settled regions and the abandonment of the entire towns.20 This failure was made worse by the stubborn persistence of the small farmer tradition in a region where its geographical usefulness was questionable. The result was agricultural failure for over seventy years, from the 1870s to the 1940s. An eastern success story, the Appalachian style small farmer became a broken myth west of the hundredth meridian. This region, whre agribusiness would get its start, was the place where the classic Jeffersonian yeoman farmer would disappear. Turner was only partly right. Nevertheless, where the Appalachian style small farmer appeared and persisted, from the Great Valley to the midwestern prairie, one of the world's great agricultural traditions was established. Several features of this tradition were unique and gave American society its distinctive coloration. The frontier farmer labored through his days and nights in intense isolation. His degree of separation from the civilized world was unprecedented in human history and formed the backdrop for his thoughts and actions. More often than not the farmer and his family were literally "off the map," having settled on land that had not been explored, surveyed, or mapped. The impact of 62 �backwoods isolation is suggested by the intensity of frontier religion, especially highly emotional, camp meeting revivalism.21 Folks feared for themselves and the conditions of their souls in an alien environment which seemed filled not only with the "silence of God," but in its strangeness pointed to the absence or "death of God," or at least his disappearance. To this psychologically powerful isolation must be added the influence of the distinctive family homestead which Americans take for granted but is a pointed contrast to the rural village communities in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The American farm family lived on its piece of land, clearly separated from neighbors and usually isolated from daily contact with any established community. No wonder frontier accounts tell of the madness of wives and the violence of husbands. The strongest sense of security under these conditions may have been the farmer's psychological bond with the tract of land which he owned and worked. By hard physical labor with hand tools, the farmer acquired a close identity with his land. Here he acquired the same solidarity with the landscape as did European, Asian, or African agriculturalists." This sense of solidarity is an unexplored theme in American history. The land was part of his own personal identity; conversely, he invented the place where he lived, creating it out of wilderness placelessness. This "built landscape" signalled to him his chances for survival. One of the most crucial aspects of frontier settlement was its durability under adverse conditions. The American farmer, despite his isolation and vulernability, believed he experienced a high degree of success and had carved out a satisfying standard of living. Pioneer farm people were used to hard physical work under dangerous conditions. Frontier farmers lived under what behavioral psychologists today would call high risk conditions, as they wavered between failure, survival, and different levels of subsistence." Their life was hazardous, because wilderness circumstances meant difficult actions happened more frequently, and tested their peak abilities constantly. There was less ability to cope with crisis when one faced it regularly and often went through defeat. Farmers on the edge of civilization more willingly accepted lower levels of performance. Desperate farmers tended to throw themselves into hopelessly optimistic projects and pollyanna solutions. Coping with an unknown, dangerous, and probably hostile environment, life for the American farmer involved more difficult work, more critical decisions, and more uncontrollable factors than in long settled regions. Hence, also, the high satisfaction with barely adequate success on a subsistence level. Extreme physical hardship, the dangers of accidents, and the uncontrollable power of circumstances were vivid daily realities for the small frontier farmer. But essentially the farming family, when it moved into a new region, was optimistic, and with justification. Their goals were attainable; pioneer farmers did not experience the grinding hopeless labor and deep pessimism of their counterparts elsewhere in the world. The risks were worth the benefits. The danger of failure or harm seemed nominal for the high returns. If a farmer had his health, reasonable abilities, basic survival and agricultural skills (which most people had), he could expect a comfortable existence.24 This essay is no more than an exploratory enquiry into a neglected but hardly trivial subject. With today's "return-to-the-land" climate, it is all too easy to romanticize the historic single-family farm as an ideal way of life. But anyone who has grown up or lived on a farm hardly praises each early morning's physical chores. Yet the difficult and often desolate life of the pioneer farmer was a quantum leap beyond agrarianism elsewhere in the world, because it promised "independence, owning one's own land, and a hope that 63 �the future would be better." By the standards of today's consumer abundance, the small pioneer farm in the Great Valley, southern Appalachian mountains, and the lower midwest would only impress us by its "nothingness." But as early as 1775, the French visitor, Crevecoeur, waxed eloquently about the pioneer farmer's victory: The world is gradually settled...the howling swamp is converted into a pleasing meadown, the rough ridge into a fine field...hear the cheerful whistling, the rural song, where there was no sound heard before, save the yell of the savage, the screech of the owl, or the hissing of the snake. I wish to see men cut down the first trees, erect their new buildings, till their first fields, reap their first crops, and say for the first time in their lives, "This is our own grain, raised from American soil-on it we shall feed and grow fat, and convert the rest into gold and silver." I want to see how the happy effects of their sobriety, honesty, and industry are first displayed; and who would not take a pleasure in seeing these strangers settling as new countrymen, struggling with arduous difficulties, overcoming them, and becoming happy. All I wish to delineate is, the progressive steps of a poor man, advancing from indigence to ease, from oppression to freedom, from obscurity and contumely to some degree of sonsequence~not by virtue of any freaks of fortune, but by the gradual operation of sobriety, honesty, and emigration. 25 Such quasi-religious proclamations about the primitive American farmer are not surprising. Frederick Jackson Turner's perceptions of the archetypal American-the single-family farmer, owning his land and carving out a fundamentally new existence-represent a virtual profession of faith in a secular symbol derived from out own history. Turner may have done better in describing a national "myth" than in writing history. We have made a very ordinary figure into a larger-than-life ideal. This is not surprising and our task is to come to grips with our creation. There is a great deal of truth in the myth. The verdant, forested southern Appalachian highlands did exist. The frontier farmer did enter them, and his settlement there created new levels of expectation for American agricultural expansion. The archetype that emerged out of this region and its settlement has persisted since then as a major symbol of American history. This agrarian ideal did fail miserably in the western dry grasslands, and it would fall upon extraordinarily hard days in Appalachia itself. Tillich today would call the symbol a "broken myth." And surely the single-family farmer today has difficulty matching historic expectations and standards. But one modern version of the independent farmer, the Appalachian mountaineer, also has a surprisingly strong durability even under adversity. 64 �NOTES NOTE: the references below are hardly exhaustive. Emphasized are works still in print or otherwise readily available. A basic environmental history of Appalachia has yet to be done. 1. Peirce F. Lewis, "Axioms for Reading the Landscape." The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, ed. D. W. Meinig (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 12. Other important related works are DAvid Ward, ed. Geographical Perspectives on America's Past (New York: Oxford University Press, (1979); David Lowenthal and Martyn J. Bowden, Geographies of the Mind: Essays in Historical Geosophy in Honor of John Kirtland Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); and YiFu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977). 2. See Mark Van Doren, ed., Travels of William Bartram (New York: Dover Publications, 1955); Reuben G. Thwaites, Travels West of the Alleghenies (New York: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1904); Maurice Brooks, The Appalachians (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965); and good popular works like May Theilgaard Watts, Reading the Landscape of America (New York: Macmillian Publishing Company, 1975); Eliot Porter and Edward Abbey (with Harry M. Caudill), Appalachian Wilderness: The Great Smoky Mountains (New York: Ballantine Books, 1973); Jerome Dolittle, The Southern Appalchians (New York: Time-Life Books, 1975); and Darwin Lambert, The Earth-Man Story (New York: Exposition Press, 1973). 3. See the excellent analysis by Robert D. Mitchell, "The Shenandoah Valley Frontier," in Ward, p. 150. 4. Still definitive is James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man's Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972). 5. Turner's essay is still available; see Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History, Foreward by R. A. Billington (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winton, 1920, 1947, 1962). 6. Ray Billington, more than anyone else, has mastered the debate over Turner's significance for historical enquiry, and the relative success and failure of his frontier thesis: see especially, America's Frontier Heritage (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966); and Frederick Jackson Turner (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). 7. In the 1920 anthology, p. 12; see also "The Old West," pp. 68-69. 8. "Significance of the Frontier..." in the 1920 anthology, pp. 27-28. 9. Frontier histories which give adequate attention to the farmer are still scarce; see especially, Richard A. Bartlett, The New Country: A Social History of the American Frontier, 1776-1890 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974): John R. Alden, Pioneer America The History of Human Society, ed. J. H. Plumb (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966) Ralph H. Brown, Historical Geography of the United States (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1948); and Reginald Horsman, The Frontier in The Formative Years, 17831815 (New York: Holt. Rinehart and Winston, 1970). 10. Aldo Leopold, "The Conservation Ethic" (1933), reprinted in Robert Disch, ed., The Ecological Conscience (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: PrenticeHall, 1970), p. 46. 11. See John T. Schlebecker, Whereby We Thrive: A History of American Farming, 1607-1972 (Ames, Iowa: The Iowa State University Press, 1975); and 65 �the perceptive classic, Eric Sloane, A Museum of Early American Tools (New York: Ballantine Books, 1964). 12. The best review is still in Horsmann The Frontier in the Formative Years, pp. 104-120. 13. See the comments in Horsman, pp. I l l , 115, 119, and 123-124; also Edward Hyams, Soil and Civilization (London: Thames and Hudson, 1952); and Fernand Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800 (New York: Harper and Row, 1973); as well as the important representative essays by Gratis Williams, Loyal Jones, and Harry M. Caudill in Robert J. Higgs and Ambrose N. Manning, eds., Voices from the Hills: Selected Readings of Southern Appalachia (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1975). 14. Betty Flanders Thomson, The Shaping of America's Heartland: The Landscape of the Middle West (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977), p. 230; compare with Maurice Brooks, The Appalachians (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965). 15. See for example the opinions of contemporaries in Clark C. Spence, ed., The American West (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966); Robert V. Hine and Edwin R. Bingham, eds., The American Frontier (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972); and Martin Ridge and R. A. Billington, eds., America's Frontier Story (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969). This is a subject which has not been adequately explored. 16. The best study on American perceptions of arid lands is still W. Eugene Hollon, The Great American Desert (New YHork: Oxford University Press, 1966). See also excellent essays by Waldo r. Wedel, John L. Allen, David M. Emmons, Martyn J. Bowden, and Leslie Hewes in Brian W. Blouet and Merlin P. Lawson, eds., Images of the Plains: The Role of Human Nature in Settlement (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975). 17. The classic, and controversial study, not yet superseded, is Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1931), pp. 152-159, and 319ff. See also John Opie, "Frontier History in Environmental Perspective," in Jerome O. Steffen, The American West: New Perspectives, New Dimensions (Norman: University of Iklahoma Press, 1979), pp. 9-34. 18. Thomson, The Shaping of America's Heartland, p. 239. 19. See John Opie, "America's Seventy-Year Mistake: or, How We Got Fooled by Good Weather in Difficult Country," Proceedings of a Seminar on Natural Resource Use and Environmental Policy (Ames Iowa: North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, 1980), pp. 27-56. An earlier version is in the Proceedings of an AAAs-DOE Workshop on Environmental and Societal Consequences of a Possible CO-2-Induced Climate Change (Washington, D. C.: USDOE, 1980). 20. See Gilbert C. File, The Farmer's Frontier, 1965-1900 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966); and Climate and Society Research Group, The Effect on Climate Fluctuations on Human Populations (Worcester, Mass.: Clark University, 1979). 21. See Charles A. Johnson, The Frontier Camp Meeting: Religion's Harvest Time (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1955). 22. See John Opie, "A Sense of Place," in An Appalachian Sympsium, ed, J. W. Williamson (Boone, N.C.: Appalachian State University Press, 1977). 23. See John Opie, "Environmental and Human Factors in Farming the Arid Great Plains, 1870-1940," 1980 Meeting of the Midcontinent American Studies Association, Des Moines, Iowa. 24. See Note 13. 25. Quoted in John Opie, "De Crevecoeur's Anti-Frontier Thesis: The 66 �Cultivator's Peaceable Kingdom as a State of Mind," 1977 Meeting of the American Society of Church History, Dallas. 26. See John Opie, "The Merging of Space and Time, Myth and History: The Victory of the Sacred West Over Profane Modernity in the Writings of Frederick Jackson Turner," 1980 Confernce on the Hermeneutics of Myth, Athens, Ohio; and also "Frederick Jackson Turner, The Old West, and the Formation of a National Mythology," 1978 Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, New York City. 67 �LOSING A BIT OF OURSELVES: THE DECLINE OF SMALL FARMER Stephen L. Fisher Mary Harnish Abstract This paper surveys the literature concerned with the nationwide decline of the family farm and the concomitant rise of agribusiness. It identifies the major causes and implications of these developments, summarizes the case for the small farmer, and reviews various reform proposals. Such a survey is a necessary first step toward an understanding cf how the Appalachian farm situation is similar to and different from the national scene. The paper concludes with some preliminary thoughts about a research agenda on the future of the small farmer in Appalachia. What many Appalachians share in common is a closeness to the land, a familiarity with it and an attachment to it. Perhaps nowhere is the significance of land more clearly and poignantly illustrated than in Robert Coles' Migrants, Sharecroppers, Mountaineers. To mountaineers, says Coles, "the land is almost anything and everything: a neighbor, a friend, a part of the family, handed down and talked about and loved, loved dearly-loved and treasured and obeyed, it can be said, as we agree to do when we get married."' Yet during the 1970s, as in the decades before, Appalachians have witnessed a constant assault on their land. We propose to examine the dimensions of one part of this assault-the displacement of hundreds of thousands of small farmers and the disintegration of the culture and communities of farming. The decline of the small farmer is, of course, a national phenomenon. In the last thirty years the nation has lost 60 percent of its farms. Ten farmers a day leave the land, and it is estimated that two hundred to four hundred thousand farms will disappear each year for the next twenty years if present trends continue. There is an increasing amount of literature documenting and decrying this decline, but the effects of this trend on Appalachia, which has the greatest number mall farms of any region in the nation, has gone largely unreported. The variety of farm experience in Appalachia and the absence of concerted political action on the part of small farmers explain, to some degree, the lack of any systematic treatment of the special social, political, and economic problems faced by the Appalachian family farmer. But the basic reason the small farm has been ignored is the widely held belief that it is inefficient and that the small farmer would be better off doing something else. This is clearly the perspective of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) which has no overall policy and practically no programs directed toward the thousands of small farmers left in Appalachia.2 Many radical political activists in the mountains also see no place for the family farm in Appalachia's future. While expressing sympathy for the problems the farmers face, these radicals accept the disappearance of the family farm as an inevitable consequence of capitalist development.3 Such beliefs can be attacked on a number of grounds. There is increasing evidence to show that large-scale farmers are not intrinsically more efficient 68 �than smaller ones. Moreover, these beliefs ignore what the disappearance of the small farm will mean for the future of our society. Societal transformation, in a sense, must begin with the land if only because the basic materials for life are acquired from the land. As Murray Bookchin explains: The kind of agricultural practice we adopt at once reflects and reinforces the approach we will utilize in all spheres of industrial and social life. Captalism began historically by undermining and overcoming the resistance of the traditional agrarian world to a market economy; it will never be fully transcended unless a new society is created on the land that liberates humanity in the fullest sense and restores the balance between society and nature.4 The paper surveys the literature concerned with the nationwide decline of the family farm and the concomitant rise of agribusiness. It identifies the major causes and implications of these developments, summarizes the case for the small farmer, and reviews various reform proposals. Such a survey is a necessary first step toward an understanding of how the Appalachian situation differs from the national scene. The paper concludes with some preliminary thoughts about a research agenda on the future of the small farmer in Appalachia. It should be noted that efforts to focus on the family farm as a policy issue face two critical limitations. First, there is no common meaning or operational definition of a "family farm' completely satisfactory for policy purposes. The term means many things to many people, and any detailed analysis of this debate would constitute a paper in itself. For our purposes, the family farm is one operated by a farmer and his family where the farmer provides much of the labor needed for the farming operation, makes most of the management decisions, assumes most of the risk, and reaps the gains or losses from those decisions.5 Inadequate data is the second problem faced by researchers. Aggregate farm statistics mask a wide variety of situations and needs in the American farm sector. As the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) itself explains, "neither the existing data base nor research to date is adequate to explain the developments taking place in the farm sector, the situation of farms in various farm groups, or the individual and cumulative impacts of all the forces causing structural changes."6 II In the late 1930s, there were over 6,800,000 farms in the United States, all but two or three percent of them classified as family farms. Today the number is around 2,300,000 and still dropping. In 1974, just 125,000 farms accounted for one half of all farm sales; today there are probably fewer than 100,000 such farms. 7 In the decades immediately after World War II much of the blame for this decline was placed on the "cost-price squeeze" faced by the farmer and on the USDA's rules and regulations.' With the publication of Victor Ray's The Corporate Invasion of American Agriculture, the focus shifted to a family farm versus corporate farm debate.9 The issues in this family farm debate are complex, but it is possible to identify the major factors contributing to loss of over 4,000,000 family farms. Financial Instability. At the heart of the farm crisis is the fact that there is little profit to be gained in farming. The high risks of failure, the cost-price 69 �squeeze, the restricted access to markets, and the problems of gaining access to capital and credit have led to a cycle of financial instability for the small farmer. The small farmer operates in a highly competitive market and chance of failure is always present. Shirley Greene summarizes this predicament: The free market, especially in an elastic demand commodity like food, tends to respond to small variations in supply with wild fluctuations in price. This tendency, combined with the manuevering of traders and speculators in commodity futures markets, results in roller coaster prices which provide farmers with no reliable index of what or how much to plant or how many animals to breed. A lucky guess one year may bring windfall earnings; the next season the same farmer may lose his shirt...The typical family farmer, unlike the large corporation farmer, does not have the reserves or the diversified sources of income to withstand many bad guesses.' ° Farmers are quite frequently caught in a cost-price squeeze where the prices they receive are not able to cover their costs. The farmers' costs are determined largely by prices charged by manufacturers, whose market conditions are much less competitive than those for farm products. The only practical way that farmers can meet increasing costs and purchase the new sophisticated and expensive machinery needed to stay competitive is to increase output. But when farmers do this simultaneously, the surplus causes a drastic drop in prices." Farmers since World War II have consistently faced heavy downward pressure on prices combined with major increases in the cost of production. This is illustrated by the fact that the price farmers receive from their produce increased only six percent from 1952 to 1974, while farm operating expenses increased by 122 percent. It is little wonder that the total farm debt in the 1970s increased from $59 billion to $94 billion.12 Since large abribusinesses, especially if they have significant non-farm sources of revenue, are better able to spread their losses over several years, it is the small farmer who is hit the hardest by the cost-price squeeze. Inflation, of course, increases the severity of the cost-price squeeze. Because farmers have more difficulty adjusting to price changes than nonfarm businesses, inflation has an important effect on the economic health of agriculture. It affects the cost of what the farmer must buy, sooner and more seriously than the farm price of his product.13 Consequently, inflation pressures thousands of small farmers out of business each year. Small farmers also face special problems in the area of marketing and in gaining access to credit. Marketing trends have seen the emergence of fewer but bigger purchasers of farm goods. The small independent farmers are frequently at a severe competitive disadvantage because they do not control large enough supplies of agricultural products to give them much bargaining power with large agribusiness concerns.14 The problem of transportation from farm to market also presents special problems for small farmers. Farmers need ready sources of capital and credit to purchase land, to recover from a bad crop, to buy new machinery, and to cover normal operating expenses. The small farmers in general face great difficulty in obtaining credit. Many of the major lending institutions refuse to extend credit to small farmers because of the higher risks faced by these farmers, their lower equity position, and the desire of these institutions to minimize their service costs per dollar 70 �loaned." The Farmers Home Administration, which is supposed to be oriented to serving the credit needs of farmers with limited resources, has tended to help affluent rather than poor farmers." In sum, it is the small farm operator who is hurt the most by the inherent instability of agricultural production and prices. He has virtually no power to affect the cost of items he must buy and little power to affect the price at which he must sell his product. In a sense, small farmers are suffering from the effects of free market competition. They constitute several million relatively small bargaining units in the marketplace at the mercy of the forces of supply and demand. It is what we say our economy is all about. Unfortunately for the small farmer, he is one of the few playing the game.'' Corporate Control. While the number of farmers working the land decreases each year, corporations are becoming more involved in every phase of food production and distribution. From one side, the small farmer feels the pinch from corporate "input" suppliers. Agribusiness corporations have gained enormous control over farm supplies such as machinery, feed, fertilizer, and seeds. As Jim Hightower explains: Before the first sprout breaks ground, American farm families are over their heads in debt to such corporate powers as Bank of America (Production loans), Upjohn Company (seeds), The Williams Companies (fertilizer), International Minerals & Chemical (pesticides), Ford Motor Company (machinery), Firestone (tires), Ralston Purina (feeder pigs), Merck & Company (poultry stock), Cargill (feed), Dow Chemical (cartons and wrappings), Eli Lilly (animal drugs), Exxon (farm fuels), and Burlington Northern (rail transportation)." There is a conspicuous lack of competition in most of the farm supply industry. Economist William Sheppherd reports that four leading firms control 67 percent of petroleum products, 71 percent of tires, 74 percent of chemicals, and 80 percent of rail transport. The concentration can be even greater in specific items and local markets. For example, DeKalb AgResearch and Pioneer Hi-Bred International supply half the hybrid seeds sold, and there are many farming communities where feed must be bought from Ralston Purina or not at all." This lack of competition has had a profound effect on what farmers must pay for supplies. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found in 1972 that the lack of competition among farm machinery manufacturers cost farmers an extra $251,000,000.20 Table 1 presents a sample of profit increases for some major farm suppliers in the first quarter of 1974. These large profits came at a time when the average profit increases for large corporations was 16 percent and at a time that prices paid to farmers were falling. Farm-Supply Corporation Farm Products and Services First Quarter 1974 Profit Increase Allis-Chalmers Burlington Northern Rail Consolidated Freightways Federal Paper Machinery Transportation Trucking Board Cartons 41% 102% 75% 100% 71 �Firestone W. R. Grace International Harvester International Harvester and Chemical Occidental Petroleum Pfizer Ralston Purina Rohm & Haus Stauffer Chemical Tenneco Upjohn White Motor Tires, Inner tubes Chemicals Machinery 19% 129% 113% Chemicals 131% Fertilizers, fuels 716% Drugs 33% Feed 32% Fungicides 30% Chemicals 55% Chemicals, machinery, fuel, packaging 57% Drugs, seeds 32% Machinery White Motor Machinery 38% Source: Business Week. "Profits: Better Than Expected." May 11, 1974, p. 69. From the other side, the farmer feels the pinch from "output" corporations —the middlemen-that process, market, and retail the farmer's product. This industry involves such familiar names as Del Monte, General Mills, Ralston Purina, Minute Maid, Kraft, Dole, and A&P. As with the farm supply industry, the food industry has become increasingly monopolistic. In 1966 the FTC revealed that the 100 largest food manufacturers-representing only .03 percent of the entire industry-accounted for 71 percent of the food industry's profits and 60 percent of its total assets.21 The American consumer has tended to blame the farmer for the rapid increase in food prices during the 1970s. Several different studies clearly show that it is the food industry which is at fault. As pointed out earlier, only 6 percent of the rise in food prices between 1954 and 1974 went to the farmer; the food industry accounted for 94 percent of the price increases which consumers paid for food. A USD A study revealed that the farmer in 1974 was receiving only forty-one cents out of each dollar the consumer spent on food." Finally, a 1972 FTC study reported that over-pricing in 13 "monopolized" food lines cost consumers over $2 billion that year.2' It is not clear to what degree actual farm production is in the hands of corporate interests. Statistically, corporations account for only 5 percent of the total number of farms. However, as Walter Goldschmidt points out, this statistic is highly misleading.24 First, some specialty crops are heavily controlled by a few large firms: 100 percent of sugar beets, 92 percent of broilers, and 47 percent of all citrus fruits.2' Second, corporations primarily engaged in other activities and whose agricultural operations account for less than 10 percent of their gross income are not required to file separate reports on their agricultural activities with the USDA and other governmental agencies. "Thus Tenneco, the conglomerate with many enterprises, is not included in such surveys because it is not primarily agricultural, though it controls nearly two million acres of farmland. The same applies to Boeing, Goodyear, Purex, Penn Central, Standard Oil of California, Prudential Insurance, and Bank of America."2' Third, the statistic is misleading because it ignores the trend in agriculture toward vertical integration. This is achieved primarily through contract farming, which involves contractual agreements between independent farmers and non-farm corporations (i.e., suppliers, processors, retailers). Instead of a corporation directly owning a farm, it simply rents one. The arrangement has several advantages for the farmer. He is usually assured of production supplies 72 �and a market for part of his crop at a predetermined price. The contract farmer also finds it easier to obtain credit. John E. Davis explains the disadvantages: First, contract farming tends to eliminate competition within its sphere of influence. Where contracting prevails, other farmers often discover that to sell what they produce they must produce under contract. Second, because farmers are seldom organized to counter the market power of corporate contractors with their own collective bargaining power, contract prices are often quite low. Third, because the contractor tells the farmer what, when, and how to produce, when to harvest, and when to deliver his crop, contract farming often removes from the farmer's hands many responsibilities that have traditionally been his as an independent entrepreneur.27 Contract farming permits the corporation to obtain high-value commodities at low "wage" prices while controlling the essential aspects of the production process. It provides the corporation with a labor force that is self-disciplined, self-exploiting, and non-unionized. Thus, it is not surprising to learn that in the United States contract farming is at least three times as prevalent as corporate farming. The American Agricultural Marketing Association estimates that 50 percent of America's food supply will be produced under contract with corporations by 1980 (as compared to 17 percent in 1970)." Government Policy. A number of governmental policies have worked to the advantage of large growers and have given impetus to the disappearance of the small farmer. The most important of these special advantages are (1) agricultural support programs; (2) tax policies; (3) agricultural labor policies; and (4) the research-orientation of the USDA and the land grant colleges." During the New Deal years, when family farms were the predominant source of food production, the government instituted agricultural support programs in order to help the farmer through the depression. The subsidy payments were directly proportional to the total productivity of the farm; so the more a person (or corporation) owned the more relief he (or it) received. In other words, income and price supports have been based on volume and acreage. As Table 2 illustrates, the wealthiest farmers with the capital necessary to expand and produce large quantities of food are now the chief beneficiaries of these government programs. The small farmer, who has the greatest need, is often unable to even qualify for support. In short, American agricultural relief policy has subsidized the corporate interest in agricultural production.30 TABLE 2 THE DISTRIBUTION OF FEDERAL FARM BENEFITS Proportion of Government Payment Received by Percentile, 1967 Top 5 percent of farmers Top 20 percent of farmers Top 40 percent of farmers Lower 60 percent of farmers Lower 40 percent of farmers Lower 20 percent of farmers 42.4% 69.0% 87.7% 13.3% 5.7% 1.1% 73 �Source: James T. Bonnen, "The Distribution of Benefits from Selected U. S. Farm Programs," Rural Poverty in the United States: A Report of the President's National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty (Washington, D.C., 1968). The tax laws also do not give the small farmer an even break. Family farmers find themselves at a competitive disadvantage in the face of a variety of income tax loopholes available to large corporate farm units and non-farm investors in farm land. The tax laws are complex and there is not the time or space to examine them in any detail here. Perhaps the two basic avenues by which tax regulations contribute to the corporate control of agriculture are the provisions which encourage high-income urban residents to make agricultural investments as "tax shelters" and the "accounting devices which vertically integrated corporations can use to shift their income and losses to minimize their taxable income."31 In addition, family farmers are hurt by rising property tax rates, as expanding urban and recreational developments drive up the price of land. A recent USDA report sums up the tax situation: It thus appears that congressional efforts to protect the family and small sized farm through the tax system may have been somewhat self-defeating, largely because of the difficulties in limiting the benefits of special tax preferences to the intended group. The provisions are so broadly written as to invite abuse, or so narrowly defined that they provide little actual assistance.32 The third major corporate advantage is the exclusion of agricultural labor from the legislation governing unionization. Goldschmidt briefly summarizes how the low wages paid farm labor work to the disadvantage of the small farmer: The family farmer's income derives in part from his capital investment, in part from managerial skill, but in large part from the value of his labor input. Commodity prices will be affected by prevailing wages; the farmer competing with poorly paid workers thus receives less compensation for his work. 33 A final corporate advantage is derived from farm research, much of it carried on at land grant schools with public money. Although designed as the peoples' universities with a mandate to serve the needs of a broad rural constituency, the land grant college complex has today become the sidekick and frequent servant of agribusiness. In Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times, an investigation of the land grant college system, Jim Hightower documents how these colleges are being called upon by big business to participate directly in the planning, research, and development stages of efforts toward the increased mechanization of agriculture.34 These efforts have helped to develop the overly mechanized, capital intensive pattern of production which has contributed in large part to the decline of the small farm. The Extension Service, which is the land grant system's means of reaching rural people, has devoted most of its attention to achieving greater output and efficiency, thereby providing technical services to larger farmers, not to the smaller ones. Ray Marshall and Allen Thompson, in their analysis of the status of small 74 �farmers, provide a number of examples of how the bias toward the large producer, illustrated in the four areas discussed above, is evident throughout the entire network of federal, state, and local agricultural agencies. The prevailing attitude, insist Marshall and Thompson, is that small farmers are obsolete and have no real future in the American agricultural system." Loss of Agricultural Land and Land Speculation. American agricultural land is being lost at the equivalent of 320 acres per hour or about 3 million acres a year. Over a million of these acres constitute what the government labels "prime" agricultural land." Much of this land is taken over for suburban developments, shopping centers, and industrial parks. Thousands of additional acres are lost to power lines, dams, and recreational developments or are destroyed by corporations strip mining for coal. Together these developments have led to land speculation and a rapid escalation of farm land prices. Foreign investors have recently become the most conspicuous players in the farm land sweeptakes, but the storm raised by foreign ownership has obscured the broader issue of the threat that land speculation poses to the family farm." In an era where more acreage and higher-volume production is the only way a family farmer can successfully compete, he is facing increasing difficulty in buying or renting prime agricultural land. Even if the farmer can find land, he often cannot afford it because of the high price or his inability to get credit. In some areas today, an acre of farm land is worth about four times the value of what it can produce per year." High land prices also cause property taxes to rise to such an extent that many farmers can no longer afford to keep their land in agricultural use. The spiralling farm land prices have made it next to impossible for new or young farmers to begin farming. If an individual is not fortunate enough to have inherited a farm, the initial investment for land and operating costs can be close to $400,000" Black farmers, whose problems are compounded by racial discrimination, have d particular difficulty in acquiring agricultural land.40 James Krohe, Jr. summarizes the effects on American agriculture if prime farm land continues to disappear at its current rate and land prices continue their precipitous rise. The effects include: ...more farm debt (and debt-caused foreclosures); acceleration of the trend toward fewer and bigger farms run by fewer and older farmers ...;increased concentration of production...with its attendant dangers of monopolization; neglect of the productive resources of the land by speculators interested only in its price;...and absentee corporate managements that buy their supplies and do their banking in big cities instead of small towns.41 Ill In the spirit of Jeffersonian democracy, Americans have always paid lip service to the family farm. Yet today it is clear that the family farm is in serious trouble and that immediate and far-reaching measures are needed to save it. The question is, are family farms worth the effort? The Social Argument. In 1946 Walter Goldschmidt, in an effort to determine the important factors in rural development, looked closely at two California communities. Each had essentially the same soil and agricultural base, but each was surrounded by farms of a different size. Goldschmidt discovered a clear and direct relationship between small farms and a high level of social and 75 �economic development in small communities. As compared to the community surrounded by large farms, the small farms community had twice as many businesses, 61 percent more retail trade and three times as many household and building supply purchases. It supported more people per dollar of agricultural production, had a better average standard of living, a much greater proportion of independent businessmen and white collar workers, more and better schools, and twice as many civic organizations, churches, and means of community decision-making.42 Efforts were made to suppress Goldschmidt's controversial conclusions, and large landowners, corporate interests, and the Farm Bureau were able to pressure Congress into forbidding the Bureau of Agricultural Research (the sponsor of the study) from funding any further research of a social or cultural nature.41 As a result, little follow-up work was done, and Goldschmidt's conclusions were largely forgotten in the 1950s and 1960s. Recently, however, several studies have confirmed Goldschmidt's findings. For example, a study in South Dakota revealed that every time six family farmers left the land, one small business had to close. A 1977 California study examined 136 towns and concluded that not only were small farm towns more viable and supported more services, but that small farm regions contained more towns. This suggests that not only the quality, but the occurrence of communities depends on the structure of agriculture in the surrounding area.44 The Ecological Argument. Since World War II the emphasis in agriculture has shifted from the diversification of crops to a relatively new phenomenon known as monoculture.45 The use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, a controlled breeding program to develop a few high-yielding, uniform crops, and the mechanization of the farm are all characteristics of monoculture farming. However, the introduction of these farming methods has upset the ecological balance. It is now questionable whether "modern" agriculture can, in the long run, maintain high yields of food production. Scientists and the Food and Drug Administration are deeply concerned about the chronic poisoning of food, and lack of plant resistance to disease, the depletion of soils, and the flood hazards related to monocultural practices. There is additional concern over the vast amount of energy resources required to power farm machinery and to produce necessary petrochemical products.46 Monoculture techniques require a great amount of capital. As a result, large farms are the only ones able to support the monoculture habit. The small farmer may have at one time gratefully accepted this illusory panacea. What he is now finding is that his careful handling of the land through the use of crop rotation, organic fertilizers, and solar energy offers a better, less costly alternative for the adequate provision of food and preservation of croplands for future generations.47 The Efficiency Argument. Many people grant that the small farm has social and ecological advantages over the corporate farm, but question whether the small farm can feed America. There exist a number of studies which establish the validity of the claim that the family farm is the most efficient unit of production, the classic summary statement on this issue, prepared by J. Patrick Madden and published by the USD A in 1967, concluded that the family farm can achieve unit costs as low as, if not lower than, giant operations.41 This was confirmed in 1969 by Dr. Roy Van Arsdall, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois. "The evidence suggests," wrote Arsdall, "that family farms can convert inputs into outputs in physical terms as effectively as any other form of business."49 Another USDA study confirmed these results in 1973. As the Deputy Director of the USDA's Commodity Economics Division put it: 76 �We are so conditioned to equate bigness with efficiency that nearly everyone assumes that large-scale undertakings are inherently more efficient than smaller ones. In fact, the claim of efficiency is commonly used to justify bigness. But when we examine the realities we find that most of the economies associated with size in farming are achieved by the one-man fully mechanized farm. 50 Even the Ralston Purina Company, with long experience as a corporate farmer, admits that the family farmer "can meet and many times surpass the efficiency of the large units that operate with hired management."" John Kenneth Galbraith, in his Economics and the Public Purpose, summarizes why this is so: Nothing regulates the hours of work of the individual entrepreneur, and nothing at all regulates the intensity of his effort. He may thus be in a position to offset the higher technical productivity of the better-equipped worker in the organized but regulated sector of the economy by working longer, harder or more intelligently than his organization counterpart. In doing so, he reduced his compensation per unit of effective and useful effort expended. He is, to put the matter differently, almost wholly free, as the organization is not, to exploit his labor force since his labor force consists of himself." Foreign experiences provide some useful insight into the efficiency of the small farm. The small farm has demonstrated remarkable viability, even in countries like the Soviet Union where it operates in a very hostile ideological environment. The experiences of Taiwan and several East European countries suggest that on the average small farms can be more efficient than larger ones in producing the same crops. The experiences in other countries also suggest that smaller farms may be more efficient in labor intensive crops requiring limited amounts of land and capital." Finally, there is, as Peter Barnes points out, the question of how much and what kind of efficiency is desirable. American agriculture is, if anything, too efficient; it is the only industry in which people are paid not to produce. Moreover asks Barnes, what kind of efficiency are we talking about? The mechanization of the farm has impoverished millions of rural families, sent them to overcrowded cities, and forced them onto welfare rolls. Thus, large farms are far less efficient when their total effect on the community is evaluated.'4 The Political Argument. The family farm represents one of the few remaining areas of decentralized ownership and control in an increasingly concentrated and corporate society. Today more and more Americans are not really free to make major decisions affecting their lives. They work for large corporations or government bureaucracies or on assembly lines. They are not their own bosses, not proud of their work, and are not motivated to exercise their full rights as citizens. The family farm allows people to determine their own lifestyle and to take pride in the quality of their work; the farmer is his own employer, making his own decisions, winning or losing by his own efforts. If agriculture goes the way of the auto industry, asks Barnes, where will our independent citizens come from?" There is a tendency to romanticize the democratic virtues of the small farm. Family farmers are not more virtuous nor further removed from human frailty than others in society. Not all persons now in farming should remain there and 77 �not all farms should be small or medium-sized. But we cannot have political democracy without economic democracy. A diversified system of agriculture with control dispersed among many persons is certainly more conducive to equity and justice in our society than a system where control is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few." IV It is clearly in our interest to make small-scale farming economically viable so that present small farmers can survive and new ones can get started. There is space here only to highlight some of the major reform proposals. Increasing Economic Opportunities. Since it is the small farm operator who is hurt the most by the inherent instability of agricultural prices, measures must be taken to stabilize these prices. In addition to a price support system to reduce the downward movement in prices, Marshall and Thompson suggest that careful attention be given to a countercyclical purchasing program to buffer agricultural price fluctuations and increase national and international food reserves.'7 There are a wide variety of proposals designed to give small farmers access to greater marketing options. These include revival of old methods, such as farmers' markets and the promotion of growers' and consumers' cooperatives, along with newer and more far-reaching suggestions, such as using the procurement power of federal and state governments to bypass the middlemen and purchase directly from farmers and farmer cooperatives." Concern over the lack of ready sources of capital and credit have led to calls for the establishment of a Rural Development Bank which could provide low-interest loans and loan guarantees to small farmers." Protection Against Conglomerates. Proposals in this area emphasize the need for a forceful antitrust policy for agriculture which would prohibit businesses with major investments in non-farm assets from engaging in agricultural production and would ban ownership of farm land by corporations. There are also demands for FTC enforcement of existing regulations against overconcentration in the food industry, for elimination of tax deductions which encourage food advertising, and for an investigation of the international grain marketing system.60 Food processors and middlemen could be required to bargain collectively with farmers, thereby restoring some balance to the power relationship that is forcing farmers to merge into the corporate system or go out of business." Government support of low-income cooperatives also wold help to strengthen the position of the working farmer and control the growth of agribusiness." Reorienting Government Policy. Current agricultural support programs, tax laws, and labor policies must be changed. No system of subsidy or price supports for agriculture should be tied to volume of production; rather it should be designed to support family farm income and to stablize prices." Tax laws that provide conglomerates with unfair tax advantages should be reviewed and modified to give the competive advantage to persons earning the bulk of their income from agriculture alone. For example, tax loss farming could be minimized and special tax breaks could be given for organic farming and the use of equipment more suitable for small farmers.64 Labor laws should guarantee to farm workers a minimum wage equal to that of other workers; this measure along with a general farm workers' bill of rights would end large landowners' ability to exploit great numbers of poor people and would allow self-employed farmers to derive more value from their own labor." 78 �The USDA must be made more responsive to the needs of the majority of farmers. Legislation that would define a farm on the basis of agricultural products "produced," not "sold," would prevent the USDA from periodically defining hundreds of thousands of small farmers out of existence. The establishment of Advisory Committees representing independent family farmers, minorities, farm workers, consumers, and environmentalists would help open up the Department to the public." The USDA, land grant colleges, and the Extension Service must redirect their research, demonstration, education, and assistance programs from the current focus on large-scale and high-energy farming operations to the needs of small farmers. They must give more attention to such neglected areas as cooperative marketing, organic farming, small-scale farm machinery, appropriate technology, and the general health of the rural community." Marshall and Thompson go so far as to propose that all federal programs designed to improve the conditions of small farms should be removed from the USDA and placed in a separate agency whose main interests might include the welfare of all small businesses." Others, pessimistic over the possibility of breaking the grip of powerful agribusiness interests on federal agricultural policy, urge farmer afld citizen activists to turn to state and local governments for help." Land Reform. There exist a number of different proposals designed to slow down the loss of farm land. The repeal of the federal capital gains privilege would be a good beginning to inhibiting land speculation.'" Zoning rural land for specific uses, such as agriculture or new towns, would help contain suburban sprawl and ease the pressure on small farmers to sell to developers." A corollary to zoning would be imposition of a real property tax based on usevalue rather than market-value.71 Some states have even passed or are considering bills that establish special agricultural districts, that place a special capital gains tax on land speculation aimed at protecting fanners, or that require owners of large land holdings to pay property taxes at a higher rate than owners of less land.'3 Land trusts should be encouraged to take the profits out of land speculation and to ensure that adequate land is available for farming at prices related to the potential returns in agriculture.74 A federal land bank could provide low-interest loans to enable farmers to purchase property or expand farms.7' Other proposals call for the redistribution of land. The guiding principles behind these proposals are that land should belong to those who work and live on it and that holdings should be reasonable proportions.76 Many of these proposals call for the enforcement of the Reclamation Act of 1902, which provides that large landholders in the West who accept federally subsidized water must agree to sel their holdings in excess of 160 acres at prewater prices within ten years.77 Peter Barnes calls for an updating of Thaddeus Steven's old program for dividing up large plantations in the South into forty-acre parcels.7' The above proposals are just a few of the elements of a program that would help to save the family farm. As Jim Hightower points out, there is nothing radical or even new about them. It is not that we have lacked solution but that we have lacked the will. If we are going to make a difference in any part of our life, says Hightower, perhaps the place to start is here, with corporate power over farming,79 For as Wendell Berry points out, to protect the small landowner, especially the small farmer, is to preserve what is human and humane in our culture. "The care of the earth," insists Berry, "is our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope."10 79 �V Appalachian farmers are among the most poverty-stricken of American farmers. Observers have labeled much of the farming area of Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Virginia as an agricultural slum, "A Land of Do Without."" Nevertheless, little has been written on the special conditions and problems faced by Appalachian farmers. Most of the studies which have been conducted are not particularly helpful. They tend to be outdated or to share the attitude of W. B. Back and Clark Edwards.l! The rural portion of the Tennessee Valley region, conclude Back and Edwards, provides a drag on economic development through its small farm structure and culture, antiturban and urbanization attitudes, limited ability to invest in its human resources, and physical isolation partly related to the topography and transportation facilities of the region. Agricultural development should be oriented to removing such obstacles, and a prime target from the standpoint of land tenure could be the small farm structure. This structure would serve a Jeffersonian world of free-holder subsistence farmers quite well, but not a twentieth century environment for urban expansion. The small farms are potential poverty traps according to twentieth century standards. The solution does not appear to be to increase farm production efficiency within the small farm structure-rather, it apparently resides in human resource investments to prepare people for nonfarm employment, accompanied by a tranformation of the agricultural sector into large-scale commercial operations." Appalachian farmers have much in common with small farmers elsewhere. They suffer from the same governmental neglect, financial instability, and corporate dominance that plague small farmers throughout the country. There are, however, some obvious differences. The Appalachian farmer tends to be older, less-educated, and poorer. The average farm in Appalachia is smaller, both in total land area and in cropland and harvested cropland. Moreover, the uneven topography results in the division of available cropland into such small and scattered fields that efficient use of modern machinery is at times impossible." The continued destruction of farm land through strip mining, dam building, and recreation development, together with the absentee ownership of large parts of the Appalachian region, make it very difficult for hte Appalachian farmer to find new agricultural land." If he can find it, he usually cannot afford it because the price of land has increased more rapidly in Appalachia than in many other parts of the United States." Another key difference involves the circumstances surrounding industrial development in Appalachia. Dean Pierce maintains that the process by which the greater American community misunderstood, misused, and disrupted the Appalachian farmer's lifestyle has led to special problems for this farmer that cannot be remedied by the solutions currently proposed by the larger society." Research on the small farm in Appalachia needs to explore a number of important questions: (a) What types of farms exist and what are their characteristics? (b) What is the process by which farm units are formed? (c) To what degree and in what manner do Appalachian farmers suffer from the forces described in Part II of this paper? (d) What has been and is currently the effect of farmer displacement on culture and community life? (e) Where and under what conditions does farming hold economic promise in the mountains? (f) What must be done to ensure the viability of the small farm in Appalachia?" These are difficult questions, but to ignore them is to risk a future where few will own farms and few will work on them. People will have nothing to say 80 �about how the land is used or the kind of quality of its produce. They will eat what the corporations decide for them to eat. It will be a future where, in Berry's words, "people will be detached and remote from the sources of their life, joined to them only by corporate tolerance. They will have become consumers purely-consumptive machines—which is to say, the slaves of producers."" If we lose the family farm, we give up more than competitiveness and economic efficiency. We lose a bit of ourselves. We lose our grip on "the idea that individuals can make it on their own, that human enterprise is of greater value than any security that corporate systems can promise."'° It is, as Wendell Berry reminds us, impossible to care for each other more or differently than we care for the earth." NOTES 1. Robert Coles, Migrants, Sharecroppers, Mountaineers (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press-Little Brown & Co., 1973), P. 7 Vol. 2, Children of Crisis. 2. This is the view of Robert W. Scott, former Federal Co-chairman of the ARC. See Robert W. Scott, "The Plight of the Region's Small Farmer," Appalachian (December 1977-January 1978) :21. 3. For an analysis of how some Marxists view the fate of the family farm in the United States, see Pat Mooney, "Class Relations and Class Structure in the Midwest," in "The Transformation of Agriculture in the United States." a manuscript prepared by a collective work group associated with the Department of Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, October 1979. 4. Murray Bookchin, "Radical Agriculture," in Radical Agriculture, ed. Richard Merrill (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1976), p. 13. 5. USD A, Status of the Family Farm, a report submitted to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, United States Senate, June 18, 1979 (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1979), p. 2. The battle over how to define the family farm has important policy impliations. The new official USDA definition requires a place to have $1,000 minimum sales of farm products in order to be counted as a farm. This new definition, instituted in 1979, disqualifies about 302,000 farms. See also James Lewis, "Alternative Definitions of Small Farms and Low-Income Farm Families," in Toward a Federal Small Farms Policy, Phase I: Barriers to Increasing On-Farm Income, ed. National Rural Center (Washington, D.C., 1978), pp. 131-47. 6. USDA, Status of the Family Farm, p.3. 7. Donald K. Larson and James H. Lewis, "Small-Farm Profile," in SmallFarm Issues: Proceedings of the ESCS Small-Farm Workshop, May 1978 (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1979), pp. 10-30 8. Some of the earlier works focusing on the reasons for the decline of the small farm include Joseph Ackerman and Marshall Harris, eds., Family Farm Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947); Stanley Andrews, The Farmer's Dilemma (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1961); Lee Fryer, The American Farmer: His Problems and Prospects (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947); Anna Rochester, Why Farmers are Poor: The Agricultural Crisis in the United States (New York: International Publishers, 1940); and Lauren Soth, The Embarrassment of Plenty (New York: Crowell, 1965). For additonal works, see Charles L. Smith, A Bibliography on Land Reform in Rural America (San Francisco: Center for Rural Studies, 1974). 81 �9. Victor K. Ray, The Corporate Invastion of American Agriculture (Denver: National Farmers Union, 1968). The literature on this debate is summarized in Kevin F. Goss and Richard D. Rodefeld, Corporate Farming in the United States: A guide to Current Literature, 1967-1977 (University Park: Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, Pennsylvania State University, 1978). 10. Shirley E. Greene, "Struggle for Survival," Engage/Social Action, October 1978, p. 15. 11. Ray Marshall and Allen Thompson, Status and Prospects of Small Farmers in the South (Atlanta: Southern Regional Council, 1976), p. 6. 12. Joe Belden, Gibby Edwards, Cynthia Guyer, and Lee Webb, eds., New Directions in Farm, Land and Food Policies: A Time for State and Local Action (Washington, D.C.: Conference on Alternative State and Local Policies, 1978), p. 10. 13. Marshall and Thompson, Status and Prospects of Small farmers, p. 9. 14. Ibid., p. 55. See Also Center for Science in the Public Interest, From the Ground Up: Building a Grass Roots Food Policy (Washington, D.C., 1976); U. S. Senate, Subcommittee on Agricultural Production, Marketing and Stabilization of Prices, Marketing Alternatives for Agriculture: Is There a Better Way? (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1976); and USDA, ECSC, Market Structure of the Food Industries, Marketing Research Report No. 971 (Washington, D.C., 1972). 15. Marshall and Thompson, Status and Prospects of Small Farmers, pp. 53-54; USDA, Status of the Family Farm, p. 29; Center for Rural Affairs, Where Have All the Bankers Gone? (Walthill, NB, 1977); and Gene Swackhamer and Raymond J. Doll, Financing Modern Agriculture: Banking's Problems and Challenges (Kansas City: Federal Reserve Bank, 1969). 16. Marshall and Thompson, Status and Prospects of Small Farmers, p. 54; and George Gilbert and Nancy Smith, The Farmers Home Administration: Its Operation and Programs (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 1976). 17. Jim Hightower, Eat Your Heart Out: Food Profiteering in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), p. 163. For further information on the financial problems facing small farmers, see USDA, Structure Issues of American Agriculture, Agricultural Economic Report 438 (Washington, D.C., 1979); U.S. Senate Select Committee on Small Business and the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Will the Family Farm Survive in America?, 4 vols., 3 parts (Washington, D. C.: USGPO, 1975-76); and U. S. House of Representatives, Sub-committee on Family Farms and Rural Development, Obstacles in Strengthening Family Farm Systems (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1977). 18. Hightower, Eat Your Heart Out, p. 167. The anaylsis in this section of the paper relies heavily on the Hightower study. See also Corporate Date Exchange, Inc., CDE Stock Ownership Directory-Agribusiness: Who Owns and Controls the Nation's Food Supply (New York, 1978); A. V. Krebs, 1976 Directory of Major U. S. Corporations Involved in Agribusiness (San Francisco: Agribusiness Accountability Project, 1976); Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsbility, ed.) Agribusiness Manual: Background Papers on Corporate Responsbility and Hunger Issues (New York, 1978); Virginia Cook, Corporate Farming and the Family Farm, CSG Research Brief (Lexington, KY: Council of State Governments, 1076); John Shover, First Majority-Last Minority: The Transforming of Rural Life in America (Dekalb: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1976); Stanley Aronowitz, Food, Shelter and the 82 �American Dream (New York: Seabury Press, 1974); Michael Perelman, Farming for Profit in a Hungry World: Capital and the Crisis in Agriculture (Montclair, NJ: Allan held, Osmun & Co., 1977); and National Farm Institute, ed., Corporate Farming and the Family Farm (Ames: Iowa State Univ. Press, 1970). For additional sources, see Goss and rodefeld, Corporate Farming in the United States, pp. 9-16. 19. Cited in Hightower, Eat Your Heart Out, p. 168. 20. Paul D. Scanlon, "TDC and Phase II: The McGovern Papers," Antitrust Law & Economics Review 5 (Spring, 1972): Table 1, 33-36. 21. National Commission on Food Marketing, Organization and Competition in Food Retailing, Technical Study No. 7, Federal Trade Commission (Washington, D.C., 1966). See also Hank Frundt, "The Food Gamble," in U.S. Capitalism in Crisis, ed. Union for Radical Political Economics (New York, 1978), pp. 155-68. 22. Cited in "Agribusiness and the Food Crisis, "Corporate Information Center (CIC) Brief, November 1974, p. 3B. 23. Belden, et. al., New Directions, pp. 10-11. For Additional information on the food industry, see Martha Hamilton, The Great American Grain Robbery & Other Stories (Washington, D.C.: Agribusiness Accountability Project, 1972); William Robbins, The American Food Scandal: Why You Can'tEat Wellon What You Earn (New York: William Morrow& Co., 1974); Catherine Lerza and Michael Jacobson, Food for People, Not for Profit: A Sourcebook on the Food Crisis (New York: Ballentine, 1975); and Dan Morgan, Merchants of Grain (New York: Viking, 1979). 24. Walter Goldschmidt, As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social Consequences of Agribusiness (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1947; Montclair, New Jersey: Allanheld, Osmun & Co., 1978), p. xxvi. 25. Jim Hightower, "The Case for the Family Farmer, "Washington Monthly, September 1973, p. 28. 26. Statement of Jim Hightower, Role of Giant Corporations, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Monopoly of the Select Committee on Small Business, U. S. Senate, Ninety-second Congress (November 30 and December 1, 1971; March 1 and 2, 1972), Part 3, p. 3725. 27. John E. Davis, "There's a Contract Out on the Small Farmer," Rural America, October 1979, p. 5. See also Marshall and Thompson, Status and Prospects of Small Farmers, pp. 55-56; Goldschmidt, As You Sow, pp. xxvixxvii; Hightower, Eat Your Heart Out, pp. 197-208; Ronald Mighell and William Hoofnagle, Contract Production and Vertical Intergration in Farming, 1960 and 1970 (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1972); and Shover, First MajorityLast Minority, pp. 175-228. 28. Belden, et al., New Directions, p. 10. 29. The Analysis in this section relies heavily on Goldschmidt, As You Sow, pp. xxxii-xxxix. For general works on U. S. agricultural policy, see Williard Cochrane and Mary Ryan, American Farm Policy, 1948-1973 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1976); Dale Hathaway, Government and Agriculture: Public Policy in a Democratic Society (New York: Macmillan, 1963); and Marion Clawson, Policy Directions for U. S. Agriculture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968). 30. Goldschmidt, As You Sow, pp. xxxii-xxxiii; Don Paarlberg, American Farm Policy, (New York: Wiley, 1964); Reo Christenson, The Brannan Plan: Farm Politics and Policy Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1959); and USDA, Status of the Family Farm, pp. 30-32. 31. Goldschmidt, As You Sow, p. xxxiv; Isao Fujemoto and Martin Zone, Sources of Inequities in Rural America (Davis: Department of Applied Be83 �havioral Sciences, University of California, Davis, 1976); Jeanne Dangerfield, "Sowing the Till: A Background Paper on Tax Loss Farming," Congressional Record 119 (May 16, 1973): 9247-55; Charles A. Sisson, The U.S. Tax System and the Structure of Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: National Rural Center, 1979); Thomas Carlin and W. Fred Woods, Tax Loss Farming, ERS-546 (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1974); and Marshall and Thompson, Status and Prospects of Small Farmers, pp. 61-64. 32. USDA, Status of the Family Farm, p. 29. 33. Goldschmidt, As You Sow, p. xxxviii. 34. Jim Hightower and Susan DeMarco, Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times: The Failure of the Land Grant College Complex (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Schenkman, 1972). See also U. S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Hearings on Priorities in Agricultural Research of the USDA (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1977); U. S. General Accounting Office, Some Problems Impeding Economic Improvements of Small-Farm Operations (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1975); William Friedland and Amy Barton, Destaging the Wily Tomato (Davis: College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of California, Davis, 1975); and Joe Belden with Gregg Forte, Toward a National Food Policy (Washington, D.C.: Exploratory Project for Economic Alternatives, 1976), pp. 103-06. 35. Marshall and Thompson, Status and Prospects of Small Farmers, p. 64. 36. National Agricultural Lands Study, Where Have the Farm Lands Gone? (Washington, D.C., 1979). See also Peter Meyer, "Land Rush: A Survey of America's Land," Harpers, January 1979, pp. 45-60; and Frank Browning, The Vanishing Land: The Corporate Theft of America (New York: Harper Colophor Books, 1975). 37. U. S. Senate, Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Foreign Investment in United States Agricultural Land (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1979); U. S. General Accounting Office, Foreign Ownership of United States Farmland-Much Concern, Little Data (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1978); and Kenneth C. Crowe, America for Sale (Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1978). 38. James Krohe, "Farm-Land Bonanza," The Nation,, February 17, 1979, p. 177. See also Marvin Duncan, Farm Real Estate Values: What's Happening and Why (Kansas City: Federal Reserve Bank, 1979). 39. Belden, et al., New Directions, pp. 9-10. 40. See Leo McGee and Robert Boone, eds., The Black Rural LandownerEndangered Species: Social, Political and Economic Implications (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979); James Lewis, White and Minority Small Farm Operators in the South, Agricultural Economic Report 353 (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1976); and Lester Salamon, Land and Minority Enterprises: The Crisis and the Opportunity (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 1976). 41. Krohe, "Farm Land Bonanza," p. 178. 42. Goldschmidt, As You Sow, pp. 3-451. 43. For details of the efforts to repress Goldschmidt's study, see Goldschmidt, As You Sow, pp. 455-91. 44. These studies and others are summarized in Goldschmidt, As You Sow, pp. xxxix-xlviii; and Alabama Marketing Project, "Land Ownership Patterns and Community Development," in A Landless People in a Rural Region: A Reader on Land Ownership and Property Taxation in Appalachia, ed. Steve Fisher (New Market, Tennessee: Highlander Center, 1979), pp. 155-56. 45. Richard Merrill, "Toward a Self-Sustaining Agriculture," in Radical Agriculture, ed Richard Merrill (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1976) 84 �pp. 284-327; Harrison Wellford, Sowing the Wind: Ralph Nader's Study Group Report on Food Safety and the Chemical Harvest (New York: Grossman, 1972); and Belden, Toward a National Food Policy, pp. 120-50. 46. Barry Commoner, The Poverty of Power (New York: Bantam Book, 1977), pp. 149-64; and Michael Perelman, "Efficiency in Agriculture: The Economics of Energy, " in Radical Agriculture, ed. Richard Merrill (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1976), pp. 64-86. 47. A number of articles on these alternatives can be found in Richard Merrill, ed., Radical Agriculture (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1976). See Also Commoner, The Poverty of Power, pp. 149-64; Wendall Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (New York: Avon Books, 1978); Garth Youngberg, "The Alternative Agricultural Movement," Policy Studies Journal 6 (Summer 1978): 524-30; Daniel Zwerdling, "Curbing the Chemical Fix-Organic Farming: The Secret Is It Works," Progressive, December 1978, pp. 16-25; and Henry Esbenshade, Farming: Sources for a Social and Ecologically Accountable Agriculture (Davis, California: Alternative Agricultural Resources Project, 1976). 48. J. Patrick Madden, Economics of Size in Farming: Theory, Analytical Procedures, and a Review of Selected Studies, Agricultural Economic Report 107 (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1967). 49. Quoted in Hightower, Eat Your Heart Out, p. 157. 50. Warren R. Bailey, The One-Man Farm, ER S-519 (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1973): 1. See also Gordon Ball and Earl Heady, eds., Size, Structure and Future of Farms (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1972); and Philip Raup, "Corporate Farming in the United States," Journal of Economic History 33 (March 1973): 274-90. 51. Quoted in Hightower, Eat Your Heart Out, p. 158. Similarly, Tenneco admits that from the standpoint of efficiency, "there is no substitute for the small-to-medium-sized independent grower who lives on or near his farmland." See Henry J. Freundt, "Agbiz 'Insignificant' for Nation's Largest Farmer," in Agribusiness Manual, ed. Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (New York, 1978). 52. John Kenneth Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1973), p. 73. 53. These studies are summarized in Marshall and Thompson, Status and Prospects of Small Farmers, pp. 68-72. 54. Peter Barnes, "Land Reform in America," in Radical Agriculture, ed. Richard Merrill (New York: Harper Colophon books, 1976), p. 27. 55. Ibid., p. 30. See also A. Whitney Griswold, Farming and Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952). 56. Greene, "Struggle for Survival," pp. 18-19. 57. Marshall and Thompson, Status and Prospects of Small Farmers, p. 79. 58. Belden, et al., New Directions, pp. 28-37, 198-213; Agricultural Marketing Project, Marketing Report: Food Fairs (Nashville: Center for Health Services, Vanderbilt University, 1976); William Ronco, Food Co-ops (Boston: Beacon Press, 1974); Deborah Bowles, Farmers' Market Organizer Handbook (Olympia, Washington Hunger Action Center, Evergreen College, 1976); and Hightower, Eat Your Heart Out, p. 304. 59. Marshall and Thompson, Status and Prospects of Small Farmers, p. 79; Belden, Toward a National Food Policy, pp. 111-14; and Belden, et al., New Directions, pp. 19-27. 60. Rural America, Platform for Rural America, revised at the Third National Conference on Rural America, December 5-7, 1977, (Washington, D.C., 1978), pp. 25-27; Hightower, Eat Your Heart Out, pp. 303-04; Barnes, 85 �"Land Reform in America," pp. 30-31; and Sheldon L. Greene, "Corporate Accountability and the Family Farm," in Radical Agriculture, ed. Richard Merrill (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1976), pp. 59-61. 61. Marshall and Thompson, Status and Prospects of Small Farmers, p. 80; Eat Your Heart Out, p. 304; and Greene, "Corporate Accountability and the Family Farm," p. 61. 62. Rural America, Platform for Rural America, p. 25; Greene, "Corporate Accountability and the Family Farm," pp. 59-60; Belden, Toward a National Food Policy, pp. 117-19; and Linda Kravitz, Who's Minding the Co-op? A Report on Farmer Control of Farmer Cooperatives (Washington, D.C.: Agribusiness Accountability Project, 1974). 63. Rural America, Platform for Rural America, p. 25. 64. Greene, "Corporate Accountability and the Family Farm," pp. 58-59; and Marshall and Thompson, Status and Prospects of Small Farmers, p. 79. 65. Barnes, "Land Reform in America," p. 31; and Greene, "Corporate Accountability and the Family Farm," p. 60. 66. Rural America, Platform for Rural America, pp. 24-27. 67. Hightower and DeMarco, Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times,, pp. 138-43; Berry, The Unsettling of America, pp. 221-22; Belden, et al., New Directions, 55-69; and Rural America, Platform for Rural America, p. 24. 68. Marshall and Thompson, Status and Prospects of Small Farmers, p. 79. 69. Belden, et al., New Directions, pp. 11-12. The book provides an excellent introduction to innovative state and local actions related to small farm issues. 70. Rural America, Platform for Rural America, p.27. 71. Belden, Toward a National Food Policy, pp. 114-17; Greene, "Corporate Accountability and the Family Farm," p. 61; U. S. Senate, Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Hearings on the Farmland Protection Act (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1979); and Joseph H. Nash, Jr., "Farmcolony: A Development Approach to Loss of Agricultural Land," Urban Land, February 1976, 12-16. 72. Farm-value assessment laws are often placed in three classes: preferential assessment, deferred taxation, and restrictive agreement. Questions have been raised as to the effectiveness of these laws as land use control mechanisms. See Robert Brandon, Jonathan Rower, and Thomas Stanton, Tax Politics (New York: Pantheon, 1076), pp. 158-63; Robert J. Gloudemans, Use-Value Farmland Assessments: Theory, Practice and Impact (Chicago: International Association of Assessing Officers, 1974); Glen W. Atkinson, "The Effectiveness of Differential Assessment of Agricultural and Open Space Land," American Journal of Economics and Sociology 36 (Apiil 1977): 197-204; Thomas F. Hady, "Differential Assessment of Farmland on the Rural-Urban Fringe," American Journal of Agricultural Economics 52 (February 1970): 25-32; and John Keene, Untaxing Open Space, prepared for the Council on Environmental Quality (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1976). 73. See H. E. Conklin and W. R. Bryant, "Agricultural Districts: A Compromise Approach to Agricultural Preservation," American Journal of Aricultural Economics 56 (August 1974): 607-13; Belden, et al., New Directions, pp. 97-112; and Bryon Dorgan, The Progressive Land Tax: A Tax Incentive for the Family Farm (Washington, D.C.: Conference on Alternative State and Local Policies, 1978). 74. International Independence Institute, The Community Land Trust: A Guide to a New Model for Land Tenure in America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Center for Community Economic Development, 1972); and Belden, et al.) New Directions, p. 88. 86 �75. Jerry Hardt, The Feasibility and Design of a Central Appalachian Land Bank, prepared for the A.R.C. (Berea, Kentucky: Human/Economic Appalachian Development Corporation, 1979); and Ann L. Strong, Land Banking: European Reality, American Prospect (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1979). 76. Barnes, "Land Reform in America," p. 31. See also Geoffrey Faux, "Reclaiming America," Working Papers 1 (Summer 1973): 31-42; Peter Barnes, The People's Land: A Reader on Land Reform in the United States (Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale Press, 1975); and Florence Constant, Land Reform: A Bibliography (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Center for community Economic Development, 1972). 77. Barnes, "Land in America," pp. 31-33. See Charles Smith, A Bibliography on the 160-Acre Anti-Monopoly Water Law (San Francisco: Center for Rural Studies, 1974). 78. Barnes, "Land Reform in America," p. 32. 79. Hightower, Eat Your Heart Out, pp. 304-06. 80. Berry, The Unsettling of America, p. 14. 81. Ladd Haysted and Gilbert Fife, The Agricultural Regions of the United States (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), p. 82. 82. See Roy E. Procter and T. Kelly White, "Agriculture: A Reassessment," in The Southern Appalachian Region, ed. Thomas Ford (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1962), pp 87-101; The Appalachian Region's Agriculture: Its Problems and Potentials for Development, prepared for the President's Appalachian Regional Commission (Washington, D.C., 1963); R. I. Coltrane and E. L. Baum, An Economic Survey of the Appalachian Region, with Special Reference to Agriculture, Agricultural Economic Report 69 (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1965); Anthony Pavlick, Toward Solving, the Low-Income Problems of Small Farmers in the Appalachian Area, Bulletin 499T (Morgantown: West Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station, 1964); and USDA, Employment, Unemployed and Low Incomes in Appalachia (Washington, D.C.: 1965). 83. W. B. Back and Clark Edwards, "Socioeconomic Trends and Nonfarm Demands for Resources in the Tennessee Valley," in Farmland Tenure and Farmland Use in the Tennessee Valley (Southern Land Economic Research Committee, n. d.). 84. Proctor and White, p. 87. 85. See Steve Fisher, ed.,A Landless People in a Rural Region: A Reader on Land-ownership and Property Taxation in Appalachia (New Market, Tennessee: Highlander Center, 1979); Judy Miller, "Where Does All of Our Farmland Go?", Mountain Review, January 1979, pp. 35-38; and Hal Lenke, "Land Poor: The Appalachian Farmer," People's Appalachia 3 (Spring 1973): 35-36. 86. USDA, Status of the Family Farm, p. 25. 87. Dean Pierce, "The Low-Income Farmer: A Reassessment," Social Welfare in Appalachia 3 (1971): 7-10. For more information on the effects of industrial development on Appalachian agriculture, see Harry Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands (Boston: Atlantic Monthly-Little, Brown, & Co., 1962). 88. Marshall and Thompson (Status and Prospects of Small Farmers, p. 80) offer a set of specific questions which could be used in structuring a response to the problem of how to ensure the viability of the small farm in Appalachia. See also Fred Stewart, Harry Hall and Eldon Smith, "Potential for Increased Income on Small Farms in Appalachian Kentucky," American Journal of Agricultural Economics 61 (February 1979): 77-82; and Sammy Comer and 87 �Roger C. Woodworth, Improving Incomes on Limited Resource Farms in South Central Tennessee, Bulletin 36 (Nashville: School of Agriculture and Home Economics, Tennessee State University, 1976). 89. Berry, The Unsettling of America, p. 74. 90. Hightower, Eat Your Heart Out, p. 188. 91. Berry, The Unsettling of America, p. 123. 88 �COMPARATIVE REGIONAL ISSUES: LAND USE AND ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING IN THE ADIRONDACKS AND APPALACHIANS Parker G. Mar den and Alan M. Schwartz with Kealy Salomon, Gardiner Tucker, Susan Tewksbury, Timothy Jones, and Laurie Booth, ST. LA WRENCE UNIVERSITY Abstract In this paper, an effort is undertaken to compare two regions—the northernmost counties in New York (commonly known as the "North Country") and the southern Appalachians. After examining the possibilities and merits of developing a comparative perspective on regional issues, a comparison is made between policies on land use and environmental planning in two areas within the larger regions: the Adirondacks and the mountains of western North Carolina. In the first case, land use and development is managed by the strictest set of controls governing private land in the United States. In the second instance, the controls are far less restrictive and administered at a local level. The notions of dependency theory are evoked to emphasize that structural arrangements are present in both instances that pass control into the hands of others. In this report, we propose to offer a comparison of two regions-the northernmost counties of New York (commonly known as the "North Country") and the southern Appalachians. Our goals here are to suggest the value of developing a strong comparative perspective on regional issues and, by way of example, to specify some important aspects of land use and the regional character of the two areas. Such comparisons offer possibilities for understanding that are not easily revealed in each separate case. In most respects, our observations are preliminary and tentative; they are perhaps better considered as an agenda for research than as firm conclusions; and they await the enrichment (and alteration) of criticism. These observations are the direct outgrowth of a summer program in comparative regional issues that has been offered to undergraduates at St. Lawrence University since 1978. The program was developed because, unlike Appalachia, the North Country in which the University is located has not been the object of significant and extensive attention from researchers as a distinctive region. Although one can draw lessons about the side effects of such attention from the experience of Appalachia, there is a knowledge base that allows that region to be better understood and appreciated. Accordingly, the program seeks to look at northern New York with perspectives gained during a trip through western North Carolina, central Tennessee, and eastern Kentucky and visits with academicians, planners, regional advocates, and residents to learn how they perceive and address the needs of their region. Comparative Regional Issues On the face of it, the potentialities for comparison are not easily recogniz- 89 �able. Despite the presence of its "Appalachian" counties, as reflected in the delineation and influence of the Appalachian Regional Commission, New York generates connotations of affluence that Appalachia does not. The sparkle and self-assuredness of New York City as a cultural and economic center for the world, despite the blight and poverty that gnaws at its core, can be blinding. But just as residents of Appalachia complain about having that region's important features blurred by media-reinforced stereotypes, the process is returned in kind and the "New Yorker" becomes a caricature and one specific to its major metropolis at that. Yet, many communities in the North Country are located as far from New York City as are some communities in western Pennsylvania or West Virginia and their cultural and social isolation may be as marked. Northern New York is not only on the periphery of the state geographically, but politically and economically as well. In a state where Westchester County, so near to New York City, is thought of as "Upstate," what chance is there for distinguishing areas that are more than 300 miles away? The North Country reaches from Vermont on the East to Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River which forms the international boundary with Canada on the West and North. Its southern border is less clearly defined, although appropriately, many persons define it as the area lying North of the metropolitan centers along the old Erie Canal and now the New York Thruway (Albany-Troy-Schenectady, Utica-Rome, and Syracuse). It is a huge area geographically for at its center lies the Adirondack Park-6,000,000 acres, of which much remains as unspoiled wilderness. The North Country is set apart from the rest of the State by its poverty, high unemployment, its harsh winters, the significant out-migration of its youth, a small population (about 250,000) scattered over a large area, and an economy that is especially vulnerable to decisions made by public agencies and private corporations from outside the region and over which it has little control. Further, land use in its Adirondack core is controlled by a controversial set of strict regulations that are unique within the United States. Many possibilities for comparison with Appalachia are obvious. Although its poverty is quite different in character, some of the nation's poorest counties are located in the Appalachians. Its economy is also based heavily on natural resources, although coal rather than timber is more commonly king. Like the Adirondacks, the natural beauty of areas in Appalachia has attracted tourists and second-home developers, thereby accentuating the struggle between development and preservation. Similarly, most economic and political decisions are made in distant cities. And as in northern New York, many young adults have had to leave the region to find rewarding employment. A comparative approach is valuable because it can lead to a better understanding of northern New York. The focus on regional concerns that is found in Appalachia is lacking in the North Country. The arguments advanced by dependency theory, for example, can be borrowed to provide a framework for evaluating manifestations of economic and political power. The control of timber and mineral resources in the North Country can be better comprehended by learning about the history of the coal industry in Appalachia. As importantly, however, the comparative approach can sharpen the analysis of the variable being compared. For example, both northern New York and Appalachia are characterized by poverty and high unemployment. From this comparison, however, it is a short step to other dimensions of economic distress: (1) the "character" of poverty (e.g., its possible relief through subsistence farming), (2) the special costs of severe winters and a low-density population, (3) the presence of a shadow economy served by the underemployed, (4) the dif- 90 �ferential impact of welfare benefits by state, and (5) the relative proximity of extremes in wealth. Similarly, the consequences of distinctive settlement patterns and their pace and timing can be appreciated through comparison. The Appalchians were settled quite early in the nation's history when compared to northern New York which, with the exception of its periphery along the St. Lawrence River, Lake Champlain, and central New York, was not even well-explored until the mid-1800s. Even today, much of the North Country is very sparsely populated with small hamlets and villages clinging to a limited network of roads. Some areas remain as true wilderness. Both areas can be characterized by the isolation of much of their populations, but in the Appalachians with its distinctive hollows, it is isolation imposed by geology; and in the North Country, it is the isolation of sparseness emphasized annually by winter. The implications of such settlement patterns need to be carefully examined. For example, how much do they contribute to the legacies of a rich and distinctive culture found in the Appalachians and to the lack of unique regional attributes and artifacts in the North Country? In the latter case, the history of recent and scattered settlement, especially in its Adirondack core, precludes the possibility of "trapping" a culture in time. So the potentialities for comparative regional study are great. In looking at Appalachia and the North Country, the pattern that seems to be emerging is one of general similarities and differences in detail. The benefits rest both in moving towards better understanding of the two regions and in developing better specifications of the dimensions along which the comparisons are made. These goals can be illuminated by an examination of land use controls and environmental planning in Appalachia, here primarily the recreation areas of the North Carolina mountains, and in the Adirondack Park at the center of the North Country. Environment and Land Use Planning Both areas are regions of great natural beauty. Persons in the North Country talk with the same affection for the High Peaks of the Adirondacks as their counterparts speak of the Blue Ridge. The attractiveness of the regions, as known to its inhabitants, was discovered next by those of wealth and privilege and both now face the pressures of the "democratization" of leisure with an unprecedented demand for recreational opportunities, including secondhome developments and other forms of intensive use. Both regions have also had to contend with the interests of large outside companies interested in timber and mineral resources. But the regions differ dramatically in the way that such challenges are being managed. While growth in western North Carolina and elsewhere along the Blue Ridge is largely the concern of local government, the Adirondack area is managed by the most stringent controls on private land use in effect in the United States. The comparisons can be most instructive. With its 6,000,000 acres, the Adirondack Park is approximately the size of Vermont. Its population, however, is small-112,000 permanent residents and 90,000 seasonal residents--and much of the area is still wilderness. Approximately 60 percent of the land within the Park is privately owned, including the holdings of large timber companies, while the balance consists of the Adirondack Forest Preserve owned by the State. These lands are intermingled like a haphazard mosaic. All or part of 15 villages, 92 towns, and 12 counties are within the Park's boundaries or the imaginary "Blue Line." The wilderness character of the Park has been attracting tourists and outdoor enthusiasts for more than a century. The first real threat to the 91 �character of the Adirondacks came from the timber industry in the late nineteenth century. Large tracts of land were being leased or sold to logging companies and the virgin forest was being cut. Alarmed at the rate at which state forest land was disappearing, the Legislature adopted what is now Article 14 to the State Constitution in 1895. The opening section remains unchanged to this day: The lands of the state, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve are now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased, sold, or exchanged, or taken by any corporation, public or private, nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed, or destroyed. Despite increasing pressures, the simplicity and Constitutional character of the law have provided over eighty years of protection for the state-owned land. The next major threat to the Adirondacks came in the middle of this century. As leisure time and incomes increased, the Aidrondacks Mountains, like many other areas of the United States, attracted an increasing number of visitors. Recreation was no longer the luxury of the rich and persons from all social backgrounds could visit the Adirondacks. Although large portions of the wilderness within the Park were publicly owned and protected by Article 14, many fragile and important ecosystems were not clearly delimited by ownership and parts were often in private hands. As long as their owners resisted development, there would be no problem. Pressures for large-scale development were increasing, however, and the State of New York could no longer be certain that the Adirondack Park would be able to escape the boom in tourism and development that was already engulfing other areas of the country. 1 In 1968, Governor Nelson Rockefeller created the Temporary Study Commission on the Future of the Adirondacks and charged it with the responsibility of developing a long-range policy for state lands and to suggest measures that would ensure that the development of private lands would be appropriate and consistent with those long-range goals.2 The Commission produced a report that made 181 recommendations pertaining to all aspects of the Park. The first three dealt with the creation of an Adirondack Park Agency that would be responsible for developing and implementing land use plans for both public and private lands within the Park. The Adirondack Park Agency (APA) Act was passed by both the Senate and Assembly in 1971, although it was opposed by all but one of the legislators from the region. Immediately after its creation, the Agency produced the State Land Master Plan that was submitted to Governor Rockefeller in 1972. Legislative approval was unnecessary because the Plan dealt solely with management of the state lands. Seven land use classifications for public land and guidelines for their use were designed to maintain the Adirondack Park in as natural and unspoiled condition as possible. The checkerboard separation of state and private lands within the Park meant that the stringent controls imposed by the APA for the state lands were really of little value if the general character of the surrounding private lands were destroyed by development. After the State Land Master Plan had been approved, the Agency set to work on the much more difficult task of developing a land use plan for the privately owned lands. The Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan was submitted to the Legislature in 1973. There were attempts to defeat the bill, but when strong pressure from Governor Rockefeller made passage seem certain, the representatives from the area 92 �sought a year's delay to study the Plan in depth. Rockefeller felt that delay would result in hurried and uncontrolled development of the kind that the Plan was designed to halt and he vetoed the delay bill. A few months later, the Legislature approved the Plan and, with it, the unique land use controls that apply to the Adirondack Park. Thus, the role of a politically powerful governor, committed to the preservation of the Adirondacks, made a key contribution for the passage of the Act. The Plan called for six categories of land use. They range from "hamlets," essentially the population centers in the Park, in which there are no restrictions on land use and development, to "resource management areas" in which land use density is limited to encourage forestry and agriculture with residential development not to exceed one dwelling per forty-two acres. (53 percent of all private land falls into this category.) In the first instance, no restrictions are set in the hope that growth will be focused on such communities, so that the rest of the Park will remain relatively unspoiled while still serving visitors. Resource management areas are especially restrictive so that fragile ecosystems can be protected and the wilderness character of the Park can be maintained. In addition to the classification of private lands, the Land Use and Development Plan also defines regional projects for which the APA has authority: Projects of a certain size and type and in certain locations assume regional importance. This means that they have a broader area of impact and concern that just the town in which they are proposed to be located.3 In hamlets, few projects are considered to be regional, while nearby all in resource management areas are regarded as such. Again, the other categories of land use range in between. The APA also established specific regulations for the shorelines of all lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams in order to protect them from destruction and to preserve the wilderness character of the land. There are specifications of minimum width to lots and building setbacks, again varying by the classification of the land. With the passage of the Land Use and Development Plan by the Legislature, the APA assumed control over most building and development activities within the Blue Line (the imaginary Park boundary), ranging upwards from the construction of a single family dwelling.4 The Agency is prepared to relinquish jurisdiction of most small-scale local planning to those communities that develop a land use plan that is consistent with its goals.' In seven years, however, only seven towns have developed APA-approved plans, although several others are in various stages of completion and adoption. The intent is to form a partnership between the state and local governments in the Park in order to maintain its character and plan its growth. The lack of approved plans, assuming more local control over local planning, is clear evidence of the resistance of communities to this notion of partnership. At the same time, the consciousness of Park residents about the importance of planning has been raised even as the presence of the APA is opposed.6 Thus, land use and development in the six million acres of the Adirondack Park is regulated and controlled by a single agency, the Adirondack Park Agency, with the full force of state law behind it. Public lands (some 40 percent of the area) are managed through Article 14 of the State Constitution, and the privately owned lands (the remaining 60 percent) are controlled through the Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan approved by the Legislature in 1973. Both combine to insure that state lands will be maintained as "open 93 �spaces," even wilderness, and that their quality will not be marred by the development of nearby private lands. The success of the Adirondack Park Agency is preserving the character of the Park is widely debated. In its first years of operation, it approved more than 90 percent of the applications submitted to it. Just over one percent were disapproved and another 5 percent were withdrawn before a decision was reached, presumably because the project sponsors realized that approval would not be forthcoming.7 These figures can be misleading, however, because many projects die aborning due to the very existence of the Land Use Plan and an agency to apply its regulations. Robert Flacke, presently Commissioner of the State's Department of Environmental Conservation, says that the Adirondack Park Agency has discouraged the "fast buck" developers from considering the Adirondacks as a suitable target for easy profit.' There is also evidence that the quality of applications has improved since the APA's early years. As will be discussed below, those years were especially troubled ones. The review procedures have become simpler and more efficient as generally accepted guidelines have emerged, at least in practice. Those filing applications are increasingly aware of the regulations concerning building and sewage system setbacks, wetlands, intensity to use, steep slopes, and aesthetics, and they describe more clearly how their project intends to meet the requirements. Accordingly, applications are processed more efficiently and quickly. The high percentage of project approvals is misleading in another way. Conditions are often attached. The most common conditions involve limits on the number of buildings due to intensity restrictions, location of buildings, wetland and stream protection, and proper provision for on-site sewage disposal. It is difficult to determine how many projects are halted because of the special conditions because they prove to be too costly to the developer or home owner, but they do affirm the intentions of the Land Use and Development Plan. At the same time, the Agency has lacked an effective system of inspection and, consequently, of enforcement, so it is difficult to determine how effective the setting of special conditions is in preserving the environmental and aesthetic quality of the Adirondack Park. Given its power to rule on matters that had heretofore been private, including the construction of a single family home, it is not surprising that the Adirondack Park Agency has been the center of controversy from its creation. Its very parentage, New York State (especially its governor and urban legislators) has never been in doubt and local residents view the Agency as an "outside" infringement of their basic liberties. In the beginning, the inefficiencies of the Agency produced several controversial cases, indeed "horror stories," that galvanized local opposition. Protest groups were active, litigation against the Agency was frequent, and legislation was introduced to curb its powers. Such activities continue, but the opposition is more sporadic and muted. The Agency's increased sensitivity and efficiency has helped in this regard. So, seven years after the Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan was enacted, the controls over land use and development within the Park are firmly in place. The status of the Adirondack Park is in sharp contrast with developments in the Blue Ridge mountains. In 1974, the Legislature of North Carolina rejected the Mountain Area Management Act (MAMA) that would have provided for state regulation and controls in that state's portion of the Blue Ridge region. Those who framed the Act were reacting to the same concerns about uncontrolled growth and uncoordinated development that had been foreseen in the Adirondacks (and elsewhere). But, here planning and environmental protection was left to local agencies instead. Many are not equal to the challenge offered 94 �by organized interests. As one result, the area around Boone and Blowing Rock has become the setting for a wide variety of fast-food restaurants, motels, amusements, and other tourist-related accouterments. Without comprehensive land use controls and zoing regulations, the growth has been uncoordinated and random. The problems escalate with new outcries for flood control and better drainage where building should have been restricted and for improved highways where the demand is generated by the newly constructed attractions. Deeper in the mountains, large-scale developments provide a challenge of similar difficulty. Ski resorts and related second-home enterprises have been built throughout the area and others are planned. Some are carefully designed to protect their natural assets; others have taken few safeguards. The situation is further complicated by the problems that some developments have encountered in their financing. Some have been slowed or halted in mid-construction due to a lack of funds, even bankruptcy, and others have had to cut corners or ignore promises. Environmental safeguards quickly become luxuries in such situations. The problems of growth are not just those of the physical environment, however. Even where developments follow sound advice and employ selfimposed standards on the use of land, protection of fragile ecosystems, and the management of sewage, there are difficulties that transcend specific projects. For example, accelerating commercialization of the environment in parts of western North Carolina places great pressure on residents to sell their land. Consequently, speculation is rampant. Those who would prefer to continue with the present use of land, perhaps in farming, are under increasing pressure to sell because assessments for taxes increase with land values and the best use of land becomes its sale. A more subtle difficulty which is perhaps unmanageable with even the most cautious planning concerns the "hidden injuries of class"' when those of economic advantage are served by those who have been figuratively or literally dispossessed. In western North Carolina, as elsewhere in the United States, the symbols become such things as roads to ski resorts that are well-maintained in winter while the schools must close because other roads are impassable, or clusters of second homes of spectacular siting and design in areas where the inadequate "first homes" of others are discreetly out of sight, but nearby. Most of these problems are not obscure. They are very difficult ones with which to deal, however, because the tools of management—land use controls, regulations, planning-challenge the concept of property rights. "Nobody is going to tell me what I can do with my land!" So, efforts to set standards for new developments or to implement stricter regulations are seriously challenged. Such challenges are often encouraged by those who have the most to gain, and land developers, bankers, realtors, and politicians have vested interests in "home rule" and local determination of land use. Indeed, it is very hard to fault those who behave in accordance with their perception of their basic rights and interests. The same arguments are heard in the Adirondacks and western North Carolina as well as any other place where the use of land is changing. But in the Adirondacks, large-scale development has virtually ceased, steep slopes and wetlands are off-limits to development, and shorelines are protected. Personal choice and local option have been supplemented in specified instances by state control of the land. One principle, environmental management, has taken priority over another-property rights. The options for development and other uses of the land have been narrowed for local residents by citizens of the entire state acting through their legislators and 95 �directly by referendum. Regional Character Why have these differnces occurred? Why is land use in the Adirondacks now managed by strict regulations while developments in North Carolina are governed more by the laws of gravity and the good will of the developers than by a formal set of controls? It is not enough to say that those with deep interests in environmental quality saw that the Adirondacks required protection and it was accomplished. Not only does this interpretation commit an act of reductio ad absurdum, but it ignores the fact that by the same standards of natural beauty and environmental quality, and at a roughly similar point in the development of these resources, the Blue Ridge region of North Carolina needed the same foresight implied in planning and land use controls. Better explanations are needed to account for the differences in response. Perhaps the easiest explanation can be sought in variations in regional character. By this interpretation, the people of North Carolina were more resistant to infringement on personal liberties than those in the Adirondacks. Doubtlessly, the inhabitants of the Blue Ridge and Adirondack regions differ in certain cultural and social-psychological attributes. Indeed, this is one argument for positioning the comparison of the two areas in the larger regional contexts of Appalachia and the North Country. But whatever those differences may be, it is very unlikely that passiveness to an infringement of property and other rights is among them. Adirondackers are proud and independent persons and to attribute the presence of land use controls established for the region to their indifference would be a classic case of "blaming the victim." 10 Similarly, it is inappropriate to explain the differences as historical accidents or to attribute them to idiosyncratic factors. In doing so, one accounts for the differences simply in the votes of legislatures or particular environmental atrocities committed (or planned) in the name of development that mobilized public opinion. Such explanations imply no pattern to history or the particular relationship of a region to the larger world. Rather, a structural interpretation seems most appropriate. In both cases, it is in the interests of others that the decision is made and that decision-for controls in the Adirondacks and against MAMA in North Carolina-reflects those interests. It is the politics of dependency. In the Adirondacks, those who influenced the decision were willing to have some rights surrendered, usually those of others, to protect the environment. In North Carolina, those who influenced the decision were not yet willing to surrender such options only because they had not yet obtained what they wanted. Instead, they could use the issue of such rights for their own ends. In the Adirondacks, the decision was made to protect the environment; in North Carolina, it was made to protect development. In either case, was it the politics of the people who would be most affected that mattered. Both situations are manifestations of dependency theory and the ideas of colonialsim." In the Adirondacks, we are talking about an "environmental" colony; in the Blue Ridge mountains, the colonizers are the land developers. Both areas, as part of the North Country and Appalachia respectively, are party to a long heritage of economic and political dependency in which decisions are made elsewhere. There are two problems with evoking the ideas and imagery of dependency 96 �and colonialism in this context. First, they carry connotations that can be troubling. The implications of exploitation and the arrogance of power are not pretty. In its classic sense, dependency is an economic, political, and social mechanism, often reinforced by psychological manifestations, that allow a few to control and profit from the labors of many. It is perhaps possible to adjust dependency theory to the unique circumstances of the Adirondack Park where the relationships are the same in that the decision was made for those who are affected, but the motives for doing so were more honorable. The reasons for imposing controls were not profit-related, but ones reflecting the deep conviction that the environment needed protection. The tradeoff between property rights and control involved a calculation that the environment, including the last remaining wilderness in the Northeast, was more deserving. In one respect, this explanation is too simplistic. It implies that the motives of all those who supported the Adirondack Park were equally honorable. For some, protection of the environment did involve a higher calling, but for others, it was a matter of protecting interests and investments. The same division, perhaps still too simple, can be made for those who opposed the Park. Nonetheless, it should be patently clear that the decision to establish strong controls in the Adirondacks was but one of a series made for local residents by others from the "outside." Here, the decision was on behalf of the environment. Conversely, the decision not to establish strong controls in the mountains of western North Carolina was also one of a series of decisions made for local residents by outsiders. Here, the decision was on behalf of development. In balance, the potential for continued exploitation both of people and the environment seems greater in the latter case. Perhaps the connotations of dependency theory, although not its logic, are misapplied when they blur such features. This raises the second problem. The application of the dependency idea provides a structure for analysis, but leads quickly to a set of second-order questions: why and how are these interests mobilized? At this point, we come full circle to the points made at the beginning of this paper about potential for comparative study. Simultaneously, we must hide behind (under?) an agenda for further study. Essentially, we argue that whether local autonomy or "home rule" is supported or eroded, it reflects the intersts of others. In the Adirondacks, those interests were supportive of the environment; in the Blue Ridge area, the issue of "rights" supports pro-development interests. Why did the econimic and political elite in New York elect to preserve the Adirondacks? Why did their counterparts in North Carolina choose the other course? These two questions are only the beginning of a fuller exploration. Informed through comparison, it could add important specification to the nature of regional character. Attention needs to be directed to basic matters of political and economic power, control, and autonomy as well as concerns about ecological fragility and environmental protection. NOTES 1. Fred Sullivan, "Adirondack Zoning: A National Experiment in Land Use Controls Faces Local Challenge," Empire State Report, December, 1975, p. 464. 2. Temporary Study Commission on the Future of the Adirondacks, The Future of'the Adirondack Part, Albany, 1972, p.3. 3. Adirondack Park Agency, A Citizen's Guide to Adirondack Park Agency Land Use Regulations, January, 1979, p. 8. 97 �4. During its first four years, 58.1 percent of the proposals reviewed by the Adirondack Park Agency involved the building of a single family dwelling or two-lot subdivisions. At the other extreme, fewer than one percent of the projects reviewed were subdivisions of greater than 50 units; cf., G. Gordon Davis and Richard A. Kiroff, "Conflict in the North Country," draft report, September, 1979, p. 18. 5. When a town is granted APA approval for a land use program, it gains (1) refinement and distribution of overall intensity guidelines, (2) local review of Class B regional projects, and (3) increased local participation in APA review of Class A projects. The Class A projects are those of "regional importance" and are generally more sensitive. The Class B projects are smaller and more localized. 6. Adirondack Park Agency, Local Planning and Land Use Controls in the Adirondack Park, 1975. 7. Davis and Liroff, "Conflict in the North Country, pp. iv-22. 8. Robert F. Flacks, A Report on Implementation of the Adirondack Park Agency Act, presented to the Eighth Annual Convention of the Environmental Planning Lobby, October 15,1978, pp. 1-2. 9. Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class, (New York: Vintage Books, 1973). 10. William Ryan, Blaming the Victim (New York: Pantheon Books, 1971). 11. See, for example, Helen M. Lewis and Edward E. Knipe, "The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case," in Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case, ed. Helen M. Lewis, Linda Johnson, and Don Askins (Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1978), pp. 9-31. 98 �COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES OF OHIO APPALACHIANS: A REGIONAL STUDY TedL. Napier and Elizabeth G. Bryant Abstract Data were collected from a random sample of 1474 residents living in a five county area located within the designated Appalachian region of Ohio during the summer and fall of 1975. The focus of the study was upon the assessment of development priorities of the local populace. The study findings are employed in this paper to ascertain the validity of stereotypes commonly used to describe Appalachians and to determine the relative merits of individual deficits models for understanding unemployment. The findings are discussed in the context of alternative development strategies for rural Appalachian areas such as the study region. INTRODUCTION Appalachians have been characterized in the existing popular, as well as scientific, literature as being individualistic, suspicious of oursiders, localistic in terms of world perspectives, opposed to government involvement and control, opposed to socioeconomic growth and social change, anti-intellectual, poverty stricken, dependent upon reference groups for information, traditionalistic, ignorant, and numerous other stereotypes which are not complimentary to Appalachian people (Coles, 1972; Ball, 1970; Fetterman, 1970; Caudill, 1963; Harrington, 1966; Quigley, 1969; Weller, 1965; Schwarzweller, 1970; Photiadis, 1970; Mayo, 1970; Looff, 1971). Such descriptors suggest that Appalachians have internalized self-perceptions and attitudes which impede planned change programs from being implemented within the region and imply that the "culture of poverty" thesis advocated by Lewis (1966) is correct. The culture of poverty thesis suggests that development problems can only be "attacked" via modification of the individual through changes in attitudes, knowledge bases, skills, values, beliefs, and behavior. The individual is perceived to be deficient in the sociocultural factors which are necessary to participate fully in the institutions of the society. Therefore, solutions to development problems are couched in terms of changing the person to fit the system. Many federal and state programs designed to ameliorate socio economic problems in rural areas within the United States have tended to rely heavily upon the individual deficits model as noted by the existing literature in the field of human resources development (Schultz, 1962; Becker, 1962; Jakubauskas and Baumel, 1967; McCollum, 1967; Bloch and Smith, 1977; Niland, 1972; Stromsdorfer, 1968; Colmen, 1967; Levitan, et al, 1972; Parnes and Kohen, 1975). The long history of manpower programs in Appalachia is evidence of the commitment to the human resources development model. The logic advanced in the human resources development model is that private and public investments in developing human skills will make the recipient of such investments more functional in the existing social structure. Subsequently, it is argued that an individual who has been "developed" in terms of "improved" human resources will be absorbed into the existing social system which in turn will reduce socio economic development problems for the region. While the individual deficits model has been used extensively by governmental agencies, several researchers have raised questions about the model (Gurin, 1970; 277- 99 �299; Grubb and Lazeson, 1975; Niland, 1972; Patten and Clark, 1968; Ballante, 1972; Koenker, 1967; 134-142; Spitze, 1970; 197-218; Blaug, 1976; Napier, et al, 1979; Napier, 1979). These writers suggest that the model has some serious limitations and some even suggest the model may be an inappropriate strategy for bringing about rural development under certain circumstances (Napier, et al, 1979; Napier, 1979). The two objectives of this paper are to examine with empirical data the validity of the stereotypes used to describe Appalachians noted above and to evaluate the relative merits of the human resources development model for understanding unemployment within a multi-county Appalachian area of Ohio. The findings will be discussed in the context of rural development policy. RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES The Research Situation The region selected for investigation is a five county area within the designated Appalachian counties of southeastern Ohio. The region is characterized by rolling hills and widely separated farmsteads and small villages. The primary occupations in the study area have traditionally been associated with the extractive industries (coal, timber and small-scale agriculture) even though the occupational structure is slowly becoming more differentiated. An examination of the socio economic history of the region prior to the late 1970s will show a gradual reduction of socio economic viability for many years. Out-migration prior to 1975 was very common, since jobs in the local area were difficult to secure and opportunities for social mobility within the study region were quite limited. The social infrastructure of the multi-county region tended to reflect this history of decline. Services, both public and private, have been in a state of continual decline relative to other areas of the state, and unemployment rates have remained high. Other indicators of a declining area have traditionally been identified with the region. The socio economic viability of the area looked rather bleat until several coal mines were opened in the early 1970s. The mines provided expanded employment opportunities but also created new interest in development planning among several groups to sustain the growth and, therefore, increase the probability that the recent surge of economic activity would not wane. To aid in the planning process, a study was commissioned by the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center using Title V funds provided by the Rural Development Act of 1972 to ascertain the perceived development needs of the region's populace. The study findings reported here were drawn from this study. Sampling A systematic, random sample was drawn from the five county study area (Napier, 1971; Napier, 1975; Napier and Wright, 1976; Napier, et al, 1977; Napier, 1976; Napier and Maurer, 1978). Interviewers were instructed to conduct an interview with an adult resident from each selected occupied dwelling. The interviewers were instructed to select every fifth occupied residence, with the initial dwelling chosen at random, and to begin the selection process at different places in the sampling area each day. A structured questionnaire was developed and administered to the respondents 100 �via personal interview. The location of each respondent's residence was noted on detailed county maps secured from the Ohio Department of Transportation which provided a means of pictorial display of the sampling distribution. Careful visual monitoring of the distribution of the sample during the data collection phase and subsequent evaluation after the data were collected revealed the sample was not clustered and approximated the population distribution by township. The respondents drawn from villages and towns were selected using the same systematic sampling technique which was modified to be approximate to more densely populated areas (streets were selected as the starting points for the sampling and the residences were systematically chosen). The village sample was also monitored with detailed maps showing location of respondents, and evaluation of the distribution during and after the data collection revealed the village samples were not clustered. Approximately 95 percent of the people selected to participate in the study completed an interview and the total number of respondents to the study was 1474. The characteristics of the sample are presented in Table 1. TABLE 1: Sociodemoeraphic Characteristics of the Study Sample (N = 1474) Sex of Respondents 44.8% Male 55.2% Female Mean Age of Respondents 44.3 years Mean Length of Residence 30.6 years Mean Number of Children Living at Home 1.25 children Mean Number of Formal Organization Memberships 1.6 groups Percent Home Owners 80.4% Percent Unemployed at Sometime During Last Year (Excluding Retired) 25.9% Percent Engaged in Full-time Farming 5.5% Percent Engaged in Part-time Farming 11.7% Mean Farm Size (For those Engaged in Farming) 104.0 acres Mean Education of Head of Household 11.5 years Occupation of Primary Income Earner Percent 61 116 119 401 375 178 86 138 4.1 7.9 8.1 27.2 25.4 12.1 5.8 9.4 149 244 257 301 198 122 118 85 Unclassified Service Workers Farmers Unskilled Laborers Skilled Blue Collar White Collar Manager- Administrator Professional Frequency 10.1 16.5 17.5 20.4 13.4 8.3 8.0 5.8 Family Income (1974) $ 0- 2,999 3,000- 5,999 6,000- 8,999 9,000-11,999 12,000-14,999 15,000-17,999 18, 000 and above NO response 101 �The characteristics of the sample population indicate the study respondents were middle-aged people with very few children living at home. The study participants were basically working class people with moderate incomes. Most of the people were long-term residents of the region and had basically completed high school. Most of the respondents spent their early years in small towns or less densely populated areas (farm and rural nonfarm). A large majority of the respondents (80 percent) owned their homes and were not actively involved with many formal organizations. A small minority of the respondents indicated they were farmers, and most of those who were involved indicated they were farming only on a part-time basis. This finding partially explains why the mean farm size was only 104 acres. Also, the region is quite hilly and large-scale agriculture is not common. A relatively large number of respondents indicated that the primary income earner in the family had been unemployed at some time during the preceding year and that many remained without work for extended periods of time. Commuting to work was quite common as noted by the respondents, who revealed they commuted an average distance of eleven miles one way each day. Instrument Construction A questionnaire was developed from previous research instruments used by the principal author of this paper and other development studies. The questionnaire was reviewed by community development professionals in the College of Agriculture at the Ohio State University and a pretest was conducted using a similar population to the one selected for research purposes. The questionnaire was revised and the data were collected in the summer and fall of 1975. Data were collected on the following: attitudes toward various development options, willingness to commit limited resources to development efforts, priorities for development actions, use of information sources, and perceptions of geographical areas to which the respondents identified. Data concerning unemployment were also collected and used to test the relevance of the human resources development approach. The findings for these components of the study are presented in descriptive statistical form with reference made to multivariate analysis published^ journal articles and research bulletins. FINDINGS The findings basically support the position that the common sterotypes used to describe Appalachian people are not appropriate for the study region, the respondents were very postive toward rural industrial development and held very positive orientations toward outdoor recreation development. The respondents were willing to commit resources for collective development efforts and perceived that socio-economic growth (expansion of jobs and industrial base) was the most important development problem within the study area. Sixty-seven percent of the study respondents identified with their county of residence as opposed to multi-county districts, the State of Ohio, or the Appalachian Region. The study participants used mass media, both printed and electronic forms, as their primary information sources rather than depending upon other people within the study area. Lastly, the human resources model was shown to be an inadequate model for understanding unemployment 102 �within the study region. Data relative to each of these findings are provided below. Attitudes Toward Rural Industrial Development The descriptive data about attitudes toward industrial development are presented in Table 2.' TABLE 2: Attitudes of Survey Respondents to Industrial Development: Presented in Frequency Counts (Percentages Within Parentheses - N51474) Strongly Agree Strongly nisigree Mean for Ovation Rapon* 3* Dingrc* 2* 489 (33.2) 76 ( 5.2) 126 ( 8.5) 63 ( 4.3) 4.1 377 (25.6) 679 (46.1) 329 (22.3) 70 ( 4.7) 19 ( 1.3) 3.9 3. Industrial development is not needed in my region. 34 ( 2.3) 74 ( 5.0) 78 ( 5.3) 552 (37.4) 736 (49.9) 1.7 4. The disadvantages brought to my region by industrial development will offset the advantages. 61 ( 4.1) 205 (13.9) 225 (15.3) 614 (41.7) 369 (25.0) 2.3 5. Industrial development in my region will create many problems for people living here. 37 ( 2.5) 227 (15.4) 175 (11.0) 688 (46.7) 347 (23.5) 2.3 6. Industries should not be encouraged to locate in my region. 45 ( 3.1) 85 ( 5.8) 79 (41.4) 610 (44.4) 655 1.8 7. Industrial development of my region will provide many jobs for local people. 748 (50.7) 599 (40.6) 67 ( 4.5) 39 ( 2.6) 21 ( 1.4) 4.4 8. Industrial development will make my region a better place in which to live. 550 (37.3) 640 (43.4) 167 (11.3) 84 ( 5.7) 33 ( 2.2) 4.1 9. New industries employing mostly women would be harmful to family life in my region. 107 ( 7.3) 216 (14.7) 254 (17.2) 555 (37.7) 342 (23.2) 2.5 10. Industrial development wilt benefit my region. 611 (41.5) 694 (47.1) 94 ( 6.4) 50 ( 3.4) 25 ( 1.7) 4.2 1 1 . New jobs are more important to me than the air or water pollution that new industries may cause. 217 399 267 402 189 (14.7 (27.1) (18.1) (27.3) (12.8) 3.0 12. Planned industrial parks are very important for industrial development. 326 (22.1) 773 (52.4) 277 (18.8) 80 ( 5.4) 18 ( 1.2) 3.9 Question 5' 1 . Industrial development in my region will benefit me or some member of my household. 720 (48.8) 2. The costs of industrial development in my region can be justified. Agree 4* Undecided 1 * •Weighted values given to each designated response. Source: Napier, Pierce and Bachtel, 1977, page 13. The findings presented in Table 2 show that the respondents were basically quite postive toward rural industrial development. The respondents believed they or members of their families would receive benefits from industrial development and believed the region as a whole would benefit. They also believed that industries should be encouraged to locate in the region. The respondents did not believe that industrial development would destroy their community and fragment family relations. They held this view if the industries attracted to the region employed primarily women. Multi-variate analyses of the industrial attitude data revealed that people 103 �from different socioeconomic strata held positive attitudes toward rural industrial development of the region. The findings strongly indicate the Appalachians included in this study did not percieve socioeconomic growth and expansion negatively, general assertions that Appalachians are suspicious of outsiders does not appear to be valid either, since most people realize industries will attract people from outside the region (Summers, et al, 1976). Data collected about the possibility of outside people being attracted to the area revealed the respondents were positive toward such in-migration. Attitudes Toward Outdoor Recreation Development Data were collected about attitudes toward outdoor recreation as a development option. These data are presented in Table 3. 2 TABLE 3: Attitudes of Survey Respondents to Outdoor Recreation Development: Presented in Frequency Counts (Percentages Within Parentheses-N'1474) Mean for Queston Response Agree 4* Undecided Disagree Strongly Disagree Question Strongly Agree 5' 2* 1* 1 . Outdoor recreation development of my region will provide many jobs for local people. 312 (21.2) 809 (54.9) 197 (13.4) 134 (9.1) 22 (1.5) 3.9 2. Outdoor recreation development will make my region a better place in which to live. 366 (24.8) 872 (59.2) 141 (9.6) 79 (5.4) 16 (1.1) 4.0 3. Outdoor recreation development is not needed in my region. (2.3) (6.7) (8.8) (53.3) (29.0) 2.0 4. Development of outdoor recreation will benefit my region. 381 (25.8) 899 (61.0) 113 (7.7) 64 (4.3) 17 (1.2) 4.1 5 . The costs of outdoor recreation devlopment in my region can be justified. 226 (15.3) 705 (47.8) 422 (28.7) 97 (6.6) 24 (1.6) 3.7 6. The disadvantages brought to my region by outdoor recreation development will offset the advantages. 39 (2.6) 210 (14.2) 267 (18.1) 716 (48.6) 242 (16.4) 2.4 7. Outdoor recreation development in my region will create many problems for people living here. 17 (1.2) 124 (8.4) 200 (13.6) 845 (57.3) 288 (19.5) 2.1 3' 8. My region will not benefit much from new outdoor recreational development. 33 137 159 832 313 (2.2) (9.3) (10.8) (56.4) (21.2) 9. Existing recreation facilities in my region are adequate for my needs. 171 (11.6) 557 (37.8) 1% (26.5) 391 (10.8) 159 2.1 (11.6) (37.8) (13.3) (26.5) (10.8) 3.1 10. Expansion of existing outdoor recreation and tourism attractions in my region will reduce my travel to other areas outside my region. 203 (13.8) 505 (34.3) 270 (18.3) 389 (26.4) 107 (7.3) 3.2 1 1 . Outdoor recreation development is usually harmful to the environment. 13 (0.9) 67 (4.5) 136 (9.2) 848 (57.5) 410 (27.8) 1.9 •Weighted values given to each designated response. Source: Napier, et at, 1977, page 14. 104 �These data demonstrate that the respondendts believed that expansion of outdoor recreation facilities was a highly desirable development option even when such development efforts would attract tourists into the region. These findings can be interpreted as indicating the Ohio Appalachian respondents were neither provincial nor opposed to socioeconomic growth. Data collected about perceptions of tourists indicated the respondents perceived them in a positive manner (Napier, et al, 1977: 11), which suggests that suspicion of outsiders is not a valid descriptor of Appalachians within the study area. The respondents believed that outdoor recreation development would benefit the region by generating jobs and stimulating economic growth. The people also believed that resources used to accomplish outdoor recreation development goals would be wise investments. Lastly, the respondents realized that the region needed such development programs. Multi-variate analyses indicated that these feelings permeated all socioeconomic groups represented in the study. When people believed they would benefit from the efforts they tended to be more supportive. Commitment of Resources To Development Efforts Data were collected concerning willingness of local people to support industrial and outdoor recreation development programs. The findings demonstrated that the respondents were willing to cooperate in the accomplishment of collective community goals and that the support for cooperative problem solving permeated every segment and social class within the region (Napier and Maurer, 1978). Individuals who were most willing to commit resources for outdoor recreation and industrial development were those who perceived that the region, close family members, or they themselves would benefit from such development efforts. The issues addressed in the commitment scale were taxation, zoning, and commitment of personal time. The first two require government involvement in the development process, which brings into question the common belief that Appalachians fear government involvement in local affairs. Also, the willingness of the respondents to pursue common goals suggests that the individualistic orientation often associated with Appalachians is probably overstated. Priorities For Development Action The respondents were requested to rank the top three development problems within the study area which they believed to be the most important. These data were summarized using weighted rank orders to assess the relative ranking of development problems. The findings are presented in Table 4. 105 �TABLE 4: Weighted Rank Order of Problem Priorities in the Study Area: Survey Results (N 5 1474) Weighted Frequency Multiplied by Weighting Factors 2711 Problem for Region Jobs and Industrial Expansion Drug Abuse Education Highway Improvements Crime, Vandalism and Trespassing New Housing Recreation Facilities Water Supply Sewage Improvements Solid Waste Pick-up Planning and Zoning Other Source: Napier, et al, 1977, page 7. 972 913 889 851 682 526 362 361 280 138 137 Score Sample Size 1.84 .66 .62 .60 Weighted Rank Order 1 2 3 4 .58 5 .46 .36 .25 .24 .19 .09 .09 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 The findings presented in Table 4 show that the study populace perceived jobs and industrial development to be single most important development issue. This issue was perceived to be much more important than the other issues evaluated, the weighted value for jobs and industrial development is 1.84 which is almost 3 times greater than the weighted value for the issue ranked second. Inspection of the priorities given to the issues will show that the respondents were primarily concerned with community living and "quality of life" issues. The respondents were concerned with having secure work roles, a crime free social environment, and social amenities and public services. The respondents were apparently willing to accept the social changes and social consequences associated with economic development to achieve better life styles. Such behavioral orientations could not be defined as traditionalistic. Sources of Information Data were collected about the most frequently used sources of various types of information. These findings are presented in Table 5. The findings demonstrate that mass media mechanisms for the dissemination of information were the most frequently used sources for every issue evaluated except agricultural information. The traditional mode of interpersonal interaction for the exchange of information was not frequently employed. The small number of people who do not seek information should also bring into question the idea that rural Appalachians are ignorant of contemporary issues in the community, region, nation, and world. The findings from the Appalachian study group are quite similar to previous research undertaken by the principal author of this paper to assess information sources used in rural areas (Ross and Napier, 1978). The patterns discovered among the Appalachian group are basically the same for other rural groups evaluated in non-Appalachian areas of Ohio. 106 �TABLE 5: Most Important Source of Information for Survey Respondents Presented in Frequency Counts with Percentages Within Parentheses (N = 1474)* Radio 239 (16.2) County Extension Agent 39 ( 2.6) Television Newspapers Family or Neighbors 67 ( 4.5) 485 (32.9) 245 (16.6) Special Interest Magazines 2 ( 0.1) 1 ( 0.1) 623 (42.3) 3 ( 0.2) 197 (13.4) 530 (36.0) 115 ( 7.8) 524 (35.5) 125 ( 8.5) 57 ( 3.9) 73 ( 5.0) 18 ( 1.2) 131 ( 8.9) New Development Programs 151 (10.2) 236 (16.0) 151 (10.2) 72 ( 4.9) 167 (11.3) 579 (39.3) 169 153 158 50 87 Recreation Activities (11.5) (10.4) (10.7) ( 3.4) ( 5.9) Taxing Issues 68 ( 4.6) 520 (35.3) 93 ( 6.3) 78 ( 5.3) Local School Issues 117 ( 7.9) 402 (27.3) 127 ( 8.6) 27 •( 1.8) 14 ( 0.9) 31 ( 2.1) Do Not Seek This Type of Information 72 ( 4.9) Public Officials 318 (21.6) Local News 2 ( 0.1) Information About Your Occupation Type of Information General Community Problems 19 90 283 Agricultural Information (19.2) (1.3) (6.1) •The most important source of information for each issue is enclosed in boxes. Source: Napier, Pierce and Bachtel, 1977, Page 19. Extension Bulletins No Response 3 ( 0.2) 4 (0.3) 0 ( 0.0) 1 ( 0.1) 2 (0.1) 113 ( 7.7) 382 (25.9) 40 ( 2.7) 11 (0.7) 72 ( 4.9) 24 ( 1.6) 18 ( 1.2) 601 192 46 13 4 (0.3) 5 (40.8) (13.0) ( 3.1) ( 0.9) (0.3) 637 (43.2) 40 ( 2.7) 4 ( 0.3) 4 ( 0.3) 3 (0.2) 622 (42.2) 148 (10.0) 5 ( 0.3) 7 ( 0.5) 1 (0.1) 183 (12.4) (0.2) 618 29 139 68 42 (41.9) ( 2.0) ( 9.4) ( 4.6) ( 2.8) 3 �Identification With Geographical Areas A characteristic commonly associated with Appalachians is the "Identification with place" orientation. The focus of the identification is assumed to be Appalachia, but seldom, if ever, is the place of identification specified. To address this issue, the respondents were provided maps with different geographical areas specified and asked to choose the geographical area with which they identified. The areas varied from county to the multi-state federation termed Appalachia. More than 67 percent of the respondents chose county of residence and an additonal 15 percent selected the county of residence and the counties immediately surrounding it as their area of identification. About 9.7 percent selected the multi-county study area. About 3.6 percent identified with Ohio and 2.4 selected the Appalachian region of Ohio. Only 2.3 percent of the respondents selected Appalachia as their place of identification. These findings indicate that the concept "Appalachia" may have more literary meaning than it does as a geographical area of identification. The findings also suggest that macro-level geographical areas for addressing rural development problems are probably not appropriate. The Human Resources Development Model Unemployment information was collected about the primary income earner in each family represented in the study and was used to assess the merits of the human resources development model as a development strategy for attacking rural unemployment problems. The literature noted in the introductory sections of this paper was reviewed to ascertain the relevant factors to examine as predictive variables. The factors used to analyze the variance in length of unemployment of the primary income earner were: age, education, length of residence, number of children in the household, formal group memberships, and occupation. Multi-variate regression and discriminant analyses were conducted on the data set and the findings revealed that the variables selected for investigation were basically useless in predicting length of unemployment. Comparisons made between the employed and unemployed groups using the above-mentioned variables also proved fruitless (Napier, et al, 1978; Napier, 1979; Napier, Maurer, and Bryant, 1979).3 The study data suggest that further investment in human resources without concomitant development of the economic infrastructure of the region is probably futile. The findings strongly indicate that pursuit of the human resources development strategy within the study region will probably result in continual out-migration of the best-trained people. Even more tragic is the possibility that such an approach will produce a better-educated and trained labor force on the local level that will remain unemployed. It was concluded from the research that human resources development approaches alone will not serve to enhance the socioeconomic viability of rural Appalachian areas, such as the study region, if the existing social infrastructure cannot absorb the newly trained people.4 An alternative development approach focused upon expanding the local structural employment bases (private economic expansion in the production and service sectors) before enhancing human skills has been advanced from the study findings. It is argued that first priority for development action be given to the generation of permanent jobs within rural areas. It is also argued that federal and state development funds be used to facilitate location of small, privately owned and operated industrial plants in rural areas. Small firms are ususally preferable to large manufacturing firms because they have fewer adverse social and environmental impacts 108 �(Summers, et al, 1976) but an established pattern of generating benefits for local communities (Birch, 1979). Once permanent jobs have been created on the local level and the existing pool of human resources has been depleted, more emphasis should be placed upon human resources development programs. In sum, the unemployment component of the regional study suggests that sole reliance on the human resources development approach is probably an inappropriate development strategy for rural areas which cannot absorb newly "developed" human resources. Thus, one must conclude that the use of the individual deficits model approach for rural Appalachian development must be questioned. CONCLUSIONS The study findings basically demonstrated that stereotypes commonly used to describe Appalachians could not be applied to the study population. Ohio Appalachians included in the study were modernistic in their development orientations and appeared to be willing to address collective socioeconomic problems which have been adversely affecting their lives. The respondents were very much concerned about "quality of life" conditions within their communities and region. They also appeared to be willing to commit personal and collective resources to community problem solving. Comparison of preliminary statistical analyses of data collected in a non-metropolitan, multicounty region in California have shown the development orientations of the Ohio Appalachians to be very similar to the views held by rural Californians. Other studies conducted by the principal author of this paper relative to the assessment of development priorities basically have produced similar findings to those reported here. The study findings also suggest that development programs couched entirely in individual deficits models will probably never solve rural Appalachian development problems if the goal of such efforts is to improve the life styles of rural people. If the development goal of rural Appalachians is to achieve a community which can provide secure work roles, basic public and private services, recreational facilities, opportunities for social mobility, and the many factors that constitute the "good life," then they should consider alternative strategies to the human resources development model, because such goals will probably never be accomplished by training people for jobs that do not exist on the local level. NOTES 1. For a more detailed discussion of the industrialization findings, see Maurer and Napier (1978) and Bachtel, et al. (1979). 2. For a more detailed discussion of the outdoor recreation findings, see Pierce and Napier (1980) and Bryant and Napier (1980). 3. Recent statistical analyses of data collected in northeast central California by the principal author of this paper basically reproduced the findings generated in southeast Ohio. 4. Billings (1974) and Walls (1976) recognized the limitations of the individual deficits model for understanding poverty in Appalachia. Billings (1974) failed to suggest an alternative while Walls's (1976) dependency explanation is open to severe criticism given the expanding production capacity of Appalachia without significant reduction in regional development problems. 109 �REFERENCES Bachtel, E. C.; Thomas, D. W.; and Napier, T. L. "A Comparative Analysis of Recent Urban to Rural In-Migrants and Long-Term Rural Resident's Attitudes Toward Rural Industrial Development." Paper presented at the Rural Sociological Society Meeting in Burlington, Vermont, August 1979. Ball Richard A. "The Southern Appalachian Folk Subculture As A TensionReducing Way of Life." 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McCoy and Virginia McCoy Watkins Abstract Inner-city youth who have migrated from the Appalachian region are the focus of this present study. The impact of this migration and resettlement process is not clear. Little is known about Appalachian youth who now reside in urban areas. What problems of transition do they face? What behavioral and emotional patterns are evident as they confront a totally new cultural environment? This study is an attempt to begin to answer these questions. Recent Findings Concerning Appalachian Youth Education has received considerable attention in the literature on Appalachian youth. Much of the literature points to cultural differences which created problems for Appalachian youth in school. Language or accents of first generation youth (and some second generation youth, as well) set them apart immediately (Rhodes, 1968; Wagner, 1974, 1975). Misinterpretation of mountain dialect, idiomatic expressions, accent differences, and other cultural differences cause problems in relationships of Appalachian youth with urban peers and school personnel (McCoy and Watkins, 1979). Appalachian culture places emphasis on individual achievement and the value of self-sufficiency—Appalachians are not "joiners" and do not relate readily to group activities. Appalachian youth are less likely to seek, or readily accept, school personnel support, such as sponsorship or encouragement by a particular teacher or counselor; they try to deal with problems on their own. They are less likely to participate in school activities (Rhodes, 1968; Wagner, 1975), and parents are less likely to participate in PTA's (Watkins, 1976). Youth do not identify with their schools, especially in junior and senior high school (Miller, 1979), since most youth are placed in an unfamiliar neighborhood for those grades. In addition, since few youth participate in school activities, few are in positions of leadership to serve as role models for others. Parents are overwhelmed by school bureaucracy, by unfamiliar extra-curricular activities, and by the eduational jargon of such groups. Class differences in terms of a mother's employment may conflict with meeting times and may preclude a work schedule to attend those meetings. High absenteeism and truancy are related to the cultural value placed on the importance of the family, as well as to the traditional migration process. Familism requires that family situations take priority over education (and in many cases, jobs). High absenteeism (Adams, 1971; Wagner, 1974; Rhodes, 1968) is, at least in part, a result of youth being needed at home to help care for siblings and household matters. The traditional migration process, in the three to five years after initial settlement in urban areas, involves frequent relocation (Schwarzweller, 1970). A family's adjustment to an urban area can mean moving several times to find satisfactory neighborhoods, jobs, schools, doctors, and shopping areas. "Indifference" or lack of interest in education was cited by many authors as one of the prevailing features of Appalachian youth in school (Wagner, 1974, 1975; Huelsman, 1969; Henderson, 1966; 114 �Moore, 1976). This attitude was described in various ways, as youth feeling ambivalent toward school, being shy, reticent, passive, avoiding conflict, and withdrawing. Few, however, perceived the significance of cultural conflict. Appalachian parents see more value in basic education and skills development than in extra curricular activities and abstract idea training (Miller, 1977). Parents may encourage Appalachian students into career/practical skills and vocational classes rather than college preparatory or advanced placement classes. Parents often sacrifice personal needs in order to have their children achieve the educational level equivalent to their own (Adams). However, the low educational level of Appalachians, traditionally, complicates parents' commitment to higher education (Miller; 1977). Kunkin and Byrne found that the parents without high school degrees considered education irrelevant (Kunkin and Byrne, 1973). Moore and Pastoor (1976) were interested in whether educational values of Appalachian youth were retained in an urban setting. They compared sixth graders in Perry County, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio, and found that both groups felt that education was moderately important to their lives. Urban youth, however, felt more positive toward education than rural youth, in that urban youth had more confidence in their teachers' abilities and urban students were more inclined to aspire toward a college education. But, based upon current evidence, urban Appalachian youth are frustrated in accomplishing such goals. Appalachian students have also experienced difficulty in racial, class, and cultural conflicts. Wagner (1975) says, in describing the typical Appalachian student in his sample: If he attends a school where there are blacks, he will not understand the blacks and will tend to keep to himself or to associate only with other white students. If he is placed in a threatening situation, he normally will withdraw, not because he is afraid, but because he does not understand the more aggressive behavior of black students. If pressed too hard, he simply will take action to avoid future incidents (such as avoiding the lunchroom, the front hall, or in the extreme situation, quit attending school). Appalachians have traditionally had little experience with urban blacks, since the black population in the Appalachian region is relatively small. Miller explains that this lack of experience continues in urban schools in elementary grades since Appalachian children attend school with other Appalachians in their own neighborhoods. However, contact increases at the junior high school level where white Appalachians often constitute a minority in the schools. Since the junior high and high schools take Appalachian youth out of their own neighborhood, away from their own "turf," they become fearful, believe rumors of reprisals, and generally feel intimidated. Class differences cause Appalachian youth to feel "looked down on" and the lack of attention given to Appalachian culture only adds to a defeated self-image. Differences in language, dress, and values are seen by other classes as deficiencies or inferiority (Miller, 1977 and 1979). These feelings of inferiority and fear were found in Cleveland to stem from the lack of skills and experiences in certain situations (Kunkin and Byrne, 1973). The conditions affecting Appalachian youth in school have culminated in 115 �extreme dropout rates. Maloney (1974) found that all twelve of the census tracts in Cincinnati with dropout rates of 40 percent or higher were in Appalachian neighborhoods. Several authors suggested methods of working with Appalachian youth to improve educational levels, as well as relationships with school personnel and peers. Some of these solutions have been alluded to: teacher training (Adams, 1971; Wagner, 1974; Henderson, 1966), curriculum development (Wagner, 1974) in Appalachian culture, and the use of innovative teaching methods (Wagner, 1974). Parent and community involvement in the schools (Wagner, 1974; Henderson, 1966; Watkins, 1976) was considered important in order to provide a personal approach and commitment, as well as having parents and students feel ownership in their schools. Future roles, expectations, and aspirations of Appalachian youth are unclear. Wagner (1975) found Appalachian youths' job aspirations to be vague and unrealistic considering low school acheivement. Henderson (1966), in studying Appalachian youth, did not find any relationship between school achievement and employment aspirations. Moore and Pastoor (1976), on the other hand, observed a positive relationship between the perception of a good education and a good job among urban Appalachian youth. In addition, Ricco (1965) found a positive relationship between achievement aspirations in both Appalachian and non-Appalachian males in Whitehall, Ohio, a small urban area. Other than school related experiences, little information exists concerning the behavior of Appalachian youth in urban environments. However, there is some evidence that the transition from the mountains to urban life presents cultural incongruities. For example, independence and freedom of movement were allowed by parents in the Appalachian mountain environment. However, when migration occurred, the spatial restrictions of the urban setting affected this lifestyle. Parental freedom, combined with alienation experienced in the school systems, and peer pressure (Huelsman, 1969) resulted in higher delinquency rates. Examples of cultural clashes creating adverse attitudes toward authorities among these (Appalachian) youth include domestic stress in the new environment, individualism in the face of need for legal help, and perceived prejudice in the legal system, both as to poor people and as to Appalachians in particular (McCoy, 1976). Inner-city Appalachian youth must also deal with restricted recreational facilities. Facilities are often staffed by workers insensitive to the Appalachian value system, or are controlled by other groups. Appalachian youth find themselves caught between the values of the urban society in which they live and the values from their heritage. Survey Findings Concerning Appalachian Youth This study is based on survey data collected in 1975 to assess youth behavior in four cities: Baltimore, Providence, Cincinnati, and Detroit. The National Center for Urban/Ethnic Affairs (NCUHA) developed and tested the survey instrument, and then contracted with community organizations in each city to collect the data. NCUEA provided training and technical assistance to the community 116 �organizations during the data collection phase. Questionnaires were administered in parochial and public schools in Detroit and Baltimore. The Providence and Cincinnati organizations were unable to obtain access to schools and utilized outreach programs to administer the questionnaire to youngsters in the community. The out-of-school populations were selected in specific predetermined ethnic neighborhoods on the basis of a 20 percent sample of ethnic youths in each selected neighborhood. Interviewers were instructed to find and interview youths fourteen to twenty years old in the prescribed neighborhoods by locating youths where they were known to "hang out," such as recreation centers, bars, churches, neithborhood drop-in centers, and after-school programs. Interviewers had to account for unique variations. For example, in Cincinnati an added consideration of low educational levels among out-of-school youth meant that some interviews had to be conducted in small groups; other interviews needed to be conducted with the interviewer reading the questions and filling in the answers. Comparative Characteristics of Appalachian and Other Urban Ethnic Youth Comparisons based on the survey data and on noting similarities and differences among the various youths should provide a certain understanding of the differences in behavioral patterns between Appalachians and other urban ethnic youths and provide some further insights into the cultural transition experienced by Appalachian youths. The sample of 1458 youths included 445 (30.5 percent) Appalachians, 157 (10.8 percent) Blacks, 307 (21.1 percent) Polish, and 549 (37.7 percent) other ethnics. Each group contained slightly more males than females: 43.3 percent of the Appalachians were females, 44.5 percent blacks, 48.8 percent Polish, and 45.6 percent other ethnics. The median ages of the ethnic groups in the sample are shown below. Appalachian youths were the oldest in the sample, with a median age of 17.1 years. Blacks were the youngest, 16.3 years. Appalachian Black Polish Other Total Sample Median Age 17.1 16.3 16.6 17.1 16.9 Religious affiliation for Appalachians and blacks was primarily Baptist, with Roman Catholicism second in importance (see Table 1). Polish youths were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic (90 percent), as were other ethnics (53.6 percent). Fundamentalism underlies the religious beliefs of many Appalachians and strongly influences other values. These beliefs are founded on a literal interpretation of the Bible, an expectation of reward in the next life, and a world view in which God is omnipotent and man is fallible (Jones, 1978). 117 �TABLE 1 Religion Baptist Black Muslims Church of God Congregational Eastern Rite Catholic Episcopalian Greek Orthodox Holiness IslamicJewish Lutheran Methodist Presbyterian Pentecostal Roman Catholic Other None Total Appalachians % N 31.7 138 8 1.8 6.0 26 0.7 3 2 0.5 11 2.5 5 1.1 7 1.6 0.0 0 12 2.8 3.7 16 27 6.2 10 2.3 17 3.9 16.1 70 7.1 31 12.2 53 436 Blacks % N 74 48.7 3.9 6 5.9 9 1 0.7 0 0.0 0.0 0 0 0.0 3 2.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 3 2.0 3 9 2 1.3 2 1.3 15 9.9 5.9 9 19 12.5 152 Polish % N 1 0.3 0.0 0 4 1.3 0.7 2 1.0 3 0.0 0 0.0 0 1 0.3 0 0.0 1 0.3 4 1.3 1.0 12 2 1.3 1 0.3 90.7 274 1 0.3 6 2.0 302 Other % N 42 7.6 0.5 3 20 3.6 3 0.5 1.8 10 2.0 11 2.2 12 2 0.4 6 1.1 11 2.0 31 5.6 2.2 1 0.3 9 1.6 53.6 295 18 3.3 50 9.1 550 Religion in the mountains (and transferred to the urban environment) was less focused on institutionalized ritual and ceremony than based on personalized beliefs in God, Christ, and the church. Specific and literal interpretations of the Bible have molded behaviors and emotions and have shaped a value system which permeates daily life routines. Fundamentalist churches which were delineated in the questionnaire include Baptist, Church of God, Congregational, Holiness, and Pentecostal; 43.8 percent of the Appalachians and 58.6 percent of the blacks belonged to these churches. The suprisingly large number of Appalachians (12.2 percent) who did not identify with any church may be indicative of the cultural transition Appalachian youths are experiencing. The transition from the more traditional Appalachian values to the more secular values and belief systems of urban youths could be due, in part, to influence from their peers or from obtaining a more "realistic view" of life based on their negative experiences in urban neighborhoods. The role of the church among inner-city urban youths probably reflects ambiguity as to its purpose and value for many of them. The storefront churches prevalent in manu inner-city areas represent a lack of stability that does not provide for the type of support needed by the youths in confronting various situations which occur during cultural transition. TABLE 2 Attendance at Religious Services Never Few times a year About once a month Few times a month About once a month N Appalachians Blacks Polish Other Grade Past Grade Past Grade Past Grade Past School Year School Year School Year School Year 19.4 29.4 35.1 11.3 15.8 2.3 8.3 14.6 15.7 28.7 23.4 19.6 12.0 24.3 5.0 31.1 6.8 7.9 9.1 6.6 9.3 15.1 5.6 6.9 10.9 20.8 15.5 12.4 24.0 20.4 11.6 14.5 17.1 36.4 50.5 42.0 17.2 43.3 24.3 75.5 302 303 547 544 439 442 150 152 118 �Even though religion and the development of religious values are important to Appalachians, church attendance is not. More than half the Appalachians in our study either never attended, or else, only attended services a few times in the past year (Table 2). Even in grade school years, church attendance was considerably less than for the other three groups. The importance of religion to Appalachians is in shaping a belief system, not in regular church attendance. As recent studies have revealed, Appalachian youth s have substantial problems with the urban school systems. Educational attainment, measured by a median for highest grade completed, shows that Appalachians in the study had completed fewer school years than any other group, even though they were one of the oldest groups in the sample. Further, there were few Appalachians enrolled in high school academic programs or college classes (Table 3). Median Highest Grade Completed Appalachians Black Polish Other Ethnic Total sample 9.9 10.1 10.6 10.3 10.2 TABLE 3 Current School Program High School Academic General GED Business Course Vocational or Trade School College Other Total Appalachians <7o N N 22.6 31.2 7.5 8.3 10.9 4.9 14.7 100.0 34 47 0 14 18 6 13 132 60 83 20 22 29 13 39 266 Black % 25.8 35.6 0.0 10.6 13.6 4.5 9.8 100.0 Polish N % 119 70 2 19 7 17 9 243 49.0 28.8 0.8 7.8 2.9 7.0 3.7 100.0 Other Ethnics N % 125 102 11 41 24 26 27 356 35.1 28.7 3.1 11.5 6.7 7.3 7.6 100.0 Since Appalachian youths' experiences with the public school systems have been negative ones, some are apparently selecting other alternatives to complete their education. Table 3 shows that Appalachians (10.9 percent) as well as Blacks (13.6 percent) were in trade or vocational schools. An additional 7.5 percent of Appalachians were enrolled in GED programs, which was a substantially higher number than for the other young people. Debunking all the stereotypes revealed in Polish jokes, the grades reported by Polish students were substantially higher than those reported by the other groups (Table 4). In addition, Polish students had the highest proportion enrolled in high school academic programs with many enrolled in college programs (7.0 percent), as well as the highest median school years completed (10.6). TABLE 4 Grades in School in the Previous Year Fail D-Average C-Average B-Average A-Average Total Appal achians N % 36 8.2 52 11.9 206 47.0 105 24.0 39 8.9 438 100.0 119 Blacks N «7o 8 5.3 15 9.9 88 58.3 34 22.5 6 4.0 151 100.0 Polish Other Ethnics N % N % 9 3.0 35 6.4 16 5.3 68 12.5 110 36.3 245 45.0 132 43.6 162 29.7 36 11.9 35 6.4 303 100.1 545 100.0 �Black youths were similar to Appalachians in the area of education, reporting the lowest grades of all groups, and low median grade completed scores. None of the Black youths were enrolled in GED programs, but some, like Appalachians, were apparently selecting alternatives to the public school system in that 13.6 percent were in trade or vocational programs. Over one fourth of the youths in the sample were not in school, but were of school age. Appalachians comprised 49.2 percent of these, 34.2 percent were other ethnics, 11.8 percent were Polish, and 4.7 percent were blacks. In revealing their reasons for not completing school, 49.2 percent said they had dropped out. The majority of Appalachians, Polish and other ethnics had dropped out of school, while blacks evidenced a greater variety of reasons for being out of school, including almost a quarter whose education was disrupted by being in jail (Table 5). TABLE 5 Reasons for not Completing School Other Ethnics Appalachians N N Dropped Out Suspended/Expelled Hospitalized Jail Other Total N Black N 108 12 20 20 27 187 % 57.8 6.4 10.7 10.7 14.4 Polish N 3 3 2 4 6 18 o/o 16.7 16.7 11.1 22.2 33.3 N 26 4 2 3 10 45 % 57.8 8.9 4.4 6.7 22.2 N 58 29 5 14 24 130 % 44.6 22.3 3.8 11.5 18.5 121 The post-high school plans of respondents (Table 6) show realistic expectations of Appalachian youths, especially in light of their current educational experiences. Only 16.2 percent planned to go to college, while nearly one fourth planned to go to work. Of the Appalachians, 20.7 percent had no plans after high school and 12.7 percent did not plan to complete high school—not an encouraging picture for further educational achievements. In light of Moore's (1976) finding that urban youths aspired more toward a college education than rural Appalachian youths, the youths in this study, who are older, have apparently reduced their expectations by the time they reach high school age. Low expectations, however, may also be a reflection of fatalism, another prominant value among many others discussed by Jones (1978). More Black/youths and Polish youths planned to attend college than to go to work. Their higher expectations for the future are also revealed in the small number who to a future without a high school diploma. TABLE 6 Plans After High School Academic College Vocational Training Work Go into Business Marry/Raise Family Join Army Other Dont't Know Dont't Plan to Graduate Total N Appalachians N % 16.2 61 30 8.0 24.7 93 11 2.9 14 3.7 24 6.4 18 4.8 20.7 78 12.7 48 377 120 Black N % 50 35.5 7.1 10 27 19.1 6 4.3 2 1.4 9 6.4 9 6.4 24 17.0 4 2.8 141 Polish N % 82 30.4 7.4 20 62 23.0 3.7 10 14 5.2 19 7.0 3.7 10 44 16.3 3.3 9 270 Other Ethnics N % 80 16.8 41 8.6 107 22.5 35 7.4 4.2 20 33 6.9 3.2 15 107 22.5 37 7.8 475 �Current employment data show that Polish and other ethnic youths had the highest proportions employed (Table 7). Appalachians, on the other hand, had the highest unemployment. Appalachians, traditionally, have tended not to seek jobs through state employment services or employment agencies, but have utilized the kin and friend network to find jobs (Schwarzweller and Brown, 1970). This method of finding jobs is not nearly as productive in times of high unemployment as when jobs are plentiful, and may be part of the explanation for the high number of unemployed Appalachian youths. TABLE 7 Employment Part-Time Full-Time Homemaker Not in School-Not Employed Total N Appalachians % N 78 29.0 62 23.0 18 6.7 111 41.3 269 100.0 Black % N 25 50.0 6 12.0 1 2.0 18 36.0 50 100.00 Polish Other Ethnics N % N % 57.1 88 116 38.3 30 30.7 19.5 93 4 2.6 10 3.3 84 27.7 32 20.8 154 100.0 303 100.0 The conditions of inner-city Appalachian youths in this survey reveal some very discouraging patterns. The culture of Appalachian youths is undergoing change. This process of change in the urban environment has created new situations with which a changing culture must deal, but the Appalachian youths in this survey were armed with few resources for this task other than support from family and their own inner strength. In summary, the findings showed that Appalachian youths had completed fewer school grades than the comparative groups, although they were older in age. Few were enrolled in high school academic programs; however, some were selecting vocational education and GED programs as alternatives. More of the Appalachians than other groups were school dropouts, and many of those who were in school had either no plans or low expectations for their future. Some did plan to go to college and about one fourth planned to work. However, if the high unemployment of this young age group is any indication of what the future holds, their chances for employment in adult life will be less than other groups. Implicatons for the Future of Appalachian Youths The above research findings show consistantly, that compared to other urban ethnic youths. Appalachians exhibit great symptomic behavior, indiciating severe difficulties in coping with urban environments. Why these greater difficulties of adjustment should exist for urban Appalachian youths is not clear at the present time. Further study is needed to understand the relationship between these behaviors patterns and the differences in cultural conditions for Appalachian youths. The recency of the migrant experience of Appalachians relative to other ethnic youths is certainly one factor that needs to be considered. Empirical confirmation is needed to determine more specifically what accounts for these differences. Conflict with public institutions (in particular, the school system) is a critical factor in any attempt to understand Appalachian youths. Consistent evidence exists that Appalachian youngsters have high dropout rates, above average truancy rates, and in general, are dissatisfied with school. Many Appalachians do not have the family and religious support systems that are needed to address medical, social, and psychological needs. 12.1 �Only a proper understanding of Appalachian culture and the needs of Appalachian peoples will permit the development of appropriate community support systems. Several factors have been cited as significant to the design of support systems intended to serve urban communities containing large numbers of Appalachians. These systems should be: 1. Family and Kinship Oriented Family and kinship networks have been an important source of support for mountain families (Brown, 1970). In making the transition from mountain lifeways, there is a deterioration of these kinship support networks. The University of Kentucky Medical Center and the Bethesda North Hospital in Cincinnati found that by developing a familial orientation of health delivery, the services and responsiveness among Appalachian families improved (Watkins, 1973). 2. Community and Neighborhood Based* Support systems for Appalachians should also be neighborhood based, rather than being associated with the presently structured schools or other institutions. Experience has shown that Appalachians respond best to services that are located near their homes. In Cincinnati in recent years, response by Appalachians has been favorable to programs like youth drop-in services, community organizing, and cultural heritage projects whose primary functions are based upon self and family defined needs. Human services or referrals to such agencies are provided as a secondary function. Self-involvement has served to instill ownership in the programs by Appalachians, as well as helping them to feel that they have given something in return for the services received. 3. Culturally Sensitive* Cultural sensitivity is another important characteristic of a support network responsive to the needs of Appalachians. Cultural sensitivity does not necessarily mean that a program would be culturally specific. A program within the Appalachian community would need to deal with several variants of Appalachian culture, as well as other ethnic groups. 4. Non-Bureaucratic* Another factor that is necessary in providing services to Appalachian youths in particular, is that support systems should be flexible, open, personal, and family oriented. A personal approach has been described by David Looff (1971) in his work with mountain children. He strongly emphasizes the Appalachian characteristics of personal support and familism as crucial to his success in working with the children. Youths tend to respond well to approaches which recognize them as people with problems, but not when labels such as "sick" or "mentally ill" or "bad" are placed on them. 5. Comprehensive A fifth factor to consider in developing supports for Appalachians is suggested by James S. Brown, a long-time scholar of Appalachian migration and migrants. He suggests that Appalachians are multiple problem families; that their arrival in the cities presents many unique problems for the family which differ for each member of the family; and that these problems are cultural inasmuch as they are economic. Urban conditions affect each member of the family in such a unique way that the support systems usually offered by kinship and family are less effective in the new environment than they were in the mountains. Multiple, sociocultural conflicts combined with a lack of initial opportunity to gain meaningful employment create multiple problems for the 122 �family. Since the Appalachian family relied very heavily upon the support system of kinship and familism in the mountains, the conflicts and stresses confronted in the urban environment also deteriorate that support system so that it is not as effective as in the mountain tradition. 'Categories similarly named in Watkins, 1975. CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, an increased understanding of Appalachian culture and needs, with the provision of appropriate support systems, could improve the conditions for Appalachian youth. Although economic conditions are also part of the problem, for Appalachians, all the problems cannot be solved through economic support. Neither should these be school based at the present time due to the alienation of the youth from the schools. These supports must be rooted in the communities and neighborhoods and involve the tremendous strength that family and kinship can offer to Appalachian youths. REFERENCES Adams, James. "Series on Appalachians in Cincinnati: Children Face Special Problems in School." Reprinted from the Cincinnati Post and Times-Star, 1971. Ball, J. C., and Bates W. M. "Nativity, Parentage and Mobility of Opiate Addicts." In J. C. Ball and C. D. Chambers The Epidemiology of Opiate Addiction in the United States, edited by J. C. Ball and C. D. Chambers, pp. 95-111. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1970. Beschner, George, and Treasure, Kerry. "Female Adolescent Drug Use." In Friedmand, Alfred S. and Beschner, George, Youth Drug Abuse: Problems, Issues and Treatment, editied by Alfred S. Friedman and George Beschner, pp. 4-7. Lexington Books, Inc., forthcoming. Brown, James S. "The Family Behind the Migrant." Mountain Life and Work, September 1968, pp. 4-7. Chein, Isidor; Gerard, Donald L.; Lee, Robert S.; and Rosenfeld, Eva. The Road to H: Narcotics, Delinquency and Social Policy. New York: Basic Books, 1964. Chitwood, Dale D.; McBride, Duane C.; and McCoy, Clyde B. "The Extent of Substance Abuse Among High School Students." Miami-Dade Metro County School System, 1976. Cisin, I. H., and Mannheimer, D. I. "Marijuana Use Among Adults in a Large City and Suburb." Annals of the New York Academy of Science 191 (1971): 222-34. Fowler, Gary L. "Residential Distribution of Appalachians in Cincinnati." In The Invisible Minority, edited by William Philliber and Clyde B. McCoy, pp. 79-94. University Press of Kentucky, 1980. Henderson, George. "Poor Southern Whites: A Neglected Urban Problem." Journal of Secondary Education 41(1966): 111 -114. Henson, Michael. "There's Nothing Better to Do." Mountain Life and Work, August 1976, pp. 20-29. Huelsman, Ben R. "Southern Mountaineers in City Juvenile Courts." Federal Probation 33(1969): 49-54. Jones, Loyal. "Appalachian Values." In Perspectives on Urban Appalachians, edited by Steve Weiland and Phillip Obermiller. Cincinnati: Ohio Urban 123 �Appalachian Awareness Project, 1978. Kleinman, P. H., and Likoff, Irving. "Ethnic Differences in Factors Related to Drug Use." Journal of Health and Social Behavior 19(1978): 190-199. Kunkin, Dorothy, and Byrne, Michael. Appalachians in Cleveland. Institute for Urban Studies, The Cleveland State University, 1973. Loof, David H. Appalachian Children: The Challenge of Mental Health. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1971. Lukoff, Irving F. Social and Ethnic Patterns of Reported Drug Use and Continguity with Drug Users. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, 1972. Maloney, Michael E. The Social Areas of Cincinnati: Toward an Analysis of Social Needs. Cincinnati Human Relations Commission, 1974. "The Implications of Appalachian Culture for Social Welfare Practice." Perspectives on Urban Appalachians, edited by Steve Weiland and Phil Obermiller. Cincinnati: Ohio Urban Appalachian Awareness Project, 1978. McBride, Duane C. "Social Control and Drug Use." Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1977. McCoy, Candance. "Attitudes of Appalachian Youth Towards Legal Authority." Focus on Law 2(1976): 11-12. McCoy, Clyde B., and McBride, Duane C. "Socio-Cultural Theories and Techniques in the Explanation for Social Research on Drug Abuse." Miami: Center for Social Research on Drug Abuse, 1976. "Drug Use in Metropolitan Society." Final Report to National Institute on Drug Abuse. Miami: Center for Social Research on Drug Abuse, 1978. , and Brown, James S. "Migration Stream Systems to Midwestern Cities." In The Invisible Minority, edited by William Philliber and Clyde B. McCoy. University Press of Kentucky, 1980. , and Watkins, Virginia McCoy. "The Migration System Pattern of Southwest Ohio and its Relation to Southern Appalachian Migration." Research Bulletin. Urban Appalachian Council, 1975. "Stereotypes of Urban Appalachians." In the Invisible Minority, edited by William Philliber and Clyde B. McCoy. University Press of Kentucky, 1980. Miller, Yommie. "Education and Urban Appalachian Youth." Youth Services Training Handout. Urban Appalachian Council, 1977. ______________. Information obtained in discussion on Appalachian youths with Virginia McCoy Watkins, 1979. Information obtained in discussion on Appalachian youth with Virginia McCoy Watkins, 1979. Moore, Detlef H., and Pastoor, Dirk J. "Appalachian Values: Are They Transferrable from a Rural to Urban Setting?" The Institute for Community Development. University of Louisville, 1976. Pickard, Jerome. "Population Changes and Trends in Appalachia." In Appalachians in Urban Areas, edited by William Philliber and Clyde B. McCoy. University of Kentucky Press, forthcoming. Rhodes, Charles. "Appalachian Child in Chicago Schools." Appalachian Advance, October 1968, pp. 6-10. Ricco, Anthony. "Occupational Aspirations of Migrant Adolescents from the Appalachian South." Vocational Guidance Quarterly, Autumn, 1965, pp. 26-30. Schwarzweller, Harry C. "Adaptation of Appalachian Migrants to the ______________. 124 �Industrial Work Situation: A Case Study." In Behavior in New Environments: Adaptation of Migrant Populations, edited by Eugene B. Broey. Sage Publications, 1970. Simpkins, O. Norman. "An Informal, Incomplete Introduction to Appalachian Culture." In Marshall Universtiy Distinguished Reading Series-2. Huntington, W.Va.,1974. Vaillant, G.E. "Parent-Child Cultural Disparity and Drug Addiction." Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases. 142-534-9. 1966. Wagner, Thomas E. "Report of the Appalachian School Study Project." Urban Appalachian Council Working Paper No. 4. June, 1974. . ______________. "Urban Appalachian School Children: The Least Understood of All." Urban Appalachian Council Working Paper No. 6. January, 1975. Watkins, Virginia McCoy. "Consideration of Factors Relevant to the Development of Health Support Systems for Appalachian Migrants." Master's Thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1973. , ______________. and West, Ray. "Relationships and Potentials Between the Urban Appalachian Family and the Neighborhood School and Neighborhood Stability." Case Study prepared for the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs. Urban Appalachian Council, 1976. ______________., and McCoy, Clyde B. Drug Use Among Urban Ethnic Youth. Report to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. January, 1979. ______________. Drug Use Among Appalachian Youth. Services Research Monograph. National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1980. 125 �THE IMPACT OF URBAN HOUSING PROGRAMS ON APPALACHIAN NEIGHBORHOODS Gary L. Fowler Abstract Traditional ports-of-entry and Appalachian neighborhoods in lowincome areas of central cities have been included in target areas for a succession of urban housing and development programs. These programs have resulted in the displacement of large numbers of Appalachian families, and have contributed to the decline in the importance of the areas in the geography of urban Appalachians. The impacts of public housing programs in Chicago's Uptown community provide a case study of these changes. This (urban population loss) is a problem—one that, yes, has to be solved or at least mitigated by both local and large, multi-state development strategies. But in the meantime, and at risk of seeming militantly cheery, the problem is also an opportunity. In Dayton's specific case, take just one small example. The inner East Side neighborhood formerly known as Burns-Jackson and now reborn as the Oregon Historic District. It has lost population, thank goodness. The large, old homes were crumbling a few years ago under multi-family occupancy by persons stuck short of the poverty line. Now the homes are being remodeled into classy, single-family residences. Sorry about the implied elitism, but there can be little real question the community is better off thanks to that "population decline." Mere numbers do not always add up for the best. Editorial, "Population Loss-Dayton's and Others'-is an Opportunity,'' Dayton Daily News, April 17, 1977, p. 18A INTRODUCTION Large numbers of Appalachian people who migrated to northern cities in the 1940s and 1950s concentrated in central city ports-of-entry. These "hillbilly ghettos" were staging areas for upwardly mobile Appalachian migrants, as well as places in which newcomers with few economic resources could live. Through time, however, many of the ports-of-entry neighborhoods were included in central city poverty areas that were designated targets for a succession of urban housing and development programs. These programs have become controversial because of their impact upon the residential opportunities for low income families who are most subject to involuntary relocation. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impacts of urban renewal and revitalization programs upon Appalachian people in Chicago's Uptown community. The empirical data for urban renewal and code enforcement programs, and available information about revitalization programs since 1974, suggest that poor Appalachians in Uptown continue to be victimized by policies and programs that benefit the middle and upper classes. 126 �Urban Appalachian Settlement People from local "high" class families dominated the early migration from the Appalachian Region.1 They went to small towns and cities near the periphery of the Region where they established roots for subsequent migrants. As the pace of migration accelerated in the 1940s and 1950s, large numbers of Appalachians who had little money and few industrial skills moved into large cities and settled in central city ports-of-entry. These neighborhoods had relatively inexpensive rental housing that was accessible to sources of employment for the newcomers. They also offered the social support of kin, friends, and familiar cultural environment that eased the adjustment to city life for people who, in many instances, considered themselves to be temporary urban residents. The hillbilly ghettos became notorious places in the folk geography of urban America. The port-of-entry life style was, in a sense, stereotyped in the public mind (Huelsman, 1968, p. 99): The migrant to Dayton usually gets here in a wheezing old car full of kids with hungry bellies and maybe a guitar. In the pocket of his faded, blue work shirt is a letter from a second cousin or an uncle with an address near Fifth and Brown or Tecumseh St. in East Dayton. This is in the heart of Dayton's port of entry, a strange new style of life for the southern white mountain migrant. He brings his wife, four, five or six children and about eight years of grammar schooling because he's heard from his kinsman that "they're hirin' on at NCR" or somewhere else. The southern mountain man in the port of entry is most likely to be from one of the mountain counties of eastern Kentucky. His kinsman of Tecumseh or Brown St. has four of five young 'uns of his own, but he'll not turn down Dayton's newest migrant. They will all pile into one big flat, sleeping on couches, on the floor or in nice weather, maybe some of the kids will sleep out in the car. The family baggage is meagre...a few changes of old clothes, a tov or so, some snapshots, a few trinkets and souveniers of life back home in the hills and hollows of eastern Kentucky. The family has brought the most important baggage of all with them...the culture of the southern mountaineer, unfamiliar with city life. Ports-of-entry were described as "natural" areas with physical and cultural characteristics that presumably suited the needs of recent migrants. They functioned as the territorial bases of an evolutionary settlement pattern in which Appalachians, just as groups of migrants who preceded them, were expected to follow an orderly progression of socioeconomic and geographical mobility in the city according to classical models of urban ecology. The stereotype of the hillbilly ghetto has dominated the public perception of urban Appalachians for several decades. Recent research, however, points out that the port-of-entry is only one of several urban residential environments in which Appalachian people live. A large percentage, but not the majority, of Appalachians in cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Detroit continue to live in traditional ports-of-entry and other central city neighborhoods in which they cluster by state or area of origin.2 The housing stock in many of these neighborhoods deteriorated during the period of large-scale 127 �inmigration as the density of population increased, and various forms of disinvestment by landlords became common in areas where an increasingly large proportion of the population suffered problems of poverty, unemployment, and other disadvantages. As selective migration from these neighborhoods to other parts of the cities continued, the flow of newcomers also decreased. Many of the traditional central ports-of-entry no longer are staging areas for upwardly mobile families. The Appalachian people who remain in them are more likely to be long-term residents of the city with limited socio-economic opportunities. And the newcomers are more likely to be upper-middle-class, non-Appalachian people (Fowler, 1976). During the late 1960s and early 1970s, many central city Appalachian neighborhoods, including traditional ports-of-entry, were incorporated within areas that were targeted for urban renewal and revitalization policies and programs. Although the roster is incomplete, Appalachian neighborhoods in Ohio cities—Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine, Cleveland's West Side, and East Dayton, for example—were included in target areas, as well as larger communities such as Chicago's Uptown and Appalachian areas of Detroit. The impacts of these programs raise serious questions about their effect upon the quality of life of urban Appalachian people. Appalachians living in central Cincinnati, for example, were more likely to have been forced to move, or to move into a place because it was the cheapest available, than were non-Appalachian residents (Fowler, 1976). Appalachians in other cities faced similar problems of relocation because of renewal and disinvestment practices. Currently, Appalachians face the possibility that public policies and programs that are designed to promote central city revitalization will result in their in voluntary dislocation by non-Appalachians, especially middle and upper-class groups. The Uptown community in Chicago is an area of traditional Appalachian settlement that has been the site for a succession of urban public housing policies of the 1960s and 1970s. Empirical data for selected urban renewal projects suggest that Appalachian people in particular had to change their residences as a result. Furthermore, revitalization initiatives suggest that Appalachian families are more likely to be excluded, rather than included, in the process. Appalachians in Uptown Uptown, which is located on Chicago's north side, extends from Irving Park Road north to West Devon, and inland from the Lake Michigan shore to Ravenswood (Figure 1). It was a prosperous area during the 1920s, with a large commercial district centered on Broadway and Sheridan and a population that was predominantly German, Swedish, Irish, and Russian. Dwelling units were converted into smaller apartment units and the density of population increased dramatically during the depression. Subsequently, foreign immigration declined, and Uptown attracted large numbers of low-income migrants after 1945. These included people from Appalachia; blacks, mainly from the South; American Indians, East Indians,and Puerto Ricans. They contributed new elements to Uptown's mosaic of ethnic and cultural diversity, as well as the area's sharp distinctions in socioeconomic status. Appalachian migrants attracted Chicago's official attention in the late 1950s. Giffin (1959) prepared a document intended for use in understanding problems of adjustment that might face the migrants; and the Cook County Department of Public Aid surveyed the public assistance use patterns of southern Appalachian families (Brooks, 1960; and Cook County Department 128 �of Public Aid, 1963). The Department of Public Aid concluded that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Appalachian families were not disproportionately represented on the public assistance roles. However, they did note, that from 1960 to 1963, the proportion of Appalachian families receiving public assistance and living in the Uptown area had increased.3 Subsequent decriptions of the Appalachian community in Uptown were neatly fitted into the stereotypes of a traditional central city port-of-entry. The area was described as one of several places in the city that linked urban poverty with its rural origins, and Appalachian people were depicted as having related adjustment problems that resulted from being unprepared for living in large, urban industrial areas.4 Research on the status and welfare of Appalachians living in Uptown clearly showed that the popular portrayal of their situation was simplistic at best (e.g., Coles, 1971; Gitlin and Hollander, 1970; and Merten, 1974). The fact remained that this was the dominant perception, and that Uptown was the only area that was consistently mentioned as the urban home of Appalachian people in Chicago. RECENT SOUTHERN WHITE IN-MIGRANTS TO CHICAGO, BY CENSUS TRACT: 1970 129 �The number of Appalachians who live in Uptown and their residential distribution is unknown. However, there is general agreement that they are concentrated in a core area that focuses upon several census tracts in the southern part of the area. This is also the area with the highest rate of recent inmigration of white people from the South as well as the highest concentration of white, southern born population (Figure 1).! Other areas on the north side have similarly high rates of recent southern in-migration, although they are generally not identified as areas of Appalachian settlement. Urban Renewal Programs in Uptown The Uptown Chicago Commission was organized in 1955 to direct efforts to redevelop the Uptown area. The commission was organized by W. Clement Stone's Combined Insurance Agency and seven other business firms, including two large local banks (Uptown Federal Savings and Loan Association and Uptown National Bank of Chicago) that were committed to investment in the area. Uptown was declared an urban renewal conservation area in 1965. Subsequently, the Uptown Community Conservation Council (UCCC) and Uptown Model Cities Council were formed and assumed active roles in urban renewal planning. As their activities became more widely known, other groups representing diverse interests organized under the banner of the Uptown Area People's Planning Coalition (UAPPC) to gain influence over plans that were considered to be thinly disguised means of displacing poor people, especially Appalachians, from Uptown to the advantage of the upper-middle-class and business interests. TABLE 1 Urban Housing Programs and Relocation in the Uptown Area, Chicago Relocated Program Uptown Urban Renewal Project I (DUR) Truman Junior College Interim Site* Total Site* Neighborhood Service Date Households 1968 1970 783 1970-1973 170 785 253 People 545 1466 892 *The data are from a survey of the site, as reported by Rodney and Sydney Wright, "Facts Concerning the Proposed Clifton-Racine Site for City Colleges of Chicago," June 17, 1970. The data are for total households (dwelling units) and people living within the site, rather than the number actually relocated. Three separate activities in Uptown were included under the rubric of urban renewal legislation in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Table 1, Figure 2). The 130 �first of these, Uptown Renewal Project I, involved the acquisition and clearing of about one quarter of the nineteen block project area. Twenty-one structures were demolished, and 783 households were relocated. The construction of a city junior college on a twenty-one acre site in the heart of the Appalachian community was the second project. This threatened a total of approximately SELECTED PROGRAM SITES IN THE UPTOWN AREA two thousand people with relocation. Third, a large area in the southern part of Uptown was designated a Model Cities area, and federal monies were used for a code enforcement program-trie Neighborhood Service Program (NSP)~ designed to eliminate slum and blighted buildings. Each of these programs included the poorest areas of Uptown, and the areas that housed the largest concentration of Appalachian people, including recent immigrants. The plans for construction of the city junior college was the catalyst of political activity over urban renewal plans for Uptown. Surveys of the site completed by UAPPC reported data that indicated that the impacts upon people living in the area was potentially quite severe. 131 �BULLETIN The North Side Coalition Community Organizations opposed to an Uptown Junior College Monday night announced the results of a survey taken in the 6-acre Phase One area. In that area they found: 18 buildings (the DUR found 25); 577 people in 104 units for a family occupancy of 5.5 persons per unit; 65 percent of the families in the area contain five or more people; some families number as many as ten; 87 percent of these people have an income under $5,000. Looking for vacancies for those to be relocated, the survey found 134 apartments on Kenmore, Winthrop, Magnolia, Beacon and Maiden. Forty-four of these were one-room apartments, no children allowed. Thirty-two were 2-room apartments, no children allowed. Forty-six were 3-room apartments. Two family-sized units were found. About 34 percent of the landlords said no children; 12 percent said only pre-school children; and 16 percent said no more than two children. The survey also checked vacancies in the 221-D3, federally-subsidized buildings. Of nine buildings, they found 30 vacancies. But building managers reportedly told Jerry Zank, a surveyor, that they would not accept Uptown residents as tenants. The majority (56 percent) of the 545 people in the Phase One (interim) site were from Appalachia.6 Other whites (18.7 percent) and Spanish-speaking people (13.2 percent) were the next largest groups. The results of a second survey for the entire twenty-two acre site counted a total of 1,466 people living in 785 dwelling units. Approximately 41 percent of them were from Appalachia, with "other whites" (25.6 percent) and black people (20.2 percent) comprising the next largest groups. The families in this area were smaller, with fewer children than in the interim site. They also had a slightly higher median income, although the majority of the households in each area received some type of welfare assistance. The Advisory Coalition for North Side City College proposed that the City College Board seek an alternate site for the college on the north side.7 UAPPC had assisted in preparing a plan for that site that would include a model community named Hank Williams Village, in which 80 percent of the units would be reserved for low-income families. Later renamed the Village, the model community also was to provide a variety of community services and a town hall for community organizations. Political confrontations that pitted the Village against the proposed junior college continued through 1968 and most of 1969, with the interim results that the Chicago College Board voted in early September to change to a twenty-one acre Riverview site instead. The decision was subsequently reversed, and the Clifton-Racine site was indeed cleared for construction in the summer of 1974. Truman College opened two years later. An estimated 87 percent of the enrollment came from the North Side of Chicago, with Uptown supplying 30 percent.1 Yet a mural facing the new college reads, "I. O. U. This college must be for everyone. 1,200 families used to live here. We are watching you." The impacts of the Neighborhood Service Program (NSP) of code enforcement were less dramatic, and affected a smaller number of people in a much larger area of Uptown. Analysis of the data on relocation, however, provides a picture of the geography of residential change that resulted. A total of 253 132 �households were displaced from 1970-1973.' The majority of these were white households, although blacks, American Indians, and Spanish-speaking groups were disproportionately represented. The majority of all groups had lived at their current residence for less than two years, and they had very low mean incomes ($4,179 for whites; $4,263 for blacks). The majority of the households that were displaced by NSP relocated in the Uptown area (Table 2). The white households remained within the southeast section of Uptown, especially around Broadway between Irving Park Road and Lawrence, and following a corridor between Sheridan Road and Broadway north to Foster and Bryn Mawr. This matched the highest concentration of low-cost residential housing units. Those who moved out of Uptown went to adjacent community areas; and seven percent left the city for various locations in the South. The white households experienced only an eight percent increase in rent after relocation (from an average of $102 to $111 per month). However, the majority remained in those parts of Uptown that had the lowest socioeconomic status. The Revitalization of Uptown The Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 and subsequent legislation has called for policies and programs to promote population redistribution in urban areas, specifically, to promote the spatial deconcentration of the urban poor and to attract higher income people to poor and deteriorating; neighborhoods. These include federal housing subsidy programs, such as the Section 8 Lower-Income Rental Assistance Program, that are supposed to increase the spatial range of housing options for the poor. At the same time, the potential for widespread revitalization in areas such as Uptown raises serious questions about the extent to which lower-income people, including Appalachians, will be involuntarily displaced from their neighborhoods to make room for the middle and upper class. The people who are least able to control their own destinies, and who have the fewest choices in the housing market, may bear a disproportionate share of the costs of neighborhood improvement. 10 TABLE 2 Relocation Patterns for Uptown Residents Displayed from the Neighborhood Services Program (NSP) Area, 1971-1973 WHITE NON-WHITE Uptown 60.7% 107 63.3% 51 Community Area Other North Side Community Areas 2.4 4 Rogers Park 2.4 4 North Center 2.4 4.1 2 7 Lake View 1.2 1 Lincoln Park 3.6 3 Near North Side Other Parts of the 10.7 2.4 4 9 City of Chicago Out of the City 7.1 3.6 3 12 of Chicago 17.9 18.3 15 31 Unknown 100% 100% 84 169 Totals Source: Based upon City of Chicago, Department of Urban Renewal data. 133 �Uptown has become a prime target for revitalization under new urban housing and development policies. According to one developer: There's no question that the area's the hottest place in Chicago right now. There are sections of the neighborhood where people are buying up apartment buildings and vacant land eyeing Uptown as, potentially, a good place to live.'' The majority of the large-scale projects are located in the southeastern part of Uptown. Expensive new housing and rehabilitated units, including some for subsidized low and middle-income renters, are being developed with federal and state funding support. The largest of the rehabilitation projects is at 511012 Kenmore. It is financed by a $10.5 million loan from the Illinois Housing Development Authority; $1.6 from the City of Chicago's community development fund; and $1.3 from the developer. The project will convert an existing 399 apartment units, two thirds of which are efficiencies, into 280 units, the majority of which are one-bedroom places. Although most will be available for federally subsidized persons, the rents will be much higher than is currently the rule and the number of units available will decrease. Other projects are town houses and high-rise condominium buildings that are specifically designed for young, upper-class professionals who are considered to be pioneers in "reclaiming the city." Controversy over the impact of revitalization programs in Uptown is focused upon alleged conflicts in the use of Community Development Block Grant Funds. The 1974 Housing and Community Development Act has a clearly stated goal: ...the development of viable urban communities, by providing decent housing and a suitable living environment and expanding economic opportunities principally for persons of low and moderate income. In the absence of a comprehensive plan for redeveloping the city, the Uptown People's Community Center produced a model plan for developing the heart of Uptown as a multi-ethnic, broad economic spectrum of people living in a variety of housing units (Hafferkamp, 1979). The Center's plan was rejected out of hand in the spring o 979. Subsequently, the Center's attorney filed an amendment to its pending 975 class action suit in U.S. District Court. The suit, which was originally filed against William Thompson, who had proposed the Pensacola Planned Development in the southern part of Uptown, was amended to contend that HUD, as well as the City of Chicago, conspired to infringe on the civil rights of the Uptown Community by allowing private developers to displace the existing population and thus aid in the destruction of an integrated neighborhood. The Center's attorney explained the suit in these terms: The 1975 suit alleged a conspiracy among the city and various developers to destroy the integrated nature of Uptown, and to create a middle- and upper-middle income, basically white neighborhood. The original suit focused on developer William Thompson because in 1975 he was the most visible enemy. Now we have added HUD because in giving money to the city, we think it has failed to live up to its mandated responsibility. I think our suit paints a very accurate history, going back 20 years 134 �to show that as the demand for white middle-and upper-income housing has increased, there were certain neighborhoods, such as Lincoln Park and Sandburg Village, that the city and developers focused on. In one way or another the existing population was kicked out. Minorities in particular didn't get the chance to move back in when the redevelopment was completed. Prices simply went up too much. And of course when you make a strickly white neighborhood, you are making a segregated neighborhood. In Uptown it became apparent to us that one logical step in the conspiracy was the city's refusal to put funds for rehab or construction into the Uptown community. If Federally subsidized housing were to go into selected sites in Uptown, two things would happen. One, the big developer would be discouraged. They feel that if there is subsidized housing in the area, then well-to-do whites won't want to move in. Second, the developer-encouraged destruction of the existing neighborhood would stop, and the area would begin to stabilize on its own. The city has not so far put funds for new or rehabbed housing into the heart of Uptown because the area is simply too desirable financially. Shortly after the amendment was filed, the suit was settled as Thompson scaled down the Pensacola Place project and agreed to rehabilitate three existing buildings nearby to provide housing for lower-income people. Epilogue Compared with relocation under urban renewal, the impacts of urban revitalization programs upon Appalachian communities are difficult to assess. The necessary data are available only from surveys and, even then, they are subject to sharply different interpretations (Cf. Sumka, 1979;Hartman, 1979). Nevertheless, the Appalachian peoples' relationship to traditional ports-ofentry in low-income areas such as Uptown has changed. The potential for direct displacement because of reinvestment is the most obvious development. The more subtle pressure of increased housing costs may be equally significant, especially when landlords, arson, and other types of disinvestment have reduced the available housing stock. During the seventies, Appalachians have had to compete for the old and new low-income rentals with recognized minority groups. In Uptown, as in many other traditional Appalachian ports-of-entry, the number of blacks and Spanish-speaking people is increasing rapidly. The politics of neighborhood revitalization are as controversial as the earlier politics of urban renewal. Uptown is similar to other communities in that respect (Auger, 1979). However, Appalachians have played less of a role in Uptown community politics in the late 1970s. This may reflect their diminished numbers, as well as the apparent decline in the number of new immigrants relative to other groups. In Uptown, as in other traditional central city ports-of-entry, Appalachian people no longer dominate the influx of newcomers to the neighborhood. NOTES 1. See Fowler (1976); Petersen, Sharp, and Drury (1977); and Photiadis (1971). 2. These patterns are described by Fowler (1980). Studies of Appalachian 135 �settlement in specific cities are by Howell (1973); McKee and Obermiller (1977); Marple, Koebernick, and Jones (1977); Petersen, Sharp, and Drury (1977); and Photiadis (1971). Also, see Maloney (1978). 3. Brooks '(I960) and Cook County Department of Public Aid (1963). 4. Cf. Backs (1968), Bruno (1974), and Montgomery (1968). Earlier studies of Appalachians in Chicago included Killian's (1970) research on southern, white laborers living in the Near West Side in the 1940's, and Harwood's (1966) description of the adaption of southern migrants in the city. 5. The census tract data are from the Fourth Count Summary Tapes, 1970 General Census of Population and Housing. 6. Uptown News, Tuesday, June 16, 1970, p. 1. The survey data are from a report by Rodney and Sidney Wright. "Facts concerning the proposed CliftonRacine Site for City Colleges of Chicago," June 17,1970. 7. The advisory coalition which was composed of a number of north side groups, was formed to "assist" the City College Board in finding a suitable site for the college. The coalition recommended that the Clifton-Racine site be dropped because it would displace people and destroy residential facilities. 8. Meg O'Connor, "New Truman College Stirs Both Hope, Fear in Uptown," Chicago Tribune, March 20, 1977, Sec. 1, p. 37. 9. According to tabulations from relocation records in the City of Chicago, Department of Urban Renewal archives. The files, which are not complete, do not contain information that can be used to identify Appalachian people. 10. See the arguments by Sumka (1979) and Hartman (1979). 11. William P. Thompson, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley's former son-inlaw; quoted in Bonita Brodt, "Rebirth of a Neighborhood Is Not Without Some Pain," Chicago Tribune, June 21, 1979, Sec. 6W, p.l. 12. Quoted in Hafferkamp, 1979, p. 197. 13. Chicago Tribune, November 25, 1979, Sec. D, p.l. The revised project will be a combined shopping center with 100,000 square feet of floor space and a high-rise tower with 252 rental units. A total of 155 apartments will be located in the rehabilitated buildings, named Scotland Yard. A $21.7 million dollar loan insured by HUD, was provided by the Government National Mortgage Association. Section 8 rental subsidies will be available for 20 percent of the units. REFERENCES Auger, Deborah A. "The Politics of Revitalization in Gentrifying Neighborhoods." Journal of the American Planning Association 45 (October 1979): 515-522. Backes, Clarus. "Appalachia: The Source. "Chicago Tribune Magazine, October 6, 1978, pp. 30-33,70. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . "Poor People's Power in Uptown." Chicago Tribune Magazine, September 29, 1968, pp. 46-56. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . "Uptown: The Promised Land." Chicago Tribune Magazine, September 22,1968, pp. 1-6. Brooks, Deton J., Jr., A Study of Families from the Southern Appalachian Region Receiving Public Assistance. Chicago: Cook County Department of Public Aid, 1960. Bruno, Hal. "Chicago's Hillbilly Ghetto." In Poverty in the Affluent Society, edited by H. H. Meisner, pp. 102-107. New York: Basic Books, 1974. Coles, Robert. The South Goes North . Vol. 3, Children of Crisis. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971. 136 �Cook County Department of Public Aid. The Southern Appalachian Migrant on Public Aid in Cook County: A Follow-Up Study. Chicago: Cook County Department of Public Aid, 1963. Cross, Robert. "Uptown's Future: Are the Swingers at the Gate?" Chicago Tribune Magazine, September 29, 1974, pp. 20-24. Fowler, Gary L. "The Residential Distribution or Urban Appalachians"In The Invisible Minority: Appalachians in Urban Areas, edited by William W. Philliber and Clyde B. McCoy, Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1980. _______. "Residential Mobility Among Appalachian People in Central Cincinnati." Research Bulletin, Urban Appalachian Council of Cincinnati, May 1976, pp. 1-3. _______. "Up Here and Down Home: Appalachians in Cities." In Appalachia: Social Context Past and Present, edited by Bruce Ergood and Bruce E. Kuhre, pp. 71-82. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1976. Griffin, Roscoe. "Newcomers from the Southern Mountains," In Institute on Cultural Patterns of Newcomers, pp. 15-40. Chicago: Welfare Council of Metropolitan Chicago, Migration Services Committee of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations. The Mayor's Committee on New Residents, November. 1959. Gitlin, Todd, and Hollander, Nanci. Uptown: Poor Whites in Chicago. Colophon Books. New York: Harper and Row, 1970. Goodman, John L., Jr., "Reasons for Moves Out of and Into Large Cities." Journal of the American Planning Association 45 (October 1979): 407-416. Hafferkamp, Jack. "Who Owns the Neighborhoods?" Chicago Magazine 28 (November 1979): 192-199. Hartman, Chester. "Comment on 'Neighborhood Revitalization and Displacement: a Review of Evidence'" Journal of the American Planning Association 45 (October 1979): 488-490. Harwood, Edwin S. "Work and Community Among Newcomers: A Study of the Social and Economic Adaption of Southern Migrants in Chicago." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1966. Ho well, Joseph T. Hard Living on Clay Street: Portraits of Blue Collar Families. Anchor Books, Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/ Doubleday, 1973. Huelsman, Ben R. "Urban Anthropology and the Southern Mountaineer." Proceedings of the Indiana A cademy of Science for 1968 IS (1968) 97-103. Johnson, Flora. "In Order to Save It." Chicago Magazine 25 (December 1976): 165-86. Killian, Lewis M. White Southerners, New York: Random House, 1970. McKee, Dan M., and Obermiller, Phillip J. From Mountain to Metropolis: Urban Appalachains in Ohio. Prepared for the Ohio Urban Appalachian Awareness Project. Cincinnati: Urban Appalachian Council, June 1978. Marple, David; Koebernick, Thomas; and Jones, Richard. "Demographic and Social Characteristics of Appalachian Migrants Living in East Dayton." Research Bulletin, Urban Appalachian Council of Cincinnati, May 1977. Maloney, Michael E. "Appalachian Migrants in Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic Cities. Mountain Life and Work 54 (January 1978): 29-32. Merten, Don Edward. "Up Here and Down Home: Appalachian Migrants in Northtown." Ph.D dissertation, University of Chicago, 1974. Montgomery, Bill. "The Uptown Story." Mountain Life and Work 44 (September 1968): 10-18. Petersen, Gene B.; Sharp, Laure M.: and Drury, Thomas. Southern New- 137 �comers to Northern Cities: Work and Social Adjustment in Cleveland. Praeger Special Studies in U.S. Economic, Social, and Political Issues; New York: Praeger Publishers, 1977. Photiadis, John. West Virginians in their Own State and in Cleveland, Ohio, Appalachian Center Research Report 3. Morgantown: West Virginia University, Center for Appalachian Studies and Development, 1971. Sumka, Howard J. "Neighborhood Revitalization and Displacement: A Review of the Evidence." Journal of the American Planning Association 45 (October 1979): 480-487. _______. "The Ideology of Urban Analysis: A Response to Hartman." Journal of the American Planning Association 45 (October 1979): 491-94. 138 �ELDERLY APPALACHIANS IN CITIES: A CASE STUDY OF CINCINNATI David P. Varady Abstract This article tests for the validity of four widely held stereotypes about elderly Applachians in cities, using the results of a survey of 862 elderly in Cincinnati, Ohio, carried out in March, 1978. As expected, the Appalachian elderly had a higher incidence of health problems and were more likely to formulate infra-metropolitan moving plans, even when other relevant background characteristics were controlled. However, in contrast to what was anticipated, the Appalachian elderly were not concentrated in older Appalachian ghettos within the city and were not less likely to utilize government social welfare and housing programs. The policy implications of these findings are discussed. Introduction The widely held belief that the elderly are a homogeneous group is incorrect (Raga and Davis, 1978). The elderly are in reality a diverse group in terms of income, social class, and ethnicity. Furthermore, these different subgroups "experience old age and its problems differently" (Wiseman, 1978:3). It is important for social planners to be cognizant of the differing needs of these subgroups within the elderly population. The lack of this type of information on the characteristics and attitudes of memb'ers of these subgroups has hindered program development (see United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1978a, 1978b). This information gap has been particularly serious in relation to different ethnic elderly subgroups.1 In order to improve existing understanding of this subject this paper focuses on differences between the Appalachian elderly and other white and other black elderly with respect to: (1) socioeconomic, health, and housing characteristics, (2) residential satisfaction and residential mobility plans, (3) spatial distribution within the metropolitan area, and (4) utilization of governmentally funded housing and social service programs. More specifically we will test for the validity of the following stereotypes: (1) that elderly Appalachians are an impoverished group, (2) that they are dissatisfied with city life and more frequently, (3) that they are concentrated in inner city Appalachian ghettos, and (4) that they tend not to utilize government funded social services and housing programs. Methodology This study is based on the results of interviews of 862 elderly residents (sixty and over) living in Hamilton County, Ohio (which includes, but is not limited to the City of Cincinnati) carried out during March 1978.- The sample was selected and interviewed using the Random Digit Dialing Technique (see Tuchfarber and Klecka, 1976). The data was collected as part of a larger study of elderly housing needs implemented by the Housing for Older Americans Coalition of Cincinnati (Better Housing League of Cincinnati, 1978). The 139 �survey included questions on moving plans (when, where, and why),' levels of housing and neighborhood satisfaction,4 perceived residential problems,' family health and functional ability,' participation in government housing programs as well as background demographic and housing data.' Information on the socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods surrounding respondents, drawn from the 1970 Census, was incorporated into the data set.The householder's Appalachian background was measured by questions on the state and county of birth. We defined an Appalachian as an individual who was born in a county defined as in Appalachia by the Appalachian Regional Commission (Appalachian Regional Commission, 1971:93-99). The variable measuring Appalachian background was combined with the variable measuring race to create an index called "Appalachian status'.' Using this index we categorized the sample into three groups, Appalachians (15 percent of the total), "other whites" (74 percent), and "other blacks" (11 percent).' Crosstabular analysis is used to compare members of these three groups with respect to socioeconomic characteristics, health and housing problems, location within the metropolitan area, residential satisfaction, moving plans, and utilization of government housing assistance programs and social services. Regression analysis is used to determine the impact of Appalachian background controlling for other background characteristics. In the first stage of the regression analysis all the theoretically relevant variables were included in the runs. In the second stage, we reran the regressions excluding those variables that did not meaningfully contribute to explaining variations in the dependent variables (i.e., housing satisfaction, neighborhood satisfaction, moving plans). We excluded those variables whose F values were statistically insignificant at the .05 level. The regression results dealing with the interrelationship between background characteristics, housing satisfaction, and moving plans are represented by a path diagram (Figure 2). The hypothesized causal relationships are represented by unidirectional arrows extending from each determining variable to each variable depending on it. Residual variables are represented by vertical unidirectional arrows leading from the residual variable to the dependent variable. Standardized regression coefficients are standardized, the two paths leading to the same variable can be compared by the order of magnitude to indicate which variable has the most powerful effect. Discussion 1. Socioeconomic characteristics and health and housing problems. Existing research offers contradictary evidence in terms of the degree of deprivation of urban Appalachians (elderly and non-elderly) in relation to other ethnic groups. Case studies of particular Appalachian neighborhoods (Gitlin and Hollander, 1970; Maloney, 1972; Osborne, 1970) emphasize the high rates of social pathologies and the high incidence of housing deterioration in these neighborhoods. This research implies that Appalachians are worse off than other ethnic groups in these cities. Furthermore, this research suggests that a disproportionately large number of Appalachians receive welfare and that they, therefore, constitute a fiscal drain on these cities. Fowler has challenged this viewpoint indication that "there is no compelling evidence that Appalachians are disproportionately represented among the poor or welfare recipients" (1976:78). It is not clear from Fowler's research, however, how Appalachians fare in relation to other ethnic groups, particularly blacks. Our evidence indicates that the Appalachian elderly in Cincinnati are a deprived group in terms of socioeconomic, health, and housing indicators. They are not, however, nearly as badly off as blacks. 140 �Table 1 shows that the mean family income of elderly Appalachians ($7416) was 15 percent lower than that of other whites ($8767). Nevertheless, the mean income level for Appalachians was still considerably higher than for other blacks ($4621). TABLE 1 Differences between Appalchian, other white, and other black elderly with respect to socioeconomic characteristics, health, and residential problems. Other blacks 41% (66) .0000 Tenant Status (proportion owners) Family Health (whether respondent or spouse unwell) 63% (123) $8767 (404) $4621 (66) 72% (588) 44% (92) .0000 .0000 44% (126) 30% (602) 42% (93) .002 Family functional ability (whether respondent or spouse has difficulty) Perceived cost problems (at least some difficulty) Housing costs/income index (index relatively high) Housing costs/income (mean) Perceived housing deterioration (at least some deterioration) Perceived crime problem (neighborhood not safe) 31% (125) 19% (597) 30% (90) .002 37% (120) 23% (567) 54% (86) .0000 20% (126) 14% (604) % (93) .0002 15% (94) 12% (384) 17% (66) n.s. 33% (123) 28% (599) 36% (90) n.s. 30% (123) 28% (582) 41% (90) .04 Neighborhood socioeconomic status (lowest quartile) Neighborhood racial composition (25-49% black) 22% (125) 8% (594) 53% )93) .0000 6% (125) 3% (1549) 8% (93) .04 Characteristic Family Income (below $3000) Family Income (mean) Appalachians 16% (95) $7416(95) Other whites 11% (404) Sig. The Appalachian elderly are clearly a deprived group in terms of the existence of debilitating illnesses and functional limitations. Table 1 indicates that Appalachians closely resemble blacks in terms of both of these measures and differ sharply from other whites. Approximately two fifths of the Appalachians, as compared to one third of the whites, were in households where either the respondent or the spouse (if there was one) felt that he/she had a health problem, a disability, or a long term illness which restricted 141 �his/her ability to get around. There were similarly wide differences in terms of a more objective measure of family functional ability. In one third of the Appalachian households, as compared to one fifth of the white households, either or both of the spouses had at least some difficulty in carrying out one or more basic activities of daily living (getting around the house, walking up and down steps, getting around out of doors). It is conceivable that these differences in health between whites and Appalachians could be due to differences these two groups in income, and the fact that health is correlated with income. The regression results refute this hypothesis. That is, there were significant negative beta coefficients between Appalachian background and both family health (- .08) and family functional ability (-.11) when other relevent background characteristics (e.g., income) were controlled. TABLE 2 Differences between Appalachian, other white, and other black elderly in the incidence of specific health problems.' Other Other Appalachians Health problem blacks whites 33 17 17 5 14 7 2 2 3 29 13 11 4 25 4 5 4 5 35 0 0 0 41 9 3 3 9 42 Heart Lungs Limbs Back Arthritis Stroke Eyes Circulation Diabetes 133 134 x2 = 20.7 df = 16 p^.2 Notes: a. This Table presents the coded first response to the questions on health problems. We suspected that the particularly high incidence of health problems among Appalachians was due to diseases contracted in the mountains. In particular, we expected that many former miners would have contracted black lung disease and, consequently, that Appalachians would have a particularly high rate of lung illnesses. The results in Table 2 are not clearcut enough to either support or reject this hypothesis. Appalachians were more likely than other whites or other blacks to have lung illnesses, but the results are not statistically significant. In addition, it should be noted that the category "lung illnesses" in Table 2 includes illnesses unrelated to having an Appalachian background (e.g., lung cancer resulting from smoking) as well as illnesses attributable to the Appalachian experience. Additional research is needed in order to identify why elderly Appalchians suffer such high rates of debilitating illnesses. The results dealing with the incidence of housing and neighborhood problems were more mixed. The Appalachian elderly were worse off than other whites 142 �with respect to three of seven problems. Specifically, Appalachians were far more likely than other whites to experience difficulty in affording current housing costs (or were expected to experience difficulty in affording likely future increases; 37 percent versus 23 percent). Appalachians were also more likely than other whites to be living in neighborhoods that were in the lowest quartile with respect to socio economic status (22 percent versus 8 percent). Furthermore, they were also more likely than other whites to be living in racially changing communities, as indicated by their presence in communities between 25 and 49 percent black (6 percent versus 3 percent). It should be noted, however, that blacks were far worse off than Appalachians or whites in terms of most of the indicators of residential problems. That Appalachians were more likely to experience a cost problem was probably attributable to their having lower incomes than other whites, rather than any aspect of their Appalachian background. This interpretation is supported by the regression results (not presented here) which indicated that the householder's Appalachian background was of no importance in predicting variations in the incidence of the cost problems when other background characteristics were taken into account. 2. Residential satisfaction and moving plans. Existing research supports the image of Appalachian transiency. That is, Appalachians have been shown to have higher mobility rates than nonAppalachians (Coles, 1967; Fowler, 1976; Votaw, 1955). There are, however, two limitations in this research. First, there have been few attempts to compare Appalachians with specific other ethnic groups. Second, most research has relied on bivariate analyses. It is as a result unclear whether the high mobility rates are a result of demographic characteristics associated with being Appalachian (such as a high rate of renting) or are a result of some aspect of the Appalachian experience. Coles (1967) favors the second interpretation. He speculates that a dissatisfaction with city life combined with an inability to return home leads to a continual wandering within the city. In order to determine which of these hypotheses is valid this paper tests a residential mobility model (Figure 1) developed by Speare and Associates (1974) consisting of three sets of variables: (1) personal, housing, and neighborhood characteristics (including Appalachian background), (2) housing and neighborhood satisfaction, and (3) intra-metropolitan moving plans.10 Speare, Goldstein, and Prey's model suggests that Appalachian background, like other personal characteristics, would affect intra-metropolitan mobility plans indirectly. That is, a householder's Appalachian identity would foster housing and neighborhood dissatisfaction, which would in turn lead to intra-metropolitan moving plans. The results (Figure 2 and Table 3) support this hypothesis." Appalachian background indirectly promoted rapid intra-metropolitan moving plans through higher levels of housing dissatisfaction. This is shown by the significant path coefficient (.11) between being Appalachian and housing dissatisfaction, and by the high correlation of the latter variable with intrametropolitan moving plans (beta = .40). Using Coles's research, we would interpret the high level of housing dissatisfaction among these elderly Appalachians as attributable to a discontent with the urban environment, generally, and an inability to return "home" to the mountains. 3. Spatial distribution Much of the research that is available on urban Applachians is based on case 143 �FIGURE 1 Elderly mobility model. �FIGURE 2 Significant Paths Influencing Housing and Neighborhood Satisfaction and Intra-Metropolitan Mobility Plans (likelihood of remaining) Among Hamilton County Elderly. NOTE: All of the beta coefficients are statistically significant at the .05 level. �TABLE 3 Differences between Appalachian, other white, and other black elderly with respect to residential satisfaction, moving plans, and length of residence. Appalachians Other whites Other blacks Sig. Housing satisfaction (proportion not very satisfied) 28% (122) 19% (590) 26% (91) .03 Neighborhood satisfaction (proportion rating neighborhood not good) Intra-metropolitan moving plans (proportion planplanning move) 29% (11 8) 27% (571) 33% (89) n.s. 20% (113) 18% (563) 15% (80) n.s. Inter-metropolitan moving plans (proportion planning inter-metropolitan move) 6% (124) 5% (591) 1%(93) n.s. Length of residence (proportion at current address below 5 years.) Length of residence (mean no. of years) 24% (126) 19% (604) 28% (93) n.s. 14.9 19.3 13.0 .001 Characteristic studies of port-of-entry tenement neighborhoods in the inner city like the Uptown section of Chicago (Gitlin and Hollander, 1970) and the Over-theRhine community in Cincinnati (Maloney, 1972). This research reinforces the stereotype of Appalachians being concentrated in this type of community. Nevertheless, this stereotype probably is inaccurate for younger Appalachian families. A recent trend is for mountain families, particularly the better off ones, to bypass the central city entirely and to settle in rural fringe communities (Fowler, 1976; Photiadis, 1970; Schwarzweller, 1970; and Stevens, 1973). The above sterotype may be applicable to the Appalachian elderly, however. Researchers have found that the white, ethnic elderly are often left behind in the inner city as younger families achieve mobility and move to the suburbs (see for example Ginsberg, 1975). The results refute this last hypothesis. The proportion of elderly Appalachians living within the city (47 percent, 126) was identical to that for other elderly whites (47 percent, 604). Not surprisingly, the proportion of blacks living within the city (83 percent, 93) was far higher than for either of the two other groups (X 2 = 43.0, df = 2, p-* .00001). In addition, only a small minority (15 percent, 59) of the Appalachian elderly living in the city lived in Appalachian neighborhoods (i.e. those estimated to be 50 percent or more Appalachian). Futhermore, the proportion of Appalachian elderly living in this type of community was no higher than that for other whites (17 percent, 287). A smaller proportion of blacks lived in this type of community (7 percent, 77, n.s.). The notion that the Appalachian elderly are concentrated in Appalachian ghettos is not true. Finally, as shown in Table 4 only a small 146 �TABLE 4 Differences between Appalachian, other white, and other black elderly in neighborhood type. Neighborhood Type" Appalachians Other whites Other blacks 39% 24 13 24 58% 29 2 11 (281) 10% 33 38 19 Hill newer Valley Established Basin-Old Town Transitional Dynamic (59) (177) x> = 50.0 df = 2 p* .00001 Notes: a. See footnote 8 for definitions of these four neighborhood types. minority (13 percent) of the Appalachian elderly living within the city of Cincinnati reside in the "Basin-Old Town area" area. It should be noted, however, that the proportion of Appalachian elderly living in this particular area is substantially higher than for other whites. Previous research has indicated sharp differences in income and other socioeconomic characteristics between Appalachians living in the city and the suburbs. That is, those in the suburbs tend to be more well-to-do (Photiadis, 1970). Based on this research, we expected that within an Appalchian elderly sample those in the city would be poorer, and in worse health, worse housing, and neighborhoods than those in the suburbs. Table 5 provides no support for this assertion. As shown, the mean family incomes for the Appalachian elderly living in the city and in the suburbs are virtually identical. Furthermore, there are insignificant differences between the city and suburban Appalachian elderly with respect to the incidence of health and housing problems. The only way in which the suburban Appalachian residents are significantly more likely to be in high socioeconomic status neighborhoods and significant city-suburban differences may be due to the presence of many attractive suburban communities in the city of Cincinnati. Consequently, this fact may have led some of the relatively affluent Appalachians to move within the city rather than to the suburbs. We would expect to find wider differences between city and suburban residents in cities lacking such attractive neighborhoods. 4. Utilization of Social Services There is consensus within the research literature that Appalachians (elderly and non-elderly) tend not to utilize existing governmental social services and housing programs. Fowler (1976) asserts that Appalachian families tend not to use public social services because of pride, because of their dependence on the kin group (which leads to an avoidance of formal public institutions generally), and because of the perception that these agencies give blacks and other groups preference. Engler (1979) found that the Appalachian elderly tended not to participate in the Independent Environments Program in Chautauqua County, New York. That is a program under which homeowners can have ramps built for wheelchairs, handrails installed for showers, and so forth. He suggests that this underutilization results from many of the Appalachian elderly having 147 �TABLE 5 Differences between Appalachian elderly living in the city and in the suburbs Characteristic Family income (proportion below $3000) Cincinnati 15% (47) Suburbs 17% (48) Sig. n.s. Family income (mean) Family health (whether respondent or spouse unwell) Family functional ability (whether respondent or spouse has difficulty) Perceived cost problem (at least some difficulty) Housing costs/income index (ratio relatively high) Perceived housing deterioration (at least some deterioration) Perceived crime problem (neighborhood not very safe) Neighborhood socioeconomic status (lowest quartile) Neighborhood racial comp. (25-49 percent black) $4798 (47) $4752 (48) n.s. 42% (59) 46% (67) n.s. 36% (59) 27% (66) n.s. 36% (56) 38% (64) n.s. 22% (59) 18% (67) n.s. 38% (56) 30% (67) n.s. 40% (57) 21% (66) .03 42% (59) 3% (66) .0000 12% (59) 3% (66) .05 moved from areas where there were few federal social services or housing programs. Thus, these elderly residents did not know what help was available nor were they sure they had a right to get it. Our results (Table 5) are in sharp contrast to previous research on the subject. There is no evidence to support the premise that the Appalachian elderly are less likely to take advantage of social services than others. As shown, there were insignificant differences between Appalachians, other whites, and other blacks in their utilization of government housing assistance programs (such as Rent Supplements) and government income supplements (such as Social Security). In addition, there were insignificant differences in the 148 �proportions preferring to move into housing for retired persons (assuming it was available), rather than to continue to live in their present home. There were significant differences in the utilization of social services delivered to the home (e.g., visiting nurses). The statistically significant difference was due, however, to the higher rate of usage of these programs by elderly blacks than either Appalachians or other whites. The greater utilization of social service programs by elderly blacks probably reflects: (1) the higher incidence of social pathologies among elderly blacks, (2) the War on Poverty which informed many blacks of their eligibility for social services, and (3) the location of many of these services (e.g., senior centers) in inner city areas that are heavily black. Regression analysis was utilized to determine whether the lack of association between Appalachian background and social service utilization was attributable to the intercorrelation between these two variables and other background characteristics. This was not the case. The results (not presented here) indicated that Appalachian background had no impact at all on the utilization of social services or housing assistance programs when other personal characteristics were controlled. The results therefore indicate that this stereotype is not valid for the Appalachian elderly. TABLE 6 Differences between Appalachian, other white, and other black elderly in the utilization of different social welfare and housing assistance programs Characteristic" Government housing assistance programs (use at least one) Government income supplements (use at least one) Social services at home (use at least one) Social services (mean number utilized) Housing for elderly (proportion preferring this over home ownership) Notes: Other blacks 26% (86) Sig. 30% (125) Other whites 26% (573) 81% (122) 84% (565) 87% (90) n.s. 19% (126) 16% (600) 31% (91) .003 .28 .23 .48 .006 11% (113) 11% (557) 13% (83) n.s. Appalachians n.s. a. See footnote 7 for definitions of these four measures of program utilization. Conclusions This paper was sought to improve the understanding of differences between Appalachian, other white, and other black elderly in urban areas. Four widely held stereotypes about urban Appalachians were tested using the results of a survey of the elderly in Hamilton County (Cincinnati), Ohio. 149 �The results supported the validity of two of the stereotypes. The Appalachian elderly were shown to be an impoverished group in relation to other white elderly. This was particularly true with respect to measures of health and functional ability. In addition, the stereotypes of Appalachian transiency was supported. An Appalachian background was shown to indiiectly promote intra-urban residential mobility plans through increased housing dissatisfacation. Two other widely held stereotypes were refuted. In contrast to what had been expected, the Appalachian elderly were not shown to be concentrated in inner city Appalachian ghettos. Not even the poor Appalachian elderly were concentrated in these areas. In addition, there was no support for the assertion made by Fowler (1976) and others that Appalachians tend not to utilize governmentally funded social services and housing programs. Policy Implications The results support an expansion of health care programs for the Appalachian elderly. As indicated above, the incidence of debilitating illnesses was disproportionately high among Appalachians even when other relevant background characteristics were controlled. In developing such programs, improved information is needed on the nature of the health problems affecting members of this group. These health care programs need to be targeted to the Appalachian elderly wherever they reside. Our results show that it would be a mistake to implement them only in identifiable Appalachian communities. In Cincinnati only a small minority of the needy Appalachian elderly reside in these areas. Citywide agencies such as the Urban Appalachian Council in Cincinnati could be helpful in reaching Appalachians located throughout the metropolitan area. Finally, attention should be given to expanding the residential choices of elderly Appalachians. The high levels of housing dissatisfaction that we discovered among elderly Appalachians probably result from a dissatisfaction with city life and and inability to return to the rural point of origin. Research needs to be directed to the obstacles preventing such return moves. With such research in hand, planners could then develop programs which would enable those Appalachian elderly wanting to return home to do so. Notes The author wishes to thank the Better Housing League of Cincinnati for making available the data set on which this paper is based. He is also grateful for the statistical assistance provided by Mr. Dan McKee of the Behavioral Sciences Laboratory, University of Cincinnati. 1. Among the few exceptions to this generalization are Lawton and Kleban's comparison of Jews and non-Jews in the determinants of well-being (1971) and Sterne, Phillips, and Rabushka's study of black-white variations with respect to residential satisfaction and political participation (1974). 2. Using the Random Digit Dialing technique, 11,365 telephone numbers were generated and called. Two thirds (66 percent or 7526) of these numbers were found to be not in service. Of the remaining valid numbers, one half turned out to be ineligible for the study either because there was no elderly person in the household (41 percent) or for some other reason, such as a business or institutional number, or a language barrier (13 percent). In one fifth (20 percent) of the cases, it proved impossible to reach anyone, even though three attempts were made. Three percent of the respondents refused to be interviewed. A little over one fifth (23 percent) of the valid numbers led to completed interviews with elderly householders. 150 �The regression analysis of the determinants of moving plans reported on in this paper is based on 408 rather than 862 cases noted above. This is due to the utilization of a regression program which required complete information on all the variables included in the analysis; otherwise, the case was deleted. For this reason 416 cases were excluded. In addition 38 intended inter-metropolitan movers were deleted from the analysis. 3. In order to measure moving plans respondents were asked: "Do you plan to move from your present home in the next ten years?" There were five reponse categories: yes, considering it, no, only under unforeseen circumstances, and don't know. In the analysis the respones were receded into three groups; those who had definite plans to move (category one), those who had plans but who were uncertain about their plans (category 2) and those who planned to remain (categories 3 and 4). Those who didn't know or who planned to move outside the Cincinnati metropolitan area were excluded from the analysis. 4. Housing satisfaction was measured by the question: "In general, how satisfied are you with your present housing?" The four response categories ranged from very satisfied to very dissatisfied. We measured neighborhood satisfaction by the question: "How would you rate your neighborhood (community) as a place for retired people to live?" The three response categories were good, fair, and bad. 5. The physical housing quality index was derived from two questions. The first asked whether there was anything about the residence that made it dangerous (e.g., a fire hazard). The second asked whether the building in which the respondent resided needed major repairs, minor repairs, or no repairs. The combined results were receded into a three point scale: (1) most deterioration (minor or major repairs and dangerous), (2) less deterioration (either no repairs and dangerous or minor/major repairs and no danger), and (3) no deterioration (no repairs and no danger). The housing costs index was created from two other questions. The first asked whether or not the respondent was having difficulty paying for the residence and its upkeep (including utilities). The second asked about the degree of difficulty that the individual would experience if housing costs increased by twenty-five dollars from what they were at the time of the interview. The four response categories ranged from not difficult to impossible. The combined results to these questions were receded into a three point scale: (1) no difficulty (can afford housing costs now, and would have some or no difficulty in affording future incrases), (2) some difficulty (either experiencing difficulty in affording current costs and would have some/no difficulty in affording future increases or can afford current costs but would find it difficult or impossible to afford future increases) and (3) great difficulty (have difficulty in affording current costs and would find it very difficult/impossible to afford future increases). A second more objective measure of the housing cost problem was computed by dividing housing costs (including utilities) by monthly family income. 6. Two separate questions were used to create the family health scale. The first question asked whether the respondent had a health problem which restricted his/her mobility. The second obtained comparable information about the spouse, if there was one. The combined results were receded into two categories: (1) families where both spouses were well or unrelated individuals who were well and (2) families where at least on of the spouses was ill or unrelated individuals who were ill. Family functional ability was based on two separate series of items (one for the respondent and one for the spouse) dealing with the degree of difficulty each experienced in completing certain everyday activities (i.e., getting around 151 �the house, walking up and down the stairs, getting around out of doors). Respondents were asked whether they could complete each of these activities without difficulty, with difficulty but without help, or only with the help of another person. The scores for this set of items ranged between 3 and 9, with 9 representing the highest degree of functional limitation. The results for each of the two variables were separately receded into two groups: (1) respondents or spouses who could complete all of the activities without difficulty (i.e., a score of 3) and (2) respondents/spouses who experienced at least some difficulty in completing one or more activities (i.e., scores between 4 and 9). The two separate variables were then combined and receded into two categories: (1) families where both respondents were able to complete all the activities without difficulty or where the unrelated individual was able to complete them without difficulty and (2) families where one or both spouses (or an unrelated individual) had at least some difficulty completing one or more of these activities. 7. Homeowners were separately asked whether they received any of the following forms of governmental housing assistance: property tax reduction, utility cost assistance, and mortage interest reduction. If they didn't receive any of the three, they were then asked whether they had ever applied to the government for financial assistance to help to pay housing costs. Renters were asked a separate series of questions probing whether they received rent supplements or assistance with utility bills, and if they received neither, whether they had applied to the government to help pay housing costs. An index was created from all of these questions to distinguish between two groups of respondents: (1) those who had applied for or participated in one or more government housing assistance programs and (2) those who had not applied for or participated in any. A second scale measured in utilization of social services for the elderly. Respondents were asked whether they had used any of the following services provided by agencies or groups over the previous three years: prepared meals or meals brought to the home, housekeeping help, assistance with minor home repairs, senior centers or clubs, transportation, visiting nurses. An ordinal level scale was created based on the number of services utilized. A third scale measured the utilization of governmental income supplement programs. Respondents were asked whether any of the following programs provided income for them or any other other relative living in the home: social security, supplementary security income, veterans' benefits, unemployment compensation, workmen's compensation, disability insurance, food stamps, aid to dependent children/general relief. An index distinguishing between two groups of respondents was created: (1) those who were utilizing one or more of these programs and (2) those who were not utilizing any. 8. Neighborhood age composition was measured by the proportion of individuals sixty and over living in the census tract in 1970. All of the census tracts in Hamilton County were ranked on the basis of the proportion of elderly living in the tract. Each tract was assigned a value ranging from 1 to 4 depending on which quartile it fell within. A socioeconomic status index was calculated for each census tract based on the ranking of the tract with respect to the following indices: median family income, overcrowding, family composition (the presence of both spouses), occupation, and education. The tracts were then ranked from lowest SES to highest and divided into quartiles. Each tract was assigned a value (from 1 to 4) based on which quartile it was located in. Four dummy variables were used to measure neighborhood racial composition (i.e., whether the neighborhood was under 25 percent black, 25-49 percent black, 50 to 74 percent black, 75 to 100 percent black) because there was a non-linear relationship between neighborhood racial composition and moving 152 �plans. Crosstabular analysis revealed that respondents living in neighborhoods 25 to 49 percent black were significantly more likely to formulate moving plans than those living in the three other types of neighborhoods. The first dummy variable (whether the neighborhood was under 25 percent black) was considered the reference variable and, therefore, was not included in the regression runs. Communities within the city of Cincinnati were classified into four types using a scheme developed by the Real Estate Research Corporation (1973:1) Hill-Newer Areas are those "often referred to as the 'suburbs inside Cincinnati'. They are relatively new, relatively white, relatively upper-income and predominantly owner occupied as compared to the rest of the city." ValleyEstablished Areas "are older, more established and contain quite mixed types of land uses. They tend to lie along the geographical valleys of the City....Most have declining populations, moderated levels of household income and average rates of turnovers". Basin-Old Town Areas "are the oldest parts of the City clustered around the central business district. Their land use patterns have been significantly changed in recent years by highway or urban renewal developments; hence they lost more than one third of their population from 1960 to 1970. Their population is mainly nonwhite and have relatively low incomes." Transition-Dynamic Areas contain those "that do not consistently fit into the above three categories. Some are undergoing rapid transition in population characteristics whereas others are more stable". In addition, city communities were classified as "Appalachian" or "nonAppalachian" using a scheme developed by McKee and Obermiller (1978). School survey data were used to estimate community ethnic composition. Communities were defined as Appalachian if they comprised one half or more of the population. 9. The overwhelming majority (83 percent) of the Appalachian elderly surveyed were white. 10. Our decision to focus the analyis on the determinants of intra-metropolitan moving plans rather than on moving plans, generally, was based on previous research indicating that there are different determinants of intra and intermetropolitan mobility (Wiseman, 1978). This implied that the precision of our model could be increased if intended inter-metropolitan movers were excluded from the analysis. It should be noted that in contrast to Spear's (1974) and Newman and Duncan's research (1978, 1979), which examined determinants of mobility behavior, ours is limited to an analysis of moving plans. Van Arsdol (1968) has indicated that there is a real distinction between moving wishes, moving plans, and moving behavior. Consequently, it is not possible to validly generalize from our results dealing with moving plans, to actual mobility behavior. Nevertheless, this study is valuable because it examines most of the components of the mobility decision and, therefore, should lead to an improved understanding of this decision. The results of the analysis of the determinants of intra-urban mobility plans for the 1978 Cincinnati elderly sample are discussed in far greater detail in a separate paper (see Varady, forthcoming). 11. These results are in contrast to those obtained from an analysis of the determinants of moving plans and mobility behavior among a sample of elderly and non-elderly residents of the Cincinnati Model Neighborhood (Varady, 1975). Appalachian background was of no importance in explaining variations in either plans or behavior in the regression analysis. It should be noted that in contrast to the analysis in this paper, we did not then test for the indirect impact of Appalachian background through measures of housing and neighborhood satisfaction. Had such measures of satisfaction been included we might 153 �have found that Appalachian background did have an indirect impact on mobility. References Appalachian Regional Commission. 7977 Annual Report. Washington, D.C.: Appalachian Regional Commission, 1971. Better Housing League of Greater Cincinnati. Housing for Older Americans in Hamilton County Ohio. Cincinnati: Better Housing League, 1978. Coles, Robert. The South Goes North. Vol. 3 Children of Crisis. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967. Fowler, Gary L. "Up there and Down Home: Appalachians in Cities". In Appalachia: Social Context, Past and Present, edited by Bruce Ergood and Bruce E. Kuhre, pp. 77-81. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishers, 1976. Ginsberg, Yona. Jews in a Changing Neighborhood: The Study ofMattapan. New York: The Free Press, 1975. Giltin, Todd, and Hollander, Nanci. Uptown: Poor Whites in Chicago. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1970. Lawton, M. Powell, and Kleban, Morton H. "The Aged Resident of the Inner City". The Gerontologist, Winter 1971, Part I, pp. 277-83. Maloney, Michael. "Appalachian Settlements: Cincinnati and Southwestern Ohio". People's Appalachia 2, No. 3 (July 1972). McKee, Dan M., and Obermiller, Phillip. From Mountain to Metropolis: Urban Appalachians in Ohio. Cincinnati: Urban Appalachian Council, 1978. Newman, Sandra J., and Duncan, Greg J. "Residential Problems, Dissatis-faction and Mobility." Journal of the American Planning Association 45 (1979): 154-166. Newman, Sandra J., and Duncan, Greg J. "Residential Problems, Dissatisfaction and Mobility." In Five Thousand American Families - Patterns of Economic Progress. Vol. 6 Edited by Greg J. Duncan and James N. Norgan, pp. 297-322. Lansing, Michigan: Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 1978. Osborne, Robert S. "The Migrant Spirit." Mountain Life and Work, JulyAugust 1970, pp. 12-14. Photiadis, John D. West Virginians in Their Own State and in Cleveland, Ohio: Selected Social and Socio-phychological Characteristics. Morgantown, West Virginia: Appalachian Center, West Virginia University, 1970. Ragan, Pauline K., and Davis, William J. "The Diversity of Older Voters." Society, July-August 1978, pp. 50-53. Real Estate Research Corporation. Description and Partial Analyis of Cincinnati's 44 Statistical Areas. May 1973. Schwarzweller, Harry; Brown, James S.; and Mangalam, J.J. Mountain Families in Transition. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971. Speare, Alden, Jr.; Goldstein, Sindey; and Frey, William H. Residential Mobility, Migration and Metropolitan Change, Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1974. Sterne, Richard S.; Phillips, James E.; and Rabrushka, Alvin. The Urban Elderly Poor. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath and Company, 1974. Stevens, William K. "Appalachia's Hillbillies Trek North for Jobs." New York Times. March 29, 1973. Tuchfarber, Alfred J., and Klecka, William R. Random Digit Dialing: Lower- 154 �ing the Cost of Victimization Surveys. Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation, 1976. U.S. Department of Health, Education and welfare. Our Future Selves: Report of the Panelon Behavioral and Social Science Research. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978. U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Our Future Selves: Summary Report. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978. Van Arsdol, Maurice D., Jr.; Sabagh, Georges; Butler, Edgar W. "Retrospective and Subsequent Metropolitan Residential Mobility." Demography 5 (1968): 249-67. Varady, David P. "Determinants of Mobility in an Inner City Community." Regional Science Perspectives 5 (1975): 154-78. ______. "Housing Problems and Mobility Plans Among the Elderly." Journal of the American Planning Association, forthcoming. Votaw, Albert N. "Hillbillies Invade Chicago." Harper's Magazine, February 1958, pp. 64-67. Wiseman, Robert F. "Spatial Aspects of Aging." Resource Papers for College Geography No. 78-4. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Geographers, 1978. 155 �This page intentionally left blank �IV Education in Appalachia 157 �Innovatice Approches to Vocational-Technical Education in North Central Pennsylvania Robert A. Rusiewski Abstract The focus of this paper will be on innovative approaches in vocationaltechnical education in the area of north central Pennsylvania. Attempts will be made to illustrate that even though the approaches discussed appear to be innovative to vocational-technical education in general, they are also fundamental to the concept of vocational-technical training in particular. The interface between and among the needs of area employers, the role of vocational-technical education to provide training to meet area employer needs, and student/adult interest in developing a skill or trade to enhance employment opportunities, will be illustrated throughout the examples provided. Introduction Three examples of innovative approaches to vocational-technical education in North Central Pennsylvania will be discussed in this paper. They involve the provision of training in petroleum production, powdered metals technology, and forest industry production (i.e., logging and sawmilling). A fourth example, a proposed vo-tech coal mining program, is briefly described. Of the three training programs being highlighted, the petroleum production course is presently the most advanced. The major goal of the Bradford Vocational-Technical Drilling-Oil Production is the development and implementation of an on-site oil production course addressing the drilling of an oil well, the use of modern finishing techniques such as electro-logging and hydrofracturing, and the installation of a pumping unit so as to provide an avenue of training and career development for young oil field workers. The major goal of the Powdered Metals Technology Program, Seneca Highlands Vocational-Technical School is the development of a program to provide training, at both the secondary and adult level, in powdered metal manufacturing technology. The North Central Pennsylvania Forest Industry Training Program at Jefferson County, while still in the development phase, has as its goal the development of a training program for secondary and postsecondary students in the skills required for harvesting, processing, and transporting all categories of forest products to local, state, and national markets. Subsequently, in order to depict this situation effectively, this paper is organized into four sections to describe the area of north central Pennsylvania, the vocational-technical training delivery system, the examples of innovative training, and in a final section, the summary and conclusion to be drawn from this study. The North Central Pennsylvania Region North central Pennsylvania consists of six contiguous counties that lie in the mountainous Allegheny plateau of northern Pennsylvania. These counties include Cameron, Clearfield, Elk, Jefferson, McKean, and Potter, and a part of a 158 �larger, sparsely populated area which is considered the only extensive "open" area remaining in the urbanized northeastern United States. The total area of the region is 5,083 square miles or 3,257,100 acres, which represents approximately 11 percent of the area of Pennsylvania.1 Nearly 90 percent of this area is forested, with large tracts of forest land owned by the federal governmerit (i.e., Allegheny National Forest), state government (Pennsylvania state game lands and forest lands), and private landowners. The population of North Central Pennsylvania in 1970 was 231,490, or approximately 2 percent of the state total.2 The latest estimates by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, compute the region's population to have grown slightly, by 6,676, to 238,166 as of July 1, 1977.3 Population decline has been a general characteristic of the region since 1910, when the regional population was at its peak of 277,970. In general terms, population losses have been due to deteriorating economic conditions and the general rural to urban movements that have been characteristic of the United States in the past thirty years. The region is rural, non-farm, and small town in character. There are numerous communities which have populations in excess of 1,000; however, only 36 percent of the total populaton resides in the fifteen larger (population of 2,500 or more) urban centers of the region. Bradford (12,672) and DuBois (10,112) are the only chartered cities, as well as the largest population centers. Of the 157 municipalities in the region, 146 have populations less than 5,000 persons. Major economic activities in north central Pennsylvania include coal and clay mining, agriculture, forestry and timber production, oil and gas production, retail and personal services, and manufacturing. Decline in the extractive industries and reliance on below average growth industries have caused severe economic problems in the region, especially when the national economy is troubled. Manufacturing is by far the single most important industry in the region. Manufacturing, in the region in 1976, employed 31,200 of the total six-county civilian labor force, or 32 percent.4 In comparison. Pennsylvania, a highly industrialized state, employed only 28.8 percent in manufacturing in the same year.' Also significant is the fact that almost 75 percent of those employed in manufacturing in the region are employed in durable goods industries. This compares to only 60 percent for the state of Pennsylvania. The heaviest concentration of manufacturing is found in the counties of Elk and Cameron. Both of these counties have well over half their employment in manufacturing (54.2 percent and 57.1 percent respectively in 1976). Mining holds an important place in the economy of the region. Coal in the southern section (Clearfield and Jefferson Counties) and oil in the northern section (McKean County) were instrumental in the region's past economic growth, and will continue to be important in the future. Mining and oil exploration have increased in the 1970s as a result of the energy shortage, but because of mechanization, especially in the case of coal, mining will never by a major employer again as in the 1940s. However, the increased mechanization has created a need for employees possessing more technical skills than in the past. Poverty, housing shortages, high dependency ratios, low wages, low tax assessment bases, and a lack of retail outlets and personal services are all problems currently experienced in the region. These problems are not unique, but are characteristic of many areas in Appalachia. Such problems and economic circumstances have contributed to both the need and demand for vocational training in the region in not only the traditional 159 �sense, but also for innovative curriculums with training for employment indigenous to the area. Such factors as the make-up of the local and regional economies, the desire of people - particularly young people - to remain in the area, the subsequent need and demand for vocational training, and the relevance of this training to enhancing employment opportunities and/or career development, have nurtured and fostered the present vocationaltechnical education delivery system in north central Pennsylvania. This system is outlined in the following section. North Central Pennsylvania's Present Vocational-Technical Education Delivery System The present vocational-technical education delivery system in north central Pennsylvania consists of three areawide vocational-technical schools and one comprehensive high school that has a vocational-technical department. Brief descriptions of each school are outlined. Bradford Area High School Bradford Area High School is a comprehensive high school including vocational-technical training. Vocational-technical training is available to students in grades 10-12, and enrollment in these grades is approximately 1,200. Enrollment in grades 10-12 is expected to remain fairly constant in the near future. In recognition of the fact that not all jobs require college training, the vocational department offers courses in twelve vocational-technical training areas. These courses are Automotive, Carpentry, Electrical Maintenance, Machine Shop, Nursing Assistants, Distributive Education, Drafting and Design Technology, Electronics Technology and Grounds Building Maintenance, Petroleum Production, Home Economics, and Business Education. Student selection is made on a quota basis with the selection criteria including test scores, past academic records, and attendance. Emphasis is made on the student selecting a course based on the student's interest in acquiring training in that subject area for the purpose of seeking employment or using that subject as a foundation for further training in a trade or technical school or a college. The school is located in Bradford, McKean County, Pennsylvania. Clearfield County Area Vocational-Technical School The Clearfield County Area Vocational-Technical School has a maximum enrollment potential of 831 students, and at present, approximately 650 day school students and 700 evening students are enrolled. Students from five participating school districts attend the Clearfield County school, and percentage of high school students attending the school represents 15 percent of the total high school (grades 9-12) student population from the five participating districts. However, only in unusual circumstances do ninth grade students participate in vo-tech training. Thus approximately 21 percent of the total school population grades 10-12 in the five participating districts attend the Clearfield County Vo-Tech. Sixteen major subject areas are offered and these included Auto Body Repair, Automotive Mechanics, Carpentry/Cabinet Making, Clothing Design/Sewing, Cosmetology, Beautician, Data Processing/Computer Programming, Diesel Mechanics, Distributive Education/Sales and Merchandising, Electronics, Electrical Wiring/Industrial and Residential, Food Preparation and Service, Health/Medical Assistant, Machine Shop, 160 �Masonry/Bricklaying, and Welding. With no vo-tech facilities in Elk and Cameron Counties (central part of the region), the Clearfield Vo-Tech has a very large service area. The $3 million facility was funded in part by a $346,500 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission. The school is located in Clearfield, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. Seneca Highlands Area Vocational-Technical School The Seneca Highlands Area Vocational-Technical School is new and opened in February 1979. Capacity of the facility is 320 students with present capacity being approximately 300 students. The $3 million facility was funded in part by a $450,000 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission. Five participating school districts in McKean, Potter, Cameron Counties send students to the Seneca Highlands Vo-Tech. Currently the school is in its first full year of operation. Students in grades 10-12 are eligible for training courses. They must be at least fifteen years of age and below the age of twenty-one. Others not categorized as such can participate in the adult training sessions. Present adult enrollment is approximately 200. Nine course offerings are available and these include: Metal Working Occupations, Heavy Equipment Construction, Automotive Mechanics, Building Construction Occupations, Building Maintenance Trades, Advanced Office Practice, Cosmetology, Health Assistant, and Powdered Metals Technology. The school is located in Port Allegany, McKean County, Pennsylvania. Jefferson County, DuBois Area Vocational-Technical School The Jefferson County, Du Bois Area Vocational-Technical School has a facility capacity of 550 students with present enrollment at approximately 520 students. Both traditional academic course work and vocational-technical training are available at this school. The combined enrollment of daytime students and adult evening students is approximately 700. Four participating school districts provide the service area student population. The $4.6 million facility was funded in part by a $187,500 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission in 1968. Fifteen vocational-technical training courses are available and these include Auto Body, Auto Mechanics, Building Maintenance, Carpentry, Cosmetology, Electrical Construction, Food Services, Machine Shop Practice, Metal Fabrication, Graphics Arts, Distributive Education, Laboratory Technology, Data Processing, Drafting and Design Technology, and Electronic Technology. The school is located in Reynoldsville, Jefferson County, Pennsylvania. Regional Service Area Upon viewing this delivery system in the six-county area, two conclusions are apparent. First, students in the northern counties of McKean and Potter have easy access to vocational training at either Bradford High School or Seneca Highland Area Vo-Tech, as do the students in the southern counties of Clearfield and Jefferson at either the Clearfield County Area Vo-Tech or the Jefferson County, DuBois Area Vo-Tech. Students in both Elk and Cameron counties have much farther to go to attend as there is no vocational-technical training offered in the central portion of the region. Second, the curriculum composition of these four schools, in terms of traditional vocational instruction, is quite similar except for the petroleum production training at Bradford High School and the powdered metals technology training at the Seneca Highlands Area Vo-Tech. It is the innovative nature of these two courses, plus two other 161 �courses in the development stage, that will be pursued in the following pages. Examples of Innovative Approaches to Vocational-Technical Education in North Central Pennsylvania The four examples of innovative approaches to vocational-technical education in north central Pennyslvanina are listed below with each course at a different phase of development/implementation. Bradford Vocational-Technical Drilling-Oil Production Course During the early to mid-1970s the petroleum industry in the Pennsylvania Grade Crude producing area of Bradford, McKean County, Pennsylvania, was experiencing a problematic series of events that projected very critical production problems in the near future. The local petroleum industry requested the vocational-technical department of Bradford High School to investigate the possibilities of developing a training program to supply the industry with training manpower.' This investigation and a survey of the local petroleum industry identified the following five specific problems, and needs of the industry. 1. The large percentage of oil field workers at the age fifty or above and the lack of younger experienced or trained workers. 2. Retirement alone will open up approximately twenty jobs per year for new employees, and the industry will need to replace 25 percent of its work force in the next fifteen years. 3. Increased drilling activity will require more workers. 4. Improved recovery techniques will require a more skilled work force. 5. Complaints by the industry that young employees have little or no knowledge of the industry and may require on-site training. When viewed compositely, these problematic events formed an unusual dichotomy whereby, on the one hand, the petroleum industry has increased production activities to its highest level since 1960 (a peak year in the local industry); and on the other hand, the petroleum industry found itself with a trained manpower shortage at the oil field production level. The effects of this "push-pull" dichotomy on the local petroleum industry prompted representatives of the industry to request that Bradford Area High School become involved in alleviating this problem. In 1975 Myron Crumrine, Director of Vocational Education at Bradford Area High School, requested the North Central Pennsylvania Regional Planning and Development Commission (NCPRPDC) to investigate potential sources of funding to develop and implement a petroleum production course. A project application was submitted to the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) and Bradford High School received $36,728 in ARC funds out of the total project cost of $45,910 to implement such a course. However, it soon became apparent that the course needed to provide more on-site training. The school had a twenty-seven acre oil lease and both the VoTech Director and the twelve man advisory committee identified a need for more equipment to provide instruction in the actual operation of drilling a producing well. An application to ARC was submitted in 1978, and a grant of $46,663 for equipment was approved. In addition to this equipment, a drilling rig, the development and implementation of an on-site production course addressing the drilling of the well, the use of modern finishing techniques such as electro-logging and hydrofacturing, and the installation of a pumping unit all provide an avenue of training and career development for students interested in the program. In a course involving the total process in the completion of a producing well, emphasis is placed on 162 �training in the following work activities. 1. Surveying to locate a well site 2. Securing the drilling permit 3. Preparation of an erosion and sedimentation plan 4. Construction of an access road 5. Preparation of a well site 6. Construction of pipe-line right-of-way 7. Securing the services of a drilling contractor 8. Setting up the rig 9. Provision of adequate water supply 10. Construction of pits for sand pumping 11. Drilling the well 12. Electo-logging of the well 13. Hydraulic fracturing of producing sand 14. Disassembly of rig 15. Installation of pumping equipment 16. Installation of oil run lines and gas lines 17. Erection and installation of electric lines 18. Clean-up of site 19. Grade and seed well location The major objectives of this training program include the following: 1. To help offset a training manpower shortage in the oil industry by providing trained workers. 2. To provide students with training in the many facets of the oil industry. 3. To provide students with skill development in these multiple areas which will enable them to seek entry level employment. 4. To provide this training in an actual work setting such as the operating oil lease upon which the training is conducted. 5. To duplicate work conditions as closely as possible. 6. In addition to skill development, to make students aware of employer's needs in an employee, such as the willingness to accept responsibility, regular attendance, and willingness to work. 7. To provide area students who desire an occupation which is outdoor in nature an opportunity to find that employment through this training area. 8. To develop a formal training program in an industry over 100 years old in which none has previously existed. 9. To assist students in finding local employment which will help preserve the area's most valuable resource, its young people. 10. To develop the training program in such a way that it may be readily duplicated in another oil producing area. 8 This course, as a mechanism for not only solving petroleum industry problems and needs but also developing skilled young employees, is unique to both vocational training and the needs of the area. The lubricating quality of Penn Grade Crude produced in this area is unsurpassed and considered a premium product worldwide. In fact, Penn Grade Crude supplies approximately 20 percent of the total lubricating sales in the nation. In this context, it is interesting to note that McKean County is the heart of the Penn Grade Producing area, and that the Bradford Oil Field will be celebrating its 109th year of production later in 1980. This year also represents the 106th year of continuous production by the oldest producing oil well in the world, situated in Bradford. Approximately 44 percent of the total crude oil production for the state of Pennsylvania, in 1977, came from McKean 163 �County.' (This amounted to 1,198,616 barrels of the state's 2,703,763 total barrels). At present the course has an enrollment of thirty-seven students. These students are enrolled in grades 10, 11, and 12 in a three-year vocational training program. This course is in its fourth year of operation, with twenty-seven students graduating from the program in the past three years. Of these twentyseven graduates, fifteen are currently employed in the oil industry, eight are on active duty in the military service, and four are employed in an occupation not related to the oil industry. 10 Approximate salary for these employed in the oil industry ranges from $4.50 per hour starting to $7.00 per hour. Course activities are conducted on a twenty-seven acre operating lease where there are currently ten oil wells in production. Revenue from these wells has been approximately $4,000 during the 1979-80 school year through December 31, 1979. This represents approximately 144 barrels of crude oil, with approximately two thirds of that production the results of the ARC funding drilling project. These funds will be used to assist in making the program self-sufficient. Both the development and operation of this program have been enhanced by the cooperation of the local petroleum industry. Donations include a complete hydrofracturing job on one new well, an electro-logging job on the same well, the donation of tools and supplies from many sources, and over 100 hours each of active participation in a curriculum writing project by the twelvemember advisory committee. In the course's 3'/2 years of operation, it has become one of the most popular training offerings at the school. In addition to the training supplied to the prospective oil field workers, the lease operation has provided involvement with other vocational shop areas such as carpentry, electrical, automotive, drafting, and building maintenance. In addition to these activities, it has provided the school and community with local and national media exposure. Two stories have been run by the national wire services, many local articles have been written, and television newscasts have covered the course activities. The program has been covered by two national magazines and was also included in the 1978 Annual Report of the Appalachian Regional Commission. At the time of the course's initial implementation it was the only vocationaltechnical course of its kind in the United States. While being an innovative approach to vocational-technical training, the course fulfills the concept or fundamental philosophy of vocational education by providing a form of training relevant to the needs of both students and the employment skills required or sought by employers in the local/regional economy. In this regard it is important to highlight the response of the Appalachian Regional Commission in providing "seed money" to enable the program to be implemented. Now, the revenue obtained by selling the oil produced at the wells, plus the contributions of materials, supplies, and industry technical assistance are together enabling the program to be self-sufficient. Also, just recently the natural gas by-product from the wells was connected to the on-site classroom and is providing fuel to heat it. (A Glossary defining some of the terminology used in this course is included at the end of the paper.) Powdered Metal Technology Program, Seneca Highlands Area Vo-Tech School The area served by the Seneca Highlands Vocational-Technical School is one of the most important production areas in the United States for powdered metal, primary metals, and related technology products. The course was developed as a result of an initial survey conducted by the Director of the new Vo-Tech School, the desire of the powdered metal industries to remain in 164 �north central Pennsylvania, and the growth and expansion projected by the Governor's Office of State Planning and Development in 1977. Course surveys were mailed to approximately twenty of the area powdered metal firms. Nine of the industries submitted detailed answers to the survey and these were very positive about such a course. Of the nine firms responding, the combined employment of these firms totaled 1,415 employees. These firms had a 6.8 percent turnover in employment annually, and their projected total employment for 1980 indicated a 330 employee increase, or 18.9 percent, to 1,745 workers. All of the firms indicated that they would hire properly trained graduates of the course. Another reason for the active and viable attempt to develop a powdered metals technology course was that the industry appears to be committed to remaining and expanding existing operations in north central Pennsylvania. Some of the explanations for this commitment include: 1. The powdered metal industry is not affected to the same extent as other regional industries (especially electronics) foreign competition. 2. Large capital investments in existing physical plant and equipment have been made. 3. The powdered metal industry is growing in excess of 15 percent per year. 4. The industry, even though quite labor intensive, has a large work force to draw upon. 5. Most of the industry's various competitors have located in the area, and all are affected by quite a variety of similar factors such as labor rate, market supply and demand, and changes in product development and quality control. Additionally, in 1977, the Governor's Office of State Planning and Development had projected significant increases in primary metal products manufacturing from the period 1980 through the year 2000. In the three local labor market areas most affected, the projections are as follows: PRIMARY METAL PRODUCTS MANUFACTURING Labor Market Area 1980 Coudersport St. Marys Emporium TOTAL Total Employment Projections 2000 1990 242 2394 524 3160 439 3095 711 4245 622 3736 884 5242 Together, these factors have contributed to the initial efforts of not only investigating the potential for the course, but also the aggressive pursuit of a sound, viable, and relevant approach to develop and implement the course. The major goal of this project is the development of a program of providing training at both the secondary and adult level, in powdered metal manufacturing technology. The approach will be the development of a curriculum which will provide both basic and advanced training through a combination of classroom and shop/equipment education. The program will resolve the problem of job entry for students from this region, while meeting manpower needs for trained individuals within the powdered metals industry. It will also be designed to upgrade the skills of those people already employed. Other objectives of the powdered metal technology course include the following: 165 �1. To train high school students, grades "10, 11 and 12" for employment in the powdered metals industry, thus making an opportunity for employment which will encourage students to remain in the community. 2. To provide a student with entry level skills which will encompass a wide variety of actual work experiences which are essential in the powdered metals industry. 3. To meet an industry need for supplying young, able-bodied workers who have had some formalized training in the occupational areas of powdered metals manufacturing. 4. To develop a formalized course of study and training programs for the powdered metals industry, which has never attempted any organized training for production workers in this geographic location. a. To develop a curriculum based upon community, education and industry needs. b. To stimulate an industrial atmosphere in which job attitudes, performances, and expectations are stressed. 5. To provide on-site training in a skill area which meets the career needs and desires of students from a rural community, and in north central Pennsylvania. 6. To provide the image of powdered metal workers in regards to wages and working conditions by providing career guidance pertinent to the industry. 7. To establish a cooperative summer employment program for enrolled students. 8. To provide a relevant type of training in the usage of sintering equipment and modern finishing techniques such as compacting, tooling, and machining." The development of this course is in the application stage at the present time. The total cost is estimated to be $275,700. Funding for the program is projected as follows: $ 37,500 Pennsylvania Bureau of Vocational Education 20,000 U.S. Department of Education 150,000 Appalachian Regional Commission 42,500 Jefferson County DuBois Area Vo-Tech 25,700 Local Ineligible Contribution . . . $275.700 TOTAL COST The proposed coyrse has been ranked as a priority for state and federal funding, and if all goes as planned, the course will be ready to enroll students in the 1981-82 school year. Clearfield County Area Vocational-Technical Coal Mining Program This proposed course is presently in the investigatory or development phase. A craft advisory committee has been formed, with members of the committee being either producers, employees, or representatives of pro-coal organizations. A need for this course is appearing as the resurgence of the coal industry has brought about a dramatic increase in coal production in Clearfield County. In 1977 (latest figures available), Clearfield County ranked third in the state of Pennsylvania of all the counties producing bituminous coal with 9,299,741 tons mined. 12 A significant factor in this production is that 8,673,745 tons were produced via strip mining. This course will be designed to meet the employment training needs of the bituminous coal industry in strip mining in the Clearfield County area. The Vo-Tech School has approximately fifty acres of land on which a small strip 166 �mining training operation could be initiated. The present plans are to seek funding from the Appalachian Regional Commission as "seed money" to begin the course, and the revenue obtained from selling the coal would enable the program to be self-sufficient. Optimally, the course will be ready to enroll students in the fall semester of 1982. Summary and Conclusions In viewing the four examples of innovative approaches to vocationaltechnical training in north central Pennsylvania in their various stages of either implementation or development, several important factors have been crucial not only to course development and implementation but also to the insurance of successful programs in the future. These factors focus on: (1) the interface between and among the needs of area employers and the role of vocationaltechnical education to provide training to meet area employer needs and student employment interests, (2) the role of the Appalachian Regional Commission in responding to such regional needs, and (3) the vehicle of vocational-technical education to provide training that is both innovative with reference to traditional forms of vo-tech education and at the same time fundamental to the needs and opportunities of the regional economy. The linkage between these factors has been of paramount importance not only in developing and implementing a meaningful training program, but also in insuring solid future for the programs based on a close relationship between the vo-tech schools and area employers. Such a situation will enable the local and regional economies to grow, reduce out-migration of the region's young people, provide employment opportunities for the young, and help renew confidence in the future of the regional extractive and manufacturing industries. Thus, the courses described can be viewed in the following ways: 1. As examples of Appalachian Regional Commission efforts in linking vocational-technical education to private sector employment opportunities. 2. As examples of innovative vocational-technical training being offered in Appalachia. 3. As a point of departure for further investigation concerning comparisons of training opportunities linked to employment opportunities in both the Appalachian region and the nation. Glossary Hydro-fracturing Hydro-fracturing involves the pumping of water under very high pressure down the well to break up the oil producing sand; then a sand solution is pumped in to keep the cracks open. The crude oil can then be freed from the producing sand and will drain into the bottom of the well much easier, thereby improving production capabilities of the individual oil well. Electro-logging Electro-logging is the process of taking an electronic picture of the rock strata in a newly drilled well to identify the presence of hydrocarbons in the strata. It involves lowering an instrument, similar in function to a television camera, down the well to take electronic pictures for analysis. Surveying to locate a well site Surveying is used primarily in conjuction with the drilling permit application procedure. The location of oil wells and new wells about to be drilled must be 167 �indicated on a topographic map to insure the location coordinates are the same as those on the permit issued to the person or firm drilling the well. Notes 1. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Commerce, Pennsylvania,Industrial Census Series Release Number M-5-77, 1978 editions. See individual booklets for each Pennsylvania County: Page 5 for Cameron, Clearfield, Elk, Jefferson, McKean, and Potter Counties. 2. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Population Estimates and Projections, November 1979, pp. 15,17,18,21,25,30, and 34. 3. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Population Estimates and Projections, November 1979, pp. 15,17,21,25,30, and 34. 4. North Central Pennsylvania Regional Planning and Development Commission, 7975 Areawide Action Program Document, p. 49. (Material taken from the 1979 Pennsylvania Statistical Abstract.) 5. North Central Pennsylvania Regional Planning and Development Commission, 1987 Areawide Action Program Document, p. 49. (Material taken from the 1978 Pennsylvania Statistical Abstract.) 6. Bradford Vocational-Technical Drilling-Oil Production Course, project application submitted to the Appalachian Regional Commission, May, 1978. See Attachment A. p. 1. 7. Bradford Vocational-Technical Drilling-Oil Production Course, project application submitted to the Appalachian Regional Commission, May, 1978, pp. 7-8 . 8. Myron A. Crurryine to Robert A. Rusiewski, January 24, 1980. 9. Pennsylvania Geological Survey, Oil and Gas Development in Pennsylvania in 1977, Progress Report 191, 1978, Figure 2. 10. Myron A. Crumrine to Robert A. Rusiewski, January 24, 1980. 11. Powdered Metal Technology Program, Seneca Highlands Area Vocational Technical School, project application submitted to Appalachian Regional Commission, April, 1979, pp. 3-4. 12. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Environmental Resources, 1977 Annual Report on Mining, Oil and Gas, and Land Reclamation and Conservation Activities, p. 116. 168 �Coral Wilson Stewart and the "Moonlight School" Movement James M. Gifford Abstract This paper traces the remarkable educational career of Cora Wilson Stewart who pioneered the "Moonlight School", a night school program for illiterate adults in her home county in eastern Kentucky. The success of her program was felt far and wide: many states adopted versions of it, the reader she devised was published for use as an aid to illiterate American soldiers in World War I, and she later served on national and international commissions on illiteracy. All told, her most satisfying accomplishment was the progress she brought to her own people of eastern Kentucky. In 1911, Cora Wilson Stewart, an ambitious, talented, Kentucky mountaineer, began a crusade against illiteracy that dramatically improved the quality of life in Appalachian Kentucky. The "Moonlight School" Program-a night school for illiterate adults-made her a beacon of hope to the mountain people of eastern Kentucky and a legitimate hero in their eyes. "My mother thought she hung the moon," observed one Morehead State University educator, while a Kentucky legislator reportedly said that "he always told his children he wanted them to see two people, Buffalo Bill and Cora Wilson Stewart."1 Her memorabilia are still cherished and handed down in Rowan County families today. By the early twentieth century Appalachian Kentucky was a land of despair that desperately needed Cora Wilson Stewart's help. While many Americans worried about the Supreme Court's antitrust stance or the unfolding split in the Republican party, eastern Kentuckians "made do".1 They had learned their survival lessons the hard way, because both geography and historical experience had separated them from the American mainstream. The Civil War had been particularly devastating.' The people of Appalachian Kentucky-caught between warring armies—expressed divided sentiments. The majority supported the North, but strong Confederate ties existed, too. The resulting local conflicts divided families and destroyed friendships. When the war ended, the bitter hatreds remained and feuding continued into the twentieth century.Other horrible aftereffects of the war were less evident than the feuds but equally debilitating. When "home rule" returned to Kentucky following the Compromise of 1877, democratic, ex-Confederates again assumed control of the state government and took revenge against their wartime opponents from the mountain counties through political and economic retaliations.' Not surprisingly, the quality of life in Appalachian Kentucky grew worse as roads and schools suffered from discriminatory funding. When this plight was "discovered" nationally, a great missionary intrusion to the mountains began. Thousands of teachers and preachers came "with souls afire" to lift the people of Appalachian Kentucky from their "cultural depravity".' In retrospect, one of the great ironies of this mountain mission was the fact that, during this same period, the Kentucky mountaineers produced their own hero in the war against illiteracy, and her efforts won national and international recognition. She was Cora Wilson Stewart and her "Moonlight School" program destroyed illiteracy in her home county and became a model for similar adult education programs throughout America and eventually the world. 7 169 �write and declared that he would gladly exchange twenty years of his life for the ability to read and write. Another man, a young ballad singer, sadly told Mrs. Stewart that he had forgotten many beautiful songs that had been passed down to him by his ancestors "before anybody came along to set 'em down." 16 Against this backdrop of educational need, Cora Stewart fashioned her plan. She decided to hold classes at night, since the majority of illiterates were employed during the day. She informed Rowan County teachers of her plan, and they unanimously volunteered their assistance. On September 4, 1911, county teachers visited each home in their district and personally invited attendance at the first session that was scheduled to begin the following night. Approximately 150 were expected; 1,200 arrived. Twelve hundred persons with 1,200 sad stories about why they could not read and write came determined to improve themselves. They wanted to read their Bibles, write to their children, and sign their names rather than make "their mark'.' The youngest was eighteen; the oldest was a "school girl" of eighty-six. They applied themselves diligently. Many learned to sign their name the first night. Soon the county was a beehive of new writing activity, and people who had long led lives of quiet, illiterate desperation wrote their names whenever and wherever the opportunity arose. Many deposited their meager savings in banks for the first time for the pure joy of signing their names to the checks. That January, Sherman Porter, managing editor of the Lexington Herald, congratulated Mrs. Stewart "on behalf of the people of all Kentucky" for her devotion to her work and the special efforts she was making on behalf of "our best citizens when they are properly understood and appreciated."" Encouraged by this huge response, Cora Stewart began writing a short newspaper, The Rowan County Messenger, as a reader for her adult students. The paper was a combination of homilies and local news and also included lessons in history, arithmetic, and some memory work from literary classics like Longfellow's "Psalm of Life'.' The Messenger inspired much good-spirited interscholastic competition which resulted in physical improvements to the buildings as well as personal progress for the students." The next year, Rowan Countians requested a continuance of the"Moonlight School" In preparation for this second session, Mrs. Stewart sponsored an "Institute" or in-service training session. Teachers attended on a voluntary, non-compensated basis and discussed both teaching and recruiting methods. It was an opportunity for them to share their progresses, their sacrifices, and their disappointments, and to renew their commitment to another arduous year of working day and night. It was also one of America's first formalized studies of adult education methodology. Cora Stewart's extensive corresondence with educators in Kentucky and throughout the nation reflected both a growing interest in her work and a recognition of the "courage and sacrifice of the teachers in Rowan County."" The second year of the moonlight school was more successful than the first. Sixteen hundred students enrolled and 350 of them learned to read and write. Some individual progresses were remarkable: a lumberman doubled his salary after six weeks of schooling and two postmasters and four preachers learned to read and write. Children brought their parents and teachers brought their spouses. It was a time of progress and a rebirth of community pride. One trustee noted that the school in his district used "to drag along and nobody seemed interested." After three weeks of moonlight school, the people of his district "got together right" and made significant improvements in their schoolhouse. These revitalized schoolhouses once again became genuine community centers and the site of many civic and religious meetings. Also, during the second session, a "home department" of the moonlight school was 170 �Cora Wilson was born to Dr. Jeremiah Wilson and Annie Eliza (Hally) Wilson in 1875 and reared in Farmers, a community in the western part of Rowan County. She attended Morehead Normal School and the National Normal University in Lebanon, Ohio, and then began a teaching career in her home county in 1895. She quickly earned a reputation as an outstanding educator, and in 1901 Rowan Countians elected her to serve as county school superintendent.1 Success in Rowan County soon brought recognition from regional educators who often invited Mrs. Stewart to address teacher-training sessions and other groups interested in advancing public education. She was a "graceful, forceful speaker with a direct, clear message,...a rich vocabulary, and...an easy and attractive manner," observed B.C. McDougle of Eastern Kentucky State Norman School. McDougle, who heard Mrs. Stewart lecture on "That Child of Yours and His Parent" in 1908, commended her "fine presentation of some school problems that should be carefully studied by both teacher and parent" and felt that it would "do good wherever heard'.' • Her other regional presentations were equally well received." Following an address in Elliot County, the superintendent of county schools, D.F. Gray, commended, her efforts, "to urge our boys and girls into something higher and nobler in life" and pledged his support if Mrs. Stewart sought the presidency of the Kentucky Educational Association: "I think it would be real nice to have one of our home county girls at the head of educational affairs of our state, and I hope you will not hesitate to take advantage of any opportunity that may come your way." Voicing the sentiment of so many persons who heard her speak prior to 1910, Gray wrote: "We all enjoyed your lecture, but nothing you said gave me greater pleasure than your statement that the remainder of your life would be devoted to the cause of education."" Many others noted Mrs. Stewart's great commitment to public education. She was re-elected superintendent of Rowan County Schools in 1909, and two years later she was elected the first woman president of the Kentucky Educational Association." Most state educators echoed the sentiments of J.G. Crabbe, president of Kentucky Normal School, who warmly congratulated Mrs. Stewart and pledged support of her efforts. "Count on me," he promised. "I am sure the Association will prosper under your leadership."" Buoyed by this statewide support, Mrs. Stewart determined, as an addition to Rowan County's overall educational program, to launch an experimental program called the "Moonlight School" that was designed to combat illiteracy among the county's adult population. Cora Wilson knew many of the 1,152 illiterate persons living in Rowan County in 1911, and, having "served as a secretary" to many of them, she knew how much they needed and wanted to learn how to read and write." One older woman who lived by herself often walked seven miles to Mrs. Stewart's office in Morehead whenever she received a letter from her daughter who worked in Chicago. After a particulary long absence, the woman arrived with a letter one morning. In reply to Mrs. Stewart's offer of assistance, she reported that she could answer it for herself for she had learned to read and write. The lonely mountain woman had determined to break down "the wall" between her and her absent daughter Jane and had purchased a speller and studied '"til midnight and sometimes 'til daylight'.' She proudly demonstrated her success by reading the letter and penning a reply with Mrs. Stewart's advice." Mrs. Stewart had many other touching personal encounters with Rowan County adults who genuinely wanted to escape the bondage of illiteracy. One middle-aged businessman cried when he confessed that he could not read or 171 �established, and teachers like Gladys Thompson taught in the homes of individuals who were too old or ill to attend night classes." The success of the first two years prompted a third-year goal of wiping "illiteracy out of the county" completely. Before the school year began, school trustees canvassed their districts and took a census of the remaining illiterates, This list was given to the teachers who in turn recruited their recently "converted" students to help them. "Each one teach one" was their motto, and, as part of a great competition that was developing between districts, they zealously sought out all remaining illiterates and taught them without mercy. Like all competitions, this one occasionally transcended the sublime and reached the absurd. One trustee for example, declared that he felt confident that illiteracy would soon be totally removed from his district, since "there's only one illiterate over there, and he's a tenant on my place; I'm going to run him over into Fleming County'.' Whenever a district reached its goal, a ceremony was held in the schoolhouse and the former illiterates were presented with new Bibles as a reward for their accomplishments. Remarking on this phenomenon of change, one long-time resident said, "It used to be moonshine and bullets: but now it's lemondade and Bibles."21 When this enormous educational crusade commenced in 1911, Rowan County had numbered 1,152 illiterates. By 1914 only 23 remained-by Mrs. Stewart's count. Of these, 6 were blind or had sight problems; 5 were bedridden invalids; 6 were defined as "imbeciles and epileptics;" 2 had only recently moved to this county and 4 "could not be induced to learn." For promotional reasons, Mrs. Stewart undoubtedly inflated the success rate by employing a very casual definition of literacy. Her qualitative results, however, remain unchallenged. Cora Stewart did not stop to rest on her laurels. She immediately broadened her horizon and prepared to wage war against illiteracy in Kentucky." In 1913, she wrote Governor James B. McCreary and proposed a state commission that would focus on the state's 208,084 illiterates and eventually place Kentucky "in a better light before the world." The governor responded positively and, in 1914, inspired by Mrs. Stewart's speech which reportedly "swept the Legislature off its feet," the General Assembly unanimously created the Kentucky Illiteracy Commission, headed by Mrs. Stewart. Other members included President J.F. Crabbe of Eastern Kentucky State Normal School, H.H. Cherry, the president of the Normal School in Western Kentucky, and Miss Ella Lewis, the superintendent of Grayson County Schools. Barksdale Hamlett, superintendent of Public Instruction, also served as an exofficio member." To promote the state effort against illiteracy and, at the same time, to reward her original Moonlight School teachers, Mrs. Stewart took her Rowan teachers on a vacation of the northern United States and Canada. A trip to Niagara Falls highlighted the tour. Financial and moral support from private organizations, like the Colonial Dames, and from many church groups and civic-minded individuals soon followed." The Kentucky campaign against illiteracy quickly won national attention from both supporters and cynics. As a teaching device, in 1915, Mrs. Stewart developed an adult reading book entitled Country Life Reader, First Book which encouraged reading by dealing with a wide variety of subjects, including agriculture, politics, economic development, sanitation, and thrift. The following illustrates her dual emphasis on adult content and "moral" instruction: I shall pay my taxes. I pay a tax on my home. 172 �I pay a tax on my land. I pay a tax on my cattle. I pay a tax on my money. I pay a tax on many other things. Where does all this money go? It goes to keep up the schools. It goes to keep up the roads. It goes to keep down crime. It goes to keep down disease. I am glad the I have a home to pay taxes on." World War I rudely interrupted the quiet progress of Cora Stewart's educational programs. The European conflict that began in 1914 prompted America's declaration of neutrality. Soon, however, continued violations of U.S. maritime rights awakened American preparedness and military ardor. President Woodrow Wilson was re-elected in the fall of 1916, and the following April he asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany to make the world "safe for democracy." By June, thousands of American men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one were registering for military service. The 700,000 illiterate national registrants included 30,000 Kentuckians." Cora Wilson Stewart and the Kentucky Illiteracy Commission responded immediately. Realizing that the regularly scheduled fall session of the moonlight school would be too late to serve the special needs of Kentucky's soldiers, Mrs. Stewart made a special appeal to the teachers of Kentucky, and by July 23, a summer school was in session." In genuine desperation, the soon-to-be soldiers assaulted their lessons. Letters and literacy took on an urgent, new, personal meaning to many young men who had never been away from their homes and "hollers."" As she had done with other groups of adult learners, Cora Stewart wrote a special reader for the unique needs of Kentucky's recruits. The Soldier's First Book was patriotic in cover, color and content. An armed soldier on the cover of the red, white, and blue text introduced lessons that dealt with war, guns, camps, flags, tent, bulletin boards, parade grounds, and the "rule of kings."" The bewilderment and humiliation that illiterates experienced in basic training was sad, but eloquent, testimony to the continuation and extension of Cora Stewart's work. Some carried letters in their pockets for days before gathering the courage to ask someone to read the home news and pen a reply. Others were frequently transferred because their commanding officers, themselves unschooled in many respects, confused inability to read and understand orders with lack of cooperation and commitment. A few were even imprisoned for "disobeying orders" simply because they could not read and understand them. Typical of the illiterates' despair, one young soldier timidly requested that a Y.M.C.A. volunteer worker address twelve envelopes to his mother. "Are you planning to write every day?" the volunteer queried. "You must be a dutiful son." "No, these are to last me a year," the soldier replied. "I promised my mother that I'd get some envelopes backed and that once a month I'd slip a dollar bill in one and mail it to her and by that she'd know that I was still alive."" During the war years of 1917 and 1918, Mrs. Stewart again focused attention on the soldiers' needs by prompting the Kentucky Illiteracy Commission to hold special moonlight school sessions for the wives, mothers, sisters, and sweethearts of Kentucky's fighting men. General Joh Pershing, Commander of the American forces in Europe, had requested that American 173 �women write "long cheerful letters telling everything that happens in the old home town," because the men were "hungry for news..." Meanwhile, The Soldier's First Book had been revised by the Y.M.C.A. as a teaching aide for all of our country's soldiers." When the war ended in 1918, Cora Stewart again adopted her campaign against illiteracy to the prevailing circumstances. A government agency distributed fifty thousand copies of her Country Life Reader to American soldiers in Europe. This new adult reader aided their educational progress while preparing them for a return to the current issues of civilian life-voting, taxation, soil conservation, transportation, and health. As the war was concluding, many former students of America's moonlight school were adapting Cora Stewart's program to European needs." Meanwhile, on the Kentucky home front, Cora Stewart and Sergeant Willie Sandlin, Kentucky's counterpart to Tennessee's Alvin York, were touring the state and promoting the work of the Kentucky Illiteracy Commission." The success of the Moonlight School Program and the contribution it made to the state, the nation, and the war effort encouraged the state legislature to make a small post-war appropriation to support the traveling expenses of seventy-five field agents for the Illiteracy Commission. These agents continued the program that Cora Stewart had started in Rowan County and constantly sought to educate the state's adults within the context of the major social and political issues of the day. A new dimension to the crusade against illiteracy in Kentucky involved extending the program to the state penal institutions. In 1919, literacy became a condition of parole, providing additional incentive to the learning efforts of state prisoners. The Literacy Commission also expanded its efforts by taking a census of the remaining illiterates in the state, thus charting a course for future action." Many other states launched adult education programs that were carefully patterned after Cora Wilson Stewarts Moonlight School and the Kentucky Illiteracy Commission. As the movement grew, it received support and encouragement from the National Educational Association and other national organizations. By the end of the second decade of the twentieth century, the campaign against illiteracy had blossomed into a national crusade. Ironically, after 1920 the social and political climate of Kentucky changed, and the state legislature did not refund the Kentucky Illiteracy Commission. As Americans moved into the Roaring Twenties and embraced new ideologies and adopted new heroes, the campaign against illiteracy became a part of the American dream and Cora Stewart achieved national prominence. In 1923, she was elected to serve a one-year term on the Executive Committee of the National Educational Association. That same year, she presided over the illiteracy section of the World Conference on Education in San Francisco. She subsequently played similar roles at Edinburgh in 1925, at Toronto in 1927, at Geneva in 1929, and at Denver in 1931. From 1929 to 1933, she chaired the Executive Committee of the National Advisory Committee on Illiteracy." This decade of national prominence also brought the story of Cora Wilson Stewart before the American public, and the "Moonlight School Lady" won awards and ever increasing recognition. In 1925, she received Pictorial Review's $5,000 achievement prize for her "contribution...to advance human welfare." She was also honored by the Kentucky Educational Association and the General Federation of Women's Clubs. A decade of honors and appointments culminated with her receipt of the Ella Flagg Young Metal for distinguished service to education in 1930." Throughout the thirties and forties, the "Moonlight School" idea was 174 �adapted to meet the increasingly diverse needs of the national adult education movement. Meanwhile, advancing age and health problems forced Cora Stewart to accept a cameo role in this national epic-drama. She moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, to be near her sisters and subsequently moved to various rest homes in North Carolina. She died in South Carolina on December 9, 1958 and is buried in Tryon, North Carolina.In retrospect, Cora Wilson Stewart emerges as a significant pioneer leader in America's burgeoning, twentieth century adult education movement. She also merits recognition as a major figure in the national crusade against illiteracy, although her methodologies have been challenged and altered by subsequent generations of educators. Her greatest achievement, however, was the human progress she fostered among the mountain people of eastern Kentucky. As a role model, a friend, and a champion of personal and regional advancement, Cora Stewart earned the love and respect of the people of Appalachian Kentucky. Their progress is an enduring tribute to her hard work, self-sacrifice, and vision for a brighter future. Their success is her greatest monument. Notes 1. George T. Young, interview, November 19, 1979; Quoted without reference to the author in the Cora Wilson Stewart Papers, Box 1, Department of Special Collections, the University of Kentucky Libraries, Lexington, Kentucky (hereinafter cited as CWS Papers UK). The author is deeply grateful to Mrs. Grace Yoder of Morehead, Kentucky, for sharing materials that her parents, the late George and Sadie Brown, had left to her. 2. There is no definitive study of the Appalachian experience in Kentucky. For a synoptic overview, see Carol Crowe-Carraco, The Big Sandy (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1979). For some insight into the difficulties encountered by Appalachian miners of this period, see John W. Hevener, Which Side Are You On? TheHarlan County Coal Miners, 1931-1939 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), pp. 1-11, and Howard B. Lee, Bloodletting In Appalachia: The Story of West Virginia's Four Major Mine Wars and Other Thrilling Incidents of Its Coal Fields (Parsons, West Virginia: McClain Printing Company, 1969). See also Also Archie Green, Only a Miner: Studies In Recorded Coal-Mining Songs (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), chap. 7. 3. For an eloquent elaboration on the Civil War's role in the Appalachian experience, see Gratis Williams, "The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction" (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1961). This monumental, three volume, sixteen-hundred-page study was abridged and edited by Martha H. Pipes and published in four successive issues of Appalachian Journal beginning with vol. 3, no. 1, Autumn 1975. An interesting reassessment of the theme of Appalachian isolation is Gary S. Foster, "Appalachian Isolation in Perspective," Appalachian Heritage 8 (Winter 1980: pp. 34-37 4. Some well-known examples of violence, emanating from the Civil War, in eastern Kentucky include the "Underwood War" in Carter County; The Hatfield-McCoy Feud which resulted in twenty-six deaths in Pike County, Kentucky, and Logan County, West Virginia; the Brammer Gap Killings in Lawrence County; the feuds of "Bloody Breathitt;" and various Guerilla conflicts that occurred after Appomattox. For more information see Harold Wilson Coates, Stories of Kentucky Feuds (Knoxville, Tennessee: HolmesDarst Coal Corporation, 1942), pp. 3-46; Henry P. Scalf, Kentucky's Last Frontier (Pikeville, Kentucky: Pikeville College Press, 1972), p. 279. G. Elliott 175 �Hatfield, The Hatfields (Stanville, Kentucky: The Big Sandy Valley Historical Society, 1974), pp. 12-14, 24; Virgil Carrington-Jones, The Hatfields and the McCoys (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1948), p. 18; Mrs. A.J. Davidson, Josie M. Davidson: Her Life and Work (Prestonburg, Kentucky: privately printed, 1922), pp. 1-10; J. Tandy Ellis, Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky: Confederate Kentucky Volunteers' War, 1861-1865, Vol. 1 (Frankfort: The State of Kentucky, 1915), pp. 338-42. 5. An elaboration of this theme, as it applies to the Appalachian experience in western North Carolina, is found in James H. Horton, Theda Perdue, and James M. Gifford, Our Mountain Heritage, ed. Clifford R. Lovin (Franklin, North Carolina: The North Carolina Humanities Committee and the Mountain Heritage Center, Western Carolina University, 1979), pp. 70-123. 6. For an interesting historical overview, see Richard B. Drake, "The Mission School Era in Southern Appalachia, 1880-1940," Appalachian Notes 6 (1978): 1-8. See also F. Scott Rogers, "The Missionaries' Effect on the Appalachian Self-image," Appalachian Notes, 1 (Fourth Quarter, 1973): 1-8, esp. p. 2; and Jim Wayne Miller, "Where Do You Come From, Where Do You Go? Appalacahians as Immigrants in Their Own Land," Mountain Review 2 (July 1976): 40-41; and Bill Best, "A Case for Appalachian Scholarship," Mountain Life and Work 46 (November 1970): 16-18. 7. The only adequate scholarship that focuses on Cora Wilson Stewart's life and contributions is Willie Everette Nelms, Jr., "Cora Wilson Stewart: Crusader Against Illiteracy" (M. A. thesis, University of Kentucky, 1973). The gracefully written study focuses "on her career as an educational reformer...and her contributions to adult education..." (hereinafter cited as Nelms, Crusader Agains Illiteracy"). A more specialized, synoptic, published version of this study is Willie E. Nelms, Jr., "Cora Wilson Stewart and The Crusade Agains Illiteracy In Kentucky," The Register of The Kentucky Historical Society 74 (January 1976): 10-29. Another helpful work is Mrs. Stewart's promotional recollections: Cora Wilson Stewart, Moonlight Schools For the Emancipation of Adult Illiterates (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1922). This work is, in spite of biases induced by purpose and time, a valuable primary source (hereinafter cited as Stewart, Moonlight Schools). 8. Some basic biographical information on Cora Wilson Stewart can be found in a small brochure used to commemorate the restoration of the "Little Brushy School" on the campus of Morehead State University in 1973. Harold Rose, ed., "The Cora Wilson Stewart Moonlight Schoolhouse" (Morehead, Kentucky: Morehead State University, 1973). See also Autograph Books I-II, CWS Papers UK. 9. B.C. McDougle addressed "To Whom It May Concern," July 30, 1908, CWS Papers, Box 2, UK. 10. See, for example H.R. Dysard, lawyer in Grayson, Kentucky, to Cora Wilson Stewart, July 29, 1908; Mannie E. Fields, superintendent of Morgan County Schools, September 25, 1908; and C.C. Adams, superintendent of Schools, Grant County, Kentucky, to Coral Wilson Stewart, October 7, 1908, CWS Papers, Box 2, UK. 11. O.F. Gray, superintendent of Elliot County Schools, to Cora Wilson Stewart, August 12, 1910, CWS Papers, Box 2, UK. 12. Kentucky Educational Association, Proceedings of the Fortieth Annual Session (Louisville, 1911), p. 9. A brief chronology of some of Cora Wilson Stewart's achievements introduces the index to the Cora Wilson Stewart Papers. See "Biographical Information." CWS Papers, Index, UK. See also Helen Deiss Irwin, Women in Kentucky (Lexington: The University Press of 176 �Kentucky, 1979), pp. 119-20. 13. Everett L. Dicks to Cora Wilson Stewart, June 30, 1911, and J.G. Crabbe, President of Kentucky Normal School, To Cora Wilson Stewart, July 6, 1911. CWS Papers, Box 2, UK. See Also J.S. Dickey, president, Bowling Green Business University, to Cora Wilson Stewart, July 30, 1911, B.C. McDougle to Cora Wilson Stewart, June 30, 1911, and W.C. Kozes, superintendent of Carter County Schools, to Cora Wilson Stewart, July 1, 1911. CWS Papers, Box 2, UK. 14. U.S. Census Bureau,Thirteenth Census of the United States (1910) Population, vol. 2, p. 749. 15. Stewart, Moonlight Schools, pp. 8-13. 16. Ibid. 17. Glenna Flannery Gearhart, interview, December 12, 1979; Stewart, Moonlight Schools, Chap. 3; Sherman Porter, Managing editor of the Lexington Herald, to Cora Wilson Stewart, July 29, 1912, CWS Papers, Box 2, UK; Conie Mauk Foster, interview, January 4,1979. 18. Stewart, Moonlight Schools, pp. 21-31; Glenna Flannery Gearhart, interview, December 12,1979. 19 .Stewart, Moonlight Schools, pp. 32-37; George T. Young, interview, November 19, 1979. Mrs. Lafon Riker, chairman of the Health Committee of the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs to Cora Wilson Stewart, February 9, 1914, CWS Papers, Box 2, UK. 20. Stewart, Moonlight Schools, pp. 38-46; Glenna Flannery Gearhart, interview, December 12,1979; Louisville Courier Journal, December 29,1912. 21. Stewart, Moonlight Schools, 47-56. 22. Ibid, p. 55; Louisville Courier Journal, February 18,1912. 23. Stewart, Moonlight Schools, pp. 57-69. 24. Cora Wilson Stewart to Governor James B. McCreary, December 16, 1913, and McCreary to Stewart, February 19, 1914, quoted in Stewart, Moonlight Schools, pp. 56-61; Lexington Herald, February 12, 1914 and Frankfort State Journal, February 14, 1914. Kentucky Illiteracy Commission, First Biennial Report, 1914-1915 (Louisville, 1916), p. 8. 25. Glenna Flannery Gearhart, interview, December 12, 1979; Stewart, Moonlight Schools, pp. 62-63. 26. Cora Wilson Stewart, Country Life Reader, First Book (Atlantic: B.F. Johnson Publishing Company, 1915). 27. Stewart, Moonlight Schools, p. 82, see also pp. 145-194. 28. Cora Wilson Stewart, president, Kentucky Illiteracy Commission, "To The Teachers of Kentucky," n.d., quoted in Stewart, Moonlight Schools, pp. 82-85. 29. Stewart, Moonlight Schools, pp. 81-105. 30. Cora Wilson Stewart, The Soldier's First Book (New York: Association Press, 1918. 31. Stewart, Moonlight Schools, pp. 81-105, esp. p. 97. 32. Ibid, pp. 101-3. 33. Ibid, pp. 103-5. 34. See a poster proclaiming "public speaking tonight at the Presbyterian Church, 7:30, Mrs. Cora Wilson Stewart, eloquent Kentucky woman, and Sergeant Sandlin, famous World War speaker, on the most interesting topics of the day." CWS Papers, Box 1, UK. On September 26, 1918, Sergeant Willie Sandlin single-handedly destroyed three German machine gun nests and killed twenty-four German soldiers. See Harry M. Caudill's Boone Day Address, "Eastern Kentucky and the History of our Commonwealth," The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 79 (Autumn 1979): 291. 177 �35. Stewart, Moonlight Schools, pp. 112,117, and 112; Nelms, "Crusader Against Illiteracy," Chap. 3. 36. Stewart, Moonlight Schools, chap. 12, passim. The Cora Wilson Stewart Papers, housed in University of Kentucky libraries, contain a wealth of informantion, including letters and photographs, of the "Moonlight School" adaptation in other states. 37. For more detail, see Nelms, "Crusader Against Illiteracy," chap. 4. 38. CWS Papers UK; Nelms, "Crusader Against Illiteracy," chap. 5. 39. "Biographical File," CWS Papers UK. 40. CWS Papers, Box 1, UK; Rose, ed., "The Cora Wilson Stewart Moonlight Schoolhouse," The Cora Wilson Stewart Moonlight Schoolhouse contains several show case displays of Stewart memorabilia. To commemorate her efforts in the state, national, and international crusade against illiteracy, Morehead State University acquired and restored the one-room school where Cora Wilson Stewart began her teaching career. The "Little Brushy School" stands on the university campus today as a museum and monument to her work and a constant reminder to the educators who continue her mission of educational services in the mountain regions of Kentucky. 178 �UNTYING SOME KNOTS IN KNOTT COUNTY: TWO EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY William Terrell Cornett Abstract In 1902 the first rural "settlement" institution in America opened its doors at Hindman, Knott County, Kentucky. Twenty-one years later, Alice Lloyd began her junior college on nearby Caney Creek, an extension of the settlement school idea into higher education. Together these two educational facilities have long experiemented with solutions that would untie some of the persistently knotty cultural, social, educational, financial, and governmental problems which have plagued this and other eastern Kentucky counties. Begun as a charity mission, yet with high vocational and academic standards, these Appalachian schools, having adapted to changing times and new demands, still serve as educational models. As counties go, Knott County in eastern Kentucky was typical of much of rural Appalachia at the turn of the century: small in area and in population, rather isolated, conservative, and economically deficient. Not the kind of place suited for true innovation, most onlookers would have guessed. Yet by the time the first quarter of the new century drew to a close, the societal, occupational, and mental complexion of Knott and surrounding counties had begun to change — overtly due to .the coming of large scale coal-mining operations, but just as importantly (however less noticeably) because of the success of two educational experiments in Knott County. Conducted within eight miles of one another, established under similar circumstances and for somewhat similar reasons, these two experiments in mountain education constitute a remarkable page in Appalachian and in American history. Both were carried out by dynamic, headstrong Victorian women who faced nearly impossible odds, and whose intelligence, compassion, and single-mindedness brought the success they so desperately hoped for. These two experiments were called the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) School and the Caney Creek Community Center School. But they were more than what either name implied; they were nothing less than new ways of life for the mountains. Today the names are changed but their sense of mission remains. The WCTU School became Hindman Settlement School (at Hindman, Kentucky), while the Caney Creek Community Center School (at Pippa Passes, Kentucky) is now better known as Alice Lloyd College. In this study we will look at similarities and differences between these two schools, and at some of the ways (many times radically innovative, but occasionally reactionary) that each approached the common goal of untying some of the knotty social, vocational, and educational problems of Knott County and its surroundings. Knott County, Kentucky, was created in 1884, the 119th (or next to last) county to be formed in Kentucky, and was named for the incumbent governor, James Proctor Knott. For the first decade and a half of the county's 179 �existence, life continued in its accustomed pattern. Moonshining and internecine warfare vied with the legal trades of farming, logging, and hunting as the principal occupations of the people. Isolation prevailed. Then in 1899 an eighty-year old man named Solomon Everidge set in motion a process that quietly changed that old order once and for all. That summer two wealthy young central Kentucky women, May Stone (18677-1946) and Katherine Pettit (1869-1936) came to Hazard in neighboring Perry County and set up tents from which to operate mini-courses in practical homemaking and the three R's. Having heard of their goings-on, and possessing the stamina to walk twentytwo miles barefoot, the patriarchal "Uncle Solomon" came from Hindman to watch. The novelist Lucy Furman later created an account of how Everidge, after observing the two women all day, expressed his eagerness to have them start a school in his own area: "When I were just a little chunk of a shirttail boy, hoeing corn on yon hillsides, I would look up Troublesome, and down Troublesome, and wonder if anybody would come in to larn us anything. And as I got older I follered praying for somebody to come. I growed up, nobody come. My offsprings, to grands and greats growed up; still nobody come. And times a getting wusser everyday—" 'Would they come?" he asked.1 The women did not get to Hindman at the forks of Troublesome immediately. Two other summer camps were held before the women with their "brought-on cloth houses" (the tents) fulfilled Uncle Solomon's request. The year was now 1902. Miss Stone and Miss Pettit soon marshalled much local support-not in money—but in gifts of land, building supplies, and promises of labor from Uncle Solomon's neighbors, and the WCTU School was begun in earnest. Although both were Wellesley graduates, the two women (who were beginning to be called "the quare women" by the locals because of their unconventional, unmarried lifestyles and because of a streak of seeming impracticality) had very limited training and experience as teachers. But they approached their new work with hope and determination. They responded vigorously to what historian Arnold Toynbee referred to as the nineteenthcentury doctrine of "challenge'.' The new school deep in the backwoods was surely a real-enough challenge, but it was also a "mission" in something of the same sense that other mountain schools, established by religious denominations, were seen to be. Not only would the WCTU provide "uplift" by means of general and, in particular, vocational education, it would also attempt to instill hatred for drinking and feuding. In those early years success with the quality of temperance came slowly. Although the feuds (such as the Jones-Wright war) had largely passed anyway, in 1915 the WCTU School renamed itself the Hindman Settlement School, in no small degree because the very obvious "temperance" part of their uplift program had generated considerable local resentment and because the other member groups of the State Federation of Women's Clubs of Kentucky were also major co-sponsors. The most obvious need for the change in name came about fittingly, because it was realized how much like the experimental Toynbee Hall (in London) and Jane Addams' Hull House (in Chicago) the Knott County school had become. The two urban institutions were called "settlements" since the founders had settled among the working class poor, and offered classes in language, sanitation and health care, practical trades, and domesticity to all who would "improve" themselves. The school at Hindman was seen more or 180 �less as a rural counterpart of these endeavors, and thus Hindman Settlement School became the first rural "settlement" institution in America and in the world.2 The new name was doubly appropriate since in mountain speech a "settlement" was a small town. By 1915 Hindman was certainly that, and at the school there were enough buildings to pass for a town itself. The school begun in 1902 at Hindman was not the first one the town had known. In the 1890s "Professor" George Clarke had maintained a "subscription school" for elementary students, but this attempt had been beset with constant problems. His old classroom building became one of the new schools first structures. Apparently local residents (such as Uncle Solomon Everidge) wanted a school that had a broader-based curriculum and more signs of permanence than the Clarke school show at that time. The new school started by "the quare women" was located on the right fork of Troublesome Creek, a few hundred yards from the main street of downtown Hindman. The situation of the school on a floodplain of the unpredictable and aptly-named creek posed many difficulties later. (Finally, after a series of both fires and floods, the school was slowly rebuilt on higher ground.) In 1902, however, all these problems were in the future. The immediate problem was that of proper staffing. Word of mouth had assured enough students, but Miss Stone and Miss Pettit had to find teachers with the same spirit of adventure that they shared. Through college friendships and letter-writing they soon had a faculty, and this informal employment procedure continued for several years. Almost all these early staff members were women. They were graduates of impressive schools: Wellesley, Vassar, Mt. Holyoke, Bryn Mawr. And they were promised little pay. One of the first to respond to the call was Lucy Furman (1870-1958), a western Kentucky writer whose upcoming books and articles were to be thinly disguised fictions concerning events and persons in Knott County. Her writings, one of which was mentioned previously, will be discussed in more detail momentarily. Soon came Ann Cobb (1886-1960) and Elizabeth Watts (born 1890), wno, along with Furman, devoted practically their entire working lives to the school. Many others came for short stints—some of them simply donating their time. With students and teachers secured, the school entered into its life of service. An elementary program was established for the youth of the county. Plans for a high school were drafted. Thoughts were given to preparing young people for college. But the heart of the Hindman Settlement offerings was an industrial arts program which, in many ways, was the forerunner of the modern vocational-technical school. Typical courses along these lines included scientific farming, animal husbandry, blacksmithing, woodworking, use of machines and tools, practical electricity, and applied mathematics. As male students moved along in the elementary grades, they began such specialization. Girls were on a basically separate-but-equal footing. Classes for them were typically provided in general housekeeping, sewing, weaving, basketmaking, (a course also open to men), cooking, personal hygiene, and manners. Every student fit in somewhere, if not all that well in the classes, at least in the mandatory work program. All students worked, regardless of background work-sometimes as much as four hours a day, depending on the need. This work was the principal fee exacted by the school from its students. In most cases this arrangement was the only means for them to attend and pay room and board. And since the school existed by private donations alone, a steady work program assured that the Hindman Settlement School would at least have an ongoing program of maintenance. 181 �While it is true that the school at Hindman emphasized manual training and good homemaking as its overriding educational concerns, it should not be inferred that academic subjects were neglected. As students advanced from grade school classes through high school they were met with an array of courses ranging from American history to Latin. That the humanities were stressed is made clear in the comment made by a 1920 graduate named Guy Crawford, who remarked in an interview that the teachers at Hindman made him take "a lot of Latin, English, and stuff like that-which I didn't need-and not enough math and science-which they didn't have much of."3 Such early graduates as folklorist Josiah H. Combs, the first Kentuckian to receive a Ph.D. at the Sorbonne, attest to the concern which the humanities received in the overall Hindman program. It has been shown how, in the early days, Hindman School set out to fight drinking and feuding. Out of this same reforming spirit came the emphasis on church attendance. Students had a choice of denominations, but they had to go to church each Sunday they remained on campus; and for many years students attended a sort of Sunday evening Bible school-also required. The Hindman Settlement was never actually a mission school like those founded in the surrounding area by Dr. E. O. Guerrant and the Rev. Harvey Murdoch, but there always was an atmosphere of mainstream Protestant Christianity.4 Some of the more recent criticism of the school has been directed at this type of religious climate, in part because of a certain denial of the value of local fundamentalist religion by the Hindman staff. However, this aspect was not necessarily the end-product, as some revisionist historians have charged, of a colonialistic mind-set. Nor was the cultural fabric the school found itself imbedded in all that scorned. The basketmaking, weaving, and other "fireside industries" stressed traditional mountain patterns of design. And there was a careful cultivation of folksong and folkdance material. As early as 1907 Katherine Pettit was sending off locally collected songs to Harvard's George Lyman Kittredge and to nationally prestigious folklore journals. In 1917 musicologist Cecil Sharp spent some time at Hindman uncovering there some of the oldest and most fascinating ballads on his American collecting tour. Others interested in capturing disappearing folkways-such as novelist John Fox, Jr., folk-scholar Olive Dame Campbell, and photographer Doris Ulmann-visited the Settlement in those early years. It was this early interest in folk studies which soon motivated several faculty members to try their skills at writing. Lucy Furman was the prime example of the Hindman-inspired author. Direct from her experiences at the school came Mothering on Perilous (1913), Sight to the Blind (1914), The Quare Women (1923), The Glass Window (1925), and The Lonesome Road (1927). Each was published by reputable Boston or New York firms. (Miss Furman had already produced Stories of a Sanctified Town in 1896, but it is for her writings about the mountains that she is remembered.) Ann Cobb's Kinfolks, a book of dialect poetry, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1922. Don West (born 1907) wrote many of the poems in Crab Grass (1931) while employed at Hindman. James Still (born 1906) spent many years at the Settlement, as librarian and teacher. From his stay there and from his forays into the surrounding countryside came Hounds on the Mountain (verse, 1937), River of Earth (novel 1940), and On Troublesome Creek (short stories, 1941), plus some of his subsequent writings, (Still gained a national reputation early, and he remains, of course, one of southern Appalachia's most honored living writers.) These and other members of the Hindman faculty also published much in magazines and journals (most of it presently uncollected), and 182 �assured that their school would maintain a high degree of intellectual ferment. Thus the experiment at Hindman achieved results surely unimagined at its beginning in 1902. In that first quarter century or so the physical plant of the school greatly expanded. From log cabins and cheap board-and-batten structures rose substantial buildings of hamsome stone and solid weatherboarding. The wooden buildings were almost invariably painted a dark brown to blend in with the earth and surrounding greenery. Uncle Solomon's gray old cabin was preserved as a museum and sales office. A school farm put food in the dining hall tables. Graduates of the manual training programs found jobs with the coal companies or could confidently pursue self-employment. Schoolteachers, engineers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, bankers, writers, singers, housewives, church workers, and farm agents were set on their career paths at Hindman. Congressman Carl D. Perkins (born 1912), some members of "the Singing Family of the Cumberlands" - the Ritches (including Jean), vocational education leader Walter Prater (born 1920) and poet Albert Stewart (born 1914) all attended Hindman Settlement School. By 1930 it was apparent that the experiment was a success. The school thrived well enough as the depression gripped the country. The recently formed public school systems of Knott County and her neighbors could even begin to pick up some of the programs that the Settlement had initiated, reminding one of Elizabeth Watts's oftrepeated words that "the best social workers are those who work themselves out of a job." The success of Hindman Settlement School prompted similar institutions to come into being. The first direct offspring of Hindman was Pine Mountain Settlement School, opened in 1913 in Harlan County, Kentucky, by Katherine Pettit. The John C. Campbell Folk School, created by Olive Dame Campbell in 1925 at Brasstown, North Carolina, bore something of the Hindman stamp, although Hindman never thought of itself as a folk school in the Danish sense, as did Brasstown. Grade schools and high schools sprang up all over the Hindman service area after the school proved itself a lasting and not a temporary experiment, and after state public school funding became more of an economic reality. Yet of all the trails of social change the Settlement helped blaze, that which opened in 1916 to one Boston-born visitor to Knott County was perhaps the most promising. Alice Lloyd (1876-1962) and her mother, Ella Geddes (1851-1945), had come by horse and buggy to Ivis, about three miles southwest of Hindman by the summer of 1916 to an unused Presbyterian outreach mission post called Hope Cottage. From there the two women hoped to engage in social work for a time and to escape the debilitating effects of the Massachusetts winters. Both the Geddes and the Lloyd families had been fairly monied, but by the time the two women arrived at Ivis their resources had been seriously depleted, so much so that Mr. Lloyd planned to remain in Boston and pursue his career. Even from the vantage point of our time, the childless Mrs. Lloyd appears quite modern and certainly "liberated"-not only in the manner of her separation from her husband, but also due to her unusual background as editor of a female-produced newspaper called The Cambridge Women's Chronicle, and as a reporter for the Boston Globe and other New England journals. She neither came to teach nor to stay. She primarily entered eastern Kentucky to regain her health, to perform a limited amount of social service, and, since she was an amateur sociologist, to study the local mountaineers--"natives," as she called them. A bout with spinal meningitis had left her tired and her right side partially paralyzed. She came south to rest and, hearing of the availability of a rent-free house from a Boston church group, decided to come to Knott 183 �County. Then, in almost no time, her plans were changed and she had found an entirely new calling; and just as suddenly her personal problems took a back seat. In the fall of 1916 an illiterate but persuasive dirt farmer from nearby Caney Creek appeared at the door of Hope Cottage and began to work the same sort of spell on Mrs. Lloyd and Mrs. Geddes that Uncle Solomon Everidge had on the women with the "cloth houses" seventeen years earlier. If they would come and start a school on his creek, fifty-year-old Abisha Johnson asked, then he would let them have some of his land free, for as long as they wished it. Johnson wanted his children and his neighbors' children to get the education others were receiving in Knott County; so he had come to ask these educated "furriners" for their help. Distances were long in Knott County in 1916, and he did not want the Caney children to have to board at Hindman and elsewhere — he wanted a new school. (An apocryphal story tells of "Bysh" Johnson remarking that he wanted his children to grow up "not liken the hog, but unliken the hog," and that a'vision' sent him to the women.)5 The request from this "Summonser," as Alice Lloyd later called him, was no doubt both shocking and thrilling. The answer, after some deliberation, was yes, and the spring of 1917 found Mrs. Lloyd and her mother snugly ensconced in a tiny board-and batten-shack on Johnson's land not far from the head of Caney Creek, ready to begin work. Letters and other recorded statements from Mrs. Lloyd indicate that she held a number of views closely akin to Social Darwinism, especially in regard to genetics. She also possessed something of the sociologist's defeatism when confronted with cultural imbreeding, as well. But being the Puritan that she was, she saw a chance for success, and she drew pleasure from the rejuvenating possibilities of such a challenge. Although a Radcliffe product, she was not a licensed teacher. Nevertheless, her strong grounding in classical education and her awareness of modern pedagogical trends gleaned from reading left her not entirely unsuited for the task. Her most outstanding assets, though, were her stubbornness and her leadership ability. And leadership was what she was most interested in. As her fledgling school got underway in her home (now referred to as the "Founder's Shack") she wrote dozens of letters on her Oliver No. 9 typewriter to college friends and Boston acquaintances, for books, clothes, money, and teachers. "The leaders are here" was her constant refrain. Not only could boys and girls be trained to do manual tasks and homemaking, they could also learn to take on the work of area leadership and service promoted by stiff academics-but not all boys and girls. She was interested in helping those of obvious superiority-and those she determined herself. The requests sent out in her letters were soon filled. Local children enrolled in the school. With land secured, dormitory and classroom buildings were erected on the narrow bottom land along the creek; pole-supported buildings climbed the hillsides. Caney Creek families donated labor, materials, and food —just as in the early days at Hindman. Since Alice Lloyd promised to stay out of the community's religion, politics, and moonshining, she got along quite well in her new surroundings~so well, in fact, that she opened a new building called the Caney Creek Community Center. From this building Mrs. Lloyd administered her elementary school, founded a high school and, in 1923, a junior college, ran a clothing exchange, oversaw manual training classes, distributed Christmas presents to needy children, established an outreach program, and engaged visitors of all kinds. (The term "community center" remained submerged as a decription for her particular brand of social improvement until the 1960s when the Federal Government's War on Poverty made it 184 �a part of the new bureaucratic jargon.) By the time her students had progressed to the point of needing the creation of the Caney Junior College in 1923, her community center was developing into the "sociological laboratory" she had envisioned. It no doubt looked like folly to many to open a college on Caney Creek in 1923, but the good experiences with her other schools caused Alice Lloyd to remain optimistic. The need for an area college was great. Students were not that hard to get; indeed, there was soon a waiting list. Well-trained teachers, such as June Buchanan (born 18937), who helped initiate the college program, came for short sojourns but stayed much longer. From the beginning the college curriculum took pre-emption over the older elementary and secondary schools departments and arts and crafts program. And the contrasts between the Caney way and Hindman way were considerable. Besides the usual strictures of no smoking, drinking, guns, or gambling, Mrs. Lloyd added "no unauthorized meetings with the opposite sex." This requirement was one of the bestknown tenets of the school on Caney Creek, only to be relaxed at Mrs. Lloyd's death in the early 1960s. The idea of mandatory uniforms, which Hindman had only toyed with, became a reality at Caney. (This rule was also allowed to lapse shortly after Mrs. Lloyd died.) Daring young men often circumvented Mrs. Lloyd's no-dating rule by climbing a tree next to the girls' dormitory at night. This was known as "wahooing." But woe unto him who was caught wahooing! Expulsion was the general sentence. The uniform for girls consisted of the old-fashioned New England boarding school apparel of long white skirts, white middies, knee socks, and low-heeled shoes. The boys were expected to wear coats and pants of subdued colors, white shirts, and necktiesto classes and to meals. Mrs. Lloyd justified the non-romantic requirement by saying courtship interfered with studies and might lead to marital inbreeding (since many students were blood relatives). She defended her stance on uniforms by invoking the name of democracy. At Caney Junior College humanities and social studies were emphasized. There was a great interest in drama and music-although few of the productions dealt with mountain material, as often did the faculty-written plays at Hindman's Christmas and May Day celebrations. (Later, however, the Student Crusades and Voices of Appalachia Choir stressed the Appalachian experience in their national tours.) As at Hindman, students were poor and a work program was central in defraying costs. Teacher-training was early seen as the prime duty of the college. Then followed commitment to pre-law and premedical courses of study. The school's early graduates were often sent to such schools as Harvard and Tulane, but after Mrs. Lloyd purchased the Caney Cottage in Lexington, Kentucky, for her scholarship students (generally male), most Caney associate-degree holders went to the University of Kentucky. An unwritten pledge, no longer in effect, required Caney graduates to return to the mountains. Throughout the twenties and thirties Hindman Settlement School and Caney Junior College often stood in basically friendly competition with one another, especially in assisting the opening of other schools in the area. The heads of the two schools occasionally had personality clashes, but amicable relations were usually soon restored. As the two schools entered the forties the feelings of contention subsided as it was observed that the clientele of each diverged more and more. The 1950s as had the 1930s brought some degree of hard times to both institutions—enrollments declined, donations diminished, and the need for their particular kind of education lessened. The early 1960s forced Hindman Settlement School to phase out its boarding program, and more and more of the old responsibilities were taken over by the county school 185 �system. In later years the Settlement functioned more as a secondary school; therefore, plans for the now-completed Knott County Central High School practically sounded the death knell of the school as it was. In similar fashion Mrs. Lloyd's school had to deal with competiton from the new University of Kentucky community college system and other private and state-supported regional universities. However, the 1960s were years of seeking alternative forms to so-called assembly-line education. Because of those needs both schools survived: Hindman Settlement to become more oriented towards community arts, crafts, and recreations programs; Caney Junior College (renamed Alice Lloyd College at the founder's death) to move towards an emphasis on Appalachian Studies and developing four-year status. Although greatly changed, both schools still make their contributions with much of the old tone of purpose. It would be hard to imagine eastern Kentucky today without the impact of the two schools. Those who believe in the vacuum theory of social groups would say others would have come into the area and done much as Miss Stone, Miss Pettit, and Mrs. Lloyd. Perhaps so, but any substitutes would have been, of necessity, clearly different. Would others have stayed as long? Would there have been another woman with the iron will of Alice Lloyd, or another Ella Geddes, starting her life over at 65? Maybe such speculation is idle, but why did so many of the denominational schools in the area fail when these two succeeded? Why did the nearby Carr Creek Center School, sponsored as an experiment by the Daughters of the American Revolution, have to close relatively soon after opening? Why did so few writers come from the faculties of the other schools? Alice Lloyd College lays claim, among others, to folklorist Marie Campbell (born 1900), poet William Howard Cohen (born 1927), Homespun Winter Verna Mae Slone (born 1914), and the Appalachian Heritage Magazine, edited by poet Albert Stewart (born 1914). Why were so few well-known alumni (such as Congressman Carl D. Perkins, who attended both Hindman and Alice Lloyd) produced by the denominational schools? If, in reference to the definition of the Southern Regional Education Board, a settlement insititution in the Southern Appalachians is "a private, nonprofit, rural organization designed to promote and provide programs, services, and development with the immediate community or nearby surrounding area in which it is located," then, perhaps, the other schools did not promote and provide what was really wanted by the community or area. Perhaps it was simply survival of the fittest. For whatever reason, though, Hindman Settlement School and Alice Lloyd College thrived. Today the two schools still teach, as we move toward the twenty-first century. Both have young, dynamic leaders who are hopeful and pragmatic. From the Settlement go art, music, and recreation teachers to add new dimensions to local public school instruction. Alice Lloyd College belongs to an outreach program called ALCOR, (which originally stood for Alice Lloyd College Outreach), and operates the highly respected Appalachian Learning Laboratory (APPLAB)--an oral history project and photographic archives. Some have called these schools anachronisms. But the donors would not agree, nor would the alumni. As long as these schools perform needed services, why should they close? Today the appearance of austerity has left both schools. Both are more stable financially and both have new building progams underway. There is an easy relationship between the institutions. For example the present director of the Hindmand Settlement formerly headed by APPLAB at Alice Lloyd College, 186 �ind Albert Stewart of Alice Lloyd's Appalachian-Heritage conducts the Appalachian Writers' Workshop at Hindman each summer. Such cooperation augurs well for the future of these two private, nonsectarian schools. On Alice Lloyd's grave at Pippa Passes (so named by Mrs. Lloyd in celebration of a Robert Browning poem) can be seen the quote: "All service ranks the same with God." Perhaps that sentence would be the fitting epitaph for the visionary founders of both schools. Their service to the poor, but deserving, mountain students might seem outdated, their upper middle-class values grating, yet their attempts to forge bonds of friendship and service were sincere. Their achievements were incredible, considering the odds. The schools these women founded can claim the distinctions of being both firsts of a kind and continuing success stories today. NOTES The author wishes to thank Mr. Michael L. Mullins, Executive Director of Hindman Settlement School, Dr. Jerry C. Davis, president of Alice Lloyd College, Miss June Buchanan, Mrs. Charlotte Madden, Mr. Albert F. Stewart, and Mrs. Grey Crawford for their cooperation toward research in this paper. 1. Lucy Furman, The Quare Women (Boston: The Atlantic Press, 1923), p. 20. 2. Lucy Furman, Afterword to Sight to the Blind (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914), p. 77. 3. Interview with Guy Crawford, Whitesburg, Kentucky, January 27, 1980. Crawford is a retired civil engineer. 4. Guerrant established several Presbyterian high schools and academies, and Murdoch founded Buckhorn School and Witherspoon College. 5. Interview with June Buchanan, Pippa Passes, Kentucky, December 12, 1979. 187 �This page intentionally left blank �V: Values and Culture in Appalachia 189 �POETRY AT THE PERIPHERY: The Possibility of People's Culture in Appalachia* by P. J. Laska Abstract The paper addresses the rise of regionalism and cultural pluralism as the major feature of A merican cultural life of the past decade. Poetry is seen as the bellwether of these tendencies in the arts. The evidence of a review of the seventies shows a major break with the past, so much so that an anthology like Donald Hall's Contemporary American Poetry (1972) would appear today changed beyond recognition. Poetry developments in Appalachia have been at the forefront of these changes in the American literary scene. The paper examines some of the reasons that lie behind this "decade of dispersal. " This discussion is followed by a conceptualization of the present that sees regionalism offering new possibilities for the renewal of the genuine peoples culture of Appalachia. * Although an editorial decision was made not to publish papers that had appeared in earlier publications, "Poetry at the Periphery" was accepted for publication in this volume prior to its publication in another journal. The Editor thanks the West Virginia Art New and Hyperion for granting permission to reprint this article. Introduction There are those for whom Appalachian culture is no more than "a region of the heart." The metaphor here is one of emotion and feeling, rather than one of perception of reality. The suggestion is that Appalachian culture is more past than present and more desire than fulfillment, and that therefore, it is accessible only as folk culture. In this paper I suggest a different approach to Appalachian culture, one that links the folk and heritage concepts to the idea of a living people's culture. What I mean by "people's culture" is something significantly different from mass culture and something clearly distant from the elitist culture of modernism. In Appalachia it includes the surviving part of that native folk culture that once gave a degree of identity and unity to life in these mountains. I don't want to get into a debate over the extent to which what is living about the culture exists as remenant of a way of life that has been broken up by the twin forces of industrialization and modernization.1 The important question for my purposes is whether these remnants and the tremendous enthusiasm for them will develop a living value in the present, and whether "the mountain experience" and the "things Appalachian" will encompass reality as well as history. At this juncture I think it is the poets of the region who are pressing this question upon us, and what follows is my attempt to explain the significance of their work. I Side by side with the pursuit of heritage and regional self-consiousness, which has been largely a scholarly, intellectual effort, there has been a virtual 190 �explosion of activity on the part of writers and poets of the region. One critic has written recently that, "Poems are pouring out of the region as if a sensitive nerve had been touched."2 He wonders whether all this activity will ultimately be classified as a famous literary movement. My own view is that something more basic, more revolutionary than a mere interest in literature is behind this upsurge. The outpouring of poetry in Appalachia in the past decade is part of a larger development which we have begun to see in the cultural life of the country. I would argue that in the past decade Appalachian poets have been at the forefront of a significant change emerging in American cultural life--a change that constitutes a major break with the past and with the cultural hegemony of urban modernism. To substantiate this rather large assertion I offer the following brief survey, which will probably not convince anyone but may enable me to get a foot in the door. An urban cultural hierarchy has been in place in this country since at least the early fifties, probably since the War period. Politically, it has been decidedly right-wing, or very conservative, as has been the dominant politics of the nation. In the early fifties what survived of a left-wing cultural opposition was driven into hiding by a right-wing hysteria that came damn close to elevating another Hitler (some say he later came to power only to be dethroned by newspaper reporters). This cultural opposition has been slow in its return to public life. The "Beat Movement," which began in the fifties was not left-wing. It was hardly political at all. It was, however, opposed to the formalism and careerism of the established poets clustered around American universities. This urban cultural hierarchy had at the time enough power to reduce any cultural movement that rejected its standards of taste to the status of a peripheral phenomenon. And this is what happened, in spite of the media interest in the Beats. The net effect of non-recognition and ridicule was a status of cultural pariah for a whole group of writers whose literature and lifestyle flouted the dominant cultural values. Donald Hall's influential anthology of American poets, originally published in 1962, contained no Beats, no blacks and few women. The upheavals of the sixties brought a change to this picture of the contemporary poetry scene. In the second edition of his Contemporary American Poetry (1972),3 Hall added more poets, including Allen Ginsberg, whom he admits having misjudged. More importantly, though, he included two black poets and was turned down by a third (Amiri Baraka, then Leroi Jones). This little background survey illustrates what is an obvious truth to many, that social forces are the strength of cultural forces. It is also a truth that is born out by developments of the seventies. The seventies have seen a continuation of social upheaval in America centered around the family and racial and ethnic identity. I think it is fair to say that if Hall were to attempt a new edition of his anthology for the seventies it would have to include some of the poetry from these movements, more from the black and women's movements and also perhaps from the American Indian movement, each of which has generated several anthologies of poetry. Toward the latter part of the seventies there has also appeared a lot of poetry to which the Canadian poet Tom Wayman has given the label, "New Realism." Wayman has anthologized some of this work in two collections of Canadian poetry 4 and is now putting together a third anthology of "new realism" poetry in the U.S. He uses the rather narrow rule of selecting poetry by poets who have worked at the jobs they write about. In the U.S. there are an increasing number of the little poetry magazines that feature what we could call "new realism" poetry in a broader sense than Wayman's. Some of the ones I have seen are Quindaro (Kansas City), Cultural Corespondence (Providence, R.I.), Working Cultures (Washington, D.C.), 191 �West End and Nostoc (Boston), Main Trend (New York), and The Unrealist. Also, established literary journals Ike Minnesota Review, Praxis and Left Curve all feature poetry which embodies social and historical perspectives and which recognizes that we are social beings shaped by the labor and technology of our metabolism with nature. An anthology of the seventies would also have to take account of the rise of regionalism in American culture. The poetry upsurge in Appalachia is contemporary with a revival of poetry in other regions of the country. Regional markets for poetry are evident all across the country, and these markets are in fact part of the mainstay of the small press publishing business. As a result certain poets have a large following in the area in which they live and publish but are virtually unknown or attract little interest outside that area. This is the case, for example, with Charles Bukowski in southern California, Ann Darr in Washington, D.C., and Tom McGrath in Minnesota, although the latter also has a reputation as a political poet going back to the fifties. I include the large urban centers as regions in the sense that there is a localized poetry audience listening to poets in their midst. The "region" can be entirely ersatz in this sense. Away from the urban centers we find poets taking localism more seriously than as a literary game, some to the point of becoming consciously regionalist. It is difficult to imagine the work of Vincent Ferrini apart from the Gloucester's fisherman and the Cape Ann area of Massachusetts. In his latest book, Know Fish,' Ferrini returns to the Italian-English dialect of his immigrant parents and writes some of his best poems. David Budbill, a regional poet in northern New England, is another example of a poet who uses dialect. In his book, The Chain-Saw Dance, 6 he writes of the people of the northern Appalachian mountians and reproduces some of their speech. This sort of thing is going on outside the national literary network. But network money, in the form of subsidies from the National Endowment for the Arts, has in the past couple of years made possible a number of anthologies based on some sort of geographical definition. California, New Jersey, New York, Washington, D.C. and its suburbs, even Hawaii, have all seen anthologies of their poets. In some cases they have more than one. So far, it has been in the heavily populated urban areas of the country that the money has tended to concentrate. The South, however, is represented by White Trash, an anthology whose catchy title belies its academic content. Although Appalachia has as lively a poetry scene as any of these other places we don't yet rate an anthology in the eyes of NEA. I've tried proposals without success, and so have others. There is much irony in the fact that Appalachia, whose poets probably have a stronger sense of regional identity than any other section of the country, cannot get support for a representative anthology. There are reasons for this, of course. I suspect you are aware of them. Certain prejudices exist about the periphery and about the possibility of poetry or any other art this far from the "center." And perhaps there's something more. It comes out when you compare the tone and content of Appalachian poetry with that of other sections of the country, particularly with that of the national network and with that of various urban scenes. Take a production like Mucked, for example.' It is a small homemade anthology whose occasion was the disastrous flood of the Tug Fork River that nearly wiped out the town of Williamson. The dozen or so poets represented there are a good cross section although their best work may not be included. What is there, taken as a whole, is significant. Literary critics reading this poetry will notice that nostalgia and anger are the predominant tones and that politically and morally sensitive subjects are the main content. But unless these critics have some grounding in the region's history of struggle against exploitation, which has in one way or 192 �another affected the lives of everyone who has lived here, unless they have that, they will miss the importance of what is happening in this work. It is a form of art that, consciously or not, aspires to contribute to a form of life that is significantly different from what is accepted as everyday reality in the urban centers of power. These Appalachian poets, and others not represented here, are not involved in a mere literary game of getting into print, although what they are doing obviously has an important literary aspect. They are engaged in something more fundamental~a struggle to have a culture at all, a real culture that has a base in the life of the people and in which poetry becomes a folk form rather than an aspect of literary consciousness. In the work of Appalachian poets with roots here the very conception of art seems different, not just because it is more political or more critical or more didactic, but because it seeks to break down the wall that separates literature from life.' It is art that seeks to be involved in the life of the people, and tries to do this at a time when there is very little poetry being written which commits itself to the world of people, and their history, their struggles and their work.' Our poets are therefore out of tune with most of what goes on in the national poetry network, and are by choice I think, closer to a regional, folk conception of art. When I look at the decaying modernist alternative, it seems to me a difference well worth encouraging. II We can look at what is happening in the country culturally from the side of the old, which is breaking up, or from the side of the new which is just beginning to appear. What is breaking up is the cultural hegemony of the metropolis. By this I mean specifically the rule of big city cultural life, its ability by controlling the production of art to define the standards of perception and taste, as well as the modes of enjoyment, in American society. What has appeared on the horizon to replace it is the regional focus of populist cultural developments that threaten to break down the traditional hierarchy in the arts and perhaps create new hierarchies in its place. The bureaucratic scaffolding for such regional hierarachies is already in place in many states. One's reaction to this cultural dialectic is likely determined by whether one's politics are populist or elitist. Those who lament the passing of the old order talk about the seventies as "a decade of dispersal," and argue, for example, that Robert Lowell is the last of the great American poets because of the scattering of cultural focus and the fracturing of the national audience. Daniel Bell, the sociologist who pronounced the end of ideology in the fifties, argues in a recent book that American society is experiencing a crisis of values and that the most pressing problem is the loss of the center.10 He and others are concerned to re-establish the central clearing-house concept of culture even if it takes a new idealogy to do it. But the reaction of elitists to the breakup of the cultural core cannot be better illustrated than in the recent flap which saw NBA (National Endowment for the Arts) move to withdraw its block funding from CCLM (Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines) when the latter, dominated by small magazine editors, voted to disperse their monies in equal amounts to all applicants. With action equal to their conviction, the CCLM Board refused to sit in judgment of the relative merit of the various, diverse literary magazines around the country and thus refused to play the role of ProTern Cultural God that had been alloted to them. For this betrayal of elitist trust and bureaucratic authority, the Board of CCLM was roundly criticized, castigated, and ridiculed. Now CCLM continues to dispense its monies under a different board that is willing to behave more like Guardians of the Poetic 193 �Gate, but NEA moved to set up its own awards to applications from literary magazines, thus extending the control of its own panel of successful careerists in literature. So the fight is on. The arts are no longer divorced from politics. And although Congress continues to appropriate large funds for the arts without much debate, the day of floor fights may not be far off. In an article last year entitled, "Post Post-Art Where Do We Go from Here?" Douglas Davis described our cultural situation as a problem of perception." We are "tumbling into infinitely complex sub-sets...older, tighter structures are decentralizing, spreading...[and] we do not clearly perceive the premise behind the action." Davis sees elitist culture as posed at the end of modernism without being able to define what is "post-modern." This is a humbling experience for Davis, who concludes that, "Small has to be beautiful now." What I find interesting is that Davis takes for granted that the end of modernism means the end of progress. Apres moi, le deluge. "Each of the great Modernist states," he says, "is breaking into component parts, the reverse of the Global Village metaphor." As though he had looked into an abyss, Davis is engaged in the desperate search for a new metaphor to stem the tide of decentralization '' Before we' re engulfed.'' Those whose politics are of a populist bent are likely to view what is happening as a positive development which opens up new possibilities. The thought that never seems to occur in these decline-of-the-West discussions is that decentralization brings with it the possibility of genuine people's culture. The unity of art and life that occurs in folk culture is Utopian to modernists (with their conception of art as commodity and museum pieces) and they are unable to take it seriously. Yet from the Appalachian vantage point, in which the remnants of real folk culture are still immediate, it can be taken seriously. And those who do take it seriously will have a very different attitude to what is happening to modernist culture. My own attitude is summed up in the statement by John Berger that: Imperialism "can no longer accomodate reality."" Berger was referring to the national wars of liberation in underdeveloped countries. But the point seems equally applicable to cultural imperialism inside the U.S. In a wide sense culture is the shared beliefs which inform our work and its shaping physical existence. Cultural pluralism allows many shapes and elaborations as real. The cultural imperialism of mass culture resulting in a bureaucratically controlled consumption, cannot permit any real pluralism because it would mean the end of the mass market in many areas of life. This imperialism has taken its toll on the psyche of the population. The results are evident in the alienation and unreality that people experience and in the proliferating psychological and religious attempts to counter the meaninglessness of everyday life. The cultural life of a people cannot be successfully controlled or managed unless the power to shape life, poesis as the Greeks called it, is taken away from the people. Poesis, lies at the basis of culture. It is the origin of all art, literature, drama, and even of language and thought itself. Originally, folk artist only embodied and articulated what was the common creation of the whole people, their style of life. The people created the form of life, the artist recorded it through mimesis. It was an understanding of this that led Vico to say, for example, that "the Greek peoples were themselves Homer," 11 by which he meant I take it that Homer was the recorder of the language and thought and actions of the early Greek peoples and that his poetry came from the people and was not, as the modern way of thinking makes us believe, from his personal invention. For the purposes of power what matters is that poesis come under the 194 �control of an elite. This is an old story. In ancient times, the priestly caste maintained control of cultural life by guarding the secrets of the hieratic script. Written language for the few and the illteracy of masses over the centuries gave us a hieratic ideology which says that the power of poesis is the special gift of the few. In modern culture it is known as the gift of genius. Creative activity devolves upon certain exceptional individuals who become hierophantic figures. What is creative in the culture is supposed to exist in their work. The living culture of the folk, with its union of art and life, is broken up into an elite producing the "high art" of novel experiment on the one hand, and a mass culture entertainment industry on the other. Both are virtually empty of any real content. The elitist "high art" defends itself against the charge of emptiness and irrelevance by the argument of art for art's sake, which says that the value of the work lies in how well it deals with its own challenge, and not in any articulation of human meaning and truth." The argument uses the autonomy of art as an ideological defense. It says that the absence of the human dimension is not a permissible criticism. So long as there is something novel in the work to serve as evidence of genius, any reference of human reality is inessential. It sees no struggle between form and content or between reality and unreality because everything takes place on the side of the individual's imagination. The old dualism returns. What appears in the imagination somehow escapes "the withness of the body," to use Whitehead's phrase for our material condition. But the dues have to be paid somewhere, and they are paid through loss of meaning. Obscure, meaningless, and trivial works of art come to predominate and art is alienated from the people. The proliferation of novelty in a void is a necessary consequence of the theory and its practice. And since the only judgment of any importance about the merit of these works concerns their intrinsic qualities, we naturally have to have a captian-critic to tell us whether a new work is metal or dross. > It turns out that the problem with modern culture is the cult, that is, the hieratic clique. Historically, the tendency has been for the cult to dislodge the spontaneous genius of the people and install its own rules, which had something secret and mysterious about them. Now the opposite appears to be taking place. People's ignorance about the power of poesis withing themselves, and the cultural heritage of fear and self-deprecation that comes with ignorance, is giving way everywhere to interest in the arts. Also, in Appalachia the emergence of oral history, folklore, and heritage studies has begun to reclaim some public space and funds for what was once a flourishing people's culture. The decentralization toward regionalism is a positive development, full of possibility for bringing together art and life in the region. To paraphrase the words of the French poet, Tristan Tzara: Poetry being everywhere, it is necessary to give it back to the people, to all individuals. • III Folk culture and people's culture are not identical in concept, but I think they are closely interrelated. They are on a continuous line and I think it can be shown that what survives of the folk is part of people's culture. Both are populist conceptions of culture that reverse the elitist form. They are not derived from theory or ideology but arise in response to real needs. They develop around the interchange of artists and craftsman with the people. If Appalachian poetry is seen as inclusive of mountain folk, blues, gospel, and grass songs, as well as the songs of work and protest, then I think we can document this contiuous line. It's not something that I could attempt here, but it is something that should be attempted. 195 �There is a tendency in modern poetry and modern criticism to pooh-pooh the song, to downgrade its aesthetic value as poetry. Modern poetry anthologies don't usually include songs that had popularity over the period covered by the anthology. I think this highlights the antilyrical, antipopulist bent of modern poetry. In the days of the oral tradition, prior to the book revolution, song was the main form for the poem to take. I'm not suggesting that the new Appalachian poets should all start writing songs. The song is only one form of poetry, and the limits of the musical form resulting from use of rime and fixed beat make it inappropriate for certain purposes. My point is that thematically the early Appalachian poetry, whose form is the song, is closely linked to the new poetry coming out of the hills. The folk themes and the political themes are inseparable because our people's lives have been and are now filled with struggle. When we get our representative anthology, I hope it will show this. In the past the Appalachian poetry of song was an organic part of a genuine folk culture. The modernist break has been felt as the break from the lyric form." This break was progressive in that it opened up new forms for poetic work, but the price was paid in terms of alienation because its avant garde experimentalism tended to downgrade the folk as passe' and to set modern poetry apart from people's culture. It remains to be seen whether Appalachian poetry, which is now consciously finding itself, will become an integral part of that collectivity that the folk represents in a way that modern poetry could not. To become part of the life of the people it will have to be a poetry in which the poem responds not merely to the challenge to itself but responds to the felt but perhaps unarticulated needs of the people. What makes poetry valuable to the people is not the novel linguistic inventions but the experience of the people that is articulated. In this sense Tristan Tzara was right when he wrote: "All poetic work is valuable only to the extent that it is lived."" Thepoesis at the basis of popular culture is both real and repressed. We can think of the removal of this repression as the liberation of poetic power on the part of the people and as the fulfillment of the idea of art. It is an idea that traces its beginnings in the old work songs, whose practical function in one way or another assisted the laborer or assuaged his pain. Think of the prudential advice offered in the "The Miner's Lifeguard,"Union miners stand together Heed no operators tale Keep your hand upon the dollar and your eye upon the scale. Or the humor appropriate to the asurdities of mining low coal as in Turner's "Lignite Blues," Bumps all along to skin your back You lay your wire and hang your track. Or of the surreal quality of the dream in which freedom is symbolized by a seagull in "Coal Loadin' Blues," Thought I heard a sea-gull Way down in the ground; Must've been those miners A-turnin' that coal around. Real freedom, free time and free mind, is the fulfillment of the idea of art. It is 196 �a revolutionary break to get poetry away from the cult and back into the life and consciousness of the people. In his last work the German philosopher Herbert Marcuse wrote that, "truth of art lies in its power to break the monopoly of established reality...to define what is real."" What he seems not to have seen is that art only has this power when it is in the hands of the people. Appalachian people's culture is a real possibility for our generation. We have now the opportunity to nuture the growth of that organic relation between past and present, between poetry and people, as existed in the old folk world, and still exists in many countries where economic and social control is maintained through legalized terror and a genuine people's culture survives underground or at the periphery of public life. I want to conclude this paper by examining some of the obstacles that stand in our way and have to be confronted if we are to make the most of this opportunity. First, there is the theoretical obstacle of our own perception of our situation and how we conceptualize it. David Walls's core-periphery model has done much to reshape our thinking about the region. It is less problematic to understand Appalachia as a peripheral region within the social and physical geography of "late captialism'.' It will be obvious how much the model is at work in this paper. But the model has an important drawback in the cultural sector, and it is well to remember in this context that it is only a model." The limitation of the core-periphery model lies in the fact that in the present situation it is economically applicable but rapidly becoming culturally inapplicable. Culturally, the core is disintegrating at the same time as the Appalachian "periphery", along with other regions of the country, are experiencing a cultural renaissance. It is possible for the cultural core of American capitalism to become so weakened that there will no longer be any justification for speaking of Appalachian culture, or that of any of the other regions, as peripheral. Theoretically, then, we should remember that there is no periphery without a core. Of course, the breakup of the "core" does not imply that a regional people's culture will emerge in its place. Other changes in the cultural superstructure are consistent with the continued functioning of American capitalism, even in its more or less dysfunctional "late'/ or post-Keynesian stage. One cannot say, for example, that the economics of American capitalism rules out an elitist cultural dispersal. The economic base of capitalism is consistent with the development of cultural pluralism under the control of regional elites." The important thing for capitalism is that a bureaucratic society of controlled comsumption be preserved." Is it not understandable then, that in Appalachia the money flows in the direction of cultural heritage programs and not in the direction of contemporary programs which nourish a living people's culture, and that would, in the words of the French philosopher Lefebvre, "create a culture that is not an institution but a style of life"?- The practical obstacles to people's culture have to do with where the money goes and where it doesn't go. State and private investments have been lavished, even squandered, on the collection and preservation of the remnants of folk culture in museums, libraries, and heritage centers. Little or nothing has gone for festivals of the arts, artists, and writers fellowships and residencies, or for contemporary people's theater; and there has been no money for our poetry anthology, a pittance, really, in comparison to what has been spent. Heritage is a safe investment so long as it does not materially affect the present. A contemporary people's culture, on the other hand, is risky. Just how risky is stated with the exhortation of a mountain preacher in a recent paper by Gratis Williams, when he says that Appalachians are a people, 197 �who have risen from our long fast in the mountains, the agony of our neglect and abuse, and the sharp thorns of perfidy that have been our anguish, and are now shaking our hides and flexing our muscles as we reach for the control box that determines our destiny." To the extent that this assessment is true, the "periphery" will turn out to be more like the front lines. Its truth value makes it dangerous to the established order because it identifies the fate of a culture with the action of the people. This is an important and far-reaching perception. Socially and politically, a division takes place when there is serious talk about reaching for the control box. We know that the box is ultimately outside Appalachia, but a good many in the region who support the folksy heritage concept of culture are tied in with those whose hands are on the controls. The controllers will permit a plurality of ethnic identities; their agents will give grants to assist in their development. What they will ridicule and condemn is the possibility that these identities should have a living value in the present, one that possesses real social power such that the people of the region gain control over their destiny. Our self-conscousness has brought us to a crucial juncture. Now is the time to invest in contemporary work in an unparalled manner. Heritage and "roots" are not enough for a living identity. We need to take another look at folk culture and recognize that the folk are the people of the present, in need of a living culture. Folk culture must extend into the present as people's culture. If it doesn't, we will lose it all. Notes 1. The remnant character of Appalachian culture is seen best perhaps in our architecture. The architecture of building and design is the external form of culture, and in Appalachia these forms, the hill farm houses and barns, the coal camps, company stores and stables, even the distinctiveness of the small towns are fast disappearing, and the new forms of urban and suburban modernism, the shopping malls along the interstates, are springing up with characteristic uniformity. 2. Frank Steele, "Two Kinds of Commitments: Some Directions in Current Appalachian Poetry," Appalachian Journal6 (Spring 1979): pp. 228. 3. Donald Hall, ed., Contemporary American Poetry, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Penquin Books, 1972). 4. Tom Wayman, ed., Beaton Abbott's Got the Contract (Edmonton: Newest Press. 1974), and A Government Job At Last (Vancouver: MacLeod Books, 1977). 5. Vincent Ferrini, Know Fish (Storrs, Connecticut: The University of Connecticut Library, 1979). See also Ferrini's Selected Poems (same publisher, 1976). 6. David Budbill, The Chain Saw Dance (Johnson, VT.: The Crow's Mark Press, 1976). 7. Bob Baber and Jim Webb, Mucked (Richwood, W.Va.: The Southern Appalachian Writers Co-op, 1978). 8. The movement of proletarian literature which developed in the thirties had this as a conscious theoretical aim: "[A] synthesizing third factor is added to the Aristotelian pity and terror - and that is militancy, combativeness. The proletarian katharsis is a release through the action - something dismetrically 198 �opposed to the philosophical resignation of the older idea. Audaciously breaking through the wall that separates literature and life, it impels the reader to a course of action...." In Philip Rahv's Essays on Literature and Politics, 1932-73 eds. Porter and Dvosin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), p. 281. 9. Cf., Eric Homberger, The Art of the Real: Poetry in England and America Since 1939 (Rowan, 1977), pp. 175-215. 10. Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1976). 11. The Village Voice, June 25, 1979, ppp. 37-41. 12. John Berger, Art and Revolution (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), p. 157. 13. The New Science of Giambattista Vico, trans. Bergin and Fisch (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970), p. 270, Para. 875. 14. In mass culture the question of the meaning and intergrity of art does not arise since the values of art are secondary to moneymaking. 15. Aristotle raises the question, at the beginning of the Poetics, of "how the fables must be put together if the poetry is to be well-formed." Hieratic criticism has made much of the criteria of form. What it has usually meant is the "interposition of technical imperatives between the poet and 'reality'." (Homberger, The Art of the Real, pp. 86-87). The modernist movement in poetry and art began with a progressive challenge to receive techniques and campaigned for the poet's right to invent. The weakness of modernism has been in not returning to the criteria of 'reality'. 16. "The Dialectics of Poetry." in Surrealism and the Postwar Period, excerpted and translated by Peter Boffey in Invisible City, Numbers 21-22, November, 1977, p. 10. 17. The modernist direction in poetry beginning with imagism was strongly influenced by the new experiment in the art of painting. 18. Petter Boffey, trans., "The Dialectics of Poetry." 19. The complete songs from which these verses are taken are found in George Korson's Coal Dust on the Fiddle (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1943). 20. Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), p. 9. 21. A model is a conceptual tool with which to grasp and structure the facts. It will grasp some facts and not others. We should expect this, especially in the present period of transition involving what may turn out to be the cultural disintegration of the core. 22. An altered superstructure could even include the breakup of the cental TV networks as we know them into various forms of regional networks, or cable networks, with an expanded market based on local variations for products stamped out in the studios of Hollywood and New York. And even the latter coul conceivably disperse into various regional locations. 23. Cf., Henri Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), chapter 2. 24. Ibid., p. 203. 25. Gratis Williams, "The Appalachian Experience," Appalachian Heritage, 7 Spring 1979, p. 11. 199 �ALTHER AND DILLARD: THE APPALACHIAN UNIVERSE Frederick G. Waage Abstract This paper explores the viewsoftwo writers, Lisa Alther and Annie Dillard, on contemporary Appalachian nature and culture. While the two authors focus on quite different realms of Appalachia, they are both concerned with returning to native peoples and places. Each author demonstrates in her own way that this return can only be genuine if it takes into account the incomplete, mysterious, and contradictory environment of present day life. Lisa Alther and Annie Dillard are two women in their mid-thirties, whose very different prose works, Kinflicks and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, express contemporary Appalachian nature and culture in remarkably similar ways. The primary setting of Alther's novel is Hullsport (read Kingsport) Tennessee; its structure of increasingly recent flashbacks chronicles the heroine's escape from Appalachia as she grows from adolescence into midwomanhood; whereas its narrative present describes the return to Hullsport of the autobiographical protagonist, Ginny, and her vigil over her dying mother. In her return she penetrates deeper (topographically and emotionally) into the essence of Hullsport while her mother slowly dies; she sets up house in the cabin where she was born, which was built by her grandfather, the founder of Hullsport, as an escape from the town he created. Dillard's lyrical, Waldenian narrative is centered on her house by Tinker Creek and Tinker Mountain, on the Roanoke Valley edge of the Appalachians near Salem, Virginia. It moves through time from winter and early spring to winter solstice again, and through a pattern of escapes and returns between the immediate, tiny, local observations of Tinker Creek's nature, the world's nature in its diversity, and the metaphysics of the cosmos. The movement through the year towards winter ("...Tinker Creek makes a sharp loop, so that the creek is both in back of the house, south of me, and also on the other side of the road, north of me. I like to go north, "-p.4) is also, paradoxically, a movement towards a deeper, or warmer, understanding of paradoxes in existence.' Both Alther and Dillard are "pilgrims" in literal and figurative senses. Their literary personae move through literal space and time, of course. Alther moves first through the different social milieux of Hullsport, then to a fashionable women's college near Boston, and finally, before her return, to Stark's Bog, Vermont, the rural antitype of Hullsport. Dillard moves to different spaces and places around Tinker Creek and Tinker Mountain, always returning to her house, which is much less physically real to the reader than the external moments and places she describes. Dillard is, in her literary persona, a solitary pilgrim; Alther's journey is to a great extent defined by the human culture, the different social environments, that encompass Ginny, her heroine. Only in her chapter "Nightwatch" does Dillard extensively evoke the presence, problems of human settlements in "untamed" nature. In this chapter she visits the Lucas place, a "secluded magic garden" (p. 216)~a formerly cultivated, now overgrowing, property, whose centerpiece is a deserted mountainside cottage, "mostly porch" (p. 218). 200 �Here she spends the night. This cottage is the contrary of her own house, where she can examine things under a civilized microscope by artificial light. It is a habitation, but scarcely: very open and deserted, its "five windows framed five films of the light and living world" (p. 219). All human structures have retreated, so that in this almost-cottage Dillard can both inhabit her own natural environment and be a non-alien presence in that of non-human creation. Here she approaches a condition of total awareness, "firmness"—the goal of her pilgrimage-both in her human consciousness and in the pure otherness of pre-thought creation: "A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek toward that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky's stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles" (p. 257). There is a remarkably similar cottage at the polar center of Alther's novel— the one built by Ginny's grandfather, Mr. Zed, founder of Hullsport, as his "primitive" retreat from the civilized corruption he created. Here Ginny was born, and here she lives on her return to Hullsport, while she waits out her mother's slow dying. She too finds this cabin abandoned, and must, like a first pioneer, clear it of kudzu vines, (originally planted by her grandfather to overgrow the city he repudiated). Her main enterprise in this cabin is her attemped mothering of baby chimney swifts, "unnaturally" abandoned by their parents after their nest falls down the cabin's chimney. Her attempt to transcend her human condition and become the birds' mother (an enterprise of taming that half of herself rebels against), ironically unsuccessful, parallels the attempt of her mother's body to transcend the powers of human medical expertise by dying. In this, her mother is ironically successful. No coagulants can stop the progressive rupture of her capillaries; blood runs symbolically throughout this novel, as, at the end, Ginny is unable to commit suicide and spill her own blood. Here, literally torn between the needs of her human mother and her non-human bird-chicken-an irreconcilable mingled attachment to, and rejection of, two worlds and two identities-she is in the same metaphysical position as Dillard is in her cottage, but Ginny as a pilgrim cannot unmesh herself from the world. She cannot achieve a fixed, firm identity as a woman or as a human. Ginny's search is different from Dillard's, in that her desires move inward toward knowing the One (herself) rather than outward toward a circumpolar All. It is similar in that both writers' personae experience the "Way" to true knowing as through intimacy with geographically, biologically minute concrete and particular things. For Dillard, ...the microscope at my forehead is a kind of phylactery, a constant reminder of the facts of creation that I would just as soon forget" (p. 123). Above other "intricate" particularities that are also totalities, is the sight, through the microscope, of indefatigable red blood cells in the tail of her goldfish: "...lying in bed at night, imagining that if I concentrate enough, I might be able to feel in my fingers' capillaries the small knockings and flow of those circular dots, like a string of beads drawn through my hand" (p. 127). Alther's Ginny finds truths higher than the cosmic philosophies her college mother-figure, Miss Head, worships (Spinoza's, Schopenhauer's, Descartes's works), when she experiences death by scraping cells from her cheek and watching them die under her microscope: "The paragraphs in the book of life and death were multicelled organisms. Cells were dying continuously in this same fashion in Aida's body, in my body, in Miss Head's body" (p. 205). She also experiences elemental birth on the microscope slide: "Professor Aitken!" I shrieked. He came rush-rushing over, his 201 �white coat flying behind him. "Something strange is going on with my protozoa!" He peered through my microscope. "Oh yes," he said... They're exchanging genetic material." "What does that mean?" "It's equivalent to what happens in human conception.... (p. 208) Ginny's microscopic insights become ultimately personal for Ginny in the battle to keep the cells inside her mother's body; her death seems to have a life of its own. Both pilgrims seek to reconcile this sort of contradictoriness in elemental things by experiencing life in its most closely knit manifestations, where the fewest abstract formulations apply: Just think: in all the clean beautiful reaches of the solar system, our planet alone is a blot. Our planet alone has death...The faster death goes, the faster evolution goes. If an aphid lays a million eggs, several might survive. Now, my right hand, in all its human cunning, could not make one aphid in a thousand years. But these aphid eggs-which run less than a dime a dozen, which run absolutely free-can make aphids as effortlessly as the sea makes waves. Wonderful things, wasted. It's a wretched system. (Dillard, p. 178) Their perception of, and desire to reconcile, contradictions seem to me bound with two determinants in their natures as writers-their femaleness and their Appalachian environment. Alther's heroine, and Dillard's literary "self," are dissatisfied with the formulary security imposed on phenomena by male consciousness. Women are privileged (or "cursed") to experience physically, pre-ideologically, within themselves, the human extremes of birthing and dying, and the sinuous experience which allies the human and the non-human. Both women acknowledge and accept a "passivity" (versus male activity) as inherent in their sexuality. For Ginny, the passivity sometimes becomes a caricatural social willingness to be seduced by male ideologies. For Dillard it is realized as a mystical "innocence," "...the spirit's unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to an object" (p. 83). Self-consciousness "does hinder the experience of the present"-but in traditional male, scientific terms, selfconsciousness, "the curse of the city and all that sophistication implies" (p. 82), is necessary to the objective apprehension of the experiential present. Dillard is quietly and only implicitly, opposed to a "male" objective distancing which makes false simplicities out of true complexities. She likens it to her youthful belief that English was the only language (pp. 106-7); beginning French, "I realized that I was going to have to learn speech all over again." She never explicitly associates sexuality with false or true perception, but in some telling scenes, the categorical and manipulative are clearly male. Once, where she is camping, children are playiang with newts.: One boy was mistreating the newts spectacularly: he squeezed them by their tails and threw them at a shoreline stone, one by one. I tried to reason with him, but nothing worked. Finally he asked me, "Is this one a male?" and in a fit of inspiration I said, "No, it's a baby." He cried "Oh, isn't he cute!" and cradled the newt carefully back into the water, (p. 112) 202 �Dealing with males, the male-ing boy is destructive; but his identity is yet unfixed enough for him to be an "innocent" mother when confronted with a "baby." All the males in Ginny's life—beginning with her authoritarian industrialist father, the Major-tend to err destructively or self-destructively by imposing their simple formulas on irreducible social reality. Ironically they often are winners, while she is a loser, because their obstinacy in constructing the world in their own image is so inflexible. Only older men-her grandfather, Mr. Zed, or the retired family doctor, Dr. Tyler-have gone beyond virility and dogma to become as anarchistically innocent as she is. Her first love, Joe Bob Sparks, is inflexibly ideal as a local football hero who becomes the local football coach, and is re-encountered by Ginny living in self-conscious plastic suburban splendor with a plastic wife, who has plastic breasts. Her second lover, Clem Cloyd, seemingly Joe Bob's motorcyclesque opposite, is actually his brother as an absolutist. Because of his self-consciously humiliating, crippled leg, he becomes absolute for degeneracy and self-indulgence, then for Death (whom he defies as he takes Ginny on manic motorcycle rides), and finally, on Ginny's return to Hullsport, for his own primitivistic evangelistic sect, of which he is the priest. Clem, reformed, still taunts death; his flock's immunity to copperhead bites at the snaketaming ritual Ginny attends is an ironically false transcendence of the barrier between human and non-human which Ginny cannot overcome with her swifts. Ginny's female lover, Eddie, with male role as well as name in their relationship, destroys herself in seeking total control and possession of her. Ira, her Vermont husband, fails her by seeking to mold her to the repetitious domestic, commercial, and sexual rituals that structure his public and private identity. Hawk, her final lover before her return to Tennessee, has found in her the ideal partner for a pseudo-Eastern, erotic-mystical ritual of transcendence, built up to by weeks of self-denying discipline. Ironically, its preparations so exhaust him that he falls asleep, as irrational physicality reasserts itself, at the point of fulfillment. Dr. Vogel (bird in German, earthbound opposite of Ginny's swifts), her mother's doctor, lives only through his medical jargon and ritualized experimentation. Like Hawk's sleep, her mother's death has a cause beyond the ken of the most elaborate male structures of apprehension: "Even on the perfectly ordinary and clearly visible level, creation carries on with an intricacy unfathomable and apparently uncalled for" (Dillard p. 134). Every man, or male-defined person, Ginny encounters eventually becomes, in assurance of knowledge, insufficient to Ginny's awareness of circumstances that contradict their truths (although she often interprets their rejections as her own inadequacy in fulfilling their needs). It is hard to believe the author doesn't feel this male inadequacy of apprehension to be biologically inherent, rather than culturally induced. For example, here Ginny is resisting the propaganda of her family and Ira's urging that she have a second child: "...Well, we can't have just one child." Ira said. "Why not?" "But people don't have just one child. Jesum Crow, Ginny. Besides, you want a son, don't you?" (p. 403) The trouble is that women are emotionally incomplete without men, and must be pilgrims until they unite with men who will inevitably either recreate them or demoralize them. Sexuality, in Dillard's book, "Fecundity," implies psychological warfare-symbolized by the battle between the organic feminist commune of "Soybean People" Ginny and her friends form in Vermont and 203 �the snowmobiling native men, led by Ira, who try to drive them out. When Ginny's jealous lover Eddie intentionally (?) kills herself on a captured snowmobile at the height of the war, Ginny capitulates emotionally to Ira, the male general, and by this victorious union of enemies (sort of akin to Ginny's protozoan vision) the Amazonian commune collapses inward and eventually dies. The women understand that the war is symbolic. The men "innocently" experience it only as the literal recapture of their sporting ground. Compounding the irreconcilable destructiveness of sexuality is the difference between male identity as experienced by men themselves, and as experienced by women. The formulaic absolutism of men is perceptual, not real. They know, in Dillard's terms, only English, whereas women know several languages. Women can see in male behavior inconsistency, paradox, doubleness, while men see themselves through this same behavior as creatures of order. Dr. Vogel can never experience himself as other than a serious scientist, but Ginny sees his fanaticism for science as similar to her own obsessive wandering. In one of the novel's most studiedly funny scenes, Ira, following step by step his guidebook to exotic sexual techniques, trying to arouse an orgasm in Ginny, arranges a gymnastic feat involving their hanging handcuffed from a beam in his ancestral house. Ginny drops the key to the handcuffs. Throughout their surrealistic attempts to free themselves, Ira faults her for botching a very reasonably structured experience. He cannot see that in this adventure he "is" in total contradiction to his self-perceived identity as a lucid, pious, ailAmerican businessman. Dillard also believes that male limitations are more in perception of behavior than in behavior itself. Through the ajar door of the Ichthyology Department in a famous university she sees ...two white-coated men seated opposite each other on high lab stools at a hard-surfaced table. They bent over identical white enamel trays. On one side, one man, with a lancet, was just cutting into an enormous preserved fish he'd taken from a jar. On the other side, the other man, with a silver spoon, was eating a grapefruit. I laughed all the way back to Virginia, (pp. 84-85) Neither man could perceive the total incongruity of their mutual behavior; the woman, cursed by ignorance and exclusion, can. Contemporary Appalachia is self-contradictory. For Alther and Dillard it becomes a place uniquely qualified to embody their vision of the irreconcilable and their search to reconcile. For Dillard, the self-contradiction is in western Virginia's biological and topographical diversity-it contains the world: It's a good place to live; there's a lot to think about. The creeks, Tinker's and Calvin's~are an active mystery, fresh every minute. Theirs is the mystery of the continuous creation and all that providence implies: the uncertainty of vision, the horror of the fixed, the dissolution of the present, the intricacy of beauty, the pressure of fecundity, the elusiveness of the free, and the flawed nature of perfection. The mountains-Tinker and Brushy, McAfee's Knob and Dead Man-are a passive mystery, the oldest of all. Theirs is the one simple mystery of creation from nothing, of matter itself, anything at all, the given, (p. 3) For Alther, it is in the social contradictions of a human culture in the process of acute change, whose loss of assurance, traditional moorings, creates and 204 �mirrors collectively the heroine's own. Since the Hullsport setting of Alther's novel has been controversial, it is profitable to focus on how the novel actually uses this setting. Generically, Kinflicks is self-consciously a picaresque novel, starring a wandering female Quixote of the lineage of Moll Flanders. Like a great many picaresque novels, it is set in a time of turmoil, unsettled life, violence done to basic truths; in this case the time is the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, dominated by social rebellion and the Vietnam war. As in real-life Kingsport, the Hullsport plastics factory run by Ginny's father-which violates nature with pollution and traditional rural culture by creating a blue-collar, urban proletariat in the mountains-is converted into a munitions factory for the Vietnam war. The Vietnam war, similarly, is defoliating nature and ravaging an agrarian people. Hullsport is the war brought home. Ginny is Virginia, the comically virginal, innocent wanderer. Her main adventures occur in three stylized locales. Hullsport is seen in two aspects. It is experienced generally in the flashback chapters which cover her younger years. Here real southern aristicracy and aristocratic traditions mingle in a melting pot with nouveau riche aristocracy (like Ginny's father) and its prefabricated traditions; with earthy, unrepentant, and ultimately "lawless" hillbilly culture, represented in her grandfather's family from Sow Gap, Virginia; with mercantile and working-class culture, created and drawn to Hullsport by her father's factory, in various stages of rise to the bourgeois splendor of development or subdivision living. In the narrative present scenes of Ginny's return to Hullsport, the main focus is on two places in but not of Hullsport-the sterile, self-contained Community Hospital where Ginny's mother dies, and the fecund, self-contained cabin land which her grandfather established, and where she lives. Hullsport's caricatural dissonance, inward and with its natural environment, is microcosmically that of mid-century America as well as of its failed Model Virgin, Ginny, who is inwardly divided: in her memories she's an "I," but in the present scenes she's a self-alienated "Ginny." Hullsport, the Model City planned concentrically like Washington D.C. in the symbolic year 1919, has been degenerated and corrupted from its male maker's abstract plan by its very unplanned, fecund growth (like a paradoxical cell under Ginny's microscope). Her grandfather did not foresee ...that six times as many people as he had planned for would one day want to leave the farms and mines and crowd into Hullsport, and that clumps of houses for them would ring the hexagon in chaotic, eczema-like patches, (p. 15) Ginny is torn between her need to nurture life as a woman, and her rejection of her mother's role as a traditional, passive wife and mother; the Appalachians are torn between the static purity of the traditional farming and mining life and the destructive progress of their cities' growing industrial economy. Ginny, as adventuress, returns to Hullsport not only because her mother (and symbolically her mother's way of life) is dying, but also by her need for truth. The dissonance of this changing world, so easy for her to parody, is also more authentic, because unsettled, than where she has been. It is a growth-anddying in simultaneity, more true to her complex vision of life than are the more beautiful, harmonious, self-contained places farther north and east. "There is not a guarantee in the world...Oh, your needs are guaranteed...But you must read the fine print. 'Not as the world giveth, give I unto you." '(Dillard, p. 277) The other two dominant places in Kinflicks are "guaranteed," as masculine 205 �formulae are, illusorily impregnable. Worthley, modelled on Alther's college, Wellesley, is expressed in and through Miss Head, the philosophy teacher, whose Okie youth was analogous to Ginny's except that her parents fought, rather than compelling, her intellectual advancement. Miss Head experiences the world purely intellectually, with her "Head", and through the world-systems of the philosophers she teaches. Like Ginny's mother, her one lover was a soldier who left her to fight in Europe; unlike her, she didn't marry or have babies by him: "Well, he was killed. In Belgium. But that's beside the point" (p. 194). Actually, invulnerable Worthley is totally vulnerable. In a battle of surrogate parents of Ginny's allegiance, Miss Head loses to Eddie, the radical fellow-student who first becomes her lover when they are "hidden" on the roof of their dormitory. The previous day Ginny has discovered her freshman neighbor, Bev Martin, losing consciousness from an overdose of sleeping pills in the dorm bathroom. She merely watches her while debating in her mind the ethics of suicide; Eddie saves Bev's life without reflection by instantly making her drink salt water to induce vomiting. Schopenhauer's and Miss Head's philosophy almost implies death: '"We must, without reserve, regard all presented objects, even our own bodies, merely as ideas, and call them merely ideas'" (p. 235). This evasive "male" abstraction (Miss Head's refuge from her femaleness and vulnerability) is agonizingly conflicted in Ginny's being with Eddie's immediate sensuality, which harmonizes with the direct experience of nature, the "ecological" philosophy derived from her biology class: I plucked a leaf off a forsythia bush and stared as it as though I had never seen a leaf before. Its atoms and subatomic particles were identical to those making up my fingers...Our earth was a burned-out hunk of mineral ash, but we-this leaf and Eddie and Bev and I-we were star stuff. Our bodies were almost entirely made up of light volatile elements. We had origins far grander than the cinder we inhabited would indicate. What affected one segment affected us all. (p. 236) She accepts Eddie's passion and rejects a comforting "intellectual" vision, symbolized by Worthley, which denies life and paradox. Northern Vermont, where Ginny and Eddie finally settle after leaving Worthley, is seemingly a place whose elemental, earthy life-patterns harmonize with Ginny's new belief in physical interdependence. Ironically, the farm the "Soybean People" establish, and the hostile neighboring town of Stark's Bog, are both such "perfect" cultural expressions of this belief that Ginny comes to experience them as of the same absolute nature as Miss Head's philosophy. Eddie's possessiveness becomes so total there also that it loses its nature as liberating passion. It demands of Ginny as much self-diminishment as will the heterosexual domesticity of its sequel, her marriage with Ira. Stark's Bog (Charlotte?), Vermont, is the opposite of Hullsport. Its population is ethnically homogeneous, ingrown, secure, so impervious to unexpected change, penetration by the outside world that weather is virtually its only topic of conversation. Ginny and Eddie's Soybean People, so much like the Stark's Boggers in their ingrown self-sufficiency, are rejected as "Communists, lesbians, draft-dodgers, atheists, food-stamp recipients" (p. 301). This is a microcosm of the United States during the Woodstock years. Their first attempt to "connect" with the Stark's Boggers, by giving blood at the local blood-drawing (a very symbolic event) is a disaster. To Ginny, "it gave me a great feeling of kinship to know that my plastic bag would nestle in the 206 �blood bank next to theirs. We were all in this business of life together" (p. 302). (Later in time, Ginny will similarly give blood to her mother, under more fatal circumstances). This personification of life on the lab slide is contradicted by social reality when Ira thanks the women ("girls") "for helping out our boys in Vietnam" at this special wartime blood drawing; the Soybean People are stunned to have inadvertently aided the Enemy. The bloodletting in Vietnam is supported both by Hullsport and Stark's Bog. With her marriage to Ira Bliss, after Eddie is ironically decapitated by a wire she herself has strung to destroy his snowmobilers, Ginny attempts individually to transform herself into a native of Stark's Bog. Initially she experiences herself as succeeding. When her radical friends visit and ask if she has succeeded in infiltrating the enemy and "laying the trip on them" (p. 396), she realizes that "by the time I had infiltrated to the heart of Stark's Bog, I had become a Stark's Bogger . . . People became what they did." Seeing how Ira's patriarchal ancester, Father Bliss, "lived on through his genes" in the people around her, as well as the ancestral stone house she inhabits (antitype of her own grandfather's imitation ante-bellum mansion, of wood, which her dying mother sells), she determines to have a child of her own to possess likewise "a hostage against death" (p. 397). Her motivation in bearing her daughter, Wendy, is itself an act of separation from her adopted culture: to perpetuate her own identity in rivalry with Father Bliss. Her refusal to fulfill Ira's desire to have a second child-relinquishing her individuating relationship with Wendy-is another. Her ultimate one, the ultimate failure of her "northing," is her clandestine affair with Hawk. This affair culminates in Ira's expulsion of her, without Wendy, when he finds them attempting Hawk's Oriental love ritual in the Bliss family graveyard. The symbolic mingling of contraries dominates Ginny's relationship with Hawk, whose aim in his "religion " is preversely like hers during her whole pilgrimage: "You are the eternal feminine principle. I am the eternal masculine principle. As we mate, we will balance opposing forces and requite our longing for wholeness" (p. 470). The wholeness Hawk seeks is one of abstractions, however; the senses become "principle." He fragments the already shaky wholeness of Ginny's union with Stark's Bog. He arrives there as a pilgrim, with a pack. He is a native Southerner (Atlanta), who fought in Vietnam, fled the army to Canada, and is passing through Stark's Bog heading south for home after covertly re-entering the country. He is, for Ginny, like a piece of Hullsport transferred north. He contains, unreconciled, the contradictions that have driven her from firmness (as fellow-Southerner and Canadian, soldier and war-resister, drug-taker and intellectual absolutist, virgin—he transcends ejaculation-and tyrannical male). His "impossible" identity is most like that of Hullsport. By getting Ginny expelled from the edenic Bliss world, he draws her back to the chaos of her own origins ('"I have to get south,' he muttered "-p. 495). In Hawk the actual inner chaos that American male culture variously reduced to pretences of order has broken through and become a personal reality; so Hullsport will eventually break through the power of other places to captivate Ginny into their different illusory versions of wholeness. Hullsport-and by extension the new, changing South as a whole-is a provincial place, but one more expressive of essential reality than the Big World outside. Ginny's daily trips between the edenic, primitive birth-cabin of her grandfather and the ultramodern hospital where her mother is uncontrollably dying are more "globegirdling" than her pilgrimages through America, just as Annie Dillard, in walking along Tinker Creek, explores the entire universe. After her mother has died, and before her failed attempts at suicide which 207 �end her story, Ginny tries to phone Hawk at his parents' home in Atlanta. She finds from his father (an ex-General) that Hawk has arrived, half-dead, but is now in the VA Hospital, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic: Hawk's father sounded faintly pleased: His son was not an army deserter, he was sick. His son was not rejecting his father's way of life-his son was crazy. "I see," she said weakly, "I'm very sorry." "Well, at least, he finally came home and faced up to his responsibilities like a man," his father said cheerfully, (p. 513) Ultimate male responsibility just like ultimate insanity, here expresses all the irreconcilables of Hullsport's world which have continued to drive Ginny in different directions-from Clem's brother Floyd's illegal bar, the Bloody Bucket, which he can disguise in an instant as a fundamentalist chapel, to her initiation into sexual excitement with Joe Bob Sparks at Brother Buck's revival meeting, to her rural glory as Persimmon Plains Burly Tobacco Festival Queen while being princess of a plastics fortune, to, in the "present," her unnatural success as a mother in training her surviving young chimney swift to fly, and its irrational suicide flying into the cabin's closed window next to its open door. Alther and Dillard both demand a disabused acknowledgement of mystery as a prerequisite to resolving mysteries, either those of the universe or those of individual identity. Ginny's swift, choosing death at the moment it is empowered to live freely, is responding to the Indeterminacy Principle which Dillard often evokes, "...That something is everywhere and always amiss is part of the very stuff of creation..." (Dillard, p. 184). Dillard with praise and wonder, Alther with lyrical self-satire, affirm the importance to individual survival, of living in and working through an environment which does not disguise fundamental mysteries. The "pilgrimage" to a place of fixity where personal and cosmic truths are revealed, is a Hessean illusion. The effectual pilgrimage must be a return to native origins-in time and space-to the small and primal elements of individual and collective existence, Tinker Creek or Hullsport, the cells of our own blood, of our own trees' leaves. NOTES 1. All quotations are from Lisa Alther, Kin/licks, (New York: New American Library, 1977), or Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek (New York: Bantam, 1975). 208 �WOMEN FOLK HEALERS OF APPALACHIA Karen Shelley and Raymond Evans Abstract This anthropological study looks at the role of the women as folk healers in Appalachian. Using data based on field research in Tennessee's Sequatchie Valley, the paper explores traditional and current practices of folk medicine. Beliefs in the curative powers of plants and other naturally occurring products of the environment provide the basis for both the prevention of disease and the restoration of good health. The paper sees the beliefs and practices of folk healing as part of the wider body of cultural adaptation to environmental conditions of the area. While the knowledge of medicinal plants and their application is part of the general body of folk traditions of .this area, preparing and administering these remedies are largely the activities of females. The importance of folk medicine in the lives of Appalachian people during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has been well documented in the historical and social science literature as well as the folklore of the area.' While both men and women healers traditionally contributed to the physical and emotional well-being of others, the role of women in the curing process is of special interest in the area of herbal medicine and maternal-infant care. This paper will consider some of the cultural factors within which curing behavior takes place and the nature of women's responisibilities and knowledge in these areas. The authors' current interest in the topic grew out of a study of healing arts and experiences in eastern Tennessee which was part of a grant funded by the Tennessee Committee for the Humanities. - The goal of this project, congruent with the aims of the T.C.H., is to organize a series of public dialogues involving both humanists in various academic disciplines and members of the community. The curative practices of faith healers, herbal specialists, and psychics as well as those of biomedical personnel are all part of the focus of concern.1 In an attempt to locate persons, who had knowledge of traditional healing and folk practices, the reseachers conducted interviews with residents of the Sequatchie Valley. This rural area is located northwest of Chattanooga in the Cumberland Plateau. The cultural boundaries of the valley include approximately seventy miles of fertile lowland country along the Sequatchie River and its bordering mountainsides. The area includes land in Marion, Sequatchie, Bledsoe, and a small portion of Cumberland counties (see Map I). Until recently, the resource of the valley provided a livelihood for its residents. At the close of the nineteenth century there was a brief economic boom when the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company established a coke oven complex and mining installation in Sequatchie County. There were also numerous other attempts at mining coal on the eastern side of the valley. The mining industry here is largely a low-profit, high-risk venture because of the irregular nature of the major coal seam.- Nevertheless, the numerous shaft and strip mines in the valley are evidence of the determination of the miners. Today, five population centers dot the floor of the valley. The largest town has approximately 4,000 residents, but the others, which are more typical of 209 �Map 1. The Sequatchie Valley. Sequatchle: (Adapted from L. Raulston and J. Livingood, A Story of the Southern Cumberlands, 1974, 149. ) the area, have no more than 2,000 residents each.' Of the total 34,551 persons living in Marion, Sequatchie, and Bledsoe counties in 1970, 85 percent of the people were classified by the census as rural, non-farm dwellers. This high percentage is atypical for Tennessee as a whole, where less than one third of the population in 1970 was classified as rural, non-farm.' The Sequatchie Valley residents are largely born and bred Tennesseans. Of the three-county residents, 87.6 percent live in their native state. Ninety-six percent of the people are white and many of these are descended from families who have lived in the region for five generations. 7 Most of the wage earners are employed in small-scale businesses, manufacturing, lumbering, and mining-related jobs/ While in the earlier part of this century most of the valley's people were farmers or stockbreeders or both, today the pattern has changed. Only 12 percent of the residents were classified as farmers by the 1970 Census and many of these landowners sup- 210 �plemented their incomes with industrial jobs. Twenty-six percent of the families had incomes below the poverty level in 1970 .'Although there is a growing pattern for people to find work outside the valley in Chattanooga and nearby areas, Sequatchie people much prefer to maintain their homes in the valley. For the older generation, particularly, life in Chattanooga is associated with the threat of a loss of intimate family ties and the security which extended family ties provided in the past. During the initial survey of our project, as informants were contacted, the emergence of some early patterns caused a re-evaluation of the scope of the project. References to persons who had experience and knowledge of folk healing were usually referrals to males. The typical format of the referrals can be seen in the words of one informant who said, "Yew ort'er go up thar ta Willuns Road en see Chals Nelmore's son yung Ben." Upon acting on the referral and arriving at "yung Ben's house',' the researchers found Ben (now about seventy years old) and his wife Lurleen. After passing pleasantries on the porch, we were invited inside and began to ask about wild herbs which grew on the mountainsides. Repeatedly, the man would volunteer a few candidates and then turn to his wife with a questioning look. The woman would then begin enumerating plant names, descriptions, and collecting procedures. Further questions concerning medicinal plants elicited more detailed information from female informants about drying and preparation techniques. When the informants repeatedly brought samples from their pantries and refrigerators to illustrate preparation methods, the interviewers realized that they were dealing not with just an exercise in ethnohistory but with elements of an on-going set of beliefs and practices. Although the following data are subject to further verification, some initial observations can be made on current folk medical beliefs and practices in the valley. In this area of eastern Tennessee traditional medicinal practices can be grouped into four main categories-herbal medicine, faith healing, psychic healing, and midwifery.10 While none of these categories were or are exclusively the domains of either males or females, the roles of women as lay practitioners and as specialists consulted by kith and kin are noteworthy. The four categories are discrete systems of curing, but they are ones which are not necessarily incompatible with one another. Although herbal medicine is primarily a lay tradition, there is a small degree of specialization in the sense that some persons who are thought to have greater experience and knowledge than others, are asked to give advice on the collection or preparation of some herbal concoctions. These persons are generally elderly women. The women in this category should be distinguished from a small number of other herbal specialists, both males and females, who package or bottle their products for sale. Further interviews are planned in order to establish more clearly the extent of traditional and current beliefs associated with faith healers and psychic healers. The focus of our immediate concern, however, is the role of women as herbalists. Before turning to consider the socialization process and female activities associated with the role of healer, we will first briefly consider the belief system of disease causation and curing operating in the Sequatchie Valley. Illness is attributed to a variety of sources and thus may be subject to several or a combination of curative procedures. Three different orientations exist. First, the germ theory of disease causation is acknowledged to be one possible reason for sickness. The most effective treatment, however, according to local tradition, does not necessarily follow a regimen prescribed by modern biomedical systems of thought. In cases of health failure, alternative treatment methods are evaluated and tried. Self-treatment, usually the first alternative, may employ herbal medicines, patent medicines, or supernatural assistance 211 �evoked through prayer. A combination of these methods is most often the course which is followed (see Figure 1). If this method fails then herbal specialists, faith healers, psychic or biomedical practitioners provide additional alternatives. Figure 1, A l t e r n a t i v e Curing Strategies A second category of beliefs explaining disease causation includes those which can be described as magical or religious. Afflictions which strike children or persons usually in good states of health are often believed to be supernaturally influenced. Religious testimonials at local church services are part of the oral tradition which give clues to the health ways and belief systems of community members. Prayers which evoke assistance from the Christian God provide the primary means of cure and source of guidance in the face of sickness believed to be of magico-religious causes. Illness is often perceived by people of the valley as a state of disequilibrium. One of the reasons for the bases of belief in the medicinal power of plants is that elements from the environment help to restore a sense of balance between the patient and his/her world. This concept of the cause of illness is similar to a traditional belief of the Cherokee Indians. According to this world view, harmony is the ideal state and results in good events. Events which are "bad" or undesirable like illness are the results of dis-harmony. Thus, sickness which arises out of states of disharmony can be cured by introducing the appropriate measures to restore harmony.'' The plural nature of the society in the Sequatchie Valley, like many other areas of Appalachia, is reflected in the use of multiple systems of curative strategies, as Figure 1 illustrates.12 The strong history and commitment to selfsufficiency in the economic sphere is also evident in the dependence on lay curing practices and the patterns of self-treatment. Since women are traditionally responsible for child care and nursing in the domestic sphere, they often rely on resources from their immediate environment. Within this context, then, we will turn to consider the traditional and current role of Sequatchie women in healing, prevention of disease, and childbirth. Traditionally, women had roles in the domestic sphere as wives, cooks, nurses, and teachers. Today, women still maintain these roles while 212 �taking on additonal ones as wage-earners. Even if a woman works outside the home, the traditional domestic responsibilities remain hers. Beyond the lay tradition of using herbs to ease the symptoms of colds and common childhood diseases, some women are considered by their neighbors and relatives to have special knowledge and skills in herbal arts. These women do not hang out shingles to advertise their skills. Rather, their reputation as advisors and consultants and as sources for dried herbs are well-known to people of the local area. Sequatchie women are not recruited into the herbal healing speciality because they possess any special supernatural attributes as is often believed to be the case of African and Native American healers.13 The primary factors involved in being an herbalist are (1) a belief in the healing powers of plants, (2) knowledge and skills in identifying, gathering, and preparing medicinal plants, (3) supernatural assistance from the Christian God, and (4) some on-the-job experience. Skills and artistry associated with herbal healing are acquired through the informal socialization process of young females. Sequatchie women most often acknowledged the source of their skills as their membership in a category of elder women, including mothers, grandmothers, and mothers' sisters. These women pass on their knowledge from one generation to the next. Long leisurely walks through the woods and trips back and forth between homes of kith and kin provided opportunities for learning names, uses, and habitats of medicinal plants. No evidence of formal apprenticeships have been found among the valley's female informants. The absence of a structured apprenticeship is in contrast to the socialization process of traditional healers among some Native American groups." Although the knowledge of herbal remedies and the responsibility for transmitting such knowledge usually rested with females, males were an additonal source of knowledge in certain families." One Sequatchie informant who is representative of this pattern learned many of her herbal skills from her mother who was a midwife in the valley. Her father, however, was an additional source of informaton and experience. He, like many other men of Appalachia, set out for the hills during 'sang season to dig ginseng (Panax quinquefollum).1*' Men who had an interest in the commercial value of herbs were particularly well-versed in the local habitats and seasonal variations of the quality of these herbs. Although ginseng is still used locally by female herbal specialists, its commercial value is primarily as an export. While some local root diggers sell to a drugstore proprietor who acts as a middleman, others sell directly to buyers in the Midwest. One individual produced documentation of selling dried ginseng in 1979 to a midwest company for $145.00 per pound. Goldenseal, which is a prolific plant in the region under study, is the other herb which has significant commercial value.17 The specific kind of knowledge and the extent of knowledge about medicinal herbs has often been underestimated. Herbal curing involves knowledge in at least five areas. First, most women who are experts in the medicinal value of herbs have knowledge of identifiable plant characteristics and knowledge of the kinds of habitats in which different species are found. While some of the herbs commonly used in the area under study grow in shaded areas near streams, others thrive primarily at higher elevations, or along roadsides and pasture land. A second area of knowledge these women have is an understanding of when to collect and which part of the plant should be collected. Some herbs are believed to have their greatest potency in the spring, while others are gathered in late summer or fall. Rather than collecting the entire plant, many herbalists are conservation-minded and try to collect only the parts which are needed. A third focus of knowledge includes drying techniques to prevent 213 �molding and to retain potency. Fourth, women are particularly knowledgeable about the preparation of herbal teas, salves, poultices, and other externally applied remedies. Admixtures of several herbs together with additions of flavorings are all part of the tradition which has to be learned. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the body of ethnoscience which specifies which plants have curative properties appropriate for use against certain diseases or complaints. The following table lists some of the herbs in current use in the Sequatchie. Common Name Scientific Name Folk Use Balm of Gilead Pupulus balsamifera Buds used to make a salve for wounds Blackberries Rubus villosus Wine made for stomach disorders; diarrhea Blackberry Roots Rubus villosus Tea for diarrhea Boneset Eupatorium Teas for colds; relieves symptoms perfoliatum associated with rheumatism Borage Borago officinalis Blood purifier Buckvine Mitchella repens Tea for kidney disorders Catnip Nepeta cataria Tea for newborns; tea for hives; teas used to induce drowsiness Cherry Tree Bark Prunus viginiana Cough syrup Clover Blossoms Trifolium pratense Tea for calming nerves Symphytom officinale Tea for calming nerves Comfrey Elderberry Roots Sambucus canadensis General health tonic Ginseng Panax quinquefollum Tea for symptoms associated with rheumatism; tea for bolt hives; tea for "female disorders" Goldenseal Tea for stomach disorders Hydrastis canadensis Heart Leaf Tea for colds; cough syrup Asarum canadense Ink Balls Ilex verticillata Tea for thrush Jimsonweed Datura stramonium Applied to boils Mullein or Verbascum thapsus Tea for colds; kidney disorders Rabbit Ears Allium cepa Onions Tea for hives; poultices for pleurisy, congestion, sore throat Pennyroyal Hedeomia Tea for colds; leaves contain pulegioides substance which acts as a mosquito repellant Pine Bark Pinus strobus Tea for diarrhea Polk Weed Phytolacca Roots boiled to make a bath americana for curing skin irritations; Berries used to make wine to relieve symptoms of rheumatism Rat's Vein Chimaphila Tea for calming nerves; colds umbellata Sage Eupatorium Tea for coughs; tonsilitis perfoliatum Sassafras albidum Sassafras General health tonic Sampson's Snake Aristolochia Tea for measles and pleurisy serpentaria Spice Wood Lindera binzoin Tea made from inner bark used to calm nerves Yellow Root Hydrastis Mouth ulcers; tea for stomach canadensis disorders 214 �Yellow root is one of the most well-known locally found herbs in the Valley. Residents can also purchase the root in powdered form from drugstores in the region. Its primary value is in relieving soreness from mouth ulcers. The root is also chewed as a way of cleaning the gums and teeth. A category of herbs used traditionally and having continuing popularity today are those which local believers cite as effective in the relief of symptoms associated with rheumatism. These concoctions are generally wines or mixtures of alcohol and herbs. Ginseng roots soaked in whiskey or wines made from polk berries or blackberries are currently in use. Tea made with the boneset plant is another remedy associated with curing arthritic discomforts. Medicinal herbs used for curing and easing the discomforts of infants and children are well-remembered by women who is past years acted as mid wives. In the case of home deliveries, catnip tea is given to infants before the mother is able to nurse. Small doses of teas made with fennel or catnip are cited as effective for infants suffering from colic. These same two herbs are prescribed for infants plagued with hives, which in years past was more common than it is today. These practices, like much of Appalachian folk medicine, were heavily influenced by Native American practices. In most Native American cultures, the primary objective of all obstetric practices was the ease and comfort of the mother. Southeastern Indians used an infusion of the bark of poplar, wild cherry, and dogwood given to the expectant mother at regular intervals." Numerous other remedies were used by Native American women during labor either to promote contractions or to relieve pain. The Alabama Koasatis used boiled roots of the cotton plant as an aid in the birt process." Native American infants also received herbal teas and herbal baths. Cherokee Indian infants were bathed in golden club and water every new moon. 20 In the Sequatchie Valley today many of the best-known and most often used herbs are intended to relieve discomforts of colds and flu. These herbs, according to local belief, act as mild diuretics and relaxants. Those most commonly mentioned are heart leaf, pennyroyal, and fever weed. Cough syrups made from cherry bark and heart leaves are also used to relieve symptoms associated with influenza. As has been demonstrated by the above data, traditional health care concepts and folk medicine practices are still a significant part of the lives of some Appalachian peoples. To a large degree, these traditions are kept alive by women who see curing as a part of their overall role as guardians of the family. Within this context, Appalachian people usually attempt to choose between modern and traditional health care systems or sometimes both on the basis of personal and cultural factors. These cultural implications should not be overlooked by those concerned with health delivery systems involving Appalachian people. A major factor is the rising cost of biomedical health care, particularly for those who cannot afford insurance. Another basic factor relates to scheduling. Many Appalachian people, particularly those who work outside their home community, cannot consult a specialist during normal office hours. Distance presents another problem to many people. For others, their traditional religious beliefs stress a dependence on God rather than medicine for healing. A final factor is the traditional Appalachian concept of selfreliance and distrust of outsiders which creates a strong tendency to depend on family and traditional means of curing. 215 �NOTES 1. Marion Pearsall, Little Smokey Ridge (Lexington, Kentucky: University of Alabama, 1959: Jesse Stuart, "New Wine in Old Bottles/' Kentucky Folklore Record 12 (1966): 105-7; 13 (1967): 20-24; Grady M. Long, "Folk Medicine in McMinn, Polk, Bradley and Meigs Counties, Tennessee, 19101927," Tennessee Folklore Society, Bulletin 28 (1962): 1-7; Mary B. Williford, "Income and Health in Remote Rural Areas," Ph. D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1932; John Parris, These Storied Mountains (Asheville, N.C.: Citizens-Times Publishing Co., 1972); Augustin Gattinger, The Medicinal Plants of Tennessee Exhibiting Their Commercial Value (Nashville: F. M. Paul, 1894); Arnold Krochmal, A Guide to Medicinal Plants of Appalachia, Forest Service Research Paper (Washington, D.C.; U. S. Forest Service, 1971). These are only a few of the noteworthy sources on folk medicine in Appalachia. 2. "The Art of Healing" was a grant funded by The Tennessee Committee for the Humanities awarded to Dr. Clive Kileff, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The authors acknowledge Dr. Kileff's continuing interest and cooperation. 3. Additional funding is presently being sought by the authors to conduct further household surveys on the use of traditional and biomedical curative practices in the Sequatchie Valley. 4. Earl C. Case, The Valley of East Tennessee, Bulletin 36, State of Tennessee Geological Survey, 1925, p. 51. 5. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population: 1970, General Social and Economic Characteristics. Final Report PC(1)-C44, Washington, D.C., 1971, p. 167. 6. Ibid., p. 168. 7. Ibid., pp. 325-31. 8. Leonard Raulston and James Livingood, Sequatchie: A Story of the Southern Cumberlands (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1974), pp 213-230. 9. U.S. Bureau of Census, General Social and Economic Characteristics, pp. 365,369, 371. 10. Helen Bullard and Joseph Krech, First Hundred Years (Crossville, Tennessee: Private Publication, 1956), p. 90. 11. William H. Gilbert, The Eastern Cherokee, 133 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1943); James Mooney and Frans M. Olbrechts, Swimmer Manuscript, Cherokee Sacred Formulas and Medicinal Prescriptions, 99 (Washington, D.C.; Bureau of American Ethnology, 1932). 12. Marion Pearsall has written about a similar pattern for rural Kentucky. Marion Pearsall, "Healthways in a Mountain County," Mountain Life and Work 36 (1960): 7-13. 13. Virgil Vogel, American Indian Medicine (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), p. 12. 14. David Jones, Sanapia: Comanche Medicine Woman (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1972). 15. For information on female herbalists, see Ellen J. Stekert, "Focus for Conflict, Southern Mountain Medical Beliefs in Detroit," Journal of American Folklore 83(1970); 126. For reference to male knowledge of herbal remedies, see the prepared comments by Marion Pearsall to E. Stekert, "Healthways," p. 150. 16. Marie B. Mellinger and Bill Stiles, "Sang Season," Foxfire 2(1968): 2832, 72-77; Marie B. Mellinger, "Sang Sign," Foxfire 2 (1968): 47-52. 216 �17. Nelson Coon, Using Plants for Healing (New York: Hearthside Press, 1963), p. 139. 18. Frank G. Speck, "An Adendum to Catawba Indian Herbal and Curative Practices," Manuscript on file with the American Philosophical Society. 19. Vogel, American Indian Medicine, p. 222. 20. Mooney and Olbrecht, Cherokee Sacred Formulas, p. 76. 217 �RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE AND COLLECTIVE ACTION: A STUDY OF VOLUNTARISM IN A RURAL APPALACHIAN CHURCH Michael Vaughn Carter Abstract This study is a theoretical inquiry into the nature of collective action in the local church, with application to an evangelical Protestant congregation in the southern Appalchian region. More specifically, the study examines the various interrelationships between the use of religious language in the church and the organization of the church as a voluntary association. A case study approach was utilized in which the author became a participant observer for two years while serving as pastor in a rural church in southwestern West Virginia. The study also reveals several implications in relation to a culture of poverty analysis of Appalachian culture and religion. Statement of the Problem Religious language has been traditionally understood as a means of communicating the spiritual message of the church (Whiteley, 1964: 40-50). The local church, unlike other voluntary associations, relies upon its message of spirituality as the primary motivational attraction to its present and prospective members. It does not use coercion, or to any large extent selective benefits, in sustaining a viable membership. The church of the southern Appalachians articulates a message which is embodied in an idiosyncratic language system. Although the Christian-Biblical symbols used are traditional to Protestant Christianity, they sometimes differ in meaning from one local church to another due to subcultural differences and denominational interpretation. If the local church relies upon language in attaining new members and in the continued motivation of existing members, then the following two questions arise: (1) Is there an association between religious language and collective action in the local church? (2) If there is such an association, is it positive in sustaining collective action or is it negative in prohibiting collective action? These questions acquire greater significance when applied to the local church of the Appalachians. Previous writers who have examined the Appalachian church describe it as housing "fatalistic" frontier religion which has an "individualistic" emphasis as opposed to a "social concern" (Weller, 1965, 1970, 1978; also see Brewer, 1962; Caudill, 1963; Erikson, 1976). Jack Weller (1965, 1978) one of the foremost exponents of this position concludes that the religion of the Appalachian is "personalistic," which in turn leads to a "socially passive ethic." This prevailing view originates from a "culture of poverty" paradigm (Lewis, 1966) but has also been integrated into the terminology of a variety of Appalachian theorists.1 In general, these descriptions of the Appalachian church result in an overall impression that the church exists only to serve the extreme individualism found within the subculture. And, no doubt, people do affiliate or attend the local church for personal reasons. This point need not be contested. But are these descriptions completely accurate? Does the religion of the Appalachian 218 �exist solely to satisfy some inherent trait of extreme individualism? Is there no collective consciousness? It is the purpose of this paper to examine these questions in view of Olson's (1971) theory of collective action. By doing so this approach demonstrates that the local church provides an array of "generalized benefits" which can only be accrued from collective action, not extreme indivdidualism. These "generalized benefits or collective goods" must be reevaluated in lieu of the previous descriptions of Appalchian religion. Religious language is then seen as a vital link in the ability of the local church to provide these "generalized benefits." Objective of the Study The study's objectives are essentially threefold. First, the theoretical framework defines the purpose of organization and the implications posed by the "free rider" problem, which is inherent in collective action based on voluntarism. 2 The size or scale of the organization is also considered. Religious language is then recognized as establishing a set of common "terms and condition" which are instrumental in the organizing of the local church. The second objective is the elaboration of a theoretical model. It is designed to examine the associational or nonassociational relationships between collective action types and the symbolic language of the church. The third and final objective is the application of the model to a specific congregation in rural Appalachia. Thus, a brief summary is presented of a case study (Carter, 1979) of a rural parish in southern Wayne County, West Virginia, where the writer served as pastor September 1977 to September 1979. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The church, like any organization or voluntary association, exists so as to serve the common interests of its members. Mancur Olson (1971: 15) states: "The achievement of any common goal or the satisfaction of any common interest means that a public or collective good has been provided for that group."3 In other words, the provision of "collective goods is the fundamental function of organizations generally." By collective it is meant that no one is excluded from the "benefit or satisfaction brought about by its achievement." Even those who do not pay or contribute to the collective good cannot be "kept from sharing in the consumption of the good, as they can where noncollective goods are concerned." The local church provides an array of collective goods and services, e.g., worship, education, congregational singing, fellowship dinners. They are usually available for both the membership and the surrounding community. Therefore, if the church is a provider of collective goods it must also engage in the process of collective action; for in fact, the collective goods are the end result of a process of collective action. The Free Rider Problem "The free rider" problem is always present in collective action based on voluntarism. Olson (1971: 21) describes the problem as follows: "Though all of the members of the group. . .have a common interest in obtaining the collective benefit or good, they have no common interest in paying the cost of providing that collective good." Each member within the organization would, in fact, prefer that someone else pay the entire cost of the collective good. This 219 �phenomenon of allowing an unequal distribution of the burden of collective action to occur can be called "the free rider" problem. It may occur to some extent in both large and small voluntary associations. The "free rider" problem consists of two stages. The first is an "assurance problem," and the second, a "commitment problem." In the "assurance problem," the participant needs to be assured that his or her action or contribution, whether it be money, energy, or time, is a shared collective event and not an individual enterprise. The ability of each individual to derive a full benefit from his or her own contribution depends upon the contribution of others. If the participant suspects that other members in the organization will not engage in a similar manner of collective action, an incentive is created for withholding one's own contribution. The second stage is the problem of maintaining a commitment to the provision of the collective good. If the participant has been assured that fellow members will contribute, another opportunity exists for the "free rider." Once he or she is assured of the contribution of others, the "free rider" can continue to enjoy the collective good without contributing to the collective action. This inherent problem of sustaining collective action has traditionally been confronted in one of two ways. The first is by coercion or compulsion; and the second by rewards or selective benefits (Olson, 1971: 13; see also Parsons and Smelser, 1954: 50-69). Size or scale of the voluntary association adds a dimension which is usually overlooked when considering viable options in seeking a solution to the "free rider" problem. Human organizations, including the church, must then be analyzed according to scale (Simpkins: 1977), whether it be large, small, or intermediate in size. It is then necessary to consider the implications posed by size to the voluntary association. The Large Organization. It would seem plausible that large organizations of an emotional or ideological element would not need to resort to a coercive or reward system in order to sustain collective action. One such example is patriotism usually draws its strength from a common ideology as well as culture or common religion. But, to support the modern state, taxes are compulsory by law. Collective action based upon voluntarism will not support most large organizations (Olson, 1971: 13). Max Weber (1947: 319-320) recognized this when he spoke of "leveraging" individuals through a selective benefit, reward, or special sanction, so that individuals might have a greater incentive to contribute. The Small Organization. In some small organizations each of the members, or at least one of them, will discover that personal gain or interest in the collective good goes beyond the entire cost of providing some degree of the collective good. There are some members in these organizations who would be better satisfied even if they had to provide the entire collective good by themselves than to go without it. This would occur if the benefit exceeded the cost for the individual (Olson, 1971: 34). The single most important point is that a small group, association, or organization may very well be able to provide the members with a collective good simply because of the individual attraction of the good. The Intermediate Organization. In an intermediate organization a member may or may not acquire enough of the generalized benefit to justify his or her own contribution. Groups of this size are large enough that an individual would not find it profitable to pay for the entire collective good; yet, the group would sufficiently notice the loss of only one member. If a member decides not contribute. the cost will noticeably rise for the others in the group; they too 220 �may then refuse to contribute and the collective good would cease. On the other hand, a member might realize that he or she would be worse off without the collective good even though a contribution had to be made. Therefore, the member might or might not decide to contribute for the provision of the collective good. The result is indeterminate (Olson, 1971: 43). The local church is just one organization which falls into the intermediate classification. Although it can be found as both large and small, it is primarily an organization that belongs in the intermediate category. It is the size of this organization which renders it indeterminate as to whether it (the local church) will provide enough incentive for the provision of collective goods. Therefore, the church like other intermediate organizations may or may not be able to sustain enough collective action to supply an optimal level of collective goods. If the church is to continue the provision of collective goods, it must then overcome the inherent problems (i.e., assurance and commitment) of collective action. Collective Action and the Local Church in Appalachia The local church in the Appalachians stands as a curious institution when interpreted through a culture of poverty paradigm. This paradigm maintains that the subculture of the Appalachians is one of self-generating or cyclic poverty (Walls, 1976). Moreover, the organizations therein do not exist to provide Olson's concept of a "generalized benefit," but rather to meet the "personalistic" needs caused from the subculture's extreme individualism. Jack Weller contends that the Appalachian cannot engage in collective action, except it meet individualistic needs; hence, he or she must rely upon the outside, more general culture for assistance. The puzzle within the culture of poverty analysis of collective action in Appalachia can be summed up with the following question: How does one account for the omnipresence of voluntary associations, i.e., the local church, which depends upon collective action over time? It is with this question that a culture of poverty analysis becomes somewhat anomalous. The local church, in its varied forms, is one voluntary association that can be found throughout the Appalachians. Its survival, according to a culture of poverty paradigm, has been in a subculture of (questionable) nonjoiners. In other words, the local church in Appalachia has been to overcome subcultural traits, as well as inherent problems of collective action. How then does one explain the prevalence of the local church, much less its continued provision of collective goods? In the upcoming discussion, language will be linked to culture and the local church so as to set forth a plausible answer. Culture, Language, and Organization A culture and the organizations contained within depend upon the existence of common languages. Human communication and human transactions cannot occur without reference to the common understanding which is inherent in a common language (Olson, 1978: 5). Language is especially important due to its ability to affect human interaction. Whorf has emphasized that language as a system of "conceptual categories tends to shape and channelize thought processes" (Ostrom, 1977: 2). The church must depend upon language if a common understanding is to prevail among the membership. People cannot effectively participate in the 221 �affairs of the church without first knowing what the "terms and conditions" are. Furthermore, the participation in the church, as a social organization, implies that the members are in some basic agreement about the "terms and conditions and standards of value that guide the endeavors" of the membership whether it be in individual or collective action (Ostrom, 1978: 5). If a general agreement does not prevail and the people do not perceive their interest being served, one cannot expect the membership to participate constructively in the affairs of the local church. The church has developed a highly specialized langauge system. This langauge system for the Protestant Church is virtually uniform in content, but not in application. Cultural traits such as language patterns and modes of organization differ from one cultural setting to another. The language of the church, although basically the same as far as Christian terminology is concerned, is not always applied in like manner. If an analysis is made of religious language, whether it be an examination of the analogy, the statement, or the parable, signs and symbols must be understood within the "subcultural ethos" (Stackhouse, 1972) of which it forms a part. Because signs and symbols have a cultural meaning many social scientists have either misquoted, misunderstood, or simply ignored their importance (Madden, 1968). In summary, the church stands as one social organization which provides an array of collective goods, but does not rely upon the conventional methods of motivation, such as coercion or selective benefits, (to any large degree). The primary type of leverage lies in the symbolic nature of a highly specialized language system. Collective action, must in part, be motivated by this symbolic mode of communication. THEORETICAL MODEL The purpose of the theoretical model is to analyze the composition of religious language when it accompanies collective action events in the local church. It is designed to show the association between certain religious symbols and voluntaristic acts in the congregation. The model is based upon the working hypothesis that religious language serves as an instrument of collective action in the local church. The highly specialized language system of the church has traditionally been viewed as a system antagonistic to the process of social organization (Whitley, 1964: 42). Contenders of this view believe the church to be a divine fellowship, not a social organization. Language may however perform two functions. The first function of religious language is to communicate the spiritual message of the church. But it also, secondly, establishes a set of common terms and conditions among people as necessary for a viable social organization. The model (as shown in Figure 1) is composed of two complementary sections. The first half analyzes the symbolic material found within religious statements; and the second half distinguishes three criteria so as to establish collective action typologies. Symbolic Types Religious statements can be analyzed in terms of five symbol types: (1) God Type, (2) Commitment Type, (3) Pragmatic Type, (4) Eschatological Type, and (5) Environmental Type. The God Type. This symbol is any symbolization which directly refers to a superior being, force, or intelligence defined as being "Godlike." In most 222 �THEORETICAL MODEL FIGURE 1 ��instances it will be revealed through one of the three trinitarian concepts of God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each of these have various derivations, e.g., Lord, Heavenly Father, Master, Good Shepherd. The Commitment Type. Symbols in this category place an obligation on the individual to support a specific cause or event within the work of the church. Some "commitment" symbol usage would seem to be imperative in any voluntary association due to the constant need for volunteers. Commitment is expressed in a variety of ways within the evangelical church. It is most vividly portrayed by the "altar call" which is voiced by forms of challenge or questions such as: "Won't you give your heart to Jesus?" The Pragmatic Type. The "pragmatic" symbol is closely related to the commitment symbol; however, the distinction lies in the difference between commitment to a future obligation and performance of that obligation. This symbol is related to actual participation in the provision of collective goods. Examples such as "I'm working for the Savior" or "I do what the Lord would have me to do," emphasize performance in the present as opposed to commitment for the future. The Eschatological Type. The "eschatological" type symbol refers to a futuristic and otherworldly event or place. "God's Heaven and Satan's Hell" are the most common examples. Others include "the Second Coming" (of Christ) and "Armageddon." Many times this symbolization will appear in phrases such as: "a land of no more tears," or "when the roll is called up yonder I'll be there." These, no doubt, convey a powerful emotional yearning within the local church. The Environmental Type. This type provides a means of characterizing the immediate surroundings of the church. Titles of hymns and sermons often tell of the environmental setting. One case in point found in the Appalachians is that of the folk hymns "God Walks the Dark Hills" and "The Unclouded Day." These vividly portray this symbolic type within a specific cultural ethos. Collective Action Types The second half of the theoretical model is composed of three attributes so as to establish collective action typologies. These attributes are to distinguish (1) type of action, (2) type of leadership for initiating the action, and (3) degree of congregational involvement. First, within the church, collective action occurs in one of two modes: contributions of money and contributions in kind. Second, it is initiated by either the pastor or a member or officer of the congregation. And third, collective action takes place with various degrees of congregational involvement, ranging from an individual to the entire congregation. These criteria are not entirely inclusive nor mutually exclusive; however, they do yield a manageable classification system when examining the evangelical church in Appalachia. The Application The application of the model rests upon Ostrom's (1978: 5) observation that "people cannot effectively participate in the affairs of the community without knowing what the terms and conditions are." These terms and conditions for the church rest in the symbolic meanings found within its highly specialized language system. Religious symbols establish a set of terms and conditions which then act as common instruments of collective action in the provision of 225 �collective goods in the church. The five symbolic types and the three examining criteria for collective action provide this model with an operational set of parameters. By cataloging the symbol type and observing the three criteria of collective action, associations will or will not exist between the two respective halves of the model. The utility of the model lies in the association between langauge and the church to sustain collective action for the provision of collective goods. SUMMARY OF CASE STUDY This is a brief account of an in-depth case study about a rural church located in the southern half of Wayne County, West Virginia, near the town of Fort Gay (pop. 700).4 Since its founding in the late 1860s the church has affiliated with the American Baptist Convention due to their early evangelization of West Virginia. Organizationally, the church is congregational in polity and led by a minister employed by majority vote of the congregation. The current membership is 125, with approximately 85 active members. The difference between formal membership and active membership lies primarily in outward migration rather than lack of participation. Doctrinally the church is conservative-fundamental, although distinguished by its heterogeneous membership in terms of social class. For instance, the Sunday School superintendent is a retired banker; the treasurer, a retired school teacher; the clerk, a housewife; and the board of deacons is composed of skilled technicians and farmers, as well as a top administrator for the State Department of Welfare. FINDINGS OF THE CASE STUDY Three things appear to be necessary to connect language with collective action at this Appalchian parish. First, the symbols must be recognized as "spiritual." If the symbols are not associated with the spirituality of the church then the congregation does not find them compelling. Second, the symbolic expression must contain a reference to the "God" type symbol. This symbolic type provides an authority base for undertaking collective action, one that is well recognized within, as well as outside, the church community. Third, the symbolic expression must contain the "pragmatic" type symbol, the use of which depends upon a general sense of commitment articulated separately through "commitment" type symbols. The expression may or may not contain "eschatological" or "environmental" symbols. The pragmatic symbol, though it can stand alone, acquires greater weight if associated with eschatological or environmental symbols, or both. The eschatological type symbol is also helpful in establishing the spirituality of a symbolic expession. Collective action, whether it be "contributions of money or in kind," occurs with a high frequency at this rural church. The members rise to meet a variety of challenges in the provision of collective goods. For example, if money is needed for a new fixture in the church, it is given by the congregation. If a family of the congregation needs financial assistance, it is provided. If volunteers are needed in Vacation Bible School, the members volunteer. If an individual is sick or hospitalized, assistance is made available. If a fellowship dinner is "potluck," food appears by the carload. The congregation provides these plus many more collective goods because of their 226 �deep sense of commitment to this voluntary association and the members within. If asked why, their response is voiced through one or a combination of the five symbolic types previously mentioned. Symbolic language in this church works as an instrument for overcoming the "free rider" problem inherent in collective action. First, the language is addressed to the "assurance problem," i.e., the need for each member to be assured that others will contribute by articulating a ground of authority and jointness and establishing a shared sense of congregational participation in the provision of collective goods. The combination of "God" type and "pragmatic" type symbols, e.g., "working for the Savior," or "giving your all to Jesus," convey pragmatic terms and conditions which carry the assurance that those who believe in "the Savior" will "work." Second, the language addresses the "commitment" problem, i.e., the need for individuals to feel committed once assured of other's contributions by providing an authoritative means of expressing a continuing commitment to the church. The occasion for expressing commitment at this rural parish is most often the altar call. By responding to the altar call, individuals manifest signs of commitment. In addition to coming forward, individuals articulate their sense of obligation through symbolic expressions both to the pastor and the congregation. To "give your heart to Jesus" is to make a basic commitment with a profound sense of personal obligation. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Local church congregations throughout America and especially in rural Appalachia are for the most part "intermediate" sized groups. This case study is one example. Given that collective action is indeterminate for this size of collectivity, what makes the difference at this rural parish in its ability to sustain congregational collective action on a voluntary basis? Religious language composed of meaningful symbolic expressions holds the key. Consensus is a necessary condition for voluntary collective action to occur. Language cannot elicit collective action in the absence of consensus. Language is an essential instrument in the act of sharing consensus. The congregation's consensus in this case study rests upon common terms and conditions embodied in a language system which is composed of symbolic types representing "God," "commitment," "Pragmatic action," "eschatology," and the "environment." Implications of the Study: Appalachia/America This study raises several questions in relation to Appalachian culture and religion as portrayed by several previous writers, especially the proponents of a culture of poverty paradigm. The study poses an anomaly for this paradigm in at least two points. First, in a culture of poverty analysis, Appalachian religion and culture are described as "fatalistic." The tentative conclusion reached by this research is that within the domain of the local church "spirituality" has been misinterpreted as "fatalism." Eschatological symbolism is not fatalistic for the congregation of this case study. To the contrary: rather than symbolizing passive acceptance and resignation, these symbols stir to action. Second, the general effectiveness of leadership in a process of collective action in the rural Appalachian congregation may depend on using the right language. Perhaps ministers who were educated outside the Appalachian region that failed to find viable collective action used the wrong language in communicating to the congregation. It would appear that Weller and others may 227 �have disregarded the importance of conservative Christian-Biblical symbols as instruments of collective action. Outside the Appalachian context, religious scholarship in the liberal tradition has held the principle of voluntarism in high esteem (Adams, 1976), while disparaging the use of conservative Christian-Biblical symbols. The results of this study would seem to indicate that the traditional liberal point of view is internally contradictory. Conservative symbolism may in fact be an important source of voluntarism and collective action in the local church congregation. Notes 1. A recent exception to this prevailing view of religion in Appalachia can be found in the introduction by B.B. Maurer and the theoretical supplement by John D. Photiadis to Religion in Appalachia (1978). Also, an exception to the prevailing view of fatalism concerning culture can be found in O.N. Simpkins's article on "Culture" in Mountain Heritage (1075). Jack Weller's position does have a minor difference from the culture of poverty thesis set forth by Lewis. The distinction for Weller is that the Appalachian simply has no culture or as he states, "mountain culture is inadequate..." (1965: 154-160). 2. The phrase "collective action based on voluntarism" could be replaced by the term "voluntary associations." The longer phrase is preferred because of the distinctions between the types of collective action. Collective action does not necessarily mean that it is based upon "the voluntary principle" (Adams, 1976). It may be action that is collective, but motivated by force (coercion), cooptation, or selective benefits; each one of these cases is not voluntaristic. The distinction for this study is imperative. Collective action within the parameters of this study is meant to refer "to the joint action of individuals organized to obtain a common goal, contrasted to the separate actions of individuals" (Carter, 1979). This joint action is maintained by voluntarism, "a principle of organization based upon the free and willing consent of individuals (Carter, 1979). 3. All quotes in this paragraph come from Olson (1971:15). 4. In the space of this paper the case study cannot be fully developed; therefore, the writer will only be able to give a brief summary of the results. The full study is contained in the masters thesis of the writer (See References). REFERENCES Adams, James Luther. On Being Human Religiously. Edited by Max L. Stackhouse. Boston: Beacon Press, 1976. Brewer, Earl. "Religion and the Churches." The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Edited by Thomas R. Ford. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1962. Carter, Michael V. "Religious Language and Collective Action: A Study of Voluntarism in a Rural Appalachian Church." Master's thesis, Marshall University, 1979. Caudill, Harry M. Night Comes to the Cumberlands. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press Book, 1963. ______. The Watches of the Night. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press Book, 1976. Erikson, Kai T. Everything in its Path. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976. Hadden, Jeffrey K. The Gathering Storm in the Churches. New York: Anchor Books, 1969. Lewis, Oscar. The Children of Sanchez. New York: Random House, 1961. 228 �_____. "The Culture of Poverty." Scientific American, October 1966, pp. 16-25. Mauere, B.B. Introduction to Religion in Appalachia. Edited by John D. Photiadis. Morgantown: West Virginia University, 1978. Olson, Mancur. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971. Ostrom, Vincent. "Culture, Science and Politics." Paper presented at Indiana University, 1977. _____. "Language, Reason, and Discourse." Paper presented in a workshop at Indiana University, December 20, 1978. Parsons, Talcott and Smelser, Neil. Economy and Society. Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1954. Photiadis, John D. Theoretical supplement to Religion in Appalachia. Edited by John D. Photiadis. Morgantown: West Virginia University, 1978. Simpkins, O. Norman. "A Scale Approach to Community Development." Paper presented at Marshall University, August 1977. _____. "Culture." Mountain Heritage. Edited by B.B. Maurer. Morgantown: Binding and Printing Company, 1975. Stackhouse, Max L. Ethics and the Urban Ethos. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. Walls, David S. "Central Appalachia: A Peripheral Region." Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare. 4(1976): 232-247. Weber, Max. Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Translated by Talcott Parsons and A.M. Henderson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1947. Weller, Jack E. Yesterday's People. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1965. Religion Mirrors and Meets Appalachian Culture." _____. "How Appalachia in Transition. Edited by Max E. Glenn. St. Louis: The Bethany Press, 1970. _____."Salvation is Not Enough." Religion in Appalachia. Edited by John D. Photiadis. Morgantown: West Virginia University, 1978. Whitley, Oliver R. Religious Behavior: Where Sociology and Religion Meet. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1964. 229 �Goals for the Collection and Use of Appalachian Oral Materials in the 1980s Jay Robert Reese Abstract This paper suggests that, although the present state of Appalachian ressearch and study is healthy, new goals need to be set for the field. The sixty-year rush to record Appalachian culture has resulted in a large body of oral material that remains largely unused. The Appalachianscholar should now spend most of his energy and time on the cataloging, analysis, and use of material collected. There is a great need for an interdisciplinary method of indexing oral materials, an index of Appalachian oral resources, and a bibliography of Appalachian oral materials. Scholars must begin adapting this material to classroom use and must analyze it for answers to questions about Appalachian culture. The present state of Appalachian research and study seems healthy indeed. Not only are the traditional perspectives of Appalachian study (e.g., English, history and folklore) still productive, but their cohabitation, if not marriage, with the newer disciplines that examine Appalachia with respect to its social and political structure, its economy, and its natural environment seems possible. Where once only Berea College was synonymous with Appalachian studies, now almost every college and university in southern Appalachia is involved either in the preservation or the teaching of Appalachian studies, now almost every college and university in southern Appalachia is involved either in the preservation or the teaching of Appalachian life and culture. Even though Appalachian study centers, workshops, and programs abound, the interest necessary to support these diverse activities is not diminishing; in fact, it is growing each year. This new popularity of Appalachian study is forcing Appalachian scholars to question whether the study of Appalachia in the next decade should be based on the theoretical principles that have guided it for the last thirty years. This question seems especially pertinent for the traditional modes of Appalachian study that, to a large extent, have brought the discipline to where it is now. In short, now that we have arrived,where do we go from here? The specific question that must be addressed in 1980 is whether or not past justifications for Appalachian research, as well as methods of investigation resulting from these justifications, are viable for the next decade. Clearly they are not. The primary justifications for the collection of Appalachian materials since 1920 has been the imperative to record the folk ways and speech of the older Appalachians (those persons seventy years of age or more) before they and their ways of life cease to exist. This belief that the researcher's prime responsibility is to save quickly passing aspects of Appalachian culture from historical extinction engendered a method of collection that might be called, "rapid, random-recording research." For the past sixty years, the trained and the untrained, professional and the non-professional, the scholarly and the non-scholarly have flocked to the deep hollows to record the customs and speech of elderly Appalachians. Because of this sixty-year rush to record Appalachia, the usual prerequisites 230 �of scientific and scholarly research have often been ignored. Few field projects have been preceeded by sufficient scholarship to ascertain how the material collected would fit into the broad range of Appalachian research or even if it would duplicate already existing data. Seldom has thought been given to the future use of the material nor has it been collected as an aid in the solution of particular scholarly or cultural questions. Too often in the past researchers have had no clear conception of what they wished to elicit from their informants or why the information would be valuable. Instead, they would simply appear at the cabin door, tape recorder in hand, to ask an elderly person to reminisce over old times. After an hour of such enjoyable babble, the fieldworkers would return home satisfied they had preserved some endangered species of Appalachia. The above is not meant to disparage the research already accomplished. The result of this long rush to preserve Appalachia has produced an oral record of a culture that is undoubtedly unsurpassed anywhere in the nation. It is not unusual for the academician to be approached in his office by a person who claims to have hundreds of valuable tapes of oral interviews of "pure Appalachians" in the trunk of his car. It is also not unusual to find not only that they are there, but that they are indeed valuable. Almost every college within the Appalachian area has some type of collection of potentially valuable Appalachian material in one stage of disuse or another. The question of goals and objectives for the 1980s is not raised to criticize the past, but to evaluate directions for the future. It has been assumed that it is far better to duplicate previous studies than to chance valuable raw information being forever lost. The rush has been to record; the task of analyzing or even cataloguing has been left to someone else, to a later time. It is now, of course, later; we are that someone else and in all truthfulness we must admit that we have either suceeded or failed in meeting the first primary goal of Appalachian research. Either that culture that was rediscovered to America in 1920 has been preserved or it is lost to history forever. It is incongruous to use the same justification in 1980 that was so urgently voiced in 1920. A full six generations of seventy and eighty year old Appalachians have died since the original subjects were found living in their 1920 mountains. Either we are now in the rather embarrassing position of admitting that the old folk ways and speech did not die out as predicted (in which case one wonders if they ever will) or that the "preservation of the culture" justification is no longer valid. Certainly if any change has taken place in the Appalachians during the past sixty years, the twentieth-century-born seventy and eighty year olds we are interviewing today are not representative of the same culture as their 1920 counterparts, who were born in pre-Civil War, frontier America. The acceptance of the fact that we cannot still justify our research solely by a simple call to the preservation of passing folk ways and speech—because they are either passed or not passing at all-is important; for all of us still have a tendency to rush once more to the hollow. The simple observation that we may not need to spend all, or even most, of our energy collecting, that our time may now be demanded in different areas, has been obscured for several reasons, not the least of which is our love of collecting. To a true folklorist, oral historian, or dialectologist of our generation, field work is the magic of our universe. There is always a sense of loss when we finish an interview and must return to the everyday newness of our office. If we had wished to stay in our cement cubicles and talk with our collegues we would have become "regular" teachers, not the woodscolts we are. There are, of course, other reasons that may have hidden this simple observation from our mind's eye, such as the relative rate of cultural change. 231 �Although Appalachian culture has altered greatly since 1920, so has the culture of the rest of the United States. As a result even though for some time we have not been preserving (i.e., recording) what was identified somewhat romantically as the southern highland culture of the 1920s, there still appeared to be sufficient superficial differences between the manners and speech of a present seventy-year-old Appalachian and that of the youth-dominated culture of the 1960s and 70s, so that the preservation theory, if not examined too closely, seemed valid. It is obvious, however, that the type of information recently received differs greatly from that of 1920. Now, time and time again, the response to a question concerning a custom or a form of speech that was commonly found in 1920 is "I don't recall that in my lifetime, but now my parents and their parents said that." It is evident that much of what we are collecting, supposedly to preserve, is now second-hand, hearsay folk speech and culture. In recent years our over-reliance on the preservation justification has constantly forced us to present the exception as the rule in Appalachian research. Since the fifties field researchers have become aware of the increasing difficulty in finding Appalachian subjects who even approximate the romantic stereotype of the pure Appalachian as identified in 1920. Occasionally one encounters subjects who sufficiently resemble the traditional mountain man or woman for us to stamp "formed in Appalachia of pure, original, old cultural ways and speech" upon them, but generally for every acceptable subject encountered, a hundred must be rejected. The areas we go to record are more and more remote and less and less representative of the present Appalachian. Even then it is not unusual to head for the farthest hollow, go up an almost impossible mountain road, walk a mile or two, sit in a non-electric cabin by the side of a pristine fnountain creek and talk to an aged but talkative Appalachian only to find during the course of the interview that six other researchers have been there previously. Perhaps because of these occurrences, one notes that a subtle but significant perceptual shift has taken place in Appalachian research. The older Appalachian is no longer viewed in the same temporal frame of reference as his nonAppalachian contemporary, rather his behavior is compared to that of the dominant culture of the 1970s, a culture sixty or seventy years his junior. This is quite different from what was seen from 1920 through the 1950s. If one reads these early accounts, it is obvious that the ways of the Appalachian were always compared to the ways and customs of persons his own age in other part of the nation1. That is to say, the uniqueness of older Appalachians of 1920 did not result simply because they were old or because they differed from the younger generation, but because they differed significantly from other persons their age in other parts of the nation. Today, however, one might argue that to a large extent the Appalachian is considered unique not because he is an Appalachian, but because he is seventy years old. One wonders if most of the information we now receive from older speakers cannot be gathered from any seventy or eighty year old rural American. In truth, of course, we are no longer doing the same type of collecting that we once did. In recent years we have begun to investigate the total range of Appalachian culture. The older person is not the only subject who is examined, recorded, and taped. More and more as we conduct mutli-generational research which gathers information on middle-aged and younger Appalachians we are increasingly focusing upon contemporary rather than past cultural characteristics. Although we seem somewhat reluctant to admit this in public, it is nonetheless true. Even though our research has changed, we have not examined where we are going as a discipline. As a result we may end up at the end of the 1980s with another generation of Appalachians stored in our personal and 232 �institutional archives, as unused and perhaps as unusable as the first. Perhaps nothing is more indicative of the need for a new direction in our study of the Appalachian culture as the term "Appalachian studies" itself. Always before we have studied Appalachia; now we have programs of Appalachian studies, programs through which we attempt to teach others about the past and present nature of Appalachia. As we attempt to do this we find that we have collected large quantities of raw data, yet we must rely for the most part on the insights and works of those who wrote before any of that material was recorded.1 If it is clear that past justifications for Appalachian research and collecting are no longer valid, what are some suggestions for the decade to come? First, we must design our research projects with a great deal more care than we have in the past. Second, we must collect what is most needed and in such a way that it is most useful. The day when one could justify going up in the mountains to simply collect bits and pieces of Appalachia seems over. A researcher now should know specifically what he seeks, how that information will help the solution of a scholarly or cultural problem and whether or not similar material has been previously collected. One might even suggest that the collection of Appalachian material is no longer the prime responsibility of the Appalachian scholar. Certainly, some collecting of comparable data from younger informants needs to be undertaken, and as we find gaps in existing material they should be filled, but I would suggest that the principal need of Appalachian scholarship in the 1980s is not collection. We should spend most of our energies, our time, and our resources on the cataloguing, analysis, and use of the material already collected. One might argue that the reason the quality of cultural understanding of Appalachia reflected in most books and articles is still only slightly above moronic prejudice is not due to the lack of data, but due to our lack of analysis and explication of that data.» Perhaps we have played in the field too long and now we must work in our offices. When one surveys the last twenty-year period of the collecting of oral Appalachian material, whether it be folkloric, dialectal, or historical, two points are immediately evident. The first is that in spite of the limited money available for such projects, a large and significant amount of oral materials of varied quality have been collected. The second obvious realization is that these materials, except for a few notable exceptions, remain largely unused. Stored in university library special collections or upon the shelves of the collectors, they are-for all practical purposes-useless. In many cases, because of the fragility of the tapes on which they are recorded, they will deteriorate before they are ever used. To understand this problem one must realize a particular curse of the collector: in a year he can collect materials sufficient for lifetimes of detailed analysis. In general, the potential use of a collection is always greater than the original reasons for its collecting. Although most collectors would share their materials with other scholars and teachers, few persons know what they possess. Thus to a large extent, scholars have been forced to reduplicate the work of predecessors, often without even being aware of the reduplication. Even if a scholar is aware of other collections, because there is no standardized method of indexing such materials, there is no feasible and reliable way of learning if previously collected materials would meet his or her specific needs. One of the primary goals of Appalachian scholars in the 1980s should be the development and use of an adequate indexing system. The development of a standardized, interdisciplinary method of indexing oral materials is essential if such materials are to be efficiently used. At present, each discipline collecting oral materials-history, folklore, and dialectology-has no systematized method 233 �of indexing; therefore, each research project indexes materials according to its own particular interests. Because of this a scholar often finds that the very information he needs to determine if a particular tape or collection is of value to his particular research project is absent from the index. To understand this need, one must distinquish indexing from processing. The processing of oral materials might include such activites as the transcription of the tapes or the notation of musical scores. Indexing, on the other hand, provides specific information on certain technological, methodological, and contextual aspect of the materials. The information needed by a scholar of one discipline is not necessarily that needed by another. It is believed, however, that if dialectologists, oral historians, and folklorists consulted each other, a list of the basic information needed by each can be drawn up. The resultant index form might consist of two easy-to-use parts. One, which would contain more general information, would be used at the time of recording. The other, a more detailed list, would be utilized when the tapes are processed for use by the individual collectors. Both forms might be designed principally as checkforms so as to reduce the complexity of indexing; however, they should provide space for the insertion of written explanations or comments on certain predetermined aspects. The availability of such indexes, which might be compiled as the Index of Appalachian Oral Resources, would promote a greater exchange of research data among scholars and teachers. Another major need of Appalachian studies in the 1980s is the development of a comprehensive bibliography of Appalachian oral materials. Without one there is little chance that even the best oral materials will be extensively used by teachers and scholars. Such a bibliography should be annotated so as to provide a general sense of the contents and scope of various collections. It should also tell where further information on a collection can be obtained. Such an Index of Appalachian Oral Resources and a Bibliography of Appalachian Oral Resources should complement each other. The bibliography would serve as a means for a quick search of possible materials, while the index would provide more detailed information on the various collections, sometimes even on specific sections of a collection. After preparation, the information in bibliography and index should be collapsed and prepared for inclusion in a computerized research data bank that would be amenable to computerized bibliographical search systems. Because of the development of Appalachian studies during the 1970s there is need of a detailed and authoritative work on the nature and range of the new multifaceted discipline. Such a work should be, of course, descriptive, but it is important that it contain a list of terms and definitions as well as an overview not only of Appalachian studies but also of the relationship of various disciplines to Appalachian studies. Without such a general guide, it is impossible for scholars who study the field from diverse perspectives to have a clear and accurate conception of the total discipline. Even when collected materials have had a certain currency within the scholarly community, they have not reached a much wider and potentially extremely significant audience-that of the classroom teacher. The basic reason for this is that teachers are not trained in the adaption of raw research and resource materials to classroom use. That is to say, that even if teachers know that such basic materials are in a library close to them, the research will not be utilized because teachers are not trained to adapt them to their present curriculum needs. Therefore, another prime objective of Appalachian scholarship in the 1980s should be pedagogical. It should set as one of its goals the preparation of materials that will demonstrate to teachers how to adapt oral Appalachian materials to secondary and elementary classrooms situations and 234 �currently used curriculum materials. It should also develop sets of classroom materials-at least one for elementary and one for secondary use-that have been adapted from oral Appalachian collections so that teachers can actually see the potential of such materials. There is, of course, one other aspect of Appalachian scholarship that no longer can be ignored during the 1980s. We must analyze our collections and use the data to answer questions concerning the present and past state of Appalachian culture. It is only when we address questions of significance, with our arguments supported by the raw material we have collected over these many years, that we can hope to aid the nation to see the region as it exists or to be of use as the region redefines itself in the last twenty years of this century. It is time to use the materials that we have spent much of our lives collecting to reach a more accurate understanding of the nature of the Appalachian culture. Notes 1. See for example Maristan Chapman, "American Speech as Practiced in the Southern Highlands," Century 117 (March, 1929): 617-23. 2. The standard readings on Appalachia remain works such as John C. Campbell, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland (Russel Sage Foundation, 1921); Harry Caudill, Night Comers to the Cumberlands (Little Brown, 1962), Horace Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders (Macmillian, 1922). 3 Some insightful essays and books on the nature of Appalachian culture have appeared in recent years, such as Higgs and Manning's Voice from the Hills (Boons, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1975) and recent editions of the Appalachian Journal; but impressionistic works such as Jack Weller's Yesterday's People (University of Kentucky Press, 1971) are still the rule. 235 �This page intentionally left blank �VI: ABSTRACTS 237 �MARY BRECKINRIDGE AND THE FRONTIER NURSING SERVICE: THE APPALACHIAN RURAL EXPERIENCE* Carol Crowe-Carraco During the early years of the twentieth century in rural Appalachia, the prenatal and postpartum treatment of mothers and babies was particularly appalling. Very often in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, granny women, having no formal training in midwifery, "cotched" babies in their lard-greased hands; they knew nothing of prenatal, postnatal and pediatric care. In 1925 in isolated Leslie County, Kentucky, forty-four year old Mary Breckinridge, in cooperation with the area's residents, established a unique family-centered health care system, staffed by trained nurse-widwives. This organization came to be called the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS). Using medical directives developed by an advisory body of physicians from beyond the mountains and riding on horseback, the FNS nurse-midwives provided medical services to some ten thousand people in a 375 square mile mountainous area, which had no roads or licensed doctors. Since midwifery training was unavailable in the United States, most of the FNS staff were British nurse-midwives or American nurses who had trained abroad. By 1930 the FNS included a hospital-health center, administrative headquarters, six residential outpost nursing centers, and a referral service outside of the mountains. When WW H brought the departure of most of the British staff and the end of American overseas midwifery training, Mary Breckinridge began a graduate school of midwifery, which expanded in 1970 to include a department of family nursing, where nurse-practitioners receive training. In its fifty plus years, the FNS has faced many problems: falls from horses, jeep wrecks, snakebites, near drownings, and the opposition of many segments of the medical profession. Yet it continues to exist, and its record is amazing. At the end of 1979, the FNS had delivered 18,535 registered maternity cases with a loss of only 11 mothers in childbirth. Long before the principles of community involvement were enunciated, Mrs. Breckinridge recognized that in order for the FNS to be effective, the people themselves had to participate in making the decisions which affected their own welfare, and in the word of Mary Breckinridge, Appalachia's foremost nurse-midwife, "The glorious thing about it is that it works. " •The majority of this paper has appeared under the title "Mary Breckinridge and the Frontier Nursing Service" in The Register ofthe Kentucky Historical Society 76 (July 1978) 179-191. 238 �THE BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY: A UNIQUE PART OF RURAL AMERICA* GranvilleB. Liles Though the frontier is gone, there is still enough of rural America available in Appalachia to provide an opportunity to reshape public attitudes toward the land. The Blue Ridge Parkway and its adjoining lands offer Americans a starting point to better understand the land as a community to which we all belong. Following the Blue Ridge mountains from the Shenandoah to the Great Smokies for nearly 500 miles, the Parkway must be considered an integral part of the southern Appalachians. Begun in 1935 as the first rural parkway in the world, it has served as a model in design, land-use planning, and land-use practices. Unfortunately, in recent years, changes have been occurring so rapidly that, without proper planning, the unique beauty and quality of this part of Appalachia will be lost. We have the model and the precedent to move into a new era of cooperative land-use planning, but there is at present no cooperative force working towards this purpose. If this rural environment is to be preserved, Virginians and North Carolinians, as well as all Americans, will have to come to grips with some form of land-use control. Parkway officials have been criticized for suggesting zoning or other land-use controls as means of protecting the investment in the Parkway and the resources in that total corridor. This should not lesson recognition of the need for more aggressive action by the states, local governments, and citizens in seeking alternatives to such programs. This paper explores some key planning concepts in cooperative land-use planning that are part of an approved Statement of Management for the Blue Ridge Parkway, identified as Management Objectives, as follows: Safeguarding the Scenic Corridor Revising the Resource Management Plan A Comprehensive Access Plan Revising the Park-wide Land Acquisition Plan Perpetuating the Cultural and Traditional Highlands scene These objectives offer a challenge to the planner, politician, land owner, and the citizen to unite their efforts and develop the framework for a cooperative plan that will prevent or minimize adverse uses of this special region of America. This paper has been published as a booklet by the Appalachian Consortium Press, Boone, North Carolina, 1980. 239 �A HERITAGE OF REGIONAL LANDSCAPES: APPALACHIAN BAPTISTRY PAINTINGS* Jack Welch Scattered throughout West Virginia and the Appalachian region in churches which immerse for baptism are a series of landscapes that have not previously been documented and studied, either by folklorists or art historians. These paintings are characterized by their depiction of the Appalachian landscape, usually showing a combination of mountains, water in the form of rivers, streams, or lakes, and trees. There are never any people in these paintings. One could look at the paintings only as an artist's view of the region. Some of the paintings are primitive, such as that by Richard Liming in the Wileyville, West Virginia, Church of Christ. This painting shows a fresh stream flowing forth toward the baptistry itself, a bright yellow sky, and strong birch and oak trees surrounding the water. The colors are primary and vivid. Other paintings, such as those done by Dorothy Decker in the Emmanuel Baptist Church in Parkersburg and the Vienna Baptist Church in Vienna, West Virginia, show the subtle play of sunlight across spring mountains. In one a sycamore tree is coming into leaf, below which, in the clear water, a trout is darting. These are joyous, fresh paintings done in a very sophisticated style. Nine other paintings representing a variety of techniques are discussed in the article. Another approach to these paintings is to consider the religious significance. In those churches which have communion only once each month, the paintings are displayed at the time of the communion, indicating a belief in the religious value of the paintings. The absence of people suggest a Reformation suspicion of images in general, but this must be investigated further. As a twentieth-century phenomenon in America, indoor baptistries created some controversy among churches which traditionally baptized only with running water. The paintings did something to assuage the anxiety about these indoor baptistries. Finally, outdoor baptisms were often aesthetically beautiful, with the congregation gathered around a deep pool in a stream singing while the candidate was immersed. The painting reproduces somewhat the aesthetic effect of that outdoor baptism. In fact, one artist indicated that he saw the painting as a kind of set before which the actual baptism would take place. These paintings deserve much more analysis. The author is documenting other paintings now and is studying the scholarship which would help to explain their religious significance. •This paper has been published in Goldenseal 6 (April-June 1980): 40-46. 240 �BRINGING SISTER HOME: THE FIGHT FOR JOB EQUITY IN APPALACHIA Leslie Lillie This exploration into the economic and social status of contemporary Appalachian women begins with a fictional prelude that depicts an educated Appalachian woman frustrated by how little opportunity for self-realization is available for her sister and her friends. She wonders if the change being sought for women in Appalachia today will come soon enough to make any difference in their lives. The essay which follows this fictional statement considers the underlying reasons for this lack of advance. Primarily, the fault lies in a well-intentioned, but misguided, paternalism that has ensured that the poor of Appalachia are its women and children, that the best indices to poverty in the region are sex and maritial status, and that virtually all the relative increases in poverty in Appalachia in the last ten years have been among female headed households. The place created by women in the coal industry is not somehow a special frontier. A commitment must be made to provide women in Appalachia a full range of choices in occupations that are only nontraditional because women have been denied them. Educating women about their choices is a key factor, as well, in their struggle to achieve equal rights. MULTICULTURALISM IN SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN SCHOOLS: A Diagnosis and Attempted Prescription David N. Mielke Abstract A general analysis of the population of southern Appalachia reveals a high degree of monoculturalism and population stability. This monoculturalism and stability is supported by the number of residents who are native born, the absence of racial diversity, and the singular religious and political orientation of the people. The pervasive nature of Appalachian monoculturalism is also supported by the fact that values, beliefs, and attitudes of southern Appalachian people are very similar throughout the region. Although the influx of outsiders and media exposure have brought a growing awareness of the multicultural world to Appalachian people, a more directed effort is necessary to promote this outlook. Educational institutions have not done their part to foster a multicultural environment. Some prescriptive strategies are available, 241 �nevertheless, to assist the regional educational institutions in meeting multicultural needs while preserving the existing cultural traditions. First, political pressure on behalf of education still needs to be applied in state capitols. Second, care must be taken to see that state approved textbooks are as free from ethnic bias as possible. Third, teacher education institutions must provide teachers with the multicultural experiences and survival skills not provided by earlier formal education. The teacher has the further commitment to pass on an appreciation of multiethnicity in the classroom. American educational institutions are conservative, and the kinds of changes needed to meet the goal proposed here will be extremely difficult to obtain. Schools must respond to this need or Appalachian children will continue to occupy what has been labeled a "disadvantageous position. " APPALACHIAN YOUTHS IN THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM: Clues in the Search for a Distinct Culture Phillip J. Obermiller and Dan McKee This paper presents the main streams of Appalachian scholarship and attempts to pose the basic questions about Appalachian culture which are implicit in them. With this overview as background, the discussion turns to a report of an attempt to discover whether a grounded theory of Appalachian cultural uniqueness can be derived from empirical research. The method chosen was a quantitative study of the juvenile court system of Hamilton County, Ohio. The county includes the city of Cincinnati and is a recognized port-of-entry for Appalachians coming to Ohio from eastern Kentucky. The response to cultural variety by the court system is observed and indications are found of a distinct cultural nuance in the court's decisions regarding white, black, and Appalchian youth. Because of this response, it is reasonable to adduce the existence of, at least, percieved culture among those affected by that institution. The final section of the paper provides a theoretical framework based on Thorsten Sellin 's concepts of conduct norms and culture conflict, which are helpful in understanding the etiology of conflicts experienced by Appalachian youth in the courts and in other institutional settings. Areas for further investigation (using Sellin's work) would be the sentencing patterns and the types of offenses for which the Appalachian juveniles were referred to court. 242 �PROBLEMS OF URBAN APPALACHIAN YOUTH IN CINCINNATI Larry J. Redden This paper examines four problems for migrant Appalachian youths in Cincinnati: the schools, unemployment, drug use, and the courts. Its analysis could apply generally to youths from any ethnic or racial subgroup who are having difficulty adapting to the American mainstream. Racial problems and school locations are the two main reasons for the high drop-out rate among Appalachian youths in Cincinnati. The incentive to complete high school may be low partly because of the lack of emphasis on formal education in the Appalachian community. The minimal number of employment agencies in Appalachian sections of the city exacerbates the problem of finding jobs. Social service agencies suggest that Appalachian youth use the counseling provided at Cincinnati public schools, but with the high drop-out rate of Appalachians, the highest of any group in the city, many youths, never take advantage of the service. The high number of youth involved in drugs or court cases stems from the radical disruption in lifestyle occasioned by the move to Cincinnati. Few resources for recreation exist in the new environment. Add to that the lack of success in school and in the job market, and it becomes easy to see why many youths fall into a pattern of delinquency. STRUGGLING TO STAY TOGETHER: BLACK AND WHITE MINERS IN WEST VIRGINIA AND ALABAMA, 1880-1910 Richard Straw Southern blacks played a major role in the development of early coal mine unionism in central Appalachia and the deep South. The study compares the contributions blacks made to the struggle to organize miners in the southern West Virginia fields with their efforts in the coal fields of the Birmingham district in Alabama during the years 1880-1910. In both areas great tension existed between racial beliefs on the one hand and economic and class needs on the other. Most of the behavior associated with Appalachian and southern workers, especially coal miners during this period, relates to the process of class formation, since few of these workers were a part of the industrial order before coming to the coal mines. This study compares miners' participation in and reaction to the new industrial world into which they were tossed. In both West Virginia and Alabama white working class belief and 243 �behavior cannot be squared with conventional assertions about white working class racism, since real and lasting cooperation existed between black and white coal miners during this period. The tremendous amount of evidence of blacks and whites working and striking together and continuing to do so in spite of public outrage and employer use of both white and black strikebreakers should make us rethink some, of the more commonly held generalizations about working class fear and hatred of blacks as competitors in the labor market ofAppalachia and the deep South. The diversity of the labor force with its predominance of unskilled blacks might have suggested that workers would be divided in a strike and other class activity; that workers might have chosen to organize separately; that they might have chosen not to join a union at all; or that they might have accepted the companies' paternalism as benevolent. But the pre-industrial and working class experiences of southern miners during this period significantly shaped their response to industrialism—the biracial UMW was their overwhelming choice. THE ASSIMILATION OF APPALACHIAN MIGRANTS Frank J. Traina Abstract The three counties comprising the region of northern KentuckyCampbell, Kenton, and Boone—have been a major receiving area for Appalachian migrants. This paper tries to determine to what extent Appalachian migrants in the area have acquired the economic and cultural characteristics of long-term residents, that is, become assimilated into the area population. They are compared with nonAppalachian migrants and the native born children of non-Appalachian migrants. The data used for the present analysis come from a recent study termed The Northern Kentucky Quality of Life Survey with a total of 240 completed interviews. The general pattern uncovered is improvement in economic measures as we go from Appalachian migrants to the children of Appalchian migrants, who even though native born, are often very similar to non-Appalachian migrants. The Appalachian migrants are the most culturally close to what have been described as Appalachian value traits. Moreover, they have the lowest education level and the highest completed marital fertility rates of the five groups. The children of Appalachian migrants have the next lowest scores indicating assimilation. But since the tatter's scores are different from the long-term natives we can confidently say they are only partially assimilated. In fact, the data demonstrate that even though native born they may be no more assimilated than are non-Appalachian mirgrants. Since the characteristics and attitudinal measures of the children on non-Appalachian migrants are frequently more mainstream than 'hose of the long-term residents, it is suggested that some long-term 244 �residents may be third, or more, generation Appalachian. But we have no data on grandparents. It is possible that even three generations is not sufficient for assimilation to take place? This is an area for further research. THE CULTURAL CONTEXT OF PHILOSOPHIC CRITICISM, FRANS VAN DER BOGERT* SOME SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF TEACHING INTRODUCTORY PHILOSOPHY AND THE OCCASIONAL ESSENTIAL RELEVANCE OF APPALACHIAN STUDIES FOR TEACHING PHILOSOPHY, H. PHILLIPS HAMLIN ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY AND APPALACHIAN CULTURE, RICHARD A. HUMPHREY TEACHING PHILOSOPHY IN APPALACHIA: AN EXISTENTIAL APPROACH, GARY ACQUAVIVA The authors mentioned above presented their papers at a session of the conference entitled "Appalachian, American and Academic Philosophies. " Each author shares a concern for developing pedagogical techniques in philosophy courses that take account of the questions and needs of Appalachian students. This composite abstract will attempt to distinguish each author's particular proposals for meeting this end. Van der Bogert observes that when he first began teaching in the mountains oj North Carolina, he was struck by the proverbial difference between rates of verbal exchange in northern, urban, and professional subcultures and in southern areas like the Appalachian mountains. Faced with gaps of silence in the classroom, he found himself evolving from Socratic questioner into a lecturer and, as a result, undermining his attempts to interest students in philosophical questions. His answer to this impasse was to recognize that Appalachian people have different attitudes toward open expression of criticism than do members of the academic profession. Once aware of the prodiem, professors can discuss philosophic criticism with students before asking them to debate issues. If Appalachian students require a defense of criticism, then so do professional philosophers need their own defense of silence. In the interaction which occurs between teacher and students, silence serves as an integral part of the learning process, particularly as an aid in distinguishing what is essential from what is inessential. Ham/in makes his appeal for teacher awareness of Appalachian students in terms of the goals of a liberal arts program. If the humanities are ideally supposed to develop the whole person, then an introductory philosophy course that introduces the ideas of Aristotle 245 �without relating them to the concerns of the student has defeated that purpose. Hatnlin argues that the primary goal of any educator should be to know the interests of the students and to relate the course content to these interests. This goal is particularly worthy of pursuit in introductory philosophy courses where so many students have only this single exposure to the discipline. Otherwise, opportunities for gaining helpful philosophic perspectives may pass by irretrievably. Hamlin concludes by arguing that the tendency in academic philosophy has been to look for truth in universal terms, beyond any particular or regional outlook. Perhaps this attitude could be called into question. At any rate, teaching introductory philosophy students, and in this case Appalachian students, means knowing something about them and their region. Humphrey, in affirming this need, directly assesses the concerns of Appalachians as they relate to land, family, and religion. He states that philosophers need to have a better appreciation for the confusion Appalachians experience by living in a subculture that is in tension with mainstream America. He points to the Appalachians' identification with the land, the support of nuclear and extended families, and the heritage of the rural church as stabilizing forces in a period of rapid change. Philosophy teachers in Appalachia can promote a search for truth in a number of ways: ethics teachers should consider questions of timber rights, zoning ordinances, and subcultural values vis-a-vis mainstream American values in their classes; philosophy of art teachers need to look beyond barn styles to consider poetry, fiction, crafts, music, and other arts of the region; philosophers need to analyze the traditional religious beliefs and practices of the region. Acquaviva, like Hamlin, emphasizes the central place of philosophy within the liberal arts tradition. He suggests that the introductory philosophy course can address the questions of students as perhaps no other humanities course can, and that the existential philosophers provide the best material for addressing those questions. In order to approach teaching in an existential manner, the student/ teacher relationship must come into questions. The goal of the existential approach is genuine dialogue, and the use of technical dialogue or monologue disguised as dialogue on the part of the teacher interferes with his aim. The philosophy teacher should make the effort to project his interest in the points-of-view of his students' especially in the first call meeting. Ultimately then, all four papers affirm the Socratic Quest: "Know Thyself," as it applies to the Appalachian student. To encourage that search, philosophy courses must begin with the questions at hand. A failure to do so means not just a poor reputation for philosophy departments and a decline in liberal arts enrollment, but the loss of an opportunity for Appalchian students to develop philosophic perspectives that would be useful in assimilating new experiences. •Van der Bogert's article will be appearing in a forthcoming issue of Metaphilosophy. 246 �FILM REVIEWS: 'THEY SHALL TAKE UP SERPENTS," "GANDY DANCERS," AND "BUNA AND BERTHA" At the conference session entitled "The Spirit of Appalachia in Faith, Toil, and Song," Thomas G. Burton and John Schroder presented three films they had made on unique aspects of traditional Appalachian life. The funding for these films was provided by the Appalachian Consortium, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and East Tennessee State University. "They Shall Take Up Serpents" focuses on the practice of handling serpents as part of the religious service of the Holiness Church of Cod in Jesus Name in Carson, Tennessee. As demonstration of of their belief in the literal meaning of Mark 16:17-18, members of the congregation filmed in the course of the service speak with "new tongues," "take up serpents," "drink...[a] deadly thing [carbon tetrachloridej, " and "lay hands on the sick. " Rather than exploiting the sensational possibilities of the subject, the film zeroes in on the participants' view of the event. Serpent handling and the drinking of poison serve not as the purpose or objects of faith for this congregation, but as one of several manifestations of the Holy Spirit. "Candy Dancers" is an energetic piece that depicts life on the railroad as it once was: track aligning songs, "knocking slack" chants, station calls, and the work of laying crossties and spiking track by hand. This way of work represents a triumph of the rhythmic, lyrical spirit of men under hard, and sometimes oppressive, conditions. "Buna and Bertha'' presents a short sketch of two mountain women in North Carolina, Buna Hicks, "going on eighty-five, " and Bertha Baird, ninety-three years old. The film captures their sprightly, humorous outlook on life in an interweaving of songs, dulcimer playing, and autobiographical comment. 247 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publications Description An account of the resource This collection contains digitized monographs and collections from the Appalachian Consortium Press. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Date Issued Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource. June 1, 2017 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource <a title="Digital Scholarship and Initiatives" href="http://library.appstate.edu/services/digital-scholarship-and-initiatives" target="_blank">Digital Scholarship and Initiatives</a> Publication URL https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636900/appalachia-america/ Digital Publisher Digital Republication Appalachian State University Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachia / America Description An account of the resource This volume of the&nbsp;<em>Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Appalachian Studies Conference</em>, held in 1981, offers a collection of some of the more important papers presented at the conference. Paper topics include labor and the economy; land in Appalachia; urban Appalachia; education; and values and culture.<br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1v6N1EfVdM4x96aW4DJtQvZX51qe9pUux" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636900/appalachia-america/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UNC Press Print on Demand</a> Subject The topic of the resource Appalachian region--Congresses Appalachian Region--Social conditions--20th century Appalachian Region--Social life and customs Land use, Rural--Appalachian Region Appalachian Region--Economic conditions--20th century Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Appalachian Studies Conference Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981 Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Somerville, Wilson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Conference proceedings Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/12212302/appalachia.html Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a> Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1980s Multidisciplinary/ Appalachian Studies https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/949da67f4f14d9e40c26ac7ab2db7375.pdf 1d894f27ab31affef94b61290595a44f PDF Text Text �THE IMPACT OF INSTITUTIONS IN APPALACHIA Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Appalachian Studies Conference Edited by: JIM LLOYD and ANNE G. CAMPBELL Managing Editor: JANE SHOOK �The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From 1973 to 2004, its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program, Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press. www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Original copyright © 1986 by the Appalachian Consortium Press. ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-3687-0 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-3689-4 Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press www.uncpress.org �Table of Contents INTRODUCTION, Anne Campbell TRIBUTES TO GRATIS WILLIAMS Loyal Jones David Williams Grace Edwards Charlotte Ross James Gifford I. II. III. IV. V. i 1 3 5 7 11 HEREAFTER EFFECTS ON THE HERE AND NOW: RELIGION AND REGION Passing Over Yonder, Howard Dorgan 14 GOVERNMENT AND TECHNOLOGY: CHANGE AND EFFECT ON A REGION Some Thoughts on Science and Technology in Appalachia, Ron Willoughby 24 CAPITALISM AND COAL: A REASSESSMENT Capitalism, Patriarchy and "Mens Work": The System of Control of Production in Coal Mining, Mike Yarrow 29 WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS: ENDURING IMAGES OF APPALACHIA Early Regional Photographers: Margaret Morley and William Barnhill in Western North Carolina, Richard Straw 48 JOCKS AND JUNKETS: COME PLAY AND STAY Sports and Play in Southern Appalachia: A Tentative Appraisal, Robert J. Higgs 57 Appalachian Documentaries: Hyping the Myth, Sharyn McCrumb 68 �Appalachia: A Tourist Attraction?, Melinda Bollar Wagner, Lynn Batley, Kai Jackson, Bill O'Brien, Liz Throckmorton 73 VI. BEFORE THE YELLOW BUSES: THE QUEST FOR EDUCATION Settlement School Goes to the People: Pine Mountain School's Community Centers at Big Laurel and Line Fork, 1919-1940, Nancy Forderhase 88 VII. ISSUES OF THEORY AND METHOD IN REGIONAL RESEARCH Class and Gender: New Theoretical Priorities in Appalachian Studies, Sally Ward Maggard 100 Beyond the "Traditional Mountain Subculture": A New Look at Pre-Industrial Appalachia, Mary Beth Pudup 114 VIII. ETHNICITY AND MOBILITY Blacks: An Invisible Institution in Appalachia?, Wilburn Hayden 128 Moving On: Recent Patterns of Appalachian Migration, Philip Obermiller and Robert Oldendick . . 148 IX. X. FREE AT LAST?: VIEW OF APPALACHIAN HISTORY Impact of the Company Town on Traditional Life, Dean Herrin 166 REALITIES AND MYTHS: MOUNTAIN POLITICS Hubbard's Branch of Mill Creek-1964-1984: Twenty Years After the War On Poverty, Warren Brunner and Tom Boyd 175 �INTRODUCTION The Appalachian Studies Conference first met in Berea, Kentucky in March of 1978. Since that time scholars, teachers and regional activists have continued to participate in an annual conference at which ideas and research, as well as personal experiences and concerns are shared. These meetings are composed of many facets — sessions which introduce research findings and theories; panel discussions with community and academic participants; creative presentations that highlight regional artistic endeavors; keynote speakers who share insights, observations and experiences; displays and exhibits which feature publications and programs offered by individuals, institutions and regional organizations; social gatherings where friendships are formed and renewed. These annual events have been held at state parks in Georgia and West Virginia; on campuses in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia; at a 4-H camp in West Virginia; and at the Blue Ridge Assembly in North Carolina. The return to Berea College, host of the initial gathering seven years ago, indicates that the Appalachian Studies Conference continues to be of value to those who participate in its annual activities. By rotating the site each year, the Appalachian Studies Conference Officers, Steering Committee and Program Committee attempt to feature specific locales and encourage attendance from neighboring areas. Each year the Program Committee selects a theme for the conference. The 1985 Program Committee chose to direct attention to the impact of institutions in Appalachia. Few people and regions have been as greatly effected by institutions as those in Appalachia. Whether it be religion, family, education, land development, culture, craft guilds or government agencies, all have contributed to shaping Appalachia and influencing its people. While the Committee planned the conference program with this overall theme in mind, we broadly interpreted the concept of institution. Thus the program offered a variety of topics and approaches which included a panel discussion on international perspectives relating to Appalachia, papers on turnof-the-century settlement institutions, as well as contemporary assesments of capitalism and coal. The papers in this publication are a sampling of those presented at the Berea meeting. Hopefully, these offerings as well as future programs of the Appalachian Studies Conference will continue to provide a forum for exchange, dialogue and understanding, and will contribute to the future of Appalachia. Anne G. Campbell, Chair 1985 Program Committee i �1985 Program Committee Anne G. Campbell, Chair Alan Banks Judi Jennings Carol Barrier Loyal Jones Andrew Baskin Jim Lloyd Malinda Crutchfield Sue Thrasher Rosemary Goss ii �Pictures Courtesy of Morehead State University �Pictures Courtesy of Morehead State University �Cratis Dearl Williams 19114985 When the tributes to Gratis Williams were presented at the Appalachian Studies Conference, Gratis lay ill in the Charlotte Memorial Hospital, after bypass heart surgery and a pacemaker. He had thought to be present, and because we knew Gratis, that he would be with us if it were physically possible, we half expected him to appear. But of course he didn't, although David, his son, was a part of the program. We put together a slide show of photographs of Gratis in different periods of his life and in his many roles. We played excerpts of his speeches, conversations and concerts. Then, some of his friends talked about him for a while, not always reverently, and we looked forward to greeting him and honoring him in person when the Appalachian Studies Conference meets in Boone next March. But Gratis died in May, and so our tributes to him now become our memorial statements. In fact three of us spoke at his memorial services. For years you could mention the name of Gratis Williams to those who knew him, and the immediate response you would get would be an appreciative smile, or perhaps a grin. Although we like to say that everyone is unique, we can describe most people by saying they are "like" so-and-so. Not so with Gratis. He was not like anybody else, and, furthermore, we know of nobody who can carry on his very special work in the world. No one else can explain the Appalachian character as he did, or reflect on or sing a ballad in his distinctive way. And speaking: whether his subject was Appalachian speech, folklore, cultural history, material folk culture or whatever, he was a lecturer without peer, with a precision and vividness of language and facial expressiveness that both amused and fascinated listeners. Already we're thinking that we shall never again hear such good stories in the night, told in that careful but sparkling and Chaucerian way. We don't look forward to attending the Appalachian Studies Conference with the scholarly tedium unrelieved by late-evening sessions with Gratis and his clusters of admirers. Gratis published his first regional essay when he was 17; called "Why a Mountain Boy Should be Proud," it appeared in the Louisa (Ky.) Louisian on December 12, 1927. Many other works were to follow: a master's thesis on folksongs of Eastern Kentucky; his New York University doctoral dissertation (1,650 pages), The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction, the definitive work on the subject of Appalachian literature to 1960 (once, showing this imposing work to a friend, Gratis remarked: "I just wanted you to admire the magnitude of the SOB"); a series of insightful and colorful essays on Appalachian speech; and numerous articles on a variety of Appalachian subjects. 1 �Although most of us knew him as a writer and lecturer or speaker at some notable event, to a great many others he was a teacher and administrator. His educational career included teaching in a one-room school, a high school, being a high school principal, a university English teacher, graduate dean and chancellor. Those who served with and under him spoke of his wisdom and vision. To me, Gratis was an ideal man, representing the essence of Appalachian culture combined with the best in the tradition of liberal learning. He was both erudite and earthy, at once profound, entertaining and delightfully honest in thought and language. We wish we could have just a few more of his insights and a few more stories in the night. Loyal Jones 2 �Remarks at the Tribute to Gratis Williams Loyal Jones remarked earlier that Gratis Williams is many things to many people, and from my vantage point that certainly has a ring of truth about it: he does indeed do many different things and, to that extent, is many different things. But from my unique vantage point, he is predominantly one thing. He is family. He is Papa. And it is as Papa that I shall speak of him tonight. Perhaps I should offer an explanation of why I find it important to speak of him as Papa. Those of you who have heard him tell the tales of our ancestors in Eastern Kentucky will recognize the almost magical qualities generated by the bestowal of familial titles upon the characters. Thus, instead of hearing about my ancestors as men named David or Jake or women named Mandy, I always heard about larger-than-life characters with magical names such as Pa Dave, Grandpap Jake, and Granny Mandy. For me, as a young listener to the family stories, the family history was transformed into legend, and the teller of the stories was not the man Gratis Williams but rather a larger-than-life participant in the legend, Papa. Perhaps someday he will settle into the family narrative as Pa Crate, but for now he remains simply Papa. It is, I suppose, somewhat awkward to have a roast without the body present. Papa has considered that dilemma and, in a sort of optimistic fatalism which I have heard described as characteristic of the mountaineer, has concluded that perhaps it is just as well that for this roast, the body could not be present. Since we are at Berea College, which awarded an honorary degree to "Daddy" King as well as "Papa" Williams, perhaps it is appropriate to summarize Papa's reflections upon not being able to attend his roast by recalling, and misapplying, famous words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: in the cool captivity of his hospital room, Papa feels safe from the searing flames of withering justice which this roast has produced. In actuality, modern technology in a sense has allowed Papa to be here. The roast has been video-taped, and one of those tapes is destined for Papa's eyes and ears. Thus, while the body is absent, the eyes and ears are present. See, I have only been speaking of him as Papa for a few moments and already he has assumed larger-than-life proportions. And, in conjunction with that, I would remind the roasters that next year's Appalachian Studies Conference will be in Boone, which should give Papa a year in which to prepare his rebuttal. He warned me before I came that he was sure that there was going to be "a lot of meanness" said about him. And, with that characteristic twinkle in his eye, he assured me that after reviewing the videotape he would clarify 3 �for me what was fact and what was fiction, what was accurate and what was meanness. In the spirit of Orwell's Winston Smith, I await such clarification. Papa asked me to convey to you some news of his status and progress in the hospital. He reports that the operation and the drugs have whittled him down to a plucky 115 pounds. Those of you who know him know that that is quite svelte. It is, in fact, exactly what his weight was toward the end of his sophomore year in high school. The weight loss has fatigued him a great deal, and he does not currently have the energy that has been spoken of tonight. His spirit, however, has not been dampened in the least, and he is happy to report, in his impish way, that while he lacks the energy and stamina to charm the female nurses in any active manner, his new physique seems to have prompted them to pay greater attention to him. He should be out of the hospital next week. He is progressing well, but more slowly than anticipated. His optimism, however, remains irrepressible. He is very sorry that he could not be here tonight. He had hoped even as late as last week to be able to attend, but he is not yet able to travel. He sends to all his greatest appreciation for this tribute. He conveys his love to the Appalachian region, the Appalachian people, and the scholars of Appalachia. This is, I think, in the end not so much a tribute to him as it is a tribute to you, the people and scholars of Appalachia, for what you see and admire in Gratis Williams is a reaction to who he is, and he is, in his own words, a complete mountaineer. What you see in Gratis Williams, even in the many different things which he can be to different people, is then a reflection of the Appalachian experience and of you as Appalachian people. This tribute in that sense is a tribute to you, the people and scholars of Appalachia, and that is the spirit in which he hopes that you will reflect upon the tribute. David Williams 4 �Tribute To Gratis: A Student's View Once upon a time, long, long ago, a child went out into the world to seek a fortune. The child's footsteps were directed toward the mountain and after climbing and climbing, and climbing at last she reached her destination. Although she had scaled seemingly dizzying heights, she found herself still at the foot of a mountain, Howard's Knob to be precise. "Wait here for instruction," she was told. Soon a parade of faces marched before her shouting out dates and times and places and calculations and formulas, babbling in Spanish, showing off in Chaucerian English, demanding, commanding, pushing, shoving, pulling. At the height of the chaos, out of the rabble emerged a single face, calm and kindly. The voice that spoke sounded like home, "Follow your own path, child. I will show you the way." And so she followed him, for his face was real, and not a mask, and his voice was true, not false. They traipsed through the New England woods that fringe Walden Pond and heard Henry David Thoreau talk about "stepping to the beat of a different drummer." They sat in the parlor of Ralph Waldo Emerson's house and listened to the philosopher say again and again, "Trust thyself." They watched shy Nat Hawthorne tell the story of the fallen woman who wore the scarlet A with dignity. They even rode the high seas on Herman Melville's Pequod, traveled through Europe with Henry James' American, returned to their own country to raft down the Mississippi with Huck Finn, and at long last came home again to the Southern Appalachian Mountains. To the child's amazement, a treasure trove awaited her even in her own land. The master of kindly face, calm manner, and familiar voice spoke, "You have seen the wonders of the world and the literary masterpieces that extole them. Now look at the riches around you." And he began to spin a tale about a boy named Jack and then to sing a song about a girl named Barbary. Those stories and those songs, just like the master's voice, sounded like home. The child felt good to know that someone else shared the entertainments she had grown up with, and more importantly, valued them. For she had labored under the mistaken notion that only customs and manners different from hers mattered—to the rest of the world. The master said again, "Follow your own path, child." And suddenly, she knew the way. Though her path was not free of brambles and briers and though it sometimes plunged into murky gloom, she followed it steadfastly, for the master was always there when she needed him to encourage and compliment and spur her onward. Just as he had promised, she found rubies and diamonds along the way, riches in her own land and among her own people. The story has no end, for the child is still following the path and the master is still encouraging her. This is where fact blends with fiction. In case you haven't identified the characters in this story, the master is Gratis Williams 5 �and I am the child. He has truly been my teacher, advisor, mentor, and friend for over twenty years now—in fact, from the moment I first walked into his classroom as a scared, shy college student at Appalachian State Teachers College. I have taken something like ten courses from Dr. Williams over the years, from undergraduate to graduate to post-graduate days. I have pursued a career that happily intersects with his. I have called on him for advice and help time and time again. Always he responds promptly, fully, generously. But he doesn't wait to be asked for help. He inspires through his letters, that come, unexpectedly, like treasures themselves. Most recently he wrote from his sick bed to offer congratulations for something he had read about. Every now and then, a colleague, a student, or a reporter asks me, "How did you get interested in Appalachian Studies?" I always answer with a name—Gratis Williams. Grace Edwards 6 �Remembering Gratis Williams Once and only once he spoke to me of the inevitability of this day, and he said that I was to wear a bright dress and tell all the people to smile and be happy. And he said this: "Remember me with joy and laughter, or don't remember me at all." He said that if anyone gathered here today had a good memory of him, it would be all right to tell it to Libby or David or Sophie or to someone in this fine extended family of Williamses and Lingerfelts. The folklorist in him understood that there is no finer monument to any man than good memories well shared. He wanted me to speak today because he knew my memories were happy ones. Sometimes two people meet and discover that they share the same magnificent obsession. Both of us had as young children become obsessed with the time and place into which we were born, with these mountains and the people who inhabit them. Each of us had studied Appalachia for many years before we met. The day we met, Gratis correctly placed my accent within twenty miles of my home, and I fell in love with him forevermore. He was my friend and mentor for seventeen years. I loved him as one loves a parent or only the rarest, only the very greatest, of teachers. For the next few minutes, I wish to share with you some of my great joy in remembering Gratis Williams. I remember Gratis pausing each morning to sniff the air, to take the measure of the new day, saying, "We do live in a pretty part of the world." I remember Gratis tramping through woods still wet with snow to see if the sarvis, that first harbinger of the mountain spring, was blooming yet. I remember Gratis stopping his car so suddenly that four cars nearly collided behind us so that he could glory over a Mail Pouch, tobacco sign painted on a West Virginia barn. I remember Gratis savoring good whiskey both here and abroad; and if it was homebrew, he'd shake the jar and watch the bead form, and turn to the crowd which had gathered to watch his antics, and taste, and say, "Now that's fine, finer than frog hair." I remember Gratis calling me in the early A.M. anguish he often knew with the dreadful news that the Red Bird Mission School had burned, or that Bill Plemmons was worse, or that we had lost that good man, Jesse Jackson. And I remember Gratis forever watching the faces of passers-by for evidences of the mountain heritage. "That looks like an Etheridge," he'd say. "Go and call him over here, Charlotte, for I want to know him." Once he stopped a woman on a Philadelphia street saying, "You have an Eastern Kentucky face." And when her shock abated, she told him she was from Harlan County, U.S.A. I remember him as always moving: bouncing across a footlog near my 7 �home in North Georgia, hurtling through Eastern Kentucky, skidding on gravelly coal near Neon, Kentucky, discovering that he had no brakes as we sped through the Cumberland Gap with Gratis yelling "Whoa, dammit, Whoa!" to his Chevette. I remember his foot slipping through a rotted board on a swinging bridge in West Virginia, and I remember him wading the Pigeon River with plastic garbage bags over his pantlegs so that I could show him an old graveyard on the other side. And I remember him always moving during that magic five-week trip we took together in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales: riding the ferries with the spray in his face in the Outer Hebrides, buying tweeds in Scotland, sampling the pubs in Ireland, walking the Roman Wall dividing Scotland and England long after night had fallen, looking north toward Celtic lands. I remember him as always talking. When he got into a car and perched on the passenger seat, it was as if a switch had been turned. He could talk nonstop for hours as long as the car was moving. Mostly, he talked about Appalachia; some of his best informal teaching was done in these circumstances. But he also talked to people everywhere: to waitresses, and schoolchildren, and to old men on the courthouse steps, and to people in the street. When he wasn't talking, he was singing. His greatest disappointment in me was that I cannot carry a tune, so mostly, he sang to me. I remember one day of sheer serpendipity in the lowlands of Scotland when Gratis Williams sang the English and Scottish ballads for nearly six hours. I remember him as the consummate teacher. He was always observing his own culture, always asking the hard questions, always setting me tasks to enrich my understanding. Like all truly great teachers, he expected that the student should surpass the master. "Else what's a teacher for?" he'd say. His mind was analytical and his interests wide-ranging. Yet, his style was always narrative and anecdotal, for that is the Appalachian way. What I seem to remember most is the highly personal nature of his teaching. I can still hear his voice asking me to sing that verse from "Lambkin," the one about the false nurse, or laughing at me because I'd never thought to ask why cedar trees grew in straight lines on the hillsides. He would taste old paint to see if it was made with lead or buttermilk. He reminded me that only the rear doors of old cabins were ever painted, for blue paint kept the devil out. He taught me to observe the people of the region closely. "That's the Appalachian body type there." "Looks like Ernest Hartley." Or, "You must remember that family name; they came down the Holston on a flatbed raft and later fought at King's Mountain." He wanted me to know the places of legend and history. When he was able, we'd walk the historic landscapes together: whole sections of the Wilderness Road and of the Great Wagon Road from Philadelphia, the twists of Dark Hollow in Surry County where the pioneers veered southward into Carolina and the Yadkin country, and 8 �the old route from Wolf Cave south along the Holston to the Watauga settlements. In later years, he'd take his afternoon nap in the car while I made my way along the river looking for the place where they found Jenny Wiley, or edged along under the cliffs seeking the place where Indians tortured Boone's son, or found the site of some forgotten treaty. And it was always just as Gratis had said that it would be. For seventeen years, assiduously, he taught me. It was the most intensive educational experience of my life, and easily the most personal and the most exciting. There was such glory in his giving, and he was always teaching. I will remember Gratis most for the thing he did the best. He was consistently, obdurately, and unrepentantly Appalachian. From the day we met until the day he died, I never once saw him waver from the Appalachian point of view. He was the original autochthonous Appalachian; his very blood and sinew were sprung out of the ground that bred him. And his mind was like a clear spring of water bubbling upward through limestone. He was the perfect exponent of Appalachian culture in the last half of the nineteenth century, though he was born in the twentieth. He was Gratis Williams, mountaineer, and he was Appalachian to the fourth power. You have to admire that kind of singularity of purpose, that consistent vision. Gratis though that lives lived without passion were uncommon dull, and he was never dull. The secret of his charm was that his life was dedicated to the study and explication of his culture, his people, his mountains. He sorrowed for those whose lives had no such center, who seemed to be always searching for identity. If he had a fault—and he admitted to one—it was that he couldn't understand why this viewpoint was not universal. He could not comprehend why anyone, particularly one of his blood, would live in flat country. "What," he would demand of me, "do they rest their eyes upon if there are no mountains?" Several times a year he would leave some meeting or other in the strained silence which in him passed for high dudgeon. After a silence of a few miles he would turn to me and say, "I was not born to the middle class, nor do I aspire to it." "A thing like that could purely stultify a man's soul." "They do not have our values." There are certain images and sounds which will always evoke his presence. I will remember Gratis whenever I see the leaves on the trees turning their backs to the wind as they did on the August day when he first came to Boone in the year that I was born. I will remember Gratis whenever I see a man cutting spring onions into cornbread or digging new potatoes. I will remember Gratis whenever I see the first bloom of spring upon the mountainside. I will remember Gratis whenever I hear any of the five sounds which he thought just might be the very essence of Appalachia: the sound of fiddle music on the night air and the accompanying stomp of a barn dance, an Appalachian tenor with that high lonesome sound, an old woman singing ballads to the rhythm of her churn, hounds running foxes up the 9 �mountainside, and the sound of the human voice rising and falling, telling the old stories. Once, operating on some internal radar, for all the road signs were down, he found Ossian's grave in an Ulsterman's pasture. He stood for a long while in the soft rain. The next day in Belfast during an interview for the BBC, he spoke about the experience. He said that it was a very fine thing to be buried in a grave on a hill overlooking a beloved country. Now, the ashes of Gratis Williams begin the final journey home to a grave on a hill in the Williams family cemetery—Caines Creek, Lawrence County, in the kingdom of Eastern Kentucky. And some of us will remember him always. When I first knew him, I loved him because he was all our yesteryears. Now, I know that remembering him will color all of my tomorrows. And I will love him for all enduring time. Charlotte T. Ross 10 �In Memorium Gratis Williams was born April 5, 1911, on Caines Creek in Lawrence County, Kentucky. In 1924, his father took him by wagon to the countyseat town of Louisa and enrolled him in high school there. After becoming the first from Caines Creek to graduate from high school, Gratis was awarded a tuition scholarship and a workship by Cumberland College in Williamsburg. After a year at Cumberland, he returned to Caines Creek to teach a one-room school. With a broom in one hand and a bucket packed with chalk, erasers, dipper, and a record book in the other, Gratis walked the five miles from Elaine to his home, proud of his accomplishments and excited about his future: "I was now a teacher," he later recalled, "I remember the cool, dank stretches of the sandy road beside Elaine Creek and the dust on the tall weeds and the leaves on the sycamores, willows, and water birches as I strolled along. Occasionally, I would be blinded by the dust kicked up by a car, but after I turned up the Caines Creek road I saw no more cars. The afternoon was hot. Poison ivy along the fence rows and the trumpet flowers that dipped from the Virginia Creeper growing on posts were still and dark in the hot sun. I thought of my trip up the creek in the wagon a year and a half before when I held proudly on my knee the loving cup I had received at the high school commencement and how pleased I had been to find on the front page of the Big Sandy News a week later my picture and a writeup that Earl Kinner had prepared. I remembered the trip in the wagon less than a year before when my father brought me to Elaine to find a ride to Louisa where I left by train for Cumberland College. That had been a hard but pleasant year, for all of that. I had made good grades, earned extra credits, and felt confident that I would teach a good school. I had also felt more keenly the pinch of poverty and recognized more deeply than ever before that I was depressed much of the time. The running sore on my thigh had never healed. My left leg tired easily. But I also knew that I felt irrepressible joy, especially with other people, and that I would go on to the University of Kentucky where I would have the money I had earned as a teacher to support me without having to try to work and go to college at the same time." His approach to one-room school discipline was unique. He assumed "that all thirty-three of the children were capable, eager, and industrious." Proceeding on that assumption, he laid down no rules, as one-room school teachers before him had always done. Rather, he referred to "the desire of everyone to be thoughtful and considerate of others and to have others return thoughtfulness and consideration." With this as a guide, he observed, "we would most certainly get along well and enjoy school." Gratis was so successful in presenting his basic guidelines for conduct that it was not necessary all 11 �year to whip a child with a switch, the "traditional terminal punishment" for misbehavior in one-room schools. Cratis's keen sensitivity to other people's feelings and his compassion and appreciation for others became personal trademarks. As a one-room school teacher, he had "three little tow-headed girls" who could not buy toothbrushes for their oral hygiene class, and so Gratis asked parental permission to buy the brushes as presents. "The father and mother looked at each other for a moment. Tears came to the mother's eyes as she nodded her head slightly." The father said that he would like "for his girls to be able to do what the other children did," and he told Gratis that the children quoted him as the "pure Gospel." The father offered to repay him, but Gratis told him that he had not come to urge him to go into debt for the brushes, that he liked his little girls and they were doing so well in school that he wanted to give them the brushes...but did not want to run the risk of hurting (the parent's) feelings," and so he sought and received their approval. On his way back home, Gratis stopped at the country store and post office and bought three toothbrushes, a green one, a blue one, and a red one so that everyone could participate in the toothbrush drill. Throughout his career, Gratis extended this kind of loving help. I first met him in the summer of 1977 at a Berea College workshop in Appalachian history and literature. I had heard of him long before I met him, but, unlike many living legends, he equalled his advanced billings and exceeded his reputation. He enthralled audiences with his knowledge, and he captivated individuals with his charm. Not surprisingly, I was eager to involve him when I came to Morehead State University in 1978 to develop an Appalachian Studies Program. The following fall (November 28-30, 1979) Gratis served a consultancy at MSU's Appalachian Development Center. As always, he kept a hectic schedule gracefully. He met with the Appalachian Studies Advisory Committee, delivered a public lecture one evening, addressed several classes, and met informally with interested students and faculty. Afterwards, he submitted a detailed and extremely beneficial set of guidelines that provided intellectual, curricular, programmatic, and developmental cornerstones for our emerging program. His greatest effect, however, was on the individuals he encountered. One faculty member wrote to him: "Words have not the power to convey either my joy from or the positive effect of your three-day visit to our campus...! am delighted to have met a person with your knowledge of our cultural heritage and zest for sharing it with others. I eagerly await your next visit to Morehead." Another wrote that his lecture to her literature class "provided one of the finest academic experiences that our students could ever have." In June of 1980 and 1981 and again in 1984, Dr. Williams served as Scholar in Residence for MSU's annual Appalachian Celebration. I was impressed 12 �with the quality of his wide-ranging knowledge and appeal and with his enormous personal charisma. Again, his contribution were enormous and farreaching and the positive effects of his visits reverberated throughout the area long after he returned to his home in Boone, North Carolina, where he remained actively "retired" as a special assistant to the chancellor of Appalachian State University. On September 17, 1981, Gratis made the first presentation in MSU's "Our Mountain Heritage" lecture series. He maintained a regular interest in and support of our Program. Cratis's contributions to Morehead State University exemplify the type of assistance he gave throughout Eastern Kentucky. He worked closely with Ron Dailey and Mike Mullins at Alice Lloyd College and with the late Leonard Roberts at Pikeville College. He regularly taught in Berea College's highly regarded summer workshops. He served on the Board of Directors of the Hindman Settlement School and as Chairman of the Alumni Board of Cumberland College. His contributions to Eastern Kentucky institutions illustrate the service he provided throughout Southern Appalachia. Yet, it seems to me that his greatest contribution was his positive influence on individuals. Gratis had an uncanny ability to become a part of peoples' lives. Like a modern day Johnny Appleseed, he went about The Southern Mountains planting wisdom, and joy, and good advice, and whenever he returned he found lifelong friendships in bloom. Gratis was consummately human. He revelled in a well told story, a good party, a hearty chuckle, or a mischievous giggle. Ifet, for all his down-to-earth qualities, he transcended his humanity and became a mythic and heroic being. All of us are children at heart; all of us once joyously looked forward to a visit from Santa Glaus or the Easter Bunny. After we got older, we looked forward to a visit from Gratis. Life is a series of beginnings and endings. I do not think Gratis would want us to view today as an ending, rather I think it is the beginning of a new phase of our relationship with him. We can no longer seek his advice and we can no longer draw strength and comfort from our visits with him, but we can do the things he would want us to do and we can rely on both memory and the written word for his guidance and inspiration. Like Tennyson's Ulysses, Gratis became a part of all that he met. The part of us that is Gratis is now more than a gift—it is a responsibility. Although he received many honors and awards, (including honorary doctorates from Morehead State University and Marshall University) his most significant awards are not inscribed on plaques or printed handsomely on diplomas or books; they are written with love and admiration on the hearts of hundreds of people like me who are forever grateful for his friendship, advice, and good company. Gratis made his mark upon the immortal mind! He set fires of love and learning that will brighten to all eternity. James M. Gifford 13 �HEREAFTER EFFECTS ON THE HEAR AND NOW: RELIGION AND REGION Convenor: Chester R. Young, Cumberland College Frontier Baptists and Changing Values, 1821-1910 John L. Bell, Jr., Western Carolina University Impact of Church and School in Black Communities in Jackson County Victoria A. Casey, Sylva, North Carolina Passing Over Yonder Howard Dorgan, Appalachian State University Passing Over Yonder by Howard Dorgan When Old Regular, Regular, Primitive, Union and some Missionary Baptist associations print minutes of their annual sessions they include obituaries for members who died during the previous year. This isn't an honor reserved just for leaders of the association or for leaders of the affiliated churches. Instead, all members—and sometimes nonmembers—may have their obituaries printed in these pages. It's just a matter of someone in the family composing the document and submitting it for publication. The cost of printing is borne by the association, with only a small charge to families wanting to include a picture of the deceased. Placing an obituary in the association's minutes constitutes a final tribute and farewell too important to overlook, and Old Regular families in particular are quite diligent in this duty to the deceased. In this subdenomination, the document is often read at the funeral, and once the statement is published, it is preserved in the family papers as an important memorial for the deceased. It will be read and reread in years to come. Occasionally, an individual will write his or her own obituary, with some member of the family then updating the document at the actual time of death and adding whatever sentiments seem appropriate. Such was the case for Alice Belcher, who on July 24, 1980, authored the following statement about herself: I will now try with the help of my good Lord to write my obituary. I was borned February 10, 1899. At Lookout, Ky. I was the daughter of the late Dave Mercer and Alfire Castle Mercer. I was married (to) Bowes Belcher, June 8, 1920. To this union was borned six children. One boy and five girls. The boy and 14 �was horned six children. One boy and five girls. The boy and one girl were still horned, leaving four girls. Vivvan died in 1970....I have eight grand children, eleven great grand children. One sister Mrs. Viola Hall of Manchester, Ky. I love them all very much. I wount all my Brothern and Sisters to pray for them all. I joined the Old Regular Baptist Church at the Little Hattie Church in May 3, 1950. I was baptized by Elder Jim Green and Fon Bowling. I all ways love to go to church. I love all my brothers and sisters. I fell and broke my hip and did not get to go. I prayed to the good Lord to let me get well so I could go. I could not get off the porch with out help. I set at home by my self so many long days. I hope this life will soon be over. I wont have to suffer and set alone. Cheldren remember the good council Mother gave you. Be good to each other. Read the bible. It will not tell you anything wrong. I hate to leave my family, but God is able to take care of them, if they will only listen. Have mine and Daddy picture put in minutes. My husband has been gone for sixteen long years. I miss him so much. Written by Sister Alice Belcher, Wife and Mother. By God's help, I love you all. Mother passed from this life February 4, 1984. At the age of 84 years, 11 months and 25 days old. Mother was a devoted mother and a loving grand mother. A dedicated Sister in the Church for over 33 years. She has fourteen great grand children now. Daddy passed from this life October 4, 1964. We miss them so very much. But we know they are together up in heaven (where) there will be no more sorrow, truble or pain to bare. If we take mothers advice, by the grace of God we will meet them in Heaven some sweet day. With all our love, Her Daughters. Phyllis, Etta, Geraldine.1 Small associations, such as the Senter District Primitive Baptists and the Little River Regular Baptist, devote only a few pages to obituaries, but the Union Baptist Association and the Sardis Association of Old Regulars run twenty to twenty-five pages of memorials, while the Union Association of Old Regular Baptist regularly publishes fifty or more pages of these farewell statements. My attention is directed at the Sardis and Union associations of Old Regulars. Written by "left to mourn" husbands, wives, children, or other loved ones, these obituaries serve not only as farewells to deceased brethren, but also as opportunities for writers to make summation remarks about life, to 15 �affirm basic beliefs, and to call other family members to needed repentance and change. For the most part, the statements are unsophisticated and straightforward defenses of the "earthly life" contributions of respective Brothers or Sisters, augmented by calls to the living to remember and emulate. Frequently, eulogies make pointed reference to individuals who must change their lives "if they are to follow the deceased into heaven," and occasionally the statements become apologias for the deceased, as if to say, "This individual was a person of goodness and worth: God should take note of the stars in his or her crown and open wide the gate." A basic format seems to be followed in these obituaries. First, there is the traditional opening statement, usually a comment about the personal pain involved in writing the document, along with a suggestion that the eulogist feels himself or herself inadequate to the task at hand and thus must call upon God for inspiration and guidance. Next, there is a succinct review of the departed's life, with particular emphasis upon the family left behind. An account of the deceased's descendants is usually provided, and pride seems to be taken in the extensiveness of the list of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Then, statements are made about how important the individual was to family, friends, neighbors, and church; and it's particularly necessary to note how much the deceased will be missed: All us children can say that Papa (Elbert [Ebb] Fuller) was the best example we could follow for our lives. We have lost something so Precious that can never be replaced here on earth. We all hope the Good Lord will strengthen us and help us take care of our dear mother. Papa and Mommy were so good to each other that all Mommy has to worry about is the loss of Papa which will be hard... I had a good papa here on earth. Jesus took him to heaven. He knew what he was worth. Sister Fannie (Hale) was a pillar in the Church for the 61 years that God blessed her to spend in the Church. She baked the bread to be served in our Communion meetings from the time I first can remember until these last few years when her health wouldn't permit her to continue. She seemed always present when her name was called. Her warm felt, kind and sweet spoken words of counsel would be good for each of us as we journey through this lane of life.2 Near the close of an obituary there traditionally will be a statement to the effect that the departed has merited redemption and the rewards of heaven. This passage serves as a final note of assurance to loved ones that all is well with the deceased's soul. Often it will be supported by some brief narrative illustrating the departed's own awareness of imminent death and 16 �subsequent passage to "glory": So many times we have heard Mom (Dollie Barley Ratliff) tell of her experience as she would cast her eyes toward Canaan's Land. She led a good Christian life, and her influence will continue to give faith and hope to the ones who knew and loved her... The night before her passing, even while enduring severe pain and suffering, Mom continued to quote verses of scripture from the Bible. She seemed to know that the death angel was near and sincerely believed in God's mercy and goodness... (Mom is) resting in Ratliff Family Cemetery awaiting the coming of Christ, and to go home with Him to live forevermore in that country where sorrow and trouble are unknown. 4 Occasionally a church member will compose an obituary for a deceased friend or loved one who was never church affiliated or ever baptized. Motivated by a desire to give his friend or loved one the best send-off possible, or by a wish to assuage fears of the family, this obituary writer will find something that projects a glimmer of hope for the departed. The 1983 minutes of the Union Association of Old Regulars, for example, contains a memorial statement for Thestil Edward Slone, killed in a coal mining accident at the age of thirty-three. Written by the deceased's uncle, Elder David Slone, the obituary notes that the nephew had been divorced from his first wife and had remarried, producing two children by each union. Although no details are given for the divorce, this termination of the first marriage may have been the basis for Elder Slone's remark about his nephew doing wrong; for Old Regular churches generally exclude from their memberships all divorced individuals, "except those who have put away their companion for the cause of fornication."4 At the point in the obituary when Elder Slone ordinarily would have given assurance of the deceased's eternal salvation he had the following to say about his nephew: Although he did wrong things in life, we all have sin(ned) and come short of the Glory of God. He never joined any Church, I have told him you must be Born again. Many times, he would ask me questions concerning the Bible what Jesus said. If he made Peace with Jesus before he died, he is better off, than any of his family and friends left here on earth... To all the family and friends of Thestil Edward be good to one another, and when you can't do any thing good for one, please don't do them any wrong, and make Peace with Jesus while you have life and opportunity.5 One common way obituaries are closed is to turn the discussion away from the deceased and to direct an urgent admonition at remaining members 17 �of the family, particularly the children. This admonition will call upon these "left behind" individuals to straighten out their own lives so they will be able to reap the same rewards claimed for the deceased: I want to say to Bob and Louise and all the other children if you get to where I feel Mother is you must repent and be born again. To do that when Jesus Christ reveals himself to you, you must believe in him and obey his spirit....He'll deliver your soul from the dead state to a lively hope in the Lord Jesus Christ....My hope is that you will repent and be born again and we'll all live together in a land where there is no more dying, but peace and love, joy and rejoicing.6 Reflections On Life These obituary writers believe the pleasures of life to be centered in the circumstances of family, community, and church, with establishment of warm or loving interpersonal relations taking priority over other accomplishments—such as building careers and massing estates. When "good" things of life are mentioned they are noted as being found in the family setting, in relationships with friends and neighbors, in traditional activities of the church, and in a personal conviction of spiritual salvation. The "bad" things of life are centered in hard and drudging work, in travails of poverty, in sufferings of ill health, in pains of losing loved ones—particularly children and spouses, in worries over unconverted loved ones, in struggles for personal salvation, in loneliness of old age, and in the slow movement of time when one is ready to "pass over yonder." In general, "Mom" is lauded for the wonderful nurturing she gave her children, for memories she left in the minds of these children, for spiritual guidance she provided, for loyal devotion she accorded her husband, for the abundance of friends she had, who subsequently mourned her death, for service she gave her Brothers and Sisters in the church, for her faithfulness in church attendance, and for the "joy" of her singing, shouting, and other forms of religious expression. "Papa" is lauded for years of hard work, for diligence in being the family provider, for firm and righteous counsel, for love of his children, for dedication to his wife, for ability to endure hardships, for faithful service to the church, for generosity to family and friends, and for his personal religious testimony. Mother and Poppy 0°nn and Margaret Raines) will be remembered by all who know them for what they were, hard working, honest, praying, God Fearing people... The old home doesn't seem like home without Mom and Poppy sitting on the porch. 18 �porch. No one could tell a story like Poppy and no one understood like Mommy. All her children were tender and beloved in her sight. She wouldn't leave home for anything if she was expecting any of the children to visit... Some of the children would travel hundreds of miles to be with them whenever they could, if only for a weekend... The family gatherings won't be the same now, with vacant seats at the long table where mother had prepared hundreds of meals for the family, friends and the church.7 Little is said in these obituaries about careers. Work is sometimes mentioned, but usually not in any detail. A father will be praised for having worked hard all his life, and frequently a man will be identified as a retired miner, farmer, mechanic, poultry raiser, etc. Often mention of a life's work will be made only in reference to hardships endured: A mother is praised for years of struggle to raise eight children, five of whom survived; a dad is lauded for thirty-one years of service to the furniture industry; and a son's early death is attributed to a coal mine accident that broke his back. The dominant image of labor, as depicted in these obituaries, however, is not a negative one. In fact, labor is probably more frequently mentioned as a dignifying factor than as something to the contrary, and there are occsional glimpses of lives that have been particularly fulfilled by labor: Bob (Williams) had resided at this farm for about 50 years and worked very hard, he and his wife, to raise their children, and continued to work after the children left home, raising a garden and canning and freezing so we and our families could have fresh vegetables and country meat when we visited the farm to see Grandpa and Grandma, and they insisted everybody take some back to the city. He achieved self satisfaction and pleasure from his long weary hours on the farm, something very few of us accomplish. Dad was a team driver by trade, I suppose the men in his profession called him a Mule Skinner, that was many years ago when logging and lumber was the largest industry around Virginia and Kentucky, and when coal mining became the primary industry, he worked several years at Harmon Mines on the tipple and then retired from public works to live out his remaining years swapping and bartering and farming which he truly enjoyed, because it required running around the country in his pick up truck and meeting and talking to the people. Most everybody around in that country knew him. Daddy loved to listen to the old time singing in the Old Regular Baptist Church, and he liked the preaching, but he had his preferences of preachers. He died from a heart attack, while cutting briars on his farm 19 �in the late afternoon and we truly believe he would have wanted to go this way.8 The overall perspective on life presented in these obituaries is strongly positive but romanticized. There are allusions to hard work and references to personal sufferings, but the broader image is one of perseverance, happiness, and love. Real hardships of life seem forgotten when these final summations are recorded, and deceased individuals are depicted as having made it through this temporal life with courage, fortitude, and joy, while providing inspiration, strength, and loving counsel to those fellow travelers of lesser talent, experience, or grit. Life, therefore, is pleasurable if lived well, with particular emphasis upon one's personal duty to family and church. Furthermore, a clear sign that you have indeed lived well is the multitude of loved ones and friends left behind to speak highly of you and to mourn your passing. Have you been an inspiration to your family, friends, neighbors, and fellow church members? Have you suffered bravely, prayed fervently, sung joyously, loved generously, and struggled diligently? If you have, then people will remember your example and thus be strengthened themselves. When your name is called out in future memorial services there will be good things to mention about your life. The elder will stand before the church, read aloud your name, and then stop and say: "He loved to sing the old songs of Zion"; "She thrilled us with her joyous shouting"; "He always had a kind word for each Brother and Sister"; "She suffered her hardships bravely"; "He was a favorite with all the children and young people"; "She maintained a warm, loving home, and kept it open to her neighbors and church brethren"; "He was poor in earthly goods, but rich in spirit"; "She was a witness to all her children and grandchildren"; "He served as moderator of our church for twenty years"; "She always baked the communion bread"; "They always filled their seats in church." Reflections on Death One ironic characteristic of these obituaries is that they generally communicate the idea that life, though often troubled, is basically good, but that death is even better. In one way or another, these farewell statements proclaim the passing of the loved one to be something positive, not of course for those left behind, but for the individual who "departed this world." There is the pronouncement that death has removed the deceased from a painful existence, either of a physical, emotional, or psychological nature. There is the judgement that death is allowing a reunion with loved ones gone on before, frequently with the prayer that the "circle be unbroken." There is the conclusion that death is bringing "rest" to one whose life was marked by long, hard, and continuous work. But most important of all, there is the 20 �declaration that death is opening the door to a kingdom of eternal joy, peace, beauty, and union with God. The death of an infant or child, however, presents a difficult problem for rationalization. If the deity calls us to death, just as he calls us to redemption, why does he occasionally call so early? In relationship to the whole scenario of life, sin, redemption, death, and eternity, where does the stillborn infant—or the child who dies before reaching the age of accountability—fit? The only rationales emerging fairly consistently from these farewell statements are (1) that the supreme being occasionally sees a new life that is suffering and decides to take that individual directly into heaven and (2) that sometimes the supreme being wants infants and small children as angels to round out or "decorate" his kingdom: (Stacey Wayne Deel) was born February 26, 1980 at the Appalachian Regional Hospital at 2:20 a.m. and God called his precious soul to come to be with him at 3:35 a.m... The doctors said he didn't get the right kind of blood circulation to develop right. His lungs weren't developed and he couldn't breathe on his own. They kept him alive as long as they could. But the Lord told him "Come home and live with me where you'll never have to suffer and can breathe."9 There is some confusion in these obituaries concerning the precise sequence of the events through which the redeemed go to make it to heaven. Some statements clearly depict the deceased as already being in heaven, both in soul and body; others speak of the dead as having simply gone to a resting place to await the final judgment; and still others suggest that the soul has gone to heaven, while the body is remaining in the grave to await judgment day: If Brother Charles (Ramey) could speak back now he would say—Children it's so beautiful up here, lay everything down and strive for this heavenly land where no sad news ever comes. Now all we can say is "Sleep on Daddy (Sugar Slone) and take your rest until that great day when God shall awake the dead, then we can all go home with him where trouble will always be a stranger." I believe that he (Charley Hopkins Deel) is now resting from all his labors and his soul is taking that sweet rest in the city of God, waiting for the Great Resurrection Morning when that soul and spirit will reunite with that body that is sleeping in the earth. Then the Lord will give him a long white robe and a crown of 21 �Glory that will never fade away. He will go to a heavenly home where troubles and sorrow will all be done away with, where all is peace and love forevermore.10 This last excerpt apparently best represents the formal beliefs of the Old Regular Baptists relative to death and resurrection. Elder Edwin May, Moderator of the Sardis Association of Old Regulars, has told me that confusion develops in obituaries relative to this issue simply because the writers of these documents generally are not the elders of the church but are laymen who get their "beliefs all mixed up." The correct doctrine of Old Regulars, he said, is that at death the soul of a redeemed individual goes directly to heaven, while his or her body remains at rest until final judgment when all of the souls and bodies of the redeemed will be reunited.11 I find myself liking the idea of giving the deceased this kind of farewell. I like what it does for the family and what it apparently does—before the fact—for the person who dies. A member of the Old Regular faith knows that he or she will be memorialized in a minimum of three ways—the funeral, the annual memorial services, and the obituary. In addition, families may elect to stage yearly individual memorials for their departed loved ones, either in the home or in the church. All of these memorials, I assume, produce in the minds of church members the conviction that they will never be forgotten. After all, every year at the regularly scheduled Memorial Day service an elder will position himself behind the "book stand" and read the name of every deceased member of the church, pausing occasionally to comment on the virtuous accomplishments of a particular Brother or Sister. In addition, there will always be that obituary in the association minutes. These factors alone will constitute a form of immortality. END NOTES 1. Minutes of the Union Association of Old Regular Baptists (Johnson City, Tennessee: Interstate Graphics, 1984), 45. 2. Minutes of the Union Association of Old Regular Baptists (Johnson City, Tennessee, 1979), 64; Minutes of the Sardis Association of Old Regulars (Published by the Association, 1983), 35. 3. Minutes of the Union Association of Old Regular Baptists Gohnson City, Tennessee: Interstate Graphics, 1980), 58. 4. Minutes of the Sardis Association of Old Regular Baptists (Published by the Association, 1983), 9. 22 �5. Minutes of the Union Association of Old Regular Baptists (Johnson City, Tennessee: Interstate Graphics, 1983), 66. 6. Minutes of the Union Association of Old Regular Baptists (Johnson City, Tennessee: Interstate Graphics, 1984), 31. 7. Minutes of the Union Association of Old Regular Baptists (Johnson City, Tennessee: Interstate Graphics, 1981), 44. 8. Minutes of the Union Association of Old Regular Baptists (Johnson City, Tennessee: Interstate Graphics, 1982), 57. 9. Minutes of the Union Association of Old Regular Baptists (Johnson City, Tennessee: Interstate Graphics, 1981), 30. 10. Minutes of the Union Association of Old Regular Baptists (Johnson City, Tennessee: Interstate Graphics, 1980), 52, 63, and 59. 11. Interview of Elder Edwin May, February 15, 1985. 23 �GOVERNMENT AND TECHNOLOGY: CHANGE AND EFFECT ON A REGION Convenor: Tyler Blethen, Western Carolina University Government Regulations and their Effects on the Grade C Diary in Southwest Virginia Ricky Cox, Radford University Producing Old Handicrafts with New Technology: An Example Pat Meisel and Bob Hughes, Georgia Southern College Some Thoughts on Science and Technology in Appalachia Ron Willoughby, Radford University Some Thoughts on Science and Technology in Appalachia by Ron Willoughby The theme of this conference is "The Impact Of Institutions In Appalachia." The use of the word "in" rather than "on" is appropriate because it allows us to discuss some aspects of Appalachia's relationship to the rest of the world that we don't always appreciate. It is widely recognized that the rest of the United States has had a great impact on Appalachia, but Appalachia has also had a major impact on the rest of the United States, and indeed the rest of the world, for within our region have occurred events of great scientific and techological significance. In this paper I will discuss in general terms the subject of science and technology and give examples of how, through science and technology, Appalachia and the rest of the world have impacted on each other. Let me begin by distingishing between science and technology. Science is the pursuit of knowledge of the physical world, without regard to whether or not that knowledge might have some "useful" application. Technology is the application of the knowledge science has created to purposes that human beings deem desirable and/or necessary. Together science and technology are the carrot and the stick of change in human society. Science lures us with the promise that knowledge is power, and technology fulfills that promise by giving us some measure of control over our environment. Science and technology exist in a symbiotic relationship that has proved amazingly successful. In its infancy science was done using only the human senses. As our knowledge expanded it became necessary to extend our senses by the use of various types of devices such as the telescope. Technology provided those devices, and scientific knowledge continued to expand, requir- 24 �ing ever more sophisticated devices. Increased knowledge allowed technology to provide those more sophisticated devices. It has never been a smooth progression, but it has been one that works, and it continues today. The technological impulse has been so pervasive throughout man's history that it is perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of homo sapiens. Our penchant for technological applications has given us a competitive edge in the struggle for survival, and has in recent years allowed us to live in such comfort as was unimaginable only fifty years ago. But this very success has created an uncritical attitude toward technology, an attitude that whatever can be done should be done. The result is a juggernaut which rushes forward faster and faster, like a man running downhill, until the very technology that has assured our survival is now, ironically, the greatest threat to our survival. There are also symbiotic relationships among technologies. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was established to build a series of flood control dams in upper East Tennessee. The dams were also equipped with water turbines to produce electricity from the water that flowed through the dams. The availability of cheap electricity attracted industry to the area, which meant cash in the pockets of the people. This cash, along with the availability of cheap electricity, created a demand for consumer goods, including electrical appliances. As prosperity spread, the demand for electricity eventually outran the ability of the hydroelectric plants to produce it, and TVA began building coal-fired steam generating plants. This produced a greater demand for coal, and the coalfields boomed. But as metallurgy and manufacturing technology advanced, sophsticated machinery was developed that gave us the ability to mine coal by stripping off the tops or sides of mountains instead of tunneling into them. The result was a cheaper way to mine coal, by use of a smaller work force which kept the cost of electricity down and fulfilled a growing demand. We can see from this example how different technologies feed off one another, each giving impetus to the other. But there is more to the picture than this. There is the question of how the relationship between technologies affects people. Large institutions, such as governments and large industries, evaluate nearly everything on the basis of short-term, large-scale statistics, usually economic statistics. On this basis the electric power-coal mining symbiosis, illustrated by the TVA example which is common across the country, has worked well. On the average, most people are economically better off because of the availability of cheap coal. But when one looks beyond the averages, beyond the short-term economic aspects, at more subtle questions, it is obvious that the blessings are mixed. On a local scale, for instance, increasing mechanization in the coalfields increased production and profits, but decreased employment. Leaving stripped land unreclaimed kept coal prices down, but did serious damage to the environment both visually and physically and reduced the quality of life in these areas. How does one balance the well-being of the minority against the well-being of the major- 25 �ity? Must there always be a group that suffers in order that a larger group (or a more powerful group) may prosper? These are the fundamental questions that create a tension between those who wish to go "forward" without hindrance and those who would go slowly, if at all. Generally it is a healthy tension, tending to exert restraint on technological development but not smother it. It forces us to consider more carefully than we might otherwise do, the effects of technological enterprises. But even after we have considered them, the course of wisdom is seldom clear, and wisdom is something that neither science nor technology claim to produce. The difficulty of reaching wise decisions is obvious in the dilemma posed by strip mining in Appalachia. If reclamation is required, the cost of coal will go up and demand will drop. What then will coal miners do for a living in a one-industry region? But if reclamation is not required, what will the area look like, and be like, at the turn of the century? Either way, do the children in coal mining Appalachia have a future in the region? Beyond the borders of Appalachia, the increased use of coal has meant a higher standard of living for virtually all Americans, through jobs in industrial plants and/or access to cheap electricity. Steel production and cheap energy are often cited as the backbones of American industry. But if coal is essential to the production of steel and is used to produce the major portion of electricity used in this country, what are we to conclude about the importance of coal and Appalachia to the United States? While coal usage is vital to America's economy, it has at the same time contributed to at least two serious and wide-spread threats to the environment well beyond Appalachia: Acid rain and an increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere. These are subtle, long-term threats of the type that our political system finds particularly difficult to deal with. But problems they are, of current and continuing concern, and they must be dealt with. Like the benefits of coal usage, they are a part of Appalachia's impact on the rest of the country. If coal is one of mankind's oldest energy sources, nuclear energy is one of the newest. It is not entirely coincidental that Appalachia harbors both, for Oak Ridge was chosen as a major nuclear energy site, not only because it was isolated, but because of its proximity to TVA's electricity. It is a city built hurriedly in 1942, primarily to manufacture components for atomic bombs. It grew up almost overnight, like toadstools after a rain, in an area that had been farmland. It was a boom town of hastily erected frame buildings inside a chain-link fence guarded by soldiers who wouldn't admit anyone without a pass. Local people found jobs there in abundance, producing in urgent secrecy things whose functions were unknown to them. But many more workers were needed than could be provided locally, and they came from everywhere, especially from other parts of Appalachia. East Tennessee was inundated with change like the spring floods that came before TVA domesticated the rivers, and when the flood receded, there was the Atomic 26 �City, cast up on the bank like old tires, clorox bottles and refrigerators. The Atomic City. The name conjured images of progress, of vitality, of energy, and it advertised itself proudly. Today the frontier boom town is gone. You can drive into the city without having to show a sentry your pass. The sidewalks are concrete, not boards; the streets are asphalt instead of mud; and the buildings are of brick, glass and concrete. Oak Ridge is now pretty much like any city in America with its shoppping centers, pizza place, and Friday night football games. It represents physically the impact that the rest of the country can have on Appalachia. People came from outside to build the city and to live and work there, and the area and its people are dramatically different as a result. Conversely, the world is dramatically different because of Oak Ridge, or at least because of nuclear energy, which Oak Ridge was and is so important in developing. Here, too, things have changed. The once bright dreams of cheap, abundant electric energy from nuclear fission are now tarnished. Slogans like "atoms for peace" have not been able to erase from the mind the overwhelming image, born in 1945, of a roiling mushroom cloud. Like Oak Ridge, Green Bank, West Virginia was chosen as the site of a governmental installation because it was in an isolated area. But unlike Oak Ridge, secrecy was not the motive. Green Bank is in a region where man-made radio signals are relatively weak, making the detection of radio waves from space easier. It was therefore the perfect site for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). Green Bank is a village of a few hundred people located in a wide, shallow fertile valley. The principal occupation is farming, and cattle graze matterof-factly in fields adjacent to huge radio telescopes. When the observatory was first established, the site was felt to be too remote to attract permanent staff members, so the administrative headquarters was established in Charlottesville, Virginia, which has a more cosmopolitan atmosphere. The principle activity at NRAO is listening. The radio telecsopes are giant earhorns used to eavesdrop on the whispering cosmos. It is an activity that cannot be rushed. One simply sits and listens, and the rotating earth sets the immutable schedule of what can be heard, and when. Because of this there is a measured quality to life at Green Bank. It moves in time to the ancient rhythms of the seasons, much like life on the land. The very nature of the activities at Green Bank encourages a contemplative atmosphere that is in step with the natural surroundings. Since there are no production facilities there is no need for a large labor force. The available jobs are filled by the local people, and in the cafeteria at the observatory (the only public place to eat in Green Bank) one can buy the quintessential Appalachian dish—brown beans and cornbread. Instead of overwhelming the valley and its residents, the observatory has blended into the surroundings. A first time visitor is always startled by the sharp contrast between the radio telecsopes and the otherwise pastoral 27 �surroundings, but no one else notices. NRAO is an Appalachian place visited by astronomers from all over the world, and major discoveries have taken place there. The impact of NRAO on the rest of the world is large, but NRAO lies lightly on the landscape of West Virginia. Oak Ridge and Green Bank present marked contrasts in style and temperament, mirroring the different impacts they and the world have on each other. At the same time, they mirror the contrast between science and technology. Oak Ridge was born in a whirlwind and leans forward eagerly toward the future. As a symbol of nuclear power, it embodies the paradox of modern technology, simultaneously offering hope and threatening disaster. Green Bank is a more contemplative place where esoteric knowledge is produced that is unlikely to result in any "practical" applications. What that knowledge is likely to do is to help us understand our place in the cosmos a little more clearly. For a region whose people have an especially strong sense of place, that would be an appropriate gift to the world. BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Don N. "Megatrends and the Mountains (Reflections on Technology and Human Values)," Consortium News, Volume 9, Number 3, November 1984, pp.5-9. Caudill, Harry M. Night: Comes to the Cumberlands. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1962. Groueff, Stephane. Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967. Groves, Leslie R. Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project. New York: Harper, 1962. Hathaway, J.W. "Response to Megatrends and the Mountains (Reflections on Technology and Human Values)," Consortium News, Volume 9, Number 3, November 1984, pp. 13-14. Hauser, Alan. "Response to Megatrends and the Mountains (Reflections on Technology and Human Values)," Consortium News. Volume 9, Number 3, November 1984, pp. 11-13. Hyatt, S. Aaron. "Response to Megatrends and the Mountains (Reflections on Technology and Human Values)," Consortium News. Volume 9, Number 3, November 1984, pp. 9-11. Thompson, Marilou Bonham. Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountains and Atom Meet. Memphis, TN: St. Luke's Press, 1978. Truit, Willis H. and Solomans, T.W. Graham. Science, Technology and Freedom. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974. 28 �CAPITALISM AND COAL: A REASSESSMENT Convenor: John Gaventa, Highlander Center Capital Versus Labour in the Appalachian Coal Fields Vic Allen, University of Leeds Capitalism, Patriarchy and "Men's Work": The System of Control of Production in Coal Mining Mike Yarrow, Ithaca College Capitalism, Patriarchy and "Men's Work": The System of Control of Production of Coal Mining by Mike Yarrow I. Introduction Harry Braverman's (1974) Marxian analysis of the developing labor process under capitalism has stimulated a burgeoning literature on the subject (see for example Nichols and Beynon 1977, Burawoy 1978 and 1979, Clawson 1980, Dix 1977, Edwards 1979, Elger 1979, Friedman 1977, Littler and Salaman 1982, Stark 1980, and Zimbalist 1979). Although there have been differences within this work, it has been based on the common assumption that the labor process, and more broadly the system of control or social relations of production under capitalism, is a product of the class antagonism between capital and labor (Edwards 1979). Feminist analyses of "women's work" have asserted that patriarchy as well as capitalism provides principles by which the work assigned to women is organized. They have added gender antagonisms to class antagonisms in their analyses of the social relations of production in clerical work (Davies 1974, Garson 1972, Howe 1977, Kanter 1977) and nursing (Ehrenreich and English 1973, Gamarnikow 1978). If this feminist intervention in the Marxist analysis of the system of control of labor is helpful in understanding "women's work," then it may also be applicable to "men's work." Here I wish to explore the extent to which coal mining, as "men's work," is organized by the logic of patriarchy as well as the logic of capitalism. The logic of capitalism, according to Marx, derives from the condition of labor as a commodity and the goal of capital to make profits. Workers become commodities as they rent their capacity to work to a capitalist for a certain duration. As with other commodities, the owner has the right to use the workers as s/he wishes. In order to make a profit, the capitalist must get his workers to create a product worth more than s/he pays them in wages. 29 �Since the amount of production can vary tremendously and the worker, who does not have the power to create and gain from the product as s/he wishes, is not very motivated to produce, capital must control labor to coerce maximum feasible production. Capital has used a number of strategies to increase its control over resistant workers, including Taylorist organization of the labor process (Braverman 1974, Clawson 1980), machine design (Braverman 1974, Noble 1979), domestication of labor unions (Aronowitz 1973, Burawoy 1981), controlling state regulation (Burawoy 1981), bureaucratic control of the work force (Clawson 1980, Edwards 1979), and the ceaseless quest for docile workers (Pollard 1963). Workers have struggled against these attempts at control with a variety of tactics which, when successful, have provoked new management strategies (Edwards 1979). Thus, the logic of capital with respect to organizing its labor centers on efficient, i.e., cheap and effective, control. What then is the logic of patriarchal domination with respect to relations among men? As Stewart (1980) points out, one theme of patriarchal domination is the identity of interests of all men in the subordination of women. The brotherhood so created tends to be egalitarian, to stress similarities and promote bonding of the community of men as superiors to women. As Kanter (1977) found, in the sex-segregated milieux of the office, this patriarchal brotherhood is mobilized against women interlopers in managerial jobs. But what role might it play in an exclusively male work setting, as coal mining has been in this country until the 1970's? It would seem to promote an egalitarianism diametrically opposed to capital's control project. There is also a hierarchal principle of relations between men under patriarchy. Under paternalism — rule of the father — some men are seen as "naturally" more powerful, wise, self-disciplined, fatherlike, than others. Thus, they should relate as fathers to the subordinate childlike men (Stewart 1980). The superordinate "father's" relationship to each "son" is personal and specific; he may have favorites among his "sons" and is able to exercise power in arbitrary ways on the authority of his presumed superior qualities and his interest in the welfare of all (Edwards 1979: 26-7). He dominates in the subordinate's best interest. Although there may be tensions, even fear and hatred of the powerful "father," there is assumed to be a harmony of interests. The "father" may be demanding, but he is personally committed to his subordinates and owes them reciprocal obligations for their loyal service. In analyzing the social relations of production of underground coal mining, I will explore the extent to which these contradictory principles of brotherhood and paternalism are operative. In a study of how the struggle between capital and labor, and "fathers" and "sons", combine to shape the social relations of coal mining, it is important to look at the historical development of these relations. The current control system has developed out of an earlier system and cannot be understood without appreciating its origins. Remnants remain from that 30 �earlier system, especially in the miners' modes of coping with control attempts. At the turn of the century, as the demand for coal expanded, new coal fields were developed, often in sparcely populated rural areas where the coal operators had to build towns next to their mines to house their workers. The system of control which developed in these coal camps can be characterized as "piece-rate paternalism." In the following sections, I will analyze this control system and the changes it has undergone since 1930. II. Coal Camp Paternalism A. Social Relations of Production During the early "hand loading" era, large mines were laid out with a central mainline entry tunnel connecting scores of "rooms," tunnels that branched off from it at right angles every 80 feet or so. These rooms were occupied on a long-term basis by coal loaders working individually or with partners. They used their own hand tools to pick, blast, and shovel the coal from the "face" at the end of their rooms into small rail cars, which they then pushed out to the mainline tunnel. The full cars were picked up and replaced with empties by mules and later small locomotives which pulled them out of the mine (Dix 1977: 8-14). In this individualized labor process, the only need for coordination was the delivery and retrieval of coal cars with the coal loaders production pace. This did not work very smoothly. One study in 1923 found that loaders spent 23% of an 8-hour day waiting for cars (Dix 1977). The coal loaders were essentially treated by subcontractors and paid by the ton, after deductions had been made for any rock found in the coal. With this piece-rate system, the mine owner bought the miner's intention to mine coal in paying him by the product. Giv^n_thi^cjmirolj2jaikjrito the terms of the labor exchange, supervision could be minimal. Mines with more than a hundred coal loaders spread over miles of tunnels typically had one mine foreman who might make the rounds once a day or less frequently. Tonnage payment was an efficient means of control, not only because it required little supervision but because it forced the miners to absorb the inefficiencies of the system (e.g., loaders were not paid for work that did not produce coal, such as cleaning up the rock after a cave-in or for the time spent waiting for empty cars.) Reliance on tonnage pay as the primary control mechanism fostered a self-concept among coal loaders of being independent craftsmen, and they guarded their prerogatives zealously. They claimed proprietary right to their rooms, even when absent, and walked out of the mine when they had earned enough for the day (Dix 1977). Miners exerted considerable craft control over their work, deciding how to do it and training apprentice miners to the craft, with or without a union to back up their claim for autonomy (Goodrich 1925). These conditions fostered an assertive autonomous stance, which Suffern (1926) called "a psychology of independence" and Goodrich 31 �(1925) dubbed the "miner's freedom." Tonnage pay also focused attention on the rate of exploitation — miners were aware of the discrepancy between the price the operator got for the coal and the price he paid them (Brophy 1964). To increase the rate of profit at stable prices, operators had to lower the rate of payment which tended to provoke resistance. The operators, therefore, often resorted to indirect means by docking a miner's pay excessively for rock in the coal, or by shortweighting his coal (Dix 1977). Miners' response to these widespread violations of the terms of the exchange was to organize and demand union checkweighmen. Thus, tonnage pay as a control mechanism had its limitations. Operators augmented their control repertoire by mobilizing aspects of patriarchal domination, both inside the mines and in the camps. In the mines the foreman used his power to assign rooms and coal cars to reward productivity and loyalty: the good "sons" got preference. They also attempted to adapt the preexistent conception of manliness to meet their needs for a productive and tractable workforce. They appealed to valued male traits of physical prowess, mastery, competitiveness, and toughness to get production. The structure of the labor process with its stress on individual production lent itself to this appeal. Miners had to be ready for the next delivery of coal cars or it meant they could not keep up with "good miners" (Brophy 1964). One 70-year old Yugoslav I interviewed remembered a foremansponsored competition between himself and a black hand loader, to see who could load the most cars in a day. Also, miners who let their concern for personal safety interfere unduly with their ability to get out-as much coal as possible from under a cracking roof before it caved in, were ridiculed (Brophy 1964). Miners resisted these operator attempts to use patriarchal forms of domination. They took pride in their individual production, but when operators attempted to turn this pride to their own ends through divisive manipulation, the miners tried to resist. They demanded the "square turn," equal, distribution of coal cars, and condemned miners who stole coal or otherwise tried to take unfair advantage of their workmates (Brophy 1964). The miners valued assertive independence from the boss and cooperation and concern for each other's safety. They realized that there was a necessary, though tension-charged, connection between the miner's ability to assert his independence at work and his ability to defend it by struggling collectively with his buddies (Goodrich 1925). B. Social Relations Beyond the Mines Unsuccessful in controlling the labor process, the early operators extended their control project to the miners' lives outside the mines. Coal camps were run as paternalistic fiefdoms in which the operator owned the housing, schools, stores, and churches, and hired doctors, storekeepers, school teachers, preachers, and guards. The miners were paid in scrip, redeemable 32 �at the company store. Often the frequent layoffs resulted in debt bondage to the operator. Attempts to challenge the system of control led to being fired, evicted, and blacklisted from mines in the region. If miners appealed to authorities beyond the coal camp, they typically confronted county officials beholden to the operators. For example, in Logan County, West Virginia, Sheriff Don Chafin was paid a royalty for every nonunion ton mined in the county (Nyden 1974: 34). This paternalistic system of control, was one in which the lives of the miners' families were profoundly dependent on the "favors" of the operators who were viewed by themselves, the local press, politicians, and small dependent middle class, as architects of progress and benevolent guardians of their employees (Gaventa 1980, Tarns 1963). Miners were viewed as irresponsible children whose carelessness caused accidents and who needed close supervision in the company towns to be protected from corrupting influences (Dix 1977, Gaventa 1980, Tarns 1963). The paternalism of the coal camps was reflected in a patriarchal family structure. Excluded from the one industry in the region, women could augment family income by gardening and taking in laundry and boarders, but they were economically dependent on their husbands. Operators reinforced the patriarchal family by giving preference to "family men" in hiring and layoffs (Corbin 1981). The economic responsibility of the patriarchal father role forced miners into dependent son roles versus the operators. Operators stressed family responsibility in claiming childlike loyalty. But there is evidence that miners felt the contradictions. In the early battles for union recognition, miners often articulated their fight as a struggle for their children (Corbin 1981). Their position as dependent worker-sons of the operators did not allow them to provide adequately for their families. The most fundamental contradiction in the patriarchal aspect of the system of domination was between the miners' assertive individualism at work and their child role in the coal camp. The social relations of production encouraged, even required, assertive independence which was frustrated by the smothering paternalism of the camp. To the extent that the operator could keep his miners beholden to his largesse, both inside and outside the mine, this contradiction was suppressed. To the extent the miners were able collectively to assert their individual autonomy at work and found reason to question the benevolence of the operators' paternalism, the contradiction became oppressive. The contradictions within coal camp paternalism were heightened by the contradictions between paternalism and the logic of capitalism. In this early period, the coal industry was very competitive and subject to periodic overproduction. Thus, survival was contingent on keeping costs down. This meant keeping wages low by fiat or deceit, providing few amenities in the coal camps and few safety precautions in the mine. When demand declined, the work force could not be carried. John Brophy depicts his family's existence in the central Pennsylvania coal fields at the turn of the century as involving fre33 �quent moves from one squalid camp, with a frequently unscrupulous operator, to another (1964). The authority of the patriarch is difficult to maintain under such conditions, where concern for the "sons" on which their loyalty is garnered seems to get lost in the scramble for economic viability and profits. Justus Collins, a prominent mine owner at the turn of the century, alludes to the contradiction in a letter of advice to his brother who had recently been appointed superintendent of one of his company's mines: Maintain good discipline at all times at your places, especially around the stores and offices, but it has always been my policy to pay small heed to those things which are purely a personal matter with my employees—it is very easy to draw the distinction—we are not running a Christian Endeavor Camp Meeting nor a Sunday School, yet a certain amount of decency and order must be required of our people. In this connection, never lose sight of the fact that the sole purpose of the organization is to make money for their stockholders (quoted in Dix 1977: 43). Coal paternalism also contradicted the system of bourgeois democracy where workers as commodities were subject to their employers' control, but as citizens outside of work were entitled to freedom from control. The operators insisted that they were only exercising their property rights, while the miners raised strike demands for abolition of company guards, payment in scrip, and other operator control mechanisms. In the bloody Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1912-13, miners and their outside supporters called the coal camp system of control un-American, and compared it to Czarist Russia (Corbin 1981). In these early strikes, the women struggled along with the men. It was equally their fight — for a living wage and for emancipation from coal camp tyranny (Corbin 1981). This infringement by wives on the male preserve of protecting the family caused some friction, but was generally treated as an exceptional condition and traditional roles were reestablished after the strikes. C. Conclusion Capital's project of controlling labor in the early coal mines met with many difficulties due to the absence of machine control of the labor process and the inability, given the special conditions of the mines, of adequately overseeing the workforce. In these unfavorable conditions, operators used a piece-rate labor exchange as the most efficient control mechanism. But miners organized to collectively resist many of its control features. Capital, therefore, went outside of the mines and mobilized elements of patriarchal domination to achieve greater control. The resulting control system, coal camp paternalism, while effective for many years in many locales, contained serious contradictions. There was the contradiction between the miner's role as son of the paternalistic operator, patriarch of his own family, and brother to his workmates. 34 �Although these three roles could be isolated to some degree, they were experienced as contradictory when they confronted each other under certain conditions. There was also often a contradiction between the capitalist logic of cost cutting in a competitive industry and the paternalist logic of caring for the loyal "sons." Miners resisted this control system as workers, brothers, and citizens. As workers, they organized both informally in the mines and formally in unions, to fight for higher wages, an end to the abuses of the piece-rate system, and their employers' arbitrary power. As brothers, they developed a counterdefinition of manliness to that of the operators. While the operators stressed responsibility to family and employer, hard work, competitiveness and loyalty, the miners stressed autonomy and independence versus the boss, cooperation and fair dealing with workmates and opposed treatment as children by the patriarch. As citizens, miners demanded the freedoms they were denied under coal camp paternalism. Coal camp paternalism has been most successful in isolated regions of central Appalachia—southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and Tennessee—where cosmopolitan ideas of democracy and the rights of labor were remote, where other industries did not provide alternative employment and control systems, and where, due to control of county government, coal operators could back up their rule of their camps with state power. Coal camp paternalism has been weaker in cosmopolitan, multi-industry regions such as western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia and Ohio (Nyden 1978). It has also been weakened when economic crises forced wage cuts and layoffs, thus bringing the benevolence of the patriarch into question. Both the bloody Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1912-13 and the great union drive of 1933 were preceded by wage cuts (Barkey 1971, Tams 1963). III. Union Paternalism Coal camp paternalism crumbled slowly as a result of a number of factors. As the coal companies expanded, the personal rule of the patriarch gave way to more bureaucratic procedures. The miners union, supported by the new deal administration, asserted miners' rights both in the mine and camp, thus blunting the absolute and arbitrary power of the operator. Better roads and automobiles allowed miners to escape the coal camps. The progressively mechanized and cooperative labor process of coal mining made the piecerate system impractical. Coal operators are still searching for an effective new system of control, while miners are engaged in a variety of forms and levels of resistance. In 1933, with Federal support for unionization, John L. Lewis, already president of the United Mine Workers since 1920, launched an energetic organizing drive with the paternalistic slogan "The President wants you to join the union." (Baratz 1955: 49). In two months over three-fourths of the country's coal miners joined. This firm establishment of a miners' union 35 �in most coal fields of the country doomed coal camp paternalism. It resulted in two decades of conflict between the union and operators, including eleven national strikes and many smaller ones. Out of these struggles, often mediated by the Federal Government, miners won significant gains in wages and benefits, and John L. Lewis won the miners' undying loyalty. Thus, coal camp paternalism was replaced by union paternalism. Lewis controlled the whole organization in a paternalistic style and insisted on making all major decisions. His success, as well as his bombastic authoritarian style, legitimated his claim to the mantle of the patriarch which the miners had just wrested from the operators. In grand paternalistic style, Lewis insisted that the miners were not yet ready for union democracy. Gaventa (1980) argues that faced with the awesome power of the operators, miners, particularly those in areas where coal camp paternalism was still intact such as eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, wanted to be championed by their own union strong man. In 1950, as the coal industry started losing markets to oil, and mechanization resuced demand for mine labor even more, Lewis came to terms with the operators. The result was a period of twenty years with no major strikes and close cooperation between the union leadership and the unionized companies. Lewis and then Boyle ruled the union with a strong hand, appointing district officials and staff and using them to enforce labor peace in conjunction with the operators. Gradually, after two decades of decline, production and demand for labor started expanding in the late 1960's. The new young miners hired as a result were less awed by the paternalism they found in the mines and the union. They were more impressed with the neglect of health and safety and compensation benefits during the period of cooperation (Nyden 1974). Gradually a movement built which on its second try in 1972 was successful in ousting Boyle and electing a reform president. With the election of Miller, the period of union paternalism came to an end, and the mid-1970's were a period of unprecedented power exercised by rank-and-file miners. This second crisis of management's system of control has led to renewed efforts to find a workable control system. In the following section we will explore the complicated dynamics of the developing system. IV. The Current System: Union Brotherhood vs. Bureaucratic Control A. The Social Relations of Production During the golden age of Taylorism in the 1920's there were repeated calls for increasing the control of the coal mine labor process. Mine superintendent Thomas Stroup in 1923 thought that it would be necessary a la Taylor "to abolish the contract system, to mechanicalize (sic) the mines thoroughly," and "to standardize every operation down to the minutest detail so that no responsibility of any kind will fall on the worker" (quoted in Dix 1977: 62). The U.S. Coal Commission of 1923 called for the introduction of a loading machine which, by concentrating the workforce, would make closer super36 �vision possible (Dix 1977: 64).* But the process of mechanizing and Taylorizing the production process in underground coal mining was fraught with problems. The first wave of mechanization substituted machines for most of the hand tools used by the hand loaders; it is now known as the "conventional mining system." Many of these machines were large electric-powered, rubbertired vehicles. The typical crew of twelve worked in five "rooms" and their connecting breakthrough tunnels. The machines rotated between the five coal faces, first undercutting, then drilling, blasting and loading the coal onto "shuttle cars," which are conveyer belts on wheels. Shuttle cars transported the coal to rail cars or the head of a stationary conveyer belt. After a room was cleared a team of two came to roof bolt the newly exposed section of roof. Roof bolting, laminating the immediate rock layers with long expansion bolts, had been substituted for timbering to allow room for the equipment to move round. Each of these twelve member crews had a foreman. The crew members had to cooperate closely to avoid endangering each other and to achieve high production with a minimum of breakdowns. No sooner was this "conventional" mining system established than it began to be replaced by the continuous miner system. The continuous miner is a huge machine which gouges the coal from the face and deposits it on the "shuttle cars" thus eliminating undercutting, drilling, blasting and loading. Continuous miner sections typically develop five tunnels but only work three at a time. Crew size is reduced to 6-8 miners and a foreman. These changes in systems involved many of the "reforms" which the "scientific managers" had called for but the result was not the undisputed managerial control of the labor process they had anticipated. Mechanization resulted in higher productivity but, since the miner still controlled the speed and direction of the machine, it did not result in significant loss of power or skill. Specialization occurred as each miner's job was defined by the machine s/he operated but with frequent job rotation, the miner's skills were not fragmented. It was in mangement's interest to have a versatile, broadly trained workforce so that if a machine operator was absent the whole section would not be crippled. Mechanization and the increasingly cooperative nature of the labor process made attribution of production to individual miners impossible so payment by the ton was converted to hourly pay. With this change in the terms of the labor exchange, management lost a powerful work incentive but gained flexibility in introducing new technologies and speed-ups. Although the production workforce was concentrated in a smaller area and the level of supervision was increased twelvefold from 1980 to 1969 (Seltzer 1977: 57), miners have been able to retain considerable control of the labor *It is interesting to note that machine loading was rapidly introduced finally after reunionization. It was then, during the Depression, in spite of the industry's financial straights, that the need for a new control system was urgent. 37 �process. First, an increasing proportion of the underground workforce (50% in 1969), works away from the coal face tending the miles of track, conveyer belts, cables, waterpipes, and air courses which are required in a mechanized coal mine (Dix 1977). Typically these support workers are only infrequently overseen by foremen with many miles to cover. Second, even at the production face where supervision is the most intense, miners still have many effective means for exerting some control of the labor process. A miner describes how a foreman can be disciplined by the miners he is supposed to control: You can stop production just like that. But you got to know what you are doing. I mean everybody knows what's going on usually. You can stop it legally. You can pull safety on them. You can stop and check your water sprays after every third buggy (shuttle car). 'There is not enough water on this miner (continuous miner)!' 'It's a Federal law.' You can stop and set all of your timbers just right, you know. If you work to rule you can really hurt them, and then you can deliberately sabotage the stuff. You can run over cable. You can just drive your buggy real slow. 'Can't you go any faster?' 'No sir!' Nothing in the contract that says how fast you have to work. (Interview June 23, 1978. Southern West Virginia) Miners can use their control of the machines, and the protection of the union contract and the mine safety laws to slowdown. Even on a modern section the foreman cannot be everywhere at once. The hourly wage rate makes uniting a crew for a slowdown easier because their paychecks are not jeopardized while the foreman is vulnerable because he is evaluated by the production of his section. Mine management has not been able to turn miners into routine workers with simple stipulated tasks partly because of the unpredictability of the conditions which necessitates quick alterations in procedures but also because to get good production, miners must take shortcuts with safety. These violations of Federal and state laws cannot be stipulated by management.* For miners to have a significant influence on the labor process through these and other power resources, they must achieve unity. Several aspects of the work seem to foster unity. First, it allows good communication between miners. The workforce at most mines is relatively small. Miners typically work on a shift with 20 to 100 "buddies." There is ample time to communicate with their fellows without being overheard by management. Miners spend forty minutes to an hour each day dressing for work and showering after work in the bathhouse. The ride to their work locations in the mine takes fifteen minute to an hour, and they take rest breaks and machine breakdown breathers throughout the day. *For a more detailed analysis of the struggle for control in the current labor process see Yarrow, 1979. 38 �Second, the work necessitates cooperation among miners. Production involves coordination which is not totally designed into the machinery and layout of the labor process. Instead, members of the crew must anticipate each other's actions so as to avoid bottlenecks and help out when a member runs into trouble. High production is a collective achievement, and so is safety. Operating huge machines in tight, dark, explosive surroundings requires watching out for your "buddies." Shoddy work is not shipped out as on an assembly line but creates the environment in which miners have to work for the next few weeks, Thus, there are typically strong collective efforts to socialize a new recruit to work safely and think about his "buddy." Their common struggles with the foreman protected by the union contract and the miner's willingness to strike locally to prevent disciplinary action against a mate, also reinforce solidarity. B. Current Management Control Attempts Faced with the effective unity of their workforce, coal operators have in the past decade tried various techniques to dissolve the miners' solidarity and nullify their power resources. Richard Edwards, in his book, Contested Terrain (1979), describes three type of management control systems which succeed each other in the historical development of capitalism but may all be used in varying degrees by one firm. "Simple control," the personal paternalistic control of the small entrepreneur, was followed by "technical control" which seeks to design control of the pace and movements of work into the physical organization of the production process through machine design and detailed division of labor. Due to the special conditions of mining and the collective resistence of miners, the attempt to establish technical control was relatively unsuccessful. Technical control, according to Edwards, is succeeded by bureaucratic control. Coal operators have recently turned to bureaucratic control measures in combination with simple and technical techniques in their desperate efforts to gain control of the labor process. 1. Technical Control The primary focus in the area of technical control is to develop a new production technology. The system now slowly gaining a foothold in underground mining (still less than ten percent of production) is the mechanized long wall systems used in Europe. With this system, a coal face up to 800 feet long is developed. A machine travels across the face shearing the coal onto a conveyer pan which moves it to a belt at the end of the face from whence it is transported out of the mine. In this system the roof is held up by huge hydraulic jacks. As the face is sheared, these jacks are advanced, and the roof caves in behind them. This system is potentially very productive. With a crew the size of that on a continuous miner section, it can produce several times as much coal. It also turns many of the jobs into relatively unskilled reptetitive operations calling for little judgement. The 39 �workforce is more tightly coordinated by the machine and its pace dictated. The long wall machinery, on the other hand, is very sensitive to geological and operational changes. It is not adaptable to many geological conditions of the relatively shallow American coal seams. It requires enormous capital to install, and it remains to be seen whether the long wall system will give management significantly more control or whether the miners will develop new effective strategies for exerting their control. All these difficulties with the long wall system have probably caused it to be adopted at a cautious pace. With technical control providing questionable prospects for a significantly more effective control system, the coal companies have resorted chiefly to simple, patriarchal controls and increasing use of bureaucratic controls. 2. Patriarchal Control Coal companies have attacked miners' unity with some "labors of division" which fit the logic of patriarchal control. Miners' unity was fostered by the increasingly social labor process, was protected by the union, and was strengthened in the mid-1970's by a strong demand for mine labor. It was formulated in terms of a brotherhood of male workers with common interests. To weaken the unity, coal companies used a variety of patriarchal control mechanisms to undermine the miners' brotherhood. One is the old paternalistic tactic of favoritism. Miners have fought to have jobs, overtime, and layoffs awarded purely on the basis of seniority to prevent favoritism, but the contract includes the criteria of comptence along with seniority in job allocation. Miners complain that foremen use this to reward favorites. Job allocation is a powerful control mechanism. For an older, arthritic and black lung miner, assignment to a strenuous wet job could be life threatening (Arble 1976). Miners have been concerned about the potential for increased paternalistic control provided by the replacement of the union-controlled health plan with private insurance carriers under contract with the coal companies. They fear the return to power of company doctors who have continued to be used in the coal fields to testify against miners' compensation claims. They also fear that the new system is divisive because miners who face difficulties with their health coverage may not share this problem with miners who work for other companies. Under the union-controlled plan, miners across the Eastern coal fields struck in 1977 when benefits were cut. Subleasing mines and operating them non-union have also increased paternalistic control. Since the long 1977-78 strike and the subsequent decline of demand for metalurgical coal, many large companies have been content to sublease their coal properties to small operators. The union contract provides that these lease operators must recognize the union if the original company was unionized. But because of their precarious finances, these operators have been able to convince miners to give up some of their contract rights. I visited a sublease operation in 1982 where a militant union local had given 40 �up enforcing safety provisions because a previous sublease operator had gone bankrupt, owing each miner thousands of dollars in back wages. Under these conditions, the miners are persuaded that they share the operator's interest in the viability of the company. Other companies have reasserted paternalistic control by avoiding the union altogether. They have been willing to pay higher wages to operate non-union. As in the past, foremen try to employ a capitalist patriarchal conception of manliness to divide and motivate miners. Foremen constantly encourage competition between sections and shifts in tons of coal mined. The 1978 contract allows production incentive bonuses, reinforcing the foremen's appeal to manly pride in production. Cautious miners may be ridiculed as unmanly. One told me of being assigned with two other men to lift heavy steel rails. The miner remarked that it looked like a four-man job. The foreman asked, "What's the matter? Aren't you man enough?" (Interview miner 143, July 1978. Southern West Virginia.) The foremen's leadership style is usually a gruff authoritarian machismo characteristic of male groups such as sport teams, fraternal organizations and the military (Stewart 1980). But it is used on miners who, although they participate in the same dominant patriarchal culture, retain their traditional classinformed definition of manliness which includes autonomy versus the boss. Miners also retain considerable control. Foremen must therefore be careful not to overstep the bounds by unduly insulting the manly dignity of their subordinates who might retaliate. On sections with particularly militant miners, foremen are forced to give up the authoritarian style completely and ask politely for work to be done. More typically a rough give-and-take between foreman and miners allows for both the assertion of authority and the protection of dignity. The miners' brotherhood makes it problematic for coal mine management to mobilize the capitalist patriarchal system of dominance to gain more control of production. Operators seeking to increase their patriarchal control might be expected to welcome women miners as a means of dissolving the brotherhood. Miners seem to fear the disruption of the brotherhood, as well as to fear the loss of pride in their claim to do work that is too arduous for women. Many have been socialized to the norm that gentlemen do not allow ladies to do such work. Working with women means they violate the norm with the resulting crisis of conscience and identity or doing the women's work as well as their own. Miners, as other male blue collar workers, have claimed high wages to support their patriarchal family roles. The low pay for "women's work" conversely has been legitimated as "pin money." Male miners may at some level fear the loss of the status "men's work." Operators have not generally welcomed women miners. Their opposition is stated in terms of their firm believe that women are not strong enough or sufficiently skilled with machinery to make good miners. Another product of foremen's participation in the dominant patriarchal culture is their 41 �ideological investment in having mining remain "men's work." Their opposition may also be based on a realization that their control system will be challenged if mining is no longer "men's work." Foremen will lose their appeal to machismo, and the underground work environment and labor process may have to be changed to take more account of miners' health, safety and comfort. Women have not been socialized to consider danger and discomfort, reaffirmations of their womanhood. Ironically, operators have gained a measure of control through the relatively high wages for blue collar workers that coal miners have attained through their years of struggle. Far from giving miners independence, these wages have financed their participation in consumerist mainstream culture. They have been able to obtain mortgages for homes in suburban developments removed from the coal camp. They must work to keep up the payments and, since mining is the only high wage blue collar work in many coal fields, they must work in the mines. This produces a new high wage dependency on the operator which fosters a fear of strikes and any actions which might put them in management's disfavor. Far from being a control system discarded as anachronistic by coal company management, simple paternalistic control is an important part of the control repertoire. The recent assault on union-administered health and pension funds and the union itself indicate a renewed determination by operators to return to this control system. 3. Bureaucratic Control In the period since the overthrow of union paternalism the coal companies have pushed for increasing bureaucratic control. Since the union president can no longer guarantee "labor stability" in return for wages and benefits increases, the companies have sought to negotiate control into contracts, to arbitrate it into the body of contract interpretation, and to litigate it into judicial decisions. In this effort, the Federal government and various other organs of the state have been most cooperative. They have tried to bring the coal industry in line with the industrial relations arrangements worked out since the New Deal. Bureaucratic control seeks to dissolve rank-and-file unity by dividing workers into many minute hierarchically arranged categories, and to prevent collective action on disputes by instituting formal, quasilegal procedures which isolate the worker from his workmates. Attempts to establish bureaucratic hierarchies among miners have not been very successful. The union-based seniority system does lead to a group of older workers with a larger choice of jobs and more stake in their pensions. But pay differentials are based on danger as well as skill, and young miners often take a stint at high paying dangerous jobs such as roof bolting to gain experience on a machine and then bid off to less dangerous lower paying work. This circulation between the pay grades defeats the establishment of a divisive merit- 42 �ocratic hierarchy. A few jobs such as electrician-mechanic require formal training and state certifications which acts as a barrier to easy access and establishes a certain distinction. Miners have fought divisions by insisting that all miners be part of the brotherhood. They use harsh initiation rituals for neophytes and practical joke sanctions against anyone seeming to set himself apart (Vaught and Smith 1980). During the period of rank-and-file mobilization, miners fought against great disparities in pay. In the last three contracts the pay differential between the highest and lowest paid union miner decreased to under ten percent. The operators have been more successful in establishing bureaucratic procedures for controlling conflict. In reform in President Miller's first contract in 1974, a fullblown grievance procedure culminating in an Arbitration Review Board was established. Miners found the grievance procedure long and drawn out and biased in favor of the operators. They did not accept it lying down. During the three years of the 1974 contract one of the biggest waves of wildcat strikes in American labor history occurred (Yarrow 1982: 168-169). Miners joined this battle in spite of a 1970 Supreme Court decision which allowed companies to sue for damages and get injunctions against wildcat strikes (Seltzer 1977: 529). Massive wildcat strikes were conducted in the summers of 1975 and 1976 against the injunctions. The 1976 strike was successful in forcing a judge in Charleston, West Virginia, to revoke an injunction and enormous fines (Nyden 1978a). This confrontation, between the operators' attempts to institute bureaucratic control and the fiesty brotherhood of miners' resistance to it, was a standoff. The operators went into negotiations for the next contract determined to restore "stability and improve productivity in coal" (Bituminous Coal Operators Association Opening Statement October 6, 1977). The contract finally adopted tacitly included an Arbitration Review Board decision which allowed operators to summarily fire wildcat strike instigators. The level of wildcats has been low ever since. The operators have also been successful in instituting bureaucratic procedures for dealing with absenteeism and weakening union organizing. As stated above, miners have used safety provisions as a power resource. Operators have sought to bring these provisions under more bureaucratic control so that individual miners or union safety committees may be penalized for "unreasonable" use of their right to refuse work or to stop production if they believe they are in "immanent danger." Recent court decisions and the 1981 contract have weakened miners' ability to maintain union representation and to organize non-union mines. The union organizing efforts are increasingly constrained by legal regulation. Although a personnel officer from an industry with more fully developed bureaucratic control would be dismayed by the coal industry, bureaucratic procedures are gradually being established. The resistance is not only from the miners. As described above, management is still wedded to patriarchal controls such as favoritism which contradicts bureaucratic procedures. Some 43 �of the bureaucratic procedures negotiated in national contracts have been honored in the breech especially by the smaller independents who tend to be more committed to simple control. But at least for the time being, with a protracted slump in the demand for coal labor, the operators seem to have won a crucial round in the institution of bureaucratic control by establishing bureaucratic regulation of conflicts. V. Conclusion The control system in coal mining has gone through a dramatic evolution in this century. Throughout that evolution, coal operators have relied heavily on patriarchal forms of domination in the struggle to gain control of the labor process and the miners. Under coal camp paternalism and then union paternalism, the patriarchal form of hierarchy among men was used in the face of ineffective technical control systems. Currently, technical control is still ineffective and remnants of paternalistic control are still employed along with an increasing use of bureaucratic procedures. Miners have responded to these control systems by also employing claims to elements of patriarchal culture. They have aggressively asserted their rights as craftsmen and men to autonomy from demeaning supervision. Thus, the control of coal mine labor is a contested terrain both in terms of concrete decision-making power and in terms of ideology with both capital and labor struggling over the definitions of the rights and obligations of labor and the rights and obligations of men. Out of the fray has come a conception of coal mining as men's work which entitles miners to certain prerogatives but also allows management to ignore certain amenities. Goldberg (1980) has suggestd in her analysis of "women's work" in the office that application of elements in Edwards' three control systems produces contradictions which can foster a militant feminist job consciousness. This may also be the case for "men's work" in coal mines. Certainly there is a contradiction between paternalistic favoritism and bureaucratic principles of fairness, and between formal safety rights recognized by the bureaucratic system and safety as a matter of trusting in and obeying the "Father" under paternalism. But the three systems also are congruent in their denial of decisionmaking power to workers, and they reinforce each other. It may therefore be the relative weakness of technical control which causes problems for the composite system. To explore how this may work in the current control system I will describe briefly how that system seems to be experienced by miners. My tentative conclusion is that the failure of technical control in underground coal mining in conjunction with the compensatory use of paternalistic and bureaucratic control mechanisms creates a characteristic montage of experiences promoting a militant male working-class consciousness. What are the salient features of the control system, and why does it foster a male specific class consciousness? Because of the failure of technical con- 44 �trol, the labor process provides miners with the experience of relative strength vis-a-vis capital and promotes unity. Compare the miner to the typical assemblyline worker. The assembly-line worker's job pace, movements and coordination with other workers are determined by the line. The line is, as the architype of technical control, capital's ideological apparatus par excellence because it convinces the worker of his or her powerlessness while mystifying the exact locus of power in the mediating machine* Because of the effectiveness of technical control of the labor process in this case, foremen are freed from the driving function and chiefly perform bureaucratic control functions to keep the line supplied with workers. The coal miner controls his or her own machine. Production is the result of a skilled, cooperative effort by a section crew. The exercise of management power is unambiguously communicated by the foreman's orders. Moreover, miners become aware over time that the foreman's goal of production and their goal of survival conflict; the veneer of paternalistic concern is peeled off by exposure to unavoidable class conflict. The assembly-line worker's job experience tends to lead to a feeling of powerlessness and insignificance, which is congruent with the feeling of being a child under paternalistic control and being a number under bureaucratic control. S/he is likely to respond by leaving the job (the turnover rate has been thirty percent a year in car assembly plants) or by resignation punctuated by brief episodes of frustrated rebellion. The coal miner's work, in spite of the horrible working conditions, involves satisfying experiences of intense comraderie with "buddies," of the exercise of skill, and of the collective exercise of power vis-a-vis capital. Attempts to control the powerful miners' brotherhood whether by paternalistic or bureaucratic means, are viewed as an assault on miners' manhood and brotherhood. They contradict a position of power and community already won. This mix of collective power with subordination seems to be fertile ground for the development of rebelliousness because the subjects of the imposition of control face it with confidence, and a heightened sense of loss of entitlements. It is this mix which the current control system has in common with the fundamentally different coal camp paternalism. Under that system miners experienced power and autonomy in the mine and subordination in the camp. Under the current system power and subordination are experienced in direct confrontation at work. *Autoworkers from the Linden GM Plant in New Jersey suggested that older workers who have been on the line for a number of years tend to "get beaten down by the line" and do not oppose GM's power. Another indication of the affect of the line is that these Linden respondents and autoworkers from the Lordstown plant interviewed for the film "Loose Bolts" observe that line workers are usually not active in local union politics. 45 �Literature Cited Arble, Meade. The Long Tunnel: A Coal Miner's Journal. New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1976. Aronowitz, Stanley. False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1973. Baratz, Morton S. The Union and the Coal Industry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955. Barkey, Frederick A. The Socialist Party in West Virginia from 1898 to 1920: A Study in Working Class Racialism. PhD. Dissertation. University of Pittsburgh, 1971. Braverman, Harry. Labor and Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review, 1974. Brophy, John. A Miner's Life. Edited and supplemented by John D. P. Hall. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964. Burawoy, Michael. "Toward a Marxist Theory of the Labor Process: Braverman and Beyong." Politics and Society 8:3-4, 1978. .Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Clawson, Dan. Bureaucracy and the Labor Process: The Transformation of U.S. Industry, 1860-1920. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980. Corbin, David Alan. Life, Work and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West: Virginia Miners, 1880-1922. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1981. Davies, Marjorie. "Women's Place is at the Typewriter: The Feminization of the Clerical Labor Force." Radical America 8:1-37, 1974. Dix, Keith. Work Relations in the Coal Industry: The Hand-Loading Era, 1880-1930. Morgantown, W.: Institute for Labor Studies, West Virginia University, 1977. Edwards, Richard C. Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books, 1979. Ehrenreich, Barbara and Deidre English. Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers. Oyster Bay, N.Y.: Glass Mountain Pamphlets, 1973. Elger, T. "Valorisation and De-Skilling: A Critique of Braverman." Capital and Class 7, 1979. Friedman, A. Industry and Labour: Class Struggle and Work and Monopoly Capitalism. New York: MacMillan, 1977. Garson, Barbara. All the Livelong Day. New York: Penguin Books, 1972. Gaventa, John. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 1980. Goldberg, Roberta. Dissatisfaction and Consciousness among Office Workers: A Case Study of a Working Women's Organization. PhD. dissertation. American University, 1981. Goodrich, Carter. The Miners' Freedom: A Study of the Working Life in a Changing Industry. Boston: Marshall Jones, 1925. Howe, Louise K. Pink Collar Workers: Inside the World of Women's Work. New York: Putnam, 1977. Kanter, Rosabeth. Men and Women of the Corporation. New York: Basic Books, 1977. 46 �Littler, C. and G. Salaman. "Bravermania and Beyond: Recent Theories of the Labor Process." Sociology 16:2, 1982. Noble, David. "Social Choice in Machine Design: the Case of Automatically Controlled Machine Tools, and a Challenge for Labor." Politics and Society 8:3-4, 1978. Nyden, Paul. Miners for Democracy: Struggle in the Coal Fields. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1974. . "Rank-and-File Organizations and the United Mine Workers of America. The Insurgent Sociologist 3, 1978. , and Linda Nyden. Showdown in Coal: The Struggle for Rank-and-File Unionism. Pittsburgh: Miner's Report Pamphlet, 1978 a. Pollard, Sidney. "Factory Discipline in the Industrial Revolution." Work and Society. Mary M. Robisehon et a/, (eds.). Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University, 1977. Seltzer, Curtis. The United Mine Workers of America and the Coal Operators: The Political Economy of Coal in Appalachia, 1950-1973. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1977. Simon, Rick. The Development of Underdevelopment: The Coal Industry and It's Effects on the West Virginia Economy, 1880-1930. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1978. Stark, David. "Class Struggle and the Transformation of the Labor Process: A Relational View." Theory and Society 9:1, 1980. Stewart, Katie. "The Marriage of Capitalist and Patriarchal Ideologies: Meanings of Male Bonding and Male Ranking in U.S. Culture." Women and Revolution. Lydia Sargent (ed.). Boston: South End Press, 1981. Suffern, Arthur E. Coal Miners' Struggle for Industrial Status. New York: MacMillan, 1926. Tams, W.P. The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia. Morgantown, WVa.: West Virginia University Library, 1963. Vaught, Charles and David Smith. "Incorporation and Mechanical Solidarity in an Underground Coal Mine." Sociology of Work and Occupations 7:2, 1980. Yarrow, Michael. "The Labor Process in Coal Mining: Struggle for Control" Case Studies on the Labor Process. Andrew Zimablist (ed.) New York: Monthly Review, 1979. .How Good Strong Union Men Line It Out: Explorations of the Structure and Dynamics of Coal Miners' Class Consciousness. Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University. 1982. Zimbalist, Andrew. Case Studies on the Labor Process. New York: Monthly Review, 1979. 47 �WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS: ENDURING IMAGES OF APPALACHIA Convenor: Jim Lloyd, Western Carolina University Mary Prescott Montague: Last of the Appalachian Local Colorists Dexter Collett, Asher, Kentucky The Schoolmarm Motif in Appalachian Fiction Heidi Koring, Lincoln Memorial University Early Regional Photographers: Margaret Morley and William Barnhill in Western North Carolina Richard Straw, Radford University Early Regional Photographers: Margaret Morley and William Barnhill in Western North Carolina by Richard A. Straw Southern Appalachia has been extremely fruitful ground in which hundreds of photographers in this century have found a rich source of inspiration for their art. Among the earliest regional photographers were Margaret Morley and William Barnhill. Morley's book, The Carolina Mountains, appeared in 1913 and though it contained only twenty-four photographs, her images chronicle the everyday lives of mountain people all over western North Carolina in an engaging and sensitive manner. Her best works show women doing the tasks that filled their days and defined their place in pre-industrial mountain society. Her photos are an open and deliberate attempt to capture what she believed to be the honesty and straightforwardness of life in the Southern Highlands. William Barnhill arrived in western North Carolina from Philadelphia in 1914 and immediately set out to record on film all aspects of mountain life in Madison and Buncombe counties. He was probably the first photographer to make pictures of mountain culture for his own enjoyment. He was independent and worked for no newspaper, no editor, nor did he have a studio of his own.1 He was something of the vagabond and set out to photograph the region to satisfy his own curiosity and inner drive. For this he is certainly unique in the history of early Appalachian photography. His works are significant historical documents of Appalachian life in the early 20th century (although he did not mean for them to be) and are remarkable for their artistry and lack of bias or romanticism. What is especially amazing about his photos is that they were kept in private hands for over The author would like to thank Richard Dillingham of Mars Hill College for all his kind help and support. 48 �a half century until published in American Heritage and Life magazines in 1969 and 1970 respectively. The half century dormancy of BarnhilPs photos removed them from the mainstream Appalachian image makers who gained national recognition during the 1930s and who determined much of the country's perception of the region. Margaret Warner Morley was born February 17, 1858 and lived for a decade after the publication of The Carolina Mountains.2 She is not well known and in fact, information on her life is scarce. She is best remembered for a long string of children's books on the lives of birds, insects, and small animals. The Carolina Mountains was her only major work for adults. Morley was born in Iowa, but her family moved to Brooklyn, New York while she was young, and it was in the East that she received her formal education. She was drawn to teaching and graduated from New York City Normal College in 1878. Her main interest was biology, and she pursued that subject at several different schools in Chicago and Massachusetts. It was in connection with data she prepared for her classes that Morley began to gather material for her books (17 in all). Coming at a time when nature study was being established as a definite part of grade school courses, her books had some pioneering importance. In addition to the specific information in them, her books offered important moral lessons to children about being kind to animals and conservation. It is unknown exactly why she initially chose to go to western North Carolina, but once she was there, she was enthralled by the scenery and the environment, so much so that she spent part of each year for twelve years at the resort community of Tryon, south of Asheville. From her base at Tryon she explored the surrounding mountains and described them in lavish and loving detail. She also took pictures. Her photographs show us a personal image of the mountain environment with little of the influences that premeated her writing. Because she grew up and she was educated in the 1870s and 1880s, it is most likely that Morley came into contact and read the works of local colorists who published stories about Appalachia in the popular magazines of the day. Perhaps this was the impetus which drove her to go to western Carolina. It was the local colorists who created the notion that Appalachia was a strange land inhabited by a distinct and peculiar people who were unchanged from an earlier period of American history. The static image, as Ronald Filer calls it, had become accepted as fact by the 1890s when Morley first began to travel to Tryon.3 She created in her writing and especially in her photos a dichotomy between herself and her readers on the one hand and the natives on the other. This hinders her prose but improves her photography because her images stand alone and neither she nor her audience are a part of the scene. That is why her photographs lack sentimentality and an attachment to what was thought to be quaint. The images unfold before us without our interference or justification. By the time Morley published her photos, railroads, economic develop49 �ment, and an influx of northern missionaries and teachers had brought vast changes to the mountains. Obviously the image of mountain life that she presented was that of a passing and vanishing age. This provides a key to why she sought out scenes which depicted everyday life and the material aspect of the highlanders' world. She was comfortable writing about and photographing nature and, therefore, she sought in her photography to highlight the relationship that existed in pre-industrial Appalachia between nature, home, and work. That fiber which held the fabric of this world together, the connection between land, home, and family is the dominant theme of her photos and suggests that she was at least suspicious of the changes that she could not help but witness around her. The old life of the high country was passing away, and she worked hardest with her photos to preserve that image. Her photos do not strike a condescending chord, rather they stand as documents and reflect the positive side of her perceptions. She did not have the painter's license to leave anything out of her photos, and thus they appear as clear evidence of pre-industrial reality. Morley was an outsider and she was in the mountains to observe. She described in detailed photos the mountain peaks, the coves, the streams, the animals, and of course, the people. She liked the mountain people with whom she visited on her nature treks, and they emerge from her work as neither pathetic nor heroic. Perhaps her awareness of change stimulated her to document a lifestyle as it had been during a time when land, family, and work intertwined in a stable, workable, and balanced society. A contemporary of Morley's, although there is no evidence at present that they ever met, was William Augustus Barnhill. He was a free spirited and adventurous individual who began vacationing in the South during the first decade of this century. In 1910 he decided he would like to move to western North Carolina, and he began to correspond with the Secretary of the Asheville Board of Trade about the possibility of locating in that resort city. In 1913 Barnhill read Horace Kephart's book, Our Southern Highlanders, and was convinced that western Carolina was the place for him. He moved there in 1914 and spent the next three summers photographing the land and people within a twenty-five mile radius of Asheville. In 1917 he went off to World War I, returned to Asheville in 1918, and worked as a commercial photographer until 1922 when he moved to Cleveland.4 Barnhill was quite taken by Kephart's descriptions and photos of mountain life and when he moved to North Carolina he went to Bryson City to meet Kephart and to show him some of his photos. Kephart was impressed and told him he would use some of them in a future book on the mountains. Kephart died, however, before the book was written. Like Kephart, Barnhill was a dedicated hiker who backpacked with his camera into remote mountain areas. Barnhill's photos are striking representations of the texture of mountain life. They are sensible and believable and like Morley's, are free of much bias and romanticism. His images are also primarily of people work50 �ing: women churning butter, knitting, spinning, weaving, drying foods, men splitting shakes, plowing or hoeing corn. His photos are a record of agricultural self-sufficiency in a time when one's ability to work the land defined the quality of life. Many of Barnhill's photos are set on or around Mt. Mitchell. He made the first of many trips there in the summer of 1914 accompanying a party which included a motion picture photographer who was making publicity photos in the area.5 In the summer of 1915 a party of newspaper editors who were attending a conference in Asheville were taken on a courtesy trip to Mt. Mitchell and again Barnhill went along. During this trip he took pictures of what he saw on the way and solicited orders from a sample album he had made previously along the railroad.6 Barnhill had an entrepeneurial bent and did not pass up an opportunity to sell his photographs. It is curious that he has stated in an interview that he was not aware of the historical value of his photographs until the 1950s but had he been, he probably would have sold them earlier.7 When the Perley and Crockett Company of Black Mountain, North Carolina started an excursion trip over the logging railroad to Mt. Mitchell, Barnhill had a photographic concession, and he later shared a photographic and souvenir business with the owner of Camp Alice at the foot of the mountain.8 Barnhll spent days at a time hiking into the mountains around Asheville, and his enormous curiosity drove him to record as much of what he saw as he could. His motivation was simple. As he has said, "I wanted to have a record of where I'd been to have something to talk about."9 He won the confidence and friendship of the people with whom he came in contact and lived with them for short periods of time. He moved freely and obtained intimate photographic studies of their way of life. He photographed the people he met because, "I was as interesting to them as they were to me."10 There is no evidence that Barnhill consciously attempted to alter the culture of the region or to present a specific image of it to the public. He did not select those images that fit with outside expectations of what "mountain people" were like. Instead he sought to record what he saw around him because he was aware of its existence and he was somehow stimulated by its presence. "What I've seen there is just what I've seen with my own eyes."11 His photos are so important in this context because we are able to look at them without wondering about his intentions or for whom he worked. He did not even think of himself as a documentary photographer and has claimed that, "Documenting is the last thing I consider."12 Barnhill had no special interpretive message to convey through his images, although from the distance of time, we are grateful for his meticulous attention to detail in people's lives. He stimulated others to document the region, but he did not discuss his photography with them. He claims, "I wouldn't talk much that way, not that I had intentions of covering up, but I was just making pictures. That's what I wanted to do and that was my 51 �answer. My story was there."13 The rare comment he has made about his work concerns his interest in process and design and how they operated in an orderly fashion in mountain society. He photographed the pottery works in the Beech Community of Madison County, for example, and he made a series of photos that show the process by which wool is worked into cloth. He sought in his images a natural composition which would illustrate the essence of a moment suspended in time but not outside or removed from the system of which it was a part. His images are, an artist's expression not those of a cultural politician. His photos are, "what came out of me...what I saw."14 Like Morley, Barnhill photographed people engaged in all facets of work, and he was particularly interested in what we now refer to as mountain crafts. He was, however, unaware of the intentional revival of certian crafts in Appalachia at that time, and he has said his only interest was his curiosity about how people "made every simple thing."15 Neither did Barnhill attempt to make a statement about the changes that had altered tradition in the mountains nor did he use his photos to illustrate how people were losing the selfsufficiency that he so admired. He was, in his own words,"just photographing people."16 Barnhill's images can be classified into three styles: record photos, character photos, and process photos. The first type is simply the image of what happened before the eye of the photographer, and he recorded it to capture a moment in time; the character study was the product of his interest in the different people he met, and these photos resulted from his attraction to a particular face, the look in an eye, the turn of a head, or a certain nuance of appearance; the process photo captured what he saw as the organic design of life, and he recorded the process because he admired its orderliness and function, not to document its existence. What Barnhill vigorously pursued was an accurate image of the people he met. He sought to portray their individuality, to know each one's different story, but not to lose sight of their place within the larger group. He is sensitive to the pitfalls of image making but believes that his early work was neither influenced by an awareness of nor an avoidance of Appalachian stereotypes.17 The result of this approach is that Barnhill's photos stand above later works by photographers such as Doris Ullman because his photos have a candid, genuine look to them. Barnhill developed a relationship with his subjects that was based on mutual curiosity tempered with a straightforwardness that each could respect of the other. Barnhill did not have to ask people to pose for him because he was so comfortable around them, and they accepted him completely. He cannot remember anyone talking to him or asking him anything about what he was doing. No one questioned why he was taking their photos. He did not have to beg people to sit for him and in fact, he is adamant about how unposed his photos were. Most of his photos have a spontaneity to them that suggests that he just happened to be 52 �someplace at the right time. For example, one of his photos is of a man salting sheep on Craggie Mountain. When he took that shot the man did not look at Barnhill or even bother to ask what he was doing.18 To describe another of his photos Barnhill states, "I started setting up the camera and I don't remember saying anything. And she didn't ask me anything. Just like that one...with the woman with the wagon out of Weaverville with the strange costume and all. She just stopped along the road and I set up my camera and she just looked at me like the oxen, without much expression. They were just curious, I think. I don't remember talking at all. Tell them how to pose? I never asked them..."19 In order to fully understand the importance of historical photography it is necessary to ask certain questions. For example, what are our perceptions as viewers, and what were the motives and goals of the photographer? Photos clearly guide and fashion our most basic sense of reality and many of our most cherished images of the past have come from frozen pictorial descriptions more so than from the written word. "Photos are magical illusions, matchless pieces of information, descriptions of things, scenes, and persons infinitely more vivid than words...They seem miniature worlds, not copies but the things themselves."20 Photos are certainly historical documents, but they are also experiences in their own right because they give us the opportunity to witness the past as if it were, momentarily, at least, present. The historian Michael Lesy pioneered the study of photos not simply as illustrations of history but also as revealing documents and expressions that are a source of insight as well as information.21 What makes this true is our ability to read the picture, to reconstruct some small drama before the taking of the photo that evokes more than meets the eye. The viewer defines to some extent what is depicted as reality in a photo through his own imagination and relates this to other images he has seen and then he determines if the image is representative or fanciful. To the historian the most difficult task is to decide if a given photo is a fairly reliable image of what did exist. Would the photographed scene have taken place even if the camera had not been present? Documentary photographers have a great deal of power to manipulate a scene, but they are limited by their desire to show us what is there. It is because of this that the photographic image is the closest we can come to an objective representation of past reality. Equally important is to know by what criteria the photographs were originally made. Both Morley and Barnhill photographed a place and time which was passing into history before them. They were both alien to their subject matter but were drawn to it either out of curiosity or to document it for other outsiders. What Barnhill has said about his motives does not lead one to conclude that he consciously helped to shape the image of what was defined as Appalachia. The fact that over fifty years later his photos influence our image of what the region was like during the early 20th century is not equivalent to saying that he went there to intentionally reveal 53 �a particular image of the mountain people through his photography. He did of course do this through his choice of subjects and settings, but what is crucial is whether he did this with the intent to change or present the culture according to his selective view. The evidence does not support the argument that he did. Margaret Morley was in the mountains to study nature and to write a book about the region and its people, and she took her photos to supplement her prose. Morley clearly tried to present an image of the mountains to the outside world, and her view was so popular that a copy of her book was for many years in each guest room of the Grove Park Inn of Asheville. What is fascinating about her choices is that she photographed images and scenes that are remarkably similar to BarnhilFs. This suggests two possibilities. Either Morley and Barnhill shared a vision of the region which was already well-established in the national mind, or they both were drawn quite naturally to those aspects of the region which appealed to their artists' imagination and sensitivity. Unfortunately, we know very little about Morley, and it is therefore difficult to speculate on her motives. She was a naturalist and had a driving curiosity to discover the relationship between various aspects of the natural world so she pictured the people in her photos close to nature, outdoors, walking, and working. She caught them as they were, and there is little visible evidence of posing in her work. Morley's photos are lasting historical documents and are not overly endowed with romantic or sentimental visions of Appalachia's past. One possible explanation for this is that her subjects appear to be in control of her photos and she was, therefore, in a position to depict them very nearly like they appeared to her. Taken individually and as a group, what do the photos of Barnhill and Morley reveal to us about Appalachia? Barnhill did not consciously attempt to rearrange aspects of the culture for public consumption. Certainly his work has an impact upon our perception of what Appalachia was like during the pre-industrial era, but the photographer was not motivated by a desire to create or alter the image of the region that is laid before our eyes when we look at his photos. Morley, however, is much more difficult to understand. Her photos certainly depicted what she wanted her readers to see but was she photographing selectively to present a preconceived image of the region that would support the assumptions popularized by the local colorists of her youth? If this is true, do her photos present an accurate image of the mountain people at the turn of the century? Since they so closely parallel Barnhill's we can assume they do. Most of their photos are middle distance and distant views which suggest that there was a unity to this life, that every event had its place in the overall scheme of things. This approach to photography gives a detached feeling as if one is viewing a drama unfolding. There is no suggestion that the people in any of their photos are posing for an audience. Most are off alone, apparently unconcerned with the photographer, without the sense 54 �that the intrusion of the camrea has in any way altered their ordinary patterns of behavior. In the end, photographs, like any other historical document, exist in two worlds, that in which they were made and that in which they currently exist. But they cannot tell us everything regardless of how carefully the photographer sought to capture reality. They retain, as works of art, a precious amount of mystery that fires our imaginations, and as historical documents they stimulate us to learn more about the region so we can compare the visual image with the literary image. Fortunately Morley and Barnhill are two sympathetic and sensitive photographers whose lives and work are vital in understanding what Appalachia has been and continues to be. FOOTNOTES 1 Sam Gray, "Mountains and Valleys and People in 'The Back of Beyond,' " The Arts Journal (Asheville, N.C.), February 1982, p. 3 2 For general biographical data see, New York Times, February 15, 1923. 3 For a complete discussion of the static image and its impact on Appalachian history see, Ronald D. Eller, Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. (University of Tennesse Press, 1982), pp xv-xxvii. 4 Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times, August 19, 1979. 5 Interview, William A. Barnhill by Polly Cheek, Richard Dillingham, Linda March, and Rob Amberg, Mars Hill, N.C. November 17, 1982, p. 41. Appalachian Room, Mars Hill College. 6 Ibid, p. 42. 7 Conversation by the author with Richard Dillingham, Mars Hill, N.C., January 25, 1985. 8 Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times, August 19, 1979. 9 Interview, William A. Barnhill by Polly Cheek, et al., p. 28. 10 Ibid, p. 33. 11 Ibid, p. 60. 12 Ibid, p. 60. 13 Ibid, p. 50. 14 Ibid, p. 51. 15 Ibid, p. 68 16 Ibid, p. 70. 17 Ibid, p. 60. 55 �18 Interview, William A. Barnhill by Richard Dillingham, Mars Hill, N.C. August 24, 1983, p. 38. Mars Hill College Oral History Program, Mars Hill College Archives. 19 Interview, Barnhill by Polly Cheek, et. al., pp. 36-37 20 Exhibitions Staff, The American Image: Photographs From the National Archives, 1860-1960. (National Archives and Records Service, 1979), p. ix. 21 One of several books which illustrates this concept is, Michael Lesy, Bearing Witness: A Photograhic Image of American Life. (Pantheon, 1982.) 56 �JOCKS AND JUNKETS: COME PLAY AND STAY Convenor: Russell Dachert, Western Carolina University Sports and Play in Southern Appalachia: A Tentative Appraisal Robert J. Higgs, East Tennessee State University Appalachian Documentaries: Hyping the Myth Sharyn McCrumb, Virginia Polytechnic Institute Appalachia: A Tourist Attraction? Melinda Hollar Wagner, Lynn Batley, Kai Jackson, Bill O'Brien and Liz THrockmorton, Radford University Sports and Play in Southern Appalachia: A Tentative Appraisal by Robert J. Higgs Wright Morris in The Territory Ahead says that no matter where we go in America today we will find what we just left. As far as sports and play are concerned, I would not want to argue with that assertion in the least. Once, not really so very long ago, sports and play in Appalachia were quite different from those forms found elsewhere, but not any more. Athletics and recreation are essentially the same across the American landscape as are the problems, which, it seems, are forever increasing. In fact writers from this region have been among the first to decry the now familiar dehumanizing trends in sports, and they have continued to speak out on issues as a few examples will make clear. Sherwood Anderson who made Southwest Virginia his permanent home was one of the first Amerian writers to regard the athlete as a cultural symbol and to suggest that sports are art forms providing the possibility of relief from the world of commerce. He also saw, like Johan Huizinga and others, the reverse occurring, the world of business encroaching upon the domain of sports and the athlete becoming a specialist and a celebrity. Thomas Wolfe was witness to the same complex and shifting scene in American sports. In Nebraska Crane of The Web and the Rock and You Can't Go Home Again he created an enduring hero of natural strength and virtue who could do what Wolfe himself could not, "remain detached from the fever of the times" and go home again. In Jim Randolph in the The Web and the Rock he shows an opposite type of hero, one who is victimized by all the flattery that his athletic success has fostered, and he succinctly paints a devastating picture of alumni and fans who are all too ready to 57 �bestow praise, providing there is a victory of course: They fill great towns at night before the big game. They go to night clubs and to bars. They dance, they get drunk, they carouse. They take their girls to games, they wear fur coats, they wear expensive clothing. They are drunk by half time. They do not really see the game and they do not care. They hope their machine runs better than the other machine, scores more points, wins a victory. They hope their own hired men come out ahead, but they really do not care. They don't know what it is to care. They have become too smart, too wise, too knowing, too absurd to care. They are not youthful and backwoodsy and naive enough to care. They are too slick to care. It's hard to feel a passion from just looking at machinery. It's hard to get excited at the efforts of the hired men.1 Indeed Arthur Miller was only echoing Wolfe a quarter of a century later when he said, "There doesn't seem to be any humanity left in big-time sports...people go to watch a machine operate. That wipes out the connection between spectator and team. The human side is out.2 Wilma Dykeman also suggests that the human side is out or perhaps going out. In a few pages in Return the Innocent Earth describing the big game between Jackson (read the University of Tennessee) Dykeman identifies every reprehensible facet of the do-or-die game: the bromidic mentality of the Alumni, the post-season bowl lust, the swelling arrogance sure to come with victory, and most of all "the dark malevolent growl" that "moves through the multitude." Is this, Dykeman seems to ask, sublimation of violence or the incipient weening of an awakening monster? Deborah Einemann (Dykeman's character), a Jew and citizen of the world, had "heard this crowd before—in Germany of course. So too had Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti heard crowds before, as he makes clear in his unsettling book, Crowds and Power. What type of men make up the machines that characters in Dykeman's novel witness? Dan Jenkins gives us his version in his novel Semi-Tough in his picture of TJ. (Torn Jock) Lambert: They say that when TJ. was in college at Tennessee, he kept a mad dog chained up in his room in the dorm and used to feed it live cats. They say that instead of going down the hall to the toilet, TJ. had a habit of taking a dump in his closet. And when it got smelling so bad in his room that even TJ. would notice it, they say he would throw a bunch of newspapers on the closet and set fire to the whole thing.3 Some would say that Jenkins surely jests and I suppose he does, yet in 58 �another sense he is right on the money in description of T.J. in college in the athletic dorms for he has found the spot—second only to the frontier cat house—where anecdote and macho lore blur into fables of studliness. If one were to look for a character reminiscent of the world beater and ringtailed roarer out of the literature of the old Southwest, there is only one place to turn, the athletic dorm at what Mark Harris called SSU (Southern State University). The picture in Gary Shaw's Meat on the Hoof of the athletic dorm at the University of Texas would tend to confirm this observation. No doubt Lisa Alther is jesting too to a degree in a chapter entitled "Walking on the Knife's Edge or Blue Balls in Bible Land" in her novel Kinflicks, but she has also zeroed in on the very real problem of muscular Christianity in our culture which seems sometimes to be headquartered in the very heart of Appalachia. Note the following prayer of Brother Buck during the city-wide Preaching Mission in the cavernous gymnasium of the Civic Auditorium in Hullsport as Ginny and Joe Bob obediently hold hands, "sweating and trembling." "Let us pray," Brother Buck instructed. "Father, our Coach, hep us, Father, to run Thy plays as Thou wouldst have them run. Knowing, Lord that Christ Jesus Thy quarterback is there beside us with ever yard we gain, callin those plays and runnin that interference. Hep us, Lord, to understand that winnin ball games depends on followin trainin. Hep us not to abuse our minds and bodies with those worldly temptations that are off-limits to the teammates of Christ.... ....and hep us, Celestial Coach, to understand that the water boys of life are ever bit as precious in Thy sight as the All-American guards. And when that final gun goes off, Lord, mayst Thou welcome us to the locker room of the home team with a slap on the back and a hearty, 'Well done, my good and faithful tailback.' " "A-man," Brother Buck added as an afterthought. "A-man," echoed the rest of us.4 This type of satire of muscular Christianity has become commonplace in the last few years but it is timely and needed as long as evangelists insist upon the heretical notion that sports are the bridesmaid of religion and slant their proselytism accordingly. Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts, and Billy Graham all acknowledge the power of sports in attracting converts, and Falwell has said that he wants to build "Champions for Christ." "Presumably," says Sheryl Hoffman about the techniques of Falwell and Roberts, "the Lord likes to see his favorite team win, and trouncing the heathens from the state college up the road proves, in its own inexplicable way, that the institution's theology was right all along."5 59 �What does all this mean for us in Appalacia today? It means, I think that sports and play in Appalachia and elsewhere have become either ends in themselves or means of serving the goals of religion, patriotism, or commercialism. If we look at the last Super bowl game, watched by 115 million, and the half-time program put on by the Air Force as a recruiting effort and remind ourselves of all the links between sports and religion, we must admit, I think, the distinct possibility that we have become a leisure-class society characterized by the four occupations of sports, government, warfare, and religion, as identified by Veblen in Theory of the Leisure Class. The rise of competitive sports and the decline of imaginative and unregulated play provide an index of the extent that a society has moved toward a leisure class of what Veblen would call a barbaric culture. Basically, the difference between sports and play is the difference between paidia and Ludus. These terms, coined by Roger Caillois in Man, Play, and Games represent principles which permeate all types of play. Paidia is a type of "uncontrolled fantasy, frolicsome, impulsive, or capricious"; ludus is the tendency toward "effort, patience, skill, ingenuity."6 Ludus lends itself to rigid competition, complexity, organization, and to easy alliance with the state; paidia by contrast, is unstructured, simple, and highly individualistic in the sense that the player is not so tightly bound by rules, and even secretive in that the nature of the play depends to a large extent upon the imagination of a limited number of participants. In ludus, the player displays ingenuity in the method or technique by which he attempts to win highly competitive contests already well established within a particular culture. In paidia ingenuity is displayed in the inventiveness of the player in creating new games, on adopting variations, as his ability, as it were, to entertain himself. The principles of ludus and piadia are always bound together, but, as Caillois points out, they always move in any game, and I would add in any culture, in opposite directions. Again, what is true elsewhere is true of Appalachia, and the big switch seems to have begun in the 1920's, though much research is needed to document this tentative assertion. The one thing we do know for sure is that things have not always been this way, if we trust observations of earlier observers. The children, says Horace Kephart in 1913, "play few games, but rather frisk about like young colts without aim or method."7 "The young people of the mountains," wrote John C. Campbell in 1921, "as a whole do not know how to play." Even when they do play, he says, they wish passionately to win and are inclined to take whatever means necessary to reach a goal. What is missing says Campbell, in addition to sportmanship, is organization, which organizations would provide: The Young Men's and the Young Women's Christian Associations might also find a special field for service in supplying and stimulating recreation. The young people of the mountains as 60 �a whole do not know how to play. They need to be directed into lines of wholesome vigorous activity. No definite program can be suggested. Here, as elsewhere, it will not be enough to supply the means. There must be definite fostering and supervision, and in places a traditional and religious opposition must be overcome, sympathetically and tactfully. The greater use of music—of community singing in particular—would be helpful, as well as the encouragement of games in which all may take part, folk dancing, and sports of various kinds.8 It may have been true that "as a whole" the mountain children in 1921 did not know how to play, but as Pamela Henson showed in her unpublished paper "A Study of Children's Play in Appalachia," based on a survey of numerous texts, it is certainly not altogether true. Mountain children did know how to play to a significant degree. In her survey of games in Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia, Henson "found 277 games with distinctive titles, all collected since 1930. After classifying these games....Henson discovered that of those that could be identified, 136 used words, while 28 were non-verbal. Eighty were exclusively played outdoors, thirty-five indoors, and forty-nine could be played either place. Perhaps the most interesting discovery is that thirty-four of the games required only one player, fortytwo could be played with a minimum of two players, thirty with three, seventeen with four, fifteen with five, fifteen with ten players and one required twenty-two."9 Henson's study is valuble since all of her conclusions on various games are telling. In the case of jump rope, which is essentially a West Virginia game, Henson found that "none of the 63 jump rope games...entailed competition between jumpers." Among her conclusions Henson cites a "rarity" of competitive and team games, and games which entail assumption of roles."10 The games Henson surveyed reflect a clear divergence from the dominant American culture, (p.36) In appendix 1 it is evident that children's games of all sort, relatively simple and unorganized, are, according to Caillois' classification, forms of paidia. They are also, especially some of them such as counting-out rhymes, quite familiar to anyone raised in Appalachia and, say, over fifty years of age. They are also disappearing though I have no data to support that claim. Also disappearing are the almost pure examples of paidia that Caillois calls "tumult", "agitation", and "immoderate laughter," which also helped to define traditional Appalachian culture in the form of tall tales and practical jokes. That tumult and agitation existed on a wide scale throughout the region, we have on authority of one in whose honor this conference was established, and in his discussion of George Washington Harris's Sut Lovingood, in whom tumult abounded most gloriously: Sut's pranks, which belong to that low type of humor that derives its relish from the sight of gore and the infliction of pain 61 �APPENDIX I Classification of Games by Roger Caillois AGON (Competition) PAIDIA Tumult Agitation Immoderate laughter Kite-flying Solitaire Patience Crossword puzzles LUDUS Racing Wrestling Etc. Athletics ALEA (Chance) Counting out rhymes Heads or tails not regulated Betting Roulette Boxing, Billiards Fencing, Checkers Simple, complex, Football, Chess and countinuing Contests, Sports lotteries in general MIMCRY (Simulation) Children's initiations Games of illusion Tag, Arms Masks, Disguises Theater Spectacles in general ILINX (Vertigo) Children "whirling" Horseback riding Swinging Waltzing Volador Traveling carnivals Skiing Mountain climbing Tightrope walking NB. In each verticle column games are classified in such an order that the paidia element is constantly decreasing while the ludus element is ever increasing. upon others, are in the mainstream of mountaineer humor, which is preserved intact from the wild and boisterous frontier. That Sut's counterparts have not appeared in the fiction of the mountains to any marked degree merely indicates that polite taste excluded them. The pranks that Sut rigged on his enemies have been the stock in trade of his counterparts in the mountain country down to recent times. Such pranks as turning snakes and lizards loose in church, throwing nests of hornets among praying congregations, howling their sins at the mourner's bench, tying cans of lighted kerosene to dog's tails, multilating cats, dogs and horses, luring preachers, sheriffs, candidates for office, and school teachers into compromising situations with women, and frustrating weddings have their local adaptations in the oral traditions of most mountain communities.11 Praise God, it might be said, that such forms of play and humor are no longer prevalent in the region if existent at all, and enough has been said in derogatory vein about such sadistic practices that it is not necessary for me to add another note of outrage. Edmund Wilson, remember, called Sut "not a pioneer contending against the wilderness but a peasant squatting in his own filth." He also acknowledged that the Yarns is "by far the most repellant book of any real literary merit in American literature." Sut's hatred, Wilson contends, "is directed against anybody who shows any signs of 62 �gentility, idealism of education."12 "Hatred," I believe, is much too strong a word, reflecting a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of play, or the ranges of play, on Wilson's part, and he also fails to see, as others of Sut's detractors have, that Sut's pranks are directed for the most part against institutions or representatives of institutions, preachers, politicians, and teachers and pretense in general. Indeed one could easily imagine Sut letting loose a bag of lizards during the height of Brother Buck's sermon in the Hullsport auditorium in Alther's novel or for that matter, recalling the scene in Return the Innocent Earth, in a section of Neyland Stadium either during the pre-game prayer or during a heroic goal-line stand on which some commercial bowl bid depends. Can we not say, in fact, without being charged with absolute sadism, "Sut, where are you now that we need you?" The point I wish to emphasize to a degree and defend is not infliction of pain upon man and beast but a sense of independene in forms of play and a rejection of blind acceptance of organized games that lend themselves so easily, especially with promotion techniques of the modern world, to perverse relationships with commerce, religion, and the nation state. There is a case to be sure for rules and structure, but how far do we go from the spontaneity of paidia that has always been a distinguishing feature of sports and play in Southern Appalachia? Note that unregulated athletics, racing, wrestling, etc., is a feature of paidia and it is such forms of competition, indeed usually violent, that were a distinctive feature of the people who formed a very large part of the population of the region. I speak of the Scotch-Irish whose contests are described by Reverend Edward L. Parker in The History of Londonderry: Their diversions and scenes of social intercourse were of a character not the most refined and cultured; displaying physical rather than intellectual and moral powers, such as boxing matches, wrestling, foot races, and other athletic exercise. At all public gatherings, the "ring" would be usually formed; and the combatants, in the presence of neighbors, brothers, and even fathers, would encounter each other in close fight, or at arms length, as the prescribed form might be; thus giving and receiving the well directed blow, until the face, limbs and body of each bore the marks of almost savage brutality. All this was done, not in anger, or from unkind feeling toward each other, but simply to test the superiority of strength and agility.13 Note that in these contests there are no material prizes, and, apparently, little or no animosity between competitors or combatants; and though the body pain in boxing matches can easily be imagined, the injuries would appear to be minor compared to those in any ordinary football game in Southern Appalachia where I have seen as many as eight people carried off the field in a single game. Still the contests of the Scotch-Irish seemed brutal 63 �to observers and no doubt contributed to the image they acquired of a "pernicious and pugnacious" people in the mind of easterners in the United States. Franklin, for example, regarded them as "violent, narrow-minded drunkards—white savages," as pointed out in Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth Century American South by Edward T. Ayers who goes on to present this composite picture: A Particularly virulent strain of violence entered the South in the culture of the Scotch-Irish, the majority of whom chose the South for their home in the eighteenth century. In Carl Bridenbaugh's language, the Scotch-Irish were "undisciplined, emotional, courageous, aggressive, pugnacious, fiercely intolerant, and hard-drinking." All observers agreed that the Scotch-Irish had little patience for legal forms and found quick recourse in their guns, knives, or fists. "It appears to be more difficult for a North-ofIrelander than for other men to allow an honest difference of opinion in an opponent," a contemporary and sympathetic biographer of Andrew Jackson argued, "so that he is apt to regard the terms opponent and enemy as synonymous." Southern mountain culture, indelibly dyed by the Scotch-Irish origins of so many early settlers, became famous for its sensitivity, as Horace Kephart observed, "to any disparaging remark or imagined affront.14 This is also a point of Campbell in his call in 1921 for reform of play in the mountains without specific reference to the Scotch-Irish but mountain youth in general: The Highland boy has, however, little knowledge of play as play. When he plays he plays to win. In contests of any kind he wishes passionately to be the victor, and if he finds defeat threatens him he is too inclined to give up or take what means he can to reach his end. He is, more-over, very sensitive and swift to take offense. Ridicule, or the suspicion that someone is "throwing off on" him, he cannot bear, and he is quicker with the knife, or, when he is older, with the pistol, than with the fists. Thus he incurs the reproach of being, in popular parlance, a "poor sport," one who does not know the art of "playing the game to a finish," regardless of what it costs. It must not be inferred from this statement that he is a coward, although from a true sportsman's standpoint there is an element of cowardice in his failure to meet defeat squarely and honestly. In feats of daring the mountain youth is brave to recklessness, and as has been indicated in a previous chapter, no man in the country makes a more valiant soldier. He needs, however, to learn the code of honest sportsmanship—the 64 �code of the "good loser—which can best be taught through games which bring him into touch with his fellows in team-play and healthful competition.15 Without approving of quick recourse to gun or knife any more than the cruel pranks on man or animals, can one not ask where the American revolution itself would have been had the Scotch-Irish played the game of the British? Was not that spirited independence and suspicion of organizations, in whatever form, the very quality that made them, in the words of British historian Leeky, go "almost to a man on the side of the insurgents, they supplied some of the best soldiers of Washington."16 Though I cannot prove it at this point, I believe the Scotch-Irish are the key to the understanding of the history of sports and play in the region. Even the celebrated Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, "America's Braemer" appears to be almost an imported event when viewed in terms of the traditional play of the mountains,17 shaped so much, I suspect, by the proud and independent ScotchIrish. Their descendents, however, have, like most of the rest of us, embraced with open arms all the mass forms of sports and play that now surround us. Are there not corporate dangers in the present forms of sports and entertainment far outweighing those spontaneous, unregulated, and often violent forms of the older generations? Are there not dangers in crowds and heroworship, the two requirements for spectator sports that now surround us? Ring Lardner apparently thought so and in 1921, the same year that Campbell said the mountain children did not know how to play, voiced exactly the same complaint about the dominant culture. We do not know how to play in America, said Lardner: because (1) we lack imagination, and (2) we are a nation of hero-worshiper s.... But hero-worship is the national disease that does most to keep the grandstands full and the playgrounds empty. To hell with those four extra years of life, if they are going to cut in on our afternoon at the Polo Grounds, where, in blissful asinity, we may feast our eyes on the swarthy Champion of Swat, shouting now and then in an excess of anile idolatry, "come on, you Babe. Come on, you Baby Doll!"18 Over a decade later Lardner is still disenchanted with the anile idolatry of crowds as seen in his novel Lose With a Smile. The narrator, Danny Warner, is a busher from Booneville, Missouri, and in his letters home he tells his girl friend what life is like in the big leagues: Some of the boys has got nick names like wear they come from like 1 of the pitchers Clyde Day but they call him Pea ridge 65 �Day because he comes from a town name Pea ridge and he was the champion hog caller of Arkansaw and when he use to pitch in Brooklyn last yr he use to give a hog call after every ball he throwed but the club made him cut it out because the fans come down on the field every time he give a call and the club had to hire the champion of iowa to set up in the sand and call them back.19 In such satire the heritage of frontier humor is alive and well, and the object of attack, sports fans, seems today as deserving of such treatment as ever. Here, then, is the familiar situation again. As in so many other aspects of Appaclahian life, the effort in sports has been not to learn from the mountain culture but to transform it in imitation of mid-America. No doubt in the 1920's many mountain kids profited from new teachers and coaches bringing to them new knowledge of new sports, but could not America then (and now) have learned just as much from the habit of mountain kids "who frisked about like young colts without aim or method"? A whole new series of books proposing alternative forms of play and non-competitive games20 were in effect anticipated by children of Appalachia for over the past one hundred years. There is, in fact, or has been, an Appalachian physical education if we care to look back and see. It is a way of play quite at odds with the modern sports industry which reflects the same traits as the rest of modern society. The old ways were not perfect by any means, but their virtues were hidden, not proclaimed and boosted as are the supposed ones of modern sports. To the degree that contemporary sports and play are reformed, they will in fact move back toward the old order, toward fun, simplicity, spontaneity, and naturalness, toward paidia, the spirit of childhood. 66 �ENDNOTES 1. Thomas Wolfe, The Web and the Rock (New York: Harper, 1939), p. 122. 2. "Human Side is Out of Sports—Miller," Knoxville News Sentinel, February 13, 1986. 3. Dan Jenkins, Semi-Tough (New York: New American Library, 1972), p. 6. 4. Lisa Alther, Kinflicks (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), p. 42. 5. Sheryl J. Hoffman, "Evangelism and the Revitalization of Religious Ritual in Sport", unpublished article scheduled for publication in summer issue of Arete: The Journal of Sport Literature. 6. Roger Caillois, Man, Play, and Games, trans. Meyer Bararh (New York: Free Press, 1961), p. 13. 7. Horace Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders (New York: Outing Publishing Co., 1913), p. 259. 8. John C. Campbell, The Southern Highlander and His Home (Russell Sage Foundation: New York, 1921), pp. 319-20. 9. Quoted in Bernard Mergen: Play and Playthings: A Reference Guide (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), p. 208. 10. Pamela Henson, "A Study of Children's Play in Appalachia," unpublished paper, Georgetown University, 1973), p. 36. 11. Gratis Williams, "Sut Lovingood as a Southern Mountaineer," Appalachian State Teachers College. Faculty Bulletin, 1966, p. 3-4. 12. Edmund Wilson, "Poisoned," Voices from the Hills, eds. Robert J. Higgs and Ambrose N. Manning (New York: Frederick Ungar Co., 1974), p. 414. 13. Quoted in Henry Jones Ford, The Scotch-Irish in America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1915), p. 243. 14. Edward L. Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Punishment in the Nineteenth Century American South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 22. 15. Campbell, p. 126. 16. Quoted in Ford, p. 208. 17. For a history of the Scottish games in North America, see Gerald Redmond's masterful study, The Sporting Scots of Nineteenth Century Canada (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982). 18. Ring Lardner, "Sport and Play," Civilization in the United States: An Inquiry by Thirty Americans, ed. Harold E. Stearnes (New York, 1922), p. 461. 19. Ring Lardner, Lose with a Smile (New York: Scribner's, 1933), p. 2. 20. In addition to the Bibliography in Play and Playthings see Recreation Alternatives: Ways to Play, 1978; Jeffrey Sobel, Everybody Wins, 393 Non-competitive games for young children (Walker and Co., 1983); and Nora Gallagher, Simple Pleasures, Wonderful and Wild Things to do at Home (Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1981). 67 �Applachian Documentaries Hyping the Myth by Sharyn McCrumb The "hill-billy" stereotyping of the Appalachian region by Hollywood feature filmmakers is a well-known phenomenon, easily recognizable by those familiar with the region. More subtle is the distortion of Appalachia by documentary filmmakers who have perpetuated old stereotypes and generated a few new ones in an effort to sell tourism or local products. Advertising has been an institution in Appalachia for most of this century—from barns plastered with "See Rock City" signs to the souvenir salesmen at the Floyd Collins mine incident. In the past fifty years, the selling of Appalachia as a region of "Disneyland" has progressed from "hillbilly" motels and Hatfield and McCoy outdoor dramas to include the film medium. In a chronological sampling of documentaries made over the last half century, it is interesting to note the shifts of emphasis from one decade to the next as filmmakers try to inform the outside world about Appalachia. After viewing a score of films made between 1930 and 1983, I found it difficult to believe that all these places described were actually the same region: 19th century throwbacks carding wool, unspoiled wilderness, industrial centers, and the costumed inhabitants of the Land of Oz were all offered by one film or another as "Appalachia". Over the years, filmmaking techniques became more sophisticated, and the films became more commercially oriented, but they seemed to come no nearer to presenting any kind of worthwhile introduction to the region; recent documentaries have changed Appalachia into another roadside attraction, designed to see that a tourist and his money are soon parted. This paper will examine the various media stances presented as "Appalachia" leading up to the most recent and atrocious incarnation, which is designed to convince the world that the "normal" Appalachian town is Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The oldest available documentary film on Appalachia was made in 1932 68 �by a now-defunct company known only as "Educational Productions". The title, "Primitive America", is the perfect representation of the attitudes of the filmmakers, who contend that Appalachia is the last stronghold of the "true pioneers" on the North American continent. The film shows mountain people making their own candles, spoons, chairs, etc., with no indication that they may also own cars, listen to radios, and live down the road from the Oak Ridge nuclear research center. Children Must Learn, a 1940 film made by New ^brk University, contends that children in rural Appalachia are hampered by ignorance and a tradition which resists change. The filmmakers claim that the children cannot relate to stories in standard textbooks, and that they should be given reading matter containing vocational information, such as the techniques of contour plowing and raising goats, so that they can be taught something "useful" besides literacy skills. These documentaries represent the "Deliverance" view of Appalachia, often reflected in feature films: that the region is a land that time forgot, bypassed by progress and education. Such films were made by outside groups of filmmakers, who used isolated incidents—and often staged events—to create the impression that this was the way of life for the entire region. For example, a woman who bought her household linens at J.C. Penny's in Knoxville, but who knew how to spin, might be asked to haul down the spinning wheel from the attic and give a demonstration for the filmmakers. The camera presents an image of a woman spinning cloth, and the audience is invited to believe that this is the norm in the southern highlands. One of the worst examples of the "primitive Appalachia" documentaries is a 1957 film distributed by the Virginia Department of Education, "Southern Highlanders". The narrator is the community's schoolteacher, who explains that the mountains are "shrouded in mists, like an old man's memory". She speaks indulgently of the people — sounding rather like a missionary: "People who still live by simple, honest values while the world grows complicated around them." In the film, the schoolteacher navigates the back roads in her new Ford Fairlane to observe her neighbors making sugar on a sorghum press and generally maintaining a nineteenth century lifestyle. What these people need, she concludes, is a good dose of progress: "They need no longer be slaves to the mountains, if they listen to the music of the future." The film's message seems to be that Appalachia is a backward place, but that there is hope for civilization there, eventually. By the mid-sixties the prevailing attitude toward Appalachia was that it was America's backyard — a nice place to visit if one went properly prepared. Happy Holiday—Camping in the Smokies, a 1966 American Oil Company production, urges suburban families to pile into their Winnebagos and head for the 'unspoiled wilderness' of the Smoky Mountains. The only indication of human habitation in the region — other than the camping tourists—is Gatlinburg, Tennessee, pictured as a strip of flashy gift shops. The film gives the impression that Appalachia is a land without schools, churches, factories, 69 �or ordinary people — since all the non-tourists appear in pioneer garb. Unfortunately this distorted image of the region — a wilderness punctuated by gift shops — became the accepted myth employed to lure tourists into the mountains. Subsequent films followed this format, sinking deeper and deeper into the trap of hyping the region as one vast 'Disneyland' existing for the amusement of 'normal' America. A strong motive for making this sort of film was the fact that the various commercial tourist attractions in the region could be sponsors of the film by paying part of the production costs in exchange for a feature spot in the film. North Carolina offered prospective tourists Variety Vacationland, a midseventies film by Doubles Film Productions, written and edited by Hugh Morton, the owner of Grandfather Mountain. Since this film was meant to interest visitors in the entire state of North Carolina, eastern attractions such as Kitty Hawk and the Lost Colony Outdoor drama were included; the western North Carolina region was represented by Grandfather Mountain, Tweetsie Railroad, Linville Caverns, and the Oconoluftee Indian village at Cherokee — all attractions charging an admission fee of several dollars. The 1976 film Holiday in the Sky, by Walter J. Klein Films of Charlotte, N.C., offers the same paid-sponsor format in an even more unattractive package. The film is narrated as a series of "postcard" texts addressed to the folks back home from a vacationing family. "I saw the Bible come alive at Christus Gardens," lisps the eight-year old. While scenes of the Three Mountaineers Craft Shop near Asheville occupy the screen, the audience hears 'Dad' telling the folks: "This is the kind of place you'd like to be lost in for ten or twelve years." Other paid-attractions visited by the family include: Ruby Falls, Dinosaur Land, and the Kingport-Johnson City Econotravel Motor Lodge. There is no hint in the film that between all these costly attractions there are free national parks where nature can be enjoyed, and that towns and farms full of ordinary people (as opposed to tin men and talking scarecrows) also populate the mountains. Probably the most widely-circulated tourist film advertising the southern Appalachian region is a 1980 movie made for Kodak by Hugh Morton. The Southern Highlands, available on free loan to any group who wishes to borrow it, is a detailed collection of tourist-trap vignettes covering North Carolina, Tennessee, and western Virginia. The audience is urged to pack its camera for a wonderful series of photo opportunities as they visit Rock City, Ruby Falls, Lost Sea, Christus Gardens, Gatlinburg, Frontier Village, Biltmore House, Grandfather Mountain, Blowing Rock, Ghost Town in the Sky, Luray Caverns—and most revolting of all—The Land of Oz, where Dorothy and her magical friends will pose with visiting tourists for heartwarming vacation pictures. It is no wonder that people believe the Dukes of Hazard after seeing documentary films depicting the region as an endless stream of commercial fluff. Ruby Falls and Luray Caverns are over-hyped commercializations of authentic natural phenomena, but there is no excuse for some of 70 �the man-made contrivances which are featured to represent the region: Ghost Town in the Sky is a western town, complete with shoot-outs and saloon girls; Christus Gardens is an imitation Holy Land on the wrong continent; and The Land of Oz is nowhere near Kansas and certainly 'no place like home' as far as Appalachia is concerned. The film was sponsored by the entrepreneurs who profit from the tourist's visits, at the expense of the region's national image. The state governments of the Appalachian states have entered the competition for the tourist dollar, using state production teams to film public relations movies inviting visitors to vacation there. The approaches vary greatly: all are better than the paid-attraction films, but most leave something to be desired in the search for a balanced presentation of the region. The Tennessee Department of Tourism offers Follow Me To Tennesee, featuring a plethora of nature shots, and more emphasis on history than on artificial theme parks, but the dignified-tone of the film is marred by the on-screen narrator, a "pioneer" in a deerskin outfit and coonskin cap. He makes an incongruous presence, chatting to the audience about water-skiing on the Mississippi. Kentucky did not respond to requests for the loan of a state film on tourism. Their ads say that such films must be requested one year in advance; apparently, a vacation in Kentucky is not a thing to be undertaken lightly. North Carolina lists a number of tourist films most of which are no longer available. Variety Vacationland, one of the sponsored films, served as the North Carolina film for this study. West Virginia seems to be trying hard to live down the standard media image of Appalachia. One of its films, The Hills Are Alive, a 1982 production, features a breathy, Tinkerbellvoiced narrator reciting the poetry of West Virginia poet laureate Louise MacNeil (sing-song rhymed couplets) to a panorama of wildlife and forest shots of West Virginia. White-water rafting and outdoor recreation is emphasized; regional accents are not present in the film. The second West Virginia publicity film, Wild, Wonderful West Virginia, is a 1982 Ellis Dungan production for the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce. Its target audience seems to be the executives of national corporations, and perhaps middle management people who have just been transferred to the region. After a few wildlife shots, the visuals and narration emphasize progress and potential in science and industry. There are shots of steel mills, hospital operating rooms, open-classroom elementary schools, and buildings on various college campuses within the state. The second half of the film shows golf courses, suburban brick homes, an art gallery, and a symphony orchestra. This approach makes one think that West Virginia doth protest too much. In producing such a scrupulously ordinary, non-regional picture of their state, they have sacrificed any individuality the state possesses. The symphony, hospitals, college campuses, and factories are all twentieth-century bland, and they could have represented South Dakota, Vermont, New Jersey, 71 �or Arizona without changing any aspect of the film. This could have been an all-purpose, interchangeable state promotional movie, for any state you chose. The result is a film which lacks in interest and character what it gains in dignity. There is a delicate balance between pioneer-garbed narrators and characterless hospital-and-art-gallery films, but the state of Georgia has managed to find the happy medium. Georgia, a 1982 production by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, is a beautifully filmed pictoral tribute to the state. The musical background is Georgia On My Mind, a nice touch to individualize the film. Instead of bombarding the viewer with statistics as the West Virginia film did ("sixth state in mineral production"), the Georgia film paints an impressionistic portrait of the state, as described by residents of the various regions. In characteristic regional accents, off-screen voices describe Atlanta, the Georgia mountains, the Savannah coastal region, and the southern marshes, with affectionate pride. The Appalachian segment features an articulate man with a mountain accent, who describes the region: "These mountains have been through the fire and the ice, and now they're just resting." Excellent cinematography is exhibited in shots of a school bus on a mountain road, a small town's main street, a farmer beginning his morning chores, and nature shots of white-water rapids and panoramic mountain vistas. "If you get used to walking on unlevel ground," the narrator says, "You won't ever want to live anywhere else." The film features no tourist attractions, no costumed natives, not even any breath-taking natural wonders — just a few native Georgians talking affectionately about their regions. The film leaves the viewer with a warm, positive feeling about the state which was missing in every other tourist film in this study. Georgia, one feels, doesn't want to trick you out of your money, or put on an act, or try to impress you with their industry — but if you want to drop in for a visit, they'll be nice to you. The film maintains the dignity of the state without sacrificing its individual flavor. Film-making and avertising have become considerably more sophisticated in the past decade. Georgia reflects this new low-key approach to tourism, but it also indicates a healthy change from the apologetic "primitive America" films of the thirties and forties, and from the "carnival barker" approach of the past two decades. The message in Appalachian tourism of the eighties seems to be: "We are proud of our regional character, but we're not backward or strange. Come and visit, but don't expect it to be Disneyland." It is a message the rest of America has needed to hear for a long time. 72 �Appalachia: A Tourist Attraction? by Melinda Dollar Wagner, Donna Lynn Batley, Kai Jackson, Bill O'Brien, Liz Throckmorton Hypothesis: Commercialization of Cultural Difference We want to make clear that we are neither advocating nor decrying tourism per se. We are not, in fact, studying tourism. Our study is not on the numbers of people coming to the region, nor is it on the attractions that Appalachia actually offers or does not offer. Rather, we are examining the literature of the tourist industry to study the image of Appalachia which it projects. Our study of the image of Appalachia as it is portrayed in tourist literature was born as a child of Wagner's (1981, 1982) theory that the image of Appalachia serves as an "alter ego" for urban American or middle American culture. Wagner's hypothesis is that America looks toward the image of Appalachia as its opposite, perhaps what it once was and might be again. This hypothesis is borrowed from anthropologist Victor Turner's (1969) delineation of "community" and "communitas" which he says every society must have. "Community" is Turner's label for a society's social structure. It is a norm-governed, institutionalized and abstract structure which delineates how people behave toward one another according to the roles they play. "Communitas," on the other hand, represents spontaneous, immediate, and concrete relationships among human beings as human beings, rather than as role bearers. Communitas suggest what "could be;" it is the crucible which holds human potentialities and universal human values. Turner (1969:203) sets forth the idea that society "needs" both: Society seems to be a process rather than a thing—a dialectical process with successive phases of structure and communitas. There would seem to be—if one can use such a controversial term—a human"need" to participate in both modalities. 73 �Thus the image "non-Appalachian America" has of Appalachia may serve as a "communitas." This image of Appalachia represents middle America's opposite — a less complex, community-oriented, rugged society. Like the American Indian, Appalachia is viewed in sentimental retrospect by an urban population which longs to free itself of its mechanized, computerized bonds and live in simplicity, at least for awhile. By looking toward its opposites, middle America may thus identify and appreciate itself through contrast. For example, if middle America is individualistic, then Appalachia is seen as collective. If middle America is task-oriented, then Appalachia is seen as person-oriented. If middle America's music is classical and rock and electrified, then Appalachia's music is "folk," "traditional," and acoustical. If urban America is concrete and pavement, Appalachia is mountains and trees. We hypothesized that this desire to find "cultural difference" in Appalachia would be reflected in the literature of the tourist industry. By embarking on an analysis of the travel literature of each state, we set out to see if there is indeed an image of "cultural difference" displayed in this medium. It is not surprising that we should look to tourist literature to see if the image we expected to find was "played out" there, for tourism itself may indeed serve a "communitas" function. Modern tourism along with "much expressive culture such as ceremonials, the arts, sports, and folklore" serve "as diversions from the ordinary, which make life worth living." Tourism is "functionally and symbolically equivalent to other institutions that humans use to embellish and add meaning to their lives" (Graburn 1977). The most obvious example of this might be the pilgrimage, and we should note that Batteau has identified the "pilgrimages" of outsiders into Appalachia during the troubled time of the 1930s and 1960s as one of the "forms that have figured prominently in the image-making of Appalachia" (along with myth, journalism, and to a lesser extent commodity) (Wagoner, Batteau, Green 1983). As pilgrimage, as well as in its less serious forms, tourism is supposed to offer us "re-creation," a difference from the workaday world, a getting away from it all. "Tourism provides a... counterpoint to ordinary life." (Graburn 1977:24) Tourism, then, is an "alternative state" (Graburn 1981:470) wherein one may seek the opposite of his everyday "social structural" world. Tourism thus is akin to rituals which embody communitias by carrying their participants through a "liminal" state (a state of transition, or marginality, or being on the "threshold") (Turner 1969). For a tourist, just as a participant in ritual, is "out of the normal, everyday social-structural and cultural environment and beyond its social and moral constraints." The tourist is outside his normal space and outside his normal time (Akeroyd 1981:468). The history of tourism within Western civilization gives further fuel to our thought that an image of Appalachian otherness would be perpetuated 74 �in the tourist literature of today. In medieval Europe, travel was for religious purposes, as in pilgrimages or crusades. People of that day (who could afford to) travelled to religious retreats on spiritual quests for truth. This truth was to be obtained by reflection. The Renaissance brought with it the view that "truth lay outside the mind and spirit" (Graburn 1977:24). Travel then turned way from seeking for truth as religiously understood toward exploration of facts as scientifically understood, and to an appreciation of the "high culture" of Europe. The Industrial Revolution brought with it, among other things, safer and cheaper travel for the bourgeoisie. It also spawned "the romanticism that glorified nature and the countryside" (Graburn 1977:25). The aftermath of World War I had the effect of further loosening the hold of the aristocracy on tourism as a recreational activity. During the 1920s the aristocracy and its pleasures were further relegated to the realm of the "stuffy," and there was heightened interest in the lifestyles of common people. Ethnic or cultural tourism became popular; folk music and jazz were sought after (Graburn 1977:26). Tourism as a product of industrial societies became a "search for the natural and the simple" (PiSunyer 1981:475). This brief history of Western tourism shows that the motivations for tourism have evolved from the religious, cultural, historical, and educational to, more recently, a seeking after the themes of nature, recreation and ethnicity. Thus we were expecting to see a commercialization of a longing for cultural difference in the tourist literature of the Appalachian area. Another reason for choosing tourist literature as our medium is that tourism is a major activity in the area. It has been hypothesized that tourism "is quite likely to become the world's largest business by the end of the 20th century" (Sutton 1967), and the Appalachian region is no slouch in this regard. Since the 1950s, the Southern Appalachians have been considered one of the principal tourist areas of the country. Among national parks, the Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah are annually ranked among the leaders in numbers of visitors. Related attractions such as the Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway have a high volume of usage (Morris 1967). In monetary terms, Virginia has a two billion dollar a year tourist industry, which is "as big an industry as agriculture and is more than equal to the combined dollar value of the industries of forestry, mining, and fishing" (MacCord 1981). West Virginia sees 1.4 billion dollars a year in "direct travel industry expenditures"; a figure which is "exceeded only by manufacturing" in that state. (Appalachia 1984). IMAGES WE EXPECTED TO FIND/TYPES OF TOURISM To summarize what we expected to find, let us clarify what the tourist/seeker seeks. A common task in socieities the world over seems to be an attribution of meaning through a process of defining "Culture" in 75 �opposition to "Nature." (This is the same process we go through when we seek to discover the meaning of any concept; we find out what it is not.) For the same reason, "communities" seek "communitias," in rituals, or by imagining it or seeking after it. Thus the highly "Cultured" city dweller seeks after Nature in two forms: One is to seek nature in the purest form, to get out "into" Nature, and the fewer people (bearers of Culture) around the better. But you can also get close to nature through Nature's "children" — the peasants of the world. "Interaction with them is possible and their naturalness and simplicity exemplifies all that is good in Nature herself (Graburn 1977:27; See also Batteau 1979 on Culture seeking after Nature). The seeking after Nature in its purest form has been labelled "natural tourism" by those who study tourism, and of course, we expected to find this in the tourist brochures from the Appalachian region. "Natural tourism" includes driving and hiking through mountains and countryside, sight-seeing things like natural land formations. This kind of tourism is represented in the tourist literature by pictures of landscapes that look as though they were taken from cars on scenic highways, and by pictures of natural "oddities" like the Natural Bridge in Virginia. As an example, we offer this ear-jangling put together of downhome and media hype: "we've set aside some of the prettiest country you'll ever see... We call 'em State Parks... and all in the middle of some of the prettiest country the good Lord ever made." The kind of "cultural difference" image we expected to find has been labelled by those who study tourism as "ethnic" or "cultural" tourism. This is communing with Nature through her children or their artifacts. It includes the "picturesque, vestiges of a vanishing life-style... with old-style dwellings, horse-drawn carts and plows, and handmade rather than machine-made crafts." Activities may include meals in rustic inns and folklore performances (Smith 1977:2). This kind of tourism includes the seeking after crafts, music, and dance. To further explain what sort of cultural tourism we thought we would find, it is necessary to clarify that there are at least two constellations of images of Appalachia, which sometimes overlap. These "types" correspond to the distinction made by Batteau and Green between "stereotype" (a popularized cartoon-like image) and "archetype" which relies on "some basic ideas within our cultural understandings," is akin to myth and legend, and harbors dichotomies like those included in the social structure/communitias model discussed earlier. (Wagner, Batteau, Green 1983). The first might be called a "hard" image; these are the stereotypes which have been played out in cartoons, jokes, television series, and advertisements. This stereotype relies on the slouch hat, the moonshine jug, the rifle, and Snuffy Smith's junkedup cabin. The "softer" image emphasizes values that have been repeatedly attributed to Appalachia: a sense of beauty, modesty, self-reliance and pride, fatalism, collectivism (a person-orientation, as opposed to a task orienta- 76 �tion), love of land, religiosity, family loyalty, and a slower, laid back pace of life (e.g. Jones 1972). Added to this should be artifacts and activities such as stringed instruments, folk and bluegrass music, clogging, quilts and quilting, and handmade wooden furniture, toys, etc. We did expect to find Appalachian "cultural difference" to be heavily commercialized by the tourist industry. We expected this commercialization, to be of a "soft" type — i.e. using the more subtle images such as bluegrass musicians, quilt makers, etc. as opposed to "hard" stereotyped images of lazy, moonshine-drinking hillbillies. Let us reiterate that we did not expect to find a "hard" exploitation of Appalachia through stereotypes such as the L'il Abner character. At least, we did not expect to find this in the official literature of the state travel bureaus. We did not expect to find this, and we did not find it. Before we tell you about our method and our findings let us clarify the remaining types of tourism which students of tourism have identified. (The types of tourism discussed here have been adapted from Smith 1977 and MacCord 1981). "Recreational tourism" is often the beach and the package of coastline activities, and "sexy pictures and images" that attract tourists who want to "relax or commune with nature," but in a comfortable way with the conveniences that a resort-type place can offer. This type of tourism also includes ski resorts and large, glamorous cities with a night life, like the "Big-A" (Atlanta) as shown in the Georgia travel literature (Smith 1977). "Historical tourism" stresses the past, with tours of historical structures (like the "covered bridges" we found in abundance in the West Virginia literature) and reconstructions of past environments (like Williamsburg, Virginia). "Industrial tourism" would include tours of factories, mines, mills, and the like. An example would be the Museum of Atomic Energy at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Thus, we thought we had good reason for looking for a commercialization, some might say an exploitation, of cultural difference in the travel literature, and we set out to see if it was indeed there. Keep in mind that our research is not aimed at determining whether the Appalachian region is actually culturally different from the rest of the United States. It has been "imaged" as if it were, and we wanted to see whether this image prevailed in the tourist literature. Whether these cultural differences are actually to be found in the area is beside our current point. We simply wished to see if they were used as part of the "come on" in the tourist literature of the Appalachian states. The method we used to test this hypothesis was to request travel literature from each of the 13 states recognized as part of Appalachia by the Appalachian Regional Commission. We did this by writing to the Tourist Division of each state government. In fact, we wrote two letters, using two different addresses, 77 �to each state office. In one letter, we requested literature on "travel and recreation" in that state, and in the other we specifically stated an interest "in the Appalachian area of the state." Our point here was to compare the separate sets to see whether the information would be different in the general state brochures and in the specifically "Appalachian" ones. Most of the states sent the exact same package in reply to both requests. Georgia and South Carolina sent no reply to the "Appalachian" request. North Carolina sent one extra item — a list of hotels — in answer to the "Appalachian" request. Tennessee was the only state that sent different materials to the two different requests. In Kentucky, the general literature came from the Office of Tourist Development, while the literature for the "Appalachian" request was sent from the governor with a special letter. Otherwise, it was the same packet of information. Originally all 13 states were analyzed (Anthropology 411 1984), but for purposes of this paper, we have narrowed our focus to these seven states: West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, and will discuss only these in the remainder of the paper. Analysis was done on the content of text, pictures, and on the feelings one got when looking at the literature. We gradually worked our way from broad, overall images of the material, to more detailed and specific things which included more concrete data such as the number of times certain images appeared or certain phrases that were used. We then looked for patterns which our analysis had shown were common in the literature. FINDINGS In general we found that commercialization of a soft "Appalachia as different" image was little in evidence. "Variety" is the Spice of Tourist Life Each state's literature has a particular theme. In no state was Appalachia — either its cultural or its natural attractions — the main emphasis in the tourist literature. For most of the states, the main emphasis was "VARIETY" — something for everyone. This was true even of West Virginia, which, of all the states, we expected to lean most heavily on its Appalachian heritage. Out of the seven states, four had variety or something for everybody as their theme (West Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina.) Tennessee had the theme of "recreation or outdoors." Virginia stressed "history." 78 �Kentucky's theme was "bluegrass." The literature of the four "variety" states used all four types of tourism discussed earlier. All of the coastal states took advantage of their beaches as the major tourist attraction, while the land-locked states, Tennesee, Kentucky, and West Virginia, promoted outdoor recreation, including hiking, sight-seeing and a variety of other activities. Appalachian seems to become lost in the innumerable pages of golf, tennis, rafting, skiing, swimming and other recreation activities as well as the history and heritage of other sections in the states. Appalachian culture may be a tourist attraction, but to the states in which it lies, it is just one among a variety of choices for the potential vacationer. All of the states except Tennessee and Kentucky sent us a main book (a "big beautiful book" as they advertised it), and many of them accompanied this with smaller brochures about particular places. These books were all divided into sections (ranging from three to eleven sections), each section emphasizing a different thing to see, thus underscoring the VARIETY available within the state. Each travel section was given a name under which the activities, events, attractions, and accommodations in that area's vacation spots were listed, described and illustrated. In five of the states, these sections were geographically determined and labelled. For example, Virginia's book was divided into Northern Virginia, Tidewater, Eastern Shore, Central-Southside, Shenandoah, and finally, the Highlands. In North Carolina and Georgia, however, the books were divided and the sections titled by relating them to history or the type of people who live there or once lived there. For example, in North Carolina's literature, one of the sections was called "The Birthplace of English America" and another was called "The Land of the Sky," an area where many Indians lived. Within these books, the placement of the section which would be considered Appalachian differed. In four states it was the last thing in the book (Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina and West Virginia); in two states it was at the front (North Carolina and Georgia). Appalachia as "Historyless" In most of the literature, Appalachia appeared "historyless." There was little to indicate that any history had ever taken place here, other than a few references to Daniel Boone. In some of the states, history was a major part of the discussion of several of its areas, but not mentioned at all in the Appalachian section of the state. One student noted that it seemed as though Appalachia had no people and no culture, just land and natural beauty. "Appalachia" Rarely Used We found that the word "Appalachia" was not much in evidence. No 79 �state used the word "Appalachia" to label the Appalachian region of its state, instead they used labels like "High Country," "Mountaineer Country," or "Highlands." (See the following chart which lists these labels for each state, along with the predominant theme of each state's literature and the kinds of tourism found in each state.) When the word Appalachia was found, it was used to refer to geological phenomena, or it was used as part of a proper name, such as the Appalachian Mountains, the Appalachian Plateau or the Appalachian Trail. That is, it was very rarely used to refer to culture or to cultural traits. South Carolina did not use the word at all in its literature. Virginia used the word only once, to refer to the "Appalachian Plateau." In Georgia, the word Appalachia wsa used only when referring to the Appalachian Trail. Appalachia as (Nearly) "Cultureless:" Cultural Images Found: Arts and Crafts With the exception of South Carolina, all of the states portrayed some part of the traditional images of Appalachia in their travel literature. Thus we found some emphasis on Appalachian culture in nearly all of the states, but not nearly as much as we had expected to find. The cultural aspects which we did find were quilting, traditional music, dancing, and festivals which featured all of these. Arts and crafts were the predominant form of "cultural" tourism. The most popular Appalachian images included: mountain or Appalachian arts and crafts in general, quilts, and stringed instruments like the fiddle and the dulcimer (all found in 5 of the 7 states); square dance, folk dance, flatfoot or clogging, and hillbilly or mountain costume (in 3 of the 7 states), moonshine and stills, love of land, folk music, and a relaxed, rural atmosphere (in 2 of the 7 states). (See the chart which delineates the items of cultural tourism found in the various states.) As an example, Virginia's literature, which made very little mention of Appalachian culture, did say "And there's the Southwest Virginia Museum at Big Stone Gap, for a close-up look at mountain culture and customs. There you'll find... century old quilts, b'ar guns and a homemade still." Likewise, the Northeast Georgia Mountain region sports a "down home atmosphere" with "rustic accommodations available from friendly people who are as widely known for their cleverly fashioned handicrafts as they are for their delicious country food." Listings of things to do included many arts and crafts festivals and fiddlers' conventions such as Tennessee's "Old Time Fiddler's Championship" with "flatfoot dance... and non-electric instruments." The pictures also showed these particular facets of the image of Appalachian culture. In Tennessee, pictures depicted men with long white beards, men playing fiddles, old women quilting, and log cbins. One picture depicts 80 �SUMMARY OF PREDOMINANT THEMES AND TYPES OF TOURISM FOUND IN THE TOURIST LITERATURE STATE PREDOMINANT THEME OF THE LITERATURE LABEL FOR THE TYPES OF APPALACHIAN TOURISM IN THE LITERATURE SECTION TYPES OF TOURISM IN THE APPALACHIAN SECTION West Virginia Variety N,H,R,C,I/N,R,C "Mountaineer Country" Virginia History H,R,N,C/N,R,C "Shenandoah," "Highlands" Kentucky Bluegrass R,N,H/N,R,C "Eastern Kentucky" North Carolina Tennessee Variety Recreation Outdoors "High Country" Georgia Variety R,N,C/N,C, N,R,H,C/N,R,C H,R,N,C/N,R,H South Carolina Variety; Beaches R N,R, "East Tennessee "Pioneer Territory," "Northeast Georgia Territory" "Up Country Carolina" Key: Types of tourism: C—Cultural (includes Indian as well as Appalachian) H—Historical I—Industrial N—Natural R—Recreational The types of tourism for each state are listed in the order which indicates which form was most prevalent in the literature of that state. a man in overalls with a mule; another is of a woman in traditional garb who is sewing on a quilt. Another shows some men sitting in front of a log house in flannel shirts and overalls playing music on banjo, guitar and fiddle while a couple of other men watch and carve on pieces of wood. Virginia's "Highlands" section pictured a mill, a rocking chair and a spinning wheel, a man making a dulcimer, a barn on a hill, a banjo player, a guitar player, and people on a porch. Kentucky's literature included a man playing fiddle, a picture of a chair in the woods with a shawl and some pottery sitting on it, and pictures of bluegrass musicians, log cabins and a mill. The travel literature of Tennesse, West Virginia, and Kentucky gave the strongest of these images of the Appalachian region(s) of their states, by including more pictures, phrases, and events that convey an "Appalachia as culturally different" image. But this still represented a small portion of all the images to be gleaned from the literature of the state. For example, in Kentucky's literature, the pictures described above were drowned in the overriding emphasis on "bluegrass." There were twenty-two pictures of horses 81 �Items of Cultural Tourism Found in Tourist Literature x indicates that this item is present in the state's literature in the literature, greatly outnumbering those with an "Appalachian" emphasis. "Bluegrass" was the most often used word in this literature, appearing sixteen times. Appalachia as "Nature" Much more in evidence were representations of natural attractions such as mountains, water, trees and other scenery. Mountains and scenery seem to be the universal symbols used to represent Appalachia. Our research showed a preponderance of beautiful pictures of the sun setting over rows of mountain ridges. Morris' (1967) article on "The Potential of Tourism" in the Ford study emphasizes the "diverse natural features" of the area, including mountains, ridges, gorges, valleys, rivers, caves, and forests. The only thing the area lacks is natural lakes, and the dams have taken care of that. All this is joined with mostly moderate temperatures and a comfortable relative humidity to make it nice for the tourist. A listing of the attractions Virginia has to offer says "Virginia is hard to beat for variety" when it comes to natural attractions. There are "waterfalls, natural tunnels and bridges, caves, cliffs, peaks, scenic 82 �overlooks, dunes, virgin forests, areas and streams for hunting and fishing, streams for canoeing, open water for boating and water-skiing, mineral and fossil deposits" (MacCord 1981). SUMMARY AND THOUGHTS ON WHY THERE IS LITTLE COMMERCIALIZATION OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCE Thus, we thought we would find commercialization of cultural difference, and found instead largely an ignoring of cultural differences. We found a nuance of cultural tourism, drowned in other forms of tourism. While our purpose was not to theorize why we found what we did, but rather to simply look to see what was there, we have given this some thought. First, we have to consider what tourism is. It is, after all, an industry — "an organized industry, catering to a clientele who have time and money and want to spend them, pleasurably, in leisured mobility" (Smith 1977:15). Areas thought to be the most profitable and best liked by vacationers may predominate in the literature of the state. Some of us have suggested that the tourist industry may not view communion with culture as lucrative, compared to communion with beaches, golf courses, restaurants, and motels. In other words, cultural tourism itself may not be considered profitable. (Although others of us have argued that it certainly is made much of in other areas; for example, Pennsylvania "sells" its Amish population to the point of genuine exploitation, and the literature we looked at used its Indian population as a "selling point" whenever possible.) Secondly, we need to remember who produced the literature we used as our sample. This literature came from the "Tourist Division of each state government. The few examples we had of a stereotyped negative image came from privately produced and distributed advertising of privately owned tourist traps. We may not find a commercialization of cultural difference in the state-produced literature for the same reason that Virginia has mandated that its plantations now be labelled "grand manor houses." (The state NAACP objected to this, saying it was a not so subtle way to rewrite Virginia history, and that a plantation should be called a plantation.) We call this a "blandifying" of the literature, a sanitizing of it to make it bland enough so as not to offend any particular group. Some of the students to whom we have presented our findings have suggested that perhaps the makers of tourist literature themselves have only a negative stereotype of the Appalachian region, and do not want to project this in the literature, and so project no image at all. Third, since the Appalachian region is just one part of most of these states, it is logical that they would not give it more than its "quota" of notice in their travel literature. Fourth, perhaps, after all, Appalachia is not actually different, and the tourist industry knows that better than we academics do. (This is not to be 83 �construed as a fact, merely a perhaps.) A more theoretical argument, and one which might lay the foundations for our next paper, is that if the cultured person is truly seeking Nature, any view of a culture to be found in that Natural setting (albeit a culture that is thought to be "different" from the tourist's own) only interferes with the Nature-seeking. If you want cultural tourism you can go to "Amish Country" or you can hobnob with the natives in New Guinea. But Appalachia is portrayed as one of America's last bastions of uncultured Wilderness (which you can see from a car). APPENDIX The following are examples of attractions and activities, taken from the travel literature, that each state claimed to offer. All of the states, except two, are divided on the basis of Appalachian and nonAppalachian sections. Tennessee and West Virginia could not be divided this way because one did not have a major book that divided the state into specific sections and one was entirely Appalachia. The examples from the Appalachian section of each state are more detailed and specific to give a clear idea of the images of Appalachia presented in the literature. The non-Appalachian sections are more generalized to give an overall picture of what that state offered. WEST VIRGINIA glassmaking companies coal mine tours Hatfields and McCoys museums horse racing fishing Coal Festival Country Festival "shimmering lakes" "luxurious resorts" barns Civil War battle grounds "mountain heritage" "Appalachian arts and crafts" quilts "mountaineer" "mountain arts and crafts" "Appalachian craftsmen" Appalachian Wildwater, Inc. 13 out of 81 pictures of mountains 4 out of 81 pictures of covered bridges "racing rapids" country inns mills Mountaineer Dinner Theater VIRGINIA Appalachian Section mill Sugar Maple Farm Festival Natural Chimneys Natural Tunnel "pioneer legends" rocking chair guitarist barn on a hill stringed instrument concerts deer Southwest Virginia museum at Big Stone Gap Old Fiddler's Convention Natural Bridge Winchester Apple Blossom Festival "handmade quilts" "homemade stills" sunsets banjo player people on porch man making a dulcimer Barter Theater caverns "century old quilts" Cumberland Gap 84 �Non-Appalachian Section Williamsburg people visiting historical houses skiing hiking beaches mountains "unspoiled natural beauty" Old Church Tower Woodrow Wilson Birthplace battle re-enactments canoeing rafting amusement parks trees Old Capital City of Richmond KENTUCKY Appalachian Section mountains lakes "bluegrass music" The Appalachian Celebration Kentucky Logging Show Sorghum Festival Annual Hillbilly Days Festival dancing Black Gold Festival clogging "bean soup dinner" "moonshine demonstration" Berea College boating fishing Morehead State University Appalachian Collection Harvest Festival Appalachian Development Center Jesse Stuart Nature Preserve crafts square dancing folkdancing folk music Great American Dulcimer Convention Non-Appalachian Section fishing tubing old houses historic documents mountains chair with a shawl on it mill horse racing historical monuments mills sunsets old cabins log houses NORTH CAROLINA Appalachian Section Hollerin" Festival New River Appalachian Trail 7 out of 9 pictures in this section are of mountains Collard Festival Grandfather Mountain Scottish Festival "authentic mountain life exhibits" quilting Non-Appalachian Section mountains restaurants beaches pine trees 85 �TENNESSEE hiking "flatfoot dancing and non-electric instruments" Seventh Annual Dulcimer Conventions Squaredancing "pioneer crafts" "folk festival" women quilting log cabins mountains 31 arts and crafts festivals listed fishing hunting Andrew Jackson Home Jonesborough — oldest town in the state fiddle playing woodcraving Old time Fiddler's Championship Appalachian Music Frontier Days "hammer and mountain dulcimers" "fiddle contest" men playing fiddles men with long white beards men in suspenders, dirty work clothes, and hats state parks men in overalls with mule pulling cart sailing men in flannel shirts playing banjos and guitars quilting men carving sticks GEORGIA Appalachian Section Lookout Mountain Appalachian Wagon Train "rustic accomodations" cat on a fencepost "Indian lore" Craftsmen's Fair "friendly people" "delicious country foods" Mountain Arts and Crafts Festival Birthplace of Sequoia Old Time Fiddlin' Convention "cleverly fashioned handicrafts" waterfalls southern plantations Sorghum Festival "a down home atmosphere" farmlands The Gold Rush Days Non-Appalachian Section water plantations Sioux Indians trees tennis colonial houses seafood Indian culture and heritage amusement parks golfing fishing SOUTH CAROLINA Appalachian Section mountains waterfalls camping crafts lakes Rock Bluff hiking rafting Non-Appalachian Section beaches sailboats seafood golfing The Grand Strand Pee Dee Country sun bathers women water restaurants Historic Charleston Thoroughbred Country 86 �REFERENCES CITED Anthropology 411 Appalachian Cultures Class. 1984. Appalachia: A Tourist Attraction. Radford, VA: Radford University Appalachian Studies Program. The authors and their chapters are: Marcia Cooper — ARC; Daphne Carr — New ^fork; Barry Sites—Pennsylvania; Susan Finley — Maryland; Ben Steinberg — Ohio; Carl Rhodes — West Virginia; Liz Throckmorton — Virginia; Lorna Smith — Kentucky; Tami Stark — North Carolina; Bill O'Brien — Tennessee; Jeff Jarvis — South Carolina; Kai Jackson — Georgia; Lynn Batley — Alabama; Kelly Morris — Mississippi; Ana Sutphin — Blue Ridge Parkway. Their work has been used throughout this paper. Akeroyd, Anne V. 1981. Comments on anthropology of tourism, Current Anthropology, October. Appalachia. 1984. Recreation and Tourism. Appalachia, May-August. Batteau, Allen. 1979. The American Culture of Appalachia. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Cincinnati, Ohio. Craburn, Nelson H.H. 1977. Tourism: The Sacred Journey. IN Smith, Valene, Ed., Hosts and Guests. University of Pennsylvania Press. 1981. Comments on Anthropology of Tourism. Current Anthropology, October. Jones, Loyal. 1972. Appalachian Values. Twig Magazine. MacCord, Howard. 1981. Your Locality and the Travel Industry. Virginia Travel Council Morris, John W., 1967. The Potential of Tourism. IN Ford, Thomas R., Ed., The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Pi-Sunyer, Oriol. 1981. Comments on Anthropology of Tourism. Current Anthropology, October. Smith, Valene. 1977. Introduction. IN Smith, Valene, Ed., Hosts and Guests. University of Pennsylvania Press. Sutton, W.A. 1967. Travel and understanding: Notes on the social structure of touring. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 8:218-23. Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago. Aldine. Wagner, Melinda Bollar. 1981. America's Alter Ego. Radford Magazine. Fall. 1982. Appalachia in America's Future: Alternative Cultural Forms. IN Simon, Rick, Ed., Critical Essays in Appalachian Life and Culture. Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press. Wagner, Melinda Bollar, Allen Batteau, and Archie Green. 1983. Images of Appalachia: A Critical Discussion. IN Buxton, Barry, Ed., The Appalachian Experience: Proceedings of the 6th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference. Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press. 87 �BEFORE THE YELLOW BUSES: THE QUEST FOR EDUCATION Convenor: Gerald Roberts, Berea College Toward a Definition of Folk Schools Pauline Cheek, Mars Hill, North Carolina Settlement School Goes to the People: Pine Mountain School's Community Centers at Big Laurel and Line Fork, 1919-1940 Nancy Forderhase, Eastern Kentucky University Northern Presbyterians in Southern Appalachia: Mountain Mission Schools Barbara Hempleman and Joan Moser, Warren Wilson College Settlement School goes to the People: Pine Mounain School's Community Centers at Big Laurel and Line Fork, 19194940 by Nancy Forderhase "Located high above the road in a woodland in one of the wedge shaped valleys peculiar to this region of the Southern Appalachians is the little log cabin settlement. Pine Mountain towers above—a formidable barrier between it and the big outside world. Nevertheless, here lives a bit of 'the outside': two 'fotched-on' teachers, an industrial worker and a nurse supplement in many ways the meager educational opportunities through classes in cooking, preaching in the little log cabin house and in their own lives, the gospel of health."1 This picturesque introduction to Line Fork, an extension center of Pine Mountain School, was a capsule description of mountain community work sponsored by the settlement school by the mid-1920's. Pine Mountain Settlement School, founded in 1913, was a complex and multifaceted institution. Building on the experience of the Hindman School which had begun in 1902, {Catherine Pettit and Ethel deLong launched a project to establish a similar school in a more remote region of Kentucky on the 'far side' of Pine Mountain. These two energetic and enthusiastic women hired Mary Rockwell, an architect from Kansas City, to draw up a master plan for the school grounds and future buildings which would be built as money was raised. They embarked upon a fund raising campaign and began to construct the first buildings at the beautiful site near Greasy Creek.2 88 �Those first four years from 1914 to 1918 were busy ones as Pettit and deLong struggled under primitive conditions to get the school operating efficiently. Several major buildings, including Big Log House, Laurel House, Open House, Far House and the Mary Sinclair Burkham School were constructed.3 After the completion of the first structure, Big Log House, deLong, in an enthsusiastic publicity letter to friends, discussed the blend of the old and the new found in Big Log House: "Typical of its aims, too, is the juxtaposition of loom and dictionary, spinning wheel and globe, home-made baskets and victrola!"4 The women also coped with farm problems. During the first year, Katherine Pettit, who particularly enjoyed farming, supervised adequate ditching of the farm, the planting of grape vines, fruit trees and berry bushes, as well as a garden. In subsequent years, Pine Mountain workers, with advice from expert agriculturists, planned for future farm operations and constructed a barn and corn crib.5 An equally important project was a reservoir designed to insure an adequate and pure water supply for the little community.6 Getting supplies to Pine Mountain was a constant problem as well as a major expense for the school, and by 1916 Ethel deLong and another Pine Mountain worker, Celia Catheart, initiated a major fund raising drive with a goal of $50,000 for constructing a road over the mountain.7 The physical plant was one of enormous number of obligations borne by the Pine Mountain administrators. Organizing the school, supervising teachers and other personnel, and overseeing the children's physical welfare as well as their academic needs absorbed considerable time and effort on the part of deLong and Pettit as the capacity of the school expanded from thirty-three pupils in 1914 to seventy children in 1918.8 In that year Ethel de Long's personal responsibilities increased as well when she married Luigi Zande, an Italian stone mason who had been working at Pine Mountain.9 Despite the backbreaking responsibilities shouldered by the two leaders of Pine Mountain Settlement School in those early years, they continued to plan for future directions of work for the school. Like their counterparts in the urban settlement houses, Pettit and deLong Zande believed their obligations extended beyond the school grounds to the community at large. From her earliest days in the mountains, Pettit had enjoyed visiting mountain families. Those friendships she cultivated in the community helped to create a positive image for Pine Mountain School and made its community work easier.10 Lack of health care was a pressing problem in the mountains. The women of Pine Mountain hired a nurse the first year of the school's existence to help cope with the medical necessities, and in 1917, the school sponsored a tonsils clinic.11 In subsequent years, Pettit and deLong Zande invited dentists and doctors to participate in other clinics — dental, trachoma, hookworm, and the like.12 While these medical services provided for the community were beneficial, Pine Mountain School workers were equally interested 89 �in preventive health care. In 1914, in an article written to garner support for the school in the Smith Alumnae Quarterly, deLong Zande deplored the lack of medical knowledge. "They are utterly ignorant of the germ theory of disease. Knowledge of sanitation is as foreign to them as it has long been to the rural population of the north... "13 Pine Mountain workers continually taught preventive health lessons to the children of the school, and as time passed, carried these health lessons to children and families in the surrounding rural schools and communities.14 Pettit and Zande were concerned about other problems in the mountains beyond the boundaries of the school property. Although they frequently extolled the virtues of the individualistic mountain people in their publicity letters and fund raising efforts, they realized that excessive individualism, a well known mountain characteristic, could be a handicap in community development, especially as the mountain regions were experiencing dramatic changes. The railroad had wound its way into the remote parts of the hills, and this enhanced transportation mode was opening up the coal regions to exploitation. Like many workers from outside the region, Pine Mountain women, perhaps reflecting a widespread anxiety in American culture about the onrush of modernity, viewed these changes with ambivalence.15 In an article written for Survey magazine, deLong Zande presented an idealized view of the mountain people, using such adjectives, as Virile' and 'vigorous' to describe them. "Poverty you find; lack of knowledge you find; conditions needing to be corrected; still, here are a people to bring hope to America."16 In another article in 1914, she warned of the problems related to the rapidly developing region: A new problem has come to the hills from the encroachments of the world outside. Every year the railroads push farther and farther into the hills for coal and timber, and the cheapest ideals come in with them first... (Young people believe) nice people outside do not work with their hands and they want to escape the contempt of the outside world. Store clothes, chewing gum, cigarettes, and superficial scorn of farm or housework, are its first gifts to the primitive folk in the heart of the hills.17 These negative aspects of modern society, at least in the eyes of the Pine Mountain women, became a special cause for concern with the outbreak of World War I. The war produced a great demand for coal, and this demand contributed to a tremendous boom in the coal fields of eastern Kentucky. Coal camps and new coal towns sprang up almost over night; indeed, the mountains were changing. In the summer of 1918, Zande visited Evarts, a rapidly growing coal town, and was most distressed at what she saw. She had visited the area three years before," ...when it was beautiful beyond my power to tell you, and where if people's homes weren't clean, they had at 90 �least privacy and beauty about them and a dignified independence, and no vulgar surroundings."18 By 1918, the scene had changed. "... I felt that the worth-while things had been taken away; they cannot raise their food, they have no smoke house, no privacy, the houses being set so close together with no yards, the toilets were indecent, much worse than the old mountain method of no closets at all..."19 Zande insisted that the inhabitants of the camp had learned only "...the veneer of modern life," and lamented that "...the future of the mountain people look(ed) very dark... unless the condition of mining camps can be elevated someway (sic)."20 In 1918 and 1919, Zande worked hard to find solutions to the problems of the mining camps. As a product of the fact-finding generation of the Progressive Era, she believed that the coal towns needed to be studied in order to identify the problems and to seek solutions to those problems. To that end, she searched for some organization which would sponsor a survey of the mining camps of Eastern Kentucky. Unable to persuade the Women's Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church to take up the survey, Zande contacted persons connected with the Kentucky Child Labor Committee, and managed to get the National Child Labor Committee to conduct a survey of conditions in Harlan County.21 Pine Mountain lent its financial support to the study in which results were published in The American Child.22 This increasing concern with changing conditions in the mountains led the women of Pine Mountain to seek support for neighborhood extension centers. Pettit and Zande were influenced by the ideas of John C. Campbell whom they had known during their years of mountain work. Early in 1918, Pettit wrote Campbell, asking him if Pine Mountain should undertake community work in its neighborhood.23 Campbell strongly approved of the extension idea. He maintained that workers would receive more community support if they lived among the people and provided positive examples of a better way of life. Certainly Pine Mountain School was an outstanding example of an excellent educational institution, but he insisted that the school could be even more influential if some of its workers lived in the neighborhood.24 Campbell's endorsement of the extension centers seems to have been a positive source of support for projects they were already contemplating. Both Zande and Pettit had been in contact with Harriet Butler, formerly a worker at Hindman Settlement School. Butler and a friend, Dr. Grace Huse from St. Louis, were anxious to come to the mountains to begin an extension center. After a lengthy correspondence, the two women agreed to come to Kentucky to begin their work at Big Laurel in the spring of 1919. Pettit and Zande were especially anxious for this project, aptly labeled Medical Settlement, to get underway because they recognized the great health needs of the area and believed Huse and Butler would fill a void.25 Plans for Medical Settlement almost went awry early in 1919, when the 91 �newly constructed Mary Sinclair Burkham School House burned to the ground. Although the staff was saddened by the death of a worker and four students, Pettit and Zande insisted the work of the School should continue and they looked forward to the opening of Medical Settlement in the summer of 1919. Work began on the doctor's house that summer; by the fall, Dr. Huse and Miss Butler, her assistant, were firmly installed at the Medical Settlement and their medical work began.26 At the same time that Huse and Butler were establishing the beginnings of a working relationship in the community of Big Laurel, Pettit and Zande were going ahead with plans for a second extension center. In 1918, the county school superintendent, A.C. Jones, had asked Ethel Zande to supervise eleven district schools in the area near Pine Mountain School.27 Anxious to improve the quality of the public schools, Zande enthusiastically took up the challenge. To aid her in this work, the Pine Mountain administrator chose Marguerite Butler, a young woman who had been associated with Pine Mountain School since 1914. Butler made frequent trips into remote parts of the county, and as a consequence, became intensely interested in extension centers. Her work provided the foundation for the newest community center, Line Fork.28 In the summer of 1920, the two young women, Isabella McClannan from Louisville, and Martha Van Meter of Lexington, spent the summer at Line Fork teaching school. They had gone to Line Fork at the urging of Mrs. Field, a school trustee. Members of the local community met and agreed to provide the logs and labor for a permanent extension center. The women at Pine Mountain School were especially encouraged by the project because the local citizens were providing the initiative and support for the center. They quickly recruited a nurse, teacher and industrial worker, and Line Fork became the second extension center to be established in the vicinity.29 The first five years of work at Big Laurel and Line Fork were a time of enthusiasm and perhaps unwarranted optimism. Pine Mountain's Notes contained frequent references to the work of the extension centers, and Zande's and Pettit's constant correspondence and appeals for funds from their long list of potential donors made financial support for the centers one of their highest priorities.30 Brochures describing the work of Medical Settlement and Line Fork were prepared to send out to friends of Pine Mountain.31 As Pettit and Zande looked forward to the future, those two outposts were just the beginning of work in the region. In a letter written to a potential donor in Lexington in 1919 Pettit stated: "As we see our extension work in about ten years from now, there will be a chain of such settlements through the country, all related to the Pine Mountain School and financed by it...I wish I could give you a picture of the various little communities where we want to start work,—Incline, the Line Fork, Little Laurel, Abner's Branch and Cutshin."32 Both Big Laurel and Line fork workers believed they should provide, 92 �by example, community development. Because the Medical Settlement at Big Laurel had the services of Dr. Huse, its primary role was to provide adequate medical attention to the people in the area. Although the local residents may have been a bit skeptical about the services of a woman doctor, they were quickly won over by the quiet ways of Dr. Huse who was called upon to perform innumerable medical tasks, from attention to 'risins', cuts and bruises to infections caused by hookworm and trachoma. The settlement school was especially proud of her work with delivering babies and caring for young children. "The only 'diplomy doctor' in a circle of twenty five miles, she rides her horse Billy by day and night, wet, hungry, muddy, frozen, exhausted, to take care of the sick and introduce little newcomers to a world incredibly happier and more wholesome because of her." Those newborn babies would be healthier toddlers because of the Medical Settlement's preventive health care programs and classes for young mothers. "As we remember the sore-mouthed, sore-eyed, sore-headed, fly-covered babies of three years ago, suffering too from sick stomachs or locked bowels, we rub our eyes at the rosy, fresh babies of today.33 Line Fork's activities were directed by a public health nurse, teacher and industrial worker, and much of the work was carried out through school activities. In a December, 1924 issue of Child Health Magazine, Anne Ruth Medcalf, the public health nurse at the community extension center, described some of the community projects that she had used to teach better health habits. In 1921, she began a health program for the schools. Through stories and games, she demonstrated simple health practices such as washing one's hands and hair and keeping the head free of lice. She weighed the children monthly and instituted toothbrush drills with shaved dogwood sticks which were used for toothbrushes. At the community center she began babies' clinics, and the center sponsored a dental clinic as well as a tonsils, adenoid and trachoma clinic.34 One community project sponsored through the school was a hot lunch program. The school bought the original equipment, and children brought from home, 'pokes' from which they made napkins, dish clothes and towels, and a curtain partition for the 'kitchen.' The children planned the meals, and cooked and served them. Initially, some opposition existed, as the boys in the school objected to doing 'woman's' work, and the students were reluctant to try new foods; however, the teacher and industrial workers, with moral support from the nurse, won the children over. Workers at Line Fork believed that valuable lessons in cooperation, nutrition and health standards were being taught by the hot lunch program. As they saw it: The development of cooperation is the keynote of community work. With this group of individualists, for such are the people in these creeks and hollows, it is seen that this spirit of cooperation must be developed from its very beginnings. The people will 93 �come to 'meetings' simply because they are meetings. "Ib graft upon these meetings the spirit of self-service and self-training, a feeling of comradeship, a desire to live and to feel the better things of life, is the problem of the industrial worker. It is felt that the work so far carried out has made some steps in this direction: the school lunches, the Sunday meeting for the adults for general discussion and interchange of ideas, and the recreational activities for the young people.36 From 1924 to the early 1930's, medical and community work continued at both centers. Dr. Huse and Harriet Butler left Big Laurel in 1924, and the Pine Mountain administrators found another woman doctor, Alfreda Withington, a former surgeon who had worked with the Red Cross in France.37 Withington, like many other women who had come to the region in the past, fell in love with the mountains. In 1932, she published an account of her mountain experiences, printed over a three months' period in The Atlantic Monthly. Along with her descriptions of midnight trips into remote hollows to minister to the sick, she also included her impressions of the mountain people.38 During Withington's tenure at Big Laurel, a series of teachers and industrial workers attempted to continue the community work begun by Huse and Butler. From the irregular reports sent to Pine Mountain, the impression was one of an uphill struggle to keep the community center going. Although workers attempted to maintain a garden and provide a variety of programs for the young people, attendance lagged. In 1929, a typical report to the Pine Mountain authorities, described the Big Laurel situation as "...one long struggle against the results of illiteracy, lack of employment, moonshine, guns, and a quick temper.39 Here, where a large percentage of the older people, and even some of the younger ones, cannot read or write, there is little in the way of mental recreation that they could enjoy. Added to this is the fact that, due to the isolation of the settlement, there is little work to do outside of work in the mines and lumber camps, and one can see how many an hour that might profitably have been spent for reading or constructive work is turned over to mischief and unlawful practices. Where fathers and grandfathers for years past have been in the moonshine trade, and sons observe the free use of it every day, these same sons can hardly be expected not to follow in their fathers' footsteps. And breaking of the law brings fear of the law, hence the need for guns. And the carrying of guns, in turn, brings fear of each other, and a lowering of the value of life.40 Workers at Line Fork were experiencing some of the same frustrations 94 �as those being felt at Big Laurel. After the departure of Anne Ruth Medcalf in the mid-1920's, the two district schools in the Line Fork area returned to local control, and the workers lost an important source of contact with the community.41 Recruitment of workers for the extension center was a constant problem, and it was difficult for the Pine Mountain staff to supervise the activities. In the fall of 1926, a middle-aged couple, Robert and Ida Stapleton, assumed duties at Line Fork. They had served as missionaries in Armenia, and Mrs. Stapleton, a doctor, provided medical attention for the neighborhood. The couple remained at Line Fork until 1937. While their presence at the extension center provided a continuity in leadership at Line Fork, their interminably detailed reports from the settlement, indicated that they were more interested in saving souls than in fostering community development.42 By the 1930's, the first generation of leadership at Pine Mountain was ending. Ethel deLong Zande had died of cancer in 1928, and Katherine Pettit was in retirement. The new director, Glyn Morris, reluctant to give up the Big Laurel settlement, searched for new directions and financing for the centers. One such plan suggested a cooperative farming project for the community, a grade school taught by teachers from Pine Mountain to prepare students for entry into the Settlement School, and continued medical work emphasizing a preventive health program and sanitation and clean up campaigns. Morris also cast about for financing for the centers and corresponded with New Deal agencies to see if federal funds could be found for the centers. None of these efforts were successful, and as the 1930's ended, Pine Mountain's work with extension centers was coming to an end.43 Pettit's and Zande's dreams of a chain of community extension centers in the shadow of Pine Mountain did not come to fruition. Nevertheless, their vision and efforts represented the idealism, energy and enthusiasm of a remarkable generation of women dedicated to the improvement of the quality of mountain life. Initial efforts for fund raising and staffing the two centers were successful. Interested donors gave their support to the project, and the women who staffed the centers at Big Laurel and Line Fork possessed the necessary idealism and self-sacrifice needed to work in the remote, mountainous regions of eastern Kentucky. Most of them were well acquainted with mountain life and understood the obstacles that would have to be overcome if the area were to develop. By the mid-1920's, however, that initial enthusiasm waned. Although Ethel Zande showed a continual devotion to Pine Mountain, her time and attention were divided between her young children and her losing battle with the cancer that claimed her life in 1928.44 Katherine Pettit was no longer a young woman by the middle of the decade, and she spent increasing periods of time away from Pine Mountain on extended trips.45 As time passed, staffing became a problem. The self-sacrificing generation of Women Progressives no longer stood ready to take up the challenge of mountain work, and it 95 �became more and more difficult to recruit and supervise individuals who would work in those remote centers. Only a dedicated missionary couple like the Stapletons would choose to remain in the region, and their approach to community development was limited. In his thorough and excellent study of Pine Mountain Settlement School, James S. Greene suggests that moonshining was a major problem in the area and inhibited community develepment. Although workers made major efforts to provide alternatives to the production and consumption of alcohol, they did not substantially alter the local mores.46 An even more fundamental problem recognized by mountain workers was the lack of community spirit and cooperation. Workers, not only at Pine Mountain, but elsewherre in eastern Kentucky, were continually frustrated by this problem and never seemed to overcome it. This frustration could be seen in the letters of Alice Cobb, the Pine Mountain secretary in the 1930's who wrote to friends familiar with the extension centers and asked their advice. Cobb explained that the extension centers were a financial burden on Pine Mountain School because it did not have the monetary resources necessary to support a good staff and effective program there. Yet Cobb was reluctant to give up the centers. "That means admitting that we've failed, and that the hopes, and unselfish labor, and thousands and thousands of solicited dollars spent there for these many years, have been sunk in a hole."47 At the same time, however, she was pessimistic about the potential of the centers to effect fundamental changes in attitudes. She held out some hope for the children, but little for their parents whose habits and patterns of living were already set by the time they reached adulthood.48 Ruth Campbell, a friend who responded to Cobb's request for advice, was equally pessimistic about the future role of the centers. She pointed out that the people "...have been exposed to medical training, parties, preaching, at times to cooking and sewing classes and home nursing; and the children have been exposed to Pine Mountain for years on end; and yet Greasy has not changed its spots." She recognized, however, that the mountain communities were changing, and perhaps the extension centers in their present form were no longer needed "...with the increasing ease in getting about in that remote section. The families will ever more easily be able to go to Pine Mountain, with the shrinkage of mileage and the trucks and autos that are pervading even Greasy and its tributaries."49 The visionary plans of Pettit and Zande had not been fully realized, but many of their ideas about community development would be revived in the 1960's by another generation of reformers who, with federal support, would 'rediscover' Appalachia. 96 �FOOTNOTE 1. Anne Ruth Medcalf, handwritten manuscript, Line Fork File, 1920-41, Microfilm edition of the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collection, Berea College Archives, (hereafter cited as PMSS). 2. Articles of incorporation of the Pine Mountain Settlement School, PMSS; for a good description of the work of Mary Rockwell, see: Buildings of Mary Rockwell Hook, 1916-40 file; Publicity file, letters, 1914-1921, PMSS; the best description of all the school's activities during the Pettit-deLong Zande years can be found in James S. Greene, III, "Progressives in the Kentucky Mountains: The Formative Years of Pine Mountain Settlement School, 1913-1930," (Ph.D dissertation, Ohio State University, (1982). 3. For a brief, chronological account of Pine Mountain building activities, see Evelyn K. Wells, "A Record of the Pine Mountain Settlement School, 1913-1927," typescript, pp. 6-10, PMSS. (hereafter cited as Wells, History). 4. Ethel deLong to friends, Nov. 14, 1914, Publicity file, PMSS. 5. Wells, History, pp. 6-9, 31. 6. Ibid., pp. 8-9 7. An extensive correspondence about the road fund can be found in the Pine Mountain records. See Celia Catheart letters in General Correspondence, 1916-18, PMSS. Catheart conducted a surprisingly sophisticated fund raising campaign in several cities. For a detailed account of the road campaign and subsequent problems connected with building the road, see James Greene, "Progressives in the Kentucky Mountains," pp. 335-48. 8. Wells, History, pp. 6-8. 9. Ibid, p. 26. 10. Greene, "Progressives in the Kentucky Mountains," pp. 268-72; Katherine Pettit to Frances P. Tanner, Jan. 4, 1929, Katherine Pettit letter file, PMSS. Pettit's letter is typical of many examples in the Pine Mountain collection describing her friendship with the mountain people. She took frequent trips into the remote mountain areas and visited with the families. 11. Wells, History, p. 9 12. Ibid, pp. 9, 11, 14-16, 37-40. 13. Ethel deLong, "The Appeal of the Kentucky Mountains," Smith Alumnae Quarterly, 3 (April, 1914), 164. 14. Wells, History, pp. 37-40. 15. From my research and reading on outsiders' views of Appalachia, I have come increasingly to believe that at least part of the interest in the region came from anxieties present in American culture caused by confusion and concern about the rapidly changing society of late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. Those who romanticized the simple, primitive nature of Appalachia seemed to be searching for traditional values which they might find in the isolated region—hence the fascination with the ballads and crafts of the region. I have been influenced by the account of antimodernism found in T.J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace (New York, 1981). See pages 60-96 for his discussion of the arts and crafts movement. 16. Ethel deLong, "The Far Side of Pine Mountain," Survey, 38 (March 3, 1917), 627-9. 97 �17. Ethel deLong, "The Appeal of the Kentucky Mountains," Smith Alumnae Quarterly, 3 (April, 1914), 165. 18. Ethel Zande to Elisa Kendrick, July 15, 1918, Gen. Corr., 1916-18, PMSS. 19. Ibid. 20.. Ibid. 21. Ethel Zande to Mrs. F.S. Bennett, Aug. 27, 1918, Oct. 15, 1918, Jan. 9, 1919, March 17, 1919, April 22, 1919; Ethel Zande to Mary Carter, May 12, 1919, Ethel Zande to Mr. W.W. Swift, May 5, 1919; Ethel Zande to Calvin Kendall, Jan. 29, 1919, Gen. Corr., 1919, PMSS. 22. Mable Brown Ellis to Ethel Zande, June 26, 1919; Ethel Zande to Marguerite Butler, Aug. 20, 1919; Ethel Zande to Mabel Brown Ellis, c. late 1919, Ethel Zande to Owen Lovejoy, Feb. 16, 1920, Gen. Corr., 1919, PMSS; Mabel Brown Ellis, "Children of the Kentucky Coal Fields," The American Child, 1; (Feb., 1920), 285-405. 23. Katherine Pettit to John C. Campbell, Jan. 4, 1918, Gen. Corr, 1916-18, PMSS. 24. See brochure describing work at Big Laurel and Line Fork in Big Laurel file and Line Fork History file, PMSS. Although Campbell had died by the time these brochures were printed, he was still considered to be the leading authority on mountain work, and obviously the Pine Mountain administrators believed it important to receive an endorsement from Campbell's writings on the subject. 25. Ethel deLong to Harriet Butler, Jan. 17, 1917, Feb. 7, 1918; Katherine Pettit to Harriet Butler, May 7, 1918, July 15, 1918, Sept. 13, 1918, Feb. 26, 1919, Big Laurel file, PMSS. 26. Details of the fire are found in the Gen. Corr. file 1919. For a vivid account of the fire, see Marguerite Butler letters and Evelyn Wells letters, PMSS. The Gen. Corr. file of 1919 also contains many examples of appeals for money for Big Laurel. Typical letters include: Katherine Pettit to Mrs. B.F. Achison, May 22, 1919, Katherine Pettit to Dr. Norman Bridge, Sept. 6, 1919; Ethel Zande to Mary Carter, May 12, 1919, Ethel Zande to Mrs. Fitz, July 10, 1919, Gen. Corr. file 1919, PMSS. 27. Wells, History, pp. 11, 42; Abner C. Jones to Ethel Zande, July 8, 1919, July 14, 1919, Extension centers file, PMSS. 28. Marguerite Butler to Mother, c. June, 1919; Marguerite Butler to Jeannette, c. Summer, 1919; Margurite Butler to Mother, c. Fall, 1919; Green, "Progressives in the Kentucky Mountains," pp. 296-303. 29. Wells, History, pp. 44-5; Isabella McLennan McMeeking, "The Beginning of Line Fork," typescript; Martha Van Meter, "Memories of Line Fork," typescript, Line Fork history file, PMSS. 30. Notes from the Pine Mountain Settlement School, Feb., 1919, Oct., 1919, Nov., 1920, Nov., 1921, March 1922, Nov., 1923, May 1924, April, 1926; (hereafter cited as Pine Mountain Notes); Angela Melville to Mrs. Haggin, March 13, 1920, Katherine Pettit to Mrs. F. Beachamp, Sept. 15, 1920, (Katherine Pettit) to Mr. Gray, Peabody Coal Company, Nov. 3, 1920; Ethel Zande to Mrs. Kate W. Baker, July 12, 1921, Ethel Zande to Gertrude Gladwin, Aug. 21, 1921, Ethel Zande to Anna Bogue, Oct. 25, 1921. Ethel Zande to Harriet Clarke, Aug. 21, 1922, Katherine Pettit to Ruth Dennis, June 20, 1922, Ethel Zande to Edna Fawcett, Oct. 25, 1922, Ethel Zande to Mary E. Abercrombie, Dec. 14, 1923, Ethel Zande to Darwin Martin, July 2, 1923, Ethel Zande to Elizabeth Bolinger, June 9, 1924, Katherine Pettit to Major D.J. Burchette, July 5, 1924, Ethel Zande to Luella Latta, Mar. 21, 1924, Gen. Corr. file, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, PMSS. 31. Brochures, Line Fork history file, Big Laurel file, PMSS. 32. Katherine Pettit to Miss Watson, Oct. 23, 1919, Extensions centers file, PMSS. 98 �33. Brochure, c. 1923, Big Laurel file, PMSS. While the rhetoric in these brochures may have been somewhat exaggerated, the records indicate that the people in the neighborhood gratefully accepted medical assistance and did not object to a woman doctor. 34. Anne Ruth Medcalf, "In the Line Fork Country," Child Health Magazine, 5 (Dec., 1924), 503-511. 35. Ibid. 36. Elizabeth Smith, report, 1923-4, Line Fork file, PMSS. 37. Wells, History, pp. 43-4. 38. Alfreda Withington, "The Mountain Doctor," The Atlantic Monthly, 130 (Sept., Oct., Dec., 1932), 257-67, 469-77, 768-774. 39. Report of community work at Big Laurel, March 30, 1929, Big Laurel file, 1927-37, PMSS. 40. Ibid. 41. Wells, History, p. 45. 42. The Stapletons wrote long reports with minute, irrelevant details included in them. See those reports in Line Fork file, PMSS. For information about recruiting efforts, both for Pine Mountain school and the extension centers, see corr. file throughout the 1920's and 1930's. 43. Glyn Morris to Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, July 12, 1932, July 13, 1932, Tentative Outline for Social and Economic Survey of Big Laurel Community, n.d., Glyn Morris to Leonard Doyle, March 14, 1934, Olyn Morris to Earl Mahew, KERA, March 11, 1936, Glyn Morris to Rexford Tugwell, Sept. 26, 1936, Glyn Morris to C.R. Conley, Dec. 10, 1936, Big Laurel file, 1927-37, PMSS. 44. Pine Mountain Notes,Sept., 1928. PMSS. This issue contains a number of tributes to Ethel Zande. 45. Katherine Pettit to Miss Bartells, Aug. 13, 1925, Gen. Corr., 1925; (Catherine Pettit to Miss Browne, Dec. 6, 1926, Gen. Corr., 1926, PMSS. Katherine Pettit was a very active woman and loved to travel. In addition to her frequent treks throughout the mountains, she traveled elsewhere. In 1926 she took a trip around the world, and in the early 1930's she went to Latin America. A small collection of her letters in the Pine Mountain papers includes her short diary of her trip to Latin America. It was quite an adventure. 46. Greene, "Progressives in the Kentucky Mountains," pp. 323-35. 47. Alice Cobb to Miss Campbell, Jan. 22, 1937, Big Laurel file, 1927-37. 48. Ibid. 49. Ruth Campbell to Miss Cobb, Feb. 2, 1937, Big Laurel file, 1927-37, PMSS. 99 �ISSUES OF THEORY AND METHOD IN REGIONAL RESEARCH Convenor: Herb Reid, University of Kentucky Class and Gender: New Theoretical Priorities in Appalachian Studies Sally Ward Maggard, University of Kentucky Beyond the "Traditional Mountain Subculture": A New Look at Pre-Industrial Appalachia Mary Beth Pudup, University of California, Berkeley Class and Gender: New Theoretical Priorities in Appalachian Studies by Sally Ward Maggard ABSTRACT Scholarship in Appalachian Studies has failed to address the contemporary and historical particularities of women's relationship to the region's social institutions and its history of social change. Treatment of Appalachian women includes: a romantic view of pre-industrial 'womenfolk' tilling soil and raising babies; a romantic view of post-industrial 'womenfolk' still raising babies while making quilts and apple butter; a ridiculing attack on Appalachian mothers which posits faulty child-rearing as the cause of a perpetuating culture of poverty; a slippery focus on 'the family' which assumes all household members have identical experiences and interests; and the 'Mother Jones syndrome' which attempts to recover Appalachian women as historical actors but which misrepresents their history as a collection of biographies of a few-great-women-of-courage. Recent efforts to document and analyze the everyday worlds of the region's working-class and ordinary people has made little improvement. Women are either missing in these works, or are treated as appendages of men. In the new social history of the region, women appear as flag-wavers who manage soup lines during industrial strikes, or as loyal family members who stand-by-their-men on a day to day basis. This otherwise promising work in Appalachian Studies too often turns out to be the history of the common man in a man-made world. 100 �But what difference does it make to study women? Doesn't this just add a small overlooked piece of the pie — an addition which may add to the flavor of the pie but does not alter its basic structure? Recent research on the relationship between class-based and gender-based structures of power suggests othewise. Analysis informed by a sustained attention to gender challenges essential theoretical and methodological tenets of class analysis. This paper examines the manner in which gender shapes the way women and men experience class, argues that the intersection of class and gender should be a theoretical priority in Appalachian Studies, explores new analytic tools for class/gender analysis, and re-examines recent social history of the region. Introduction During the decade since the Appalachian Studies Association was formed in 1977, the academic field of Appalachian Studies has come of age. Hundreds of courses are taught each year in college and high school classrooms. Research has been published in prestigious journals in each of the disciplines the Association incorporates. Books treating Appalachian topics have received national and international acclaim. Scholars from the United States and a number of other countries have established a solid international connection, as comparative research flourishes on many Appalachian-related issues. Given the overall health of the field and the variety of scholars attracted by its interdisciplinary nature, it is surprising that so little Appalachian scholarship touches on the experiences of women and their place in the region's history. On the one hand, disturbing stereotypes of mountain women plague much Appalachian scholarship. On the other hand, many scholars deny that any new understanding of the region's history or social organization would emerge from a systematic examination of women's lives. This paper offers some reflections on the treatment of women in Appalachian research and suggests that Appalachian scholars could do well by paying attention to recent developments in feminist and marxist scholarship. In particular, the argument is made that sustained attention to gender relations is essential to understanding such popular Appalachian Studies topics as work, community, class divisions, social change, and collective protest. The importance of gender relations in shaping the central features of a social system is equated with the importance of class relations. The interaction of gender and class is identified as a theoretical and empirical priority, and new analytic tools are discussed. The many myths of the mountain woman The 'Daisy Mae' image of mountain women as ignorant, barefoot, and pregnant has been slow to die. A variation of this image informs a ridicul101 �ing attack on Appalachian mothers by those social scientists who posit faulty child-rearing practices as the root cause of the region's persistent poverty (Loof, 1977, 1971; Weller, 1965). Equally troublesome is the 'womenfolk' image of mountain women. 'Womenfolk' are said to be stalwart individuals who hold families together in times of trouble. Pre-industrial 'womenfolk' are described s industrious tillers-of-the-soil who have babies and stand by their men (Eller, 1982). Postindustrial 'womenfolk' are described as just as industrious — only now they are being industrious in coal camps or mill towns. They, too, have babies and stand by their men (Eller, 1982; Corbin, 1981). In other words, 'womenfolk' are thought to help things along somewhat, and they do bear the next generation. Other than that, they don't seem to have much to do with the course of history. Above all, 'womenfolk' are marginal people. In a related theme, mountain women are 'family'. In a near reflex action, scholars in Appalachian Studies, and many other fields as well, tend to equate women with the family. The assumption is that the family is somehow the essence of women's existence. Or, as Catherine MacKinnon writes: ...women become 'the family', as if this single form of women's confinement (then divided on class lines, then on racial lines) can be presumed to be the crucible of women's determination (1982: 525). 'The family' here is a slippery concept with little explanatory value. It serves as a dumping—or lumping—ground for all of women's lived experiences. Another treatment of mountain women could be called the 'Mother Jones syndrome'. Some scholars have begun to recognize Appalachian women as historical actors in their own right. Biographies and oral histories of women who were leaders in community organizations, work-place struggles, or social services do add information about women's behavior and their perceptions. But the danger in this approach is that it can misrepresent women's history as the collection of biographies of a few-great-women-of-courage. The 'Mother Jones syndrome' in Appalachian Studies parallels what historian Gerda Lerner (1976) termed 'women's contribution history'. As feminist scholars began to search for women's historical record, their early focus on biography resulted in an 'add-on' approach which did not challenge traditional male-defined interpretations of history. The result in labor history provides a good example of the problems which resulted. Women were portrayed as supporting male leaders—an assumption which implies united women in a united movement and ignores conflict within social classes as well as the particular experiences of women (Lewis, 1981). Recent scholarship in Appalachian Studies covering an exciting range of topics has dramatically improved our understanding of the region's 102 �history and social order. A growing number of scholars are at work unfolding the mechanics and consequences of the industrialization of the region, probing the causes of rebellion and containment of protest, detailing the nature of community life, scrutinizing the political economy of development strategies, and exploring sources of cultural and social psychological conflict (Eller, 1982; Corbin, 1981; Gaventa, 1980; Whisnant, 1980; Banks, 1983-84). While this new scholarship represents fresh insights and approaches, as a whole it is seriously inadequate in its treatment of women (Maggard, 1984). Women are either missing in these works, or are treated as appendages of men. They appear as flag-wavers who manage soup lines during industrial strikes, or as loyal family members (usually as 'wives') backing up husbands, sons, fathers on a day-to-day basis. In short, we still know very little about the everyday lives, pressures, motivations, and histories of Appalachian women. Above all, we lack any sense of them as active human beings shaping the course of the region's history. Introducing gender But what difference does it make to study women? Doesn't this just add a small overlooked piece of pie — an addition which may add to the flavor of the pie but which does not alter its basic structure? Recent research on the relationship between class-based and gender-based structures of power suggests otherwise. As a way to lead into this discussion, I will first touch briefly on some of the issues identified as feminist scholars began to attempt a coherent theory of women's oppression under contemporary capitalism. I will then point to some promising new direction in research on class and gender. Finally, I will speculate about the implications of these issues for Appalachian Studies. Feminist theory has called attention to the ways in which reproduction and family roles operate to construct women's lives in general. These roles are said to result from a gender-based division of labor which creates a fundamental inequality between women and men felt throughout the social structure. Gender is identified as a social category as fundamental as social class in shaping the central features of the social system. Marxist analysis locates individuals in the class structure by their relation to the prevailing means of production, a method heavily focused on economic relations and frequently on an individual's relationship to the wage economy. Any set of people with a common relationship to the economic order are said to form a class. It is assumed that these people share certain objective situtations which shape the interests they will pursue ordinarily or in the long run, as well as their consciousness of the way their worlds operate. Feminist scholars have been uncomfortable with the tendency among 103 �marxist practitioners to gloss over sharp differences in the objective conditions of the lives of women and men who occupy the same social class position. In addition, there is a tendency in class analysis to overlook forces which may divide women themselves who are grouped in the same class. Women's class position has traditionally been located simply by connections to men or to family. Recent feminist scholarship challenges this oversimplification and attempts to identify the central importance of gender-based inequality to the class structure. The relationship between class and gender is one of the most pressing concerns on the agenda of these scholars today (Petchesky, 1983; Bene'ria and Sen, 1983; Goldberg, 1983; Kessler-Harris, 1982; Rapp, 1982; Hartmann, 1979; Tilly and Scott, 1978). It is increasingly recognized as a priority by marxist scholars as well (Burris, 1982; Benenson, 1980; Seccombe, 1980). Efforts to link gender and class include arguments that women constitute a reserve labor force; that women's lower wages provide extra surplus value to employers; that women as managers of household consumption shore up capitalist consumerism; that housework and the reproduction of workers is central to capitalism; and that women as mothers reproduce not only laborers and capitalists, but also the psychodynamic of sexuality which underpins capitalism (Hartmann, 1979; MacKinnon, 1982; Rapp, 1979; Kaplan, 1982; Chodorow, 1978; Dalla Costa and James, 1979). The overall result of these efforts is a general agreement that production and reproduction cannot be treated as separate spheres. The precise nature of their interaction, however, remains problematic. If production and reproduction are not separate, what is the specific relationship which binds them? To what degree are they autonomous? How does their interaction affect women's and men's interests and needs? When do class-based and genderbased interests lead women and/or men to act together collectively? Debates about connections between gender and class are frequently at a high level of abstraction. They are complicated by competing and contradictory uses of such key concepts as patriarchy, reproduction and ideology, (Barrett, 1980; Burris, 1982). Attempts by radical feminists to treat patriarchal social relations as autonomous from (pre-dating and/or logically distinct from) capitalist economic relations are frought with problems. At the same time, efforts by socialist feminists to treat gender relations as simply 'functional' to (i.e. created by and/or subsumed under) the capitalist economic order are equally unsatisfactory. Space does not permit a recounting of these arguments or an analysis of the conceptual snares which have developed. The central problem which remains, however, is the identification and interpretation of specific relationships at any given point in time between gender, modes of production, and modes of reproduction. Concrete, empirical, historical research is required 104 �to move analysis of the class/gender connection further. Empirical research and new theoretical directions Examples of this kind of research are available and help to illustrate the issues raised in this paper. Two very useful recent studies are (1) Ann Game's and Rosemary Pringle's analysis of gender, the labor process, and technological change and (2) Harold Benenson's dissertation on the structure of the American working-class since World War II. The Game and Pringle study examines the reorganization of work and the allocation of jobs during periods when new technology is being introduced. The authors' intention was to build on research on the intentional use of technology by management as a tool to control the labor process and the work force (Edwards, 1979; Burawoy, 1979; Braverman, 1974). By considering the gender context of the implementation of technology, Game and Pringle expected to elaborate on the idea that the sexual division of labor is 'functional* to capitalism. They expected to find examples of manipulation of the sexual division of labor by management to obscure its own interests in technological innovation (such as the displacement of or deskilling of labor to increase productivity and surplus value). Defining the sexual division of labor primarily as functional to capitalism suggests that gender inequality is merely a side effect of economic relations under class society. Or to put it another way, that gender inequality is a product of class exploitation. Game and Pringle found, however, that they had to treat gender in a more fundamental manner in order to make sense of the reorganization of the work process and the division of jobs which accompanied technological change. Case studies of manufacturing, banking, retailing, computing, nursing, and housework, revealed a much more complex pattern of relations in the struggle over technology than was expected. Beyond the predicted, classdefined struggle between workers and management over machines, a second set of relations shaped the conflict — a struggle between males and females over work reorganization. Two sets of relations were operating, mediating, overlapping, and contradicting each other. The logic of the reorganization of work that emerged was related to more than the dynamics of class conflict. It was also related to the dynamics of the construction of gender identity. Notions of 'masculinity' and 'femininity' are continually produced and reproduced through a myriad of daily rituals and processes — including relationships at work. Game and Pringle found that the reorganization of work and introduction of technology disrupts and threatens these processes. In such times, gender relations and the power relations they embody become highly visible. In each of the cases studied, the process of renegotiating disrupted gender relations was just as important as, and was frequently in conflict with, the imposition of capitalist rationalization of the labor process. 105 �Game and Pringle concluded that gender inequality cannot be treated as a reflex or appendage of class relations. Instead, it must be considered as a central defining feature of contemporary capitalism. As they suggest: ...there is nothing inherent in a job that makes it male or female. The gender definition of jobs, and sexual division of labor, are socially and historically constructed (1983:23). Study of the labor process, they concluded, requires that the economic real is examined in relation to the sexual and symbolic. Harold Benenson (1980) also argues that our understanding of class society has suffered from an artificial isolation of the economic sphere from broader social dimensions. The result has been a failure to recognize deep divisions within social classes and profound differences between class modes of life. Benenson argues first that the meaning and determinants of membership in a class are not the same for all members of that class. Second, he argues that this is because members' lives are structured by fundamental relations outside production. Third, he targets patriarchal relations of authority, the sexual division of labor, and family relations under capitalism as central aspects of social structure. These forces create sharp differences between men and women in determining class position and in modes of participation in class activity. According to Benenson, traditional assumptions of class theory underlie our failure to understand class dynamics. His research on post-war occupational and family change in America challenges those assumptions. For instance, Benenson rejects the dominant orientation in class analysis which treats the unit of analysis as the individual worker. This orientation treats the worker as divorced from social relationships outside work, and the analysis occurs solely within the bounds of the economic structure of employment. This framework, he argues, marginalizes the significance of change in the social composition of the workforce, or in the family relationships and sexual bases of employment patterns. Benenson also rejects conceptions of a uniform, generalized impact of narrowly economic processes (crisis, unemployment, labor intensification) upon an undifferentiated 'class as a whole'. He rejects the focus on the single employed family member (usually the male wage earner) as the simple connection of family members to the economy. He argues that indispensible forms of human activity — such as social reproduction — cannot be dismissed as unimportant or tangential to class analysis. Static notions of workplace organization and job characteristics, an exclusive 'point of production' determinism in analyzing conditions which shape class relations, and a government statistics approach to classifying and counting the abstract individual wage-earner in isolation from family and social relationships are all problems in contemporary class analysis. Rosalind Petchesky (1983) builds on Benenson's work. She places heavy 106 �emphasis on reproduction and fertility as determinants of female class position. Petchesky has proposed a class/work/fertility schema for analyzing different positions for women within traditionally defined class groupings. Her model points to distinct differences in experience, consciousness, and objective class position for "many if not most women" (1983: 232). Both Benenson and Petchesky explore the way gender determines the experience of class, and vise versa. Age at the birth of first child, age at marriage, and number of children, for instance, are identified as variables in class position of females. Early marriage, early childbearing, and high fertility can lock young women into "a pattern of lifetime exclusion (from the labor force) which is established very early on" (Benenson, 1980: 188). On the other hand, the consequences of early marriage, early childbearing, and high fertility are quite different for middle-class professional men's wives than for working-class women who have similar fertility patterns. This work, like Game's and Pringle's, demonstrates that the interaction between gender and class is essential to understanding capitalism, work, and other spheres of existence. Much additional research on class and gender recognizes the need for reconceptualization and new theoretical orientation. While space does not allow a full review, the following is a list of some additional priorities which have been identified: (1) the identification of specific varieties of forms of patriarchal relations under differing modes of production, and over time within a single mode of production (Hamilton, 1978; Humphries, 1977); (2) the redefinition of 'the community of work' as necessarily involving more than paid wage laborers (Tilly, 1981; Hufton, 1971); (3) the role of unions in institutionalizing gender-based conflict which divides the working class and discourages females from union activism (Cook, et. al., 1984; Milkman, 1980; Jameson, 1977; Nash, 1975); (4) the causes/consequences of the failure of reform movements to recognize women's interests and address gender inequality (Bene'ria and Sen, 1983; Graham, 1977; Hufton, 1971; Thomas, 1967); (5) recognition of the difference in material interests and motivations during class conflict for women and men and analysis of the consequences for the form, content, and outcome of collective action (Petchesky, 1983; Goldberg, 1983; Jameson, 1977; Nash, 1977; Scott, 1974); (6) analysis of 'class struggles of the marketplace' and their importance in class conflict along with analysis of the importance of women's roles as administrators of wages (Humphries, 1977; Rapp, 1982; Tilly, 1981; Tilly and Scott, 1978). Empirical, historical research is required to suggest new directions scholars need to explore in order to develop a more successful understanding of the central features and history of contemporary capitalism (Burris, 1982; Barrett, 1980; Young, 1980; Seccombe, 1980). 107 �Class, gender, and collective protest In my own research I am exploring the connection between production, reproduction, and collective protest. In particular, I am looking at the gender context of two labor disputes in the early 1970s which mobilized large numbers of rural, working-class women in central Appalachia: (1) a strike for union recognition at a Pike County, Kentucky hospital where over two hundred non-professional hospital employees (five out of six of whom were women) maintained a twenty-four hour picket line for over two years; (2) a mining strike in Harlan County, Kentucky, which led to the formation of a militant women's auxiliary on behalf of one hundred eighty male miners striking for over fourteen months for union recognition. The question of such a high degree of involvement by women in these coalfield community disputes underlies my research. The objective is to use the two cases of activism to explore factors which may help explain it. An intensive case study approach provides the opportunity to read back into the objective situations and motivations underlying collective protest. As indicated above, recent research suggests the need to look at family situations to understand how women will react to political action, union organizing efforts, and strike activities. A central question of my research is the degree to which relationships inside households — not just relationships in the workplace — affect women's responses to work and their attitudes toward labor organizing. The research involves an attempt to elaborate new analytic tools to study the class and gender intersection. In particular, theoretical priority is placed on the concept of household economy as a set of complex processes structured by gender, shaping different objective conditions for different members of a household, and thereby mediating the way individuals experience social class. In order to empirically study household economy, I am developing profiles on the composition and operation of households for a sample of women involved in each strike. These profiles include information such as: the number of people living in each home and their kin or non-kin relationships; incomes, savings, and sources of non-cash support available to households; marriage and fertility characteristics; consumption patterns and debts; paid work experiences of all household members; division of labor regarding housework, child care, and the elderly; age and education; condition of the housing unit itself; and networks among women which link households. I am also looking at variations in the ways women participated in the strikes. I am collecting data on the degree and form of women's involvement, women's perceptions and leadership roles, and the duration of involvement. I am particularly interested in discovering whether or not household patterns are related to protest involvement, the central empirical question 108 �of the research. The two strike contexts permit comparison across an important dimension — relationship to the wage economy. In Pike County, women organized to protect their own wages and to control their own work situations. In Harlan County, women organized to protect wages earned by other members of the household and crucial to family survival. If household economy does influence women's collective protest within each case, it will be important to see if those patterns hold when women's relationships to waged labor vary. If patterns do not hold across cases, the breakdown of differences will be drawn out for theoretical speculation and the development of hypotheses for further research. Conclusions Recent theoretical and empirical work on class and gender raises questions about concepts and perspectives which inform Appalachian research. While important new scholarship on work, community, class divisions, and collective protest has greatly improved our understanding of the region, it is important that Appalachian scholars respond to challenges raised by innovations in class and gender analysis. Attention to gender relations as they are historically constructed under contemporary capitalism suggests the need to redefine definitions of the composition of the workforce, bases of employment patterns, consequences of economic processes, the unit of and boundries of analysis of class relations, and the historical construction of work relations in the region. A more elaborate and differentiated definition of community structure and history is called for, as is a more complex approach to divisions within classes and family structure. The study of quiescence and rebellion becomes even more complex when new theoretical perspectives are applied to class, community, and family composition. These new perspectives help pave the way for more adequate incorporation of such social dimensions of class as age, race, and ethnicity. The implications of recent work on class and gender for academic scholarship are substantial. They are equally important for those interested parxis of political activity. Efforts to challenge management control of the work process and production, efforts to build viable community organizations, efforts to address the state and advocate for human rights or peace all require an understanding of gender relations as historically constructed under capitalism. Finally, the road to academic and practical reconsideration of basic assumptions about gender relations is difficult. Scholars and activists face much resistence in attempting to analyze or address gender-based inequality. The intellectual excitement that comes when conceptual blinders are lifted and more adequate understandings of our lives and histories begin to emerge 109 �is just reward for the effort. A new vision of a future family, work, community life based on human dignity and respect depends on incorporating an understanding of forces which divide and degrade people, including gender inequality. 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Burris, Val 1982 The dialectic of women's oppression: notes on the relation between capitalism and patriarchy. Berkeley Journal of Sociology 27: 51-74. Chodorow, Nancy 1978 The Reproduction of Mothering; Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cook, Alice H., Val R. Lorwin, Arlene K. Daniels (editors) 1984 Women and Trade Unions in Eleven Industrialized Countries. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Corbin, David Alan 1981 Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: the Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880-1922. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Dalla Costa, Mariarosa and Selma James 1979 The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community. Bristol, England: Falling Wall Press. 110 �Edwards, Richard C. 1979 Contested Terrain: the Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books. Eller, Ronald D. 1982 Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of Tennessee Press. Game, Ann and Rosemary Pringle 1983 Gender at Work. London: George Allen and Unwin. Gaventa, John 1980 Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Goldberg, Roberta 1983 Organizing Women Office Workers: Dissatisfaction, Consciousness, and Action. New York: Praeger. Graham, Ruth 1977 Loaves and liberty: women in the French Revolution. Pp. 236-54 in Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (editors). Becoming Visible: Women in European History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Hamilton, Roberta 1978 The Liberation of Women. London: Allen and Unwin. Hartmann, Heidi 1979 The unhappy marriage of marxism and feminism: towards a more progressive union. Capital and Class 8 (summer). Hufton, Olwen 1971 Women in revolution. Past and Present 53 (November): 90-108. Humphries, Jane 1977 Class struggle and the persistence of the working-class family. Cambridge Journal of Economics 1 (September): 241-58. Jameson, Elizabeth 1977 Imperfect unions: class and gender in Cripple Creek, 1894-1904. Pp. 166-202 in Milton Cantor and Bruce Laurie (editors). Class, Sex, and the Woman Worker. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. Kaplan, Temma 1982 Female consciousness and collective action: the case of Barcelona, 1910-1918. Signs 7 (spring): 545-566. Kessler-Harris, Alice 1982 Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Lerner, Gerda 1976 Placing women in history: a 1975 perspective. Pp. 349-67 in Carroll, Berenice A. (editor). Liberating Women's History: Theoretical and Critical Essays. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Ill �Lewis, Jane 1981 Women lost and found: the impact of feminism on history. Pp. 55-72 in Spender, Dale (editor). Men's Studies Modified: the Impact of Feminism on the Academic Disciplines. New York: Pergamon Press. Loof, David H. 1977 Assisting Appalachian families. Pp. 102-12 in Williamson, J.W. (editor). An Appalachian Symposium: Essays Written in Honor of Gratis D. Williams. Boone, North Carolina: Appalachian Consortium Press. 1971 Appalachia's Children: the Challenge of Mental Health. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky. MacKinnon, Catharine A. 1982 Feminism, marxism, method, and the state: an agenda for theory. Signs 7 (summer): 515-44. Maggard, Sally Ward 1984 The Roots of Social Action: Women, the Industrial Experience and the Land in Central Appalachia. Paper presented at the Southern Sociological Society's 47th Annual Meeting. Knoxville, Tennessee. April 19. Milkman, Ruth 1980 Organizing the sexual division of labor: historical perspectives on 'women's work' and the American labor movement. Socialist Review 49 (January-February): 95-150. Nash, June 1975 Resistance as protest: women in the struggle of Bolivian tin-mining communities. Pp. 261-71 in Ruby Rohrlich-Leavitt (editor). Women Cross-Culturally: Change and Challenge. The Hague: Mouton Publishing. Petchesky, Rosalind Pollack 1983 Reproduction and class division among women. Pp. 221-41 in Swerdlow, Amy and Hanna Lessinger (editors). Class, Race, and Sex: the Dynamics of Control. Boston: G.K. Hall. Rapp, Rayna 1982 Family and class in contemporary America: notes toward an understanding of ideology. Pp. 168-87 in Thorne, Barrie with Marilyn Yalom (editors). Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions. New York: Longman. Rapp, Rayna, Ellen Ross, and Renate Bridenthal 1979 Examining family history. Feminist Studies 5 (spring): 174-200. Scott, Joan Wallach 1974 The Glassworkers of Carmaux: French Craftsmen and Political Action in a NineteenthCentury City. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Seccombe, Wally 1980 Domestic labor and the working class household. In Fox, Bonnie (editor). Hidden in the Household. Toronto: The Women's Press. Thomas, Edith 1967 The Women Incendiaries. London: Seeker and Warburg. Tilly, Louise A. 1981 Paths of proletarianization: organization of production, sexual division of labor, and women's collective action. Signs 6 (winter): 400-17. 112 �Tilly, Louise A. and Joan W. Scott 1978 Women, Work and Family. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Weller, Jack 1965 Yesterday's People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky. Whisnant, David 1980 Modernizing the Mountaineer: People, Power, and Planning in Appalachia. New York: Burt Franklin. Young, Iris 1980 Socialist feminism and the limits of dual systems theory. Socialist Review 50/51 (MarchJune): 169-88. 113 �Beyond the "Traditional Mountain Subculture": A New Look At Pre-Industrial Appalachia by Mary Beth Pudup "Let us now come to the Highlands—a land of promise, a land of romance, and a land about which, perhaps, more things are known that are not true than of any part of our country." John C. Campbell The Southern Highlander and His Homeland Introduction Appalachian Scholars are fond of quoting John Campbell on the persistent misunderstanding of the region, and indeed much recent scholarship has had the explicit goal of setting the historical record straight. This paper attempts a critical, yet friendly reading of this work, arguing that despite its significant achievements, certain aspects of Appalachia's economic and social history remain poorly understood. The central problem identified is a simplistic view in preindustrial Appalachia. While the region's twentieth century industrial history has been carefully analyzed, the preindustrial era largely remains a terra incognita surrounded by dense thickets of "invented tradition." Analysis of both preindustrial economic activities and social class formation has been effectively precluded by adherence to romantic notions of a traditional mountain subculture. The net result has been a static protrayal of preindustrial Appalachia as a halcyon backdrop to the region's harsh industrialization experience. This paper takes a new look at the preindustrial era. It argues that during the nineteenth century, local economic and social pre-conditions were established which propelled the region along a path of dependent capitalist development. The term dependent is used specifically to denote Appalachia's historic reliance on absentee capital financing of industrial development, and how such development took place to satisfy non-local resource demands. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first section, I attempt to demonstrate the continuity between old and new visions of preindustrial 114 �Appalachia as a regional subculture. I then discuss how this essentially cultural definition of the era has obscured some of the structural processes underlying the region's economic develoment trajectory. In the second section, I make similar arguments concerning preindustrial social processes. I suggest the search for appropriate models of Appalachian regional development has proceeded at the expense of concrete historical analysis. As a result, a social relations internal to the region have been made to conform a priori with a variety of frameworks, prohibiting the region's history from "speaking for itself." In the conclusion I suggest some priorities for future regional historical research. A few caveats are in order. By openly criticizing the definition of the "traditional mountain subculture," I do not wish to imply that preindustrial Appalachia — or the present-day region for that matter — somehow lacks culture. Indeed there is considerable evidence to the contrary, although rarely is it enunciated in terms of a coherent concept of culture. Second, by structurally linking the preindustrial and industrial economics, I am not suggesting they represent a teleological path of development. What happened in Appalachia at the turn of the century was the conjunction of several historically constituted processes which are the subject of the author's dissertation (Pudup forthcoming). Finally, this paper raises issues specific to research on the central Appalachian coal fields, although it bears relevance for the study of noncoal dominated areas of the region as well. Beyond the "Traditional Mountain Subculture" A commonplace assertion voiced at the turn of the twentieth century held that Appalachia was a region where nothing much had changed since the earliest years of its settlement. Freeholding households cultivated small subsistence plots in 1900 just as they had during the 1820's, using the most rudimentary implements of tillage. Appalachians engaged in little commercial intercourse among themselves and, taken together provided few commercial links between Appalachia and the rest of the nation. Since transportation routes followed meandering creek beds, movement on foot and horseback was plagued by either mud or dust, depending on the season. The various waves of immigration that had broken on American shores throughout the nineteenth century had largely bypassed the region. Settled principally by persons of Scotch-irish, German, and English extraction, these groups mutiplied and divided among themselves, lending Appalachia a rather distinct and coherent social and cultural identity. These perceived conditions captured the imagination of many contemporary observers of the American scene. In scholar journals and popular literary magazines of the day, Appalachia became identified with melancholy, bucolic notions of a traditional American past. As self-subsisting tillers of the soil, the region's people seemed to have preserved much that was con115 �sidered intrinsically American: rugged individualism and a dogged determination to survive. From this identification of place with time, what Henry Shapiro has called the "invention of Appalachia," emerged a vision of Appalachia as a regional subculture — at once part of and apart from America. This powerful vision has of late received extensive critical scrutiny, most notably by Shapiro himself (1978) and David Whisnant (1983). Shapiro's and Whisnant's books, Appalachian On Our Mind and All That Is Native And Fine, respectively, concern material and ideal aspects of a preindustrial Appalachian culture. They question the veracity of our understanding of that culture, given the ways it has been perceived by and for us. Both have been enormously influential in re-interpreting the historical development of Appalachian regional identity, which, as they demonstrate, has been consistently defined by people and institutions located outside the region. In this sense, both have been much-needed palliatives to the seemingly endless stream of literature depicting Appalachia as a region where "time stood still," inhabited by "yesterday's people." So, too, are they part of a wider recent effort to re-interpret the actual economic and social history of the region. This history has been written m6st frequently as an isolated and backward subculture becoming, in essence, ever more backward and isolated. Through an extraordinary interpretive leap, the region once celebrated as a traditionally American subculture became condemned as a culture of poverty. Historical accounts singled out Appalachia's social and economic isolation as the root cause of all its problems. Recent scholarship has turned this historical argument on its head (e.g. Lewis, et. al. 1978; Gaventa 1980; Eller 1982). Chronic regional poverty, it is argued, has resulted not from isolated but from the very opposite: Appalachia's particular form of integration into the United States economy and society. A rather glaring light is cast on the irony that Appalachia's subsistence economy was "discovered" and codified as traditionally American at precisely the time it was being undermined by capitalist development. The agents of disruption were absentee capitalists who flocked to the region and gained control over its natural resources. In doing so, they exerted a form of colonial domination, forever altering the intimate relationship between the land and the people. Since then, the argument goes, the region has been subject to national and international economic fluctuations over which it has had no control. The Appalachian people have derived few of the benefits which can accompany capitalist development. A new and equally powerful vision thus emerged from recent scholarship: that of a region suffering cultural, economic, and social deprivation at the hands of outsiders. This new vision of Appalachia substantially incorporates the one put forth at the turn of the century. Both share an idealized view of the preindustrial era. In fact, although recent scholarship has been highly critical of the invention of Appalachia as a regional subculture, it has breathed new life into melancholy stereotypes. This suggests certain blind spots persist in 116 �"corrective" scholarship. I would argue these blind spots are two: the identification of Appalachia's preindustrial economy solely as a subculture; and a failure to analyze the region's history as continuous process. 1 would argue further that the latter problem follows rather directly from the former. Historian Ronald Eller's work renders well the continuity with early idealizations of preindustrial Appalachia. He begins his book Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers (1982:3) thusly: "Few areas of the United States in the late nineteenth century more closely exemplified Thomas Jefferson's vision of a democratic society than did the agricultural communities of the southern Appalachians. Long after the death of Jefferson and long after the nation as a whole had turned down the Hamiltonian path toward industrialism, the southern Appalachian Mountains remained a land of small farms and scattered open-country villages.... Nowhere did the self-sufficient family farm so dominate the culture and social system as it did in the Appalachian South." In Eller's view, one more generally shared by regional scholars, the preindustrial era was governed by the "traditional mountain subculture." This subculture was characterized by a set of material practices surrounding subsistence production (and reproduction) of individual households (e.g. farming and home manufacturing), and related mentalite emphasizing strong kinship affiliations, individualism, and traditionalism (cf. Knipe and Lewis 1971:26-27). Perhaps the most frequently claimed element of the traditional mountain subculture is the deep attachment the Appalachian people developed with the land on, and from which they lived. To quote Eller again at length (1979:85): "Perhaps more than in other rural areas, the physiography of the land itself shaped the development of culture and social patterns in the mountains. Each community occupied a distinct cove, hollow, or valley and was separated from its neighbors by the rim of mountains or ridges.... Economic and social activities were largely self-contained within these geographic "bowls," with individual households relying upon themselves or their neighbors for both the necessities and pleasures of life. The land was such a dominant factor in mountain culture that neighborhoods often drew their names from the creeks or branches which penetrated the settlement..." Rather than merely attack the obvious romanticism of Eller and his counterparts, it is important to emphasize that their view of the traditional mountain subculture is not simply an intellectual one, but a profoundly 117 �political one as well. After decades of scholarship depicting Appalachh as a culture of poverty, a new generation of scholars, many with roots in the region, clearly perceived the need to assert a new view of Appalachia which re-claimed for its people a role as rational human agents. Moreover, eulogizing a benevolent mountain subculture helped this generation of scholars carve into sharp relief the economic and social dislocations accompanying capitalist development in the region. My criticism of this view of preindustrial Appalachia is that it fails to recognize that the material practices which formed part of the region's subculture were also the structural bases of the region's preindustrial economy. Preindustrial economic activities, like subsistence farming, are frequently described but rarely analyzed as such. One is given the distinct impression that the region lacked an economy until the twentieth century. The problem bears directly upon and is perhaps best illustrated by a further problem: the failure to consider Appalachia's economic development as a continuous historical process. Appalachian economic history, as written, is polarized between subsistence agriculture (nineteenth century) and natural resource extractive industrial development (twentieth century). A decade or two of absentee capital investment in resources and transportation is the bridge spanning the two eras. Historians correctly signal absentee capital penetration as the harbinger of change. But they seem to accept uncritically that industrial development would be dependent upon absentee capital financing. The entire process of industrialization in Appalachia is analyzed consistently as a response to raw material demands existing outside the region. Scholars have rarely asked why such demands did not exist locally, or why investment in extractive industries was not financed by local capital. So quick to affirm the deleterious relationship between absentee capital and Appalachia's people and resources, they have not yet explored what alternative development path the region's economy might have followed. Implicit acceptance of the necessary role played by absentee capital suggests that the preindustrial economy has not been examined, in dynamic terms, for its self-generating development potential. For this reason, there exists little ostensible continuity between the preindustrial and industrial eras of economic history. A more correct view, I believe, is that the preindustrial economy failed to generate demands for the region's raw material resources. By the same token, it failed to generate capital locally which might have been invested in industrial development. National demands for raw materials and absentee capital filled these local vacumns, In this view, absentee capital and demand are not just the historical bridges spanning the preindustrial and industrial economies, but are the structural bridges as well. In his attempt to advance regional debates beyond the colonial hypothesis, Richard Simon has been the only scholar to point to this structural relationship, although he does so only in passing. Simon's work analyses 118 �the "development of underdevelopment" in southern West Virginia, has wider applicability throughout the coal fields. He claims: "...it was inevitable that in the undeveloped West Virginia economy in 1880 resources would be developed by absentee owners for export—There was no internal market in which manufacturing could be developed and from which commodities could be exported or coal consumed. The only market for West Virginia's resources was in the industrial northeast" (1981:190). A complex argument is made by Simon, one part of which is that West Virginia lacked the capacity for developing its own resources. But for what reason? As Simon continues: "...there was little financial capital in West Virginia with which to build the railroads and open the mines... In the southern part of the state, which had remained agricultural, almost the entire initial investment had come from outside capital" (1981:180-181). Thus Simon relates "inevitable" absentee capital investment to the fact that southern West Virginia had "remained agricultural." He does not specify, however, just what it was about the area's agriculture that forged this relationship. The need for such specification becomes apparent in light of the historical development of other regions in the United States (and world) whose economies were also governed by agricultural production (cf. Moore 1966; Brenner 1976). For different forms of agriculture can, and indeed have precipitated, distinct patterns and processes of industrialization, depending on such things as the social organization of agriculture, the extent to which it is integrated into markets, and the particular structure of the markets themselves. In the midwest, for example, a highly competitive and commercialized household agriculture gave rise to industries both supplying farm inputs and processing farm outputs. Such industries developed in tandem with agriculture, through investments made by independent classes of merchants and manufacturers. Midwestern agriculture was both a source of capital and a market for manufacturing in the region. By contrast, in the south, plantation slavery was the predominant form of commercial agriculture. The plantation system fettered that region's industrial development during the antebellum era. Its social and economic legacies contributed to the narrowlybased, and highly repressive nature of subsequent southern industrialization (cf. Post 1982; Billings 1979, 1982). The historical differences between the midwest and the south illustrate some of the ways in which agricultural production has profoundly shaped regional industrialization. This general point holds for the central 119 �Appalachian region. Coal industry development in Appalachia did not result solely from the unfolding of some inexorable geographic logic of the industry, or of the larger economy of which it formed a part. Although the coal industry arouse to satisfy demands existing many hundreds of miles away from the region, its specific timing and investment patterns were largely governed by prevailng conditions of the local preindustrial economy. However quaint or picturesque it appears in hindsight, the preindustrial economy has exactly that — an economy — and as such possessed its own internal logic. Subsistence production practices satisfied most demands of the local population. The household was not only a "unit of production and consumption" as in the midwest, but more specifically, the household was the unit of consumption for most of what it produced. This resulted in a shallow, if not non-existent social division of labor in the mountains which was manifest in the lack of an internal commercial market for goods and services. Thus, industries which might have tapped the region's raw material base, like farm implement manufacture, did not develop. Local market conditions delayed industrialization until external demand for coal and timber penetrated the region. This same set of conditions also had implications for the pattern of investment in resource-based industries. Households did produce surpluses, but these were strictly what remained after subsistence needs were met. Surplus items were traded with local merchants, but local commerce took place on barter terms, effectively prohibiting either trading party from accumulating much in the way of liquid capital assets. These barriers to local capital accumulation generated a chronic local shortage of money capital. The net effect was that absentee capital was the principal source of investment in the region's resource industries and transportation infrastructure. From the Region as Class to Classes with the Region A related set of issues will now be raised concerning how regional scholarship has treated social class in preindustrial Appalachia. There seem to be two main currents in its treatment. The first derives from the colonial model and thus treats the region tout court as a class exploited by outsiders. The second equivocates, to the extent that it suggests class distinctions might have existed during the preindustrial era but didn't matter, and what really matters is the class structure created by capitalist development. The argument in this section is that both share an idealized view of preindustrial Appalachia, which fails to account for how the preindustrial class structure left "openings" for the entrance of an absentee capitalist class. Furthermore, although the importance of a "local elite" is often hinted at, the composition and actions of this elite are rarely specified. A spirited debate among regional scholars took place during the 1970's over what new theoretical framework would best explain Appalachia's rela120 �tionship with the rest of the United States (and world). Scholars sought to remove the stigma of isolation attached to culture of poverty theories, and demonstrate how Appalachia's endemic poverty had resulted from the opposite condition. A variety of frameworks were advanced, including the dependency model (Arnett 1978); the world system (core-periphery) model (Conti 1979; Walls 1978); the uneven development model (Simon 1978); and the internal colonialism model (Lewis and Knipe 1978). The last of these has exerted the most pervasive influence on regional scholarship. Indeed, the colonial model has gained such currency that its central tenets need not be reviewed here. Owing to its undeniable appeal, the model singlehandedly re-directed regional research. It underpins John Gaventa's pivotal study Power and Powerlessness (1980) as well as Ronald Eller's Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers (1982). The colonial model provided the raison d'etre for the monumental work of the Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force (1983), and a host of other works too numerous to mention. To be sure, the colonial model has been dealt its fair share of criticism. David Walls, (1978:326) in particular, has found the model "strained at some key points— especially on the issue of forced, involuntary entry. Richard Simon has been perhaps the most vociferous critic of the colonial model. He concedes that it transcends merely blaming the victims of poverty. But he suggests the model implies absentee capitalists behave in a manner inherently different from local caipitalists (Simon 1981). Furthermore, it imputes a degree of self-conscious, cohesive action to absentee capitalists belied by historical evidence. But perhaps most important for Simon, the colonial model reifies the idea that Appalachia has been exploited by outsiders. The region is assigned a one-to-one correspondence with social relations of exploitation and domination, and thus is portrayed as a class in itself (Simon 1983-84). In doing so, the colonial model fails on its own terms in explaining at least one central feature of the so-called "colonialization complex." This failure stems from its grossly over-simplified view of social life in the mountains prior to capital penetration. Somewhat ironically, then, the colonial model actually perpetrates some of the very same stereotypes it sets out to quash. An unabashedly romantic view of preindusrial Appalachia is the fulcrum on which the colonial model rests. The colonial model necessarily endorses this view, since its entire analysis centers on the violence done to the traditional mountain subculture by outside agents of industrialization. Such romanticism enforces a simplified view of preindustrial social life. Preindustrial Appalachia is likened to a "society approximating an Asian or African country" and its people described as "natives" and "illiterate, simple mountain farmers" (Knipe and Lewis 1978). There is a double irony here. By imputing social simplicity to African and Asian countries, which in fact has been shown otherwise, the colonial model evinces a racism akin to that it bemoans. Furthermore, the colonial model helps to immortalize the commonplace stereo121 �type of a region inhabited by illiterate natives. But much more than irony is at stake. An essential role in establishing and maintaining the "colonialization complex" is given to "the natives who became colonizers of their own people" (Knipe and Lewis 1978:22). Local colonizers are dependent upon absentee capitalists and thus ally themselves with outsiders. Yet the colonial model does not account for the emergence of the local colonizers themselves. In fact, with its elementary social view of preindustrial Appalachia, it cannot do so. To the extent that it presupposes a region populated by simple country folk, one is left to wonder exactly who the local colonizers could have been. What is clearly missing from the colonial interpretation of Appalachian regional development is an understanding of actual local social conditions during the preindustrial era. The need to formulate such an understanding can be found, took, in other regional scholarship which departs from the colonial model. Its point of departure lies in explicitly assigning to "local elites" a significant role in capitalist development. Since it shares a common set of themes, this scholarship need not be reviewed in its entirety. Only the central tenets of the argument will be discussed here. The common starting point is that social class divisions were virtually absent or unimportant to preindustrial Appalachia. Statements to the effect that "we're all kin" are taken as evidence of scant social differentiation among the population. Thus, kinship displaced class, while the preindustrial economy itself exerted a levelling effect on class differentiation. Once this egalitarian view is asserted, however, it is usually followed by a somewhat sheepish admission that while class was sublimated, class distinctions did exist, and eventually became very important. To quote Eller (1982:11-12): "The dominance of a democratic ethos, however, did not mean the absence of a class structure in nineteenth century Appalachia....Class distinctions did exist in the larger community, county and region...The southern mountain country contained a minority of wealthier, landed families whose economic power and political influence set them off as elite group...these wealthier families provided the political leadership in the mountains and often controlled local commercial enterprises...their political influence, access to resources, and contacts with the outside placed mountain elites in a strategic position to benefit from economic change." According to this argument, class remained a latent source of social division in the mountains until the late nineteenth century, when absentee capitalists began taking notice of the region's resources. Only then was it made manifest. The question then turns to what role the local elite performed during capitalist development. The consensus here is that local elites were 122 �followers rather than leaders, merely riding the development bandwagon drawn by outsiders. Citing evidence from local newspaper editorials, Arnett (1978:36) states "many of the citizens of the area— especially merchants, professionals, and real estate agents— welcomed capitalists, whatever their nationality, with open arms." Eller echoes this view (1982:57): "native middle class entrepenuers served as effective brokers for absentee investors and as energetic missionaries of the new industrial faith." In doing so, Conti (1979-80:52) claims "this local leadership pursued essentially a 'modernizing' role, diffusing change from the American metropolis to the Appalachian hollers." Only Batteau (1971:32) has assigned to local elite a more provocative role: "in every form of major development...the pioneering enterpreneurs were not outsiders, but locally born and raised entrepeneurs from such towns as Hazard and Paintsville." In large measure, this argument surrounding the role of local elites is founded on a few well-worn examples of local tycoons like John C.C. Mayo, C. Bascom Slemp, and Floyd Day. Nonetheless, these men, particularly Paintsville native John Mayo, are treated as the exception rather than the rule (cf. Caudill 1982; Turner and Traum 1984). Thus, although scholarship admitting the existence and importance of local elites represents a saluatory departure from the strictly colonial interpretation of Appalachian development, a number of issues remained unresolved by it. One may ask first whether Batteau is correct in asserting members of the local elites were actually the "pioneering entrepeneurs— that is, leaders rather than followers. If so, this would certainly destroy more than a few shibboleths within the domain of Appalachian studies. But more important, one may ask what, if any, was the "typical" situation in the mountains. Did each county have its own local elite, or was the elite "really" only a handful of prominent individuals region-wide? Existing scholarship identifies an elite in nearly every county, but, because such work paints the picture in broad strokes only, it tells little about the actual composition of the elite at the local level, and the routine detail of their activities both before and during Capitalist development. Finally, to the extent that the local elite is accorded economic and political power and prestige, one may ask why its members did not oppose absentee capital penetration, and pursue industrial development by themselves. Local demand for the region's raw materials might have been scarce, but external demand was mounting. Why then did local elites not rise to meet this demand? The task of resolving these issues, I would argue, must begin with an understanding of the social class structure that had emerged in preindustrial Appalachia in tandem with its economy. This economy had been governed by a subsistence logic, with little extra-household commerce or industry. Limited surplus production generated little local capital accumulation. In social terms, this meant there had developed a large class of direct producers and only a small commercial class. Dependent as it was on the vagaries of 123 �household surplus production, the mountain commercial class did not, and indeed could not become the vanguard capitalist class in the region. Thus, the issue of whether a local merchant-centered elite were leaders or followers is rendered moot. There existed very real barriers to its collective ability to accumulate capital on a large enough scale to finance industry or infrastructure investments. Its relatively weak economic position, in turn, created space in the local social structure for an absentee class of investors. Only when Appalachian regional development is viewed as a continuous historical process, in its economic and social dimensions, does this become apparent. I would argue further that such a "long view" is necessary for understanding precisely what roles local elites did perform in capitalist development. For by suggesting that they could not become the vanguard capitalist class, I do not wish to negate their importance. One critical reason why so much equivocation has surrounded "who they were" and "what they did" is that regional scholars have been wont to define and explain mountain elites in terms of pre-determined models. Thus for Arnett, (1978) they are part of the "infrastructure of dependency"; for Conti, (1979) they are Sicilian-like "broker capitalists"; and for a large number of scholars, they remain "local colonizers." No systematic attempt has yet been made to study the preindustrial mountain elites in a specific place, through time, in order to permit them to define and perhaps even explain themselves. And, it might be added, to illuminate the "typical" situation. In this regard, one is wise to heed the words of historian Edward Thompson (1963:11). Although written in another context, they bear direct relevance for the Appalachian case: "The question of course, is how the individual got to be in this 'social role', and how the particular social organization (with its property rights and structure of authority) got to be there. And these are historical questions. If we stop history at a given point, then there are no classes but simply a multitude of individuals with a multitude of experiences. But if we watch these men over an adequate period of social change, we observe patterns in their relationships, their ideas, and their institutions. Class is defined by men as they live their own history, and, in the end, this is its only definition." Conclusion Three years ago David Whisnant sounded a call for a "a second level of Appalachian historical analysis and writing" with "more tolerance for abiguity, irony, paradox, and contradiction" (1982:117). This paper represents a preliminary move toward that goal. In reviewing the main currents of recent Appalachian historical scholarship, three overlapping research priorities 124 �have emerged: the development of appropriate comparative frameworks; the need for micro-level analysis; and the use of "new" information sources. Each of these will be discussed briefly. The Appalachian region is frequently compared with other so-called underdeveloped areas of the world, particularly with nations of the third world. Although such comparisons— especially those between different coal fields— have often been quite fruitful, I believe historical research must begin with comparisons a bit closer to home. Appalachian regional scholarship as a whole presupposes a process of regional formation which itself must be explained. The most elemental historical forms of social and economic differentiation took place within the boundaries of the various states which comprise the Appalachian region. Thus, before we begin to study Appalachia as a region possessing some set of common characteristics, we must first explain, for example, how the east Kentucky mountain area became differentiated from the rest of the state of Kentucky (and so on for the mountains of western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, northern Georgia, etc.). One issue around which an intra-state comparative focus becomes critical is internal improvements, like transportation. During the nineteenth century, most internal improvement programs were undertaken by state governments, owing to the reluctance on the part of the federal government to become involved in ostensibly local development projects. Since the Appalachian region was notoriously lacking in improved transportation infrastructure until the twentieth century, we must ask how and why state policies discriminated against the mountains. Another issue is the promotional campaigns organized by many states to attract outside industrial investors. To what extent, if any, did mountain politicians participate in these campaigns? These, and other questions pertaining to intra-state differentiation can lead to a second level of comparative work much needed in Appalachian studies: among different areas of the mountains (e.g. western North Carolina and eastern Kentucky). Finally, they can provide a firm basis upon which larger-scale comparative research can be undertaken: between Appalachia and other U.S. and world regions. The second priority for regional historical research concerns the need for micro-level analyses in Appalachia. Thanks to the pioneering work of the past decade, we now have a rather clear outline of the contours of Appalachian social and economic history. Yet as this paper has tried to show, we still know relatively little about the content of this history at the local level. Aside from processes governing social class formation, there is work to be done on the intersection of class and kinship, demographic history, inheritance practices, land use, and local-level politics. This leads directly to the third research priority: the use of "new" information sources. To the extent that the transmission of social "information"; during the preindustrial era in Appalachia was governed by oral tradition, regional historical research can not make use of the common set of qualitative tools 125 �used by economic and social historians (such as diaries, letters, mercantile account books, newspapers). Owing to this very real problem of historical recovery, which is more than a scholar's methodological dilemma, we may never know certain things about the region's past. Yet this does not foreclose the possibility of meaningful historical research. A variety of public records, maintained at the county, state, and national levels, can be used to address many historical problems. A few examples will make clear the potential abundance of historical information that does exist. Tax assessments were made on an annual basis in most counties. These assessment books, many of which have been placed in permanent storage in state archives, detail the ownership of a variety of forms of real and personal property. Not only do these records permit cross-sectional analyses of property ownership, but longintudinal ones as well. Deed records of course contain information on real estate transfers. But based on evidence from east Kentucky, deed books were also used to record many other economic transactions, such as loans and tenancy arrangements. Finally, county court order books permit a reading of the conduct of local politics. The three research priorities identified here are by no means exhaustive, but they will help to fulfill the challenging agenda of a "second-level" of Appalachian historical research. BIBLIOGRAPHY Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force, 1983. Who Owns Appalachian Landownership and Its Impact. Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky Arnett, Douglas, 1978. Eastern Kentucky: The Politics of Dependency and Underdevelopment. Unpublished PH.D. Dissertation, Duke University Ball, Richard, 1968. "A Poverty Case: the Analgesic Subculture of the Southern Appalachians" American Sociological Review 33 pp. 885-895 Batteau, Allen, 1971., "The Contradictions of a Kingship Community" in Robert L. Hall and Carol B. Stack, eds. Holding Onto The Land And The Lord; Kinship, Ritual, Land Tenue And Social Policy In The Rural South. Athens: University of Georgia Press Billings, Dwight, 1979. Planters And The Making Of A "New South"; Class, Politics And Development In North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press Billings, Dwight, 1982. "Class Origins of the 'New South': Planter Persistence an Industry in North Carolina" in Michael Burawoy and Theda Skocpol, eds. Marxist Perspectives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Brenner, Robert, 1976., "Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe". Past and Present No. 70 pp. 30-75 Campbell, John C., 1921. The Southern Highlander And His Homeland. New York: The Russell Sage Foundation Caudill, Harry M., 1982. "The Strange Career of John C.C. Mayo". Filson Club Quarterly 56 pp. 258-289 126 �Conti, Eugene, 1979. Mountain Metamorphosis: Culture and Development In East Kentucky. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University. Conti, Eugene, 1979-80. "The Cultural Role of Local Elites in the Kentucky Mountains: A Retrospect Analysis". Appalachian Journal 7 pp. 51-68. Eller, Ronald D., 1979. "Land and Family: An Historical View of Preindustrial Appalachia". Appalachian Journal 6 pp. 83-109 Eller, Ronald D, 1982. Mines, Millhands and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Gaventa, John, 1980. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Knipe, Edward E. and Helen M. Lewis, 1971. "The Impact of Coal Mining on the Traditional Mountain Subculture" in J. Kenneth Moreland, ed., The Not So Solid South: Anthropological Studies in a Regional Subculture. Athens: University of Georgia Press pp. 25-37. Lewis, Helen, et al., eds., 1978. Colonialism in Modern American: The Appalachian Case. Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press. Lewis, Helen and Edward Knipe, 1978. "The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case" in Lewis, et. al., eds., 1978. pp. 9-31. Moore, Harrington, Jr., 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship And Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press. Post, Charles, 1982. "The American Road to Capitalism". New Left Review No. 133 pp. 3-51. Pudup, Mary Beth, forthcoming, Land, Class, and Rural Transformation: The East Kentucky Coal Fields, 1870-1920. Ph.D. dissertation in progress, University of California, Berkeley. Shapiro, Henry D., 1978. Appalachia On Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Simon, Richard, 1981. "Uneven Development and the Case of West Virgina: Going Beyond the Colonialism Model". Appalachian Journal 8 pp. 165-186. Simon, Richard, 1983-84. "Regions and Social Relations: A Research Note". Appalachian Journal 11 pp. 23-31. Turner, Carolyn Clay and Carolyn Hay Traum, 1983. John C.C. Mayo; Cumberland Capitalist. Pikeville, Ky.: Pikeville College Press. Walls, David, 1978. "Internal Colony or Internal Periphery? A Critique of Current Models and an Alternative Formulation" in Lewis, et. al., eds., 1978 pp. 319-349. Walls, David, 1978. Central Appalachia in Advanced Capitalism: Its Coal Industry Structure and Coal Operator Associations. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kentucky. Whisnant, David, 1982. "Second-Level Appalachian History: Another Look at Some Fotched-On Women". Appalachian Journal 9 pp. 115-123. Whisnant, David, 1983., All That is Native and Fine; The Politics of Culture in an American Region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 127 �ETHNICITY AND MOBILITY Convenor: Elizabeth Barrett, Appalshop Blacks: An Invisible Institution in Appalachia? Wilburn Hayden, Jr., Western Carolina University Moving On: Recent Patterns of Appalachian Migration Philip ]. Obermiller, Northern Kentucky University Robert Oldendick, University of Cincinnati Long Journey Home Elizabeth Barrett, Appalshop Blacks: An Invisible Institution in Appalachia? by Wilburn Hayden, Jr. ABSTRACT The institution of black invisibility is defined and discussed in terms of its impact on the social-economic status of blacks in the Region. Using counties with close to 4000 or more blacks, 20 concentrated areas were identified. These concentrations center around the following conditions: I. CoalIndustrial Site; II. Major University or Military Base; III. Urban Center; IV. Combination of I and III; and V. Combination of II and III. Seventy five (75) percent of all blacks in the Region were in the 63 counties while only 37% of whites. The third concentration and the two (2) combintion concentrations (the combinations included urban) accounted for 15 of the 20 concentrations, 74.4%. The paper identifies high urbanization of blacks as a factor that contributes to the institution of black invisibility. Thus, as a group, the black experience compared to whites as a group is very different in the Appalachian Region. The concept of "black Appalachia invisibility" was first put in print and defined by Clarence Wright in 1973.' Ed CabbelPs article2 seven years later provided support for the concept through an informal survey of blacks in the Region. Cabbell identifies two myths that are useful in understanding the concept: (1) "...the number of black people in the mountains is inconsequential."3 and (2) "...Appalachia is a land of 'poor white hillbillies' beset 128 �solely with 'white problems' and not the 'color problems' that plague the rest of America."4 He further concludes that these myths have resulted in the failure of scholars and analysts of the Region to focus on the existence and plight of black Appalachians, thus causing blacks to be a neglected minority within a neglected minority (people of Appalachia).5 Black invisibility as an institution within the Region will be defined as the view of Appalachia as a white Region justifying the formal and informal collections of customs, practices, beliefs and attitudes that lead (led) to ignoring the plight, contributions and experiences and to unequal social and economic conditions of blacks as a group. There are two constructs which are important to understanding the definition: view and group. View is the holding to and acting on an unsubstantiated judgment or opinion. Turning now to the construct group, when there are few minority individuals or when a majority member develops a close friendship with a minority individual, the individual in the majority group may see the minority individual or friend as separate from the minority group. As one moves throughout the region it is clear that individual blacks appear to escape unequal treatment by whites. Both blacks and whites have learned to accept the institution of black invisibility which creates the appearance of a high level of tolerance for the individual(s). The tolerance level quickly shifts to unequal treatment when the institution is challenged. For example (this example is to illustrate a point and does not negate the many exceptions) even today there are hollows, communities or counties that demonstrate and maintain that blacks are not welcome. The white residents of these hollows, communities or counties may work daily alongside a black individual and develop a positive relationship. The non-work association is maintained in a neutral setting or in the black community. Seldom is the black allowed social contact within the white residents' setting. If the black raises the issue, the friendship begins to shift. The white resident now sees the black individual as a member of a group—visible—desiring to be an equal. The invisible institution of blacks is seen by some as a positive factor. This perspective sees invisibility as important to the lack of racial tension and the perception of greater freedom in the region for blacks. By being invisible, blacks are (were) not singled out as a significant threat to the order of the white domain, thus able to co-exist. But with this perspective, many blacks suffered discrimination as individuals. The invisibility meant that blacks could be ignored by the institutions of the region (particularly employment). The invisibility of blacks may well be singled out as a major cause for the high degree of poor housing, higher proportion of poverty and unemployment, lack of ownership of large holdings of land, a small voice in the political and governmental decisions or services, and a- lesser social status. An examination of the 1980 census data will be presented to determine how the extent black invisibility is more than a view about blacks as a group. The census identifies 1,575,368 blacks living in 397 counties in the region. The 129 �total population for the region is 21,019,681. The black population is 7.8% of the region which is about 4% less than the percentage of blacks (11.8%) in the country as a whole. Table I is a distribution by race for the 13 states. American Indians represented 0.1% of the region numbering 29.373. Others represented 0.5% and numbering 110,146 which are primarily individuals who failed to be identified by race. TABLE 1 STATE POPULATION DISRIBUTION IN THE APPALACHIAN REGION AS DEFINED BY THE ARC STATES AND PERCENTAGES Alabama Percentage TOTAL 2,448,121 100.0 WHITES 1,926,125 78.7 BLACKS 486,438 19.9 AMER. INDS. 2,721 0.1 OTHERS 32,837 1.3 Georgia Percentage 1,104,081 100.0 1,027,236 93.0 71,048 6.5 2,387 0.2 3,410 0.3 Kentucky Percentage 1,078,076 100.0 1,056,048 98.0 18,394 1.7 809 0.1 2,852 0.3 Maryland Percentage 220,132 100.0 212,358 96.5 6,419 2.9 171 0.1 1,184 0.5 Mississippi Percentage 481,717 100.0 346,080 71.8 133,569 27.8 654 0.1 1,414 0.3 New York Percentage 1,082,794 100.0 1,053,887 97.3 15,592 1.5 3,950 0.3 9,365 0.9 North Carolina Percentage 1,217,514 100.0 1,094,682 89.9 112,137 9.2 7,041 0.6 3,654 0.3 Ohio Percentage 1,262,503 100.0 1,229,540 97.4 26,715 2.1 1,944 0.2 4,304 0.3 Pennsylvania Percentage 6,103,923 100.0 5,741,637 94.1 332,121 5.4 4,608 0.1 25,557 0.4 835,095 100.0 654,155 78.3 176,481 21.2 675 0.1 3,784 0.4 Tennessee Percentage 2,090,517 100.0 1,955,618 93.5 120,775 5.9 2,506 0.1 11,618 0.5 Virginia Percentage 505,487 100.0 493,412 97.6 10,618 2.1 352 0.1 1,098 0.2 West Virginia Percentage 1,929,122 100.0 1,853,437 96.0 65,061 3.,4 1,555 0.1 9,069 0.5 20,359,082 100.0 18,644,215 91.6 1,575,368 7.8 29,373 0.1 110,146 0.5 South Carolina Percentage TOTAL PERCENTAGE 130 �Alabama has the largest number of blacks at 486,438 and third largest percentage of 19.9%. The largest percentage is 27.8% from Mississippi with the fourth largest black population of 133,569. The state with the smallest percentage was New York at 1.5% and the eleventh largest population of 15,592. The state with the smallest number of blacks was Maryland at 6,419. Table 2 is the ranking of each state by the number and percentage of population. Table 2. Ranking for Each State by Number and Percentage of Blacks. Number States 1 Alabama Georgia 7 10 Kentucky Maryland 13 Mississippi 4 11 New York 6 North Carolina 9 Ohio 2 Pennsylvania 3 South Carolina 5 Tennessee 12 Virginia 8 West Virginia Percentage 3 5 12 9 1 13 4 10 7 2 6 10 8 For most scholars and people in the region these numbers are no surprise, yet blacks as an invisible institution remains. WHY? A closer look at the census data provides some light to the question. Table 3. Number of Concentrations and Counties for Each State Number of Concentrations 2 1 0 1 2 1 3 1 • 3 1 2 0 3 TOTAL 131 Number of Counties 19 6 0 1 9 1 4 1 7 6 2 0 6 20 States Alabama Georgia Kentucky Maryland Mississippi New York North Carolina Ohio Pennsylvania South Carolina Tennessee Virginia West Virginia 62 �The mean number of blacks per county was computed at 3,968. County maps for each state were used to plot counties with near or more than 3,968 blacks. Twenty (20) concentrations consisting of 62 of the 397 counties were plotted. These counties were 15.6% of the total counties. Kentucky and Virginia were the only states to have all of its regional counties with less than 4,000 blacks. Table 3 is the number of concentrations and number of counties. Table 5 are the counties for the 20 concentrations. The concentrations resulted from three conditions and two combinations of the three: (I) Coal or Industrial Site; (II) a Major University or Military Base; (III) an Urban Center; (IV) Combination of I and III; and (V) Combination of II and III. Five (5) of the 20 concentrations of 23.8% were in the first two conditions. Twelve (12) or 57.1% concentrations were from Urban Environments. The three remaining concentrations were combinations with an urban setting. Thus 74.4% of the counties were urban (see Table 4). Table 4. Number of Concentrations by the Five Factors for Each State States I Alabama Georgia Kentucky (none) Maryland Mississippi New York North Carolina Ohio Pennsylvania South Carolina Tennessee Virginia (none) West Virginia 1 TOTAL 2 1 II III IV 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 V 1 1 2 2 3 11 1 2 The total number of blacks in these concentrations was 1,157,986. This number represents 73.5% of the total number of blacks. Thirty-six point six percent (36.6%) of all whites were found in the counties that formed the 20 concentrations. According to an Appalachian Regional Commission report, 74% of the 1980 U.S. population lives in an urban environment while 48% of the total Appalachian population lives in an urban environment.6 The conclusion was made "...that Appalachia remains essentially a region of small towns and rural areas."7 The conclusion, though accurate for white Appalachia, is not the case for black Appalachia. The ARC report falls to the fate of the institution of black invisibility. Black Appalachians live in urban environments. For twenty-six point five percent (26.5%) of the blacks, 132 �TABLE 5 COUNTIES FOR THE TWENTY CONCENTRATIONS FOR EACH STATE ALABAMA Concentration: 1 Lauderdale Lawrence limestone Madison Morgan Concentration: 2 Pickens Tuscaloosa Walker Jefferson St. Clair Etowah Calhoun Talladega Shelby Randolph Tallapoosa Cambers Coosa Elmore GEORGIA Concentration: 3 Floyd Bartow Polk Carroll Gwinnett Hall MISSISSIPPI Concentration: 5 Marshall PENNSYLVANIA Concentration: 12 Erie Concentration: 6 Chickasaw Clay Kemper Lee Lowndes Noxub ee Oktibbeha Concentration: 13 Mercer NEW YORK Concentration: 7 Chemung NORTH CAROLINA Concentration: 8 Buncombe Concentration: 9 Forsyth Concentration: 10 Rutherford Burke OHIO Concentration: 11 Jefferson MARYLAND Concentration: 14 Washington Concentration: 14 Allegheny Beaver Fayette Washington Westmoreland SOUTH CAROLINA Concentration: 15 Anderson Cherokee Greenville Oconee Pickens Spartanburg TENNESSEE Concentration: 16 Knox Concentration: 17 Hamilton WEST VIRGINIA Concentration: 18 Fayette McDowell Mercer Raleigh Concentration: 19 Cabell Concentration: 20 Kanawha 133 �the report is accurate, and the case of the institution of black invisibility may be argued, especially since non-urban black Appalachians are a subminority of a minority of a minority. Realizing that blacks in the region are found in the same environments as most blacks in the nation, it is not difficult to see why the institution of black invisibility exists. The social and economic conditions for blacks in the region are very different from whites. To acknowledge and respond to the difference requires the visibility of blacks in the region. By not ignoring the difference, black individuals as a group may be able to do in the region what has not occurred in the rest of the nation — move toward equal treatment. This means shifting some of the analysts, resources and services to the urban struggle, life, and social and economic conditions of the visible black Appalachian. One final note that can be concluded from this study that speaks to the region as a whole is the increasing urbanization of the region. With 48% of the region living in urban environments in 1980, it is clear that by 1990 the majority of Appalachia will be living in urban centers. Thus, the focus of Appalachian Studies and resources may need to include the urban invisible Appalachian. 134 �POPULATION DISTRIBUTION BY RACE FOR THE TWENTY CONCENTRATIONS OF BLACK APPALACHIAN IN COUNTIES WITH 3,990 OR MORE BLACKS ALABAMA Concentration: 1 Lauderdale Lawrence Limestone Madison Morgan Region Total Percentage Concentration: 2 Pickens Tuscaloosa Walker Jefferson St. Clair Etowah Calhoun Talladega Shelby Randolph Tallapoosa Chambers Coosa Elmore Regional Total Percentage State Total Percentage Total Amer. 80,546 30,170 46,005 196,966 90,231 433,918 100.00 370,652 83.5 Blacks 7,845 5,074 6,539 39,069 8,816 67,343 15.2 21,481 137,541 68,660 671,324 41,205 103,057 119,761 73,831 66,298 20,075 38,676 39,191 11,377 43,390 1,455,867 100.00 1,899,785 100.00 12,451 99,335 63,547 444,426 36,935 88,806 97,313 50,922 58,982 15,173 28,096 25,222 7,411 33,585 1,062,204 73 1,432,856 75.4 8,978 37,405 4,839 223,759 4,128 13,809 21,074 22,745 6,947 4,869 10,451 13,894 3,950 9,655 386,503 26.5 453,846 23.9 79,800 40,760 32,386 56,346 166,903 75,649 451,844 100.00 69,305 35,889 27,518 46,484 161,144 68,461 408,801 10,237 4,720 4,832 9,679 4,154 6,762 40,384 90.5 8.9 113,086 100.0 107,150 94.7 5,049 4.5 89 .1 798 .7 29,296 100.0 13,598 46.4 15,577 53.2 39 .1 82 .3 People Whites 72,375 23,013 39,351 154,782 81,131 Indian 99 40 36 439 98 712 .2 12 101 98 520 51 121 215 45 106 10 13 14 08 28 1,342 .1 2,054 .1 Others 227 2,043 79 2,676 186 5,211 1.1 40 700 176 2,619 91 321 1,159 119 263 23 116 61 08 122 5,818 .4 11,029 .6 GEORGIA Concentration: 3 Floyd Bartow Polk Carroll Gwinnett Hall Region Total Percentage 89 96 _ 59 295 143 682 .2 169 55 36 124 1,310 283 1,977 .4 MARYLAND Concentration: 4 Washington Percentage MISSISSIPPI Concentration: 5 Marshall Percentage 135 �Concentration: 6 Chickasaw Clay Kemper Lee Lowndes Monroe Noxubee Okitibbeha Region Total Percentage State Total Percentage Total People 17,853 21,082 10,148 57,061 57,304 36,404 13,212 36,018 249,082 100.0 278,378 100.0 Whites 11,393 10,482 4,592 45,224 37,224 25,560 4,629 23,305 162,409 65.2 176,007 63.2 Blacks 6,434 10,540 5,512 11,645 19,601 10,827 8,534 12,355 85,448 34.3 101,025 36.3 Amer. Indian 22 05 44 09 94 07 47 12 240 .1 279 .1 Others 04 55 — 183 385 10 02 346 985 .4 1,067 .4 NEW YORK Concentration: 7 Chemung Percentage 97,656 100.0 92,629 94.9 3,957 224 846 4.1 .2 .8 160,801 100.0 146,125 90.9 13,943 193 .1 540 .3 243,683 100.0 182,647 59,403 24.4 451 .2 1,182 75 53,787 72,504 126,291 100.0 530,775 100.0 47,159 66,953 6,534 5,213 20 95 243 114,112 90.4 442,884 83.4 11,747 9.3 85,093 16 115 .1 759 .2 317 .2 91,564 100.0 85,956 5,000 93.9 5.5 123 .1 484 3 388,780 100.0 265,589 68.3 121,135 31.2 384 .1 1,672 Percentage Concentration: 13 Mercer Percentage 128,299 100.0 122,258 95.3 5,521 106 .1 414 .3 1,450,085 204,441 159,417 217,074 392,294 2,423,311 100.0 2,940,390 100.0 1,288,989 191,964 153,093 208,957 383,903 2,226,906 91.9 150,077 11,644 5,844 7,324 6,527 181,416 1,104 9,915 NORTH CAROLINA Concentration: 8 Buncombe Percentage Concentration: 9 Forsyth Percentage Concentration: 10 Rutherford Burke Region Total Percentage State Total Percentage OHIO Concentration: 11 Jefferson Percentage 8.7 .4 74 2,039 .4 PENNSYLVANIA Concentration: 12 Erie Concentration: 14 Alleghany Beaver Fayette Washington Westmoreland Region Total Percentage State Total Percentage 2,614,753 88.9 136 4.3 7.5 308,072 10.5 169 137 256 267 1,933 .4 664 343 537 1,597 13,056 .1 .5 2,423 15,142 .1 .5 �SOUTH CAROLINA Amer. Indian 109 37 227 43 73 Total People 133,235 40,983 287,913 91,811 79,292 201,861 835,095 100.0 Whites 109,823 32,800 235,210 43,656 72,794 159,872 654,155 78.3 Blacks 22,895 7,988 50,842 48,037 5,849 40,870 176,481 21.2 Concentration: 16 Knox Percentage 320,494 100.0 288,675 90.1 28,806 426 .1 2,587 9. Concentration: 17 Hamilton Percentage State Total Percentage 287,740 100.0 608,234 100.0 229,976 308 .1 734 .1 1,616 518,651 85.3 55,840 19.4 84,646 13.9 57,863 49,899 73,932 86,821 268,515 100.0 53,276 42,401 68,483 79,408 243,568 90.7 4,321 7,378 5,030 6,862 23,591 8.8 41 25 65 59 190 .1 Concentration: 19 Cabell Percentage 106,815 100.0 101,627 95.1 4,488 4.2 70 .1 630 Concentration: 20 Kanawha Percentage State Total Percentage 231,414 100.0 606,744 100.0 215,953 93.3 561,148 92.5 13,776 6 41,855 155 .1 415 .1 1,530 Concentration: 15 Anderson Cherokee Greenville Oconee Pickens Spartanburg State Total Percentage 136 675 .1 Others 408 158 1,584 75 576 983 3,784 .4 TENNESSEE 80. .8 .5 4,203 .7 WEST VIRGINIA Concentration: 18 Fayette McDowell Mercer Raleigh Region Total Percentage 137 6.9 225 95 354 492 1,166 .5 .6 .5 3,326 .5 �STATE POPULATION DISTRIBUTION IN THE APPALACHIA REGION AS DEFINED BY THE ARC Whites 1,926,125 78.7 1,027,236 93.0 1,056,048 98.0 212,358 96.5 346,080 71.8 1,053,887 97.3 1,094,682 89.9 1,229,540 97.4 5,741,637 94.1 654,155 78.3 1,955,618 93.5 493,412 97.6 1,853,437 96.0 18,644,215 91.6 Blacks 486,438 19.9 71,048 6.5 18,394 1.7 6,419 2.9 133,569 27.8 15,592 1.5 112,137 9.2 26,715 2.1 332,121 5.4 176,481 21.2 120,775 5.9 10,618 2.1 65,061 3.4 1,575,368 7.8 Amer. Indian 2,721 0.1 2,387 0.2 809 0.1 171 0.1 654 0.1 3,950 0.3 7,041 0.6 1,944 0.2 4,608 0.1 675 0.1 2,506 0.1 352 0.1 1,555 0.1 29,373 0.1 Others 32,837 1.3 3,410 0.3 2,852 0.3 1,184 0.5 1,414 0.3 9,365 0.9 3,654 0.3 4,304 0.3 25,557 0.4 3,784 0.4 11,618 0.5 1,098 0.2 9,069 0.5 110,146 0.5 ALABAMA—Counties in Appalachia Population State Total 2,448,121 1980 1,926,125 486,438 2,721 32,837 Whites Blacks Indian Others 12,029 35,761 97,313 25,222 17,185 26,942 11,424 11,925 42,209 3,675 02 56 215 14 13 09 04 04 68 08 69 90 28 121 07 22 19 44 STATES AND PERCENTAGES Alabama Percentage Georgia Percentage Kentucky Percentage Maryland Percentage Mississippi Percentage New York Percentage North Carolina Percentage Ohio Percentage Pennsylvania Percentage South Carolina Percentage Tennessee Percentage Virginia Percentage West Virginia Percentage TOTAL PERCENTAGE Total of Counties in Appalachia 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. Bibb Blount Calhoun Chambers Cherokee Chilton Clay Cleburne Colbert Coosa Cullman De Kalb Elmore Etowah Fayette Franklin Total 2,448,121 100.0 1,104,081 100.0 1,078,076 100.0 220,132 100.0 481,717 100.0 1,082,794 100.0 1,217,514 100.0 1,262,503 100.0 6,103,923 100.0 835,095 100.0 2,090,517 100.0 505,487 100.0 1,929,122 100.0 20,359,082 100.0 Total Persons 15,725 36,459 119,761 39,191 18,760 30,612 13,731 12,595 54,519 11,377 61,642 53,658 43,390 103,057 18,809 28,350 7,411 60,928 52,538 33,585 88,806 16,378 26,991 138 598 21,074 13,894 1,550 3,633 2,268 647 9,146 3,950 528 939 9,655 13,809 2,396 1,301 Amer. 1,159 61 12 28 35 19 3,096 08 117 91 122 321 28 36 �ALABAMA con't Total of Counties in Appalachia 17. Jackson 18. Jefferson 19. Lamar 20. Lauderdale 21. Lawrence 22. Limestone 23. Madison 24. Marion 25. Marshall 26. Morgan 27. Pickens 28. Randolph 29. St. Clair 30. Shelby 31. Talladega 32. Tallapoosa 33. Tuscaloosa 34. Walker 35. Winston Percentage Total Persons Whites Blacks 51,407 671,324 26,453 80,546 30,170 46,005 196,966 30,041 645,622 90,231 21,481 20,075 41,205 66,298 73,831 38,676 137,541 68,660 29,953 48,990 444,426 14,457 72,375 23,013 39,351 154,782 29,250 64,444 81,131 12,451 15,173 36,935 58,982 50,922 28,096 99,335 63,547 21,818 2,150 223,759 ,975 7,845 5,074 6,539 39,069 100.0 78.7 701 1,016 8,816 8,978 4,869 4,128 6,947 22,745 10,451 37,405 4,839 69 19.9 Amer. Indian 188 520 11 99 40 36 439 35 62 98 12 10 51 106 45 13 101 98 27 Others 79 2,619 10,010 227 2,043 79 2,676 55 100 186 40 23 91 263 119 116 700 176 8,039 0.1 1.3 GEORGIA—Counties in Appalachia Population State Total 1980 1,104,081 1,027,236 71,048 2,387 3,410 Total of Counties in Appalachia Total Persons Whites Blacks Amer. Indian Others 8,702 21,354 40,760 56,346 36,991 21,856 51,699 12,333 4,774 54,573 14,748 79,800 27,958 15,185 11,110 30,070 166,903 25,020 75,649 18,422 6,520 25,343 10,762 17,747 19,685 26,104 11,654 32,386 8,240 18,139 35,889 46,484 36,683 19,929 50,406 12,076 4,614 51,348 14,638 69,305 27,628 13,631 11,071 28,794 161,144 23,658 68,461 17,103 5,402 22,528 10,170 15,788 19,596 25,005 11,346 27,518 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. Banks Barrow Bartow Carroll Catoosa Chattooga Cherokee Dade Dawson Douglas Fannin Floyd Forsyth Franklin Gilmer Gordon Gwinnett Habersham Hall Haralson Heard Jackson Lumpkin Madison Murray Paulding Pickens Polk 139 450 3,189 4,720 9,679 228 1,892 1,041 192 _ 2,966 36 10,237 05 1,529 14 1,185 4,154 1,266 6,762 1,305 1,118 2,739 222 1,942 36 1,041 292 4,832 12 20 96 59 18 10 41 22 160 96 _ 06 55 124 62 25 211 43 163 30 169 44 89 288 19 23 63 295 35 143 _ 37 06 02 28 1,310 61 283 14 12 336 08 41 21 04 — 64 34 09 12 37 12 36 �GEORGIA con't Total of Counties in Appalachia Amer. Indian Others 93.0 2,320 401 2,529 6.5 32 48 02 34 60 22 234 0.2 09 48 12 11 69 28 400 0.3 KENTUCKY—Counties in Appalachia Population State Total 1980 1,078,076 1,056,048 18,394 809 2,852 Blacks Amer. Indian Others 64. Rabun 65. Stephens 66. Towns 67. Union 68. Walker 69. White 70. Whitfield Percentage Total of Counties in Appalachia 71. Adair 72. Bath 73. Bell 74. Boyd 75. Breathitt 76. Carter 77. Casey 78. Clark 79. Clay 80. Clinton 81. Cumberland 82. Elliott 83. Estill 84. Fleming 85. Floyd 86. Garrard 87. Green 88. Greenup 89. Harlan 90. Jackson 91. Johnson 92. Knott 93. Knox 94. Laurel 95. Lawrence 96. Lee 97. Leslie 98. Letcher 99. Lewis 100. Lincoln 101. McCreary 102. Madison 103. Magoffin 104. Martin 105. Menifee 106. Monroe 107. Montgomery 108. Morgan 109. Owsley 110. Perry Total Persons Whites Blacks 80 2,646 56,470 10,120 65,789 9,381 10,345 19,021 5,624 9,336 54,021 9,669 62,626 100.0 10,466 21,763 5,638 Total Persons 15,233 10,025 34,330 55,513 17,004 25,060 14,818 28,322 22,752 9,321 7,289 6,908 14,495 12,323 48,716 10,853 11,043 39,132 41,889 12,000 685,004 17,945 30,239 39,982 14,121 7,754 14,882 30,687 14,545 19,053 15,634 53,352 13,525 13,962 5,117 12,353 20,046 12,103 5,709 33,763 Whites 14,682 9,696 33,352 54,259 16,923 25,022 14,768 26,489 22,357 9,302 6,893 6,908 14,472 12,086 48,440 10,221 10,600 38,933 39,782 11,984 24,362 17,799 29,847 38,588 14,061 7,712 14,858 30,306 14,499 18,259 15,366 49,712 13,493 13,897 5,050 11,979 18,955 12,057 5,699 33,068 140 524 319 858 1,078 43 07 22 1,789 347 10 388 — — 237 230 620 441 133 1,927 — 5 128 322 309 31 35 06 302 29 762 195 3,185 01 07 51 358 1,063 21 05 639 08 02 39 45 17 12 04 08 08 01 _ — 07 — 46 — _ 04 99 04 38 08 17 22 17 02 12 25 10 12 62 46 12 10 02 09 14 15 02 09 19 08 81 131 21 19 24 36 40 08 08 — 16 — — 12 02 62 81 12 27 10 53 1,063 12 05 06 54 07 20 11 409 19 48 14 07 14 10 03 47 �KENTUCKY con't Total of Counties in Appalachia Total Persons Amer. Indian Whites Blacks 81,123 11,101 45,803 13,973 19,049 13,708 17,022 33,396 6,698 80,631 10,970 45,131 13,935 18,657 13,581 16,612 33,109 6,686 320 100.0 98.0 1.7 0.1 MARYLAND—Counties in Appalachia Population State Total 220,132 212,358 1980 6,419 171 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. Pike Powell Pulaski Rockcastle Rowan Russell Wayne Whitley Wolfe Percentage Total of Counties in Appalachia 106 564 03 293 109 365 205 02 37 15 23 13 23 05 22 19 04 Amer. Indian Others 135 10 85 22 76 13 23 63 06 0.3 1,184 Total Persons Whites Blacks 80,548 26,498 113,086 78,841 26,367 107,150 1,315 55 5,049 50 32 89 342 44 798 100 96.5 2.9 0.1 .5 MISSISSIPPI—Counties in Appalachia Population State Total 1980 481,707 346,080 133,569 654 1,404 Total of Counties in Appalachia Blacks 120. Allegany 121. Garrett 122. Washington Percentage 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. Alcorn Benton Chickasaw Choctaw Clay Itawamba Kemper Lee Lowndes Marshall Monroe Noxubee Oktibbeha Pontotoc Prentiss Tippah Tishomingo Union Webster Winston Percentage Total Persons Whites 33,036 8,153 17,853 8,991 21,082 20,518 10,148 57,061 57,304 29,296 36,404 13,212 36,018 20,918 24,025 17,739 18,434 21,741 10,300 19,474 29,443 5,066 11,393 6,459 10,482 19,055 4,592 45,224 37,224 13,598 25,560 4,629 23,305 17,600 21,379 14,744 17,651 18,688 8,267 11,721 3,427 3,087 6,434 2,530 10,540 1,333 5,512 11,645 19,601 15,577 10,827 8,534 12,355 3,278 2,579 2,978 100.0 71.8 141 Amer. Indian Others Others 3,000 2,014 7,637 16 44 09 94 39 07 47 12 _ 58 08 85 38 08 116 122 — 04 — 55 114 — 183 385 82 10 02 346 40 09 09 17 15 11 — 27.8 0.1 0.3 681 44 — 22 02 05 �NEW YORK—Counties in Appalachia Population State Total 1980 Total of 1,082,794 1,053,887 Total Whites Persons 51,742 51.080 213,648 207,921 83,088 85,697 146,925 142,757 92,629 97,656 48,848 49,344 48,263 48,820 46,210 46,824 58,230 59,075 29,710 29,207 17,412 17,686 97,553 99,217 49,032 49,812 86,638 81,657 100.0 97.3 NORTH CAROLINA— Counties in Appalachia Population State Total 1,094,682 1980 1,217,514 Total of Total Counties in Whites Persons Appalachia Counties in Appalachia 143. Allegany 144. Broome 145. Cattaragugus 146. Chautauqua 147. Chemung 148. Chenango 149. Cortland 150. Delaware 151. Otsego 152. Schoharie 153. Schuyler 154. Steuben 155. Tioga 156. Tompkins Percentage 157. Alexander 158. Alleghany 159. Ashe 160. Avery 161. Buncombe 162. Burke 163. Caldwell 164. Cherokee 165. Clay 166. Davie 167. Forsythe 168. Graham 169. Haywood 170. Henderson 171. Jackson 172. McDowell 173. Macon 174. Madison 175. Mitchell 176. Polk 177. Rutherford 178. Stokes 179. Surry 180. Swain 181. Transylvania 182. Watauga 183. Wilkes 184. Yadkin 185. Yancey Percentage Total without Forsythe Percentage 24,999 9,587 22,325 14,404 160,801 72,504 67,746 23,250 9,367 22,097 14,276 146,125 66,953 63,739 243,683 7,217 46,495 58,580 25,811 35,126 20,178 16,827 14,428 12,984 53,787 33,086 59,449 10,283 23,417 31,666 58,657 28,439 14,884 100.0 18,304 6,553 21,959 182,647 6,837 45,495 56,296 22,839 33,391 19,763 16,627 14,270 11,735 47,159 30,574 56,321 7,676 22,071 31,098 55,681 26,969 14,610 89.9 973,831 100.0 912,035 93.7 18,933 6,619 24,599 142 15,592 3,950 Blacks Amer. Indian 173 3,266' 580 229 411 1,723 9,365 Others 260 2,050 306 1.5 433 224 68 127 106 103 72 66 195 53 140 0.3 112,137 7,041 3,654 Amer. Indian Others 2,021 3,957 277 236 254 431 230 96 984 413 2,674 Blacks 1,668 203 182 90 13,943 5,213 3,874 395 54 2,556 59,403 _ 790 2,008 507 1,549 25 3 15 38 193 95 47 196 12 47 451 376 80 126 2,418 64 28 21 34 32 20 34 56 1,714 846 151 194 254 311 201 112 485 314 2,167 0.9 56 14 31 — 540 243 86 38 — 37 1,182 4 130 150 47 122 2,493 2,804 1,354 227 9.2 32 22 56 13 14 0.6 48 20 94 30 74 105 143 13 74 121 116 103 33 0.3 52,734 6,590 2,472 339 159 30 1,187 6,534 2,373 2,929 101 1,240 425 5.4 0.7 0.2 �OHIO—Counties in Appalachia Population State Total 1980 Total of Counties in Appalachia 1,262,503 1,229,540 26,715 1,944 4,304 Total Persons Whites Blacks Amer. Indian Others 750 08 892 108 46 98 48 18 93 16 50 25 123 163 36 05 53 123 29 10 104 95 186 144 11 87 21 902 283 54 74 387 160 162 163 21 44 91 28 32 484 96 25 06 43 185 06 35 81 302 224 181 13 201 97.4 2.1 0.2 0.3 PENNSYLVANIA-Counties in Appalachia Population State Total 5,741,637 6,103,923 1980 332,121 4,608 25,557 186. Adams 187. Athens 188. Belmont 189. Brown 190. Carroll 191. Clermont 192. Coshocton 193. Gallia 194. Guernsey 195. Harrison 196. Highland 197. Hocking 198. Holmes 199. Jackson ZOO. Jefferson 201. Lawrence 202. Meigs 203. Monroe 204. Morgan 205. Muskingum 206. Noble 207. Perry 208. Pike 209. Ross 210. Scioto 211. Tuscarawas 212. Vinton 213. Washington Percentage 24,328 56,399 82,569 31,920 25,598 128,483 36,024 30,098 42,024 18,152 33,477 24,304 29,416 30,592 91,564 63,849 23,641 17,382 14,241 83,340 11,310 30,978 22,805 65,004 84,541 84,614 11,584 64,266 24,255 53,719 80,616 31,463 25,413 127,153 35,354 28,882 41,236 17,617 32,611 24,045 29,330 30,305 85,956 62,120 23,355 17,366 13,631 79,390 11,275 30,927 22,380 61,280 81,684 83,539 11,552 63,086 100.0 Total of Counties in Appalachia Total Persons Whites 214. 215. 216. 217. 218. 219. 220. 221. 222. 223. 224. 225. 226. 227. 1,450,085 77,768 204,441 46,784 136,621 62,919 147,912 183,263 6,674 53,285 112,760 43,362 83,578 38,971 1,288,989 76,755 191,964 46,556 135,166 62,605 146,512 179,282 6,648 53,051 109,376 42,918 83,096 38,675 Allegheny Armstrong Beaver Bedford Blair Bradford Butler Cambria Cameron Carbon Centre Clarion Clearfield Clinton 143 25 1,644 1,631 353 89 835 464 956 577 496 729 152 08 230 5,000 1,470 225 05 514 3,642 — 06 240 3,327 2,447 Blacks 150,077 888 11,644 148 1,039 97 845 3,508 10 43 1,704 256 276 162 27 134 39 50 22 Amer. Indian 1,104 27 169 39 76 39 108 71 09 25 79 35 67 18 Others 9,915 98 664 41 340 178 447 402 07 166 1,601 153 139 116 �PENNSYLVANIA con't Total of Counties in Appalachia 228. Columbia 229. Crawford 230. Elk 231. Erie 232. Fayette 233. Forest 234. Fulton 235. Greene 236. Huntingdon 237. Indiana 238. Jefferson 239. Juniata 240. Lackawanna 241. Lawrence 242. Luzerne 243. Lycoming 244. McKean 245. Mercer 246. Mifflin 247. Monroe 248. Montour 249. Northumberland 250. Perry 251. Pike 252. Potter 253. Schuylkill 254. Snyder 255. Somerset 256. Sullivan 257. Susquehanna 258. Tioga 259. Union 260. Venago 261. Warren 262. Washington 263. Wayne 264. Westmoreland 265. Wyoming Total Persons Whites 61,967 88,869 38,338 388,780 159,417 5,072 12,842 40,476 42,253 92,281 48,303 19,188 227,908 107,150 343,079 118,415 50,635 128,299 46,908 69,409 16,675 100,381 35,689 18,271 17,726 160,630 33,584 81,243 6,349 37,876 40,973 32,870 64,444 47,449 217,074 35,951 392,294 26,432 61,640 87,342 38,238 265,589 153,093 5,030 12,707 39,920 41,170 91,009 48,105 19,143 225,763 103,790 339,744 116,000 50,271 122,258 46,690 68,145 16,557 100,046 35,608 18,138 17,564 159,715 33,334 80,982 6,290 37,687 40,695 31,751 63,832 47,297 208,957 35,806 383,903 26,235 100.0 94.1 Blacks 214 1,063 03 121,135 5,844 09 107 420 926 903 43 08 1,072 3,101 2,101 1,699 102 5,521 110 822 20 96 21 57 62 335 124 66 43 19 149 875 305 21 7,324 Amer. Indian 17 146 09 384 137 22 11 51 55 74 51 06 62 64 113 122 114 106 24 24 25 83 17 12 22 52 33 49 06 73 35 34 59 83 256 Others 96 318 88 1,672 343 11 17 85 102 295 104 31 1,011 195 1,121 594 148 414 84 418 73 156 43 64 78 528 93 146 10 97 94 210 248 48 537 45 6,527 107 30 267 14 1,597 5.4 0.1 0.4 SOUTH CAROLINA-Counties in Appalachia Population State Total 654,155 835,095 1980 176,481 675 3,784 Total of Counties in Appalachia Percentage 266. Anderson 267. Cherokee 268. Greenville 269. Oconee 270. Pickens 271. Spartanburg Percentage 70 Amer. Indian 76 Total Persons Whites Blacks 133,235 40,983 287,913 91,811 79,292 201,861 109,823 32,800 235,210 43,656 72,794 159,872 22,895 7,988 50,842 48,037 5,849 40,870 109 37 277 43 73 136 1,584 100.0 78.3 21.2 0.1 0.4 144 Others 408 158 75 576 983 �TENNESSEE—Counties in Appalachia Population State Total 1980 Total of Counties in Appalachia 272. Anderson 273. Bledsoe 274. Blount 275. Bradley 276. Campbell 277. Cannon 278. Carter 279. Claiborne 280. Clay 281. Cocke 282. Coffee 283. Cumberland 284. DeKalb 285. Fentress 286. Franklin 287. Grainger 288. Greene 289. Grundy 290. Hamblen 291. Hamilton 292. Hancock 293. Hawkins 294. Jackson 295. Jefferson 296. Johnson 297. Knox 298. Loudon 299. McMinn 300. Macon 301. Marion 302. Meigs 303. Monroe 304. Morgan 305. Overton 306. Pickett 307. Polk 308. Putman 309. Rhea 310. Roane 311. Scott 312. Sequatchie 313. Sevier 314. Smith 315. Sullivan 316. Unicoi 317. Union 318. Van Buren 319. Warren 320. Washington 321. White Percentage 2,090,517 1,955,618 120,775 2,506 11,618 Total Persons Whites Blacks Amer. Indian Others 888 1,102 138 888 118 44 01 05 768 611 1,526 06 18 162 600 2,607 04 — 04 1,199 3,004 431 164 08 99 168 57 06 42 46 08 25 29 22 09 11 21 08 53 05 67 308 03 61 01 46 08 426 32 68 11 25 08 11 17 28 16 13 42 45 34 69 17 46 12 145 18 16 04 30 89 09 3,455 25 230 319 53 19 90 33 11 79 217 48 30 18 96 12 126 08 145 1,616 13 86 09 57 28 2,587 45 138 56 27 06 56 39 10 01 18 521 94 134 23 22 98 15 361 40 02 06 73 393 30 5.9 0.1 0.5 70,256 9,478 77,770 67,547 34,923 10,234 50,205 24,595 7,676 28,792 38,311 28,676 13,589 14,826 31,983 16,751 54,422 13,787 49,300 287,740 6,887 43,751 9,398 31,284 13,745 320,494 64,043 9,125 74,859 64,392 34,643 10,022 49,647 24,202 7,545 28,020 36,725 28,600 13,282 14,795 29,587 16,595 53,010 13,772 46,747 229,976 6,833 42,778 9,367 30,259 13,623 288,675 2,594 320 2,582 2,668 170 187 426 314 112 668 1,340 06 268 02 2,279 136 1,233 02 2,341 55,840 38 826 21 922 86 28,806 24,416 7,431 28,700 16,604 17,575 4,358 13,602 47,690 24,208 48,425 19,259 8,605 41,418 14,935 143,968 16,362 11,707 4,728 32,653 88,755 19,567 27,745 23,262 7,279 27,745 16,430 17,493 4,340 13,566 46,359 23,458 46,731 19,161 8,548 41,112 14,308 140,855 16,300 11,689 4,714 31,351 85,269 19,097 100.0 93.5 28,553 41,878 28,700 28,055 39,629 145 421 2,043 �VIRGINIA— Counties in Appalachia Population State Total 493,412 505,480 1980 Total of Counties in Appalachia 322. 323. 324. 325. 326. 327. 328. 329. 330. 331. 332. 333. 334. 335. 336. 337. 338. 339. 340. 341. 342. Alleghany Bath Bland Botetourt Buchanan Carroll Craig Dickerson Floyd Giles Orayson Highland Lee Pulaski Russell Scott Smyth Tazewell Washington Wise Wythe Percentage Total Persons Whites 14,333 5,838 6,349 23,270 37,989 27,270 3,946 19,806 11,563 17,810 16,579 2,937 25,956 35,229 31,761 25,068 33,366 50,511 46,487 43,890 25,522 5,284 6,131 22,093 37,839 27,126 3,938 19,673 11,152 17,400 16,002 2,919 25,804 33,211 31,412 24,887 32,669 48,990 45,555 42,863 24,541 100.0 97.6 13,923 10,618 Blacks 356 553 198 352 Amer. Indian 12 01 1,098 Others 42 — 11 798 857 910 09 13 14 09 — 03 06 05 10 03 44 52 28 14 22 39 19 38 11 40 115 41 — 36 21 51 17 09 19 99 21 10 81 178 115 132 60 2.1 0.1 0.2 65,061 1,555 9,069 Amer. Indian Others 1,124 21 94 08 94 384 354 550 06 89 1,867 300 157 594 1,304 WEST VIRGINIA-Counties in Appalachia Population State Total 1980 1,929,122 1,853,437 Total of Counties in Appalachia Total Persons Whites 343. Barbour 344. Berkeley 345. Boone 346. Braxton 347. Brooke 348. Cabell 349. Calhoun 350. Clay 351. Doddridge 352. Fayette 353. Gilmer 354. Grant 355. Greenbrier 356. Hampshire 357- Hancock 358. Hardy 359. Harrison 360. Jackson 361. Jefferson 362. Kanawha 363. Lewis 364. Lincoln 16,639 46,775 30,447 13,964 31,126 106,815 8,250 11,265 7,433 57,863 8,334 10,210 37,665 14,867 40,418 10,030 77,710 25,794 30,302 231,414 18,813 23,675 16,416 44,764 30,064 13,795 30,792 101,627 8,187 11,246 7,406 53,276 8,256 10,059 35,992 14,714 39,183 9,816 76,384 25,711 27,389 215,953 18,673 23,632 146 Blacks 154 1,701 297 75 248 4,488 12 04 04 4,321 37 121 1,539 107 1,035 203 1,014 16 2,733 13,776 61 04 22 45 16 11 20 70 04 03 08 41 19 05 25 10 38 08 45 15 40 155 09 14 47 265 70 83 66 630 47 12 15 225 22 25 109 36 162 03 267 52 140 1,530 70 25 �WEST VIRGINIA con't Total of Counties in Appalachia 365. Logan 366. McDowell 367. Marion 368. Marshall 369. Mason 370. Mercer 371. Mineral 372. Mingo 373. Monongalia 374. Monroe 375. Morgan 376. Nicholas 377. Ohio 378. Pendleton 379. Pleasants 380. Pocahontas 381. Preston 382. Putman 383. Raleigh 384. Randolph 385. Ritchie 386. Roane 387. Summer 388. Taylor 389. Tucker 390. Tyler 391. Upshur 392. Wayne 393. Webster 394. Wetzel 395. Wirt 396. Wood 397. Wyoming Percentage Total Persons 50,679 49,899 65,789 41,608 27,045 73,932 27,236 37,336 75,024 12,873 10,711 28,126 61,364 7,910 8,256 9,919 9,952 38,089 86,821 28,734 11,442 15,952 15,875 16,584 8,675 11,320 23,427 46,039 12,245 21,874 4,936 93,648 35,993 100.0 Whites Blacks Amer. Indian 48,290 42,401 63,186 41,198 26,799 68,483 26,334 36,162 72,270 12,611 10,583 28,051 58,051 7,713 8,207 9,814 9,814 38,012 79,408 28,385 11,422 15,806 14,634 16,411 8,648 11,297 23,245 45,920 12,228 21,800 4,905 92,510 35,504 2,149 7,378 2,263 823 382 40 25 91 29 11 65 24 11 82 17 08 15 44 04 01 15 45 25 59 37 08 67 23 29 07 04 18 22 09 13 01 49 34 96.0 3.4 0.1 247 135 5,030 804 1,100 1,536 204 104 03 2,126 171 25 70 55 52 6,862 216 04 25 1,097 109 08 03 91 21 — 05 13 Others 200 95 249 134 100 354 74 63 1,136 41 16 57 1,143 22 23 20 38 — 492 96 08 54 121 35 12 16 73 76 08 56 17 266 73 0.5 NOTES 1. Clarence Wright. "Black Appalachian Invisibility—Myth or Reality?" Black Appalachian Viewpoints, 1 (August 6, 1978) pp. 1-3 2. Edward J. Cabbell. "Black Invisibility and Racism in Appalachia: An Informal Survey." Appalachian Journal, 16 (Autumn 1980) pp. 48-54. 3. Ibid., p. 48 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. ARC Staff. "Appalachia: The Economic Outlook Through the Eighties." Appalachia, 16 (December 1984) p. 5. 7. Ibid. 147 �Moving On: Recent Patterns of Appalachian Migration by Phillip J. Obermiller and Robert Oldendick Although European mapmakers and explorers designated Appalachia as a graphic area as early as the sixteenth century, the notion of Appalachia as the locus of a particular culture, social structure, and political economy evolved much later, principally in the era following the Civil War (Shapiro, 1978; Walls, 1977). Local-color writers, educators, church people, and others used the purported physical and social isolation of Appalachia to explain the cultural uniqueness and lack of economic development of the region (Shapiro, 1977, 1978). By the turn of the century Appalachia and its people had been labeled as "different" and "deficient"; as a consequence, Appalachia was defined clearly as a major social problem by the beginning of the twentieth century (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1935; Vance, 1962). Such a problem must be defined before it can be treated. This step in the process requires the gathering and analysis of data; in the case of a large geographic "problem area" like Appalachia, researchers often seek information about the basic demographic processes of the area, including rates of fertility, mortality, and migration. The decline in fertility in Appalachia which began at the turn of the century and intensified in the 1950s, has been well documented (Ford and Dejong, 1963; Murdock and McCoy, 1974). Mortality rates for what was then called "The Alleghenny Region" were compared with those of other regions of the country as early as 1860 (Walls, 1977). According to at least one demographic historian, significant outmigration from the mountains had already begun in the 1830s (Barren, 1977). The study of Appalachian migration patterns provides the most useful demographic approach for understanding not only the problems but also the social and economic dynamics of the region. Migration has been a key factor in both the early growth and the later loss of population in Appalachia (Belcher, 1962; Brown 1972). It serves as a clear indicator of the economic conditions prevailing in Appalachia and its subregions at any given time (Brown and Hillery, 1962; Peoples Appalachian Research Collective, 1972). 148 �Moreover, theories of Appalachian cultural uniqueness and social isolation can be tested readily through studies of inmigrants and return migrants (Anglin, 1983; Garkovich, 1982), through studies of outmigrants (Schwarzweller, Brown, and Mangalam, 1971; Philliber, 1981), through comparisons of migrants with nonmigrants (Uhlenberg, 1975), and through international comparisons of Appalachian migrants with similar groups (Marger and Obermiller, 1983). Although migration studies make an important and useful contribution to our understanding of the Appalachian experience, patterns of recent Appalachian migration have been neglected. No effort has been made to compare current (1980) Appalachian migration patterns with previously collected data on earlier Appalachian migration patterns, nor have recent Appalachian migration flows been compared with national migration trends. In this paper, we will attempt to update the study of Appalachian migration. We will begin by examining the principal studies of Appalachian migration, and will describe the data set used in the current study. Next, we will present an overview of Appalachian migration for the period 1980-81, including a brief analysis of migration flows at the state level. This discussion will be followed by a description of current migration streams to selected urban areas, along with the change in migration to these areas that occurred between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. We will summarize these findings with a survey of recent patterns of net Appalachian migration by national regions, census divisions, states, and selected urban areas. To illustrate the underlying dynamics of these general migration patterns, we will examine two case studies, outmigration from Appalachia to Harris County (Houston), Texas, and inmigration into the Appalachian counties of Eastern Kentucky. In conclusion, we will discuss these findings both in light of the changes and continuity in Appalachian migration patterns over time and in terms of the relationship between these patterns and national migration trends. PREVIOUS STUDIES The field of regional studies has identified two basic economic options that affect migration: the distribution of economic opportunities to regional populations primarily through the creation of jobs, which inhibits migration, or the distribution of regional populations to external areas of economic opportunity, which encourages migration (Cumberland, 1973). Carter Goodrich and his associates (1936) recommended the later option as a result of a study they made in the mid-1930s, which included eight-four coalproducing counties in the Cumberland Plateau. The study advocated that the number of farmers and miners in this area be reduced through the outmigration of more than a quarter of the area's population (Goodrich et. al, 1936: 122-123). Brown and Hillery (1962) documented the fact that many persons did, 149 �in fact, leave the southern Appalachian region during the twenty-year period between 1940 and 1960. Although a great deal of movement took place within the region, southern Appalachia also experienced a net loss of over thirteen percent of its population between 1940 and 1950, and a net loss of nineteen percent between 1950 and 1960 (Brown and Hillery, 1962: 59, Table 9). In his review of the 1970 census data, James S. Brown (1972) notes that between 1960 and 1970, outmigration from southern Appalachia continued at a considerably lower rate, resulting in a net loss by migration of five percent for the decade (Brown, 1972: 138). During the 1960s, the metropolitan areas within southern Appalachia increased by nearly eight percent, principally through inmigration, since natural increase had declined significantly during this period; with the exception of those in Georgia, the nonmetropolitan counties in each of the ten states with Appalachian areas experienced an overall loss due to net migration (Brown, 1972: 135-138). Paralleling national trends in rural-to-urban migration, the majority of Appalachian migrants moved to large, industrialized metropolitan areas. Clyde B. McCoy and James S. Brown (1981) have documented in some detail the migration stream systems from southern Appalachia into major metropolitan areas of the country. Their study identifies the thirty top-ranking metropolitan destinations for southern Appalachian migrants, as well as the particular migration stream systems between West Virginia and Kentucky and the ten metropolitan focal areas for these systems (McCoy and Brown 1981). Although the rate of outmigration decreased over the thirty-year period ending in 1970, McCoy and Brown, find a great deal of consistency in the direction and proportions of Appalachian migration to the metropolitan focal areas they have identified. The major finding of the Apalachian Regional Commission's Report to Congress on Migration (1979) is the turn around in net Appalachian migration. An analysis of the Social Security Administration's continuous work history sample for 1965, 1970, and 1975 indicates that Appalachian migration changed from a net loss to the region in the period of 1965-70 to a net gain in the period 1970-75. The pattern of outmigration also changed: while Northern states remained the destination of the greatest number of Appalachian migrants, states in the South showed the largest gain in the percentage of Appalachian migrants received (Appalachian Regional Commission, 1979b: Tables 11-3 and 11-4). The report concludes that most outmigrants enjoy greater incomes than they experienced while in Appalachia, and quickly gain income parity with workers in the areas where they settle (Appalachian Regional Commission, 1979b: 15). THE CURRENT STUDY The data for this study were compiled by the Bureau of the Census for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from the Individual Master File, which 150 �includes a record of every individual income tax return form 1040 and 1040A for 1980 and 1981. The Area-to-Area Migration Flow Data were developed by matching the social security numbers (SSNs) on returns filed in each year. When identical social security numbers were found, the counties of residence on each return were compared to see whether they matched. A match in county of residence was counted as an instance of nonmigrant; when the counties did not match, the taxpayer was considered an outmigrant from the county of residence in the base year, and an inmigrant to the county of residence in the subsequent year. The final step in the process was to tally the exemptions on all subsequent year forms which had identical SSNs with the base year, and to categorize them as either nonmigrant, inmigrant, or outmigrant. (See Notes 1,2, & 3.) The figures derived from the IRS Area-to-Area Migration Flow Data have several limitations which should be noted so that the data presented here may be evaluated properly. Individuals who fail to file tax returns, those who are not required to file returns, and those who innate the number of exemptions on their returns all detract from the representativeness of the data. In addition, the IRS has applied rules for suppression and aggregation to the data set in order to make it manageable and to protect the anonymity of individual taxpayers. (See Note 4.) These characteristics of the data set make it impossible to calculate the exact volumes of migration or to describe the social characteristics of the migrants. The IRS data set, however, does have attributes not found in other sources of migration data such as the decennial census, the current population survey, or the Census Bureau's annual population estimates (Rogerson and Plane, 1985). First of all, it is inclusive: taxpayers and their dependents include ninety percent of the population. (See Note 5.) Also, it is timely: the IRS data allow the tracking of annual fluctuations in migration. It is specific: the IRS data can be analyzed at specific regional, subregional, state, and county levels for particular years and series of years. Finally, it is extensive: the IRS data allow the tracking of inmigrants and outmigrants, as well as county to county migration flows. Other characteristics of this study were also worth noting. The definition of the Appalachian region and the definitions of metropolitan, urban, and rural counties within the Appalachian region employed in this study follow those used by the Appalachian Regional Commission (Appalachian Regional Commission, 1979a). (See Notes 6 & 7.) The "urban areas" referred to throughout the study are actually the counties in which the cities named are located; these areas are not necessarily congruent with the commonly used designations of urban places, urbanized areas, or metropolitan statistical areas (Weller and Bouvier, 1981). In addition, the data present migration flows for one year only; estimates for more extensive period cannot be extrapolated accurately from this small base. In spite of these limitations, however, the data presented in the following 151 �sections of this report provide a current and fairly accurate picture of Appalachian migration patterns. Morever, these patterns can, with reasonable confidence, be compared with previously established patterns of Appalachian migration and with recent trends in U.S. internal migration. THE FINDINGS In the twelve months covered by this study, slightly more individuals left the Appalachian region than entered it. Table 1 shows that the leading sources of outmigrants were the metropolitan counties in Appalachia. These counties, which had 49 percent of the region's 1980 population, accounted for 55 percent of the outmigrants. The urban counties had 25 percent of the population and 24 percent of the outmigrants; the rural counties, which had 26 percent of the population, contributed 21 percent of the outmigrants. We found similar percentage distributions among metropolitan (54%), urban (23%), and rural (23%) Appalachian counties for the flow of migrants into the region. TABLE 1. 1980-81 Appalachian migration by county type.1 Destination Origin Metropolitan Urban Rural Out of Region Metropolitan 119,418 34,699 22,157 281,845 Urban 35,147 22,262 30,452 119,830 Rural 22,831 29,475 41,365 119,671 Out of Region 289,752 127,870 114,123 — 1980-81 Net Mi;'ration —10,399 'For county typology see Appalachian Regional Commission, 1979. Source: IRS Area-to-Area Migration Flow Data. Internal migration flows within Appalachia indicate that rural counties are the most frequent destinations for those who leave rural counties; of all rural-county outmigrants 44 percent moved to other rural counties, 32 percent to urban counties, and 24 percent to metropolitan counties. Similarly, metropolitan counties are the most popular destination for those who leave metropolitan counties; of all metropolitan county outmigrants, 67 percent moved to other metropolitan counties, 20 percent to urban counties, and 13 percent to rural counties. Residents of urban counties, however, tend to move to either rural or metropolitan counties, with a preference for the latter. In the period 1980-81, 40 percent of all urban county outmigrants moved to metropolitan counties, 34 percent to rural counties, and only 26 precent to other urban counties. Table 2a shows the non-Appalachian states with the most significant 152 �migration flows during the period under study. When we compared inmigrant flows with outmigrant flows, it became apparent that reciprocal flows exist between Appalachia and California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, and Texas. The flows from Indiana and Michigan to Appalachia are substantially oneway streams; few migrants move to these states from the region. The flows from Appalachia to Arizona and Massachusetts are also substantially oneway, but in the opposite direction: few migrants from these states move to Appalachia. TABLE 2a. Migration flows to and from the Appalachian region for selected states, 1980-81.' Migrants to Appalachia (N) 5,135 2,136 2,122 1,946 1,836 1,724 1,266 Migrants from Appalachia State (N) Florida Illinois New Jersey California Michigan Texas Indiana 10,734 10,465 4,849 2,207 1,141 525 431 State Florida Texas California Arizona Illinois Massachusetts New Jersey TABLE 2b. Net Appalachian migration for selected states, 1980-81.1 Net Gains 8,741 5,599 2,903 1,795 State Texas Florida California Arizona Net Losses -995 -1,266 -1,691 -1,784 State Illinois Indiana New Jersey Michigan 'Tables do not include states with Appalachian counties. Source: IRS Area-to-Area Migration Flow Data. The non-Appalachian states that show the most significant net gains in migrants from the region were Texas, Florida, California, and Arizona, in that order. Those showing the most significant net losses are Michigan, New Jersey, Indiana, and Illinois. Table 3 presents a more precise view of recent Appalachian migration. The table includes those non-Appalachian counties that had a net gain or loss of 200 or more migrants from the Appalachian region in 1980-81. Since the counties are invariably metropolitan, the name of the chief city in each county is used to designate the "urban area." 153 �TABLE 3. Selected urban areas ranked by net Appalachian migration, 1980-81.1 Urban Area Houston Nashville Tampa/St. Pete. Phoenix Dallas Los Angeles Lexington W. Palm Beach Columbus Jacksonville Anaheim Charlotte Ft. Lauderdale Mobile Jackson San Diego Washington Roanoke Louisville Indianapolis Dayton Cleveland New York Chicago Miami Detroit Cincinnati Atlanta Net Migration 6,570 From Appalachia 7,883 3,140 5,314 2,992 3,684 2,047 1,635 1,537 1,482 940 838 691 623 593 576 492 401 345 320 221 207 1,658 2,851 2,745 1,126 4,365 948 643 2,033 2,163 1,162 554 767 331 860 300 -0395 1,616 813 1,112 644 52 -243 -258 -463 -630 -632 -1,024 -1,046 -1,420 -1,933 -5,670 4,366 9,995 To Appalachia 1,313 2,174 692 412 121 1,369 1,805 288 3,674 325 50 1,457 1,671 761 209 447 110 653 543 258 858 2,246 1,445 2,136 1,690 1,472 6,299 15,665 'Table excludes urban areas in the Appalachian region. Source: IRS Area-to-Area Migration Flow Data. Houston and its environs had the largest net gain in migrants from Appalachia of any non-Appalachian urban areas in the United States: it had over twice as many migrants as the second and third highest-ranked urban areas, Nashville and Tampa/St. Petersburg, and well above three times as many as Phoenix, Dallas, and Los Angeles, which ranked fourth, fifth, and sixth respectively. Atlanta was the chief among those urban areas that sent more migrants to the Appalachian region than they gained, and had by far the highest combined Appalachian in- and outmigration. These facts must be interpreted with caution, however, since the county in which the city of Atlanta is located, Fulton County, shares common boundaries with five Appalachian counties. Similar conditions exist for the counties in which Cincinnatti, Lexington, Roanoke, and Montgomery are located. Although these areas are likely to have high rates of exchange with neighboring counties, a situation that fulfills the technical definition of migration, their position in the ranking becomes somewhat ambiguous when compared with urban areas much more distant from Appalachia. 154 �Table 4 presents a comparison of the thirty top-ranked metropolitan destinations for Appalachian migrants for the periods 1965-70 and 1980-81. Nine of the destinations found in the earlier ranking—Washington, Detroit, Baltimore, Columbia, Dayton, Norfolk, Richmond, New York, and Louisville—have been replaced in the more recent ranking by Houston, Lexington, Montgomery, Ft. Lauderdale, Phoenix, Dallas, Mobile, West Palm Beach, and Jacksonville. The positions of Atlanta, Birmingham, Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Philadelphia have remained fairly constant in each order, while Chicago and Cleveland rank significantly lower in 1981 than in the previous order. Pittsburgh, the Winston-Salem/Highpoint/Greensboro area, Charleston, and Greenville have all moved to substantially higher positions in the 1981 ranking. TABLE 4. Top-ranking metropolitan destinations for migrants from Southern Appalachia, 1965-701 and for migrants from the Appalachian region, 1980-812. Rank 1 I 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 1965-70 1980-81 Atlanta Washington Detroit Birmingham* Knoxville* Chicago Chattanooga* Cleveland Los Angeles Nashville Huntington* Huntsville* Baltimore Columbus Tuscaloosa* Cincinnati Greenville* Charlotte Charleston* Columbia Tampa Dayton Norfolk Richmond New York Louisville Roanoke Winston-Salem*/Highpoint/Greensboro Pittsburgh* Philadelphia Pittsburgh* Atlanta Birmingham* Houston Knoxville* Chattanooga* Nashville Greenville* Cincinnati Columbus Tampa/St. Pete. Charleston* Winston-Salem*/Highpoint/Greensboro Huntsville* Huntington* Los Angeles Lexington Montgomery Ft. Lauderdale Phoenix Charlotte Tuscaloosa* Dallas Cleveland Mobile W. Palm Beach Chicago Jacksonville Philadelphia Roanoke *Located in the Appalachian Region. Table excludes urban areas in the Appalachian region. 'Source: McCoy and Brown, 1981. 2 Source: IRS Area-to-Area Migration Flow Data. 155 �TABLE 5. Net Appalachian migration to selected urban areas by census regions and divisions, 1980-1981. Census Region South Census Division Net Migration Urban Area South Atlantic Tampa/St. Pete., Fl. West Palm Beach, Fl. Jacksonville, Fl. Charlotte, N.C. Ft. Lauderdale, Fl. Washington, DC Roanoke, Va. Columbia, S.C. Greensboro, N.C. *Huntington, WV. Baltimore, Md. •Charleston, WV. Miami, Fl. *Greenville,S.C. Atlanta, Ga. 2,992 838 623 576 492 221 207 63 36 19 -37 -434 -1,046 -1,054 -5,670 Nashville, Tn. Lexington, Kv. Mobile, Al. Jackson, Mi. *Huntsville, Al. *Knoxville, Tn. Tuscaloosa, Al. Montgomery, Al. Louisville, Ky. "Chattanooga, Tn. *Birmingham, Al. 3,140 940 401 345 267 256 168 -101 -243 -503 -1,183 East South Central West South Central West Houston, Tx. Dallas, Tx. West Pacific 6,570 1,537 Los Angeles, Ca. Anaheim, Ca. San Diego, Ca. 1,482 593 320 Phoenix, Az. 1,635 West Mountain Northeast Middle Atlantic New York, N.Y. *Pittsburg, Pa. -632 -1,789 North Central East North Central Columbus, Oh. Indianapolis, In. Dayton, Oh. Cleveland, Oh. Chicago, 11. Detroit, Mi. Cincinnati, Oh. Indicates urban area in Appalachian region. Source: IRS Area-to-Area Migration Flow Data. 156 691 -258 -463 -630 -1,024 -1,420 -1,933 Division Region Totals Totals 9,420 -2,174 3,487 8,107 2,395 4,030 1,635 -2,421 -5,037 -2,421 -5,037 �As elsewhere, we advise caution in examining this table because two different geographic definitions were used in constructing the rankings (see note 6). In the later ranking, the definition of Appalachia includes counties in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, while the earlier definition excludes counties in these states. This difference, for example, could be the principal reason behind the radical change in the ranking of the Pittsburgh area between one period and the other. When net migration figures for selected urban areas are categorized by census regions and regional divisions (Table 5), a clear pattern emerges. For 1980-81 the urban areas in the Northeast and North Central regions show losses in Appalachian migration—2,421 and 5,037 respectively—while Western states show a net gain of 4,030. Urban areas in the South have a regional net gain of 9,420 migrants from Appalachia. At the divisional level, net losses occur in urban areas located in the South Atlantic states despite substantial net gains in Florida, in East North Central states (5,037), and in the Middle Atlantic states (2,421). Net gains are recorded for urban areas located in the states of the East South Central (3,487), West South Central (8,107), West Pacific (2,395), and West Mountain (1,635) divisions. In Table 6, which depicts the case study of Appalachian migration flows to the Houston urban area, it is evident that nearly three-fifths of the Appalachian migrants to Houston come from the Northern Appalachian subregion, slightly over two-fifths from Southern Appalachia, and a negligible number from Central Appalachia. These proportions parallel closely the distribution of the donor counties by subregion. In relation to total regional population, Southern Appalachia is proportionately represented in the Houston migration flow, Northern Appalachia is overrepresented, and Central Appalachia is underrepresented. All the states with Appalachian counties with the exception of Virginia contributed to the Houston area migration flow. Pennsylvania and Alabama are overrepresented in this migration flow, both in number of donor counties and in proportion of the regional population. The numbers of migrants to Houston from Tennessee, West Virginia, New York, and Ohio are roughly proportionate to their respective states share of the regional population, but underrepresented in number of donor counties. Houston, in contrast is attracting Appalachian migrants from metropolitan counties in quantities vastly disproportionate to the number and total population of those counties. Only one in five of the migrants to Houston came from urban counties within the region; only three out of every hundred came from rural Appalachian counties. Table 7 summarizes the case study of inmigration to the Appalachian counties of Eastern Kentucky. In 1980-81 22,535 persons moved into Kentucky's Appalachian counties, and about one-fifth of these came from major areas. The figures indicate that most of the movers in this area are internal 157 �TABLE 6 1980-81 Appalachian migration to Harris County, Texas, by Appalachian subregion, donor state, and county type.1 Donor counties to Harris Co. SUBREGIONS Northern Southern Central Totals: STATES PA AL TN WV NY OH GA SC NC MS KY MD VA (%) (N) (%) (N) 57 41 6 104 55% 39% 6% 10,123,604 7,995,784 2,114,947 20,234,335 50% 40% 10% 4,453 3,231 25% 17% 13% 11% 8% 11% 5% 2% 3% 3% 1% 1% 0% 100% 5,995,097 2,427,024 2,073,647 1,949,644 1,083,266 1,262,558 1,103,941 791,587 1,217,723 482,712 1,077,095 220,132 549,909 20,234,335 54% 39% 7% 100% 9,901,104 5,107,839 5,225,392 20,234,335 2 3 3 1 1 COUNTY TYPES *Metropolitan Urban Rural Totals: Migrants to Harris Co. (N) 26 18 14 11 8 12 5 Totals: 1980 Population of subregions, states, and donor counties2 0 104 56 41 7 104 100% 100% 30% 12% 11% 10% 5% 6% 5% 4% 6% 2% 5% 1% 3% 100% 49% 25% 26% 100% (%) 199 56% 41% 3% 7,883 100% 2,921 1,772 869 589 467 462 269 158 156 145 40 35 37% 22% 11% 7% 6% 6% 3% 2% 2% 2% 1% 1% 0% 0 7,883 100% 6,018 1,678 76% 21% 3% 187 7,883 100% 'For subregional definitions and county typology, see Appalachian Regional Commission, 1979. Source: Pickard, 1981a. All other figures are from IRS Area-to-Area Migration Flow Data. 2 migrants; that is, they moved from one county to another within Eastern Kentucky. The rest of the local moves are split fairly even between nonAppalachian Kentucky counties and counties in the Appalachian areas of West Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, and Virginia. Inmigrants to Eastern Kentucky come principally from urban areas in Kentucky and Ohio, followed by Michigan, Indiana, West Virginia, and Illinois. The chief urban donor areas include Lexington, Cincinnati, Louisville, Detroit, and Columbus. DISCUSSION Although the evidence is incomplete, the much remarked-upon "migration turnaround" of the 1970s which saw the first net gain in migration to Appalachia in five decades, may have come to an end in the early 1980s (Picard, 1981a, 1981b). This finding would correspond to a national trend detected in the early 1980s, in which the flow of migrants to rural America 158 �TABLE 7 1980-81 migration into Kentucky Appalachian counties from selected donor areas. From Contiguous State Areas (N) 15,129 1,279 528 422 320 105 Kentucky (App. Cos.to App. Cos.) *Kentucky (Non-App. Cos. to App. Cos.) *West Virginia "Ohio Tennessee Virginia From Urban Areas by State Kentucky Lexington Louisville (%) (N) 78% 22% 1,805 507 / I AAO/ \ \L\J\J /Q) Ohio Cincinnati Columbus Dayton Hamilton/Middletown Mansfield 542 307 240 214 38 Michigan Detroit Battle Creek 40% 23% 18% 16% 3% (100%) 401 39 Indiana Indianapolis Ft. Wayne/Elkhart/So. Bend 91% 9% (100%) 221 133 62% 38% (100%) 119 36 77% 23% (100%) 150 100% (100%) West Virginia Huntington Charleston Illinois Chicago lotal mmigrants (%) 85% 7% 3% 2% 2% 1% (100%) (N) 2,312 (%) 49% 1,341 22,535 100% 3% 150 21% 7% 155 4,752 (%) 9% , ,354 79% 28% . . . 440 (N) 17,783 3% (100%) *Less inmigrants from urban areas in these states. Source: IRS Area-to-Area Migration Flow Data. decreased notably from that of the mid-1970s (Agresta, 1985; Population Reference Bureau, 1982). Within Appalachia, however, the migrants' preference for rural counties over urban counties continued from the 1970s into the 1980s, but the flow of internal migrants away from metropolitan counties appears to have ended (Picard, 1981b). the most frequent destinations for internal migrants in this study were metropolitan counties, while the least frequent were the formerly popular urban counties. Appalachian migrants also reflect national preference in their choices of which states to enter and which states to leave. The 1980 census data docuument a preference for destinations in Texas, Florida, California, and Arizona 159 �and a disinclination to stay in Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, and Michigan (Robey and Russell, 1983). The national migration flows to states in the South and West and away from the North and East are paralleled by the Appalachian migration patterns presented in this study (Rogerson and Plane, 1985). In their choice of urban destinations, migrants from Appalachia go where jobs are available, but probably encounter intense competition from other migrants upon arrival. Eight of the top-ranked urban destinations of Appalachian migrants are among the twelve urban areas projected to have the greatest population growth between 1980 and 2000: Houston, San Diego, Dallas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Anaheim, Ft. Lauderdale, and Tampa/St. Petersburg (Holdrich, 1984). Similarly, six of the top-ranked urban destinations of Appalachian migrants are among the twelve urban areas projected to have the greatest gain in employment between 1980 and 2000: Houston, Los Angeles, Anaheim, Dallas, San Diego, and Phoenix (Holdrich, 1984). Although recent Appalachian migration patterns parallel national patterns of migration, they diverge significantly from historic patterns of Appalachian migration. Brown and McCoy (1981) found high correlations among the rankings for the metropolitan destinations of Appalachian migrants in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Despite some inconsistency in the way the data were gathered for the 1965-70 study and the 1980-81 study, we noted a substantial change in the pattern of migrant destinations in the 1980s. The change is clear and consistent throughout the county, state, and regional levels of analysis. The focus of Appalachian migration has shifted from the cities and states of the Northeast and Midwest, and has now turned toward the cities and states of the South, Southwest, and West. The study of outmigration from Appalachia to the Houston area provides some insight into the nature of these migration flows. A sizeable portion (24%) of the migrants in the Houston flow came from nonmetropolitan counties. About one in two came from Northern Appalachia, more than one in three from Pennsylvania, and one in six from the Pittsburgh area. This migration stream is likely to be a mixture of upwardly mobile urban business people and professionals seeking career advancement in Houston; unemployed blue-collar workers from the declining manufacturing industries in Northern Appalachia; entry-level job seekers leaving areas of small population and few opportunities; retirees seeking a better climate; and relatives of members of each of these groups. The composition of this stream, as far as it can be accurately characterized, may serve to approximate the other streams of outmigrants identified in this study. The immigration to Eastern Kentucky adds another aspect to the migration picture. The migration flows into this area come almost exclusively from the North, with only two lateral flows, Louisville/Lexington and Charleston/Huntington. These migrants are likely to be return migrants, with social and cultural roots in Appalachian Kentucky (Anglin, 1983). 160 �Although some may be retirees, they are younger on the whole than the networks of kin and acquaintances who drew them back (Garkovich, 1982). They may be looking for work in the coal industry or in service jobs that wax and wane with the fortunes of the coal business. Others are visitors, biding their time and accumulating whatever resources they can for the next move in search of work. CONCLUSION Three major conclusions can be reached on the basis of this study. First, it appears that patterns of outmigration from Appalachia changed substantially between the 1960s and 1970s and the early 1980s. The urban areas that serve as the focal points for current Appalachian migration flows are now more likely to be found in the Southern and Western states than in those of the Midwest or Northeast. Second, it appears that patterns of internal migration within Appalachia have changed between 1970 and 1980. Migrants within the region are moving to metropolitan counties at higher rates in the 1980s than in the previous decade. Third, outmigrants from the Appalachian region move in a fashion quite similar to other internal migrants in the United States. Current Appalachian migration streams flow toward the same general receiving areas as do the larger national migration streams. In their patterns of "moving on," recent Appalachian migrants are less similar to earlier migrants from Appalachia than to their contemporaries in other parts of the country. NOTES 1) Only the returns in which the SSN in 1980 matched the SSN in 1981 were included. Reasons for nonmatches include errors in entering or reading the SSN, individuals marrying and having the second SSN on a joint return, deaths, failure to file, and falling outside the guidelines for filing. 2) Some reasons for differences in the number of exemptions between matching 1980 and 1981 returns are births, deaths, marriages, and dependents leaving the status of dependent. Since the 1981 data are the most recent, they have been interpreted as being the best indication of the actual number of exemptions. 3) Exemptions for blindness and age were not included in the final tally. 161 �4) When the number of returns indicating movement from one county to another were ten or less, they were aggregated into the appropriate larger category: "same state" or one of the four census regions. The present study makes no allocation of the exemptions in these categories. In addition, if county-to-county migration did not account for at least 0.5% of the migrants to the county of destination on the inmigration data set or at least 0.5% of the migrants from the county of origin on the outmigration data set, this information was not presented by county but included in a larger geographical category. This resulted in roughly one-third to two-fifths of the data being reported on a higher geographical level than the county-to-county level. Consequently, the figures presented in this study for county-to-county migration are quiet conservative. Finally, since different aggregation rules may be in effect for inmigration and for outmigration data, the results produced from the two data sets are not necessarily symmetrical. An example may help to illustrate the discrepancies this may cause. In the inmigration data, where Elk County, PA, is the county of destination, the records show that 21 returns were filed by people who migrated from Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), PA. The outmigration data, in which Allegheny County is the county of origin, have no separate record for these 21 returns that indicate relocation in Elk County, but have them aggregated with other "same state" movers. These returns represent four percent of the returns for migrants into Elk County, and accordingly they are listed individually in the inmigration data; however, they account for less than 0.5% of the returns for migrants from Allegheny County, and therefore are aggregated in the "same state" category in the outmigration data. This aggregation procedure causes underestimates of the county-to-county migration into counties with large populations and underestimates of the county-to-county migration out of these counties. With this in mind, we have used the outmigration data set when counties with large populations were the place of destination, and the inmigration data set when these counties were the place of origin. 5) The 1980 census was conducted on April 1, 1980, and the data for the base year in this study were collected on April 15, 1980. The total exemptions for a random sample of Appalachian counties averaged 83 percent of the total census population for these counties. The difference between the national average (90 percent of census totals) and the Appalachian average may be attributed in part to the region's high incidence of poverty, which may place many individuals below the minimum income requirement for filing a tax return (Appalachian Regional Commission, 1982a, 1982b). 162 �6) Consensus is lacking on a geographic definition of the region. In 1894 William G. Frost defined "the Mountain Region of the South" as consisting of 194 counties (Walls, 1977); John C. Campbell (1921) included 254 counties in the "Southern Highlands"; the U.S. Department of Agriculture (1935) variously designated 205 or 236 counties as the "Southern Appalachians"; Brown and Hillery (1962) define "Southern Appalachia" as 190 counties; McCoy and Brown (1981) employ four different definitions of the region, one of which includes 303 counties; Philliber (1981) includes 396 counties in his study of Appalachian migrants; and the Appalachian Regional Commission (1979a) defines the region as 397 counties. This study adopts the most inclusive definition in order to obtain the greatest range of comparability with similar research. 7) The working lists of metropolitan, urban, and rural counties used by the Appalachian Regional Commission were revised in light of the 1980 census data. The county lists used in this study follow the ARC revisions of June 30, 1983. REFERENCES Agresta, Anthony 1985. "The Migration Turnaround: End of a Phenomenon?" Population Today, 13:6-7. Anglin, Mary. 1983. "Experiences of In-Migrants in Appalachia." Pp 227-238 in Allen Batteau, ed., Appalachia and America: Autonomy and Regional Independence. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Appalachian Regional Commission. 1984a. "Appalachian Unemployment, November, 1983." (Map) Appalachia, 17:2 1984K "Projects Funded in Distressed Counties in FY 1983." (Map) Appalachia, 17:6. 1982a. "Appalachian Population and Per Capital Money Income. (Table) Appalachia, 16: 22-23. 1982b. "Poverty Status of Household Population in Appalachia." (Table) Appalachia, 16: 24-25. 1979a. Appalachia—A Reference Book. Washington, DC.: Appalachian Regional Commission. 1979b. A Report to Congress On Migration Washington, DC.: Appalachian Regional Commission. Barren, Hal Seth. 1977. "A Case for Appalachian Demographic History." Appalachian Journal, 4: 208-215. 163 �Belcher, John C. 1962. "Population Growth and Characteristics." Pp 37-53 in Thomas R. Ford, ed., The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Brown, James S. 1972. "A Look at the 1970 Census." Pp. 130-144 in David S. Walls and John B. Stephenson, eds., Appalachia in the Sixties: A Decade of Reawakening. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Brown, James S., and George A. Hillery. 1962. "The Great Migration, 1940-1960." Pp 54-78 in Thomas R. Ford, ed., The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Campbell, John C. 1921. The Southern Highlander and His Homeland. New York: The Russell Sage Foundation. Cumberland, John H. 1973. Regional Development: Experiences and Prospects in the United States of America. Second edition. The Hague: Mouton. Ford, Thomas R., and Gordon F. Dejong. 1963. "The Decline of Fertility in the Southern Appalachian Mountain Region." Social Forces, 42:89-96. Garkovich, Lorraine. 1982. "Kinship and Return Migration in Eastern Kentucky." Appalachian Journal, 10: 62-70. Goodrich, Carter, Bushrod W. Allin. C. Warner Thornthwaite, et al. 1936. Migration and Economic Opportunity: The Report of the Study of Population Redistribution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Holdrich, Martin K. 1984. "Trends: Prospects for Metropolitan Growth." American Demographics, 6:33-37. Longino, Charles F., Jr. 1984. "Migration Winners and Losers." American Demographics, 6: 27-45. Marger, Martin N., and Phillip J. Obermiller. 1983. "Urban Appalachians and Canadian Maritime Migrants: A Comparative Study of Emergent Ethnicity." International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 24: 229-243. McCoy, Clyde B., and James S. Brown. 1981. "Appalachian Migration to Midwestern Cities." P; 35-78 in Wm. W. Philliber and Clyde B. McCoy, eds., The Invisible Minority: Urban Appalachians. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Murdock, Steven H., and Clyde B. McCoy. 1974. "A Note on the Decline of Appalachian Fertility, 1930-1970." Growth and Change, 5, 39-42. Peoples Appalachian Research Collective. 1972. "Urban Migrants: Industrial Heartland Refugees." Special Issue. Peoples Appalachia, Vol. 2, No. 7, (July). Philliber, William W. 1981. Appalachian Migrants in Urban America: Cultural Conflict or Ethnic Croup Formation:1 New York: Praeger. 164 �Pickard, Jerome. 1981a. "A Decade of Change in Appalachia." Appalachia, 14: 1-9. 1981K 'Appalachia's Decade of Change = A Decade of Inmigration." Appalachia, 15: 24-28. Population Reference Bureau. 1982. "U.S. Population: Where We Are; Where We Are Going." Population Bulletin, Vol. 37, No. 2, Qune). Robley, Bryant, and Cheryl Russell. 1983. "Trends: Altered States." American Demographics, 5: 34-36. Rogerson, Peter A., and David A. Plane. 1985. "Monitoring Migration Trends." American Demograpics, 1: 27-47. Schwarzweller, Harry K., James S. Brown, and J.J. Mangalam. 1971. Mountain Families in Transition. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Shapiro, Henry D. 1977. "Appalachia and the Idea of America: The Problem of the Persisting Frontier." Pp. 43-55 in J.W. Williams, ed., An Appalachian Symposium. Boone, NC: Appalachian State University Press. 1978 Appalachia on Our Mind. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Uhlenberg, Peter. 1975. "Noneconomic Determinants of Nonmigration: Sociological Considerations for Migration Theory." Rural Sociology, 38: 296-311. U.S. Department of Agriculture. 1935. Economic and Social Problems and Conditions of the Southern Miscellaneous Publication No. 205. Appalachians. Vance, Rupert B. 1962. "The Region: A New Survey." Pp 1-8 in Thomas R. Ford, ed., The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Walls, David S. 1977. "On the Naming of Appalachia." P. 56-76 in J.W. Williamson, ed., An Appalachian Symposium. Boone, NC: Appalachian State University Press. Watts, Ann DeWitt. 1981. "Cities and Their Place in Southern Appalachia." Appalachian Journal, 8: 105-118. Weller, Robert H., and Leon F. Bouvier. 1981. Population: Demography and Policy New York: St. Martin's Press. White, Stephen E. 1983. "Return Migration to Appalachian Kentucky: An Atypical Case of Nonmetropolitan Migration Reversal." Rural Sociology, 48: 471-491. 165 �FREE AT LAST?: THREE VIEWS OF APPALACHIAN HISTORY Convenor: Judi Jennings, Kentucky Humanities Council The Significance of Ingle's Ferry in the Settling of the Appalachian Region Laura Binder, Radford University Impact of the Company Town on Traditional Life Dean Herrin, University of Delaware Whitfield County, Georgia: Slavery Politics on the Edge of Appalachia Derrell C. Roberts, Dalton Junior College Impact of the Company Town on Traditional Life by Dean Herrin In October of 1897, the Big stone Gap Post, of Wise County, Virginia, reflected on recent change in the county: Two years ago, along the banks of Callahan creek...was a gloomy wilderness... The advent of the railroad, breaking the stillness of this grand and wild mountain district, was not more wonderful to the ordinary native than the sudden springing into existence of Stonega.1 The "gloomy wilderness" had been replaced by a mining town, which was soon to become the base of operations for the Virginia Coal and Iron Company. Labor recruited from the mountains was supplemented with immigrants from southern Europe and southern Blacks. Houses, churches, mine structues, and roads all appeared where once only a few isolated cabins had stood. A physical transformation had taken place on the banks of the Callahan, a transformation that occured many times throughout Appalachia around the turn of the twentieth century. The story seemed to be the same everywhere: traditional, agricultural patterns of life were disrupted and replaced by the industrial rhythms and structures of mine camps. Farming the land gave way to mining the earth as the primary occupation of the region. Many native Appalachian mountaineers fled this industrial invasion, moving further into the mountains to re-establish the way of life they knew best. Others, however, saw in the coal camps opportunity, excitement, money, or a host of other real and imagined enticements. Mountain cabins, plows, and seasonal work rhythms were given up for company housing, coal cars, and 166 �industrial whistles. But the break with tradition was never complete. Older cultural patterns were drawn upon to help in the adjustment to newer patterns. Tradition informed and guided innovation. This study of one particular coal camp, Stonega, Virginia, will focus on life in these camps, on the patterns of associations formed by those who lived in the camps, and on the preservation of tradition. Tradition was not easily preserved. Coal camps were perceived by some as not only the active agents in the physical transformation of Appalachia, but as agents in the transformation of traditional Appalachian society. The establishment of coal camps and the subsequent rise in the population of Appalachia were welcomed by many observers of the mountain region as solutions to its "community problem." Unaware or unimpressed by the communalism afforded by court days, or the local church, or through shared farm labor, the sociologist Edward Alsworth Ross wrote in The New Republic in 1924: In the mountains between Pennsylvania and Georgia are pocketed three million old-line Americans who illustrate the social effects of isolation as vividly as Albania or the Caucasus.2 Others also pointed to the supposed lack of community in the mountains. "Lack of good roads has caused an undue isolation, has prevented cooperative activity and the realization of the ideals of a modern community life...", wrote one journalist. Another suggested that an "over-developed individualism" had resulted because "there is no cohesive community life..."3 Samuel Tyndale Wilson, in his mission-study text of 1906, The Southern Mountaineers, believed that: The industrial invasion will introduce much evil, but it will, in part at least, prepare the way for better things. It will break up the isolation. Shiftlessness will disappear if the awards of labor are forthcoming. The days of no trade and no money are passing away. The mountaineer sees it, dreads it, and will profit by it.4 Whether or not mountaineers who moved into Stonega "profited" by it is beyond the scope of this paper, but they did form not simply a community, but several different types of community in the camp. By "community" I mean a shared set of values and interests that distinguishes one group from another. A recent study asserts that class consciousness was the primary definition of community among miners in southern West Virginia in the early part of this century.5 Community based on class feeling was present but not dominant in Stonega before the 1930s, coexisting with other "communities" based on race, ethnicity, and such factors as religion and location in camp. 167 �The physical structure of Stonega helped to determine community. Built largely in 1896 and 1897, the town was divided into various sections representing class, racial and ethnic divisions. The Immigration Commission, created by Congress in 1908 to investigate the living conditions of immigrants in American industry, reported that mining camps in Wise County were segregated "principally because of the desire of the employees themselves for segregation."6 Whether the coal company named the various sections of Stonega is unknown, but the names are indicative of the social ordering in the camp. Black laborers were housed in Red Row, Slavetown, Creek Row, Smokey Row, and Possum Trot, locations near the coke ovens. Immigrants, mostly Hungarians and Poles, lived in Hunk Town. The rest of the camp was made up of native white Americans, some from the Appalachian region and others brought to Stonega from nearby states. They lived in such areas as Quality Row, Avondale, and Church Hill. Employees may have preferred living in segregated parts of the camp, as the Immigration Commission reported, but the coal company most clearly maintained this segregation in the assignment of houses. In a letter describing the condition of vacant houses in two other Stonega Coke and Coal Company* camps in Wise County, a company official ranked them in the following order: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) For First-Class Americans For Low-Class Americans For Foreigners For First-Class Colored Labor For Low-Class Colored Labor7 At the top of the housing scale were those houses intended for the supervisory personnel of the company, such as the superintendent of the camp, the company doctor, and other officials. These houses were large, three-story, fourteen to sixteen-room structures occupying the section of town known as the "Park", which simply by its name evokes a pastoral scene set apart from such sections as "Smokey Row" and "Possum Trot". Company clerks and store employees, and certain skilled employees, such as electricians were housed nearest the Park, in the section known as "Quality Row". These houses were two-story, and as with most other houses in Stonega, were semi-detached and intended for two families. Each unit in Quality Row houses had four rooms in its half. The most common type of house built in Stonega was the two-story, double-pen type, found in almost all sections of the camp, and occupied by all groups. The cheapest form of housing consisted of tworoom shacks, built in the Possum Trot section and intended for Black labor. These houses were so identified with Black workers that one former resident of Stonega only remembered them as "colored people-shacks". The final house type constructed by the company was a one-story, four-room house, twenty-one of which were built in 1910 to house the workers of the com*The Virginia Coal and Iron Company's successor. 168 �pany's carpentry shop.8 The segregated sections of Stonega and the selective assignment of houses were indicative of company attitudes toward miners. Since the development of the Stonega field, the native Appalachian population had been looked down upon by the intruders. When General John Daniel Imboden was first promoting the area in the 1880s, he commented once on how he had told a group of investors all about Wise County and, ...how nice it was ...and interested them so much that when our road is built they are coming out to see for themselves. They think it must be delightful to see and mingle with primitive people.9 Stonega Coke and Coal Company's annual report for 1917 referred to the Wise County natives who the company first encountered as "at least two hundred years behind the civilization of the more densely populated sections of the United States."10 The. Appalachian mountaineers were not simply culturally inferior; they were culturally deficient. A Stonega resident and office clerk who wrote a weekly news item for the Big Stone Gap Post, contributed the following in 1903: We rise to remark that the only thing Stonega needs to make it the most desirable place on the globe, is for the cultured people who come here to reside, to disseminate their culture by using their talents in reaching out and helping those who have not been so highly favored...11 Blacks and immigrants were also considered among those who had "not been so highly favored", with frequent disparaging remarks found in company reports, letters, and news items in the Big Stone Gap Post.12 This attitude on the part of the company helped foster a class solidarity among the miners, a solidarity of "us" versus "them". But class solidarity of the miners was also tempered by divisions of race and ethnicity, divisions made more acute by the company's labor problems. The 1917 annual report for the Stonega Coke and Coal Company claimed that since the establishment of the coal industry in the Stonega area, the shortage of labor had been the most serious problem faced by the coal operators. As the mining and coking operations had increased at Stonega in the late 1890s, and as other mines opened in the region, the native population was unable to provide the necessary number of workers.13 To obtain the necessary labor, large numbers of men were brought into the Stonega area "on transportation" between 1895 and 1920. In 1899, 1,000 men were imported to the region, while in 1900, the figure rose to 1,377. From 1915 to 1920, the Stonega Coke and Coal Company imported a yearly average of 2,260 workers.14 Many of the workers imported into the region were either recently-arrived immigrants, or southern Blacks. The annual report for 1900 listed a monthly average of 1,405 workers on the company's payroll for that year. Of these men, 49.5 per cent were 169 �native whites, 31.8 per cent were Blacks, and 18.7 per cent were immigrants, mainly Hungarian.15 Many of these men brought in from outside the area did not stay long in Stonega, however. The usual procedure was for the company to pay the travel expenses of the worker to the mines, and then take out so much every month from the worker's paycheck until the transportation costs had been reimbursed. Upon arriving in Stonega, some workers left the camp and hired on with other local mine operators, thereby avoiding the transportation fee. Most of the coal companies in Wise County, including the Stonega Coke and Coal Company, were active in trying to lure workers away from one another. Others left because they did not like the work, or the area, or both. Transportation men who left the area in 1916 reported that they had to sneak away at night, as the company had guards who were watching them. For the period 1905 to 1915, 18.8 percent of all men brought into Stonega on transportation left without working.16 Native workers also moved from camp to camp, to increase wages, to escape harsh conditions, or for a variety of other reasons. One might assume that the mobility of mine workers would have prohibited any formation of "community" in the coal fields, but as David Corbin has shown for West Virginia, miners' mobility led to the creation of a large community uniting isolated company towns.17 Each company town afforded miners a sense of identification, whether derived from occupation, church membership, kinship ties, or ethnic affiliation. Most migrant miners found "communities" to fit into in each coal camp. The different racial and ethnic communities in the coal camps helped to support and sustain the families of Stonega. Native whites, immigrants, and Blacks all occupied separate sections of Stonega, and maintained tightknit communities around these sections. Each group had its own church, its own fraternal orders, and its own customs. Fraternal organizations in particular reflected both mutual support among the miners and ethnic and racial separation; five lodges were established for native white miners, two each for immigrant and Black miners, and one even for wives of white miners.18 Traditional values and preserved patterns of life were also instrumental in maintaining community. The immigrant population in Stonega was particularly adept at maintaining strong ties with the "old world". A Roman Catholic priest who served Stonega reported that at certain times of the year, such as First Holy Communion, Confirmation, or the consecration of a new church, one "would imagine to live for the time in a village of the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire."19 The occupation of mining itself enabled all groups in Stonega to uphold certain work traditions, particularly those associated with agriculture. The company complained in its 1902 annual report that "the insurmountable difficulty is to prevail upon the employees to work sufficient time to get the yield out of the plant equal to its capacity."20 Part of the problem stemmed from the method of mining used in the early Stonega mines. Most miners 170 �were paid not by the hour, but by the amount of coal they loaded. The shift usually began about seven in the morning, but the miner was free to come and go as he pleased. He bought his own tools and blasting powder, and he decided when he had loaded enough coal. The distances between working places in the mines, and the small number of supervisors meant that most miners worked all day without seeing a boss. In a sense, the miner sold the coal to the company. The editor of Coal Age described mining as late as 1921 as similar to a "cottage industry, only the cottage is a room in the mines." The process was very similar to a tenant farmer "selling" his crops to the landlord, and many miners in Stonega had indeed been tenant farmers before coming to the camp. 21 There were other ways in which miners maintained touch with their agricultural past. Many miners operated farms near Stonega and would leave the mines periodically throughout the year to tend to their crops. Many others in the camp maintained gardens and kept cows, chickens, and hogs. The company, of course, became frustrated with the seasonal work habits of the miners: "It is impossible to maintain the discipline necessary to get the efficient results desired and possible." The company began mechanizing their mines after 1915, but it encountered "prejudice against trying anything new" on the part of the miners. Jerry Bruce Thomas has reported that the tonnage system of mining persisted in the coal industry long after machinery made it obsolete.22 Besides maintaining a traditional work discipline, residents of Stonega resisted certain ideoilogical aspects of camp life, often in subtle ways. Freedom of choice was protected by the miners, who patronized peddlers and local stores, even though the company went so far as to fire employees who allowed competing salesmen into their company homes.23 Traditional habits were maintained by the miners, who refused to drink piped water, even though the company warned of a contaminated water supply and threatened to fire workers who continued to drink well water.24 Religious independence was claimed by the miners as evidenced by the complaint of the coal company in 1904 that attendance was very poor in the church it had built and continued to support.25 Old customs of entertainment were still enjoyed by the miners, as they gambled and drank illegal whiskey and "layed of?' work days after particularly boisterous weekends.26 Residents of Stonega did not completely reject the capitalistic and industrial ideology sponsored by the coal company, but the adjustment to camp life was eased somewhat by the maintenance of traditional patterns of life. The company was also able to use tradition to its advantage. When more workers were needed, Appalachian natives who were felt to be influential with mountaineers were asked to recruit workers from the hills. A Catholic priest was hired to attract immigrants to Stonega. Bake ovens were built behind some houses in Stonega, so that the company could "get some Hungarian families to locate there..." But as with work habits, most tradi171 �tional patterns of behavior was considered by the company to be objectionable and "peculiar."27 Many miners saw each other as "peculiar" as well. Immigrants were subject to Americanization efforts. One local priest complimented the "foreigners" on their flag-raising during World War I, and claimed that they "bought liberty bonds until they had to borrow money to pay their regular bills."28 Most buildings and events at Stonega were segregated into white and black sections, and many white Stonega residents recalled in interviews that "people knew their place." The different racial and ethnic groups at Stonega coexisted peacefully most of the time, but there were occasional outbreaks of violence. The Big Stone Gap Post for May, 1898, reported a fight in which "nearly all nationalities were represented."29 A more typical pattern of interaction was described by a local priest, who related the trouble that Appalachian natives had with understanding the Roman Catholic faith of the immigrants: It is their conviction that the Catholics believe neither in Christ nor in the Bible, that they worship the Virgin and adore pictures, that they are a mixture of Mormons, Jews and Mohammedans, and that it is safer not to fool with them.30 Traditional cultural patterns were not destroyed in Stonega. In fact, each group's preservation of past cultural behavior was one factor that created boundaries between racial and etchnic groups in Stonega, and was a principal reason why class feeling and behavior was only one of several relationships formed by the miner in Stonega. The transition from an individual farmstead to a coal camp thrust the Appalachian mountaineer into a new industrial environment in Wise County, Virginia. In the camp the miner belonged to various "communities" that further aided in the adjustment to an industrial setting. The miner was at any one time, a member of a certin social and economic class, a work group, a church, a lodge hall, a family, and perhaps other groups as well. The miner's membership in these communities and his adaptation of past cultural values to the coal camp gave the miner a sense of security and self-identity in a new environment. NOTES 1. Big Stone Gap (Virginia) Post, 7 October, 1897. 2. Ronald D. Eller, Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982) pp. 33-38; Margaret Ripley Wolfe, "Aliens in Southern Appalachia: Catholics in the Coal Camps, 1900-1940," Appalachian Heritage6 (Winter 1978) :44. 172 �3. Henry D. Shapiro, "Appalachia and the Idea of America: The Problem of the Persisting Frontier," in An Appalachian Symposium: Essays Written in Honor of Gratis D. Williams, ed. J.W. Williamson (Boone, N.C.: Appalachian State University Press, 1977), p. 51. 4. Henry D. Shapiro, Appalachia on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1978) p. 159. 5. David Alan Corbin, Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981). 6. U.S. Congress, Senate, Reports of the Immigration Commission — Immigrants in Industries, S. Doc. 633, 61st Congress, 2nd sess., 1911, Part 1, Vol. 2, "The Bituminous Coal Mining Industry in the South," p. 211. 7. E. Drennen to D.B. Wentz, 4 October 1915, Westmoreland Coal Company Collection, Hagley Museum and Library, Greenville, DE, Accession (Ace.) 1765, Series (Ser.) II, Box 385, Virginia File No. 17; "Houses and Buildings, 1914-1918." 8. D.B. Sayers to E. Drennen, 26 July 1915, Westmoreland, Ace. 1765, Ser. II, Box 385, Virginia File No. 17: "Houses and Buildings, 1914-1918"; Stonega Coke and Coal Company Annual Report, 1917, Westmoreland, Ace. 1765, Ser. II, Box 211, pp. 25-26, 39: Transcript No. 24, Interview with Joseph Tony, Big Stone Gap, Virginia (December 1972), Oral History Collection, Emory and Henry College, Emory, Virginia. 9. Eller, Miners, p. 49. 10. Annual Report, 1917, Westmoreland, p. 3. 11. Big Stone Gap Post,, 24 December 1903. 12. Annual Report, 1917, Westmoreland, p. 7; Big Stone Gap Post, 31 March, 1898: Big Stone Gap Post, 24 July, 1902. 13. Annual Report, 1917, Westmoreland, p. 3. 14. Annual Reports,1915-1920, Westmoreland: "Virginia Coal and Iron Company: Annual Report of Operating Department (1899 and 1900),"Westmoreland, Ace. 1764, Ser. I, Box 4. 15. "Virginia Coal and Iron Company: Annual Report of Operating Department (1900)," Westmoreland. 16. E. Drennen to D.B. Wentz, 19 November 1913, Westmoreland, Ace. 1765, Ser. II, Box 385: A.H. Reeder to J.B. Newton, 5 July 1906, Westmoreland, Ace. 1765, Ser. II, Box 443, Virginia File No. 125: "Va. Iron, Coal & Coke Co. 1905-1923"; Annual Report, 1915, Westmoreland, p. 10. 17. Corbin, Life, Work and Rebellion, p. 42. 18. Big Stone Gap Post, 8 June, 1899: 9 October, 1902; 30 July, 1903; 6 August, 1903. 19. "Sacred Heart Church of Stonega and Missions," unpublished MS. (in author's possession), St. Bernard Abbey, Cullman, Alabama, p. 4. 20. "Annual Reports to the Stockholders (1902)," Westmoreland., 173 �21. United States, Department of Justice, "Memorandum (Earnest Randolph)," dated October 29, 1915, Straight Numerical File 182363, Record Group 60, National Archives; Richard M. Simon, "The Labor Process and Uneven Development: The Appalachian Coalfields, 1880-1930," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research* (March 1980): 55. 22. Jerry Bruce Thomas, "Coal Country: The Rise of the Southern Smokeless Coal Industry and Its Effect on Area Development, 1872-1910," (Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1971), p. 206; Big Stone Gap Post, 30 June, 1904; Annual Report, 1918, Westmoreland, p. 7; "Annual Reports to the Stockholders (1902)," Westmoreland; Annual Report, 1916, Westmoreland, p. 31. 23. Wise County Court Records, File No. 2285, Wise County Courthouse, Wise, Virginia. 24. D.B. Wentz to A.H. Reeder, 20 January 1909, Westmoreland, Ace. 1765, Ser. II, Box 416, Virginia File No. 9: "Small Pox at Stonega and Osaka 1904-1911." 25. A.H. Reeder to D.B. Wentz, 8 August 1904, Westmoreland, Ace 1765, Ser. II, Box 360, Virginia File No. 12: "Churches 1904-1909." 26. Transcript No. 24, Interview with Joseph Tony. 27. A.H. Reeder to D.B. Wentz, 8 July 1907, Westmoreland, Ace. 1765, Ser. 11, Box 416, Virginia File No. 9: "Small Pox at Stonega and Osaka 1904-1911"; C.G. Duffy to R.E. Taggert, 8 Apiril 1916, Westmoreland, Ace. 1765, Ser. II, Box 384, Virginia File No. 107: "Houses Leases 1915-1916"; Big Stone Gap Post, 24 July, 1902. 28. "Sacred Heart Church of Stonega and Missions," p. 4. 29. Big Stone Gap Post, 26 May, 1898. 30. Wolfe, p. 48. 174 �REALITIES AND MYTHS: MOUNTAIN POLITICS Convenor: Ron Eller, Mars Hill College Hubbard's Branch of Mill Creek—1964 and 1984: Twenty Years After the War on Poverty Warren Brunner, Berea, Kentucky Tom Boyd, Berea College Boss Hoggism—Fact or Fiction: The View from Eastern Kentucky Stuart Sprague, Morehead State University Hubbard's Branch of Mill Creek —1964 and 1984: Twenty Years After the War on Poverty by Warren Brunner and Tom Boyd Introduction What we attempt here is a naturalistic study of an occurrence. The goal is not the testing of an hypothesis about the cause of events; we don't even plan to defend any hypothesis. Our ambition in this work deals with awareness of things — consciousness. Brunner and Boyd have been working together — reasoning, arguing, and at times even agreeing — in order to capture a tiny part of an occurrence in American history. This capture, if successful, has as its goal a heightening of our awareness of social change. What we attempt for the next 15 minutes is a manipulation of perspective, an addition to the social construction of reality of The War on Poverty. Our information comes from a variety of sources: Brunner's photographs taken in Mill Creek in 1964 and 1984, files and other information about the Appalachian Volunteer/Council of the Southern Mountains summer program, data about the area published between 1964 and 1984, visits with families that were the target of the program, and talks with some of the participants responsible for guiding the program. Photographers use image to make language. Sociologists use language (albeit at times jargon and numbers) to make image. Here we plan to make private worlds public to heighten the 175 �awareness of us all. Our presentation will be brief. We hope all will become sensitized to some reality of Hubbard's Branch and that the discussion of images and argument that follows will be the way we might begin to "make sense" out of Appalachian rural social change and The War on Poverty. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 proclaimed its goal was "to eliminate the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty". (Harrington, p. 3) In January, during his State of the Union Message, President Johnson declared "an unconditional war on poverty". The Office of Economic Opportunity, which was created to fight this war, received considerable attention and never cost the government even one-percent of the federal budget. (Harrington, p. 21) Besides community action, a number of other programs to alleviate problems of low-income citizens were started and live on today as Head Start, Food Stamps, Medicaid, and the like. Today, awareness of this period of American history is often limited to the belief that such programs were gigantic, were handouts, and were unsuccessful. The Reagan administration's view seems to conform to this conventional belief in spite of other views. Even though the War on Poverty never got off the ground, it is blamed for some of the budget ills of the 1980's. As Michael Harrington puts it, "The savior that never was (has become) the scapegoat that is." (Harrington, p. 20) This assistance effort was not gigantic — America remains the Westernworld's most limited welfare state. (Harrington, p. 16) Such programs were not simply handouts — most required local aid and recipients had to demonstrate that they "earned" the amelioration of their problems. Finally, the efforts were not uniformly without impact — figures on life expectancy, levels of educational attainment, and nutrition crept up during the period after a variety of programs were put in place. As portrayed in the popular media and political pronouncements today, American awareness of The War on Poverty is a memory of events that never happened. (Harrington, p. 15) We construct images of what did happen in one tiny place in the Appalachian region of America. Hubbard's Branch of Mill Creek—1964-1984. The Appalachian Volunteer Summer Program: 1964 The Appalachian Volunteers started before the formation of the federal office of Economic Opportunity. The AV's earliest labors were in the Spring of 1964: these were work projects to improve school buildings using college students and local volunteer labor on Saturdays. In January 1964, the President's Appalachian Regional Commission sent a consultant to eastern Kentucky to investigate the feasibility of organizing and mobilizing a group of volunteers to work on the "grass roots" level of poverty in Appalachia. He focused on the Appalachian Volunteers of The Council of the Southern Mountains. (Conn, p. 10) During February, a lead article in Newsweek was 176 �titled "Poverty USA", and it had a special section on Appalachia. The description of Sargent Shriver's plans for OEO said that among other things, there were "...pilot programs on the drawing board (that) involve putting college students...to work as tutors for potential high school dropouts." (Newsweek, p. 36) Hubbard's Branch of Mill Creek in Clay County was possibly the earliest recipient of one of these programs. From June 8 through August 7 in the summer of 1964, college students taught reading, writing, and arithmetic and organized recreational activities in this community. The people on Mill Creek had requested school renovation, but as stated in the project report, "since school renovation appeared unnecessary and since a number of students had offered to volunteer their services during the summer, the idea of a community summer school project gradually developed". "The need for a program that would teach the three R's but, more important, would motivate the children of Mill Creek to want to learn was obvious." (CSM, Mill Creek Project Report, p. 3) The educational activities took place in the Hubbard Cemetery Missionary Baptist Church. The church voted to allow the use of the building for a summer school program. While on the project, the volunteers were given room and board by the Mill Creek residents. The proposal for funding said the college students would attempt to provide educational experiences for some 20 school age students and that this would bring to the community, "...a modern educational experience that goes far beyond anything that has been attempted in a similar eastern Kentucky community. (Project proposal, p. 1) The daily school activities ran from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. and from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. The "curriculum" included movies, records, painting, music made by a rhythm band, and reading. Field trips included parents, and the group went to Cumberland Falls, Levi Jackson State Park, and the State Capitol Building at Frankfort. While in Frankfort, Governor Breathitt met with them in the Capitol Rotunda. An excited news release accompanied by photographs went out from the Commonwealth of the Kentucky Department of Public Information. The budget for this summer school project was $775. It had $375 for supplies and field trips and $400 for living allowances and expenses of the volunteers. Equipment and books were borrowed from the Kentucky Extension Library Service and the Berea College Library. A basketball and goals were given by businessmen in Manchester, as was a car for the older boys to tear down and work on. All project documents stressed that the parents of the pupils assumed responsibility for providing meals and lodging for the volunteers. The original college student volunteers were from New York City (Union College) Detroit (Harvard College) and St. Louis (Cumberland College). Two additional volunteers, one from Massachusetts and one from Tennessee, joined the project after the midpoint replacing two of the originals who left for 177 �health reasons. Reports about the project say that, "For the first time, the children had become friends with someone whom they could admire and look up to who was not a school dropout..." One of the volunteers said the project goal was "not just to teach reading and writing, but to live with the people and to enter into their way of life". As officials described it, "The volunteer teachers became friends and possible symbols for what the children may try to become". The volunteer teacher taught the parents about the world and how 'outsiders' or formally educated people look at the world and life". (Project report, passim) At the end of the summer a VISA volunteer was assigned to Mill Creek to carry on other community work. Upon the completion of this earliest AV summer school program the Sunday Courier-Journal ran an article using a Brunner's photographs. It was entitled "Students Bring Light to Mountain Children", and under the heading "Volunteers pioneer classes at Mill Creek" the author, after giving details of program, community, families, and education concluded, "the Appalachian Volunteers need money in order to continue the school renovation and summer teaching programs". (Courier Journal, section 4, p. 4) The money did come in to support the Appalachian Volunteers: in 1965 the OEO came to play a major role in this support. Eight months after the completion of the project, in April 1965, the Coordinator of the CSM Education Projects wrote to the Director of the AV's about the Mill Creek project. He acknowledged that, "The Mill Creek project was one of the firm publicity and growth angles of the Appalachian Volunteers...". However, given this impact on the AV's, he wanted a better handle on the impact upon the families. "How are the residents of Mill Creek living now — as compared to conditions, human and environmental, before the project?" (CSM, letter April 16, 1965) The AV Director's response to the question included the facts that some students considered attending outside boarding schools, books were left behind for the one-room school, and the VISA worker was receiving community cooperation in a variety of efforts. The Appalachian Volunteer development effort has been described as encompassing three different strategies — issue organizing, community organizing, and the self-help programs which began with the early "enrichment" efforts such as this one at Mill Creek. (Whisnant, pp. 195-197) With the passing of 20 years can we any better respond to the question of how residents of Mill Creek are living now after their encounter with such "enrichment"? The Community In 1964, as now, Hubbard's Branch of Mill Creek was a dispersed residential area 22 miles from the county-seat of Manchester and about four miles up the creek from the local post office and stores of the nearest crossroads community. Then, as now, community activities were centered around its hillside cemetery and the annual homecoming the second Sunday in August 178 �each year. Transportation in and out of the community was on a dirt road that had wooden flooring on the bridges criss-crossing the stream. Today, it is much the same except for the new cement bridges crossing the creek. The post office has left the store that formerly housed it, migrating about 300 yards onto the blacktop and that much closer to Manchester. Carried on by a different owner on the same site, what was formerly Mrs. Hubbard's store is still a commercial venture. The summer school program was to assist the pupils that attended the Middle Mill Creek Elementry School — a structure that now is a family home. Education has migrated out of the community to the more modern consolidated elementry school about eight miles away and nearer the population concentrations. While some students in 1964 walked to the one-room elementary school others rode a bus out for more advanced education. Twenty years ago, according to the driver it was a 36 person bus, and today the same man drives a bus with a 65 child capacity. In the early 1950's, the Rural Electric Cooperative brought electricity to the community, (correspondence with Flem Messer, Jan. 1985) For the census enumeration district of which Mill Creek is a part, by 1980 electricity as a fuel for cooking was up 55% from the 1970 figure to 84% of the households using it. Between 1970 and 1980, coal and wood as heating fuels went from 100% down to 68% usage. What the census calls "complete plumbing facilities" were found in 4% of the homes in 1970, and now they are found in 44% of the homes in the area. Forty-five percent of the households are estimated to have telephones, and among the families on Mill Creek this includes one having that necessary modern adjunct, an unlisted telephone number. Housing conditions have changed. Both assistance programs and individual prosperity have led to new siding on homes and weatherproofing. Trailers have been brought in for housing returned migrants, and some new homes are the result of the regional franchise effort 'Jim Walker Homes' replacing the much earlier custom of building with local materials. The Mill Creek community in its physical and social aspects presents a face of stability in the continuation of the church, the cemetery and the annual homecoming celebration. It also demonstrates deep change in the transfer of institutions from local scope and size to county and regional ranges of taste and control. The community is within the Red Bird Purchase unit of the Daniel Boone National Forest, thus a major land owner is the federal government. Their policy for land use is not one promoting homesteads and family life. Private landholding within the forest area is common, and it is on that land that community life continues, but the National Forest is still a major force. When the husband in one of the four original households participating in the summer program died, the spouse sold the land and moved out of the community. The Forest Service later purchased this land and the homestead is gone. Federal ownership replacing private ownership is an important force of change that originates from outside the community and 179 �has a major impact upon it. The Families According to project records, six families and thirty-three children lived in this area of Mill Creek. Four of the families and twenty of the children participated in the summer school program. The project description said, "The families are related by geographical proximity, common church membership or association, and often by kinship". (Project description, p.l) These ties of horizontal or local level social interaction are found twenty years later in fascinating patterns. In 1964 of the four families in the program, one had seven members, two had nine members, and one had ten members. These four original households have become twenty-nine households encompassing the original generation and the new one. The original thirty-five persons have changed in group composition only slightly — three are now deceased, but there were also three additional births in the original families. Of all these persons, 49% (17) lived on Mill Creek in 1984. Eight people lived in nearby rural areas, seven in nearby county-seats, and three persons in 1984 lived away from eastern Kentucky. The program did open up the community to new experiences but, while one entire family group with descendants moved out of the community when the land was sold to the Forest Service, Mill Creek has not experienced the reduction in population found in other parts of Appalachia. Between 1970 and 1980 the enumeration district surrounding Mill Creek had a 12% decline in the number of housing units, an 18% decline in the number of residents, and an 11% decline in the number of families. There was also a shift in the model size of households from six or more persons to three persons. Mill Creek defied this pattern and at the same time, took part in it. Families still thrive on Mill Creek; children have moved away to stay, while others who left have returned to live near the original homeplaces, parents and siblings. One entire family-group, even though it moved over the ridge into the next county, keeps in touch through a variety of activities including the church homecoming. For the three resident and remaining family-groups, the first has gone from one to three households in the community, the second has gone from one to six households in the local area and the third from one to four households in Mill Creek. This change in twenty years, from four to thirteen households in this community, represents a 225% increase! At the same time, the family group that moved away plus "branches" of the other three make sixteen households living outside Mill Creek. Branches of Mill Creek stems are found as far away as Louisville, Arkansas and Illinois. Seventeen of the original thirty-five persons are still living today in this community, and the count of these plus their descendants and spouses makes a total of forty-six persons — a 31% rise in the 180 �population! At the same time, it differs in its family growth. Hubbard's Branch mirrors the surrounding enumeration area in one way — the model size of households. In 1964 model family size was 9 persons, and today it is three persons as in the rest of the area. One of the summer project volunteers, the teacher, was quoted in the final report: Through me and the other volunteers (the parents) realized their need to send their children to school, the need to learn more themselves and the need to think about their children leaving the mountains for a new life. (The children were given)...inspiration, enthusiasm and a desire for something bigger and better, something reaching into the world they had known nothing about. The community as a whole began to realize that they were people that could and should want to be a part of the whole world. (Final report, p. 7-8) Mill Creek families are now part of the wider world but at the same time, they have not rejected life in the community. Absence of particiption in formal education does not explain this view of "home". Participation in Formal Education During the summer school, formal education in 1964 was described in these terms: "Given such a set of circumstances of isolation, limited communications and poor schools, it is not unreasonable to expect to find the adults with little if any formal education and their children extremely limited and retarded in their school achievement level. Only one parent on Mill Creek had gone to high school. Of those able to read and write, very few had reached the eighth grade. Nearly half of the 20 children participating in this program were behind in their grade level from two to five years", (report, p. 3) What has taken place in the 20 year interval? Twenty-six children were alive in the four famiies at the time of the summer school with 20 of them attending "classes" in the church for nine weeks. The educational attainment for the 25 alive in 1984 was the following: ten had completed high school (38%), one completed high school and some college (4%), seven ended their education with some high school (27%) and eight ended their education with the eighth grade or less (31%). Of the adults in the four families in 1964 seven had only some elementary school and one had completed high school. Thus, in 1964 the adult model attainment of education was some elementary school, but for the children 20 years later, the model attainment of education is the completion of high school (42%). In the enumeration district surrounding Mill Creek, from 1970 to 1980 there was an increase in the level of schooling for the population 25 years 181 �of age and older. For this group, 14% of the population had completed high school or gone further. However, the 25 Mill Creek summer project children and siblings 42% had attained this same level. Taking only the 11 Mill Creek children resident in the community today 27% (3) have completed high school. Focusing only on the fourteen program participants that are not presently resident in Mill Creek, 57% (8) have completed high school. From these comparisons between generations inside the community and across the next generation comparing Mill Creek with the surrounding area, a greater participation in formal education is clearly seen. The claims made to questions of the impact of the program eight months after its completion were, "three students were considering going away to school", "the community for the first time is well-supplied with books", and there is "a greater awareness of the value and need for education on behalf of children and adults alike", (project report, pp. 11-12) In 1984, there is little evidence to the contrary. Even one person who was an adult in the 1984 group, expanded participation in formal education. After the husband died and the family moved to the next county in 1971, she got her GED high school diploma while raising the remaining children, (interview with family A) In America today, formal education and employment are closely linked in claims for the efficacy of schooling; the "need" for formal education is most commonly justified in terms of employment. Only rarely is the connection with citizenship mentioned. How did the summer school participants fare in terms of employment? Employment Patterns In 1964, the project proposal said, "The only sources of employment in the community are subsistence farming or coal mining", (proposal, p.l) According to 1980 census figures the enumeration district had Agriculture Forestry and Mining as the most common industry with 39% of the total employment, retail trade was next with 25% and the third most common employment was educational services, 10%. Between 1970 and 1980, the mean income had gone up by 147% and there was a 24% decline in the number of families classified as "poverty status". While these figures are less easily comparable, the best estimate is that during the decade there was also a 13% increase in persons receiving public assistance. Connected with these issues of "poverty status" and public assistance is the record of labor force participation. For the enumeration district in 1980 63% of the population sixteen and over were not in the labor force. The fate of the people on Mill Creek had been a variation on this employment theme. The twenty-five children that were program participants or siblings of participants have a deviant record of labor force participation, 15 (60%) are in the labor force and 10 (40%) are not in the labor force — a reversal of the enumeration district proportions. Adding the generation that were 182 �adults in 1964 gives a similar picture for the entire group of persons involved in some way with the program — 47% are not in the labor force and 53% are in the labor force. Of the 15 persons not in the labor force, 8 (53%) are housewives, 4 (27%) are simply not working, and 3 (20%) are retired or disabled. For the seventeen persons in the labor force the most common employment was in some aspect of coal, 6 (35%). Then school system employment accounted for 4 jobs (24%). The remaining employment consists of two factory workers, a mechanic, a nurse, a person in retail trade, a person in services, and one woman in military service. Of course, some of these persons are members of branch households located outside Mill Creek. Looking only at those persons resident in the program site in 1984, 4 are employed in coal related work (23%),4 are housewives (23%), 3 are working for the school system, 3 are retired or disabled, and 3 are without work. The program evaluation in 1964 said, "The immediate result of the Mill Creek Project is readily observable to anyone who knew the community before the program began. As a result of the summer project, the community has had a good exposure to the 'outside' world (project report, p. 11). Using "outside" and "inside" as appropriate images for the situation in 1964 is open to considerable debate; its inappropriateness in 1984 should be evident! Mill Creek program participants make up the American world — both "inside" and "outside". Remembrances: Two Versions Hubbard's Branch of Mill Creek 20 years after the start of The War on Poverty has changed perhaps in order to remain the same. Participation had been transferred to institutions outside the community. Family remains strong today and there are branches of these stem families scattered around. Participation in formal education had changed as has employment. But what is remembered of the program? In this case, the remembrances have two versions. The volunteer teacher in an interview during the summer and reports about the project present one version of remembrances The other version is the recollections of participants now entering adulthood or in the ranks of the almost elderly in 1984. 1964: "These are healthy intelligent and enthusiastic children. They responded extremely well to the things I tried to teach them". (Courier Journal, 1964) 1984: "I can remember me watching that film, that's me there", (child of family A, 1985) The most vivid recollection of the summer program was singing songs and playing games, (child of family B, 1985) Two of the participants from the same family who now still live in Mill Creek said the most important result of the AV program was the contact the children had with others of the community. They said they learned to get along with other children and learned about what was outside of Mill Creek. 183 �1964: "Rice Motor Company has donated a 1955 car for the older boys to tear down and work on as they learned the names and spelling of the different parts", (project report, p. 4) 1984: A young man who is a Honda mechanic with a GED and certificate from a welding school didn't remember much about learning, but he laughed and remembered the boys taking apart the car — they never got it back together again. 1964: "The parents were very cooperative". "They might not have understood the things I did, and sometimes they found them strange, but they were tolerant". (Courier Journal, 1964) 1984: "Part of the time we had classes in a barn!" (child of family B, 1985 "I think the project helped the kids a lot. I know it did my kids. It was a great thing. It encouraged kids to go on to school, to do things", (interview of parent in family A, 1985) 1964: "The individual families have had strangers come into their homes and leave as close personal friends", (project report, p. 10) 1984: "Everything is gone now. We had 100 apple trees when I sold the place. It's not the same. Everything changed". "I think about the good old days, when I was really happy up there. We didn't have anything, no money, but we had love and happiness." (parent in family A) Conclusion: The program evaluation in 1964 said, "Education and many of the expected material and cultural aspects of modern America are only abstractions to the average Mill Creeker". (project report, p.2) In 1984, it is very hard to make such a case. Material aspects of modern America are found in the community today such as Jim Walker homes, unlisted telephone numbers, and manufactured household furnishings to name a few. Branches of Mill Creek families engage in occupations as varied as nursing, military service, and factory labor receiving cultural and social messages as well as material benefits. Still some continuity is found. Families are close, they keep in contact, and where possible live near one another. Those who live away try to return each year for the homecoming in August. Even the stem family that moved out returns for this. Education varies and on the average is much greater than that found 20 years ago. Is America a different place because of this also? The War on Poverty has come and gone in the direct sense of OEO and the placing of volunteers in communities. The Appalachian Volunteers did go on to use the Mill Creek program, and other "enrichment" programs, as examples of their work— "useful publicity and growth angles" as it was described. Mill Creek was visited, photographed, and in turn visited others. Did their opening up their lives enrich other lives in America? Could the Appalachian Volunteers have received their initial financial support without the help of communities such as Mill Creek? As the August 1964 Courier Journal stated near its conclusion, "A pro184 �ject such as this is difficult to evaluate, partly since it produces few immediate tangible results. Its potential significance is long-range..." Results, tangible or intangible, for social events are not easily seen to come from one clear single source or even a few sources. Social life is much more complex than this search for a single cause will justify. We live in a world of interaction between numerous social, economic, and environmental forces. Nonetheless, of all the material we discovered and sifted through, one result can be directly attributed solely to the program and the impact of the summer effort. This is an event simple in its action and profound in its meaning — as profound as anything can be in the dynamics of family and community in Appalachia. In Clay County, there is a young woman born long after the summer program was over. She is a high school graduate, married with one child of her own, and they live in a rural area near Mill Creek. She is named Connie after the woman, the idealistic and maybe naive college student, that spent part of the summer of '64 on Mill Creek. This naming may be all the explaining we can give. 185 �TABLE 1: FAMILIES PARTICIPATING IN THE PROJECT IN 1964* FAMILY A Parents: Mr. and Mrs. A Children: Male Male Female Female Female Male Male Age 13 Age 11 Age 10 Age 9 Age 7 Age 6 Infant Completed Grade 6 Completed Grade 4 Completed Grade 3 Completed Grade 3 Completed Grade 1 Will be in Grade 1 Age Age Age Age Age 12 10 7 4 2 Completed Grade 2 Completed Grade 2 Completed Grade 1 Age 13 Age 11 Age 9 Completed Grade 4 Completed Grade 4 Completed Grade 1 Will be in Grade 1 Family B Parents: Mr. and Mrs. B Children: Female Female Female Female Female Family C Parents: Mr. and Mrs. C Children: Male Male Female Male Male Male Male Family D Parents: Mr. and Mrs. D Children: Female Male Male Female Female Male Male Male Age 6 Age 5 Age 4 Age 1 Age Age Age Age Age Age Age Age 18 16 14 12 10 6 7 4 Completed Grade 8 Completed Grade 3 Completed Grade 2 Completed Grade 4 Completed Grade 2 Will be in Grade 1 Schooling Not Possible *From project report (Names obscured by authors of this paper.) Note at bottom of page: "There is another man on Mill Creek who has 4 or 5 children but we have not been able to get him involved in the community or get him to send his children to the school program. Aside from him there is only one other person on the creek with children but they have not reached school age." 186 �TABLE 2: Original Plus Next Generation Households — 1984 Family A No. Persons 3 people 5 people 1 person 3 people 5 people 5 people 2 people 2 people 1. Mrs. A and 2 children 2. Male and family 3. Male alone 4. Female and family 5. Female and family 6. Female and family 7. Male and family 8. Male and family Place of Residence County Seat Nearby Rural Nearby Rural County Seat Nearby Rural Illinois Nearby Rural Nearby Rural 8 Households outside Mill Creek 0 Households on Mill Creek Family B 1. Mr. and Mrs. B. 2. Female and family 3. Female and family 4. Female 5. Female and family 6. Male and family 2 3 3 1 3 3 people people people person people people Mill Creek Mill Creek Mill Creek Arkansas County Seat Mill Creek 2 Households outside Mill Creek 4 Households on Mill Creek Family C 1. Mr. and Mrs. C and 2 children 2. Male's widow and family 3. Male and family 4. Female and family 5. Male and family 6. Male and family 7. Female and family 4 3 5 5 5 2 3 people people people people people people people Mill Creek Mill Creek Mill Creek Nearby Rural Nearby Rural County Seat Nearby Rural 2 Households outside Mill Creek 5 Households on Mill Creek Family D 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 2 5 6 3 2 3 3 4 Mr. and Mrs. D Female and family Male and family Male and family Female and family Female and family Male and family Male and family people people people people people people people people Mill Creek Mill Creek Mill Creek Mill Creek Louisville County Seat Mill Creek Mill Creek 2 Households outside Mill Creek 5 Households on Mill Creek Source: Interviews with families, Fall 1984 and Winter 1985 187 �TABLE 3: Demographic Change in Mill Creek 1964-1984 1964 Families on Mill Creek Persons on Mill Creek Mean Household Size 1984 4 35 13 46 X-8.75 Persons X-3.5 Persons % Increase or Decrease +225% +31% 1984 Residence of Persons on Mill Creek in 1964 Plus 3 Siblings Mill Creek Nearby Rural County Seat Outside East Kentucky 17 8 7 3 35 TABLE 4: Education of Program Participants and Siblings in 1984 Total Group Some Elementary Some High School Completed High School Some College Group Resident in Mill Creek Some Elementary Some High School Completed High School Some College 7 7 10 1 28% 28% 40% 4 4 3 0 11 36% 36% 27% 4% Group Resident Outside Mill Creek Some Elementary 3 Some High School 3 Completed High School 7 1 Some College 21% 21% 50% 7% 14 (Estimated Education in the Enumeration District — 1980 Census) Some Elementary 72% Some High School 14% 12% Completed High School Some College 2% 188 49% 23% 20% 8% �TABLE 5: Labor Force Participation for Program Participants: Siblings and Parents — 1984 Labor Force Participation Persons in Labor Force Persons Not In Labor Force 17 15 53% 47% Persons Not In Labor Force Retired/Disabled Housewife No Work 3 8 4 20% 53% 27% 6 1 1 35% Persons in Labor Force By Industry Coal Mechanic Nurse Operator School Employee Military Retail Trade Services •j 4 1 1 1 (Estimated Labor Force Participation in the Enumeration District— 1980) Persons in Labor Force Persons Not in Labor Force 12% 24% 37% 63% Sources and References Interviews with Families in Mill Creek and elsewhere, 1984 and 1985. 1970 Census of the Population, Clay County, ED0016. 1980 Census of the Population, Clay County, ED0038. Council of the Southern Mountains Papers, Berea College, Special Collections "Proposal to The Council of The Southern Mountains Educational Committee" no date. "Mill Creek Project Report" no date Letter from Coordinator Education Programs, CSM to Director of Appalachian Volunteers, April 16, 1965. "Students Bring Light to Mountain Children" The Courier Journal, August 9, 1964, section 4, page 4. Jim Hampton. Newsweek, "Poverty USA", Feb. 17, 1964, pp. 19-38. Philip Conn, "Appalachian Volunteers: An Experiment in Community Development", unpublished thesis, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, 1966. Michael Harrington, The New American Poverty, New York (1984). David Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineers, "One-Eye in the Land of the Blind: The Appalachian Volunteers" pp. 185-219, New York (1980). 189 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publications Description An account of the resource This collection contains digitized monographs and collections from the Appalachian Consortium Press. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Date Issued Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource. June 1, 2017 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource <a title="Digital Scholarship and Initiatives" href="http://library.appstate.edu/services/digital-scholarship-and-initiatives" target="_blank">Digital Scholarship and Initiatives</a> Publication URL https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636870/the-impact-of-institutions-in-appalachia/ Digital Publisher Digital Republication Appalachian State University Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Impact of Institutions in Appalachia Description An account of the resource This volume of the <em>Proceedings of the 8th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference</em>, held in 1986 in Berea, Kentucky, offers a sampling of papers presented at the conference. Paper topics include religion; government and technology; capitalism and coal; regional photographers; sports and play in Southern Appalachia; education; cultural and diversity issues; and history and politics.<br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1H72pT8Uk_FiyiJcwdCR6bPCXaqC8PLry" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636870/the-impact-of-institutions-in-appalachia/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UNC Press Print on Demand</a> Subject The topic of the resource Appalachian Region--Congresses Social institutions--Appalachian Region Appalachian Region--Social conditions--20th century Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Proceedings of the 8th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lloyd, Jim Campbell, Anne G. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986 Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Conference proceedings Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/12212302/appalachia.html Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a> Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1980s Multidisciplinary/ Appalachian Studies https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/1f7711c328bd7978c5934e4ba90ff24e.pdf ff493222d8fb4f2097a94583fe2d7c42 PDF Text Text �THE MANY FACES OF APPALACHIA: Exploring a Region's Diversity Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Appalachian Studies Conference Edited by: SAM GRAY Managing Editor: JACQUELINE STEWART �The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From 1973 to 2004, its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program, Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press. www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Original copyright © 1985 by the Appalachian Consortium Press. ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-3684-9 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-3686-3 Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press www.uncpress.org �Table of Contents INTRODUCTION, Sam Gray I. II. III. NORTHERN GEORGIA EXCEPTIONS: POLITICS The Reconstruction Careers of Joseph Brown and Benjamin Hill, Derrell Roberts vii 1 APPALACHIAN HANDICRAFT: COMMERCIALISM AND AUTHENTICITY Nineteenth Century Quilts in Macon County, North Carolina, Laurel Horton 11 INTERPRETING THE MOUNTAIN WOMAN'S EXPERIENCE Emma Bell Miles, Pioneer Folklorist of Appalachia, Grace Toney Edwards 23 The Science Poetry of Marilou Awiakta, Parks Lanier . 29 Going Home, Ron Willoughby IV. V. VI. 37 SOCIAL THEORY AND SOCIAL LIFE IN APPALACHIA: A PANEL A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Allen Bateau 41 CURRENT RESEARCH IN COMMUNITY ISSUES Households and Families in Eastern Kentucky in 1900, Thomas A. Arcury and Julia D. Porter 47 PRE-COLUMBIAN CHEROKEES Pre-Columbian Cultural Contact Between Chibchan and Iroquoian Linguistic Groups, David K. Evans 57 �VII. NORTH GEORGIA WRITERS-PAST AND PRESENT These Also Climbed Parnassus: An Overview of Georgia Mountain Authors, Paul McClure 71 VIII. THE BUSINESS OF TRADITION: TRADES, HANDICRAFTS AND HOUSEHOLD ENTERPRISES The Shell Button Industry in Appalachia, Cheryl Claassen 77 IX. X. REGIONAL POETRY Faces of Appalachia in Poetry, Bennie Lee Sinclair 89 COMMUNITIES: PARTICIPATION OR RETREAT Progress Is Our Most Important Product: Decline in Citizen Participation and the Professionalization of Schooling in an Appalachian Rural County, Tom Boyd 107 ECONOMICS I: MACRO Surviving the 1990s: Inter-Regional Variation in Economic Problems, Thomas R. Shannon 125 Historical Perspectives on Energy, Industrialization and the Shaping of Appalachia, Ted Couillard 139 XII. NORTH GEORGIA MUSIC North Georgia Musicians and Groups in the 1920s and 1930s, Gene Wiggins 147 XIII. HISTORICAL DIVERSITY IN APPALACHIAN COMMUNITIES Diversity in Antebellum Mountain Life: The Towns of Western North Carolina, John C. Inscoe 153 XI. �XIV. THE THREE R'S: RESEARCH, RESOURCES, RECORDS The Great Smokies: Diverse Perceptions of the Park as a Resource, David Carpenter 169 XV. TOURISM THEN AND NOW A Plunge into the Past: Henry Ford and Friends Tour the Southern Appalachians, Charles Gunter 183 XVI. MOONSHINE AND BEYOND A Touch of Mountain Dew: Art and History of Whiskey-Making in North Georgia, Ray Rensi and Leo Downing 195 �This page intentionally left blank �Introduction In March of 1978 the first Appalachian Studies Conference was held at Berea, Kentucky. My memories of this event are surprisingly clear— the weather was fine, the company congenial and the energy, drawn from diverse places and personalities, was sharply focused. I recall that many individuals who have remained involved in the Conference over the years were instrumental in shaping with their words and concerns, the issues of that first conference and much of the agendae of those to follow. There were no papers read at Berea, instead, committees were formed upon an ad hoc and voluntary basis. The committees were actually discussion groups based on the various academic disciplines embraced by the notion of Appalachian Studies: Natural History, Literature, Geography, Folklore, History/Political Science, Economics, etc. The committees were supposed to distinguish and elaborate the issues and themes of Appalachian Studies and articulate intentions and strategies for the development and exploration of these issues. The eventual reports of the various committees were rendered on a Saturday afternoon too lovely for remaining indoors. These reports ranged from a somber call for a new text of Appalachian History to be written by the history committee to a delightful piece of impromptu theater (in verse no less) offered up by the literature committee. From these reports and the plenary session the following Sunday morning emerged certain ideas, issues and positions that were to become the durable content of each annual Appalachian Studies Conference. Three content areas can be identified from these 1978 Berea sessions. (1)A dichotomy between what was later designated "the action people and the creative people." At Berea, I believe two groups were designated, "the political types and the academic types," and the issue was which group would dominate the Appalachian Studies Conference. Neither ever did and the polarity has dimmed through the years for want of energy. This issue nevertheless serves some adaptive function for the continuation of the conference and is renewed annually. (2)A second theme that was evident at Berea in 1978 was the purposeful inclusion of women, workers, and minorities in the design and function of the ASC and in our political and cultural analysis of the region. This theme, related to the first, has also undergone a slight shift in energy levels through the years. It would be hard to imagine any conference or convocation of educations and students in the 1970's that could ignore this crucial issue. The difficulty has been in determining as a conference, the appropriate practices to address the issue. (S)Appalachian identity and regional autonomy constitute a third thematic current that has run strong in all the years of the conference. This complex of ideas and issues concerns the Idea of Appalachia itself Vll �and the various textures and perspectives that contribute to that idea. The long march of regional definition antedates the conference and will doubtless continue for as long as there are minds to reflect on the meaning of mountains. Some time near the end of that long day of words that began the Appalachian Studies Conference in 1978, Gurney Norman, native son and constant defender of the divine right of cultural deviancy, delivered a short, rambling address that delighted many, satisfied none and in a subtle way planted another thematic seed within the conference. Gurney's narrative that afternoon at Berea, like his novel, stories, and autobiography was a rich and varied amalgam of ideas, suggesting that regional identity, autonomy, institutions, images and issues are more diverse that homogeneous, more complex than simple and intricately connected to distant regions and institutions. This theme of cultural pluralism, of regional diversity and variation, adumbrated in 1978, achieved overt expression in 1984 at the Seventh Annual Conference held at Unicoi State Park, Helen, Georgia. Cultural diversity within a region that is presupposed to be a coherent whole is a theme that is difficult to access and delineate. It is one that moves sometimes in resonance with, and sometimes dialectically across the other established themes and issues in Appalachian Studies. The idea cultural diversity and interrelationship of social parts can be a useful intellectual tool. It is an idea designed to account for the complex textures of codes, texts, images, institutions, cultural and political transformations within the region, but one always in danger of evaporating into relativism or tautology. For better or worse, it is a part of the ongoing assessment of who we are and to whom (or what) we, as Appalachian people, are related. The Seventh Annual Appalachian Studies Conference at Unicoi State Park adopted the idea of diversity as the Conference theme. The conference did, in fact, enjoy more variety in the number and types of organizations and individuals attending as well as in papers and presentations. Budgetary and editorial constraints allow here only a remnant of the conference's diverse doings. It is our hope that these will offer the reader a glimpse of the varied texture of the whole cloth. Sam Gray January, 1985 Vlll �NORTHERN GEORGIA EXCEPTIONS: POLITICS The Reconstruction Careers of Joseph Brown and Benjamin Hill Derrell Roberts; Dalton Junior College; Dalton, GA North Georgia Politics: 1872-1880 Ellen Garrison; East Tenn. State Univ.; Johnson City, TN Aspects of 20th Century Politics hi North Georgia Carl Ross; Appalachian State University; Boone, NC Convenor: Sam Dayton; Mtn. Regional Area Planning Comm.; Gainesville, GA The Reconstruction Careers of Joseph Brown and Benjamin Hill by Derrell Roberts The New South as proclaimed by Benjamin H. Hill, a product of the Antebellum South, recognized the advantages of the economic and political concept of the northern states of the United States. Joseph E. Brown, son of the Georgia mountains and Civil War Governor, recognized the benefits of that system some years before. The differences in their backgrounds possibly explain why Brown accepted Reconstruction and the New South sooner than Hill. Even so, economics provided the central force that merged their ideas in the 1870's. Meanwhile, their personalities and political followers clashed on most issues prior to that time. Born April 15,1821 in the Pickens District of South Carolina, Brown's family moved to Union County, Georgia. In the community of Gaddistown, Brown worked on the small farm owned by the family and attended the rural school in the area. At the age of nineteen, he drove a team of oxen, given to him by his father, to the Anderson District in South Carolina. There he traded the oxen for room, board and tuition for a year to attend the Calhoun Academy. Back in Georgia, he opened a "three month school" where he taught and made enough money to return to yet another academy in South Carolina. Meanwhile, he paid off debts incurred in his first year. He returned to Georgia and settled in Canton in January 1844 and took charge of the town academy. There he taught school in the daytime, and at night and on Saturdays, he read law without the benefit of an instructor. Financially, the year was a profitable one, since he cleared enough to pay his school debts. During the next year, Brown spent more time reading law, for he had dropped his full-time teaching career and was teaching the children of a 1 �Canton physician for his room and board. The doctor later sent Brown to Yale Law School. But before he went to New Haven, he passed the Georgia Bar examination in 1845. He was graduated from Yale after a year there and in 1846, he returned to Canton where he began a very successful law practice. Then in 1847, he married Elizabeth Gresham, whose father was a South Carolina Baptist minister. Elizabeth was a devoted wife to Brown and a marvelous mother to their eight children (6 sons and 2 daughters). Benjamin Harvey Hill was born in Hillsboro, Jasper County, Georgia in 1823. His ancestry was traced to Ireland and Wales and his father, John Hill, moved to Hillsboro from North Carolina. Hill's father and family, though moderate in financial means, were influential people in their community of small farmers. Like many farmers of moderate means, the whole family worked on the farm and Hill worked alongside the family slaves his father had acquired. Meanwhile, he was reared with the common, positive concepts of education, religion (the Methodist Church), and temperance. Like Brown, the Hill's family moved, when he was ten years of age, to Long Cave in Troup County near LaGrange. At age sixteen, he went to Meriwether County to study with a minister who had graduated from Yale College. After a year there, he entered the University of Georgia at age seventeen in 1841 as a sophomore. Graduated from the University in 1844, he read law in Heard County, Georgia for a year and passed the examination for admittance to the Georgia Bar in 1845. In that year he settled into a law practice in LaGrange after he married Caroline E. Holt of Athens. In 1867, the family moved from LaGrange to Athens. Then in 1872, he moved from Athens to Atlanta where he lived until his death. His family included his wife, three daughters and two sons. In the 1850's, the careers of the two men began to parallel. Brown was elected to the Georgia Senate in 1849. Distinctive issues in those years included the Compromise of 1850, Georgia's state-owned Western and Atlantic Railroad and property rights for women. These issues still faced the General Assembly when Hill was elected to the State House of Representatives in 1851. Interestingly, both men served their terms and did not offer for re-election. While Hill, always on the border of financial ruin, retired to LaGrange to concentrate on his law practice for a while, Brown chose to run for another office. Elected judge of the Blue Ridge Circuit, Brown presided for a two year term. During that time, Brown remained a Democrat while Hill moved from the dead Whig Party to the Know-Nothing or American Party. By 1860, he was a supporter of the Constitutional Union Party. In any case, Brown was a consistent supporter of the Democrats (the major party) while Hill played a role as a member of the "opposition group." But there was 2 �another notable parallel in that in the national election of 1852, Brown served as an elector to the Electoral College for Franklin Pierce. In 1856, Hill was an elector for former President Millard Fillmore. In an unusual turn of events, Brown became the Democrats' candidate for Governor of Georgia in 1857. A large number of well-known candidates for the nomination provided a dead-lock which led to the proposal by Linton Stephens that Brown be nominated. Stephens' motion was accepted and Brown was nominated at the state convention. Meanwhile, Hill was nominated to oppose Brown by the American (Know-Nothing) party. The most significant issues for that election year involved national affairs. The Democrats were forced to endorse the Buchanan administration. At the same time, the state party platform condemned the territorial governor's activities in Kansas. On state questions, Hill and the American party members condemned the operation of the Western and Atlantic Railroad and advocated its sale, while the Democrats pledged to keep it and turn it into a profitable, effective operation. Even then, Hill was skilled in the art of debate and Brown was inexperienced. On several occasions, Hill clearly defeated Brown so that when leaders of the Democrats (Howell Cobb and Robert Toombs) discovered what was happening, they halted the debate. Toombs took Brown on a campaign tour of south Georgia where he could be taught. Toombs was a capable teacher and in a short period Brown developed a distinctive, "homey" speaking style that served him well in the remainder of his political career. The course of the campaign and the governor's election in 1857 developed an adversary relationship that continued between the two men for two decades. In that election, Brown defeated Hill by more than ten thousand votes while Hill carried two of the eight congressional districts. While Hill did not run against Brown again, he consistently opposed him and supported opposition candidates. For instance, by 1859, Brown was the undisputed leader of the Democratic party when he stood for re-election to the governship. Meanwhile, the American party was extinct and was replaced in Georgia by a state group known as the "Opposition party." Hill led the party but the candidate to oppose Brown was Warren Aiken of Cassville. Brown was easily re-elected in that campaign. He was also re-elected in campaigns against only nominal opposition in 1861 and 1863 and served as governor until June, 1865. Hill was elected to the Georgia Senate in 1859 as a strong Unionist. Logically, he would have been more comfortable following or joining Georgians like Howell Cobb and Robert Toombs. After all, he was a product of the "cotton" area of Georgia, owned slaves and was attuned to the Antebellum South. But it would appear that Brown from the mountains would have been more likely to have been a Unionist or nationalist 3 �and much less a part of the "Old South." The secession movement and convention in 1860 brought the two Georgia leaders to the arena in opposition to each other. Brown joined the majority of the Southerners in his support of John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for the presidency of the United States. Hill and Alexander H. Stephens supported John Bell of Tennessee and the compromise platform of the Constitutional Union party. Hill made interesting attempts to lure votes from Breckinridge and Stephen A. Douglas to Bell, but to no avail. The eventual winner, Abraham Lincoln was not a factor in Georgia. Again, Brown's supporters with Breckinridge beat Hill's candidate by almost ten thousand votes in Georgia. The next battleground for the two was a Georgia's Secession Convention in Milledgeville in January, 1861. By that time South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida had already seceded, which made Georgia a pivotal state in the formation of the Confederacy. Hill appeared before the Secession Convention and made an eloquent plea against immediate secession and any dangerous or precipitate action. Hill believed that if existing laws regarding slavery were scrupulously enforced, all the problems of the South would be solved. Brown was not a delegate to the Secession Convention, but he was given a seat on the floor where he quietly went about his work promoting secession. If he had been true to his upbringing in the northern part of Georgia, he would have opposed slavery and secession, but to the contrary, he advocated both. Brown was partially responsible for showing the delegates from the mountainous part of the state the advantages of secession for their section, even though they had no slaves. He pointed out to them that if Georgia did not secede, the slaves would surely be freed, and the national government would reimburse the slaveholders for the loss of their slaves. That would cost the government about two billion dollars and result in higher taxes for everyone, including those who had not owned slaves. Brown said the slaveholder would use that money to buy up the land of small farmers, and the freed slaves would compete with poor whites for land and jobs. Another alternative was that slaves could be relocated which would cost even more tax money. Again, Brown's views won over Hill's ideas and secession was approved in Georgia by a vote of 208 to 89. H. J. Pearce, Jr.,: "So Hill was again overborne. He had been overborne in 1855 by the Democrats in the Fourth Congressional District, when they elected Hiram Warner; he had been overborne in the presidential canvas of 1856, when Toombs and Stephens won the electoral vote of the state for Buchanan; he had been overborne by Brown and the Democratic onslaught in the gubernatorial contest of 1857; he had been overborne by the Breckinridge party in the presidential campaign of 1860; and now in the Constitution Convention (for secession) of 1861 he had been 4 �overborne while leading a minority fight. If any public man of note in Georgia was not responsible for secession, it was Hill. —Secession had come." Once secession took place, Hill's role changed, and Brown, serving as Governor of Georgia adopted a strong "states rights" position. In that posture, Brown opposed all attempts to centralize the Confederacy in any way. He vigorously opposed the conscription of men for the Confederate Army by the Confederate Congress. In his view, the states of the Confederacy should have been asked by the weak central government to provide troops as needed. When the Congress persisted, Brown provided exemptions for large numbers of Georgians who would ordinarily have been conscripted. Predictable, he also objected to taxation by the Confederate government. His position was much like the advocates of the Articles of Confederation in the early development of the United States government. Needless to say, these and other positions led the Georgia Governor into direct conflict with Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Hill, on the other hand, might have been expected to have opposed the Confederate government, too. He had counseled for union and moderation and had bitterly opposed secession. Yet when the Confederacy was formed, he accepted the election by the Georgia General Assembly and became one of the state's Confederate Senators in Richmond. In that position, he was a strong supporter of President Davis, and thus was in conflict with Brown again. Hill was the Georgia spokesman for the Davis administration, and carried out several "trouble shooting" missions to the state. At the end of the Civil War, both men were arrested by Federal troops and imprisoned for a brief period. Hill was arrested in LaGrange and spent a short time at Fort LaFayette in New York Harbour. Brown was taken from the Governor's Mansion in Milledgeville to Carroll Prison in Washington, D.C. Upon their release, Hill returned to LaGrange to practice law and Brown settled in Atlanta where he was active in business and political affairs. Between 1865 and 1867, the two men were relatively inactive on the political scene because of the Reconstruction measures and the occupation of the state by Federal troops. Meanwhile, they both attempted to develop their financial resources, Brown in law and business and Hill in law and agriculture. It developed that Brown was much better adapted and inclined toward the business world than Hill was to agricultural pursuits. After his brief imprisonment, Brown returned to Georgia, moved to Atlanta and began to counsel acquiescence to the policies of President Andrew Johnson. Hill also accepted Johnson's plan of Reconstruction and pledged his support in his request for a parole from the President in July, 1865. Therefore, both men were relatively quiet during the first year and 5 �a half of Reconstruction. In February, 1867, Brown made a trip to Washington, D.C. with some Atlanta business and political associates. During those days, the Congressional Reconstruction plan was under consideration. Also, impeachment proceedings against President Johnson were just beginning. On his return to Atlanta from Washington, he found a letter from businessmen asking him for an opinion on the situation in the nation. Brown counseled acquiescence to the unpopular measures of Reconstruction and his public career took an unusual turn. The national and regional situation looked gloomy to him. Clouds covered the political scene and the Republicans were in a strong position in national affairs. The right to vote by freedmen had already been settled, he said. The only question now was whether or not former Confederate officials could vote. Therefore, suffrage for the freed slaves was a moot issue. Further, the Civil War had settled the secession question. Therefore, people from the North ought to be invited to bring their money to the South and help developments there. He said that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution should be ratified immediately. Continued resistance might further endanger the enfranchisement of a greater number of Southerners and might eventually lead to confiscation of property. For all those reasons and more, Brown said that all Reconstruction measures should be accepted "without further hesitation or delay." No public figure was more publicly villified than Brown after his public letter. But it was Benjamin H. Hill who helped to focus the hatred of the public on Brown. With his scathing tongue and marvelous speaking style and with his pen, he called attention to the poor arguments and loopholes in Brown's public utterances nad notices. Between June and August, 1867, Hill wrote a series of articles for the Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel that he called "Notes on the Situation". Henry W. Grady called the "Notes" the "profoundest and most eloquent political essays ever penned by an American." In the first article, Brown was portrayed as one who had "urged us into secession as the only peaceful method of securing our rights; who afterwards led us to subjugation as the only method of escaping military despotism: and was then advising the acceptance "of proposed terms for a new Union." In another "Note," Hill described Brown as an ambitious politician who supported Reconstruction measures only because of the strength of the Republicans. The sufferings of Southern people did not matter to Brown, he charged. The former Governor was looking for political power even at the risk of becoming a traitor to his state. His most scathing criticism of Brown came in a description of how he had met the train of the incoming Union General John B. Pope who commanded the army of occupation. That night at a banquet in honor of the General, the former Governor responded to a toast to the honoree. Hill thought that any 6 �ordinary citizen would have been nauseated and he thought that Pope was too. Hill's "Notes" were very effective and were reprinted all over the state. They were widely discussed and quoted, and the general populance agreed with Hill. But Brown replied to Hill in a series hi the Augusta paper he called "Review of Notes on the Situation". While the Augusta editor hesitated to publish them for Brown, he wrote a short preamble to the first one in which he explained that the Chronicle whole-heartedly supported the views expressed by Hill. Nevertheless, he was willing to open his column to Brown to give him a chance to redeem himself. The tone of the preamble indicated that he did not think Brown could redeem himself, though. Brown began his rebuttal by calling attention to Hill's inconsistencies. He said that Hill started as a Democrat, then Whig, Know-Nothing, Opposition, etc., and then became a Unionist. As a Unionist, Hill urged disunion if Lincoln was elected. When Lincoln was elected, he opposed secession at Georgia's convention. Then he was elected to the Confederate Senate where he voted against conscription and then castigated Brown when he objected to the Confederate draft. On an occasion, he charged, Hill made an impassioned speech for the militia and enrolled in it. When the militia was activated, he claimed an exemption because he was a Senator. Congressional Reconstruction, he said, was not important. Congress had the power to do whatever it wanted to do in the matter. Georgia should accept the fact and restore its members to Congress in less than two years. Brown also lambasted Hill's objections to the new Georgia constitution. Even so, Brown played a significant role in the new document. Brown followed his "Review of Notes on the Situation" by continued political activity. In 1868, he identified himself with the Republican party, attended the national convention and spoke to the gathering. He went on to help elect Rufus Bullock the Republican Governor of Georgia. After Brown's unsuccessful campaign for United States Senator, Bullock appointed him Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. Otherwise, he made more public statements on Reconstruction and made a great deal of money in real estate, banking, Georgia mines, railroad investments and other enterprises. Hill gained a reputation in Antebellum Georgia as a magnificent speaker and that talent soared to new heights in the Reconstruction period. With his great speaking ability, he scoured Brown even before the publication of "Notes on the Situation." In July, 1867, he delivered a stirring speech against Congressional Reconstruction, Negro suffrage and Brown at Davis Hall in Atlanta. General Pope attended the speech and thought it a good reason why the South should have been considered conquered land instead of reconstructable states. 7 �Meanwhile, Georgia was reconstructed by a desegregated General Assembly, a Republican governor was elected and inaugurated and Hill and the majority of Georgia's white citizens were mortified. At a rally to support the national slate for the Democratic party in July, 1868, Hill delivered his "Bush Arbor" address. The rally took place in downtown Atlanta under the arbor to protect participants from the heat. He attacked the Republican Governor, the General Assembly and others who might have aided Bullock's election. Henry Grady remembered his boyhood sensation as he listened to the speech; watched Robert Toombs throw his hat in the air as a reaction; and Grady picked up Toombs' hat and returned it to him. Suddenly late in 1870, Hill announced that he had changed his mind about the Reconstruction policy. Since it was inevitable, Southerners should go ahead and bow to it and get it over with and move on to other issues. By finishing the process Georgia could "regain control of her own affairs." Needless to say, Georgians were stunned at the announcement. If Brown had been a traitor in reaching those conclusions, then how much more was Hill? Brown thought that the statements Hill made did "not look like the productions of the same mind." There is another interesting irony in this period, too, involving the two men; Brown was a leader in the Republican party and Hill was a spokesman for the Democrats. Another interesting announcement was made about the same time that Hill changed his political mind. It was reported that Chief Justice Brown had resigned from the Georgia Supreme Court to become the President of the Western and Atlantic Railroad Leasing Company. Further, one of the several stockholders hi the venture was Hill. Brown successfully pursued the lease by underground politics and interesting alliances involving Hill and others. The railroad prospered significantly under Brown's leadership and the stockholders were well rewarded. For the next ten years, Brown attended to economic affairs for most of the time. Even so, there were unusual political turns for him. In 1872, he led the Liberal Republican group in Georgia as they supported Horace Greely for President of the United States as opposed to President U. S. Grant. Then in 1876, he represented the Democratic party in Florida in attempts to turn the disputed votes there to Samuel Tilden. While he was unsuccessful in Tilden's behalf, he did manage to move smoothly back into the Democratic party. Hill bought several thousand acres of farm land in South Georgia and made an attempt at farming. He did not make nearly the money that Brown made in his ventures even though he was paid legal fees for one case in the range of $50,000 to $65,000. His speaking ability remained his most distinguished attribute. Even after his infamous change of mind in 1870, he made his most memorable speech in 1871 to the University of Georgia Alumni. Known as Hill's "New South" speech, he held the 8 �audience spellbound while he dismissed the "Old South" and cried out for a "New South." Hill's version of a "New South" would make better use of modern agricultural methods and use natural resources more efficiently as he promoted education at all levels. His address pre-dated Henry Grady's "New South" speech by several years. But Hill was not forced to remain in the political "dog house" as long as Brown. In 1875, he was elected as a Democrat to the United States House of Representatives to fill an unexpired term of a deceased incumbent. He was re-elected and served in the House until 1877. In the House, his most famous speech involved a debate with Rep. James G. Elaine in 1876. Elaine attempted to wave the political "bloody shirt" in the Congress. Hill, effectively defended Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the Andersonville tragedy. He accused Elaine of raising the issue to win the Republican nomination for President of the United States in 1876. In 1877, Hill was elected to the United States Senate where he was joined by Brown in 1880. In a political arrangement between Governor Alfred H. Colquitt, General John B. Gordon with Brown, Gordon resigned the Senate seat, Colquitt appointed Brown to the Senate and Brown supported Colquitt for re-election as governor. Subsequently, Brown was elected to the seat by the General Assembly and re-elected in 1884 to a full term that lasted to 1891. In the Senate he advocated internal improvements within the states, statehood for Utah and silver money among other rather liberal issues, though he was a staunch conservative, otherwise. During those years, too, he became an educational philanthropist and an active leader in the Southern Baptist Convention. In 1882, Hill died of throat cancer and Brown participated in a memorial service for him in Atlanta. Twelve years later, Brown died of respiratory problems. They are both buried in Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. Hill made a great deal of money but spent it unwisely and indulged his family. He left his wife the house in Atlanta and ten thousand dollars. Brown left a fortune of one and one half million dollars at the least, but more probably several millions of dollars. As one attempts to compare the lives of the two men, various stereotypes of Brown's mountain and Hill's "Old South" cultures may be applied. When one does that, it is amazing in how many ways their expected roles are reversed until the early Reconstruction period. In that era, economics became the great concern and in the end, the two old enemies joined together in business ventures and in politics. Had Brown followed the stereotype of the nineteenth century mountain man, he would have clung to illiteracy as a way of life. There would have been a tendency toward clanishness and a reticence to leave the area of his birth. Religion would have been spasmodic and primitive in practice. Brown was the opposite of those and most of the other general characteristics of nineteenth century Appalachian Mountain folk. 9 �With sixty-five slaves in 1860, Hill might have been more the "fireeater" in preserving the culture in which he lived. He might have been much more "States right" oriented than he was before the War in Confederate affairs. Had he been more the "Old South" activist, he would have joined with Robert Toombs and countless others in "never giving up." Historians ought to be pleased that the two men did not fit the mold that their communities cast for them. If it had been otherwise, Brown might have been a mountain school-teacher and sometime lawyer at best. There would have been no political career that spanned all branches of state government and into the United States Senate. Further, there might not be a Georgia State-owned railroad today, much less the great personal fortune he developed. For Hill, he might have died an embittered "Old South" lawyer and "hack" politician. There might not have been his greatest speech on the "New South." Without the Hill-Blaine Debate, the "Bloody Shirt" politics might have been much worse. In closing, let us all be thankful for leaders who are willing to step out of the stereotype and the molds into which they are placed. The willingness to do that is one of the several attributes of leadership. �APPALACHIAN HANDICRAFT: COMMERCIALISM AND AUTHENTICITY Toward a Definition of Folk Art Mildred Dunevant; Appalachian State University; Boone, NC The Penland Family of Potters Terence Painter; Maggie Valley, NC Nineteenth Century Quilts in Macon Co., North Carolina Laurel Horton; McKissick Museums; Univ. of South Carolina; Columbia, SC Jewel Waters, North Georgia Woodcarver Bob Hughes, Pat Meisel; Georgia Southern College; Statesboro, GA Convenor: Bob Conway; N. C. Div. of Archives & History; Asheville, NC Nineteenth Century Quilts in Macon County, North Carolina by Laurel Horton One of the major tasks of present-day quilt historians is the examination of generally accepted assumptions about American quiltmaking traditions. In the Southern Appalachian mountains, that study is complicated and obscured by widely believed and exaggerated romantic notions of mountain life generally. As with most stereotypes these may be based on some truths, but the problem is that they obscure other truths which reflect the real variety of experience within mountain culture. The stereotyped picture, in its extreme form, goes something like this: That the Southern mountains were settled by refugees and misfits from Tidewater culture; that these unfortunate folks took advantage of the mountainous terrain to escape from authority in its various forms, so that they could make their moonshine, shoot their neighbors, and marry their cousins; that they avoided with suspicion any contact with the outside world, and consequently, had to grow or manufacture everything they needed to live, including all food, clothing and shelter; that as a result they were completely ignorant of events and products of the civilized world; that because of their isolation and remoteness, they preserved their backward self-sufficiency unchanged well into the twentieth century, and to hear some people, if you go back into the hollers far enough, you can still find people untouched by the outside world, sitting in their log cabins, speaking pure Elizabethan English, singing ballads, and making baskets and quilts. We can laugh at this exaggeration, just as we laughed at the distorted view of mountain culture when we used to watch "The Beverly 11 �Hillbillies." Still, we have never examined the assumptions behind the comedy. We assumed that there was some truth there without question. Two groups are partly responsible for purveying these distortions. The first group are the travellers, local color writers, and tourists who have flocked to the mountains in great numbers since the railroads arrived in the late 1800's. They saw what they had planned to see, spectacular natural beauty and people living as they imagined their pioneer forebears had lived. Because they were mostly urban dwellers, their first close look at rural America convinced them that they were travelling backward in time, visiting their "contemporary ancestors," and "yesterday's people." The second group were Northern social workers who sought to improve the h'fe of the mountaineers. Some did this by recruiting laborers for the growing number of cotton mills in and around the mountains. Others, who wanted to preserve the picturesque aspects of the area, taught mountaineers to weave coverlets, to make baskets and quilts, and to carve little wooden animals, all to sell to tourists. This is an oversimplified explanation of why we associate crafts with the Southern mountains. Several years ago at the North Carolina Quilt Symposium, a midwestern quilter told me she would be driving back home through the mountains and could I please tell her where she could stop off to see mountain ladies quilting. She had just spent three days with hundreds of quitters from all over the country, but she assumed that mountain quilters would be different, somehow pure and unaffected, and that they would be on display, perhaps under glass. These stereotypes prevent us from seeing the wide diversity that has always been a part of Appalachian life. The new field of Appalachian Studies has encouraged dozens of scholars to produce volumes examining the myths and realities of Southern mountain history and culture. For my part in this work I have chosen to study quilts made in one North Carolina mountain county prior to the crafts revival of the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on the changing range of fabrics available to quiltmakers. Fabric selection is possibly the single most important element influencing the way quilts look. To take a fresh look at mountain quilts, we'll start with geography. The Appalachian range is mountains, including foothills, plateaus, and six thousand foot peaks. Where there are mountians there are also valleys carved out by creeks and rivers. Some valleys are narrow, carrying fastmoving currents, some are wide and fertile. Between the mountains are gaps, formed by wind and water, through which animals and, later, humans, made trails. The Southern Appalachians are recognized by biologists and ecologists for the abundance and diversity of plant and animal life. The Cherokee Indians recognized the area as a good place to live when they came from the North and drove out the earh'er inhabitants. The Cherokee 12 �established small villages and a system of agriculture that supported their basic needs. A system of trails linked these villages to each other and to other tribes along the Atlantic coast, several hundred miles away, with whom the Cherokee traded for shells and for leaves of the Yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria) which they used to prepare their Black Drink for ceremonial occasions. These trails also brought the first white explorers beginning with DeSoto in the 1600's, and followed by geographers, artists, botanists, and speculators, and especially trappers and traders. Early white traders introduced the Cherokee to aspects of their civilization. Some, such as small pox, had devastating effects. Others were considerably more welcome. Imagine being an Indian woman responsible for taking stiff raw deer hides and other furs and skins and making clothing for a family. Imagine a moment of realization upon seeing for the first time brightly colored cloth carried or worn by a white trader, then to discover that the price of this wonderful, labor-saving stuff is to be paid with those very pelts and hides they would replace. This represents a very major cultural innovation. Lest we tend to view such exchanges as accidental, haphazard, or infrequent, we must note that by 1707, the trade between the Cherokee and other tribes and white entrepreneurs operating out of Charleston, South Carolina, had reached such proportions and had become so lucrative that the colonial government of that state formed a Board of Commissioners to regulate the trade and license the traders. In 1716, this Board formed an official commercial treaty with the Cherokee Nation. John Henry Logan, in his History of the Upper Country of South Carolina, recreates a trading scene from this period: The smoke from a hundred campfires curls above the thick tops of the trees and the woods resound with the neighing of horses, and the barking of hungry Indian dogs. A large supply of goods has arrived from Charleston, and every pack-saddle came down from the Nation loaded with skins and furs, and these being now displayed to the best advantage, the work of barter begins. In the open air and in the trading-house are congregated a motley assembly of pack-horsemen, traders, hunters, squaws, children, soldiers, and stately Indian warriors—some silent and grave, seemingly uninterested in the scene; but the greater number loudly huxtering, and obstinately contending over their respective commodities in trade, in many barbarous tongues. The hunters from distant wilds want a supply of powder and ball, each squaw fancies some bright-colored fabric for a new petticoat or dress, while the warriors and old men eagerly demand guns, ammunition and blankets. 13 �The clamor begins, however, presently to subside, and at length the last bargain has been struck, and the goods and peltries have alike changed hands. The packs are once more made up; the goods for the Indian towns, and the skins for the market on the seaboard, and everything is again ready for the trail . . . The trains enter the narrow paths, and are soon far on their way, leaving the garrisons and agents of the posts to the dull monotony of the wilderness till their next visit. (1) Not all of the treaties made between the colonial and state governments and the Cherokee Nation were commercial. In a series of treaties the Cherokee ceded large portions of their land, in the vain hope that white settlers would be satisfied and would leave them the rest. Usually the land they gave up was already occupied by illegal white settlers. In 1817-19, the Cherokee ceded to the State of North Carolina the section which includes present-day Macon County. About this time Jacob Siler and William Brittain came into the area, bought an Indian cabin, and set up a store, to carry on trade with the Indians and to supply the needs of earlier settlers and the growing swell of newcomers, now that settlement was legal. Siler and Brittain hauled their wares by wagon and horseback over the mountain trails, from lowland trading centers to the south and east. Their wares would have included many of the same items earlier traded to the Indians, including iron cooking pots, guns and ammunition, blankets, and fabrics. The first settlers in Macon County claimed large tracts of fertile flat land along the Little Tennessee River and larger creeks. They selected the site of the old Cherokee town of Nikwasi for their own county seat of Franklin. Later arrivals took up the remaining available land on smaller creeks and in the steeper coves. Within a few years the larger landowners had established flourishing farms. They produced a wide variety of agricultural products and hauled their surplus grain, fruit, and livestock to market towns in the low country where they traded for a wider selection of goods than was available at local stores. Roads were poor in the mountains during the nineteenth century, just as they were nearly everywhere in rural America at that time. Passage over the mountains was slow so travellers expected their market trips to take many days. These well-to-do landowners formed a middle-class within the stratification of mountain society. Ronald Eller, in his book Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: The Modernization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930, describes this group in this way: Usually the first to arrive on the land, such families had acquired large land holdings and by 1830 had emerged as a resident ruling class. More noticeable in the larger valleys and county seat towns, these wealthier families provided the political 14 �leadership in the mountains and often controlled local commercial enterprises. Their descendants, having access to resources and educational opportunities in the flatlands, became merchants, teachers, and lawyers. (2) To illustrate this point, here is a portion of a letter written by Laura Siler, a Macon County girl, to her favorite cousin, in which she entertains him with an ironic description of her boarding school experience in Asheville, which is 70 miles from Franklin and would have represented a journey of at least two days over two major mountain ranges: September 29, 1847 Dear Cousin Leon, Well as you are aware I am settled in for the present in the notable city of Asheville. A place unsurpassed in the known world for the intelligence, refinement, correct taste, generosity and hospitality of its inhabitants, qualities that could not but endear them to so warm hearted a creature as I, especially when with that extra warmth of heart is united a mind and taste so fully capable of appreciating the many excellencies enumerated. Hah! (3) The middle-class in Macon County formed a minority within the population, but its influence was felt by all. Even the residents of small farms higher in the coves would have been aware of this group as fashion setters in architectural styles, clothing, and politics. A middle-class household inventory in the mid-nineteenth century would have included looms and spinning wheels to produce home furnishings and everyday clothing for the family and any servants or slaves. Macon County farmers raised sheep, consequently wool was available for clothing and blankets at little cost. As we are now beginning to realize, quilts were not as commonplace in early America as was once thought. Until the widespread availability of inexpensive manufactured fabric in the second half of the nineteenth century, there simply wasn't an abundance of desirable fabric scraps. Most quilts which remain from that period are well-planned with the same fabrics throughout. We used to assume that there must have been large numbers of utilitarian scrap quilts that supplied the bedding needs of most of the population and that these quilts were worn out long ago, leaving no trace. But upon close examination it appears that in Macon County, as elsewhere during the early nineteenth century, blankets were cheap and available and quilts were special creations. A woman planning to spend the time and effort to make a quilt was likely also to have gone to the expense to purchase fabric especially for that quilt. The Siler family in Macon County, like most of their neighbors, had little access to cash money. They bartered and they maintained charge 15 �accounts with local storekeepers which were settled once or twice a year. A record of the Siler family account with T. C. Bryson's store for 1849 survives in the Siler Family papers in the Southern Historical Collection. This account shows us what was purchased during that year and the prices paid. Among other items are included the following: 10 yds linen 1 doz buttons IVt yd swiss muslin 2 pr ladies hoes [sic] 1 pr bl kid gloves 1 card hooks & eyes 10 yds calico 6 yds domestic 1 peice [sic] wadding 1 tooth brush 1 cake almond soap 40 p 10 p 60 p 40 p 1-00 10 15 p 15 p 5 15 10 yd dz yd pr yd yd (4) We know that the Silers were a well-to-do family. Laura Siler married a doctor who later was elected to the State legislature. Not everyone in the mountains could afford to buy almond soap and black kid gloves, but these existed side by side with home-made lye soap and hand-knitted mittens. The availability of goods and the steady commerce in and out of the area affected everyone. Every family had to come into town from time to time and country people were aware of what merchandise was available even if they couldn't often afford it. Some people have characterized the pre-Civil War and pre-industrial period in the mountains as a kind of golden age of comparative prosperity and well-being. The Civil War, the slow economic conditions and uncertain political situations afterward, followed by the exploitation of timber and minerals by outside interests and the advent of tourism in the late nineteenth century drastically altered the mountain region and its people. Traditional family life, agricultural patterns and the economic base were irrevocably changed. The problems which emerged during this period were not the result of the region being isolated from the outside world, but of the impact of modernization imposed by these outside interests. While there were places within the mountains that were at times comparatively inaccessible, there was never a period when mountain people were "cut off from the outside world." The trails and roads that brought people into the area didn't somehow close up behind them. Having dealt with the myths of isolation and self-sufficiency, we now have a proper framework through which to view the quilts. I am indebted to Laura Nelle Estes of Franklin for locating these quilts and arranging interviews with their owners. 16 �Rose of Sharon—made by Aunt Matt Anderson Circa 1860—83" x 85" A Rose of Sharon quilt was made, according to family tradition, by Aunt Matt Anderson, who worked as a live-in seamstress hired in the fall and winter to sew family clothing for Dr. and Mrs. A. C. Brabson and their eleven children. The Brabsons lived in the Riverside community south of Franklin in a large frame house which still stands. The fine work and precision reinforce the implication that this quilt was made by a professional seamstress. The seeming incongruity between the red and green fabrics in the blocks and the blue and tan tones in the border is attributable to fading of the cretonne prints of the latter. The batting in this quilt is wool, which is unusual for Southern quilts generally, but which may have been more available than cotton in the mountains. (5) 17 �Cotton Boll—made by Elizabeth Sanders Morrison Circa 1864-63'/!" x 80" A Cotton Boll quilt was reportedly made by Elizabeth Sanders, who was born in 1833, married William Morrison, and died in 1864. The present owner is the quiltmaker's great-granddaughter and still has the Bible that Elizabeth Sanders received for her eleventh birthday. The applique design is similar to a quilt owned by the North Caorlina Museum of History. The four-corner arrangement is fairly uncommon, more often associated with very large applique motifs. The applique has been sewn on a machine, so it appears that there were sewing machines in the mountains at an early date. (6) 18 �North Carolina Lily Variation—made by Margaret Gillespie Slagle Circa 1880—66'/*" x 75" An unusual quilt (7) was reportedly made by Margaret Gillespie as a young girl before her marriage to Henry Slagle in 1888. She was the granddaughter of Jesse Siler, an early Macon County resident, and the mother of the present owner. This quilt is a variation of the North Carolina Lily. The stems were apparently green originally but have now faded to tan. The most striking feature is the red gathered and appliqued "dahlia" flowers. One is missing, leading to speculation that someone at some point took it apart to see how it was made. 19 �Star Quilt—reportedly made by Mary Morrison Bryson Circa 1880—62" x 76'/z" A Star quilt was reportedly made by Mary Morrison Bryson, who was born on May 10, 1841, and died on May 10, 1918. She married Samuel Byers Bryson, who died in 1895. They had ten children, one of whom, Robert T., was the father of the present owner. The maker of this quilt was related to the husband of the woman who made the Cotton Boll quilt. Four corner pieced arrangements are even less common than in applique. Perhaps Mary got the idea from her in-law. The quilt contains an unusual combination of printed fabrics in red, white, pink, and blue prints, but as the fabrics are consistent throughout, this appears to have been intentional. (8) 20 �Burr—made by Harriet Love Anderson Stallcup Circa 1880—69'A:" x 75%" A Pine Burr quilt was reportedly made by Harriet Love Anderson Stallcup, who lived in Tennessee, was widowed there, and moved to Macon County with her second husband just after the Civil War. Harriet Stallcup was the great-grandmother of the present owner's husband. The fabrics in this quilt are typical of the late nineteenth century, although the blue, pink, and green combination is uncommon. By alternating two colors in the same block the maker has created an even more complex design than usual. In conclusion, these quilts made by early Macon County residents and handed down within their families do not fit the stereotype of isolation and self-sufficiency usually associated with mountain culture and mountain crafts. Doubtless there were quilts made from remnants of homespun, home-woven fabrics, and scrap quilts from more homely fabrics, but it seems there were also, at the same time, women who selected and purchased fabric in order to make formal, planned quilts. It is possible that these special quilts were the rule rather than the exception. These quilts 21 �are in many ways similar to nineteenth century quilts made elsewhere in the country. Since these are truly "mountain quilts" we must now expand our definition of that term to include them. Notes and References (1) Logan, John H., A History of the Upper Country of South Carolina, S. G. Courtenay & Co., Charleston, and P. B. Glass, Columbia, 1859, (The Reprint Co., Spartanburg, 1960), pp. 251-252. (2) Eller, Ronald D., Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: The Modernization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930, The University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1982, p. 11. (3) Ms. letter, Laura Siler, September 29,1847, in the Lyle and Siler Family Papers (#1818), Southern Historical Collection, Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (4) Ms. store account record, dated August 11, 1849, in the Lyle and Siler Family Papers (#1818), Southern Historical Collection, Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (5) Applique quilt, Rose of Sharon, made by Aunt Matt Anderson, Macon County, N. C., c. 1860. In collection of Betty Ann Bryant. (6) Applique quilt, Cotton Boll, made by Elizabeth Sanders Morrison, Macon County, N. C., c. 1864. In collection of Sue Waldroop. (7) Pieced and applique quilt, North Carolina Lily variation, made by Margaret Gillespie Slagle, Macon County, N. C., c. 1880. In collection of Harriet Slagle Setser. (8) Pieced quilt, Star, made by Mary Morrison Bryson, Macon County, N. C., c. 1880. (9) Pieced quilt, Pine Burr, made by Harriet Love Anderson Stallcup, Macon County, N. C., c. 1880. Bibliography Clark, Thomas D. Pills, Petticoats and Plows: The Southern Country Store. The University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1944. Eaton, Allen H. Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands. Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1937. (Dover, New York, 1973). Eller, Ronald D. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: The Modernization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. The University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1982. Logan, John H. A History of the Upper Country of South Carolina, from the Earliest Period to the Close of the War of Independence. S. G. Courtenay & Co., Charleston, and P. B. Glass, Columbia, 1859. (The Reprint Co., Spartanburg, 1960). Lyle and Siler Family Papers (#1818) in the Southern Historical Collection, Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Shapiro, Henry D. Appalachia On Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness. The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1978. "Macon County" vertical file folder, Macon County Public Library, Franklin, N. C. 22 �INTERPRETING THE MOUNTAIN WOMAN'S EXPERIENCE Emma Bell Miles: Pioneer Folklorist of Appalachia Grace Toney Edwards; Radford University; Radford, VA The Science Poetry of Marilou Awiakta Parks Lanier; Radford University; Radford, VA Alma Kathryn Stripling Byer; Cullowhee, NC Going Home Ron Willoughby; Radford University, Radford, VA Convenor Nancy Joyner: Western Carolina University; Cullowhee, NC Emma Bell Miles Pioneer Folklorist of Appalachia by Grace Toney Edwards Allow me to introduce you to, or perhaps renew your acquaintance with, a woman whose impact on Appalachia has been significant. Hers is not the impact of a thundering explosion or even a great shudder, but rather that of a gentle rain that comes and goes, leaving behind it a soil refreshed and renewed. I speak of Emma Bell Miles, of Walden's Ridge, Tennessee. Her span on earth was relatively short, from 1879-1919, and her public career as a writer was even shorter — a scant fifteen years, from 1904-1919. Yet in that brief moment she produced two published books of prose, two books of poetry, at least fourteen short stories, more than a hundred newspaper columns, a dozen magazine articles, five volumes of personal journals, and scores of letters. Alongside the written products I must point to her art work: drawing, painting, illustrating, wall murals, and even some interior decorating. And these feats she accomplished while bearing and raising five children, keeping house for her husband, Frank Miles, growing a garden to help feed the brood, scouting the woods for blackberries and wild grapes, etc., etc. Her familial and domestic chores were not unusual for a mountain woman around the turn of the century, but her creative writing and her artwork certainly were. Miles is one of many women writers who chose the mountains and mountaineers as their subjects about this time. But she had a unique view not matched by others of her genre or time: she was a local mountain woman writing about her people. Although not mountain born, she was primarily mountain bred. True, she came out of a different culture from that of the mountains; her family heritage and education were different from those of most mountaineers. She was an only child; her parents were 23 �school teachers; and she was widely read and well educated by them. But these facts of difference gave her the bases from which she would later develop her dual perspective on mountain culture: that of outsider and insider. She was an insider by virtue of having lived on Walden's Ridge from the time she was ten years old and by virtue of having married a mountain man from one of the pioneer families and by virtue of having borne and raised a mountain family in a manner fairly typical of a Walden's Ridge lifestyle. She had five children over the course of seven years, starting with twin daughters in 1902. She lived in a series of small houses ranging from a tent to a tarpaper shack to a mountain cabin. She lived in poverty, for there was no way to make a living except through farming and occasional day labor; and Frank was not a steady adherent to either of those activities. Emma carried the burden of supporting the family through her writing and painting. I am making a case for her as an insider, but of course, the writing, sketching, and drawing were not typical among the women in a culture where illiteracy was the norm and utilitarianism the dominant force. In fact, Emma's exercising of these talents raised real suspicion among her husband's relatives and other mountain neighbors. As Grandma Miles, Emma's mother-in-law, was to say: "These here writers and typewriters will do to watch!"' In a culture operating largely through oral communication and by traditional standards, such suspicion is understandable. Indeed, it was such conflicts as the role of artist as perceived by mainstream culture and the role of wife and mother as perceived by the mountain folk culture that forever complicated Emma Bell Miles' life and in turn added much depth of insight and feeling to her writings. And it was the richness of the oral tradition that she so often turned to as subject matter for her works. Miles wrote a variety of types of things, as mentioned earlier, including both poetry and prose. Many of these works were filled with folklore of her own collecting, which she placed in context and analyzed according to quite modern trends touted by professionals today. She was nationally published in the popular magazines of her day and in her two books; the magazines carried her poems first, then an article on mountain music, and eventually her short stories. She was recognized in Who's Who in America and other leading biographies for several years. And yet she and her works virtually disappeared from the public mind for about fifty years or more after her death. Then in 1975 the University of Tennessee Press brought Miles' name back into the view of Appalachian scholars and followers by reprinting her 1905 book about life in the southern mountains. Although The Spirit of the Mountains revived her name, there are still many revelations waiting to be made about her total output of literary and artistic works. 24 �I make a claim for her today as one of the earliest pioneer folklorists of the Appalachian region. By 1900 she had begun to note the speech, the stories, the songs, the customs of her Walden's Ridge, Tennessee, neighbors. Though she was not trained as a folklorist and would never have called herself that, she believed that somewhere there was an audience who would like to read about "her people" in southeastern Tennessee. In 1904 she found that audience through a national publication, Harper's Magazine. Harper's accepted her article entitled "Some Real American Music" and ran it in the June issue. The article began with these words: "It is generally believed that America has no folk-music, nothing distinctively native out of which a national school of advanced composition may arise." Two paragraphs later she contended: "But there is hidden among the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas a people of whose inner nature and its musical expression almost nothing has been said. The music of the Southern mountaineer is not only peculiar, but, like himself, peculiarly American."2 In the article Miles combined text, context, and analysis. She gave the words, and in several cases, music, for sixteen songs; she recounted the circumstances under which such songs might be sung and expressed the reactions of both performer and audience to the performance; she traced the lineage of several of the pieces back to their English, Irish, and Scottish roots; and she evaluated the significance of this mountain music in terms of the contribution it could make to a "national American music." One specific song which she gave "exactly as it was sung to me by two young girls in the mountains" began: It was a ladie bright; Each child she had was three; She sent them off to a Northern State, For to learn their gramarie. Though she made no specific analysis of the ballad in this article, she introduced it by saying: "The mountaineers sing many ballads of old England and Scotland. Their taste in music has no doubt been guided by these, which have come down from their ancestors."8 One year later in the book, The Spirit of the Mountains, she expanded the Harper's article to become Chapter VIII, still entitled "Some Real American Music." Here she suggests that "it should delight the heart of the student of English to compare the following instance ['A Ladie Bright'] with 'The Clerk's Twa Sons of Owsenford' and 'The Wife of Usher's Well.'"4 She also added a final variant stanza that she obviously had collected after she did the original research for the article. To place the chapter on music into its larger context, perhaps an overview of her framework for The Spirit of the Mountains is appropriate. This book contains ten chapters about mountain life, any one of which can be pulled out and read separately as an essay complete in itself. The setting 25 �is not specified as to which mountains are being described, but internal evidence continually points to the Walden's Ridge culture as the model for the author. However, she does fictionalize places and people in the book. She is not attempting a strict ethnography but rather is writing in the local-color travel book genre popular around the turn of the century. (Wilma Dykeman calls this the "parlor tradition" in contrast to the "frontier tradition" from which Sut Lovingood springs.)6 To follow the conventions of that genre, she must compare and contrast the folk culture she is describing with mainstream culture. That means approaching the subject from the outsider's view or at least from the outsider's standard of measurement. Thus, Miles adopts the persona of mountain school teacher for her narrator, which implies education in and exposure to mainstream culture. Yet she wants to build on her inside perspective and so establishes early in the book that she is o/the mountains, that she attended the same log church school which she now teaches. She dots her writing with we, us, our, and even more blatantly, with my people or my own people. Unfortunately, this inclusion of self sometimes seems superimposed and may produce the opposite effect of that intended. Ultimately she balances the duality of inside and outside perspectives to produce a book that shows both the quaint and the ordinary, the pretty and the ugly, the romance and the realism of the Tennessee mountain culture in the early 1900's. Let us pay attention again, now, to my claim that she was one of the pioneer folklorists for Appalachia. If one places Miles in the history of formalized folklore collecting in America, he finds that she was a very early collector and analyst who did all the right things according to today's standards: i.e. collected texts, provided contexts, and analyzed the function and place of the lore in the culture. Yet, as I said before, Miles would never have called herself a folklorist. She was a writer. Whether or not she was even aware of Francis James Child's mammoth work on The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, I cannot say. I can assert, however, that she gave the lie to Child's claim that all the old ballads were dead, for she had found several of them alive and well on Walden's Ridge, Tennesseemost specifically his #79, "The Wife of Usher's Well," sung to her as "A Ladie Bright." At the time she was writing these things, the American Folklore Society was only fifteen years old. A few isolated reports of bits of folklore had come out of the Southern Appalachians, but nothing on any great scale. Cecil Sharp, who is generally noted as the discoverer of traditional ballads in the mountains, was not to be heard of before 1916. Yet Emma Bell Miles collected ballads and folksongs and reported them in Harper's Magazine in 1904. Moreover, she showed how and when they were performed by the mountaineer; she placed him on the porch of his mountain cabin; she analyzed why he sings one kind of song and not another; why, for example, humor was so important in his music. She distinguished 26 �between songs sung by mountain men and those sung by mountain women. She saw a marked difference between male and female personalities and influences. The men, she believed, belonged to the "young nation, the young America." Thus, they sang songs of rollicking adventure or fun-loving ditties. The women, on the other hand, were of the "old race" because they lived with things that were old: their furnishings, their houses, their utensils were passed down through the generations and all had long histories and old traditions attached to them.6 The men came indoors only to eat and sleep and then were out again hunting, farming, sawmilling, whatever; but the women lived inside with the old things. Consequently, the women crooned the traditional ballads of death, desolation, and domestic problems while they worked at the loom or spinning wheel or knitting. Along with her collection and analysis of songs, Miles undertook a similar task with tales and legends. Without realizing what she did, she presented an interesting case study of how a piece of folklore is transmitted through the years and generations. She related the story of old Joe Winchester's search for the lost Cherokee silver mine. This was a family legend among the Winchesters, who were the people of Frank Miles' mother. Emma stated that she first heard the story as a child sitting on a sheepskin in front of a roaring fire in somebody's cabin. From then to adulthood she heard it several times from different people but with little variation. After her marriage she heard the story most often from Grandma Miles, who had a real flair for storytelling. But Grandpap was such a realist that he often squelched Grandma when she began to tell tales of questionable truth. Thus, the Joe Winchester story had practically dropped out of Grandma's repertoire so that one avenue of transmission was being sealed off. But Emma Bell Miles herself had picked it up and relayed it in print, in The Spirit of the Mountains,'' so that another avenue had opened up. And in all likelihood the legend was still alive in the oral tradition of other people on the Ridge since Miles had heard it from various sources. In such a fashion, then, is folklore transmitted—sometimes moving from oral tradition into print and then back out again, but continuing to live through the ages. In The Spirit of the Mountains Miles also discussed mountain dialect, proverbs, rhymes, superstitions, the supernatural, religion and a number of other topics revealing mountain culture. But the point I would leave you with is the significant contribution Miles made as one of the earliest folklorists, whether she knew it or not, in the Southern Appalachians. Long before Cecil Sharp, or Richard Chase, or Leonard Roberts, or Frank C. Brown, Emma Bell Miles was collecting and analyzing the lore of the mountains—all part of the oral tradition which she correctly saw as a valuable component of American literature, and certainly of American culture. 27 �And for this atypical mountain woman, it was the typical mountain experience of home and family that gave her the stuff of which her contribution was fabricated: she took it from her children, her husband, her relatives, her neighbors, the Ridge itself. She told her own story almost eighty years ago; and even though her voice was silenced much too early, at the young age of thirty-nine, today we are the heirs to this remarkable woman's legacy, Emma Bell Miles. Notes 'Emma Bell Miles, Unpublished Journal, Vol. II, MS, 2 June 1912. This and volumes I, IV, and V of the personal journals are in the possession of Judith Miles Ford of Aline, Oklahoma. The manuscript of volume III is missing; however, typescript versions are held by the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library and by the Tennessee State Library and Archives. 2 Emma Bell Miles, "Some Real American Music," Harper's Monthly Magazine, June 1904, p. 118. "Miles, "Some Real American Music," p. 121. 4 Emma Bell Miles, The Spirit of the Mountains, A Facsimile Edition (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1975), p. 163. "Wilma Dykeman, "Appalachian Literature," in Appalachia in Perspective, Series of Videotaped Lectures from the Stokely Institute for Liberal Arts Education, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, Summer 1983. 'Miles, The Spirit of the Mountains, pp. 68-69. 'Miles, The Spirit of the Mountains, pp. 88-97. 28 �The Science Poetry of Marilou Awiakta by Parks Lanier Cartoonist R. Hansen once drew a creature part woman, cockatrice, butterfly, and scorpion—beautiful but bizarre—demurely confessing to a curious little cupid, "My mother never speaks of that particular orgy." One can only feel sympathy for her, which is exactly how one feels when someone tries to discuss the paternity of science fiction. Like success, it has many fathers. Science fiction is a beautiful but bizarre creation, the result of a literary orgy which, some say, has been going on for thousands of years, at least since Gilgamesh, if not before.1 And the orgy is all the more interesting if one remembers science fiction's twin— or clonescience poetry. Science poetry is narrative poetry of estrangement set in an alternate world where the workings of science—biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, etc.—are a major cause or effect.2 Like science fiction, science poetry turns upon what Darko Suvin calls the "novum" or "novelty." "Now the novelty in SF," he says, "can either be a new locus, or an agent (character) with new powers transforming the old locus, or a blend of both."3 Earthlings may travel through time or space, or creatures from other times or other places may travel to earth. Science makes that possible. Science also makes possible "new powers transforming the old locus" without anyone going anywhere in space or tune. Like science fiction, science poetry is attentive to change or transformation. For example, in her poem "The Planet," Josephine Jacobsen takes us to the moon's Sea of Tranquility, from which we view beautiful earth with "green fields, green fields/ocean of grasses, breakers of daisies" (11. 9-10).4 With a similar image of green grass in mind, Knute Skinner, in "Imagine Grass," invites 29 �us to journey to "a far-flung star/of an unnumbered magnitude/Mount Palomar has never viewed," (11.10-12), but before we leave he reminds us: The planet that we plant upon rolls through its orbit of the sun, bending our grass upon the breeze. While far away the galaxies in a decelerating pace reach for the outer edge of space.6 (11. 1-6) Such a cosmic view, such a dramatic and sublime change of locus, is always thrilling. But so, too, is a transformation wrought on this earth, "the planet that we plant upon." Marilou Awiakta has taken such transformation as her subject in her collection of science poems Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet. Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 1942: first there was the mystery, "new powers transforming the old locus," as Darko Suvin expresses it. Marilou Awiakta says that when she was a child of seven living in Knoxville, city of her birth, she realized that, . . . a few miles away, we had a new frontier. Daddy went first, in '43—leaving at dawn coming home at dark and saying nothing of his work except, "It's at Y-12, in Bear Creek Valley." The mystery deepened. The hum grew stronger. And I longed to go. Oak Ridge had a magic sound . . . .8 In a recent article for MS. magazine, Marilou expands on this story. Her father did not even know how his job fit the mysterious work going on at Oak Ridge. He could go only to his place of employment, not to "the most secret part" guarded by a maze of fences. What lay within that area he did not know. He saw "long, heavy trucks coming in. What they're bringing just seems to disappear. Somebody must know what happens to it, but nobody ever talks about it."7 Something alien was being built, but not by aliens. A transforming force had come to Oak Ridge. "I can't imagine what," Marilou's father said. "I couldn't either," she says. "But I could feel its energy like a great hum."8 The writers of science fiction had "imagined what." The "fact" of atomic energy and the atomic bomb became one of the strongest claims for the predictive aspect of science fiction.9 John Campbell, editor of ^4stounding Science Fiction magazine, received a visit from government agents in 1944 after publishing a story about the use of an atomic bomb.10 30 �Lester Del Rey recounts that after his story "Nerves" appeared, a story about "an accident in a nuclear power station,"11 copies of Astounding Science Fiction which appeared at Oak Ridge were "immediately stamped secret, and the research workers were refused permission to read it unless they had top clearance. They had to go outside the government plant to buy the issue from the newstands, where it was freely available."12 Another editor, Philip Wylie, "received a similar visit [from government agents] in 1945; [also] . . . two comic-book stories featuring Superman were actually suppressed."13 The predictions were coming true, and Marilou was attracted to the alien city where gigantic bulldozers were leveling mountains or making new ones: So I kept listening to the hum, and longing . . . Mother said we'd go someday, in the fullness of time. And when I was nine the fullness came, exploding in a mushroom cloud that shook the earth. ("Genesis," 11. 52-55) Nothing was ever to be the same again. Marilou Awiakta quotes Einstein who, after the bombing of Hiroshima, said, "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."14 To change "our modes of thinking" is one of the functions of Marilou's science poetry, something which her work has in common with the very best science fiction. For critic Darko Suvin, the essence of science fiction is estrangement. Science fiction, he says, is "the literature of cognitive estrangement";16 that is, it has "a different space/time location or central figures for the fable, unverifiable by common sense."16 There is something alien or unknown. But the aliens, says Suvin, "Utopians, monsters, or simply differing strangers [as they were at Oak Ridge] are a mirror to man just as the differing country [into which Black Oak Ridge was transformed] is a mirror for his world. But the mirror is not only a reflecting one, it is a transforming one, virgin womb and alchemical dynamo: the mirror is a crucible."17 This precisely is the metaphor which fits not only Marilou's subject, but her work as well. First the mirror showed destruction, the carnage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What was unknown and unseen "suddenly ... had an image: the mushroom cloud. It had a name: the atom."18 Looking west from Knoxville, Marilou had been lured by the hum of energy. "The atom was poetry in my childhood," she says, "images, rhythms—a presence beautiful, mysterious, dangerous... like the mountain. And I loved them both. Then the atom went awry .. . was alien" (Abiding Appalachia, p. 79). The mushroom cloud was not its only image. The cow in the next field, as docile as Keats's garlanded heifer "lowing at the skies" became an 31 �emblem of the atomic nightmare. A sacrificial beast, she was familiar but alien: She'd like to be a friendly cow, I know, But she's radioactive now and locked behind a fence . . . . . . It hurts my heart that I can't even stroke her head but as mother said, radiation's just not friendly. ("Test Cow," 11. 1-3; 7-10) The cow might as well be from Jupiter, or fallen out of one of the terrible Martian machines in The War of the Worlds. She is an alien mirror to man, and the reflection is ugly and scary. But, as Suvin reminds us, it is also transforming. As so often happens in science fiction, what first is alien and "awry" becomes familiar and comprehensible. The beast becomes beautiful. "I also saw the immense nurturing potential of the atom," Marilou says. "Terminal cancer patients came from everywhere to the research hospital. I especially remember one newspaper photograph of a man with emaciated hands reaching for the 'atomic cocktail' (a container of radioactive isotopes). His face was lighted with hope."19 Once again Marilou felt the poetry of the atom, an experience she records in "Star Vision": In my hand lying prone upon the grass I could see each atom's tiny starminute millions so far-flung so bright they swept me up with earth and sky in one vast expanse of light. ("Star Vision," 11. 6-12) No longer is she apart; she is a part. From her Cherokee foremother she had learned "this firm step of mind/that seeks that whole/in strength and peace" ("An Indian Walkes in Me," 11. 25-27). Admirers of Frank Herbert's Children of Dune will no doubt liken Marilou's experience of communing with her Cherokee ancestors to that of the twins Leto and Ghanima who were "born with a totality of genetic memory, a terrifying awareness which set ... [them] apart from all other living humans."20 Marilou's experience, however, is unifying and consoling, a healing vision which is also a record of poetic rebirth that Marilou has commemorated by adopting a Cherokee surname, Awiakta. 32 �"The atom has found its poetry again and I can feel love once more for its image and its sound," she says (Abiding Appalachia, p. 79). In addition to adopting a new name, for her life and work Marilou created an emblem of "the sacred white deer of the Cherokee, leaping in the heart of the atom The reverent hunter evoked the white deer's blessing and guidance."21 The deer is a symbol of reverence for life,21 the nurturing, mothering aspect of the atom. The little white deer is also a symbol of hope. "There will be no sign of hope," Marilou says, "except deep in the invisible, where the atom's mother heart—slowly and patiently—bears new life."22 Darko Suvin spoke of the alien mirror as "virgin womb and alchemical dynamo." Scientists at Oak Ridge had also perceived the powers of the virgin and the dynamo, calling the reactor " 'The Lady' and, in moments of high emotion, [they] referred to her as 'our beloved reactor.' "23 She inspired them to poetry. "In the control room," Marilou says, "they left a poem, 'To a Loyal Lady,' inscribed as 'thoughts from many hearts' " (Abiding Appalachia, p. 83). Marilou herself came to think of the nuclear reactor as a regal sister: In a nearby valley a new queen reigns. She is a deep pool clear and still and from the slender cylinder of her heart a blue glow rises a glow they call Cerenkov's fire . . . (Abiding Appalachia, p. 87) When her father told her that the graphite core was black, Marilou imagined "a great black queen, standing behind her shield, holding the splitting atom in the shelter of her arms."24 The maternal image is not unlike the iconography of Leonardo's Madonna and Child With St. Anne, where the Child emanates from the lap of the Virgin, who in turn sits upon her mother's lap. First there is Mother, then Daughter, then Cosmic Son. Like the backgrounds of Leonardo's paintings, the background of Abiding Appalachia, for all its atomic science, remains essentially pastoral. This other world is symbolized by the childlike language and unsophisticated memories of Oak Ridge's wooden boardwalks in "Beneath My Feet": "Dryin' out you smell so good/I like to lie against your wood" (11. 13-14). Darko Suvin feels that "the pastoral... is essentially closer to SF [than to fantasy];... SF has much to learn from the pastoral tradition," he believes, "primarily from its directly sensual relationships which do not manifest class alienation."26 The worlds of the pastoral and science 33 �fiction are alike, he says, in "[offering] no assurances as to the outcome of the protagonists' endeavors."26 In the unpredictable pastoral world, Marilou remembers her mother's advice: . . . always test the 'seems' of thingsbriars may lurk in the dew-drenched grass and jagged glass in heaps of leaves. The toughest sole can't bear these without a wound. (Mother's Advice While Bandaging My Stubbed Toe," 11. 5-9) Perfect advice for anyone undertaking atomic research, or for living in a world transformed by it, is her grandfather's advice, "Be plucky, like an Indian." At the beginning of Abiding Appalachia, Marilou evokes memories of the Trail of Tears and the martyrdom of "Tsali, his brother, and all his sons save one" (p. 21) who gave their lives that a remnant of the Cherokee might continue to live in their mountain fastness. Over and over her poems raise the haunting question, "If our atomic present —or futurebecomes our Trail of Tears, will we, too, be 'plucky like an Indian'?" We can be if we let the Indian in Marilou become the Indian in us, and if we resolve as she did, "And no more/could I follow any rule/that split my soul" ("An Indian Walks in Me," 11. 20-22). Fusion. Harmony. This is what explodes from the crucible that is the poetry of Marilou Awiakta. She says, "Mother had already taught me that in the holistic philosophy of my Cherokee ancestors, beyond surface differences, everything is in physical and spiritual connection—God, nature, humanity. Harmony. All are one: a circle. It seemed natural for the atom to be a part of this connection."27 In Abiding Appalachia, she says, "The language of science is coming round. The atom has found its poetry again and I can feel love once more for its image and its sound" (p. 79). Her phrase "coming round" suggests not only accommodation but also her sense of the sacred circle, symbol of unified life. Darko Suvin might see Marilou's reaching toward myth, folklore, or fairytale, expressed in Awi Usdi, small chief of the deer, as "committing creative suicide,"28 for he cannot bear that impulse in science fiction. Such transcendence antagonizes him, yet in science poetry, it seems to me, it is the perfect way to express that yearning which Suvin recognized as lying behind all great science fiction, "a hope of finding in the unknown the ideal environment, tribe, state, intelligence, or other aspect of the Supreme Good (or ... a fear of and revulsion from its contrary)."29 If it is "creative suicide" for science fiction to turn toward the mythical, the religious, the fairytale, in expressing hope of finding the ideal, it is quite the opposite for science poetry, since all poetry springs from an impulse 34 �that is essentially "mythical." As a fitting conclusion for her work, Marilou's final poem, "Where Mountain and Atom Meet," invokes "an aura from the great I Am/that gathers to its own/spirits that have gone before" (11. 6-8). It is precisely at that point of gathering, and at that point only, "where mountain and atom meet," and where we, too, may enter the sacred circle ourselves. NOTES 'Lester Del Key, The World of Science Fiction, 1926-1976 (New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1980), pp. 12-13. 2 The term "science poetry" is my own. The definition, however, is modeled on Darko Suvin's definition of science fiction in Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 4. "Suvin, p. 79. •Edward Field, ed., A Geography of Poets (New York: Bantam, 1979), p. 327. 'Field, p. 32. "Marilou Bonham Thompson, Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet (Memphis: St. Luke's Press, 1978), p. 48. All citations in the text are to this edition. 'Marilou Awiakta, "What is the Atom, Mother? Will it Hurt Us?" MS. (July 1983), p. 47. "Awiakta, p. 47. 'Peter Nicholls, ed. The Science Fiction Encyclopedia (New York: Doubleday, 1979), p. 432. 10 Del Key, p. 108. "Nicholls, p. 432. "Del Key, pp. 108-109. "•Nicholls, p. 432. "Awiakta, p. 48. 16 Suvin, p. 4. "Suvin, p. 18. "Suvin, p. 5 "Awiakta, p. 47. "Awiakta, p. 47. "Frank Herbert, Children of Dune (New York: Berkley Publishing Corp., 1976), p. 4. 21 Awiakta, p. 48. 22 Awiakta, p. 48. 23 Awiakta, p. 47. "Awiakta, p. 47. 35 �'"Suvin, p. 9. "Suvin, p. 19. "Awiakta, p. 47. ^Suvin, p. 8. ""Suvin, p. 5. 36 �Going Home by Ron Willoughby "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." from Genesis 1:31, KJV "But it's the truth even if it didn't happen." One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I try to talk my mother out of going, but it doesn't do any good. Pardee is the place where she grew up and she wants to see it, or what's left of it, or the place where it was, one more time. So we drive over there, one hundred and fifty miles of four lane road that bulldozes its way across country, then up the narrow hollow on seven miles of one and a half lane humpbacked road that squirms through the woods, following the creek the way a puppy follows its mother. On the other side of the creek a railroad track tags along silently, only occasionally visible through the trees. On both sides of the hollow strip mine high walls follow the contours of the ridges as precisely as lines on a topographic map. We pass through Dunbar, where we lived for a while, where the company sold its houses to the miners, who fixed them up and settled down. Dunbar, population seventy-five, more or less, with no store, no post office, not even a gas station. Nothing but people and their homes. And the mountains. Two miles above Dunbar is Pardee, the end of the line, the head of the hollow lying in the lap of Pine Mountain. Here the road is still in use only because there is a stripping operation going on above Pardee. The blacktop is slowly crumbling and disappearing from the outside edges toward the middle, like a scab on a healing cut. We cross the creek and the railroad tracks, round one last bend, and are in Pardee. The hollow is little more than one hundred yards wide at this point. The road runs along the base of one ridge, and to our left is 37 �the creek, the railroad track and the opposite ridge. Once there were thirty or so houses lined up facing each other across the tracks, white as healthy young teeth. Now there are two teeth left, slowly rotting. The first building we come to is the old church, which stands apart between the creek and the road. It had been a little white clapboard building with a high peaked roof topped by a homemade wooden cross, and served as the center of social life in Pardee. Now it is being razed, and only the front wall is standing. I pull off the road in a cleared space beside the church. A bulldozer is already parked there, a giant yellow eraser waiting to finish rubbing out the last smudges of what had once been Pardee. I look at Mother. She is looking intently at the remains of the church, already back in a time and place that no longer exists. Eventually she nods. "I remember when your daddy and I came to Sunday school and church here," she says. "That was before we were married, mostly. After we were married we lived in Dunbar and Appalachia, and we only came here when we were visiting. Your daddy taught Sunday school some, and there was a piano. We'd sing hymns and have a big time." She is smiling. "And before that, when I was a little girl, we had square dances and parties here. And there was a Christmas program every year. One of the men would dress up like Santa Glaus and give us paper bags full of fruit and nuts and hard candy." We stand silently for a minute longer, then turn away, clunk across the creek on the old wooden-decked bridge, and walk slowly along between the rusty rails of the railroad track. The ditches and the old house sites are overgrown with weeds and blackberry bushes. The two remaining houses are both in the row away from the creek. We stop in front of the first one. The steps are gone and the boards are missing from the floor of the porch. There is no door, and the windows don't even have frames, much less glass. A few shreds of clear plastic hang in the windows and occasionally twitch in a passing breeze. Behind the house the wooded ridge rises steeply, waiting patiently to reclaim its own. The old house is too tired to resist. It sags like a man who has spent twelve hours at the coal face with a pick in his hands. "This is the house where Olin and Glad lived," Mother says. "I'm sure of it." Glad was one of mother's older sisters. She died in 1943 of a kidney infection. A few months after she died penicillin was introduced, and that same kidney infection would have been cleared up in ten days, without going to the hospital. Or so the story goes. I wonder how mother can be so sure this is the house. "And after Glad died, Mary and Rich moved in here." Mary is another of mother's older sisters. She lives by herself in the Wildcat near Big Stone, where she and Rich and several of their children moved in the early fifties. They bought a house and a little piece of land with the insurance 38 �money that they got when Johnny, their second son, was killed in Korea in 1950. Right after his eighteenth birthday. "And right over here," she points, "is where we lived." I shake my head. I vaguely remember what the house looked like, but there's no house there now, and I'm still not sure she can recognize any of these places with certainty. But it doesn't matter. She's certain. "Poppy used to work a twelve hour shift as the tipple foreman," she says. "We had a nicer house than most because he was a foreman. We had this beautiful white trellis in our front yard—do you remember it?— and Poppy told me after your daddy and I ran away to Harlan to get married that he had hoped the two of us would get married at home. We would have stood under the trellis. Said I was his last girl, and all the rest had run off to get married, and he'd hoped I would get married at home." She fell silent. I remember some other stories about Poppy Hall. About how he'd had a lot of money and property at one time, but had let his brother hoodoo him out of it a little at a time while he was drunk, so that in the end Poppy wound up as a mine foreman, and died in a rented house in Norton, while great-uncle Ben ended up rich. Or about how Poppy loved cars, used to buy a new one every year and keep it all shined up. My daddy told me about being with Poppy in his car once with Ray and Shine, two of mother's brothers. They'd just finished shining up the car and the windows were as clear as spring water. So clear that Poppy thought the window was down and spit a great gob of tobacco juice all over it. Daddy said that they were afraid to laugh out loud, so they nearly died because they swelled up ready to burst with all the laughs they swallowed. And mother told me about the time Poppy came home drunk, and for some reason got upset with Mary and tried to throw her out the window of the upstairs bedroom. Mommy Hall ran into the room and started pulling at him, and he turned and hit her. And then he fell down on his knees and cried out, "What have I done?" And after that Poppy never took another drink. Or so the stories go. Mother turned and pointed again. "Over there," she says "was the superintendent's house." This time I know she's right, because I can see the long flight of steps—there must be forty of them—leading up to an empty flat spot on the lower flank of the ridge. The house sat looking out over the rest of the camp like a corporate Big Brother, or so it must have seemed when the union and the company cops came into the hollow. Looking at the empty space at the top of the steps I have an eerie, childish thought: If I walked up those steps to the top, and if I stepped off onto the spot where the house had stood, would I disappear? We wander on up the railroad track toward the remains of the tipple near the head of the hollow, crossing the creek again by stepping from 39 �tie to tie. The water is visible about five feet down through the gaps between the ties, and I remember how terrified I was as a child to make this same crossing. The water seemed to be thirty feet away then, but I made the crossing anyway because I was even more terrified of being called "chicken" by my friends. We come to the company store a couple of hundred feet after crossing the bridge. "This is the new store," mother says. "I remember when the old one burned, and I remember them building this one. I loved that old store. Your daddy lived in a room on the second floor when he came up here to teach school. He and his roommate, the doctor, used to sit up at night and read Shakespeare aloud to each other." Like most of what mother was saying today, I had heard this before, and my mental image of this scene is from outside, down the hollow from the building. It is dark, and the stars are visible if you look straight up. The only other light is in the window of Daddy's room, a dim yellow glow in the blackness of the ridge in the background. In the earth's guts thirteen year old boys pick and shovel coal and breathe coal dust, while the words of Shakespeare drift like thin morning mist over the hollow. But some thirteen year olds didn't go underground, and Daddy was proud of the letters he got from his students, even decades later, thanking him for being here when they needed him. Even though he gave up teaching in his early thirties to take a job where he could earn a living, men and women who were his students in Dunbar and Pardee were still writing him when he died at sixty-nine. He left two children, two grandchildren, and a wife who had been his student in the seventh grade. We mount the steps to the porch of the "new" store, whose claim to fame is that some scenes from "Coal Miner's Daughter" were shot here, and look through the big windows. The plate glass lies in shards inside, and here and there among the debris is a baseball-sized rock. We turn away and look back down the hollow, where we can see all that remains of Pardee. The two decaying houses, the front of the church standing like the facade of a movie set, the long steps leading nowhere. In a moment I look at Mother. She has the relaxed face and unfocused stare of a newborn baby. In her mind she is building her own reality, with the creative power that is a wavering image of God, a deep Presence glimpsed in a wind-ruffled pond at dusk. Her faded blue eyes are the windows of a house in winter, and inside a young girl presses her nose to the frosted glass, looking out and listening to the faint voices outside. Perhaps one day Mother will become that young girl again, will open the door and go outside to become once more a part of that earlier time. But now, nearing seventy, she can only look through the girl's ageless eyes at the reality she has made. So she stands on the uneven boards of the porch, looking at what is, while the young girl presses her face to the window and sees what used to be. . . .and behold, it is very good. 40 �SOCIAL THEORY AND SOCIAL LIFE IN APPALACHIA: A PANEL Presenters: Mary Anglin; New School for Social Research; New York, NY Alan Batteau; Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Evanston, IL Bill Horton; Abingdon, VA Jim Foster; Emory and Henry University; Emory, VA Discussants: Tom Plaut; Mars Hill College; Mars Hill, NC Tom Shannon; Radford University; Radford, VA A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy by Allen Bateau Unless they are connected with protest potential from other sectors of society no conflicts arising from . . . underprivilege can really overturn the system—they can only provoke it to shape reactions incompatible with formal democracy. For underprivileged groups are not social classes, nor do they ever even potentially represent the mass of the population. Their disenfranchisement and pauperization no longer coincide with exploitation, because the system does not live off their labor. They can represent at most a past phase of exploitation. Appalachia has been studied for a variety of reasons: Some seek a romantic escape from urban society in the construction of Appalachian folk; others look for a laboratory within which to perfect tool for the improvement of society at large. Others have hoped to discover amidst the oppression of the coalfields seeds of the eventual transformation of American society. In all cases there is the presumption that in some manner Appalachia is exceptional, even as its boundaries are artificially drawn to preserve that exceptionality. Yet every study of Appalachia contains within it assumptions about the nature of American society that belie this exceptionality. To the extent that one mis-understands American society, or is unclear on his or her assumptions, the resulting statements made about Appalachia will be misleading, romantic, or irrelevant. William G. Frost made such a mistake, being uncomfortable with the cultural pluralism in America, and 41 �thus blind to the ethnic diversity within Appalachia. Jack Weller made such a mistake, ignoring the macro-political and -economic bases of Appalachia's situation. My study of Appalachia has been motivated by the observation that conditions there present in unusually dramatic form processes of exploitation and oppression found in many corners of American society. One can observe there processes of oppression which, while not qualitatively different from those underway elsewhere in America, nevertheless are cast into sufficiently high relief to permit one to view a structure that elsewhere is rather opaque. The opacity of these processes in our everyday lives is what makes them work. This opacity derives from the fact that in most cases people are controlled and manipulated not through force and fraud, but through the manipulation of consciousness. I have been trying for several years to understand how this manipulation of consiousness occurs in a variety of places in American society; in the process I have arrived, I hope, at some new understandings not only of the quality of oppression but also at the structures through which people and groups are oppressed. I should first state some of the assumptions that have informed my study of Appalachia. I can reduce these to four statements, which after stating I will take the liberty to elaborate on. 1. America is a capitalistic society. 2. America is a continental society, embracing and assimilating to an unusual degree regional, ethnic, and other forms of diversity. 3. In America, the state—meaning the political and governmental apparatus at both federal and sub-federal levels—is large, powerful, and partially autonomous. 4. The dominant framework for authority in America is bureaucratic; in America, every form of large-scale organization, from corporate enterprise to religion to the state, is bureaucratized. If one takes exception to any of these statements, we are in trouble, for I have deliberately chosen those that seem to me to be least exceptionable. One may be uncomfortable with some of them, particularly with the emphasis they suggest; but such discomfort does not per se discredit the statements or their logical implications. To say that America is a capitalistic society means that it is divided by class, that surplus appropriation is a central dynamic, and that certain classes aggrandize themselves at the expense of others. For anyone who has taken a passing glance at the coal industry in Kentucky, such observations are commonplace. But (and this is a major qualification) if we must continually hark back to the coal industry to validate our statements about class, we are on shaky ground, particularly with regard to those districts and periods of Appalachia outside the coal industry's domination. I attempted to see how this would work for certain non42 �industrial spheres in eastern Kentucky, and suggested in an article in the American Ethnologist some revisions of our understanding of class. The observation that America is a continental society is hardly novel; yet it suggests some interesting problems. Continental societies are rather unusual—there are only four of them in the world (five if you count Canada) and they are all marked by a heightened tension between strong centripetal government and the centrifugal tendencies of linguistic, cultural, regional, religious, and ethnic diversity. This is not a particularly trenchant observation, yet it creates some difficult issues for those interested in the first: For the models we have—both conservative and radical, I might add—of capitalism and class struggle were derived from societies where this sort of diversity was less of an issue, and hence could with some plausibility (and arrogance, one might add) be dismissed as "false consciousness" or "bourgeois nationalism," or "traditional survivals." In the last thirty years, however, we have seen that nationalism—with the linguistic, religious, ethnic, and other affinities from which it is built up—is a revolutionary force. A major intellectual task is squaring such an observation with some of our assumptions about the workings of capitalist society. In a world context, American society is unusually assimilationist, managing to a far greater degree than nearly every other society to integrate these forms of diversity with minimal violence. Given the relative political salience of ethnic and class loyalties in different contexts, these assimilationist tendencies also suggest some problems for understanding American class structure. Now a major issue for us is whether these various non-economic affinities are reducible to distinctions of class or other economic relationships, or whether they are in their own right autonomous and alternative forms of consciousness. I'll return to this in a moment. The observation of a large and powerful government and political apparatus in America, and that of its legal-rationalistic structure, is also rather pedestrian. The crucial question is what significance one attaches to these facts. Is a large government merely a tool of capital, or does it represent an independent sphere of action? Is bureaucracy an instrument or a form of domination? While these questions might seem to border on the Thomistic—kind of like asking how many civil servants can dance on the header of a computer tape—they have serious implications for how one seeks to improve the lives of one's fellows, whether in the office or in the hollers. I began with the question of the role of human consciousness in the manifest processes of oppression. It is a metaphysical question that we cannot resolve here whether or not human consciousness is autonomous of or shackled to economic interests and domination. It is a metaphysical question, and no amount of professorial fudging ("partly yes, partly no") or dialectical backflips ("mutally reactive autonomous forces") will solve 43 �the problem. I will have to explain that I find the former assumption, of the autonomy of consciousness, more interesting, more plausible, and more productive for devising political strategy. Others may differ. But once I've taken this step, several interesting possibilities are opened up. One can discover a diversity of semantic values in economic processes; one can better explain ethnic and religious affinities; and one can suggest new political strategies. When we talk about how consciousness works, we are talking about forms, media, and contents of communication, about symbolic forms such as myth, ritual, and narrative, about processes such as persuasion, identification, faction, and sacrifice. All of these are symbolic processes, yet are very real in their political results. There is a well-developed literature of the systematic ways in which these symbolic processes work. I will elaborate on this in the discussion, commenting here only that they are irreducible to economic processes as one normally understands them. With an understanding of consciousness as an autonomous agency, we also find new ends of action beyond simply economic aggrandizement. Individual identity and group solidarity, for instance, are created through symbolic processes which are irrational from an economic standpoint. The symbolic bases of ethnic and religious affiliation are more understandable if one assumes that they are partially independent of economic interests. I would suggest also that with an understanding of these symbolic processes one arrives at a better understanding of ethnic and religious oppression, and ultimately at a new map of the class structure of American society, A paradox for me is how people who are well-fed and secure in their livelihood can feel oppressed. The answer of academic social science is to retreat into "relative deprivation." This suggests that nearly everyone can find an excuse to identify themselves as oppressed. But suppose we assume that people have an interest in more than just their economic and political situation; that they have an interest in such irrational matters as autonomy, identity, and group affiliation. Then anything that threatens these—threatens them symbolically, I should underscore, for that is how these things work—will be experienced as oppressive. Protestant fundamentalists find threats in sexual license, for such unpunished sin questions some of the axioms of their existence; most ethnic groups find stereotyping immediately offensive, not because it deprives them of their livelihood (although it can be used for that purpose), so much as because it stigmatizes and fragments their identity. For every act of oppression there is an oppressor; yet in a rational society, what drives the shaming, stereotyping, and fragmentation of this symbolic oppression? In a brief article I wrote a few years back, I suggested that in the kind of society we have today, "intangibles such as health and personal identity have become resources, placed on the market, and made into resources for surplus appropriation." Elsewhere I have sug44 �gested that some of the shaming rituals that Sennett described for the workings of bureaucracy were means by which those with relative power could "accumulate economic, political, and psychological capital at the expense of the inferiors." If you have indulged me thus far, you may think that this is an interesting metaphor, an extension of the meaning of surplus and capital into non-economic spheres. My intention however is literal, not metaphorical. You see, the genius of capitalism is that it continually places new segments of human experience on the market and extracts surplus value out of them. Three hundred years ago, before the industrial revolution, the notion that there might be a market in human labor was an outlandish one. A hundred years ago any notion of buying and selling human consciousness would seem pretty extravagant—yet now we have large advertising agencies engaged in just such a business. And if you think that identity is not for sale, then you haven't been to Bloomingdales. That which can be sold is alienable; that which is alienable is a prime target for the workings of a capitalist market. If one can move beyond the simple economistic view of capital, and see that capital can take on a variety of forms, then one is permitted a conception of "human capital" as those intangible, infungible, yet accumulable resources an individual or a group possesses. These resources include such matters as skills, social relationships, group solidarity, individual identity. Through their accumulation the individual achieves a degree of autonomy in the face of capitalist predation. Yet one of the critical issues we see in the workings of capital today is the appropriation or destruction of the diverse forms of human capital. Capitalism has been around for hundreds of years. It existed before the industrial revolution, and it will continue to grow even as industrial production employs ever-decreasing fractions of the American labor force. Bureaucracy has been around for thousands of years, and continues to grow and sequester new areas of human activity. If one is willing to abide by the evidence of states that have undergone socialist revolutions, then bureaucracy seems to be more durable than capitalism. The two have in common the facts of the oppression they create, albeit for at times dissimilar ends. The prospects for a revolution in this country leading to more equitable social forms rests more on messianic hope than on sober assessment of current possibility. Short of this, one can in fact find means to limit the encroachments of capitalism and bureaucracy. This requires a willingness to engage in confrontation and negotiation, rather than a retreat into sectarian avoidance; it requires not only knowing on which side (of several fences) you stand, but also who stands there with you and who your potential allies are. I began this discussion with an epigraph which I think is suggestive of the political significance of processes of oppression in Appalachia. The 45 �epigraph is not from any "post-industrial theorist" such as Daniel Bell, but from Jurgen Habermas. Habermas, in "Toward a Rational Society" is attempting to locate the zone of conflict and protest in a society where legal-rationalistic structures have broken out of their traditional restraints and have usurped the very framework of the society. He suggests that student protest may provide the zone of conflict he seeks. His conclusion here is based partly on an assumption that may have seemed plausible in 1968 that student activists were less directed toward professional careers than other students. In 1984 one despairs the protest potential among professionals or the proto-professionals found in most universities. Although one should not look for new ideas for fundamental change in the society from such classes, in certain kinds of situations they do represent potential allies for those who have worked out their own political agenda. Such negotiations with other classes and the powerful institutions of this society will always be like a card game in which the rules are biased in favor of your opponent— you can win at such games, if you know what you're playing for and are at times prepared to break the rules. If one is convinced that the only solution lies in revolution, then this will certainly sound like I am trying to lure the proletarian sheep into the den of capitalist wolves. The motive of seduction, however, is not mine; it is rather one of the important dynamics of how the system works. In American society, the sheep are continually lured into the wolves' den, and their (seemingly) voluntary participation in their own oppression is essential to the workings of the system. No one is coerced into purchasing his or her identity at Bloomingdales; few feel the immediate spur of poverty and hunger as motives to sell their labor; most could survive in comfort (if not security or prestige) with far less income than they currently have. But the American economy continues to work, consuming far more labor, creating far more environmental spoliation, producing far too many useless goods, accumulating destabilizing surpluses, because the overwhelming majority of the society has bought into its myths of happiness through consumption and upward mobility. These beliefs are essential to the survival of advanced capitalism. Finding an alternative yet equally persuasive set of beliefs, a new form of consciousness, if you wish, is a precondition and not a consequence of its demise. 46 �CURRENT RESEARCH IN COMMUNITY ISSUES Households and Families in Eastern Kentucky in 1900 Thomas A. Arcury/Julia Porter, University of Kentucky; Lexington, KY Poverty, Race and Class in Appalachian Cities Mike Maloney/Elizabeth Lilly; Appalachian Peoples Service Organization The Graying of Central Appalachia Rosemary Goss, Virginia Tech.; Blacksburg, VA Framework for Teaching Human Service Professionals About Appalachian Communities John McNutt/Marcia Barren, Tusculum College; Greenville, TN Convenor: Aaron Hyatt; Western Carolina University; Cullowhee, NC Households and Families in Eastern Kentucky in 1900* by Thomas A. Arcury and Julia D. Porter Figure 1: Percentage Distribution of Household Population by Age and Sex, Pike County and Ashland Samples, 1900 The purpose of this paper is to describe and compare the composition of rural and urban Appalachian Kentucky households hi 1900. This task is undertaken for two reasons. First, for much of this century the composition of the traditional Appalachian family and household has been the center of attention for both scientific and popular analysis. While several analyses of the Appalachian family have been presented since the 1940s (Brown, 1952a, 1952b; Stephenson, 1968; Hicks, 1976; Bryant, 1981; Batteau, 1982; Ford, et al, 1983), little quantitative or qualitative data have been presented for earlier periods. The second reason for analysis of Appalachian data from this period is that it allows an examination of the effects of rapid industrialization and urbanization on the household composition of a region in which subsistence agriculture had dominated previously. Beginning shortly before 1900 areas of Eastern Kentucky became involved in the large scale commercial exploitation of the region's vast coal reserves. The present study is the result of a preliminary investigation of household composition during this period. Data are abstracted from a sample of households listed in the 1900 census enumeration schedules for 47 �two communities: Ashland, the only city in Eastern Kentucky in 1900, and one rural enumeration district in Pike County. Traditional Appalachian Kentucky Household Composition This study is concerned with the eastern one-third of Kentucky included in the Southern Appalachian Region (see Ford, 1962). Little is known about this region's family and household composition at or before the beginning of the twentieth century. Research on the history of any component of the region's social organization has been limited. Eller (1982) provides a valuable analysis of Southern Appalachian economic change between 1880 and 1930 due to industrialization, particularly the commercial exploitation of the region's timber and coal resources. But his discussion of micro-level sociocultural change is limited. Campbell (1921) describes some specific examples of Appalachian households, but his concern is more with lifestyle than with the analysis of social organization. Due to the dearth of published historical material, ethnographic analogy is used to provide some background on turn of the century Appalachian household composition. Brown's research on rural Beech Creek, Kentucky (Brown, 1952a, 1952b; Brown, et al, 1963; Schwarzweller, et al, 1971) is the most completely documented study upon which ethnographic analogies are made. Brown found that the household consisting of a conjugal family, a husband, a wife and their dependent children, was the dominant form of household organization. These nuclear family households represented about 75 percent of all households in Beech Creek, with another 16 percent including a married couple with no children, and five percent including an additional family. Only three percent of all households did not contain a family. Marriage was almost universal among this rural Appalachian population. Age at first marriage was at about 23 years for males, and 18 years for females. Often a new couple stayed for about one year in the dwelling of one of their families of orientation, usually that of the husband. This accounts for all of the households with an additional family. Often the newlyweds first child was born before they established their own household. Within eight to ten years after marriage, the average couple in Beech Creek had 3 or 4 children. When the wives were from 37 to 45 years of age household size was at its maximum; most contained at least four children, and many had six or more children. The nuclear family household was the basic unit of production and consumption. Such families owned and farmed their land, made most of their tools and consumption goods, and were almost totally self-sufficient (Eller, 1979; Precourt, 1983). Labor differentiations were along age-sex lines, and there were an interdependence of age-sex roles. As the family 48 �worked the mountain homestead, economic roles and family roles could only be separated analytically (Brown, 1952a, 1952b). The ideal of the separate, self-reliant nuclear family household meant the extended family household was rare. The presence of the household head's siblings or other relatives only occurred in situations of extreme old age or youth when the individual could not care for himself. Most older couples lived alone, or if a spouse died, in a single person household, maintaining a separate household as long as possible. The aged parents of a household head or his spouse resided in his household only in cases when the parents could no longer care for themselves. Often in these cases, the younger family would come to live in the parental household. Nonrelatives were also rare in the rural Appalachian household. While the extended family household was a rarity in rural Appalachia, the extended family network was still an important part of the social organization. Several households containing related families usually lived in close proximity. This extended kin network, also called a "set" (see Batteau, 1982; Bryant, 1981,1983), could be counted on in time of crises. The help of these kin also allowed aged and other disabled individuals to maintain separate households. Ethnographic analogy with studies of more contemporary rural Appalachian households can be used to present some background on rural 1900 household composition, but similar research is not available for industrial Appalachian households. While this study examines the population of Ashland, Kentucky, it should be noted that this community does not totally reflect the rural Appalachian industrialization experience. Ashland existed as a city before commercial timber and coal extraction began. Most of the industrial workers did not live in cities, but in rural communities and company towns nearer to the mines. Oral history interviews and some published materials do indicate some changes in household composition. Native men who worked in the mines often moved their families to company towns or stayed at boarding houses. Methods Data for this study consist of a total of 300 households randomly selected from two localities in Appalachian Kentucky. The two localities were purposefully selected as representative of the two extremes of industrial and urban development present in the region hi 1900. As the more industrial locality, the city of Ashland was selected. A census enumeration district in Pike County (Magisterial District 2), as totally removed from commercial coal production as possible, was selected as the traditional non-industrial locality. A total of 150 households was randomly selected for each locality from the 1900 census schedules. For the specific Pike County area only the single enumeration district was sampled. For Ashland, all three of the city's central precincts were included. 49 �The four household structural types used in this study are adapted from those developed by Hammel and Laslett (1974): (1) nonfamily, (2) nuclear family only, (3) extended family, and (4) multiple family. Some variable definitions are dictated by the way they were recorded in the 1900 census. The ability to read and write was recorded instead of educational attainment. Literacy is defined here as the ability to both read and write. Migration can only be defined in terms of an individual's state or nation of birth. In this study we use a rough measure of the number of nearby households containing relatives. Similar to the method used by Smith, et. al. (1979), this method involves examining the ten households which precede and the ten which follow each sampled household on the enumeration schedules, and recording the number of households which contain the same surname as that in the sample household. The Household Population A comparison of the sample household populations neatly summarizes the differences between the two communities: one, Pike County, with a stable, homogeneous agricultural population; the other, Ashland, an industrializing, heterogeneous population in a state of flux. The age-sex pyramids (Figure 1) portray their differences. The Pike County pyramid indicates a population growing with high fertility. There does appear to FIGURE 1 50 �FIGURE 2 TABLE 1. State or Nation of Birth and Race of Sample Household Population by Residence Urban Rural State or Nation of Birth N Kentucky Ohio Virginia West Virginia Other U. S. Foreign born Missing Total Race White Black Total % N % 799 0 55 7 36 1 89.0 63.1 13.0 8.2 4.3 7.1 4.3 898 100.0 445 92 58 30 50 30 (5) 705 100.0 898 0 898 100.0 665 45 710 93.7 6.3 100.0 51 6.1 .8 4.0 .1 100.0 �be some outmigration of young adult males in the Pike County population, but there does not appear to be any significant inmigration . The bulge in the 15 through 34 age cohorts for Ashland indicates a population being affected by substantial inmigration. Fertility in the Ashland population also is relatively low. The lack of inmigration in the rural Pike population and the strong influence of inmigration in the urban Ashland population is substantiated when place of birth within the population is examined (Table 1). The great majority (89 percent) of the rural population is Kentucky born. Less than two-thirds (63.1 percent) of the urban population were born in Kentucky. A significant number of the urban population were born in the neighboring states of Ohio and Virginia/West Virginia, in other parts of the U.S., and even outside of the country. In addition to the ethnic heterogeneity of Ashland, there is also some racial variety. About 6 percent of Ashland's population is black; the entire rural Pike population is white. The rural sample is employed almost entirely in agriculture: 75.1 percent of the work force are farmers (Table 2). The only other significant TABLE 2. Occupations and Literacy of Sample Household Population by Residence _ Occupation Professional, Technical; Managers & Administrators Sales and Clerical Craftsmen Operatives All Laborers Farmers All Service Missing Not in the labor force Total Literacy Read and write Read only Neither Missing and Children Total Rural N 1 1 4 0 31 121 3 (2) (735) 161 300 61 196 (341) 557 52 Urban % .6 .6 2.5 19.3 75.1 1.9 100.0 53.9 10.9 35.2 100.0 N % 24 25 38 42 86 4 26 (18) (447) 245 9.8 10.2 15.5 17.2 35.1 1.6 10.6 500 8 44 (158) 552 100.0 90.6 1.4 8.0 100.0 �occupational group consists of laborers (19.3 percent), with most of these being farm laborers. The urban labor force is distributed among all the occupational groups with a significant proportion in each group except farmers. Finally, there is a large difference in the level of literacy of the two populations. Ninety percent of the urban sample can both read and write. In the rural population only 53.9 percent can read and write, with an additional 10.9 percent who can only read. Household Composition The characteristics of all Appalachian rural and urban sample households differ significantly on each dimension measured. The differences in the distribution of household types (Table 3) are the smallest of any variable. The rural population has a slightly greater proportion of nuclear family, and the more complex extended and multiple family types. The major differences hi structural types is the proportion of nonfamily households: only one such household (.7 percent) is present in the rural sample, but nonfamily households constitute 7.4 percent of the urban sample. A further difference is represented by the number of generations which the households span. In Pike County 10.7 percent of the households span one generation, and 18 percent span three or more generations; hi Ashland, 18.1 percent of the households span one generation and only 9.4 percent span three or more generations. Another major difference between the rural and urban Appalachian households is the number of persons resident, and some specific characteristics of these persons. The median number of persons in the rural TABLE 3. Distribution of Household Type by Urban-Rural Residence for Total Sample and Native Kentucky Subsample . ,, _ Household Tvpe Rural Urban N X2=10.488 df=3 N % 1 113 23 13 150 Nonfamily Nuclear Family Extended Family Multiple Family Total % .7 75.3 15.3 8.7 100.0 11 107 15 16 149 7.4 71.8 10.1 10.7 100.0 P<.05 53 �households is 6.4, while in the urban households the median number is 4.8. A large proportion of the inhabitants in the rural households are young children of the household head. The median number of children under the age of 18 in rural households is 3.8. Only 20.8 percent of the Pike County households have no children under 18 present, while 34.2 percent have five or more children under 18 present. Far fewer urban households have young children of the head resident; the median number of children under 18 is 1.6. Of the urban households, 36.9 percent have no children under 18 present, while only 5.4 percent have five or more children under 18 present. Unexpectedly, a significantly greater proportion of the urban households have older children of the head present. The specific composition of the rural and urban households can be further illuminated by examining the distribution of relationship to the household head by the sex of the residents (Table 4). A greater proportion of the urban population (both males and females) have the status of household head or head's spouse than does the rural population. Conversely, a greater proportion of the rural population have the dependent statuses of child or grandchild. A higher percentage of the urban population includes siblings or siblings' children of the head, as well as there being more nonrelatives in the urban households. Females are twice as likely to be heads in urban households as they are in rural households. Rural households appear to have a much greater tendency to have relatives living in nearby dwellings. Fewer than one-third of the Pike County households have no nearby households which do not share the TABLE 4. Relationship to Household Head by Sex by Urban-Rural Residence Malea Relationship to Household Head Rural Urban Femaleb Rural Head 141 30.3 128 34.9 11 2.5 Spouse 132 30.5 Child 275 59.1 183 49.9 247 57.0 Grandchild 29 6.2 12 3.3 13 3.0 4 1.1 13 3.0 Parent/Grandparent 2 .4 Sibling/Sibling's Child 8 1.8 7 1.5 16 4.4 Not Related 11 2.4 30 6.5 9 2.1 Total 465 99.9 373 100.1 433 99.9 aX2=29.601 bX2=23.031 df=5 df=6 P<.05 P<.05 54 Urban 20 5.9 120 35.6 151 44.8 4 1.2 12 3.6 12 3.6 18 5.3 337 100.0 �head's surname, while 82.5 percent of the Ashland households have no same surname households nearby. Of the urban households with nearby same surname households, most have only one such neighbor. Almost onefifth of the rural households have four surname neighbors, and another one-fifth have three such neighbors. Interpretation and Conclusions The data indicate differences in household composition are largely the result of industrialization in urban Ashland. The charateristics of 1900 rural Pike County households are very similar to those described since 1940 for more isolated traditional Appalachian neighborhoods (Brown, 1952a, 1952b; Bryant, 1981; Batteau, 1982). These characteristics include the presence of a large number of children, the infrequency of co-residing nonrelatives, the infrequency of co-residing siblings and other collaterals, and the tendency of relatives to live nearby. The 1900 Pike County data also indicate that children married young and left the parental household soon after marriage, and that older parents maintained separate households as long as possible. The differences found to exist in the household composition of the rural and urban samples suggest two general conclusions. First, intraregional variation existed in Appalachian Kentucky as early as 1900, a period when the region is considered to have been relatively isolated from the mainstream of American society. The second conclusion is that Ashland's experience is a forerunner of household composition change in many rural Appalachian communities with the coming of industrialization, particularly commercial coal production. The exact nature of household and family change in the rural industrializing communities deserves further investigation. "This project was supported by an Appalachian Studies Fellowship from the Appalachian Center, Berea College, Berea, Kentucky. REFERENCE Batteau, Allen 1982 Mosbys and Broomsedge: The Semantics of Class in an Appalachian Kinship System. American Ethnologist 9:445-466. Bryant, F. Carlene 1981 We're All Kin: A Cultural Study of a Mountain Neighborhood. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. 1983 Family Group Organization in a Cumberland Mountain Neighborhood. In Allen Batteau, ed., Appalachia and America: Autonomy and Regional Dependence. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 55 �Brown, James S. 1952a The Farm Family in a Kentucky Mountain Neighborhood. Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 587. 1952b The Family Group in a Kentucky Mountain Farming Community. Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 588. Brown, James S., Harry K. Schwarzweller, and J. J. Mangalam 1963 Kentucky Mountain Migration and the Stem-Family: An American Variation on a Theme by LePlay. Rural Sociology 28: 48-69. Campbell, John C. 1921 The Southern Highlander and His Homeland. New York: The Russell Sage Foundation. Eller, Ronald D. 1979 Land and Family: An Historical View of Preindustrial Appalachia. Appalachian Journal 6:83-109. 1982 Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Ford, Thomas R., ed. 1962 The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. University of Kentucky Press. Ford, Thomas R., Thomas A. Arcury, and Julia D. Porter 1983 Changes in the Structure of Central Appalachian Mountain Families and Households, 1958-1976. CDC Development Paper No. 19, Center for Developmental Change, University of Kentucky. Hammel, Eugene A., and Peter Laslett 1974 Comparing Household Structure Over Time and Between Cultures. Comparative Studies in Society and History 16:1, 73-109. Hicks, George L. 1976 Appalachian Valley. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Precourt, Walter 1983 The Image of Appalachian Poverty. In Allen Batteau, ed., Appalachia and America: Autonomy and Regional Dependence. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Schwarzweller, Harry K., James S. Brown, and J. J. Mangalam 1971 Mountain Families in Transition: A Case Study of Appalachian Migration, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Smith, Daniel Scott, Michel Dahlin and Mark Friedberger 1979 The Family Structure of the Older Black Population in the American South in 1880 and 1900. Sociology and Social Research 63:544-565. Stephenson, John B. 1968 Shiloh: A Mountain Community. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. 56 �PRE-COLUMBIAN CHEROKEES Pre-Columbian Cultural Contact Between Chibchan and Iroquoian Linguistic Groups David K. Evans; Wake Forest University; Winston-Salem, NC Man of Lightning (Film) Gary Moss; Georgia State University; Atlanta, GA Convenor: Theda Perdue; Clemson University; Clemson, SC Pre-Columbian Cultural Contact Between Chibchan and Iroquoian Linguistic Groups by David K. Evans Nowhere in this paper am I suggesting that the ancestors of the people in the mountains of North Carolina today known as the Cherokee, came from Central or South America. What I am saying, however, is that there is ample evidence to strongly suggest that much of the cultural past of these proud people may indeed have found its way up from the South. I will suggest that the people contacted by the whites, and called Cherokee, may well have been several peoples at an earlier date, and that fate and fortune, coupled with time, had welded the various cultures into one by the time of the first European contacts. My evidence for making this assumption will be archaeological, historical, linguistic, and ethnographical. If I were asked to say just when and where this research began, I would say it was in Amubri, on a June evening in 1972, after the arrival of the swallows, but before the bats. Amubri, a Bribri Indian settlement, has a Catholic Mission station on the plain at the edge of the mountains of the Talamanca rain forest in Southern Costa Rica. In June the swallows come, every evening, just before sunset. They dart about, ingesting insects on the wing. As the sun goes down behind the mountains, everything, including the birds in zig-zag flight, is cast in shades of red, orange, and gold, from the spectacular sunsets common to the region. Almost at once, when the light fades, the swallows vanish, and the bats appear for their share of the insects. For me the appearance of the bats was always a sign to pump up the gas lamps for the evening—so 57 �I know this research began before the bats took over where the swallows left off because there was still enough natural light in the sky to read by. My students, all team members of Wake Forest University's Overseas Research Center, were drifting back from the river, where they had bathed. My wife and one of the Catholic Sisters had gone to find a guitar string, and I had climbed the wooden steps to the upper balcony of the building that served as the church, the school, warehouse, lab for my students and home for the two German priests who presided over the mission. For two summers, among other things, I had been collecting clan names among the Bribri Indians and their mountain neighbors (and liguistic kin), the Cabecar. In checking these names against earlier accounts by W. M. Gabb and other writers of the last century, I had found that many were now extinct and long forgotten by all but the oldest of the Indians. That evening, as I climbed the steps to work on my data on the clans, Padre Bernado Drug, a German priest in his sixties with a huge salt and pepper beard, was waiting for me with a surprise—an original copy of H. de F. Pittier's work on the language of the Bribri, published in Vienna in 1898. Padre Bernardo knew that I had tried in vain to obtain a copy of this work. Although relatively little has been written on the Talamanca tribes, most that has has simply quoted extensively from two sources, Gabb (1875) and Pittier. Albeit slightly worm eaten and smelling of mildew, with ample evidence of having been wet at some time in its long existence, Pittier's work was indeed a surprise and a delight for me. And, as I sat in a hammock with the book in my lap, there was still enough daylight for me to read the names of the clans that existed in this remote part of Central America toward the close of the 19th century. Almost at once, I read the name Arauuak. Pittier translated this to be Die Donner Haus Leute, or "The Thunder House People." At once I wondered if the Arauuak could have been the Arawak, first described by Columbus as being the tall, peaceful, light-skinned natives he found on the island of Hispanola—now Haiti and the Domican Republic. One surprise followed another as I read Pittier that night, first in the fading light and later by the precarious glow of that spitting, hissing field lamp. For years I had wondered about the early accounts of the Arawak the Spanish had met during their first contacts in the islands of the Greater Antilles. I knew that Canoa was an island Arawak word, carried over into Spanish and picked up by English as canoe. And Pittier indicated that there once existed, among the Chibchan speaking Bribri I was studying, an ancient clan known as the Kgno-thuk-wak. This Pittier translated as "die schiffer" oder "die seeleute" (1898:30). In English, of course, this would be The Shippers or The People of the Sea, with Keno = boat, u = house, or clan, and wak = people or family. 58 �This was my first inkling that at least some ancient Bribri clans may have been seafarers. This led me to ask if it was possible that not only the Keno-thuk-wak were sea people, but that theArauuak (Thunder House People or People of Thunder) may have been mariners as well? I felt, that evening, that there was a strong likelihood that the island Arawak encountered by Columbus, and the ancient Bribri Arauuak were the same people. Speaking of the island Arawak, the American archaeologist, Irving Rouse, writing about the aboriginal inhabitants of the Greater Antilles, had written that "Arawak culture was . . . oriented towards the sea" ... he later noted that... "the Awawak were probably seafarers" (1951:260). One thing I thought was obvious, both the Bribri and the ancient Arawak of Columbus' time spoke the same or similar Chibchan dialect. The evidence for me, at that time, was the word Keno in Bribri, that Columbus rendered Canoa in Spanish. This, more or less, is where, how, and when this particular research began—all because of a rare work printed in Vienna in 1898, and a chance reading of that work in a bush mission station in Costa Rica—this, plus something else that came drifting up from my memory that evening, something I had read in the 1875 writings by William Gabb. I searched through my field copy and there it was—page 571—where Gabb, perhaps puzzled, had written, "... a curious coincidence exists in the fact that in the island of Santo Domingo (the Hispaniola of Columbus), where there are no venomous reptiles, a poisonous plant, retaining its native name, is called by the people, ki-be." Kebe, in Bribri, means snake, and Gabb had written the above as a brief footnote beside the word in this Bribri vocabulary. His "curious coincidence," to me of course, was now neither curious nor a coincidence, because I was beginning to believe that it was quite probable that at least some of the Caribbean inhabitants described by Columbus as Arawak were in reality "People of Thunder," and were, or had been at some time past, a clan of the Bribri. The Cherokee Connection Long ago, the 19th century Cherokee Chief, William P. Ross, in discussing the mysterious origins of his ancient people, was quoted as having said: "No response comes down the gallery of time from the silent recesses of the past. Echo alone replies, where and whence came they" (1893). That silence has puzzled me for the past decade or so, and this paper 59 �is an attempt to shed some light on the question, from "where and whence" came the Cherokee. I am under no illusion that I have discovered an ethnographic or linguistic or historical fact that is new, but only wish to bring my data to the attention of others who may be better qualified than I to examine these ideas. I am aware that it has long been the custom of some to relegate data such as I present in this paper into the limbo of fairy tales. Nevertheless in the light of the data present here, I hope that perhaps, behind these artifacts, myths, and legends, there may well lie a grain or two of historical fact. Archaeological Evidence There is today a great deal of archaeological evidence to support quite early migrations of people from the South into what is now Florida and the Gulf Coast. It may well be that many different small groups of people came up either the Central American—Yucatan—Florida route, or by way of islandhopping to Cuba and then crossing the 96 mile channel to Florida. The fact is, we have historical evidence that the Florida channel was crossed by Indian canoes and apparently quite frequently. Peter Martyr recorded that "natives of the mainland were accustomed to visiting the Lucayas Islands (Bahamas) in order to take pigeons, returning with their canoes laden" (Sauer:189). Carl Sauer thought that it may well have been such seafaring natives who informed the Spanish of a fountain of youth to be found on an island known to the natives as Bimini (Sauer:190). More solid evidence is to be found in archaeological sites such as Crystal River in Florida, where a temple site reported to be Mayan, dates to A.D. 440 (Bullen:861). And certainly the archaeology of Florida east of Pensacola Bay would seem to indicate that many groups may have visited the area more-or-less around the same point in time. Holmes tells us that, "The manner of occurence of the ceramic remains of the Gulf region is interesting. In many cases several varieties of ware are intermingled on a single site" (Holmes 1888:104). Of special interest to the possibility that there may be a Southern, tropical origin of some Cherokee cultural traits, however, is what Holmes wrote on the next page. He wrote, "Strangely enough, in the national collections from southwestern Alabama there are a lot of sherds exhibiting typical features of the peculiar pottery of New York State, which seem to belong to the Iroquoian tribes." Holmes went on the speculate, "that the museum record may be defective and that the association is accidental" (p. 105). It is possible, however, the Holmes' observation that Iroquoian-type ware was in the South is not 60 �"strange," nor is the fact that it associates so well with the North "accidental." It may well be that the museum records are in no way "defective," but that these records simply did not fit the preconceived notions of the archaeology of the 1880's. Holmes had noted that here and there along the Gulf Coast are certain pieces of pottery that do not affiliate with the ordinary ware, yet at the same time appear to present closer analogies with the wares of Yucatan and the Caribbean islands. It was noted that on the Gulf Coast of Florida, at Point Washington site, just South of Jolly Bay, several "exotics," or non-local ware are found. The "exotics" are the stamped ware of the Appalachian district to the North. Holmes went on to say that the techniques used among some of this ware gives . . . "a striking effect and reminding one of Central American methods of treatment" (109). What was so odd was that though typical of the Southern Appalachian mountains, homeland of the Cherokee, this stamped pottery was "seen at a glance to embody the commonest concepts of the Gulf Coast groups" (110). Another intriguing bit of archaeological evidence that may directly link the Cherokee with the cultures of the South is that in one mound, believed by Thomas to have been the work of the Cherokee, copper bells were found. Thomas apparently did not credit the ancient Cherokee with the ability to produce such copper bells, for in writing about a number of small copper "hawk-bells" found with the skeleton of a child, Thomas observed, "They are precisely of the form of the ordinary sleigh bell of the present day, but with pebbles and shell beads for rattles" (p. 34). He then added: "... that the bells indicate contact with Europeans must be conceded" (p. 35). This strikes one as a rather strange conclusion for Thomas to have drawn, and can be challenged on at least two points: 1. If the bells were indeed European artifacts, why would the Indians remove the usual metal ball or clapper and replace it with clay balls or shell beads? And, 2. I have seen many of these same type copper hawk-bells, with clay balls or small rock clappers, dug from pre-Columbian sites on Roatan Island in the Western Caribbean, and I have seen gold bells of the very same type, again with similar clappers, from the Limon Coast of Costa Rica and from Bribri grave sites in the mountainous interior of the Talamanca rain forest. 61 �Such bells are thought to have proceeded all known European contacts in the New World by centuries. In fact, Columbus reported such copper bells in the huge canoe he seized on his last voyage to the Indies in 1502. Linguistic Evidence What I hope to do in this paper is simply list some of the data that supports my theory that some aspects of the culture of the Cherokee, found in the Appalachian Mountains when the Europeans first made contact in 1540, had been in some ways influenced by cultures from the South, and that the primary influence may have been from seafaring Chibchan speaking peoples from the Antilles and Central America. We know, from early writers, that there were mysterious groups of people in contact with the Cherokee. One such people was known to James Mooney as the Taskigi. He wrote about them saying, "who or what the Taskigi were is uncertain and can probably never be known, but they were neither Cherokee nor Muscogee proper." He went on to add that... "It is not a Cherokee word, and Cherokee informants state positively that the Taskigi were a foreign people, with distinct language and customs" (389). Another mysterious group, well-known to those who have studied the Cherokee, is the Ani-kuta'ni. Of them Mooney writes, "Among other perishing traditions is that relating to the Ani-kuta'ni... concerning whom the modern Cherokee know so little that their very identity is now a matter of dispute, a few holding that they were an ancient people who preceeded the Cherokee and built the mounds, while others, with more authority, claim that they were a clan or society in the tribe and were destroyed long ago by pestilence or other calamity" (392). Joseph B. Mahan, Jr. writes... "Mooney continues to the effect that from the various statement, it would seem that the Ani-kuta'ni'were a priestly clan, having hereditary supervision of all religious ceremonies among the Cherokee. In consequence of having abused their sacred privileges, they were attacked and completely exterminated by the rest of the tribe, leaving the priestly functions to be assumed thereafter by individual doctors and conjurers" (184-85). Hayword, in his History of Tennessee, quoted a Cherokee as saying that the ancient priests of the Cherokee had been destroyed (249), and John Ross spoke of the Nicotani, described as a mystical, religious body, of whom the Cherokee people stood in great awe. Where they came from is no longer known, and all that can be said for certain about their passing was that they were massacred by the Cherokee themselves because one or more of them interfered with the wife or wives of a prominent Cherokee. It was said, "His wife was remarkable for her beauty, and was 62 �forcibly abducted and violated by one of the Nicotani" (MacGowan 1866:139). If they really existed, it would seem that Ross' Nicotani were probably the same Am-Aute'ra'described by Mooney. But who were these ancient, mysterious and foreign people among the Cherokee, and from where did they come? It is suggested here that they were Chibchan speakers, and that they had come, originally, from Central and possibly Northern South America, and had eventually reached the Gulf Coast and Florida via the islands of the Greater Antilles. Mooney further tells us that the Cherokee call themselves Ani-yunwiya, and he notes that this means "real people" or "principal people." Bantram (297) spelled it Ani kitu hwa, Mooney tells us that no occasion the Cherokee referred to themselves as Kitu'hwa, He noted that this was an ancient settlement on the Tuckasegee river and thought this might have been ". . . the orginial nucleus of the tribe" (1900:15). These bits of linguistic information from the Cherokee are of interest to my basic thesis that they, in their remote past, had been in contact with Chibchan speaking peoples from the South. The Cherokee term Ani,'used as a prefix, would make perfectly good sense even today to the Bribri with whom I have worked in the Talamanca rain forest of Costa Rica. The Bribri use the identical prefix Ani'to refer to "we." In their Chibchan dialect the prefix breaks down into a' (you) and ni' (me) to mean "we" or "us" as opposed to others. The suffix "wa" as found in the word kitu hwa, which Mooney tells us was also used among the Cherokee to describe a region, village and a dialect, as well as the people themselves, translates in Bribri to mean "people." The u sound, found in the middle of the Cherokee word kitu hwa translates into Bribri as "house" or "clan," and finally, kit, translates to mean a "cord" or a "vein" or "binding material" in Bribri. The CherokeeAni'-u-wa, taken together in Bribri, translates to mean "we people of the same house" and Mooney's "kit-u-hwa" translates to mean "People bound together, or "people of the same vein," or perhaps "people of the same blood." Bertram's spelling oiAni-kita-hwa would translate beautifully in Chibchan to this day, as We people bound of the same cord (297). But if the Cherokee call themselves Ani-kitu-hwa, then what does the word Cherokee itself mean, and from where did it come? The name Cherokee has no meaning whatsoever to the people known today as the Cherokee. Why? The answer, I believe, is because the word Cherokee is Chibchan and not an Iriquois word at all. Lying just to the South of the Bribri region in Talamanca, across the border in what is now Panama, there exists a large lagoon, known even today by its Indian n&me—Chiriqui. As with the Cherokee of Mooney's 63 �time, the Chibchan language lumped the inhabitants, the quiet bay, and other landmarks, as well as the entire region itself, under the term Chiriqui. Thus the people from this region were referred to as the Chiriqui (Sauer:127). It should be pointed out, however, that the Indians of this region would not necessarily refer to themselves as Chiriqui, unless specifically asked, "from where do you come?" More than likely, the Spanish would have asked them their name or "what do you call yourself?" to which they would probably refer to their clan or family name. It seems quite likely that something like this would explain why Columbus was so puzzled when he labelled all of the Indians of Haiti Arawak and then tried unsuccessfully to use them as interpreters on Cuba. The Spanish had asked them what they called themselves and they had replied Ara-u-wak, "Thunder House People," or "People of the House of Thunder." But Columbus had assumed that all Indians in the Antilles viereArawaks and spoke the same dialect and thus had run into translation difficulties later in Cuba. In returning to our discussion of the Central American region known as Chiriqui, however, Peter Martyr recorded other people of this region who did not appear quite like their neighbors. He tells of the Spanish fighting against men as "bearded as any bearded Christian." The record reads, "In this Escoria there was a breed of Indians much larger than the others and better conditioned" (Sauer 271). Apparently, these unusual Indians fought from mounds protected by palisades, the Spanish reported "forts made with two or three enclosures of timber and large trees and very great moat around" . . . and added ". . . these could well pass for good forts in Italy" (Sauer 271). We hear again, some two centuries later, of the Indians in the region of Chiriqui. An Englishman, by the name of John Cockburn, published a book in London in 1779, entitled "The Unfortunate Englishman" in which he gives an account of having been marooned in this region and having walked northward seeking an English settlement. In his account he tells of tall Indians of light skin, fighting from well-made forts, who had the habit of painting their faces red and black before battle. He adds that they were called by others in the region the Cherokee. Although Cockburn's Cherokee is simply an anglicized spelling of Chiriqui, it does present evidence that a people in that region of Central America were still being referred to by that name by others near the close of the 18th century (Cockburn 1779:147), and, that these people with the same name exhibited cultural practices of fighting from behind palisades with their faces painted, red and black. At once this brings to mind the practice of the Eastern Cherokee of the Appalachians. We are told that ". . . an oration by the war speaker anticipated the formal departure of a war party. When they ventured forth, 64 �they were elaborately painted red and black" (Oswalt 1973:509). Cockburn's account is intriguingly similar to a report written about the same time concerning Indians believed to have been the Cherokee in the mountains of Western North Carolina and Northern Georgia. Heckewelder's encounter with the Cherokee, later described by Thomas in 1890, reads as follows . . . "They are said to have been remarkably tall... it is related that they built to themselves regular fortifications or entrenchments from which they would sally out." Such fortification was described as "properly entrenchments, being walls or banks of earth regularly thrown up, with a deep ditch on the outside" (Thomas:12:13). It becomes clear that in 1540 De Soto's chroniclers were accurate in their descriptions of the mounds they passed by in the mountains of North Georgia and North Carolina. They had noted that such mounds were not only fortified with huge timbers, but protected by vast moats as well. This all too well brings to mind not only fortified, moat-ringed, mounds described by Cockburn in the Central American region of Chiriqui but the great mound known asEtowah in the Southern Appalachians of North Georgia. Etowah, likewise, is not a Cherokee word. However, following Pittier, one could translate.EJtow;a/i as Et-u-wak, meaning in Chibchan "that" or "it" "which was once of our people" (cf. Pittier:74). Again, if one considers the ancient name Mooney informs us the Cherokee used for themselves on occasion—Kitu-wha, and remember that in Mooney's day he found three dialects in use, it would seem possible that both words are of Chibchan origin and were perhaps introduced by those mysterious foreigners who for a time at least, resided with the Cherokee and were held by them in such awe (cf. Chiltoskey 1972:54). If we add to the above, place names found in the Central American region of Chiriqui and in the Appalachian mountain homeland of the Cherokee at the time of contact, we have even more linguistic evidence of possible contact. For example, Bartram notes that in 1777 he visited a war town called Coweta. He tells us the town was near or on the Chattahoochee River. On the Southeast coast of Costa Rica today, South of Puerto Limon and near the Rio Estrella, is located a town named after the Chibchan word for the district and an ancient Indian settlement. In Spanish this name has come down to us ca-hui-ta. A perfect English rendition of the Spanish is the name of Bartram's 18th century Cherokee war town—Cowetal Moreover, as with the Chibchan language, Mooney, writing about the Cherokee language in 1894, tells us "It may be noted that as a rule the Cherokee and some other tribes have no names for rivers or settlements." Just as with the people of Central America, Mooney noted that in the past, 65 �among the Cherokee "... The name belongs to the district, and is applied alike to the stream and to the town or mountain situated within it" (1894:xxix). My basic theory is that Chibchan speakers, at some time past, made their way northwards by sea, perhaps reaching the Gulf Coast and Florida as the archaeological record suggest. It is in this region that I am suggesting these Chibchan seafarers encountered Iroquois speaking Indians and, affiliating themselves with them, introduced words and cultural practices from the Antilles and Central America. One such word, which seems to support my theory of ancient contact between the Iroquoian linguistic family (of which most linguists agree Cherokee is related) and the now extinct Arawak of the Western Antilles, is "canoe." As noted at the beginning of this paper, the English word "canoe" is clearly derived from the Spanish canoa, which was taken directly from the Arawak word keno. I want to stress that this word was not only found among the now extinct island Arawak of Columbus' day, but is to be found today among both the Bribri of Costa Rica and the Northern Iroquoin speakers of New York and Canada. Dr. Marianne Williams, a noted linguist specializing in the Iroquoian language, upon my inquiring, informed me that, "... (concerning)... the words boat in Iroquoian, in Northern Iroquoian it is a nice, clean cognate set." Seneca — Kaawaa Cayuga — Kha' o" we — kah' o" weh Five Nations Onondaga Mohawk — Kahu we=ya — kahuwaku Oneida It would seem at a glance that if one takes the Bribri word for boat Keno and adds the Bribri suffix uak or wok, or u-wa to denote "clan," "tribe," or "people," then the Iroquoian word Kahoweh, with the proper tonal sounds, would be understood by the Bribri even today to mean "People of the Sea." It is probable that the non-seafaring Iroquois, simply transferred the entire name for the seafaring people they encountered into their language to mean boat. One more bit of evidence to suggest that this is precisely what they did is the rather unusual word used by the Bribri to denote net or woven bags. They used this word from the tiny bags carried over the shoulder by jungle hunters to large cargo nets with straps to fit the shoulders and head. The Bribri name for such bags is Chd'cara, a most unusual word. This same word among the Iroquoian dialects has retained the Bribri meaning in its entirety as well. I am told by Dr. Williams that Chdcara, 66 �the net carrying bags of the Bribri, would today among the Iroquois translate as "a container." Frank G. Speck, writing in the 1920's, theorized that the culture of the Cherokee, and perhaps the Iroquois too, may have had their origins in the tropical rain forests of the South. In building his case, Speck noted that none of the Southern tribes except the Cherokees, and possibly the Catawbas, "rimmed their baskets with a thin oak loop bound fast with a hickory fibre withe." He also noted that this particular characteristic of basket making is to be found in the Orinoco and Amazon basins. This is precisely from where many linguists and archaeologists think the original Chibchan language families dispersed northward (Speck 1920). Consider yet more linguistic evidence linking the Iroquoian dialects with the Chibchan speakers in the South. As was noted above, one of the five Iroquois nations is the Cayuga. Today the word is used among the inhabitants of the Bay Islands of Honduras in Central America, and elsewhere in the Western Caribbean to mean an Indian dugout boat. On Roatan Island, if the dugout has been finished with decking and small motor, it is referred to by the English term "dory." If it is roughly finished, unpainted and without motor, being propelled by paddle and rude sail, it is known to this day as a "cayuga," the very same word used today as the name of one of the 5 Iroquois Nations in New York and Canada (Evans:52). I would like to end this paper with a look at historical and ethnographic accounts that would seem to link the Cherokee with Antillean and Central American cultures in times past. At Puerto Limon, Costa Rica, the first Spanish landfall on the mainland of the New World, Columbus reported finding cloth made from the inner bark of certain trees. The Bribri call this cloth mastate (made from, among other species, the Brosimum costaricensis tree (Stone:22). There are many accounts of Cherokee bark cloth, the technique for making it, and its uses, and others before me have tried to link this cultural artifact with the South. And a Southern link seems also to be warranted to account for the method of poisoning fish, with the Bribri crushing the inner bark of the Habillo tree and the Cherokee poisoning their fish with toxin made by crushing horse chestnuts (Miling 1940:18). Mention should perhaps be made at this point of the blow gun, known today among both the Bribri and the Cherokee. The blow gun is most certainly a tropical hunting weapon. And both the Bribri and the Cherokee support shoulder bags in association with the blow gun. The difference here is that while the Bribri carry in their bag clay pellets and several bones to smooth and calibrate the unfired clay balls to match the bore of their blow guns, the Cherokee missile is a dart, supposedly poisoned. As for history, it too has something to add; for example, Carl Sauer, 67 �in his excellent account of the early Spanish Main, tells us that, "Dogs that did not bark were noted by Columbus. These were found throughout the islands, and later around the Caribbean and beyond. They were small, Las Casas said, the size of a lap dog, and were eaten—indeed were kept to be eaten" (1966:59). Listen now to Mooney, as he reminds us that De Soto was welcomed among the Cherokee somewhere near what is now the Western N. C. mountain town of Murphy. He tells us the Spanish were greeted in 1540 by Cherokees with "a little corn and many wild turkeys, together with some dogs of a peculiar small species, which were bred for eating purposes and did not bark" (1900:25, see also Ranjel, in Oviedo, Historia General y Natural de las Indies, I, p. 652, Madrid 1851). To go on now, and describe similar burial practices, similar medical practices, similar myths and artifacts, even a similar God in a similar heaven, would be possible but perhaps tiresome to the reader. What I believe at this point in my research, is that in seeking the Cherokee's past only in the North with their linguistic kin, the Iroquois, we have been but seeking a part of their cultural past. And that by turning Southward we may, to misquote the Cherokee chief with whom I began this paper, find indeed that if we look hard enough, and listen well, some faint response may indeed come down the gallery of time from the silent recesses of the past, and that, little by little, we may discover from "where and whence came they." BIBLIOGRAPHY Bartram, William 1928 Travels of William Bartram, Mark Van Doren, ed., (N.P.), Dover Publishers Bourne, E. G., Ed. 1904 Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto, 2 vol. New York Bullen, Ripley P. 1966 "Stelae at the Crystal River Site, Florida" American Antiquity, Vol. 31, no. 6: 861-865, October Cockburn, John 1779 The Unfortunate Englishman, London Columbus, C. 1930 The Voyages of Christopher Columbus, Newly translated and edited by Cecil Jane, London Conzemius, Edward 1926 On the Aborigines of the Bay Islands (Honduras), Roma, atti del XXII, Congresso Internazionale degli Americanist: Settembre 68 �Davidson, William V. 1974 Historical Geography of the Bay Islands, Honduras, Southern University Press Evans, David K. 1966 The People of French Harbour: A Study of Conflict and Change on Roatan Island, Honduras. University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. Dissertation Unpublished Ford, James 1966 "Early Formative Cultures in Georgia and Florida," American Antiquity, vol. 31, no. 6, October: 781799 Gabb, Wm. M. 1895 On the Tribes and Languages of Costa Rica, American Philosophical Society, Vol. XIV, August: 483-602 Holmes, W. H. 1903 "Aboriginal Pottery of the Eastern United States," 20th Annual Report Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D.C. Holmes, W. H. 1888 "Ancient Art of the Province of Chiriqui," 6th Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D.C. MacGowan, D. J. "Indian Secret Societies" Historical Notes and Queries concerning the Antiquities of America X, (Morrisania, N.Y.: Henry B. Dawson) Mahan, Joseph B., Jr. 1969 Identification of the Tsoyaha Waeno Builders of Temple Mounds, (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Mooney, James 1894 "Administrative Report," llth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (1889-90) Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Mooney, James 1900 Myths of the Cherokee, 19th Annual Report of the U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1897-98, Washington, D.C. Navarrete, M.F. De 1825-32 Coleccion de los viajes y descubrimientos, que hicieron por marlos espanoles desde fines del siglo XV, 5 vols., Madrid Oswalt, Wendell H. 1973 "The Eastern Cherokee: Farmers of the Southeast," This Land Was Theirs, John Wiley and Sons, New York Oviedo 1959 Historia general y natural de las India. Bib. Antores Espanoles, vol. 67-71, Madrid Pittier, H. deFabrega 1898 Die Sprache der Bribri— Indianer in Costa Rica Sitzungsberichte, Band CXXXVIII, Wien Ross, William P. 1893 The Life and Times of Honorable William P. Ross of the Cherokee Nation, Mrs. Wm. P. Ross, ed., Fort Smith Rouse, Irving 1964 "Prehistory of the West Indies," Science 144:499-513 69 �Rouse, Irving 1966 "Mesoamerica and the Eastern Caribbean Area," Archaeological Frontiers and External Connections, Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 4, Robert Wauchope, ed., 234-242 Sauer, Carl O. 1966 The Early Spanish Main, University of California Press, Berkely and Los Angeles Speck, Frank G. 1920 Decorative Art and Basketry of the Cherokees, Milwaukee Stone, Doris 1962 The Talamancan Tribes of Costa Rica, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard, Cambridge, vol. XLII, no. 2 Stone, Doris 1966 "Synthesis of Lower Central American Ethnology," Vol. 4, Handbook of Middle America Indian, Robert Wauchope, ed., Austin Thomas, Cyrus 1890 The Cherokees in Pre-Columbian Times, N.D.C. Hodges publisher, New York 70 �NORTH GEORGIA WRITERS—PAST AND PRESENT These Also Climbed Parnassus Paul McClure; N. Georgia College; Dahlonega, GA Works of Byron Herbert Reese Raymond Cook; Valdosta, GA Readings by Bettie Sellers; Young Harris College; Young Harris, G A Convenor: Julia Evatt; Elliiay, GA These Also Climbed Parnassus: An Overview of Georgia Mountain Authors by Paul McClure Most of the acclaim that has come to Southern Appalachian writers has come to those from Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Relatively little recognition has been achieved by writers from the mountains of North Georgia, but they too have contributed significantly to our mountain heritage, from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Most nineteenth-century literature set in the Georgia mountains was produced by lowlanders, some of whom had at best an imperfect understanding of the region and its people. Probably the first of these was William Gilmore Simms, whose novel Guy Rivers (1834), involving frontier violence and intrigue in what is now the Cleveland-Dahlonega area, shows the influence of James Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott. However, it reveals little understanding of the Georgia mountains. After the Civil War came Sidney Lanier, whose poems show a great love for nature and the land. Especially noteworthy is "Song of the Chattahoochee," which personifies the wild, uncontrollable river singing happily in its mad rush "out of the hills of Habersham/Down the valleys of Hall," answering the call of Duty to water the plain. As a result mainly of this one poem, Lake Lanier and many other things in northeast Georgia have been named for this poet. Joel Chandler Harris is usually remembered as the creator of Uncle Remus, but he also wrote a few stories depicting north Georgia mountaineers. His long-short story "At Teague Poteet's," which appeared in a volume called Mingo and Other Sketches in Black and White (1884) reveals considerable insight into the hill-dweller's personality and lifestyle. The title character is so fiercely independent that he refuses to fight for 71 �either side in the Civil War. He shoots at recruiters for both sides when they approach his cabin. Later he gives the same treatment to "revenuers" when they approach his still. Another story, "Trouble on Lost Mountain," in the volume Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches (1887), reveals the tragic results of the jealousy that separates two young mountain lovers because of the presence of a stranger in their midst, who, ironically, is unaware that he is the focus of the trouble until it is too late. The story presents all three characters sympathetically and ends on a note of pathos. Both these stories show Harris' keen ear for dialect as well as his understanding of human nature. Roughly contemporary with Harris was his friend Harry Stillwell Edwards of Macon, whose story "An Idyl of Sinkin' Mountain" takes place near Tallulah Falls. First published in Century Magazine in 1888, it was later included in Edwards' collection Two Runaways and Other Stories (1889). It is the story of a young, poverty-stricken mountaineer in his search for true love and a decent living. He eventually finds both on his own farm—a mica deposit is discovered there, and he falls in love with an orphan girl whom his mother had taken in but he had heretofore regarded somewhat as a sister. The story suffers from some lack of realism and from the author's imitation of the characters and dialect of Mary Murfree. Edwards, who knew little of the mountains in the 1880's, came to know them better in the 1920's, when he wrote several newspaper sketches with a mountain setting. The one native north Georgian to receive much literary fame in the nineteenth century was humorist Charles Henry Smith of Cartersville, known to his readers as "Bill Arp." He started writing in 1861 in the form of an "open letter" to President Lincoln, which he read to some of his backwoods friends near Rome, one of whom was named Bill Arp, who asked Smith what name he was going to use when he published the letter. Smith replied that he had not yet decided on a name. So Bill said, "Well, squire, I wish you would print mine, for them's my sentiments."1 Smith continued to use the name "Bill Arp" in over 2000 informal essays published as "open letters" in Atlanta newspapers and elsewhere until his death in 1903. These "letters" were collected in several books over the years; three of the best-known are Bill Arp, So Called (1866), Bill Arp's Peace Papers (1873), and The Farm and the Fireside (1891). Over the years the persona of Bill Arp changed from that of a semi-literate backwoodsman to that of a cultivated Southern gentleman who used impeccable English. But the earlier sketches, which used mountain dialect and rough frontier humor, are more interesting. In the early twentieth century, the most prolific of all Georgia mountain writers, Will N. Harben of the Dalton-Chatsworth area, wrote a number of novels and short stories which poignantly and faithfully depict the people of that region, although a few have their settings largely in 72 �other parts of the country. Although he published his first novel, White Marie, in 1889, he did not become really well known until his volume of short stories, Northern Georgia Sketches, appeared in 1900. It received favorable notice from William Dean Howells, who asked Harben for a novel to be published by Harper's. Harben's reply was the novel Westerfelt, which had been heretofore rejected but was published in Harper's in 1901. It is the story of "a common man dogged by guilt after the suicide of a girl who loved him hopelessly."2 Altogether Harben wrote over twentyfive novels and other books before his death in 1919. Of these, Ann Boyd (1906) is usually regarded as Harben's most powerful work of fiction. However, perhaps the most interesting of Harben's novels in terms of our Appalachian heritage is Pole Baker (1905). Though it begins slowly, it soon captures the reader's interest, not so much in the title character as in the whole cast, for it is more the story of a whole community than of one man. The irony is that Pole Baker, a poor, barely literate dirt farmer with a serious drinking problem, is throughout the novel a stabilizing influence on the rest of the community, including his wealthy friend Nelson Floyd. Floyd eventually emerges as the central character with an identity crisis to solve and problems in his love affair with Cynthia Porter, whose mother hates Floyd and tries both fair means and foul to separate the lovers. But with common sense and elementary investigative methods, Pole Baker solves Floyd's identity problem, brings the lovers together, and inadvertently finds a better life for himself as well. This novel, while somewhat inauspicious in terms of dialect and other local-color aspects, is more original in plot and characterization than most other mountain novels, especially those of the early twentieth century. It may be that Will Harben is one of the most underrated novelists of his age. Around the turn of the century Corra Harris, who as a Methodist minister's wife lived in several communities in north Georgia, began to write stories and articles for various periodicals. In 1910 appeared her first and most famous novel, A Circuit Rider's Wife. It tells the story of Mary Thompson's trials and joys as a minister's wife in rural north Georgia. Though influenced by the author's own experiences, it is not predominantly autobiographical. It later served as the basis for the popular motion picture I'd Climb the Highest Mountain, which premiered in the early 1950's. There were also two sequels to this novel: A Circuit Rider's Widow (1916) and My Son (1921). Corra Harris also wrote a number of other novels, all highly popular in their day but usually criticized today for their overt didacticism. She also wrote a few satires on small-town politics and on the church hierarchy. Some of her later books, especially My Book and My Heart (1924), are more obviously autobiographical than her earlier works. During the last several years of her life she lived in a cabin near Pine Log Mountain in Bartow County and wrote a column called "A Candlelit Column" for the Atlanta Journal, until her death in 1935. 73 �Her works were among the most wholesome and inspiring of popular fiction. Tastes in literature began to change in the 1920's, and that change was reflected in the works of Lillian Smith when she began writing in the 1930's. Born in Florida, she moved with her parents to Clayton in her teens. There her father managed a hotel and a youth camp, which she herself directed for a time. Her first novel, Strange Fruit (1944), with its story of an interracial love affair, outraged most Southerners and was banned as obscene in some places. Nevertheless, it was so popular that a dramatized version was performed on Broadway for a time. She also wrote a half-dozen other books, but like Strange Fruit, they can hardly be called Appalachian literature on the basis of setting or theme. Lillian Smith can be called a Georgia mountain writer only by virtue of her having resided in the region for a number of years. The first prominent Georgia mountain native poet was Byron Herbert Reece of Union County. A quintessential mountaineer, reared in the remote Choestoe Valley, he remained a dirt farmer as well as a poet his whole short, tortured life. Yet no poetry evokes the spirit of the mountains, of nature, and of the soil more than his. Though he published some poetry in obsure poetry journals as a youth, it was only after the encouragement and recommendation of Jesse Stuart that he received much notice. His first book of poetry, Ballad of the Bones (1945), was well received, as was his novel Better a Dinner of Herbs (1950). He served for a time as poet-inresidence at UCLA and later did the same at Emory, but ill health forced him to return home. For the last few years of his life he served as poet-inresidence and teacher at Young Harris College, near his home. His suicide in 1958 was a tragic waste of a prodigious talent. Another Georgia mountain native who became a notable poet is Don West. Born in 1906 in a one-room cabin in the almost inaccessible Devil's Hollow in Gilmer County, he grew up with very little schooling, but showed early a great love for books. His uncle, who had fought in World War I, saw to it that he had a chance to enroll in the Berry School near Rome, Georgia. There he learned fast, but he left Berry in his junior year as a result of his stand in favor of a teacher who was fired. Thus began West's involvement in controversy, his championing of those whom he regarded as victims of injustice, which has marked his career ever since. After working for a few years, he enrolled in Lincoln Memorial University, where he became a friend of Jesse Stuart and later became involved in more controversy. As a graduate student at Vanderbilt he received a fellowship to study in Denmark. At Vanderbilt he wrote his first book of poetry, called Crab-Grass (1931). He also attended other institutions of higher learning, but, as he puts it, "My real education has been beaten into me by the everlasting toil and hunger I've seen, by the struggles in textile and coal-mining centers, where our people were tolled down from the hills 74 �with fair promises of a better life .. ."' The poverty and oppression suffered by mountain people has been a major concern of his, and for this reason much of his poetry is anti-establishment. Its weakness is that it often sounds like propaganda, but some of his poetry rises to lyric heights comparable with that of the best mountain poets. During the last few decades he has lived mainly in West Virginia, where until recently he directed the Appalachian South Folklife Center. His principal books of poetry include Clods of Southern Earth (1946), The Road Is Rocky (1951), and O Mountaineers (1974). Poetry continues to flow from the pens of north Georgians today. Bettie Sellers of Young Harris, whose first book of poetry, Westward from Bald Mountain, appeared about a decade ago, now has published several other works and is currently engaged in a highly ambitious series of poems. She is only one of several north Georgia poets who are gaining a reputation outside the region as well as in it. In addition, such nationally known poets as James Dickey have set a number of their works in the Georgia mountains. North Georgians are continuing to produce prose, too. Terry Kay has written a delightful novel called After Eli, set in the Nacoochee Valley; Julia Evatt of Ellijay has attracted considerable notice with her "Leland Benjamin" stories; and Gloria Stargel of Gainesville has brought inspirational narrative back into vogue (at least in Georgia) with her autobiographical story The Healing, perhaps the most interesting contemporary prose writer in terms of our Georgia mountain heritage is Jimmy Townsend of Jasper, whose brand of homespun philosophy in Mountain Echoes, Wait Jest a Cotton-Pickin' Minute, and other works bears comparison to that of Mark Twain and Will Rogers. Still another prose writer of note is Lt. Gov. Zell Miller of Towns County, whose book The Mountains Within Me contains much of the essence of our Appalachian heritage. In view of this continuing and ongoing production of literature by people from the Georgia mountains, this heritage seems in no danger of fading into obscurity. In fact, the literary future of the region looks bright. NOTES 'Joseph H. Baird, "Bill Arp's Humor in the Bleak South," Atlanta Journal and Constitution Magazine, Oct. 18, 1970, pp. 18-19. •Robert Bush, in Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Robert Bain et al (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1979), p. 200. 'In a Land of Plenty: A Don West Reader (Minneapolis: West End Press, 1982), pp. 6-7. 75 �This page intentionally left blank �THE BUSINESS OF TRADITION: TRADES, HANDICRAFTS AND HOUSEHOLD ENTERPRISES The Shell Button Industry in Appalachia Cheryl Claassen; Appalachian State University; Boone, NC Oral Histories of Appalachian Craftsmen Mont Whitson; Morehead State University; Morehead, KY Appalachian Ethnicity as Reflected in a Craft Cooperative Susan Keefe; Appalachian State University; Boone, NC Convenor: Gordon McKinney; Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC The Shell Button Industry in Appalachia by Cheryl Claassen The major motivating factor for collecting freshwater shellfish in the Eastern United States during historic times was the shell button industry which flourished from 1891 until 1930 in most regions. The button industry derived its raw materials largely from local populations, working rivers and streams from Wisconsin to Texas and east to the Appalachians (Georgia to Pittsburgh) and including New York and New England. After 1855 the shellfish populations in New England and New York rivers declined due to over harvesting and the shelling center jumped to Muscatine, Iowa in 1891.' The rate of spread eastward from Muscatine toward Pittsburgh and the western edge of the southern Appalachian Mountains was directly related to the rate of depletion of shellfish bed in the Mississippi-Illinois River system.2 Consequently then, the duration of the industry and the shelling activity shortens as one moves toward the Appalachians. Buttons were cut in Cincinnati and Cleveland by 1898 using Mississippi River shells.3 By 1912, the income from this industry was greater than $6 million yearly. From 1930 to 1940 plastics came to replace shell as the major raw material for buttons ending what was in most places no more than a 20 year long industry. Most button factories closed while some converted to plastic or military button manufacture. The largest factory in Muscatine, Iowa continues today to manufacture shell buttons, the only producer of this product in the U.S. A TV A warning of overfishing in 1933 apparently stopped the shelling on the Tennessee River but men returning home after WWII 77 �discovered the beds had recovered and shelling began immediately. Following a hiatus of over twenty years the Japanese demand for shell nacre revitalized the shellfishing activity in the Eastern United States. In the late 1950s, the cultured pearl industry of Japan got over 80% of its shell stock from the Tennessee River.4 Shellfishing activities resumed on the Ohio in Ohio in 1950. A single collector moved onto the Muskingum River in 1966, harvesting 35 tons of shell that year.5 Today several companies employ men full time on a seasonal basis to dive for deeper shell beds in numerous Eastern rivers. Unlike the days of shell buttons when the term "prospecting" characterized the activities of shelters, today shelters or divers are told where to dive, what species to take and in what quantity. Company owned tractor-trailers buy the shell from the divers at company specified locations. Two years ago (1981), the Tennessee Shell Company (President is Latandresse) began culturing pearls at two locations in this country. This development should insure the future of commercial shellfishing in the Eastern United States.8 Appalachian Shellfishing: Locations and Yields Although the major impetus for shellfishing was the button industry, shellfishing for pearls preceded the commercial collection of shells on several Appalachian streams, particularly the Powell, Clinch and Holston Rivers. In 1909 a government sponsored button potential assay trip to these rivers found that the pearlers had no awareness of markets for shells or the button industry,7 then 18 years old, in spite of factories as close as Clarksville, Kentucky and Knoxville. Pearling occurred primarily in the months of July, August, and September, used the same techniques for capture as were used elsewhere for shelling and relied on pearl buyers for marketing. Huge piles of discarded shells were observed by the government party visiting the Clinch, Holston, and Powell Rivers. Mr. J. Beopple, the Bureau of Fisheries agent conducting the 1909 survey of these rivers and legendary father of the shell button industry in America, instructed the local pearlers and interested persons in the market value of certain species of shell for the button industry. The commercial value of such shells was explained to the pearl hunters, who were advised to seek a market for this material. It was learned that few pearls had been found during the preceding summer, so that a market for the shells was practically necessary to supplement the income from the yield of pearls.8 Under Boepple's influence, a single car of shells reached the market (place unspecified) late in the 1909 season. The following seasons, 1910 and 1911, 78 �98 tons of shell from the Clinch and 56 tons of shell from the Holston were sold to button factories. Boepple rated the shells from the "Clinch and Holston Rivers as having the best mussels for buttons that I have seen in all my experience in the button business."10 Neither the tonnage nor the earnings beyond 1913 are known for these rivers, where shellfishing lasted into the 1940s. Pearlers had been in operation on the Cumberland River for at least 20 years when the government party of Wilson and Clark assayed the Cumberland shellfishery in 1914.11 Few species were found living above Cumberland Falls but from the falls to Celina, Tennessee, a distance of 175 miles, considerable pearling was underway with the activity tapering off south of this area at Carthage. One hundred men were often pearling at one bed near Rowena and at one time, 150 men on a single bed. The Caney Fork was said to have the best pearls available. "Our own observations, as well as records of people engaged in the pearl trade, indicate that pearling was once an important occupation in the upper river."12 Downriver from Carthage, pearling was a secondary activity to shelling. The major southern Appalachian rivers exploited by shelters collecting shells for factory buyers were the Ohio, as early as 1908,13 the Cumberland, and the Tennessee. Collection records from the Ohio River in Ohio from 1908 until 1963 (Table 1) indicate that the peak years of collecting activity were 1908 until 1922 with a hiatus from 1931 until 1950. TABLE 1 Ohio River Basin Commercial Shellfish Catch—1894-1963 (Thousands of pounds—thousands of dollars)" Av. Price Per Ton (Dollars) Total Pounds Total Value 1894 1899 1903 1908 1912-13 1922 1931 1950 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1962 1963 289 283 356 122 10 59 94 109 83 29 22 95 47 160 26,263 31,482 16,318 8,318 553 2,812 3,956 4,264 3,383 1,144 708 2,260 1,150 2,762 79 22 18 42 29 34 42 48 51 49 51 62 84 82 116 �From 17,000 to 31,000 pounds were taken each year during the peak period, 2054 tons of shell valued at $119,000 in 1912 alone.14 In addition, in 1926, commercial harvesting in Ohio was recorded on 25 Ohio streams. On the Cumberland in 1913, a catch of 1267 tons of shell valued at $22,000 was recorded. For the Tennessee River this same year, the figures are 906 tons and $11,000.16 In neither case is it possible to determine the proportion of the catch that came from outside Appalachia. Shelling on the Tennessee reached a standstill in the 1940s. Lesser regional rivers and creeks known to the author as shelling locations are the Scioto, Muskingum, Tuscarawas, Killbucks, Mohican, Sandusky, and Wills in Ohio,17 Clear Fork, Big South Fork, Beaver Creek, Goose Creek, Obey River in Kentucky,18 and the Holston, Clinch (particularly near Lone Mountain19), Power, Caney Fork, French Broad, and Stones River in Tennessee.20 (See the appendix for a detailed account of shellfishing along the upper Cumberland.) Catch figures for several rivers and streams for the years 1912 and 1913,21 1926,22 and the 1960s,23 are to be found in Table 2. TABLE 2 Catch Figures for Appalachian Streams Weight (ton) Water Body Muskingum Tuscarawas Killbucks Mohican Wills Clinch Holston 191213 1926U 1966" 1968 1969 1970 1926 1926 1926 1926 1913 1913 Value-Shell Value-Pearls 688 36 35 90 417 650 18 55 40 19 98 56 $14 ,000 $ 1,800 $ 65 $ 935 $ 2,475 $ 1,600 $ 430 $ 30 $100 $150 $ 0 Methods of Collection—Preparation of Shellfish In 1919, 70% of the shellfish gathered in the United States were taken by the Crowfoot bar, 5% by hand and 1% by dredge.24 The popularity of the crowfoot bar was due to its adaptability to a variety of riverine conditions and its ease of operation for even the inexperienced. Developed in 80 �1897, this method capitalized on the animals' instinct to clamp shut whenever disturbed. When dragging the foot over the bottom, any hooks that are caught between the values of the animal will be clamped down on. The crowfoot bar is raised periodically and cleaned of shellfish, then lowered again. The boat type most frequently employed in this operation is the John boat. Coker26 describes numerous other techniques. In 1967, the methods of collecting and handling mussels had changed little since 1891.26 Appalachian pearlers seen in 1909 on the Clinch River had developed two unique techniques for catching shellfish.27 One was the crude method of using an iron hook to pry the animal from the bottom and then push it into a tin can that was lowered to the bottom. The second innovation was to use a plow drawn by a strong team and working in 4 to 12 inch deep water, thoroughly plow up the bottom so that the mussels could be easily picked up. At campsites along a river, sometimes after transfer to a flat boat, shelters "cook out" the animals. Campsites were chosen for proximity to a good shell bed and by convenience to shade and wood.28 Tents or frame buildings were constructed. House boats or shanty boats are a common shelter. The cooker was frequently a vat 5' long, 2' wide and from 12" to 18" deep. It was suspended over a trench with a fire and fitted with a stove pipe to furnish draft. In many Appalachian areas this vat is similar to a molasses cooker.29 Driftwood was commonly used as fuel. The vat was and is today, filled with mussels and a small amount of water and then covered with burlap or gunney sacks. Steam eventually kills the shellfish relaxing the hinge muscles that hold the paired valves together. The meat is cut out and it along with any unsuitable shells—those too small or endangered or inappropriate species—are discarded. The water in the cooker was strained to recover any pearls; meats were explored for the same reason. Shellfishers More often than not shelters were and are today, itinerates living (then) on shantyboats or (now) in trailers or motels. Shelters worked an area either in an individual family group or formed a sort of camp town with a dozen or more families grouped together. Along the Cumberland River in Monroe County, an informant recalled seeing only Caucasian shelters.30 Some had huge families and most returned summer after summer to the same river. The Rose family, with eleven daughters, moved their shantyboat into Monroe County each spring, "cooking out" on shore and cooking meals both on shore and on boat. They wintered each year near the mouth of Greesy Creek, subsisting, like many shelters, on fur trapping.31 Other families covered greater territory. One family which reportedly began 81 �shelling "in the east" can be traced next to the Muskingum of Ohio, the Wabash in Indiana, the Ohio River and finally in Texas.32 Local people also shelled and pearled. Many of the shelters are nomadic and therefore move readily with their launches from a region of poor fishery to a better locality. It is often the case however, that in times of low water, when the mussels are easily obtained, the farm hands, miscellaneous laborers, and others engage temporarily in shelling, using any kind of available equipment or collecting by hand.33 Although itinerants shelled the Cumberland in Monroe County, Kentucky, local people such as the young Hascill Haile and his brother gathered shellfish only to look for pearls, discarding both shell and meat. Every other day, in the summer during low water, the teenage brothers would collect shellfish with a crowfoot bar while checking the family fish traps. They usually spent the entire day doing this. Haile soon began buying pearls locally for another buyer who visited the area periodically from Salina, Tennessee. Haile reports that he made "a lot of money pearling, more than working by the hour." He has retained several pearls in a private collection. Currently he makes guitars choosing Arkansas shells for the enlay work. Divers working for modern companies such as the American Shell Company of Knoxville or the Tennessee Shell Company of Camden, Tennessee, are only occasionally local people. As in earlier days the divers are itinerate, often traveling with their own and other families.34 Marketing Haile reports that buyers paid the itinerate shellers by the ton in the 1920s, then loaded the whole shells onto locally owned barges destined for a button factory in Nashville. Shells collected on the northern Clinch River near Lone Mountain were sold to factory buyers from Knoxville such as Patton's which closed in 1982. (In the mid 1930s the company had switched from the production of shell buttons to metal military buttons.35). Shells were transported to market on barges on the Cumberland, and by boxcar and wagon from the Clinch.38 On the Tennessee River, in 1956, the shellers got $60/ton with the meat in and packed in 200 Ib. boxes while middlemen such as Latandresse got $100/ton in the States and $480/ton in Japan.37 Known Ohio factories were located near or on the Ohio River. One factory was located between Ripley and Manchester,38 one on Brush Creek,39 and one in Manchester.40 The Manchester factory sent buyers to "comb the country from the Appalachians to the Rockies and from the 82 �Gulf to the Lakes to secure clam shells."41 The advent of restrictive legislation necessitated a reliance on foreign shell. In 1949 they were cutting only shells from India and the Persian Gulf at Manchester. The blanks cut in Manchester were then sent to Amsterdam, New York, for polishing and finishing.42 A noteworthy difficulty encountered in many places in Appalachia was high transportation costs. In areas remote from manufacturing centers shellers might own a cutting machine so that the button blanks could be punched out for sale to a buyer and the excess weight discarded. A cutting machine in 1919 cost about $16.43 Shell companies today are highly competitive enterprises. During interviews with personnel at both the Tennessee Shell Company and the American Shell Company, requests for information on the number of divers, diving locations and average weekly income were denied. It was possible to learn a few facts about the modern operation, however. Raw shell is sent to Japan where it is contracted out to cheap labor for cutting and polishing in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Korea. Shells are bought from the divers in 100 Ib. lots and transported by tractor-trailer to the company.44 The collecting season is usually March until November but in some areas of the South individuals are willing to dive year round. The American Shell Company exports "a container or two each week."46 Discussion Several aspects of commercial shellfishing suggest future research topics. The shell button industry was a short-lived capitalistic enterprise that could, because of the length of its duration, provide an excellent case study of industrial capitalism. The processes typical of industrial development are extremely contracted and complete in this example. The itinerant life style of shellers has never been recorded or studied. Just how their ideological, social, and technological attributes compare with other American itinerant groups would be equally interesting. Itinerate shellers were both local seasonal laborers and "foreigners" hi an area. Similar seasonal wage labor was available in the lumber industry, beginning in the Ohio-Kentucky-Tennessee area hi the 1870s suggesting it could have served as a model for seasonal, and part time shell collecting. At convenient intervals during the cultivating and harvesting seasons and during the winter, the farmers went into the woods to cut saw logs and to snake or haul them to the nearest tributary capable of floating to a raft yard . . . These farmerloggers spent much of their tune in the woods during summer months between 1870-1935 cutting on their own property or working for larger landowners or timber buyers.46 83 �The economic impact of this activity during the first period of collecting on the lives of Appalachian citizens is quite elusive at this time. Shell prices per ton are the easiest to obtain. Table 1 gives annual prices and net value for Ohio River basin collections from 1908 to 1931. Boepple estimated the Clinch shells would bring $77 per ton. If this figure is correct, the 1913 market proceeds from Clinch River shell was approximately $7549 and $4312 for Holston River shelters. The number of people involved is a very elusive figure for any area or time period. Oral interviews with buyers appear to be the only possible means of estimating the number of people involved and the amounts realized in any one community. These figures are equally elusive in this second period of shellfishing activity. Company personnel are candid in their refusal to release information on the number of divers employed or their catches. The number of collecting permits issued in those states requiring permits will give some indication of this figure. In 1966 the mussel shell harvest from the Tennessee River was estimated at 5,468,000 pounds valued at $577,161.47 Unfortunately this figure includes areas outside of the Appalachian region. It is most likely that shellfishing never exceeded the economic contribution of other part tune labor in Appalachia. Pearling on the other hand, may have exceeded the earning potential of any other wage labor job available between 1890 and 1930. The highest price paid for a pearl from the Clinch River was $2,500, sometime before 1914. At Burnside, Tennessee, a personal collection of pearls valued at $20,000 was seen by Wilson and Clark. They also learned that one of the principal merchants in Carthage bought $15,000 worth of pearls every year. He generally paid between $20 to $300 for a single pearl in the years 1907-1909. Boepple's guide on the Holston River had found and sold approximately $14000 worth of pearls in that same time period. Hascill Haile reports making more money pearling than he ever did in wage labor. Again, the number of men involved in this activity is difficult to estimate. Many shellfish beds in the upper Cumberland River and in the Holston and Clinch Rivers were fished to the point of exhaustion. As many as 150 men worked a single shellfish bed in a single season on the Cumberland near Rowena. In contrast, four pearlers were encountered working beds on the Clinch October 31st, 1909. Most likely, large numbers of boys and men probably pearled at least one season in their lifetime during the period 1900-1930. The historical shell button and pearl industries are important from several standpoints. In both cases there are living participants who can provide much data on what are essentially unrecorded activities. These activities, in as much as they netted cash and facilitated the local participation in an expanding cash economy are unknown factors in the process of the mountaineer's acculturation. They also provided an avenue 84 �of exit from Appalachia for individuals and families. To what extent shellfishing influenced people in either regard is the major challenge of future research. FOOTNOTES 1. Irving Richman, History ofMuscatine County, Iowa (S. J. Clarke, Chicago, 1911), p. 303. 2. Robert E. Coker, Freshwater Mussels and Mussel Industries of the United States. Bulletin of the Bureau of Fisheries, Vol. XXXVI1917-1918, Document No. 865. (Government Printing Office, Washington, 1919), p. 32. 3. Clarence Clark, "Management of Naiad Populations in Ohio" mRare and Endangered Mollusks of the U. S., ed. S. E. Jorgensen and R. W. Sharp (1917), pp. 26-33. 4. Comments by Ben Jaco in Rare and Endangered Mollusks of the U. S., pp. 57-59. 5. Clarence Clark, "Management of Naiad Populations in Ohio," p. 29. 6. John Latandresse, personal communication, Oct. 1983, Camden, Tennessee. 7. J. F. Boepple and R. E. Coker, Mussel Resources of the Holston and Clinch Rivers of Eastern Tennessee, Bureau of Fisheries Document No. 765,1912. (Government Printing Office, Washington), p. 3. 8. J. F. Boepple and R. E. Coker, Mussel Resources of the Holston and Clinch Rivers of Eastern Tennessee, p. 9. 9. Ibid, p. 13. 10. Ibid, p. 11. 11. Charles B. Wilson and H. Walton Clark, The Mussels of the Cumberland River and Its Tributaries. Bureau of Fisheries Document No. 781,1914. (Government Printing Office, Washington), p. 42. 12. Charles B. Wilson and H. Walton Clark, The Mussels of the Cumberland River and Its Tributaries, p. 44. 13. Clarence Clark, "Management of Naiad Populations in Ohio," p. 26. 14. Robert E. Coker, Freshwater Mussels and Mussel Industries of the United States, p. 40. 15. Table 1 taken from Ohio River Basin Comprehensive Survey, Appendix G, Vol. 8. U. S. Dept. of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service 1960. 16. Robert Coker, Freshwater Mussels and Mussel Industries of the United States, p. 40. 17. Clarence Clark, "Management of Naiad Populations in Ohio," p. 26. 18. Charles Wilson and H. Walton Clark, The Mussels of the Cumberland and Its Tributaries. 19. Lewis Kalter, TVA Island Wilderness Biological Survey (1935), p. 52. 20. John Latandresse, personal communication, Oct. 1983, Camden, Tennessee. 21. Robert E. Coker, Freshwater Mussels and Mussel Industries of the United States, p. 40. Source for all 1912, 1913 figures in Table 2. 22. Clarence Clark, "Management of Naiad Populations in Ohio," p. 26. 23. Ibid, p. 30. 85 �24. Robert E. Coker, Freshwater Mussels and Mussel Industries of the United States, p. 59. 25. Ibid. 26. Paul Parmalee, The Fresh-Water Mussels of Illinois (Illinois State Museum Popular Science Series, volume 8), p. 2. 27. J. F. Boepple and R. E. Coker, Mussel Resources of the Holston and Clinch Rivers of Eastern Tennessee, p. 10. 28. Robert E. Coker, Freshwater Mussels and Mussel Industries of the United States, p. 59. 29. Hascell Haile, personal communication, Oct. 1983, Tompkinsville, Kentucky. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. John Latandresse, personal communication, Oct. 1983, Camden, Tennessee. 33. Robert E. Coker, Freshwater Mussels and Mussel Industries of the United States, p. 44. 34. John Latandresse, personal communication, Oct. 1983, Camden, Tennessee. 35. Paul Parmalee, personal communication, Oct. 1983, Knoxville, Tennessee. 36. John Latandresse, personal communication, Oct. 1983, Camden, Tennessee. 37. John C. Williams comments in Rare and Endangered Species of the U. S., p. 51. 38. Robert Genheimer, personal communication, Oct. 1982, Cincinnati, Ohio. 39. David Brose, personal communication, Nov. 1983, Columbia, South Carolina. 40. Kendall Rhoades, "Clam Shells and Buttons," Ohio Conservation Bulletin, June, 1951, pp. 14-15. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. Robert E. Coker, Freshwater Mussels and Mussel Industries of the United States, p. 44. 44. John Latandresse, personal communication, Oct. 1983, Camden, Tennessee. 45. Interview with an official of the American Shell Company, Knoxville, Tennessee, Oct. 1983. 46. William Lynwood Montell, Don't Go Up Kettle Creek (University of Tennessee Press 1983), p. 85. 47. Development of Water Resources in Appalachia. Appendix G, Fish and Wildlife Resources. U. S. Dept. of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service 1969, p. 16. REFERENCES CITED Boepple, J. F. and R. E. Coker 1912 Mussel Resources of the Holston and Clinch Rivers of Eastern Tennessee. U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, Document No. 765, Government Printing Office, Washington. Clark, Clarence 1971 Management of Naiad Populations in Ohio. In Rare and Endangered Mollusks (Naiads) of the U. S., ed. S. E. Jorgensen and R. W. Sharpe, (U. S. Dept. of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife Region 3. Twin Cities, Minn. 55111), pp. 25-33. 86 �Coker, Robert E. 1919 Freshwater Mussels and Mussel Industries of the United States. Bulletin of the Bureau of Fisheries, Vol. 36, 1917-1918, Document No. 865, Government Printing Office, Washington. Kalter, Lewis 1935 Island Wilderness Biological Survey. Tennessee Valley Authority. Montell, William 1983 Don't Go Up Kettle Creek. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Parmalee, Paul 1967 The Fresh-Water Mussels of Illinois. Illinois State Museum Popular Science Series 8. Rhoades, Kendall 1951 Clam Shells and Buttons. Ohio Conservation Bulletin, June, pp. 14-15. Richman, Irving 1911 History of Muscatine County, Iowa. S. J. Clarke, Chicago. U. S. Department of Interior 1960 Ohio River Basin Comprehensive Survey, Appendix G, Vol. 8. Fish and Wildlife Resources. Fish and Wildlife Service. 1969 Development of Water Resources in Appalachia, Appendix G. Fish and Wildlife Resources. Fish and Wildlife Service. Wilson, Charles B. and H. Walton Clark 1914 The Mussels of the Cumberland River and Its Tributaries. U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, Document No. 781, Government Printing Office, Washington. 87 �This page intentionally left blank �REGIONAL POETRY Reading by: Don Johnson; East Tennessee State University; Johnson City, TN Bennie Lee Sinclair; Cleveland, SC Thomas Crowe; Webster, NC Convenor: Sam Gray, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC Faces of Appalachia in Poetry by Bennie Lee Sinclair The Blue Ridge escarpment of South Carolina, as well as similar terrain in neighboring Georgia and North Carolina, has furnished contrast for much of my poetry. Here where highland and lowland abruptly meet, the mountains ever looming blue to those dispossessed of them, the abundant lights of the fertile piedmont taunting those who would resist its lure, the conflict of a century-and-a-half old migration is keenly felt. The necessary movement from hill country to mill country so typical of escarpment folk is subject of the following two poems. In the first the sustaining image, that of the radio, is particularly reminiscent of South Carolina where, in the late 1930's and early 1940's, the legendary Arthur Smith began his career playing bluegrass and country music on the state's first radio station WSPA, in Spartanburg. Hill-haunted listeners who cannot afford to move home again, though sometimes generations removed from the ridges, have continued to make that music the most popular in the area. BLUEGRASS & COUNTRY MADRIGALS I. Ours, the hardscrabble land. Out of the bones of mules sometimes the green corn grew, too late. Over-wet, or stony, or dry, always there were fields we could not negotiate— 89 �until the mills opened up new vistas, and we swarmed: tuning the night's radio for our lost and irregular theme. II. Listen! Whenever a straw-and-wind fiddle bends, bow to breast in the deep fields of night, a music begins— a system of vibrating strings that shakes the ruined valleys and hills asleep under concrete or slag; shakes awake a diminishing vision we only gather, like dew or kindling, out of the windows of Greyhounds or houses we left, as we pass. III. Pressed by this wind, the guitar (the poet's guitar of rain) descends in coded note-drops through awnings and roofs of a city until we also wake, children bewitched under sheets of tin to hear such music fall freely, piercing the walls of our high-rise down to that remnant of land we hold buried, somewhere beneath the sub-floor under our realized dreams. 90 �IV. And drowning this echo, the rain, a broken voice takes hold. Our roused heart, like a maverick banjo, sloughs up the mined-out steepsides braying (as if we still climbed a wilderness) until, near the top, we look down at our future, almost behind us and relayed in this system of strings—mere viscera stretched and strummed tight as our squandered soul, on its frame. V. Curtains of rags at the windows; rags on the table and doors; rags into cracks for the chinking; and rags into rugs for the floors; hot mustard-pack rags for the dying of croup or flu or cold— and yet, in the evenings, we sang: the clear chorus of those open spaces imbuing us, making us love them no matter how far we remain. 91 �VI. Surrounded by fresh, laundered linen in our new rooms that are vaulted like heaven, we wait the thesis of displaced seed or tuber: and in the darkness we hear a gentle rain, yet intricate as math far-fetched, fetched far and homeward for us (who have paid our dues in the fields gathering cotton, or wheat, or dust; and no one ever to tell us which are the roots that grow or may blossom again)— Listen! The next poem had roots in the childhood experience of accompanying my father in his search for bootleg and music. Born at Fruitland, North Carolina, he was the first of his family to leave the hills, a move he always regretted. I remember our 1940's wanderings—in his 1940 Ford, a black cloth flapping where the shotgun window would be—and the toe-tapping music, the moonshiners' wild children my playmates for the evening. I envision the narrator of this poem to be my alter-ego Polly Esther, who sings with the Textile Boys band. THE FIRST TIME EVER I HEARD YOU, HONEY, AS A ONE-MAN BLUEGRASS BAND The first time ever I heard you, honey, as a one-man bluegrass band, you were tuning it up when the music started up, coming right out of your skin: and I couldn't keep still and I couldn't say no to a sound so good for my soul; and I thought about my daddy and his old Ford— 92 �how we rode through the hills for a song— and I couldn't give it up and I wouldn't give it up, I'd been looking for you so long: a man who can make the banjo moan, a man who can stroke a guitar; a man who isn't afraid to sing like a slow-moving rattle-freight car; a man who can thump like a drum with his toes, hold the mouth-organ right with his teeth . . . you got me, honey, you don't even have to play no more, tonight, oh please . . . A major asset of escarpment highlands is the plentitude of water that springs from the ridges. Gravity flow spring water is a luxury flatlander, with dug well, cannot envision. My husband, potter Don Lewis, remembered visits to his great aunt's home in the North Georgia mountains as the happiest times of his childhood. Especially splendid to him was the spring that supplied her family with water. As he and I searched for land years later, springwater was his main requirement. Then, shortly after we found and moved to our dream place (more than a hundred acres with more than a hundred springs) a terrible year-long drought, the worst in the area's history, dried up springs and creeks. He was deeply affected by the drought, a depression that resulted in an artist's block that lasted until the rains at last came again. LORD OF SPRINGS The first day that we climbed our land I stood at the uppermost spring mesmerized, and it winter, by color: my husband—red jacket, blue jeanskneeling amid stone gray, algae green, to drink from that shining source; and by how complete he seemed rising satisfied like an animal or a god, droplets gleaming from his brown beard in that stark unscreened sunlight, who had always, in our search, considered water his Muse. 93 �Here, on this one tract wedged between mountains and rivers the Indians named "Saluda"— "Saluda": Land Where the Green Corn Grows— we had found two good-sized streams, a dozen lesser springs; the acreage itself well-forested and intact: and, though tin cans left by bootleggers rusted in mulch at the rim, and as we dug toward bedrock we sifted precious birdpoints the Cherokee had tossed in, it seemed in the aeons of flow few others had been, the grade much too significant for those just passing. For him, not house site or tenable field the priority, but days and weeks of his life engineering that high water down—the line an unwieldy plastic kink, a half-mile-long black snake recoiling and striking with strength— until at last the grand rush came, knocking the cup from my hand. Triumphant, we settled in accepting steadily rain, torrents, mists; only occasionally did we labor like pilgrims to that spring along the singing creek appositely: drought was something we never dreamed. Now, month after month, a year without rain. Against a tolling heart he climbs daily to that spring, a priest fearful the flame to go out, his water barely flickering. I step across those streams that once I could not leap, wake abruptly in the night escaping an ancient rite: blood for water, water for corn; 94 �and a persuasion of haunting voices chanting their sibilant name, Saluda. Am I as basic as they? What wouldn't I do to restore him? Over the ridge, a fire. In our cornfield parched stalks moan from its wind, the brown leaves clattering like sticks or primeval bones applauding sacrifice. Without, can it ever be the same, that origin or measure of his dreams, or mine of him? A powerful, lithe man—dark, with gifted hands—when he comes out of the shower glistening, erect, and I prepare for him, it seems to me this space—the dry creeks, the pond, the lakeshould be shaken by that tide his presence makes: and I share what the faithful prayed upon our mountain offering quartz or blood to the headspring: Downstream, the river waits, Saluda: downhill the seed corn holds new life, and feast, and future: but may all my blessings rise just here, with you, forever Lord of Springs. My father's parents, Effie Barton and Joseph Elim Sinclair, were eighth generation Southern Appalachioners: the Bartons, English who remain in the "Dark Corner" of South Carolina near Tigerville; the Sinclairs, Scots Highlanders who settled in the Bearwallow section of North Carolina. Because I am a writer, and interested, elders of both families (most now deceased) have over the years led me on lengthy tours of hillside farms and cemeteries, and told me family stories that will live only as long as someone remembers, or writes them down. In planning a poem about 95 �wildflowers, I was struck with a quote from Emerson (for whom my late father and brother, Waldo Graham Sinclair Sr. and Jr., as well as many of their Barton cousins, were named) that seemed a suitable epigraph for joining the images of flora and family. MY APPALACHIAN WILDFLOWERS "... whereby contrary and remote things cohere, and flower out from one stem . . ." Emerson Exuding truth these fragile flowers endure delicate as tears ten million years: innocent of strength appallingly they break like knifeblades out of the graywacke, a force like stars glistening and complex: and yet they do not last, but resurrect haphazard in the fields or on the steepslike ghosts they bloom: faces we have known, connecting us. I. In autumn, when the forest seems holding its breath, the spectacular lilac-blue gentian, its petals vivid as bright paper wings, glows along the brown creekbanks triumphant as some wise shaman instructing this student of flowers its standard, against death. Later, unravelling out of the snow, the sweet arbutus clings so tightly to the slope 96 �no thaw may pry it loose: its deceptive buds—little beads of the purest pearlescence— more persistent than even the children suffering rheum and phlegm who shall not manage to stir their hillside stones again. How clearly their cycles reflect us! Adorning cradle, altar, grave, the softness of their designation (Stellaria, Kalmia, Lobelia) belying though the mountains be slaughtered around us these preglacial, anteholocaust flowers will remain. II. Their division is magnificent: from the sallow Indian Pipe, a saprophyte illusory, ghostly white shrivelling on its stem, at zenith an unnoticed skeleton; to milkweed, in genesis undistinguished, later undergoing metamorphosis, bloom to chrysalis, releasing at year's end a silvery tuft, a lovely, flying skein spun finer than any thread—the unknown its seedbed. Galax, toad flax: in summer flowers strange as their names like generations past (remember "Aunt Kindness," and "Pleasant," her brother—twin?) 97 �come back to visit, recognition guaranteed of root or gene however diverse or common may seem the family. III. Violets, for instance. In merely one afternoon I catalogue sixteen explicit from one another in color, shape, leaf; and attend a clever neighbor actually capturing them in a bottle—so simple!—of jelly, its lavender held to the light astonishing; then witness, at dusk, roadside, a pencil-legged doe and her fawn likewise feasting on violets (the halberdleaved, yellow ones)— rolling the nuggets like butter onto their tongues. So much! And I have not even begun Violaceaen taxonomy; or the remedies, dyes, superstitions the true student must learn of them. IV. Sometimes, wading fields of cousins these ridges have hemmed in like daisies and mountains asters of flu, the old wars, sin— I think how the happenstance flowers adapt and carry on despite this constant winnowing by heat, cold, drought, flood, slide, gust, blade, rock, flame, craw, mole's whim: 98 �how again, and again each turning bloodroot heralds spring abruptly as new flesh, pale stalk a resilient green; and rue anemone, its leafy fringe poignant as old lace whispers into bloom. Whether camp or mine or town has been, or been moved on, the cabin gone, indomitable as kin these flowers peculiar to place whenever we climb toward home welcome us. Out of the evening mist like ghosts they bloom: faces we have known, connecting us. Like psalms they bloom: music that we live, uplifting us. As a small boy my brother learned to gather Indian artifacts on a great-uncle's farm, site of an ancient riverside village. By the time he joined the Order of the Arrow at the Boy Scouts' Camp Old Indian in northern Greenville County, S. C., in the 1940's, he was already an accomplished and responsible scholar of the woodland Indian culture. He had hiked the entire mountain range of South Carolina and chosen the area around Jocassee as his destined home. Here were the sites of two of the oldest Indian villages in the Southeast, Keowee and Toxaway, as well as some of the state's last virgin timber and great clumps of the rarest wildflower in the world, Oconee Bell. When he learned that all was to be inundated by a nuclear power plant and lake, it seemed that all his dreams were devastated. His personal life had not gone well, but he had hoped for a new life in that beautiful place. Ironically, the last time that my husband and I spent with him, before his sudden death from cerebral hemorrhage at age thirty three, was in a melancholy combing of that doomed place for artifacts. The following became an elegy for the land as well as the man. 99 �THE ARROWHEAD SCHOLAR 1967 In laurel caves above the river we hunt for arrowheads— intently scavenging for those lost cultures grounded in this shelf of sand and rock. Once, Siberian visionaries (dreaming food) hiked a sunken strait to forage, mutate, settle this primordial basin. Now, a dam begins to shroud it, locking in the secrets of the Cherokee, and those tribes older who survived prehistory to civilize this valley—only tenacious drifts of laurel high, at the new crater's rim, hide some final relic for those who care to race the drowning hour. For this, my husband and I have as our guide my brother, the Arrowhead Scholar, who can discern out of earth a handful of points, and each its story: the type of rock, the age, the use some hunter young and dedicate as himself found of it in the laurel there, or lost, of time and savagery, beneath our feet. He leads us with a ripened Eagle Scout's vision of sweet water, virgin air, forests plentiful of bone and wing above these vanished towns of Keowee, and Toxaway— 100 �and it is reincarnate in his glistening face as he steps among their leavings stirring no more sound than some ghost, until above us, in the greenery, he begins to sing as he catalogues our finds—a sentimental ballad of the maid Jocassee who went down here, swimming to her lover (his wife merely chokes for him of cancer, and disgrace) and he repeats that song, our father's mistakes with a constancy that perplexes me. Last winter, the doctors at the State Hospital sent him home (they said that he was sane) and now his labyrinth has grown until I could split my heart and wrap the pelt around him, suffering his long-ago face (and mine) pressed against the glass on Sundays (Daddy's visiting day) until our hope was passed. Instead, my offering is this redemptive afternoon in which he can forget that it has come again (the Sabbath) and his own son waits. This brutally uprooted past depends on his wandering hand to salvage while I and my husband (his keepers, and more— as long as we are in sight he believes in happiness) follow the tentative trail he makes through laurel and sawbrier, aware of the dizzying rim whenever the dark leaves part, before him. 101 �1970: ENVOI The dam arcs gently as a bird's great wing (the buzzard of Cherokee legend, whose span erupted these hills) and a shimmering Visitor's Center, impressive, of concrete and steel, welcomes my husband and me to a hydroelectric saga, the Story of Nuclear Energy woven of films, recordings, animation—but little is said of what once was here; of our lost Indian villages, only the names. From a crowded terrace we stare the freshly-reflected expanse where drown a thousand forest colors and, on the farther bank, I see my brother's sweat-curled hair flashing black amid the green, until the vision splinters into a flock of displaced, shrieking crows, and I remember his burst brain. Of that other, nothing remains except a sack of flaked stones gathered by that young man marked of scars some unhonored gambling debt had got him: yet, when I saw him last, laid out for Intensive Care with a towel loincloth, his reserve was a fine as any warrior's who might have carried them. I do not know what could have been. When Daddy failed us, we said it was the times were hard (so many dreams misplaced of dust and joblessness) 102 �and yet, our faith in better days turns out the same. Waiting outside those honky-tonks (the River Street Bar and the Dixie Grill, with Mama) to remind a staggering man of our claim; and later, when we buried him, I vowed myself out of soap opera while my brother—God knows— must have mistaken the role as freedom. Whatever, I shall not repeat this pilgrimage, for him. Technology has done this place in, in trust of the future, but I know (of the Arrowhead Scholar) that the past must be suffered again as it is today, in my brother's form, moving with his magnificent grace among the laurel there, which is no more. Acknowledgements: "Bluegrass and Country Madrigals appeared in San Jose Studies: Poems 1976; "The First Time Ever I Heard You, Honey, As A One-Man Bluegrass Band" appeared in The North Carolina Arts Journal; "The Arrowhead Scholar appeared in The South Carolina Review. All were included in the book THE ARROWHEAD SCHOLAR (Wildernesse Books, 1978) which received South Carolina's Winthrop College Excellence in Writing Award for 1978. The other distinguished poets who contributed to the Regional Poetry session were Thomas Rain Crowe and Don Johnson. Samples of their poetry follow. LOOKING FOR LAND Fast as the fool's trace whispers over high hills, I try to buy land. 103 �O, what a clown would come into this place so long looking for blood! How can any man Own a piece of the earth! A week too late, the silver goes back into the pockets of our ancient lives. And the land our children would love thickens as we walk away. Empty. Feet tired. Our hearts as heavy and as brittle as rust, in leaving behind this special place to die. Thomas Rain Crowe THE PERFECT WORK Love is the perfect work. A music which rings all the bells in the temple. A special wind in the treesListen to the way the drummer hits lovingly his drum. The way the dancer moves over the warm earth. And watch as children leave their bodies behind on the old logs around the fire and sing! The world is aglow in the shadows of the children singing. Of the sticks against wood. Of the heavy silent breathing of the old ones who sit off to the sides of the circle and pray. When I am at work in my garden I take off my shoes. I let my other hands embrace dirt. 104 �I plant myself in this place. And knowing what love is, I awake. In this place in my body. Full of dream music. Full of light! Thomas Rain Crowe SNAKE DOCTORS In the hills they call dragonflies "snake doctors." I knew snake doctors kiss bitten moccasins curing the sickness of snake fights. Peewee Worley, who was eight, had seen it, down behind Carruthers' barn: two snakes, fanged together poison-locked, until, as if by signal, they untied and lay there side by side unmoving, like two friends grown tired of wrestling. But when the dragonfly appeared, hovered green above their heads, then touched each one in turn just once and left, the life rolled slowly back along the slackened skins, building coils, allowing each to slip away— toward the chicken house, toward the trough, where Peewee found them both and hoed their heads off. 105 Don Johnson �This page intentionally left blank �COMMUNITIES: PARTICIPATION OR RETREAT Progress Is Our Most Important Product Tom Boyd; Berea College Getting Organized: Appalachian Participation in Urban Community Councils Phillip Obermiller; Northern Kentucky University Attributes of Rural Families John Photiadis and Lucille Bryant; Morgantown, WV Convenor: Esther Lefever; Director; The Patch, Inc.; Atlanta, GA Progress Is Our Most Important Product: Decline in Citizen Participation and the Professionalization of Schooling in an Appalachian Rural County* by Tom Boyd Of the 52 states and territories of the Union, on the basis of the number of illiterate white voters of native white parentage, Kentucky is 49, leaving whites in North Carolina, Louisiana, and New Mexico alone lower. (Biennial Report of Superintendent of Public Instruction 1907-1909) Fact: The least-educated adult population in the nation. In 1980 only 56 percent of those 18 and over had a high school diploma. Only 11 percent had a college education. Fact: One of the highest high school dropout rates in the nation. In 1981 Kentucky's rate was 33 percent; only eight states did worse. (Louisville Courier-Journal, Oct. 30, 1983) These comments, separated by seventy-five years of change in public education, give evidence of interest in the results of formal education; but their tone also indicates the way lack of educational attainments are managed as major stigmata in an urban, industrial society. The Commonwealth of Kentucky receives these signs as Saint Francis and others did—light marks symbolic of pain—Appalachian Kentucky carries the very wounds evidencing deep penetration. Efforts for improved public education in this century carry all the attributes of 'progress': increasing specialization of effort, increasing effi107 �ciency in management and administration, even greater expenditures for new plant and equipment. They have also been associated with the decline in citizen participation that has accompanied the strengthening of external ties binding local communities to a wider society goverened by professionals and urban middle class interests.1 This paper traces the history of change in formal education in Jackson County, Kentucky, a part of central Appalachia. A number of recent empirical researches carry on the documentation of educational deficiency in the mountains that has long been a part of the national definition of the region as a problem area. These contemporary efforts are noteworthy in that they strive to spread the blame to others than the victim; nonetheless they continue to provide evidence (now in the social science idiom of scales and tests) of the stigma of deficiency when students are examined or measured. DeYoung, Vaught, and Porter have demonstrated that on the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills in Kentucky, "... the school districts having the higher percentages of below average readers tend to come from Appalachia".2 In another study developing measures of school inputs, processes, finances, and outcomes DeYoung has concluded: Appalachian county school districts in Kentucky have poorer input, process, outcome, and financial characteristics than do non-Appalachian county districts or independent districts.3 Rech and Rech in a study of pupils in the Appalachian mountains of Western North Carolina and urban North Carolina used the Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept Scale along with interviews with many children. The scores obtained from the application of the self concept scale indicate significant differences between the two populations. The rural Appalachian children possessed a significantly more negative general self concept than did the urban nonAppalachian children.4 All of these studies conclude that the source of these problems lies, at least in part, in the separation between schools and the majority of the citizens of the rural areas of Appalachia. Jackson County in Eastern Kentucky is a very rural county; the 1980 census lists the population as 100 percent rural. One major newspaper in the state marked it in front page detail recently in the following terms: Only 28.6 percent of the county's adults have completed high school—the third-lowest ranking among the nation's 3,137 counties. Fewer than 40 percent have gone beyond the eighth grade. In last year's statewide testing, Jackson County ranked 167th out of the state's 183 school systems. Many people, including 108 �educators, seem to have grown tired of even hoping for better, "(emphasis mine) This fatigue on the part of educators and other observers—if an accurate assessment—is of very recent vintage. Jackson County, as the rest of rural America, has in the past been the object of many "hopes for the better". These efforts from outside the county and from the profession of education may explain many of the present conditions; they are rarely cited with such figures are given. The series of Biennial Reports of the Superintendents of Public Instruction in Kentucky from the turn of the century onward give evidence of aspirations for Jackson County schools. From 1899-1919 the section titled "Epistolary Reports of County and City Superintendents" also gives some of the thinking of the county superintendents on this subject. These aspirations and thoughts are all in the direction of centralization of power, consolidation of schools, and the adoption of management techniques as being progress for the county's schools. In the 1899-1901 report the State Superintendent praises the work of the teachers in the Commonwealth and goes on to say, "next to the work of the teacher in importance is the work of the (county) superintendent".6 Words of criticism are used when the subject of the management of school affairs is tackled. To say the present common school trustee system is an absolute failure would be probably too severe a criticism, but to say the least, it is unsatisfactory.7* The system of local trustee control was under attack for many years. At this time the duties of the local trustees were vast—a list of 16 activities covered everything fom school records, maintenance, and teacher employment to a pupil census and the duty "to urge upon parents the necessity of prompt and regular attendance of their children".78 The county superintendent received the trustees' reports every year but at this time he had little control over these locally selected citizens. The 1899-1901 report suggests a better form of management, The plan in brief is this: Place all the schools of the entire county ... under the management of a county board of education, to be composed of the county superintendent, and one member elected from each magisterial district of the county by the voters thereof... 8 The press for centralization of control and management was strong from the turn of the century onward. The Jackson County Superintendent, R. M. Bradshaw, in his report agreed with this direction of change and added further comments as to why it was obviously desirable. The present trustee system should be abolished and in its place 109 �a county board of education created, consisting of a member from each magisterial district having an educational qualification, elected by the people and exercising the same powers as the boards of education in our cities.'(emphasis mine) Here we first find the juxtaposition of educational qualifications and urban educational practices defined as progressive activity for this entirely rural area. In 1908 the County Administration Law brought this form of organization to all of Kentucky; it made the county the unit of administration and set up county boards. From 1909 onward Jackson County has had such a school board with six, and now five, citizens elected from the magisterial districts. However, at this time the sub-district trustee still existed. The 1914-15 Kentucky Educational Directory said the county had no graded schools and it listed 71 of these citizen-trustees who were to be found residing all over the county. In spite of the existence of county boards the sub-district trustees dominated affairs making it difficult for the county boards to bring about what some observers saw as progress— the consolidation of schools.10 In the 1907-1909 Biennial Report the state superintendent explained in detail his concern that the trustee system had an unfortunate tendency to allow "political influence" in school affairs as opposed to what would now be called "professional management" of these activities. His justification for embarrassment is telling: The old school district system which has prevailed in Kentucky until recently, was discarded in the Northern States nearly 75 years ago, and has been discarded in every Southern State excepting Arkansas.n(emphasis mine) The "politics" that derived from citizen involvement, as well as the knowledge that the practice of trustee management was abandoned elsewhere, were major arguments to justify the centralization of power in education and the removal of supervision from the hands of citizens. The issue of educational attainment as a qualification for the exercise of power was evident early on and the final stroke on the bill of indictment of trustees was the matter of cost and the efficiency of popular election. During the period of trustee control it was pointed out that much of the population of any area, and especially a rural area, was illiterate and it was from such a population that school officials were elected. One observer stated it succinctly. These men were good, honest, upright men but they had little or no education, and therefore they possessed a very limited vision of the possibilities of education, "(emphasis mine) The 1909-1911 Biennial Report records Superintendent Davis of Jackson 110 �County giving clear justification and need to reduce citizen participation in the name of economy and efficiency. I believe all vacancies in the office of subdistrict-trustee should be filled by appointment by the County Board of Education. I also favor the election of trustees "viva voce" compensating the trustees so elected with the money annually expended for holding school elections.13 The argument against trustees was clearly based on the believed superiority of central control; it was also linked with the fact that many citizens were unable, or unwilling, to make the necessary effort to provide a major modern structure for education—the consolidated school. Early on the Jackson County superintendent praised the idea of consolidation Unking it with the graded instruction found in urban areas. I . . . believe that we could consolidate several of our districts into one large district... and have a school building sufficient for four or five teachers; that is, a room for each grade, and then we might hope to have our schools graded as well as any college or normal school.14 The wishes of professional teachers were also used as a justification for consolidation in this period. It is my opinion that, with longer terms of schools, we would have more professional teachers, and with our little local schools consolidated, we would have better graded schools.16 The State Supervisor for Rural Schools in 1916 chided the citizens of the Commonwealth in terms of being once again behind the rest of the nation—now the new issue was this one of consolidation. He said the only hope for improvement (ie consolidation) was, "the enactment of laws standardizing public school buildings and making the State Department of Education responsible".16 Consolidation accompanied the transfer of power that had recently replaced the district with the county; but, the way to attain this newest goal for progress in education was to further transfer power from the county to the state level. Superintendent Chapman also invoked the newly popular idea of efficiency as a justification. "Consolidation in its best form [creates] a larger school where more efficient work may be done, or equivalent work at less expense."17 During the period 1899-1919 Jackson County attempted to meet these desires to conform to urban America but it was a difficult task and some cases of skepticism as well as despair are notable. Superintendent Davis in 1913 wrote: As to consolidation and transportation, it is impractable (sic) because the roads are so poor and there are so many mountains 111 �to be crossed by the pupils. The county being one of the poorest in the State, makes consolidation almost impossible. Where possible, it is, in my opinion, the one step needed in our schools.18 In 1919 Superintendent Minter echoed this assessment: We have no consolidated schools in this county. In most parts of the county the roads are so bad and the population so sparse that consolidated schools are impractical. About half the school population would be unable to attend for at least half the term.19 Nonetheless he ended his report on a note of hope lest deviant local conditions be seen as defeating progress. "A sentiment for better roads seems to be growing and this is the first step toward consolidated schools."20 Scrutiny of these documents and reports produces one area of stated pride in progress made during this time. A new form of equipment gave the county superintendent a noteworthy event for the 1914-1915 report. Since my last report we have built three new school houses and purchased and installed patent desks and seats in seventy of the schools in my county. [Our goal is]... to have comfortable school houses, with patent seats and desks, in every district of the county.21(emphasis mine) In the 1916-1917 report the spread of formal education and this new equipment go hand in hand. We have either built or repaired almost every school house in the county, have established nine new districts, and have furnished every school house in the county with patent desks during my incumbency.22 (emphasis mine) The purchase of manufactured desks and seats was, in this rural timberproducing county, an important symbol of the successful quest for progress on the part of this Superintendent. At least in this effort he could comply with the urban industrial standards sought by the profession of education. The historian Thomas Clark has described how 'patent' goods as symbols of real or imagined modernity spread across the rural South in an earlier period. Drummers and stores were agents of the new industrial age—in this respect so was the increasingly powerful school superintendent.23 From 1921 onward statistical tables dominate the Biennial Reports in a new format representing the theme of numerical accounting as an adjunct to efficient management. Statements of events, plans, and achievements—the epistolary reports of county superintendents themselves—disappear. The replacement is prepared by the State Department of Education that is growing in power. In his 1921 report the state superintendent writes of the county school administration law as the most important school legislation enacted by 112 �the General Assembly of 1920. Through this mandate the sub-district trustees are at last removed. Attention is now directed at the qualifications of the rural superintendent as being the major problem of management. The mirror for reflection remains an urban one. The county school administration law of 1920 was designed primarily and specifically to give to each county in the state ... better leadership. The superiority of the city schools to the county schools is primarily due to the better ability, the better preparation, and the better leadership of city superintendents as compared with county superintendents. [This law]... makes it possible to secure for the administration of county schools, the same sort of leadership that cities have enjoyed for years.24 When problems were described in detail the blame was clearly shifted to a person not having the requisite, new professional skills. "Too many county superintendents were not properly prepared, and did not have the administrative ability and educational leadership the position demanded."26 By 1940 the Jackson County School system still had many small schools. County-wide consolidation had proved to be difficult but there were some district level mergers to provide multi-grade and multi-teacher schools. The seventy-three schools in the county were still dominated by the one-teacher school; there were fifty-nine of these with the rest being eleven two-teacher schools, one three-teacher school, and two twelve-grade schools.26 The report of a teacher working on improvement of instruction illustrates transportation problems. The difficulties of transporation enter into teacher reports frequently. Jackson County has no railroad and few improved highways. Many of the rural schools are situated far from the main highways on dirt roads that become impassable in bad weather. The supervisors reached a number of these schools on horseback.27 For forty years comments of state, county, and other observers reflect awareness that consolidation is dependent upon road conditions; other aspects of the new structure received more sanguine attention. The State Superintendent of Rural Schools produced a fourteen page report extolling the virtues of consolidated schools. First. The consolidated rural school secures better buildings, better equipment, better teachers, better attendance, more sanitary conditions, greater school spirit and greater efficiency along all lines. Second. This type of school may become, and almost invariably does become, a community center and a rallying point for all 113 �the educational, moral and industrial forces of the community. Third. While the difference in cost between the one-room school system and the consolidated system is very little, if any, the advantages of the larger school are so much greater that they more than compensate for the difference in cost, should there be any. After all else has been said, the best argument for consolidation and transportation is that they get more children into school, keep them there better and for a longer time, and give them opportunity for more rapid progress, "(emphasis mine) It was believed that as roads were built consolidation would follow swiftly behind. Just to make sure readers would be aware this was the wave of the future the report concludes on a strong note. "As no successfully consolidated school, so far as is known, has ever returned to the old way . . . consolidation is surely beyond the experimental stage." (Chapman, 1917) The author of another study of the consolidation process in Kentucky in the 1920's got caught up in the mood of the times. "The history of consolidation in business, in manufacturing, in education has shown the key note of success."29 It was believed that such a process would attract and hold better teachers, give better instruction to the children, produce better buildings and equipment, and allow the teaching of new subjects.30 The growth of the consolidation movement could only be hindered by transportation problems, conservatisism of people, financial conditions, and inadequate leadership.31 From the 1920's onward consolidation was seen to be a natural extension of a process that produced efficiency in the growing urban, industrial economy. Outside the lack of physical resources the only things that could prevent it were deficient or inadequate people. A 1969 history of Kentucky small schools produced by the State Department of Education argued that the larger schools offered, ... better trained teachers, greater variety of curricular and extra-curricular activities, better adaptation on the part of graduates to the present social order, and better leadership in business, industry and government, resulting from a broader and better education, "(emphasis mine) During a fifty-year period the state abolished 98 percent of the one-teacher schools, most of the remaining ones were found in Eastern Kentucky. Three factors were cited as making this consolidation possible. First there was the obvious growth in the possibility of pupil transportation as school buses were developed. Second, "growth of population in small villages and towns ... made it necessary to abolish small schools and construct larger ones". And third, "from 1955 to the present, emphasis on accreditation 114 �and evaluation has been a large factor in the decline".33 The population shift away from rural areas aided consolidation, perhaps doing away with the personal inadequacies that led to opposition to the process as well. After 1955 the principle factor was the control of the State Department of Education with professional evaluation and standards being advanced as links with state financing of county educational programs. In 1961 Jackson County still had 31 schools—a reduction of 41 from the 1940 figure. Sixteen one-teacher schools remained in existence; the rest of the county's schools were five two-teacher, two three-teacher, five general elementary and three twelve-grade schools. The county had been loosing population over the years. From 1940-50 there was a 19.8% loss, from 1950-1960 a 18.5% loss, and from 1960-1970 there would be a 6.3% loss. Efforts to consolidate the Jackson County school system could finally be completed during the decade of the 1960's, roads in the county had been improved somewhat, there was some loss of population in the outlaying areas, and federal and state dollars were available for educational expenditure to bring change. This decade brought a further change at the state level; the yearly publication, Profiles of Kentucky Public Schools began to publish data that allowed comparison of schools in the rough terms of inputs to educational programs and the results of schooling. Such data collected for one county system over time allows us to compare time periods using these same variables. Table 1 gives data on the performance of the county system for the period 1966-67 (the first year such statistics were complete) to the present. Appendix 1 gives the method the State Department of Education uses to develop these educational indicators. Comparison with data for the entire state during the same time period allows us to view any changes relative to a wider norm for performance that is not solely urban. Looking at the change in these figures an assessment of the claims for consolidation can be made in its own terms of better buildings, greater efficiency, getting more children into school, keeping them for a longer time, and giving them opportunity for more rapid progress. Scrutiny of the fourteen-year period from 1966 to 1980 gives a picture of changes in the system as consolidation was completed and as the first group of pupils left schooling having had a full 12 years of the transformed, transportation-oriented rather than neighborhood-oriented, county school system. In 1980 the county has only five elementary schools and one high school. The elementary schools consist of three major multigraded schools in the larger population concentrations near the most important highway and two smaller more remote schools the State Department of Education has recommended the county close. The single consolidated high school, according to Department of Education figures, is thirty-five miles away from the more distant pupils; many children are on busses at 6 a.m. in 115 �order to reach high school by 8:15 a.m. By the 1981-82 school year transportation was 15.4% of total current expenses, and the county was derided by weathermen on television newscasts for being closed so often when ice was on these mountain roads.34 Figures 1-7 compare county and state figures and chart changes in teh educational indicators as the county system has begun to have an educational effort that includes approximately 3,000 miles of total bus travel on any given day. Facilities for schooling have changed dramatically since 1940, the three newest buildings are recognizable as schools found anywhere in the nation and the high school has had the most recent status benefit of modern construction—expensive removal of asbestos used in the construction of the library. All three have gyms for indoor physical education and the ubiquitous pursuit of prowess in basketball—patent desks and chairs abound. In 1966-67 the county pupil/teacher ratio was 27.7 to 1 and that was only one more pupil more than the state ratio of 26.6. By 1979-80 the Jackson County ratio declined to 20.7 and the state ratio was reduced to 21.0. In 1966-67 the percentage of students enrolled who were in attendance was 90.8%, the state average was 94%. By 1979-80 the county figure was 89.7% and the state 93%. During this period of culmination for the process of consolidation, the county did not improve its performance relative to the state averages for pupil/teacher ratio and percent attendance. Throughout the United States the 1960's and 1970's were a period of inflation as well as increasing amounts of money spent on public education. In 1966-67 Jackson County spent $346 per pupil when the annual current expenses were divided by the average daily attendance; by 1979-80 the figure was $1,184. The state change during the same period was from $357 to $1,452. In the initial period, expenditure in Jackson County was 97% of the state average, by 1979-80 it had dropped to 82% of the state figure. When the cost per pupil for instruction alone is considered the figure for Jackson County in 1966-67 was $253; by 1979-80 the amount spent was $772. The state change during the same period was from $280 to $970. The culmination of the consolidation effort led to the county declining from 90% to 80% of the state average of dollars being spent per pupil for instruction. From this view consolidation has not led to an increase in the county expenditure relative to the state average expenditure per pupil. This might be viewed as supporting the claims of greater "efficiency" that were promised by the proponents of the process. In the 1966-67 school year 57.5% of the Jackson County students entering ninth-grade in 1962 graduated from high school. These young people had come out of any one of twenty-six elementary schools. In 1979-80 the percentage had dropped to 46.2%. The dramatic drop this year may be due to the closing of the small private high school, but in years 116 �before this the figure had dropped below 50% five separate times and climbed above 57% only three times. The state figures for this period were 69% and 65%. Jackson County had a percentage point decrease of 11 and the state a decrease of 4 points. The early county figure was eight-tenths of the state percentage and the new figure was a decline to about seventenths of the state percentage. The 1966-67 school year saw 28.7% of the high school graduates entering college and by 1979-80 the figure was 23.9%. Ten times during this time period the percentage was below the initial figure and only three times was it above the figure for the students with the more neighborhood-based elementary education experience. During this same period the state percentage fluctuated much less; the initial figure was 42.4% and ending figure was 42.8%. For Jackson County the early figure was 68% of the state percentage and the later figure was 56% of the state percentage. Such figures do not demonstrate that the process of school consolidation improved the ability of the schools to "hold pupils" or to "motivate and prepare" them for higher education. The claims of educational improvement through school consolidation have not been supported in this Appalachian county. Things have stayed the same or declined further. More modern buildings have been built, the pupil/teacher ratio and expense per pupil have shifted. But there has been no increase in "getting more children into school", "keeping them for a longer time", and the "opportunity for more rapid progress"—if anything things have gotten worse and these figures don't necessarily show the entire picture. In Kentucky pupils may stop attending school at age 16; many of these dropouts never reached the ninth grade to be counted in the figures for percentage of ninth grade graduating from high school. Nonetheless, as the figures show, the new system did not greatly increase retention of the pupils that did reach the ninth level of state graded educational attainment. What social processes have gone on during the period from 1961 to the present? There has been increasing centralization in the distribution of educational facilities in this reduction from 31 to six schools. Schooling is, with two exceptions that are condemned to be closed soon, found in the population concentrations. There has also been a centralization of power and participation as the reduction in schools means a longer bus ride for pupils and greater distance for parents to travel to participate in school meetings, events and the like. This 'de-ruralization' of education has taken place in a county where more than two-thirds of the pupils are considered "economically deprived children". The state figure is 32%. These events have been organized, directed and managed by the profession of education from outside the county with some citizens accepting the process as progress. Opposition has not been totally absent. Some members of the Hisel 117 �community have recently thwarted attempts to close their two-teacher elementary school and the school board has supported them by going against the wishes of the Kentucky Department of Education, keeping this school open on a year-by-year basis. However, in some cases this has been used by newspapers, teachers, and educational administrators as further evidence of the backwardness of education in Jackson County rather than a wise decision in the face of a wrong policy.36 Evaluations of the effects of consolidation on school systems are not frequent in the social science literature of today. The conventional wisdom seems to be that it has been successful so there is no need for analysis; any problems are the result of incomplete or thwarted consolidation. Another view holds that it is a "natural" process not worthy of scrutiny. As Rosenfild and Sher point out in an article entitled "The Urbanization of Rural Schools, 1940-1970", By the 1960's consolidation, as a political issue, had ceased to be a legitimate subject of debate or policy analysis. Consolidation and other urbanizing practices were no longer perceived as reforms championed solely by the progressive elements of society. Rather, they had become accepted educational standards supported not only by the full range of the education profession, but also by the mainstream of American society.36 Claims of cost effectiveness abound in terms of "economies of scale" and greater efficiencies in larger schools. But at least one study has shown how after a certain size is reached new diseconomies of scale emerge in more busses, higher fuel costs, faster depreciation and the cost of new administrative specializations.37 Studies of the effect of consolidation on participation of citizens and students alike show results similiar to the ones found in Jackson County, but such studies are rarely, if ever, cited in state analyses. A study of high school size and student participation published in 1964 found that when students were transferred to a larger county high school they had a decrease in their participation in extracurricular activities and the amount of satisfaction associated with, "acquiring knowledge and developing intellectual interests".38 A case study of a school consolidation struggle in rural West Virginia showed how sides taken are often in terms of "experts versus amatures", "professional educators versus parents" etc. For members of the middle class (including professional educators) consolidation is an effective way to strengthen influence and control within the community, while furthering their aspirations for their children. Yet, to the rural poor and working class, consolidation represents an attempt to destroy what is often their only sphere of public influence and their last 118 �vestige of control over their childrens' education and socialization.39 Decline in participation is impossible to refute. It is often a result of consolidation that is admitted not as a cost but as something desirable in a "complex" world. When, it is admitted as a cost it is frequently justified as being necessary for the educational benefit of improved pupil performance—this study shows that such a benefit is a false assumption. The early consolidation studies took place in urbanized areas; they did not control for family economic conditions as an effect upon learning and thus showed some positive correlation between school size and student achievement. Recent studies demonstrate that when researchers control for I.Q. and socio-economic status the result is, "a complete reversal of the traditional conclusions about the correlation between size and achievement".40 A review of the literature, one author claims, shows that not one of the controlled studies demonstrates a positive correlation between size and achievement independent of social class.41 Jackson County has two-thirds of its pupils in the status the state measures and terms "economically deprived". We have seen that the impetus for consolidation in rural Kentucky came from comparison with urban areas. This is not unique to Kentucky or Appalachia; the process and the results in terms of participation are similiar in areas of the nation having a better reputation.42 In urban America community control of schools gave way to a "corporatebureaucratic model" as part of a drive "taking the schools out of politics".43 A similiar theme was sounded in the complaints about Jackson County and other rural areas. In American urban education this happened in a much earlier period, as state and county Superintendents often proclaimed in their early reports, and it was a major transfer of power from parents (many of them recent immigrants and most working class) to professionals. The professionals were not immune to forces for change themselves. From the turn of the century onward there has been considerable adoption of business values and practices in educational administration. At this time professional administrators in urban areas began to be perceived as business managers rather than educational philosophers.44 The demise of county "epistolary reports", and the State Superintendent replacing this with statistical reporting methods, in the 1920's, demonstrates this well as do all the surveys and cost accounting material that begins to appear at this time. In urban America at the turn of the century school boards were being reduced in size and their composition was changing, in that they were increasingly dominated by businessmen.46 Administrators responded to this pressure on their work in a positive way. A 1916 text book Public School Administration explained that businessmen, manufacturers, and 119 �bankers made the best school board members and those who would not be adequate were politicians, saloonkeepers, and uneducated or relatively ignorant men.46 The pressures for change in school board composition in Jackson County was largely from the profession of education not local businessmen! Even today, perhaps due most to the nature of the population in the county, the school board is not dominated by manufacturers, businessmen and bankers. Also, as we have seen, this school board is not pushing as hard as the state and the profession for the remaining consolidation effort. What does the future hold for Jackson County and the rest of Appalachian Kentucky? The commonwealth has seventy-three elementary schools with less than eight teachers. All of these small schools, having at least one instance of a teacher assigned to more than one grade, are slated to be consolidated into larger graded schools.47 As part of this the Moore's Creek and Hisel schools in the county will be closed. For Jackson County the State facilities survey recommends the construction of a new upper elementary school for all 7th and 8th grade pupils.48 It will be built next to the existing high school and means that two more complete grades will be bussed to the central education facility each day. Legislation pending in the 1984 Kentucky General Assembly will raise the minimum educational level for new school board members from an eighth-grade to a high school education. Jackson County has 2,313 citizens 18 years old and over who meet this educational qualification. In the future only 28.6% of the population will be eligible for participation as a school board member. In the 1981-1983 Biennial Report the Superintendent of Public Instruction has recommended the following, Election of county school district boards of education should be at large rather than by subdistricts so that the boards represent and advocate for a sound county-wide public education and not a regional or sub-district one.49(emphasis mine) When implemented this change will at last lay to rest the "problem" of the local interest and sub-district trustee, they have gone from 71 to five in number. With the adoption of this recommendation from the professionals there is no longer any assurance that peripheral areas will be represented and a county-seat population might produce all five school board members. The educational lights have gone out all over this central Appalachian county. During the past forty years the processes of centralization of power and consolidation have brought urbanization in the provision of schooling, the decline in local participation, and the alienation of citizens that occurs when the universal and whole, in this case socialization, is 120 �transferred into the hands of professionals alone. This has not been totally due to professionals. In every Appalachian county some citizens have seen it in their interest to promote this cause. They have accepted the ideology of individual advancement and social mobility and believed that the urban school—"The one best system"—was the way to attain it.60 They overlooked the fact that in such a distribution someone has to be on the bottom. In terms of stigmata Kentucky carries light marks symbolic of pain, but many Appalachian counties have had profound penetration leaving deep wounds. APPENDIX 1 Definition of Indicators used in Profiles of Kentucky Public Schools 1. Pupil/Teacher Ratio: This was calculated by dividing the enrollment obtained from the Superintendents' Annual Statistical Report by the total number of classroom teachers as reported on the federal and state salary schedules. 2. Percent of Attendance: Data on the Annual Statistical Report was used to calculate this by dividing the aggregate days attendance by aggregate days membership. 3. Annual Current Expenses Per Pupil in Average Daily Attendance: Data obtained from Annual Financial Reports collected by the Division of Finance from the local districts and the Superintendents' Annual Statistical Reports collected by the Division of Pupil Personnel. The total current expenses were divided by the ADA to arrive at the figure. Current expenses include administration, instruction, attendance services, health services, pupil transportation, operation of plant, and fixed charges. 4. Cost Per Pupil for Instruction: Instruction costs were calculated by dividing the total spent for Instruction by the average daily attendance. The total for instruction excluded money spent in this area from Title I and IV of ESA. (This exclusion is due to accounting requirements for federal reporting.) 5. Percent of Ninth Graders Graduating: The Superintendents' Annual Statistical Report submitted by the local districts to the Division of Pupil Personnel is the basis for this calculation. It lists the total graduates by age and enrollment by grades. The number of graduates was divided by the number of ninth graders enrolled three years ago. **In districts which have merged or experienced a significant enrollment increase or decrease the figures can be misleading. 6. Percentage of High School Graduates Entering College: The School Data Form is the source of graduates entering college. High School 121 �graduates are reported on the Superintendents' Annual Statistical Report and divided into the number entering college. 7. Percent of Economically Deprived Children: This was taken from records of the Office of School Food Services indicating the percentage of children eligible for free school lunch benefits in proportion to total children of school age in the district. NOTES 1. For a consideration of this process in a single Appalachian rural community see Tom Boyd, "Floating Down The Stream Of Time: An Appalachian Rural Community Confronting Mass Society", unpublished paper presented at the 1982 Appalachian Studies Conference. 2. Alan DeYoung, et.aL, "Evaluating Educational Performance in Appalachian Kentucky", Appalachian Journal, vol. 9, nr. 1, (Fall 1980) p. 54. 3. Alan DeYoung, "The Status of Formal Education in Central Appalachia", Appalachian Journal, vol. 10, nr. 4 (Summer 1983) p. 323. 4. Una Mae Lange Rech and Gregory G. Rech, "Living is More Important than Schooling: Schools and self concept in Appalachia", Appalachian Journal, vol. 8, nr. 1, (Fall 1980) p. 20. 5. The Louisville Courier Journal, "In Jackson County the schools are failing to end the poverty cycle", p. 1, October 30, 1983. 6. 1899-1901 Biennial Report, p. 11. TA..1899 Biennial Report, p. 14. 7B. Moses E. Ligon, A History of Public Education in Kentucky (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1942) p. 118. 8. 1899-1901 Biennial Report, p. 17. 9. 1899-1901 Biennial Report, p. 238. 10. Ligon, Op, cit., p. 214. 11. 1907-1909 Biennial Report, p. 15. 12. Ligon, op. cit, p. 119. 13. 1909-1911 Biennial Report, p. 68. 14. 1901-1903 Biennial Report, p. 160. 15. 1901-1903 Biennial Report, p. 160. 16. 1916-1917 Biennial Report, p. 273. 17. 1916-1917 Biennial Report, p. 277. 18. 1911-1913 Biennial Report, p. 101. 19. 1917-1919 Biennial Report, p. 27. 20. 1917-1919 Biennial Report, p. 27. 122 �21. 1914-1915 Biennial Report, p. 280. 22. 1916-1917 Biennial Report, p. 34. 23. Thomas D. Clark, Pills Petticoats and Plows: The Southern Country Store, (Bobbs-Merrill, 1944) p. 21. 24. 1920-1921 Biennial Report, p. 6. 25. Ibid, p. 7. 26. Mary J. Patterson, "A Demonstration in In-Service Education of Teachers", unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Kentucky (1943). 27. Ibid, p. 66. 28. Kentucky School Report, 1916-1917, "Supplementary Report of J. Virgil Chapman, State Supervisor of Rural Schools", pp. 281-282. 29. Hattie C. Warner, "Consolidation of Rural Schools In Kentucky", unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Kentucky, (1925) p. 21. 30. Ibid, p. 40. 31. Ibid, p. 29. 32. The Little Red School House in Kentucky, Division of Pupil Personnel Attendance and Accounting; State Department of Education; (June 1969) p. 2. 33. Ibid, p. 2. 34. Figures calculated from 1981-1983 Biennial Report. 35. Jackson County Sun, August 5, 1982, "Hisel School to remain open" p. 1. Jackson County Sun, May 12, 1983, "Hisel gets one-year reprieve" p. 1. Lexington Herald-Leader, May 13,1983, "Tiny School in Jackson gets 1-year reprieve", p. 1. 36. Stuart A. Rosenfeld and Jonathan P. Sher, "The Urbanization of Rural Schools, 1940-1970", pp. 11-42, in Jonathan P. Sher (ed) Education in Rural America: A Reassessment of Conventional Wisdom, (Boulder Colorado: The Westvies Press, 1977) p. 40. 37. Jonathan Sher and Rachel B. Tompkins, "Economy, Efficiency, and Equality: The myths of Rural School and District Consolidation", pp. 43-75 in Sher, op. cit., p. 46. 38. Roger G. Barker and Paul V. Gump, Big School, Small School: High School Size and Student Behavior, (Stanford University Press, 1964) p. 153. 39. Timothy Weaver, "Class Conflict in Rural Education: A Case Study of Preston County West Virginia", pp. 159-204 in Sher, op. cit, p. 161. 40. Sher and Tompkins, op. cit., p. 63. 41. Ibid, p. 64. 42. Wayne E. Fuller, The Old Country School: The Story of Rural Education in the Middle West, (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1982). 43. David B. Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education, (Harvard Univ. Press, 1974) p. 7. 44. Raymond E. Callahan, Education and The Cult of Efficiency, (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1962) p. 120. 45. Ibid, p. 150. 46. Ibid, p. 151. 123 �47. Shirley Williams, "Jabez Elementary School: One for all, all for one", The Louisville Courier Journal, Jan. 9, 1983. Mr. Harmand Bisconti of the State Bureau of Instruction discusses these plans here. 48. Comparative Facilities Survey ofJankson County Kentucky School District, June 1973, Department of Education. 49. 1981-1983 Biennial Report, p. 81. 50. For a discussion of the rise of this vertical view of life as opposed to the horizontal view see: Berton Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism, (Norton, 1978). *Funding for some of this research was provided by a James Still Fellowship administered through the Faculty Development Project of the Appalachian Center, University of Kentucky. Write to author for tables. 124 �ECONOMICS I: MACRO Appraising the Diversity of the Appalachian Economy Millicent M. Taylor; Tusculum College; Greenville, TN Surviving the 1990s: Inter-Regional Variation in Economic Problems Thomas R. Shannon; Radford University; Radford, VA Historical Perspectives on Energy and Industrialization in Appalachia Ted Couillard; Georgia Southwestern College; Americus, GA Surviving the 1990s: Inter-Regional Variation in Economic Problems by Thomas R. Shannon The national economy appears to be undergoing a major transformation with far-reaching social and political ramifications, Appalachia is participating in that transformation. However, because of its particular place in the traditional national economic division of labor and its particular heritage of economic, social, and political conditions, it is likely that the consequences of national trends on Appalachia are going to differ significantly from the consequences encountered in other regions. Moreover, the consequences of national economic trends are not likely to be completely uniform across the region. It is possible to identify certain common tendencies in the likely future economic development of the region1. Yet, it is also true that the region is characterized by considerable economic diversity. Traditionally, that diversity has been twofold in nature. First, many different types of economic activity have characterized the region. Second, many of those activities have been geographically concentrated in certain subregions of Appalachia, creating a geographical basis for diversity. More recently, to that traditional diversity have been added new economic activities of the sort formerly concentrated in the urban, industrial regions of the north. While less industryspecific and less geographically concentrated in specific subregions, there still has been some tendency for certain subregions to attract a larger share of this kind of new industry than others. Hence, a full understanding of the likely direction of economic change in Appalachia requires an 125 �understanding of the differential impacts of national trends on its different economic activities subregions. The present discussion represents a preliminary attempt to examine the differential impacts of national economic trends on the various economic activities and subregions of the southern two-thirds of Appalachia (West Virginia and the Appalachia counties south of it). Much (though not all) of the factual presentation will parallel a recent report of the ARC on near-term economic prospects of the region.2 However, this discussion will go beyond the ARC effort by more critically assessing the problems economic trends will create and by looking at the implications of those trends for developing strategies to improve regional economic conditions in the future. National Trends American industries are confronting increasingly intense competition from foreign procedures in both foreign and domestic markets. That competition is intensifying and spreading to more and more product markets. At the same time, the increasing size and conglomerate structure of American corporations has made them less dependent on continued success in one product line and better able to shift the location of their operations to different domestic locations or overseas. Hence, in response to increased competition (or simply to maximize profits) the large comporations have been shifting their production plants to low-cost areas. They have also been shifting their resources out of highly competitive, low-profit activities into such high-return activities as "high tech" products, resource extraction, financial speculation and the delivery of managerial, technical and financial services. The result has been the "de-industrialization" of many older industrial regions, the rapid growth of other regions in the United States and certain Third World countries, and the steady decline of whole industries (e.g. steel and autos). In addition, competitive pressures, the ability to relocate, and the willingness to disinvest in lowprofit product lines has led to corporate pressures on workers to make wage and other concessions. It has also resulted in pressures on government at all levels to provide subsidies and regulatory relief in return for either not moving plants or staying in business at all.3 Impact on Specific Appalachian Economic Activities and Subregions These general national trends, combined with the specific problems of particular types of economic activities which characterize various subregions, seem likely to create a number of problems as Appalachia 126 �moves into the 1990's. These problems are lilely to be compounded by the fact that the labor force in Appalachia is projected to grow substantially between 1980 and 1990. As a consequence, a ten percent increase in the number of jobs available will be necessary just to maintain unemployment at the levels which characterized the late 1970's.4 Coal: The coal industry is the most geographically concentrated economic activity in the region: almost 90 percent of all the coal produced regionally is produced in a small number of counties in West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky. For Appalachia as a whole (ARC definition) coal mining provides about 300,000 jobs, either for miners or for workers in minerelated industries. The "coal counties" also remain among the most distinctive of Appalachia's subregions in terms of such things as: degree of absentee landownership, low quality of public services, poor physical infrastruture, employment instability, low educational levels, and environmental deterioration.5 Overall, despite the partial recovery of the coal industry in the 1970's, the "coal counties" thus remain relatively socially and economically depressed. Moreover, the impact of national trends and problems specific to the coal industry are likely to mean that continued reliance on the coal industry will not provide these counties with adequate employment opportunities over the near-term future—even if the current economic recovery continues on the national level. Energy conservation and the stagnation of the North Central industrial region—the area most severely affected by de-industrialization—will mean slow growth for the utilities which have been the largest customers for Appalachian coal in the recent past. The rapid decline of the steel industry and the rapid conversion of its production technology wil depress coal demand even further. In recent years, about one-fourth of Appalachian production has been exported.6. However, intense price competition from foreign mines with low wage costs (e.g. South Africa) limits potential export demand. Growing concern about the sulphur content of much of Appalachia's coal because of acid rain also will be likely to depress demand. In addition, it is likely that Appalachian coal will continue to lose national market share to strip-mined coal in the West. Western coal has been gaining not only because of topography advantages, sulphur content, and the cost advantages of strip versus shaft mining, but also because increasing concentration and outside ownership of the coal companies has made them more able and willing to shift to the West to avoid unionized shaft mines in Appalachia. Overall, the result is the official estimates, which may be too optimistic, project only modest growth in the demand for Appalachian coal through the mid-1990's. The resulting growth in employment would be 63,000 additional jobs, and even 127 �that modest increase is premised on the dubious assumption that there will be no further increases in labor productivity because of mine mechanization or the shift to strip-mining.7 Thus, the challenge to residents of the coal-producing area is formidable. The coal industry is likely to remain a major source of employment, and the coal counties will continue to have to contend with the familiar and severe problems of coal mining. At the same time, these counties will need major new sources of employment, but the very conditions created by coal mining will create problems for attempts to attract new employers. Textiles/Apparel Textiles mills represent another traditional source of Appalachian employment which are both heavily concentrated in the region (about onethird of all employees in the industry)8 and certain areas of the region (nationally, 60 percent of all employees are located in the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia).9 Overall, about 200,000 workers are employed in textiles in the region.10 Textiles also represent one of the major industries in the United States particularly threatened by low-wage plants located in Third World countries. However, actual production of yarns, fibers, and fabrics is expected to remain high in the domestic industry. That is because basic textile production has a high potential for intensive automation. On the other hand, automation will involve the rapid closure of old plants, the bankruptcy or forced consolidation of smaller companies which lack capital to modernize, and the steady decline in employment opportunities in the industry.11 (Employment has been declining since 1976.) Given the nature of employment patterns in the industry, declining employment will have a particular impact on some kinds of workers. Most textile workers are unskilled, 51 percent of the workers are women, and 19 percent are black (nation-wide figures). The percentage of women and blacks in the industry has been increasing in recent years.12 Continued competition from foreign producers (who are also automating) is also likely to maintain pressures to keep wages low (currently, wages are 32 percent below the national average for all manufacturing),13 working conditions substandard, and work discipline harsh. The apparel industry is closely associated with textiles in terms of its location in the region and employs about the same number of workers. Nationally, employment in the apparel industry has been in decline since 1973, and the prospects for the industry are poor. It is the most laborintensive industry in the country (85 percent of all workers are produc128 �tion workers). Small firms, the fragmented nature of the market, intense price competition, and the nature of the work all mean that the industry is not in a position to automate. As a consequence, the industry has been extremely vulnerable to foreign competition from extremely low-wage producers overseas—despite some of the lowest wage rates in U.S. industry.14 Low wages, production speed-ups, the rapid development of urban "sweat shops" using illegal immigrants, and some federal limitations on imports have only served to slow the domestic industry's decline. Hence, major reductions in the region's employment opportunities in the apparel industry seem likely. This decline will especially impact on women workers who constitute 81 percent of the labor force.16 Employment declines in textiles and the apparel industry are serious problems for the region as a whole: about 10 percent of the labor force of the entire region (ARC definition) is employed in these industries.16 The concentration of workers in the Carolina's and Georgia and the frequent location of plants in small communities make the likely subregional and local employment impact especially ominous. Hence, the challenge in textile and apparel dependent areas is to find alternative employment opportunities for workers who are generally unskilled and predominantly women. Efforts of the recent past by particular communities to attract new textile and apparel plants is a "beggar thyself to beggar thy neighbor" game. These efforts rely on local government subsidies, opposition to labor unions, and the acceptance of low wages and end up attracting a limited number of low quality jobs of uncertain stability, continuing low living standards, and straining local government budgets only to (often temporarily) move employment from some other community in the region. Furniture Another traditional source of employment in the region has been the furniture industry, which is concentrated in a narrow north-south band centering in western North Carolina. It is also another labor-intensive industry and one which is just beginning to feel the impact of low-wage, foreign competition. Substantial foreign in-roads have occurred in the markets for low-priced furniture and furniture components, and imports now account for about 10 percent of total domestic sales. Prior to the recession of 1981-83, employment nationally was stagnant and larger producers were gaining market share.17 Hence, furniture dependent areas are likely to face stagnant or declining employment opportunities if they continue to rely on this traditional industry. Communities which rely upon smaller furniture companies as primary employers may face plant closings. Employees can be expected to face continued pressures in regard to wages and working conditions. 129 �Other Wood Products Another traditional source of employment in the region (about 200,000 workers region-wide) is actually expected to experience some employment growth: timber and wood-related products. Declining timber reserves in the Northwest and projected long-term world shortages are likely to increase the demand for timber from the Southeast, including Appalachia. Assuming sustained economic recovery, the ARC expects short-term employment growth of about 20,000 (compared to 1980) as early as 1987.18 Growth in timber cutting and processing (e.g. lumber and pulp) may provide some additional employment, but it will also raise other issues in areas where the industry expands: hillside erosion and attendant flooding problems, disputes over timber rights, worker safety (logging is one of the most dangerous occupations), road deterioration, unstable employment patterns, the continuing problems associated with outside land ownership, the appropriate taxation of large tracts of timber lands, and disputes over the use of federal forest land. The last period of largescale lumbering in the region brought with it massive problems which still linger, and the challenge is to avoid those problems this time around. Chemical and Related Products A significant concentration of chemical and related products plants providing over 100,000 jobs exist in Appalachian Tennessee and South Carolina. Although official projections for the chemical industry as a whole are for continued but slower growth,19 Appalachian plants tend to specialize in products destined for such industries as steel, textiles, and pulp and paper where demand is not expected to increase very much.20 In addition, the chemical industry may be faced with significant foreign competition which will have to be met by plant modernization. (Worldwide there is excess capacity in many sectors of the industry.)21 Such modernization would allow increased production but would not increase employment since chemical plants are highly automated and capital intensive. At the same time, locational factors work against the movement of the growing sectors of the industry into Appalachia.22 "Newer" Manufacturing Industries During the 1970's Appalachia did acquire a substantial number of new industrial jobs. These jobs frequently were in industries which were new to the region and represented branch plants of more traditionally Northern industries. Especially significant were plants for industrial electrical equipment, instruments, industrial machinery, consumer electronics, ap130 �pliances, and transportation equipment. Overall, these industries provide about 450,000 jobs region-wide (ARC definition).23 While less geographically concentrated than other, traditional industries, the greatest concentration of these plants is in the most southern part of the region -especially in a wide, low-density band west of Atlanta (which is now the most heavily industrialized area in the region).24 Nation-wide, industries such as machinery, electronics, and instruments are expected to grow and provide substantial increases in employment opportunities.25 However, to maintain its current share (7 percent) of this projected increase (of about 3 million new workers nationwide), Appalachia will have to continue to offer conditions which attracted these industries in the 1970's: wages below the national average, low rates of unionization, and a "congenial" business climate (e.g. low taxes). In addition, labor intensive sectors of even these industries (which were often the first "runaways" from the North to Appalachia) are likely to be attracted to overseas locations and much of the industry has a high potential for automation.28 Hence, particular plants and communities may be vulnerable to some employment loss, even if the region experiences a net gain. "High-Technology" Potential "Hi-Tech" industry (e.g. computers, aircrafts, drugs, scientific instruments) is the popular panacea for national economic problems. Actually the promise of high-tech is largely illusory both because the number of jobs which will be created will be very modest (about 1.5 million by 1990) and the kinds of jobs available in the industry are not what people think. Employment in the industry is sharply divided between small numbers of designers, technicians, and other professionals and a majority of relatively low-wage, low-skill assemblers. (About 60 percent of Silicon Valley's labor force is composed of low-wage production workers or clerical workers.)27 Pressures from foreign competition is already leading to the transfer of production operations overseas (e.g. Atari's plant closure in California). Hence, the potential number of jobs the region could attract in hitech is limited, and production workers would be in direct competition with Third World wage and working conditions. Headquarters operations are not likely to be attracted to a region which lacks amenities for "upscale" professionals and an established network of scientific centers.28 Military Production Clearly one of the growth industries of the decade has been military procurement. Military procurement has been a source of modest but 131 �significant employment in the region. Appalachia's role in the military production system has traditionally been concentrated in a few types of activities: production of non-weapons supplies by traditional industries (e.g. apparel), power production for nuclear processing by the TVA, and the production of nuclear and non-nuclear (e.g. gun powder and rocket propellants) ordinance on a limited number of government-owned, privately operated facilities. As a recent Highlander Center report demonstrates, while some jobs (usually low-wage) have been created and some communities are very dependent on those jobs, the region has paid a high price in terms of environmental abuse, union-busting by military contractors, violation of worker health and safety, tax avoidance by government facilities, and the like. Generally speaking, military production has consequently reinforced Appalachia's traditional role in the national economy rather than functioning as a "modernizing" force in the region. The "good" (high-pay, high-skill) jobs for weapons production have been located elsewhere.29 Hence, while military procurement activities may continue to provide employment opportunities and provide some modest additional employment, those localities in which such activities are located seem likely to be confronted with a host of problems which will offset those limited employment gains. Services Growth in the service sector was the most important source of employment gains in the nation and in Appalachia between 1970 and 1980. However, the regional growth did not parallel the national pattern in terms of the specific kinds of jobs created, the rate of increase in service jobs, or the resulting proportion of workers in the regional service sector by 1980. The type of jobs created region-wide (ARC definition) were concentrated (two-thirds of the total) in health services, retail trade, and educational services. Hence, two of the three major job categories which experienced rapid growth were in those service areas in which most jobs were both low-skill and low-pay. While that is true for most of the service sector, other areas in the service sector offer at least some additional employment in managerial and professional categories and major employment in clerical and related white collar categories (e.g. finance, marketing, wholesale trade, etc.). Related to this pattern was the fact that the gap in service levels (as measured by employment) between Appalachia and the rest of the country grew between 1970 and 1980 because service sector growth in Appalachia was below the national average. The end result is that Appalachia continues to have a much lower level of services, public and private, than the nation as a whole and relies much more on outside 132 �services -especially in the areas of finance, business, and technical services.30 That pattern seems likely to continue for a number of reasons. High quality business and professional services are oriented toward urban areas in general and corporate "headquarters cities" in particular. High service levels are also dependent on high average income levels and strong tax bases. Clearly, these are not conditions which exist in the region. Moreover, the major role of health services in the region is dependent upon federal policies and funding levels -both of which may change in the near future. Education is similarly vulnerable to funding cuts at the state level and the limitations imposed by local tax bases. Demographic changes almost assure limited growth or decline in educational employment. Hence, the disproportionate concentration of Appalachian service workers in retail trade seems likely to continue and will probable provide most of the projected growth in the service sector. Service sector growth is also likely to continue to be concentrated in the more urbanized counties of the region. SUMMARY It is hard not to be pessimistic about the economic prospects for most areas of the southern part of Appalachia. Traditional industries in the region are extremely vulnerable to the effects of national deindustrialization and foreign competition—in addition to a number of industry-specific problems. Some parts of the region are likely to continue to be dependent on resource extraction, with only modest prospects for employment growth and all the attendant problems associated with the coal and timber industries. There is some potential for growth in the newer industries which are concentrated in the southern-most part of the region, but overall manufacturing employment may decline, and pressures on wages and working conditions may intensify. Service sector growth will concentrate on a limited range of jobs which are disproportionately lowwage. IMPLICATIONS If this view of current economic trends and prospects is correct, it has some important implications for those who are seeking appropriate strategies for economic growth and "development" in the region. First, the diversity of problems and economic characteristics of the different subregions will require that any general strategy be flexible enough to be adapted to the specific needs of each particular area. No single, rigid and specific approach can work for all the different areas in 133 �the region. For example, communities facing the collapse of employment in apparel factories face significantly different problems from coal mining communities faced with stagnant average employment and rapid cyclical swings in employment. That is not to say that certain commonalities do not exist. They do. The issues of land ownership, exploitative labor relationships, weak public services, poor infrastructure, lower than average living standards, and the like are common threads which must run through any discussion of the region. On the other hand, the various subregions and different communities of the region will have to deal with very different specific problems and will have very different resources to deal with their problems. All of which suggests that developing strategies to create jobs and improve economic conditions at least must start at the subregional or local level. Second, regional diversity and the likely specific impacts of national trends on various subregions and industries provide additional reasons why the "economic development" or "modernization" model (i.e. the ARC approach of the 1970's) has such limited utility in the region. Simply trying to attract private investment (mostly in manufacturing) to "growth centers" or transportation corridors by building highways, training workers, subsidizing infrastructure, and planning industrial parks is a losing proposition. First, it oversimplifies the complex nature of the problems and needs of a diverse region—a problem which is not overcome by local planning commissions when those commissions are wedded to this general strategy. Second, and most fundamentally, such a strategy ignores national trends toward de-industrialization which: (a) limit the total potential for increases in industrial employment and (b)increasingly force Appalachian communities into competition with Third World countries in terms of wages, working conditions, and corporate subsidies. Appalachia is competing for a declining pool of jobs under conditions in which it can obtain additional manufacturing jobs only by attracting employers interested in docile, low-wage labor and a "friendly" regulatory and tax environment. Even the ARC staff seems to have finally acknowledged these problems and recent ARC projections are for a decline in total manufacturing employment in the region.31 That leaves those hoping to attract private investment in conventional ways essentially "whistling in the dark," hoping for growth in the service sector by pointing out that the region is currently "underserviced" and therefore has the "potential" for service sector growth. As we have seen, those hopes are probably not wellfounded. In short, trying to generate conventional investment in the region probably will not be enough in most areas. Third, if diversity precludes a single approach and attempts to attract corporation investments will not be enough, some alternative approach seems to be needed. At least some tentative directions in which such an approach might head can be suggested here. The need for subregional and 134 �often community-specific solutions implies the creation of organizations at those levels to plan and mobilize people and resources. The likely inadequacy of outside corporate investment to create enough of the right kinds of jobs implies seeking new kinds of economic activities, organized in new ways (e.g. local entrepeneurs, community organizations, etc.). For instance, to draw on the experiences of other places and other times, one recalls the very extensive producers' cooperative movement in the Midwest in the early part of this century and the much more recent development of large numbers of "mini-hydro" plants in New England (which have restored the abandoned mill ponds along the fall line). Movement in this direction is, ultimately, a political act and a political problem in that it involves such things as: generating community support for onconventional solutions, mobilizing community participation, getting cooperation or involvement from local or state government, and fighting the likely legal and political opposition of entrenched interests at all levels of government. It also will require regional cooperation in creating an organizational framework for such things as dealing with common problems (e.g. legal and legislative), sharing expertise, and obtaining and channeling outside assistance. To those who point the massive obstacles to such an effort and the past frustrations of such efforts there are several replies. First, there does not seem to be any alternative. Current economic trends are moving against the needs of the people of the region. While the traditional private sector will remain the dominant economic force and source of employment for the foreseeable future, it will not be enough by itself. Second, there are models, partial or flawed though they may be, of things that can and have been done within the context of the American system of political economy—especially in times of economic distress. Third, the beginnings of a cooperative framework and specific local organizations already exist and could provide a foundation on which to build.32 CONCLUSION Whatever the short-term effects of the current economic recovery may be, there are long-term structural changes occurring in the American economy which will have substantial and very often threatening impacts on the regional economy. The problems will vary substantially from community to community and industry to industry. However, it seems clear that waiting for outside corporate involvement to "solve" the problems of the region may entail a very long wait indeed. (Moreover, if the past is any guide, we would not like those "solutions" in any event.) Hence, communities and subregions in Appalachia need to begin to think in terms of how to tailor their resources to meet the particular problems they are likely to face. In doing so, they will have to rethink what constitutes ac135 �ceptable solutions to their problems and create new organizational structures to implement their new strategies. REFERENCES 'See Thomas R. Shannon, "Appalachia as an Enterprise Zone: Some Speculations on the Future of Federal Policy Toward the Region," Proceedings of the Appalachian Studies Conference: March, 1983 (Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1984). 2 "Appalachia: The Economic Outlook Through the Eighties," Appalachia, vol. 17, no. 2 (November-December, 1983), pp. 1-14. 'Shannon, op. cit. 4 "Appalachia: The Economic Outlook Through the Eighties," p. 1. 'William E. Hrezo and Thomas R. Shannon, Appalachian Atlas: A Portrait of the Southern Mountains (Radford University, 1984). '"Appalachia: The Economic Outlook Through the Eighties," p. 8. ''Ibid. U. S. Department of Commerce, 1983 U.S. Industrial Outlook (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Printing Office, 1983), p. 39-2; "Appalachia: The Economic Outlook Through the Eighties," p. 10. 8 1983 U. S. Industrial Outlook, p. 39-1. "Appalachia: The Economic Outlook Through the Eighties," p. 10. 10 "Ibid. "1983 U. S. Industrial Outlook, p. 39-2. "Ibid. p. 39-3. "Ibid, pp. 40-2-40-5. "Ibid, p. 40-4. ""Appalachia: The Economic Outlook Through the Eighties," p. 10. "7985 U. S. Industrial Outlook, pp. 42-8—42-9. ""Appalachia: The Economic Outlook Through the Eighties," p. 14. "1983 U. S. Industrial Outlook, pp. 9-1-9-15. 20 "Appalachia: The Economic Outlook Through the Eighties," pp. 11-12. 21 1983 U. S. Industrial Outlook, pp. 9-1—9-15 ""Appalachia: The Economic Outlook Through the Eighties," p. 12. "Ibid. "Hrezo and Shannon, op. cit. 2S "Appalachia: The Economic Outlook Through the Eighties," p. 12. "Ibid. ""Down in Silcon Valley," Multinational Monitor, vol. 14, no. 4 (April, 1983), p. 15. 136 �28 "Appalachia: The Economic Outlook Through the Eighties," p. 13. w Our Own Worst Enemy: The Impact of Military Production on the Upper South (New Market, Tenn.: Highlander Research Center, 1983). '""Appalachia: The Economic Outlook Through the Eighties," pp. 13-14 and 7. "Ibid. p. 4. S2 Steve Fisher and Jim Foster: "Models for Furthering Revolutionary Praxis," Appalachian Journal, 6 (Spring, 1979). 137 �This page intentionally left blank �Historical Perspectives on Energy, Industrialization and the Shaping of Appalachia by Ted Couillard Among the scholar-researchers the competent historian will be best able to discern those forces that have operated to produce the tragedy of Appalachia. This paper is an effort to point up my belief. From 1820 when the first "14 tons of coal" was mined America began its ascendancy among industrial nations. By 1850, only 10 million tons per year was produced. In 1890, 160 million tons was mined. In twenty years, from 1890-1910, however, the annual production of coal in the United States skyrocketed to 500 million tons per year.1 The growth of the American economy has been inseparably linked to the growth of the energy industry. That a cheap supply of energy could be guaranteed was an overriding concern of those who managed America's industrial affairs. These managers performed ably. Cheap coal was king until an even cheaper fuel, petroleum, replaced it just after World War II. Then began a period of almost thirty years when America showed the rest of the world what energy consumption levels in a high technology society could be. Suddenly in the winter of 1973-74 all Americans learned that if we were to continue our overprivileged ways we had to find a new source since we were wholly dependent upon a reliable supply of energy. Few, perhaps, have fully understood the indispensable role of energy in a modern industrial nation. For example, after the Civil War, the production of iron and steel for American industry required efficient fuels. Coal met this demand. It was abundant in America and such men as Henry Frick with his coke ovens in Connelsville, Pennsylvania, enabled Carnegie, the steel king, to meet the new demands for Bessemer steel for railroad building, or the enormous demands for structural steel. Generating of electricity was an essential step to industrialization also. Today our need for electricity is so great that coal is being replaced by 139 �nuclear plants for electrical production. Edison began producing electricity in the first electric generating plant in New York City in 1882. America was to be lighted by electric lights rather than the older kerosene lamps and gaslight from this time on. Electricity was cheap, convenient and efficient. After a supply of electricity was available, electric motors could revolutionize automation in almost all spheres of human activity. Today, the three fossil fuels, petroleum, coal, and natural gas supply about 95% of our energy needs. Hydropower accounts for a mere 4% and nuclear energy supplies less than 1% at this time. This picture will change by the year 2000 when 26% of the total energy needs will come from the fledgling nuclear industry. Percentages do not mean much when one considers that the rate of consumption of energy of all kinds will continue to skyrocket as we pass from decade to decade. Coal's demand to generate electricity will be greater than it has been in the past and the nuclear demands will be truly astronomical. In recent history Appalachia's character has been molded because of the production of coal from the region. No other single factor, or factors, has comparable impact upon the people and their present day culture. In Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson expressed his hope that America would remain a virtuous agrarian society. He advised that manufacturing should be avoided by Americans and that we should buy our goods from Europe. In European nations he told us Manufacture must therefore be resorted to of necessity not of choice, to support the surplus of their people. But we have an immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman . . . Those who labor in the earth are the chosen of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he had made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue . . . generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption . . . for the general operations of manufacture, let our workshops remain in Europe . . . The loss will be made up in happiness and permanence of government.2 In his own time, Thomas Jefferson was criticized for this view, but today that such a view could be held by an American of such intellectual stature is incredible. Jefferson's hope for an agrarian society was far afield. The U. S. is an industrial nation today surpassing all others. The poet, Walt Whitman, did not lament the fact that America's course was clear even before those giant strides toward industrialization had been taken. Whitman, like Jefferson, shared the view that the humble, virtuous man would comprise the polity and that all would be well. 140 �The story of Appalachia is the story of coal and industrialization. Many people—perhaps tens of millions over the past 100 years—are involved. Today the economic picture for Appalachia continues to be very gloomy. Coal rich West Virginia leads the nation in unemployment, while the ten poorest counties in Kentucky persist in unrelieved economic depression. If one disregards Reagonomics which has produced the current depression, and examines the relative national economic prosperity of about a decade ago, the pattern of economic life in Appalachia can be discerned. The per capita income of central Appalachians as late as 1970 was $2,306. The reality of what this means does not easily come home to us. The per capita income of nearly twenty million people in Appalachia is sharply less than for Americans elsewhere plunging large numbers well below the poverty line. Many impoverished Appalachians die from inadequate medical attention in the most remote and poorest areas. Hunger, disease, poverty, and illiteracy are never pleasant for anyone to contemplate for very long. America's need for coal has produced Appalachia. This story really begins somewhere around 1880 although coal mining was accelerating even earlier especially in Pennsylvania. Today America still needs coal. Into the foreseeable future this need will continue3, but changes have occurred that alter significantly the conditions of the past. Automation in the mines and technological advances in strip mining have reversed the need for a large work force to produce coal.4 Industrial America has needed coal to fuel factories which enabled people to have jobs. Thus the coal was centrally important to a healthy economy for the nation, and the economy of the nation, in turn, had to be an overriding concern of government. Moreover, government's responsibility has always been to insure that the military strength of America be sufficient for the nation's defense. Military strength depends upon the industrial efficiency of America. The simple law in economics that explains what happened to the Appalachians is the law of supply and demand. Everyone knows that the price of anything to be bartered, including human labor, depends upon how dearly it is wanted. If the supply of any commodity is greater than the demand, the price falls. If the demand is greater than the supply, the price rises. Such knowledge is dangerous in the hands of the wrong people. In a democratic society, when something is done to control the laws of supply and demand, extremely favorable results can accrue. This is, of course, wrong. Many would argue that government was less than vigilant about the rapidly developing energy industry in this country. The cheap supply of coal was needed for the new industries that were expanding so rapidly just before and just after the turn of the century. If the cost of this all important fuel for steel production, fuel for the factories, the railroads, the steamships and for the generation of electricity, was to rise, the 141 �reverberations throughout the whole economy could be disastrous. Millions of industrial workers were involved, and efficient regulation of industrial production depended upon a predictable, reliable, and continuous supply of cheap energy. The highly monopolistic coal industry was certainly able to deliver on this score. There was plenty of much needed bituminous coal in Central Appalachia. There was also a large native population there from which to recruit the needed miners. The energy industry was able to produce and deliver cheap coal only because it was able to control the laws of supply and demand of labor needed for coal production. Such choices—the tampering with these laws—are, however, not so easy for right-thinking people and government to condone. A monopolistic cartel such as that presided over by J. Pierpont Morgan and the railroad magnates under his control had enormous capital with which to achieve its objectives. It not only had this great economic power to make things happen, but it was also able to control large numbers of people who were part of its organization who also added to this enormous power to make things happen. The capital was supplied by Morgan and other financiers under his control. The government was interested in industrial expansion, a healthy economy, and an efficient fuel industry. Through manipulation of supply and demand laws as they regulate the barter of labor, the energy industry was able to guarantee that the workers would not rebel. Indeed they could not rebel. It appears that a slavery was imposed upon Appalachian miners that exceeded any contentions about demeaning slavery that the white masters of the antebellum south were supposed to have imposed upon the negroes for well over 100 years. To begin with, mining coal is probably one of the least desirable jobs that a human can have. Jefferson did not approve of the much better jobs that could be had in factories. What, for Virginians, would Jefferson's view be of the dangerous job of mining coal? Great risk of injury, and loss of life, accompanies the miner's job. In short, history proves that mining coal is just about the least desirable work a man can perform. This means that not many will willingly do it. And since not many will do it, theoretically the price of labor in coal mining should be expensive. If the labor costs go up, the higher price of coal production means higher prices to the factories and industries that use it. If the factories must pay more for coal, the products produced cost far more when they are marketed. With some items, it is not of national concern, but in the steel industry for example, it is extremely unfavorable to the American economy when rolled steel can be produced in Japan far less expensively than in the United States. Industry must compete. It is clear that coal production must be kept inexpensive. On this score—cheap production of coal—the energy industry has a remarkable record. They delivered coal in such abundance and so cheaply that American industry was never in doubt about the continued supp142 �ly. They were able to do this because they attended to the necessary planning that had to be done. Here the story of Appalachia becomes quite disturbing. It was necessary for the cartel to control a whole region. It was necessary to control the population of the whole region. Ten million people or more; Impossible! you say. Not at all. Proceeding with a clear knowledge of the law of supply and demand, the energy industry was able to manipulate the supply of labor to insure that there would always be a greater supply of labor than was actually needed. This, of course, required careful planning. It must be remembered, too, that the energy industry in 1910 was a cartel that had the power, both economic and political, to accomplish what it was about. No branch of government, no church, no labor union, no normal political group or faction, could accomplish what this cartel was able to accomplish. It is the nature of a cartel to build an organization involving a large number of people who depend upon their association with the cartel. They, too, are part of the cartel, but not as policy makers nor significant democratic voices to exercise influence in any way. The first concern was to build the organization of dependent workers. When this was accomplished, the power of the cartel was greatly enhanced. Very tight control of the coal miners in Appalachia was easily achieved.5 The company housing, the company stores, the closely supervised communities of workers was all part of the organization building of the cartel. A labor union also organizes large numbers of people and wields great power, but its objectives are entirely different, and the democratic dialogue attending labor union activity distinguishes it from the industrial cartel immediately. Such was the power and tight organization of the energy industry cartel in Appalachia as early as the eve of W.W.I. After building the cartel organization, the surrounding region had to be controlled if the cartel was to protect its existence. Careful planning prevented competing industry from luring members of the cartel organization to other jobs which would gain for the workers independence from the cartel. It is true that a worker and his family was free to return (if he could pay his bill to the company store and surely some of them could) to the hollow where he was born. But what could he do there? Perhaps he could fish or hunt squirrels. And no doubt many workers chose to return to their beloved mountains after a stint in the mining camps. Eventually, however, the mountaineer had to come back to his senses and agree to employment with the energy people, if he wished to enjoy industrial society's commodities. How could the mountaineer ever hope to buy an automobile to ride in, or a radio to tune into, that would bring him that wonderful music broadcast all the way from Wheeling, West Virginia, if he did not have a job? The radio station flooding with lovely music the moon-blanched mountains on any given night in North Carolina or Tennessee appealed powerfully to the mountaineer and worked magically calling the mountaineer back to his senses 143 �and to the mines. Clearly the cartel, even if it didn't own the station could exert its will. The power of a cartel is both economic and political. Its influence in the social sphere is, therefore, enormous. I have argued that after the turn of the century the existence of an energy cartel in this country that was bigger than government itself is something that a few reasonable men will doubt. Matthew Josephson is convincing about who owned the coal fields and how they acquired them. He writes: In the great Pennsylvania coal fields those resplendent magnates, the Vanderbilts, J. Pierpont Morgan and Cassatt of the Pennsylvania Railroad had after a process of "squeezing" smaller capitalists added most of the anthracite mines to their railroad domains.6 The real power was in the hands of a single man, J. Pierpont Morgan. "The hard-coal mines were nearly all indirectly owned by eastern railroads over whom Morgan held influence or a decisive voice ...'"' The much richer prize than Pennsylvania's coal was the Central Appalachian coalfields. When General Imboden bought so much of West Virginia for the "gentlemen of means" it was Morgan's empire again that controlled the Baltimore and Ohio roads. Similarly in the soft-coal regions, the Hocking Valley Railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio and Chesapeake and Ohio were soon swept into the unified control of the unified system which held through the "purchase or interchange of stock," at once the coal mines, the roads that carried their coal to market and the banks which financed them all.8 The best American historians will examine Appalachia carefully when the best 20th century American history is written. The story of coal, the energy cartel and American industrialization will be the dominant concerns of these scholars when they attempt to tell the story of modern America. NOTES 'Richard C. Dorf, Energy Resources and Policy, (Menlo Park, 1978) p. 90. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Edited with an introduction by William Peden (Chapel Hill, 1955), pp. 164-5. 'Donald Whitehead reported to Congress that 600 million tons of coal are expected to be produced in Appalachia by the year 1985. Richard C. Dorf says U. S. coal production will top 1,000 million tons by 1985. See Richard C. Dorf, Energy Resources, and Policy (Menlo Park, 1978). p. 91. 144 �4 In 1932 there were 705,000 miners in Appalachia. In 1940 there were 439,000. The number has continued to decrease. See Helen Lewis "Fatalism or the Coal Industry?," in Appalachia: Social Context, p. 157. The dependency of large numbers of workers and their families upon the cartel was carefully planned and accomplished. Again the debt to Henry Prick is clear. Samuel Gompers complained the miners' children were "brought into the world by the company doctor, lived in a company house or hut, were nurtured by the company store ... laid away in a company graveyard." Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons, (New York, 1934) p. 373. "Matthew Josephson, Robber Barons ... p. 373. 'Josephson, Robber Barons . . . p. 373. •Josephson, Robber Barons . . . p. 413. 145 �This page intentionally left blank �NORTH GEORGIA MUSIC Folk Visions and Voices Art Rosenbaum; University of Georgia North Georgia Musicians and Groups in the 1920s and 1930s Gene Wiggins; N. Georgia College; Dahlonega, GA Eller Brothers and Ross Brown: Workshop/Performance Convenor: Zell Miller; Lieutenant Governor of Georgia North Georgia Musicians and Groups in the 1920s and 1930s by Gene Wiggins COMMERCIALLY RECORDED GEORGIA FOLK MUSICIANS OF THE 1920's There is a special interest for the folklorist and social historian in the commercial recordings made by folk musicians in the 1920's. It is our first chance to either hear or see all the sorts of things rural southerners had been singing to each other. Folklorists had collected from the folk only a certain sort of thing. Toward the rest of what their informants were singing and playing, the folklorists sometimes had been hostile. Sometimes they had been just busy and forced to specialize. They did a good job. They did what most needed to be done. But now we have a broader definition of folk music, along with an interest in biography of folk musicians, in musical styles, and in total repertoire. The oldest material serving these interests was recorded in Atlanta beginning in 1923. Fiddlin' John Carson, who had put rural music on Atlanta radio in 1922, was recorded in 1923 at the suggestion of Atlanta record man Polk Brockman. Brockman had no personal liking for Carson or for his music. He wanted Carson recorded because he knew many people did like him. This 1923 recording in Atlanta was almost the first commercial recording made anywhere in the South. It was the first issued and successful recording of what came to be called country music, though we should remember that country music means one thing when we are talking historically and another thing when we are trying to distinguish types of music prevailing today. For a few years the recording of this type of music—or these types of music, for there was considerable variety—was mainly in the hands of northern, urban people who understood the music so little that they left nearly everything to the performers. For a few years there was no hard search for new performers. The companies either had the 147 �performers go to New York or recorded them in Atlanta. A large fraction of the people recorded in those early years lived in or near Atlanta, had known each other before recording, and continued to play shows together. At the first Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame awards in 1982 Clyde Carson, Fiddlin' John's son and driver, stated, "Most of the people you have heard about tonight I have hauled in a 1914 T-Model." There was a local quality about much of the music, though people who knew each other well sometimes recorded widely different versions of the same song. There was also an amateur quality. Many performers had been professionals of a sort, but pass-the-hat standards had not been high. It was a sort of music many people could approximate. It didn't have to be rehearsed to any fine point. There exists an issued record by Fiddlin' John's band in which John's fiddle switches from "Peter Went A-Fishin' " to "Little More Sugar in the Coffee." One of the band does not notice and continues to sing "Peter Went A-Fishing." Radio and records produced a rapid change in this sort of music. It soon lost its local, spontaneous, amateur quality. It was corrupted or improved, depending on your point of view, by hardcore professionalism. The depression almost suspended the making of country records except those by such prime non-Georgia favorites as Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter family. In 1934 when things were looking a little better there were sessions by Georgia's Fiddlin' John Carson and Georgia's Skillet Lickers. The records made at these were not all flops. In fact the Skillet Licker pairing of "Down Yonder" and "Back Up and Push" was a considerable hit. Still, it was clear in 1934 that the heyday of the real old timers in the recording business was over. Let us have a little closer look at these musicians, beginning with the first recorded, John Carson. Carson is usually said to have been born in Fannin County in 1868. However, there is some reason to think he may not have been quite that old and may have been born in Cobb County. Fannin County was the famous mountain county. A fictional and journalistic notion of the old mountain fiddler had developed in the nineteenth century, and when we first see newspaper publicity about Carson in 1913, he is already pretending to be a little more of a hick than he really was— at least by pretending to be a visitor from Blue Ridge, Fannin County, when he had lived in Atlanta since 1900. Country music had its ballyhoo years before it had any recordings, and Carson was something of a professional from the time he was a boy. He played and passed the hat, and he was hired to work political campaigns. Two of his nineteenth century political patrons were Bob Taylor of Tennessee and Tom Watson of Georgia. Carson moved to Atlanta in 1900 to work in the cotton mills. Three events of 1913 turned him away from cotton-mill work and made him more of a professional musician. One was the beginning of a wellpublicized series of fiddlers contests in Atlanta. He got a lot of publicity 148 �in the reporting of these, and became better known. Second was a textile strike which caused him to quit his job in the mill. Third was the murder of Mary Phagan. Carson composed songs about Mary—apparently four of them eventually, though only three have survived—and peddled song sheets. He had become well-known in Atlanta and was doing shows in other towns when Polk Brockman, in 1923, decided to see how he would sell on records. His records sold quite well for a number of years. On the first sessions he fiddled and sang alone. Then he added a band—the Virginia Reelers—which included his daughter Rosa Lee, who was given the name Moonshine Kate. Carson recorded some 123 distinct pieces plus a good deal of redoing of things he had already done, sometimes with important changes, sometimes not. I classify 42% of his output as pretwentieth century folk material. The oldest specimen we have of several songs now well-known is on the recordings of John Carson. The first time Carson recorded with a band he employed a little banjoist named Land Norris, who went on to record on his own several songs with banjo accompaniment. Norris was born in Gilmer County in 1877 and was a fur trader. He wandered through the mountains buying furs, and he learned a lot of comic songs from the people he traded with. He was notable for changing the name of nearly everything he recorded. For instance "Cripple Creek" became "Red Creek" and "Sourwood Mountain" became "Dogwood Mountain." A notable theme in Norris' recordings is satire on the clergy. Preachers were apt to regard banjo pickers as sinful, and banjo pickers were apt to frame anti-clerical stanzas in retaliation. There were two Earl Johnsons in Fiddlin' John's early retinue— Freckled-faced Earl, a comedian and one-string fiddler, and Fiddlin' Earl, a four-string fiddler. Fiddlin' Earl, born in 1886, was a Gwinnett County piano tuner who could read music and allegedly could play citified stuff. He continued to be heard on some of Carson's sessions, but he also formed his own band, which is named on some records Earl Johnson's Entertainers and on others Earl Johnson's Clodhoppers. The later name is more typical. Most of the old Georgia bands sought ultra-bucolic names. In addition to Earl Johnson and his Clodhoppers we had Arthur Tanner and his Corn Shuckers, Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers, Fate Norris and his Plow Boys, Lowe Stokes and his Swamp Rooters, etc. Johnson recorded about 60 sides, singing on many and on others playing the wildest and fastest fiddle of the time. Fiddlin' John Carson was not the oldest of the rural Georgia musicians we can hear on the old records. His friend Rob Stanley, born in 1858, was at least a decade older. It was Uncle Rob Stanley who encouraged the more famous Gid Tanner to move to the Lawrenceville-Dacula area. Rob's daughter Roba was only 14 when she, her father and a Bill Patterson cut a record in 1924, Rob singing "Nellie Gray" on one side and he and Roba singing "Whoa Mule" on the other. Roba recorded other records 149 �with her father and Patterson, as well as with a Virginian named Henry Whitter, who had recorded before Fiddlin' John but did not have his records issued until after the success of John's. Roba, who is still living, was found by Charles Wolfe and me in 1977 and has received some notice under the epithet "First Sweetheart of Country Music." A couple of her songs do have the coquettish derision of males we sometimes associate with hillbilly gals, but several of her songs have a male persona. In one case he seems to be a moonshiner and in another a black chicken thief. However, in 1924 there was no competition for the title "Sweetheart of Country Music," and one didn't have to sound very seductive. A little over a year after her first recording, Roba married, moved to Florida, and gave up music. Andy Jenkins was born a little south of Atlanta in 1885. From the age of three weeks he was blind. By 1918 he was preaching in Atlanta and selling newspapers on the streets. In 1922, he and his second wife and his stepdaughters were doing programs on WSB. Later, in addition to the family recording as the Jenkins Family, Jenkins recorded solo as Blind Andy and Gooby Jenkins. As far as any modern taste for his singing is concerned, Jenkins comes in behind even Land Norris, who does have one number on reissue longplay. As far as I know, Jenkins has none; but he was a phenomenal songwriter. Some of his songs, thought to be mountain or western folksongs actually were composed on the busiest streets of Atlanta. Like Wordsworth, Andy composed aloud and he liked to be where there was a lot of street noise so people wouldn't think he was crazy. Some of his songs were great hits as recorded by other people. The best known probably are "Death of Floyd Collins," "Billy the Kid," and "God Put a Rainbow in the Cloud." The Cofer Brothers, Leon and Paul, born in 1899 and 1901, also recorded with a Ben Evans as The Georgia Crackers. They sounded more black than Appalachian. Once some old-time music buffs conjectured that they were black, but I eventually found their younger brother and sister and found that they came from a relatively cultured white family. Their father was a Methodist minister and song writer, P. A. Cofer, who published a pair of books of religious songs. All the Gofers were trained in sacred music, but Rev. Cofer also employed blacks on his farm and at his three sawmills. It was the songs and the style of their black friends that Leon and Paul drew on most when they recorded. The formative years of the Cofer brothers were spent in middle Georgia, many of Leon's early years at the Macon academy for the blind. However, they wefe born in North Georgia and had moved to Atlanta by 1923.1 think there is a discernable Appalachian element in their music. The Skillet Lickers get considerable attention in Art Rosenbaum's last book, because they were a big influence and because the book deals directly with Gordon Tanner, lead fiddler of the 1934 session and son of 150 �the most famous Skillet Licker, Gid Tanner. Gordon and his son Phil continued Skillet Licker music until Gordon's death in 1982. Phil and his son continue it yet. James Gideon Tanner, generally known as Gid, was born near Monroe in 1885. At Uncle Rob Stanley's instigation, he later moved to Dacula. He became well-known as a fiddler and comic singer at the fiddlers' conventions in Atlanta before World War I, and when the ground was too wet for farming he would go to Atlanta and play on the streets, accompanied by Gordon when Gordon was very young. When the Okeh record company scored a hit with John Carson, the Columbia record company naturally sought the services of the other of the two fiddlers best known in Atlanta. Gid agreed to go to New York and record if he could take with him a blind singer and guitarist named Riley Puckett. Puckett was a decade younger than Tanner, and the initial duo was augmented later by still younger men—Clayton McMichen, Lowe Stokes, and Bert Layne. It was given the name Skillet Lickers. There are at least six places in Georgia officially or unofficially named Lickskillet. In the old days people didn't talk about living in depressed areas or being disadvantaged. They talked about licking skillets. There had been a Lickskillet Band at the fiddlers' conventions years before. With the possible exception of the band of North Carolinian Charlie Poole, the Skillet Lickers are the 1920's band most listened to today. There is one reissue longplay of John Carson, one of Earl Johnson, one the the Georgia Yellow Hammers, but at least six of the Skillet Lickers, as well as three of Riley Puckett, who remained their star singer as well as cutting many records apart from the Skillet Lickers. With the Georgia Yellow Hammers, of Calhoun, as with the Skillet Lickers, two older men recorded first and then the band was enlarged with younger fellows. The old timers were Bud Landress and Bill Chitwood and the major additions were Phil Reeve and Ernest Moody. All the Yellow Hammers had been involved in religious singing convention music as well as instrumental music. Actually they were a good vocal quartet that could play instruments adequately, and they had two talented song writersBud Landress, who wrote "Picture on the Wall"—done in recent times by Ross Brown and the Eller Brothers—and Ernest Moody, who wrote "Kneel at the Cross"—done in recent times by Lester Maddox. Moody lived until 1977. When I interviewed him, I found him to be a well-read ex-school teacher who had what I think of as the pre-1950's-school-marm conception of folk music. According to that conception folk music is found only way back in the mountains, it has definite British elements, its pretty and sweet, and it isn't played for money. He was too nice to say so, but it was evident he thought I had goofed in regarding him as having been a purveyor of folk music. I don't know to what extent I changed his thinking as to the value of what the Yellow Hammers had done, but shortly before he died his daughter wrote me that she had caught him 151 �singing, Oh the bell cow—grab her by the tail; Oh the bell cow—milk her in the pail. Only people close to my age know how much anti-hillbillyism once existed. In the thirties and forties people almost had me thinking that the people I have been talking about were not so precious as they seemed to me. Their music is not as smooth as the music you hear in the dentist's office, but if it ever really gets in one ear it won't go out the other. If you haven't yet tried it, do so. 152 �HISTORICAL DIVERSITY IN APPALACHIAN COMMUNITIES Diversity in Ante-Bellum Mountain Life: The Towns of Western North Carolina John Inscoe; Univ. of North Carolina; Chapel Hill, NC The Vinland Settlement Roy G. Lillard; Cleveland State Community College; Cleveland, TN Demography of Western North Carolina Blacks Wilburn Hayden; Western Carolina University; Cullowhee, NC "Ripshin" Roberta Roy; East Tenn. State Univ.; Johnson City, TN Convenor: Ed Cabbel; John Henry Memorial Foundation; Princeton, WV Diversity in Antebellum Mountain Life: The Towns of Western North Carolina by John C. Inscoe* In the first issue of Mountain Life and Work in 1925, the journal's co-founder, Olive Dame Campbell, wrote, "There is no fundamental reason for separating mountain people from lowland people, nor are mountain problems so different from those of other rural areas in the United States."1 This was an extraordinary statement, particularly at a time when social consciousness of the poverty, ignorance, and isolation of the people of the Southern Appalachians was at its peak. In the midst of the stereotypes of backward mountaineers that were rapidly establishing themselves in American minds, such a perspective was refreshing, though its accuracy to mountain life in the early twentieth century is debatable. But when applied to the same area in an earlier era, the decades just before the Civil War, the statement takes on new significance and becomes a far more applicable assessment of mountain society at that time. Historians have only slowly and reluctantly come to recognize the fact that antebellum society in the Southern Appalachians had much in common with that of the rest of the South.2 By the 1840s and 1850s, as advances in trade and transportation elsewhere in the South accelerated, the topographical disadvantages of the highlands and the delays in getting railroads and other internal improvements into their region had begun to be recognized by some mountain residents as possible hindrances to their full participation in the economic development around them. At the same time, settlers were beginning to push back into the more secluded 153 �coves and hollows that would sooner or later cut off much of their contact with the outer world. But to most, these trends were seen as little more than temporary setbacks which, as in other frontier situations, would soon give way to the inevitable march of progress. They did not view themselves as part of a separate region with special problems which should set them apart from the rest of the South. Any distinctions in their geographic or demographic situation were seen as minor aberrations which would soon be overcome and allow their eventual integration into the broader economic network around them. Southern Appalachia was of course a predominantly rural area, even more so than the antebellum South as a whole. It was populated largely by small farmers and its economy was based on a system of diversified and primarily subsistence agriculture. But to leave such a description of antebellum mountain life at that, as is so often done, is to overlook what was, by the mid-nineteenth century, a far more varied, complex, and vigorous society. Nowhere was this more true than for the western counties of North Carolina, and nowhere was it reflected more than in the development of the towns and villages there. Though often overlooked by those seeking to characterize the Southern Appalachian experience, it was those communities that formed the vital centers of mountain society and, as such, they exerted an influence on the social and economic character of the region far greater than their size alone would have warranted. This paper is an attempt to demonstrate the significance of these nonrural factors on an essentially rural society by examining the origins, functions, and influence of its towns on the mountain region of North Carolina in the years before the Civil War. Whether they developed as county seats, as commercial centers, or as tourist resorts, they generated much of the area's progress, diversity, and entrepreneurial spirit. These characteristics not only gave them much in common with their counterparts throughout the South, and thus make Mrs. Campbell's observation so apt, but they also served as a link to communities elsewhere. Thus, though many remained quite small and crude, even by the standards of the rural South, these mountain towns became their region's strongest force against any tendencies toward isolation or alienation from the outside world. Very few mountaineers were so secluded that they did not have access to, or make use of, some such community. There seems to have been no pressing need for towns or the services they offered among the earliest settlers in western North Carolina. Their primary goals were simply to acquire land and make it as productive as possible. In most parts of the region, it was only the formation of new counties and the need for a seat for their newly organized local governments that led to any efforts at establishing a concentrated non-rural community. Morganton, the earliest town in the western part of the state, 154 �was established only when the legislative act creating Burke County in 1777 also stipulated that a commission fix the location for a courthouse, a prison, and stocks. Even then, it was seven years later, when the creation of the Morgan Judicial District gave some urgency for the need for a courthouse, that a site was selected and a town plan drawn up.3 Between 1835 and 1860, nine new western counties were created. Despite the fact that several had had substantial and well-established populations for several decades, they often had no community or commerical center to designate as a county seat. Thus Marion in McDowell County, Webster in Jackson County, Sparta in Allegheny, Waynesville in Haywood, and Wilkesboro in Wilkes were all established in locations chosen strictly for their accessibility and topographic suitability and their central location within the new county boundaries.4 In other instances, the presence of a store or trading post was the determining factor in the selection of a site. James Harper had operated a large store, tannery, blacksmith shop and harness shop for a full decade before the site of his enterprises was chosen for Lenoir, the county seat of newly-formed Caldwell County in 1841.6 Likewise, Jordan Councill's mercantile operation became such a focal point for trade and communication in his area that it, with the new name of Boone, was designated as Watauga County's seat in 1850.6 Cherokee County was created from Indian territory soon after the 1838 removal of the tribe, and its county seat, Huntersville (later called Murphy), was established on the site of an earlier trading post from which Colonel Archibald Hunter had maintained a brisk business with the Indians.7 Macon County too was part of former Indian territory and its county seat, Franklin, grew from the foundations of what had once been a sacred Cherokee village.8 The potential economic and political significance of these seats of local government were fully recognized by county residents, and bitter disputes sometimes broke out between communities or sections of a county as to which would reap those benefits. In several cases, the more obvious choices were passed over in favor of smaller communities or even relatively unsettled locations as the result of hard-fought contests between rival factions. Buncombe Courthouse, later called Morristown and finally Asheville, was built on a plateau where a wagon road forded "the big branch between the Indian graves." Such an obscure locale was a compromise choice between the county's most concentrated settlements at Reems Creek and Swannanoa, though even that so-called mid-point was considered a victory for the northern section of Buncombe and a loss for those to the south, whose selection committee refused to sign the final report.9 The location of Yancey County's seat was a source of rivalry between two individuals. In 1833, Thomas Ray and John Bailey, both among the area's earliest settlers and most prominent citizens, sought to establish the town near their own homes by offering the county generous allotments 155 �of their own land for that purpose. The decision seems to have been based merely on the size of the donations, as Ray's fifty-acre offer on the Cane River was passed over in favor of Bailey's hundred-acre gift on the Toe River, where the town of Burnsville soon emerged.10 With Madison County's formation in 1851, the small but lively village of Jewell Hill, the site of the area's militia muster and court sessions, was assumed to be the logical choice for county seat except by the few, but influential, citizens of Lapland, a smaller settlement farther up the French Broad River. Zebulon Vance, who had grown up there, donated fifty acres for the new town, and was so confident that his action would settle the matter that he wrote his fiancee, Harriett Espy: "You may expect to see, next time you pass this place, a flourishing and romantic little village."11 His influence, along with that of his uncle Adolphus E. Baird, who had long operated a tavern and inn there, and Samuel Chunn, whose stockstand was equally well established, finally won the day for the Lapland site in 1855, though by only a single vote of the selection committee.12 Its name was promptly changed to Marshall, but it was still another four years before the court began to meet there instead of at Jewell Hill. The most heated contest was that in Henderson County. After it was created in 1838, a three year controversy raged over the location of its county seat of Hendersonville, whose name at least had already been determined. Advocates for a site on the French Broad River were opposed by those favoring one along the Buncombe Turnpike. "River" and "Road" factions, as they came to be called, remained so adamant that it took three appeals to the state Supreme Court and a referendum election throwing the decision to the county's voters before the "road" location was finally agreed upon.13 In this, as in other disputes, commercial interests were at least as decisive as political factors in the choices made. Both the French Broad and the turnpike offered potential for substantial trade between North Carolina's mountains and South Carolina and Georgia. The final decision was based largely on the judgment of county residents that the latter held the greater promise as a trade route and was thus the one they wanted their new seat of local government most accessible to. Not all mountain towns owed their origins to demands for commercial centers or county government bases. Tourism contributed to the early growth of several communities. Natural mineral springs and their reputed healing powers began attracting visitors to western North Carolina early in the nineteenth century. These sites, along with others whose attraction lay merely in their cool climates, healthy air, and mountain scenery, often began with hotels, inns, or seasonal private residences that formed the cores of what grew into fully operational and multifunctional towns and villages. Though many of western North Carolina's most successful and well-known resorts did not emerge until late in the nineteenth century, Warm Springs in Madison County, Flat Rock in 156 �Henderson County, and White Sulphur Springs and others in Haywood County were all fully established and thriving by the 1830s and 1840s.14 Once established, all of these mountain communities attracted enterprising men of various training and background whose skills and services did much to move most parts of the region beyond the frontier stage of development and added diversification and complexity to an otherwise agricultural economy and farming populace. The governmental function of the county seats, along with the judicial function of their county and circuit courts made lawyers, judges, clerks, and other office holders prominent among their earliest residents and most frequent visitors. Merchants, artisans, tavern and inn keepers, and land speculators recognized the business opportunities offered by these newly emerging towns, and their early moves to them often enabled them to engage in several types of commercial ventures simultaneously with profitable results.15 These professional and business men were among the few mountain residents with enough capital to acquire slaves, so that the region's largest slaveholders were, more often than not, town rather than rural residents. Many put their black property to work in their stores, hotels, or "factories" so that much of the black labor force in the western part of the state was concentrated in its towns and villages rather than scattered on its farms. This, along with the influx of slaves brought along by slaveholding tourists, led a British visitor to Asheville in 1842 to express dismay at the large proportion of black residents there. Though his estimate is somewhat exaggerated, he wrote that the town had "a population of 200 persons, of whom not more than 120 are whites."16 Churches, and soon after schools, became integral parts of most mountain communities. Many of them, particularly in the smaller villages, relied on circuit ministers and teachers who provided local residents with regular and influential contacts with the outside world and served to bind them more closely to other mountain towns as well. The larger and more prosperous communities were able to support at least one, and often several, ministers and teachers. As permanent residents, they added to the diversity of the population and encouraged more widespread social contacts by drawing into town residents from surrounding areas and giving them a sense of community participation and belonging. Both schools and churches, which often shared a single building, not only provided a social center for community life but served as a focal point for local civic pride. In 1855 a woman in Macon County's Oak Hill Community described the festivities surrounding the opening of a new school there. "There seems to be quite a spirit of improvement astir among the good people in our quiet little village," she wrote. "We are making roads, building bridges, rearing dwelling houses and churches at a rate that would astonish you."17 Her enthusiasm reflected a spirit that was typical of many late antebellum mountain towns and villages, whose citizens actively promoted the develop157 �ment of their communities and were optimistic about their future progress. But despite similarities in their origins and certain integral features shared by all these communities, variables in their geographic locations, their dates of origin, their rates of development, their appeal to outsiders, and the abilities and ambitions of their citizens led to sharp contrasts in the character of western North Carolina's towns during the antebellum period. The older, more established towns, such as Asheville and Morganton, and to a lesser degree Lenoir and Wilkesboro, developed a thriving commerce, which along with their functions as county seats, gave them as diverse and as affluent a populace and economy as any small town in the antebellum South. The latter three, situated in broad fertile valleys on the east side of the Blue Ridge, served the market needs of western farmers by providing an accessible outlet to the piedmont. At the same time, they served as gateways for traffic moving up into the mountains from the rest of the state. The mere appearance of these towns reflected their relative prosperity and earlier roots. Of Morganton, "the oldest village in the mountain district," one visitor noted "its pleasing avenues and inviting residences," and concluded that "from a society point of view, the town sustains its ancient reputation for polish and cleverness."18 Asheville though had already established its preeminence as the social and commercial center for the western part of the state. In 1795, soon after the selection of Bumcombe Courthouse's site, two enterprising brothers, Bedent and Zebulon Baird, recognized its profitable real estate potential and bought all of the designated land. After donating a central lot as the site of the courthouse, they laid out streets and lots which they sold to families and businesses as they moved into the area. From this promising start, the town prospered and grew, thanks to its scenic and accessible location at the intersection of the wide valleys of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers which made it a natural crossroads for most trade and travel west of the Blue Ridge. By the late antebellum period, its residents included many of the region's most able and ambitious citizens and it consisted of over twenty stores or businesses, a courthouse, a jail, three churches, three large hotels, several schools and a female college. In 1856, British journalist Charles Lanman described it as "a very busy and pleasant village, filled with intelligent and hospitable inhabitants, and is the center of a mountain land where Nature has been extremely liberal and tasteful in piling up her mighty bulwarks for the admiration of man."19 Due to the scenic settings and cool, pure air of Asheville and other mountain communities, summer tourism played a major role in their economic and social vitality. In 1827, Charles Baring, a prominent Charleston rice planter, sought relief from the ill effects of the swampy coastal climate on his wife's health and built a lavish estate at Flat Rock. Others from South Carolina and Georgia soon followed him and Flat Rock, 158 �Hendersonville, Asheville, Warm Springs, and other communities soon gained reputations throughout the South as "charming refuges from the hot plains of the lowlands."20 Local residents quickly sought to capitalize on the various needs of the influx of visitors from May to October every year. Among the most successful and influential citizens of Asheville were its hotel owners. James Patton's Eagle Hotel and James M. Smith's Buck Hotel were among the town's largest buildings and were so often filled to capacity that nearby homes profited by accommodating their overflow.21 Like the Walton House in Morganton, which advertised that it was "supplied regularly with Fresh Fish from Norfolk and Newburn, in fact with every delicacy usually found at First Class Hotels," these establishments prided themselves on the quality of their accommodations and service.22 Among their most basic services were the various forms of transportation they provided. The Eagle Hotel, for instance, declared that it was "in readiness at all times to convey passengers to any part of our beautiful Mountain Country." In addition to daily or every-other-daily stagecoach service to Greenville and Spartanburg, S. C., Greenville, Term, and Morganton, Salisbury, and Charlotte, N. C., its livery stable offered "superior saddle and harness horses and a lot of entirely NEW Vehicles: consisting of Hacks, Carriages, Buggies etc., which are safe and comfortable."23 In addition to the commercial boom brought about by the "summer people," as they were referred to by mountain residents, those tourists themselves did much to shape the characters of those communities to which they flocked. An Asheville native boasted that the town was "adorned with many beautiful residences, the result of cultivated taste among its inhabitants, or the summer residences of citizens of South Carolina." He went on to praise his fellow residents "who, in a spirit of improvement, a love for the beautiful, and a taste for the refined, make gardens of waste places, and turn the barren hillsides into blooming undulations."24 A young female visitor wrote of a ride she took on the outskirts of Asheville along the Swannanoa River. "It was," she exclaimed, "quite a merry drive indeed; [I] saw a great many fine farms and residences and a good many people riding out—some in buggies and some on horseback in riding costumes, looking quite like city folks and city life."26 Even more impressive to travelers were the Hendersonville and Flat Rock communities, where the affluence and taste of its transplanted South Carolinians and Georgians was apparent in the fashionable clientele of their hotels and even more so in the "baronial style" of their estates. To a New York traveler, they "rivaled in elegance and taste any villa or mansion on the Hudson," and an aristocratic British visitor said that they reminded him "more of English than anything we had seen in America."26 Just as Baring had led many of his fellow Charlestonians into the area, his plantation, with its magnificent columned home, beautifully landscaped 159 �lawns and gardens, private chapel and rectory, complex of stables and servants' quarters, and vast private park for deer hunting, served as a model that inspired others to imitate or even outdo it." The social activities in these communities were fully in keeping with the lavish settings in which they took place. As summarized by a Hendersonville woman, they included "quadrilles danced under candled chandeliers, gracious conversations over three o'clock dinners in silver laden banquet rooms, morning gatherings on latticed porches, Carriage drivers over Little River Road ... and picnics on the mountain ridges."28 The participants in this leisurely and sophisticated lifestyle were equally as impressive to another British observer. He described those at a ball he attended as being "good-looking with good figures and good dancers and manners easy and polite."29 The mineral springs resorts catered to an equally affluent clientele in much the same manner, if on a smaller scale. In addition to its healthful waters, Warm Springs, the most well-known and well-attended of these, "presented more attractions to the seeker of pleasure than probably any watering-place in the South." Elaborating on those attractions, Charles Lanman wrote that "Music, dancing, flirting, wine-drinking, riding, bathing, fishing, scenery-hunting, bowling, and reading are all practiced here to an unlimited extent."30 In sharp contrast, many of the more western county seats, most of which were formed later, remained small, crude, frontier-like communities. While most visitors describing these towns tactfully chose to extol their magnificent and "romantic" physical settings, Augustus S. Merrimon, a young Asheville attorney who practiced in various circuit courts throughout western North Carolina in the early 1850s, was more openly contemptuous of them and their residents. Of the state's western-most town, Murphy, he wrote in his diary that it "is a small place and poorly improved. There are several small stores here that seem to do a small business. All of them together would not make one good one." Waynesville, despite the presence of several fashionable resorts in the vicinity, was no more appealing to Merrimon, who found it "a dirty small village and there is no place of entertainment in it fit to stay at. One would suppose it to be a large negro quarter to see it from a distance."31 Its buildings, he wrote, were already delapidated and decayed, including their courthouse which had been built only a few years earlier.32 But it was Jewell Hill (where Madison County's court still met despite the selection of Marshall as its county seat) that Merrimon found most offensive. Its men were generally drunk, as were its women, whom he described as "dirty, filthy strumpets." He wrote with disgust: "I do not know any rival for this place in regard to drunkenness, ignorance, superstition and the most brutal debauchery."33 British geologist George Featherstonaugh echoed these sentiments in recording his impressions 160 �of Franklin. "What a dreadful state of things!" he wrote. "Here was a village most beautifully situated . . . that might become an earthly Paradise, if education, religion, and manners prevailed . . . But I could not learn that there was a man of education in the place disposed to set an example of the value of sobriety to the community." He revealed his own national bias by concluding that the town served as a "perfect specimen of that kind of equality which democratic institutions often lead to."34 Somewhat more objectively, the celebrated writer and journalist Porte Crayon described the relative lack of physical or economic development of Bakersville, then in Yancey County in 1857: Its principal streets is built up on one side with a rail-fence, and on the other with two cabins, set back from the street. The back streets and alleys, which are laid off ad libitum, contain the stables, cowshed, and hen-houses. The only public buildings worthy of note are an applejack distillery... and a springhouse, which has no commercial value. During the dark of the moon the town is lighted with pine-knots; and its police force, consisting of six big dogs, is at all times uncommonly vigilant and active.36 Swiss geologist, Arnold Guyot, made extensive tours throughout the Carolina highlands in the late 1850s and found few of the communities he visited worthy of even that much attention. Of Watauga's county seat, he wrote: "There is not so much as a village in the whole County, for Boon (sic), the county-seat. . . contains but a few dwellings clustered around the Court-house."36 But regardless of their rate of growth or the degree of sophistication of their citizens, all of these mountain towns exerted an influence far in excess of their size. The "backwardness" of these western-most communities described by contemporary observers often failed to acknowledge their commercial and social vitality. In 1860, Boone, whose very existence Guyot all but denied, actually consisted of six stores, two tanneries, two hotels and several boarding houses, at least one saloon and the blacksmith shop. The demand for lumber to keep up with the pace of construction in the community was great enough to make three sawmills among the town's most successful enterprises in the 1850s.37 Community studies have provided a number of models by which these towns may be categorized in terms of function and relationship to the dispersed populace of the region. In several such studies of twentiethcentury Appalachian communities, Art Gallaher, Jr., has distinguished five types of community in terms of their contact with and access to the "outside world." These range from the most extreme cases of social and geographic isolation through progressively more complex and 161 �sophisticated communities to the region's few urban centers. The fourth level of community development along his scale is that of county seat community, in which its political and trade-centered functions provide "systematic links to the greater society which exist in more variety and in more institutional areas" than in the three preceding levels.38 Pushing this scheme back to the antebellum period, and applying it to western North Carolina's towns and villages, most, if not all, met the criteria for Gallaher's county-seat model, whether they were indeed county seats or only tourist resorts or commercial centers. The government and judicial functions of the actual county seats entailed regular contacts by its residents with agencies and individuals outside the region and meant frequent visits from various officials and other professionals. The impact of tourists and seasonal residents on those in and around the resort communities was even greater. But to the majority of mountain residents, those farmers and their families beyond the bounds of these communities, contacts with these particular outside influences were minimal. Travelers only occasionally veered from their wellbeaten paths and their encounters with more remote local residents, when they did so, were only sporadic and superficial. Likewise the contacts between county officials and their county's more rural citizens came only when they bought or sold land or paid their taxes. It was as commercial centers that almost all of these towns, from Asheville and Morganton to Franklin and Murphy, exerted their most pervasive influence on their region, and it was through their real functional cores, the commercial establishments, that rural mountaineers maintained their most substantial and immediate link with the world beyond their own. Just as stores and trading posts were often the nuclei around which communities grew, so they remained vital to the further prosperity of both town and county residents. Many businessmen provided various services as well as merchandise, so that a "store" was often only one of several operations conducted by a single owner. Jordan Councill of Boone, William McKesson of Morganton, Jesse Siler of Franklin, and James Harper of Lenoir are only four examples of merchants who operated tanneries, blacksmith shops, and mills in addition to their mercantile businesses, and each of them was among the most prominent and influential leaders in their communities. By meeting multiple needs for their areas, they and their counterparts in other mountain towns served as the primary, and often the only, contacts many western Carolinians had with the outside world. Their dependence on these men, based on personal contact as well as economic need, made their influence considerable. A Buncombe County resident recalled that "old settlers in the country each had his merchant in Asheville, not only to supply his wants, but in whom he confided as a trusted friend."39 In addition to supplying local residents with a wide variety of 162 �manufactured goods and imported food staples, these store owners provided equally as vital a service as an outlet for those surplus goods that those same customers wished to sell. The scarcity of cash often necessitated a barter system, the flexibility and localized nature of which allowed for a readily available means by which most mountain farmers could, and often did, move beyond mere subsistence farming and enter the market economy, if only in a limited way. While farm produce and meat from slaughtered livestock were the most basic of local goods bartered, the inventory of several mountain stores indicates that a wide variety of distinctively mountain products were also common in these transactions. A British woman visiting Asheville seemed somewhat offended by the diversity of goods carried in shops there. Merely to buy "a bit of ribbon," she had to face "horrible raw hides . . . masses of mica ... and every imaginable thing for sale."40 Leander Gash owned a large store on the present site of Brevard, where he stocked "hams, venison, hides, and feathers, chestnuts, chestnut bark, apples, cabbages, wild honey and mountain herbs."41 Several merchants specialized as dealers in ginseng, the root of a small plant native to the North Carolina mountains, which was sold to China, where its medicinal qualities were in great demand. Calvin Cowles of Wilkesboro bought it, along with other roots and herbs, from mountain residents who gathered it in the forests of the state's northwest corner and brought it down to his store.42 Bacchus Smith and Nimrod Jarrett of Yancey County found the ginseng, or "sang," business so profitable in the 1830s that they ran three factories at which over 86,000 pounds of the freshly-dug green root were steamed, dried, and prepared for the Chinese market.48 These various products in turn provided merchants with the means by which they engaged in expanded versions of such transactions elsewhere. As early as 1802, Francois Andre Michaux described the trade pattern he observed in passing through Morganton: One warehouse only, supported by a commercial house at Charleston, is established in this little town, where the inhabitants, for twenty miles round, come and purchase mercery and jewellery goods from England, or give in exchange a part of their produce which consists chiefly of dried hams, butter, tallow, bear and stag skins, and ginseng, which they bring from the mountains.44 This pattern was typical and continued to be practiced in most mountain communities throughout the antebellum period. In Ashe County alone, residents were said to have sent to market goods worth "upwards of Thirty Thousand Dollars yearly."46 163 �Some merchants, particularly those in the northern section of North Carolina's mountain region, looked to the north for their primary business contacts. Calvin Cowles made annual trips to Washington, Philadelphia, New York and Boston, where he found ready markets for his ginseng and other roots and herbs. These he sold for cash which he then used to purchase the merchandise with which he would stock his Wilkesboro store for the coming year.46 James Harper of Lenoir sold deer and other animal skins and furs to markets in Baltimore and Philadelphia and obtained much of his merchandise from mercantile suppliers there.47 But these men also participated, along with the majority of western North Carolina merchants, in the far more well-established trade network to the southeast. Charleston and Columbia in South Carolina and Augusta, Athens, and Savannah in Georgia were regular trade centers for mountain businessmen, and trips to one or more of these towns at least once a year, along with regular correspondence and shipment of goods throughout the year, were routine for most of them. Joseph Cathey was the postmaster and storeowner at Forks of the Pigeon in Haywood County. He planned his trips after consultation with South Carolina and Georgia as to the prices on "the bacon, lard, and feather markets." He then headed south, usually in February, with wagon loads of smoked meat, tanned hides, feathers (in demand for beds), and apples. He was accompanied by varying sized herds of livestock, moving on foot, all of which he had bought from or traded with farmers from all over the county. In 1854 he sold "40 cattle and sheep" for $1386 in Augusta. He then used the cash to purchase saddles, bridles, and tools from a "hardware importer," and various supplies from a druggist before moving on to Charleston where he bought coffee, sugar, candy, salt, and rifle powder from a wholesale grocer, and paint, oil, and glass from a "staple and fancy dry good" establishment.48 With considerable variations in the type of goods sold and bought and in the cities visited, annual trips like Cathey's were made by at least two or three store owners in every mountain town. Through such business practices they served as middle men who enabled almost any mountain farmer to participate in the broader southern market economy. But even more important, their experiences and contacts in the deeper South combined with their pervasive influence among their fellow mountain residents to make them the region's predominant "culture carriers," providing links with the rest of the South that were not merely economic, but social and political as well. Mountain towns of course did much to facilitate and promote this lively interstate commerce. But several of them were the beneficiaries of an even more extensive trade network that ran through the Carolina highlands. This was the phenomenal movement of livestock from the upper South, particularly Kentucky and Tennessee, to the plantation markets 164 �of the southeast. Beginning as a trickle about 1800, the annual flow of hogs, cattle, sheep, horses, and even turkeys, and ducks grew steadily through the 1820s and 1830s to become a virtual flood with the opening of the Buncombe Turnpike. This major thoroughfare in the western part of the state not only increased the capacity for moving larger herds on hoof but enabled wagon traffic as well to utilize the same route. An 1849 traveler on the turnpike noted that: an immense number of cattle, horses, and hogs are annually driven over it to the seaboard markets. Over this road also quite a large amount of merchandise is constantly transported for the merchants of the interior, so that mammoth wagons with their eight and ten horses, are as plenty as blackberries and afford a romantic variety to the stranger.49 Running along the already well-travelled French Broad valley from Tennessee directly south through three mountain counties to South Carolina, the turnpike brought a commercial boom to the towns of Marshall, Warm Springs, Asheville, and Hendersonville. Local merchants, inn and tavern keepers eagerly sought to accommodate the demands of the drovers and their herds. They also benefitted greatly from the business generated by the many farmers in the vicinity attracted by the ready outlets for their own livestock and grain crops. As a major juncture with other routes, Asheville was from the beginning the center of the livestock trade and served as a point of convergence at which animals from all over North Carolina mountains joined those from other states already midway on their journey. By the late antebellum years, 140,000 to 160,000 hogs alone were estimated to have passed through the town every year, with an estimated value of between two and three million dollars.60 Some butchering was done in Asheville, with cured meat, bacon, and lard either sold locally or held for later trips south. But the vast majority of animals merely continued on hoof to their southern destinations. Thus, antebellum mountain residents by no means made up the poverty-stricken, stagnant, and backward society which came to characterize much of Southern Appalachia in later years. Far from being physically or psychologically isolated from the world around them, western North Carolinians maintained strong profitable ties with their lowland neighbors. On the eve of the Civil War, they anticipated even greater prospects for economic and social intergration as their long-awaited plans for railroads through the mountains were on the verge of becoming a reality. Among the primary causes and the primary effects of this vitality were the towns and villages of the region, and particularly their citizens. The leadership, contacts, ambitions and diversity of interests and talents of mountain town residents had much to do with making their region not merely like other rural areas, as Mrs. Campbell suggests. Because of the 165 �special elements of its tourist trade and livestock traffic, western North Carolina may well have been even more lively and diversified than most. NOTES 'Mrs. John C. Campbell, "Flame of a New Future for the Highlands," Mountain Life and Work I (April 1925), 9. "Among the most perceptive works on this theme are Gene Wilhelm, Jr., "Appalachian Isolation: Fact or Fiction?" and Wilma Dykeman, "Appalachia in Context," both in J. W. Williamson, ed., An Appalachian Symposium (Boone, N. C.: Appalachian State University Press, 1977); and Gene Wilhelm, Jr., "Folk Settlements in the Blue Ridge Mountains," Appalachian Journal 5 (Winter 1978). 'Edward W. Phifer, Jr., Burke: The History of a North Carolina County (Morganton, NC: 1977), 66-67. •Mildred B. Fossett, History of McDowell County (Marion, NC: 1976), 85, Ora Blackmun, Western North Carolina and Its People to 1880 (Boone, NC: 1977), 266; John P. Arthur, Western North Carolina: A History from 1730 to 1913 (Raleigh, 1914), 169, 174. See also David L. Corbitt, The Formation of the North Carolina Counties, 1663-1943) (Raleigh, 1950), 3-4, 117-118, 129, 142, 227-228. 'Nancy Alexander, Here Witt I Dwell: The Story ofCaldwett County (Salisbury, NC: 1956), 93-95. "Betty McFarland, Sketches of Early Watauga (Boone, 1973) 'Blackmun, Western North Carolina, 274. "Arthur, Western North Carolina, 174. 'Foster A. Sondley, Asheville and Buncombe County (Asheville, 1922), 72-73. 10 Jody Higgins, ed., Common Times: Written and Pictorial History of Yancey County (Burnsville, NC: 1981), 42. "Zebulon B. Vance to Harriett N. Espy, February 19, 1853, in Elizabeth R. Cannon, ed., My Beloved Zebulon: The Correspondence of Zebulon Baird Vance and Harriett Newell Espy (Chapel Hill, 1971), 184. See also George W. McCoy, "Madison County Marks Its Centennial," Asheville Citizen-Times, January 14, 1951; Manly Wade Wellman, The Kingdom of Madison (Chapel Hill, 1973), 66. "Wellman, Kingdom of Madison, 70. 13 James T. Fain, Jr., A Partial History of Henderson County (New York, 1980), 15-18. "Lawrence F. Brewster, Summer Migrations and Resorts of South Carolina Low-Country Planters (Durham, 1947), 64-68. "Wilhelm, "Appalachian Isolation," 78, 85. "James S. Buckingham, The Slave States of America (London, 1842), Vol. II 202. For a discussion of slaves in the mountains, see John C. Inscoe, "Mountain Masters: Slaveholding in Western North Carolina," North Carolina Historical Review LXI (April 1984), 143-173. "Mollie Carrie to Leander Gash, March 1855, Gash Family Papers, North Carolina Department of Archives and History. 166 �"W. G. Zeigler and Ben S. Grossup, In the Heart of the Alleghanies of Western North Carolina (Raleigh, 1883), 342. "Charles Lanman, Letters from the Alleghany Mountains (New York, 1849), 427. "William W. Malet, An Errand to the South in the Summer of 1862 (London, 1863), 215. See also Brewster, Summer Migrations and Resorts, and Blanche Marsh, Historic Flat Rock, (Asheville, 1961). "Sondley, Asheville and Buncombe County, 84. "Advertisement, North Carolina Standard, Raleigh, July 16, 1859. M H. E. Coulton, Guidebook to the Scenery of Western North Carolina (Asheville, 1860), 14-15. "Coulton, Guidebook, 17-18. ""Mollie Carrie to Leander Gash, August 3, 1855, Gash Family Papers, NCDAH. 2611 Picturesque America: On the French Broad River, North Carolina," Appleton's Journal, December 17, 1870; Buckingham, The Slave States of America, 197. "Malet, Errand to the South, 235-237; Marsh, Historic Flat Rock, 3. "Marsh, Historic Flat Rock, 3. M Malet, Errand to the South, 234. "Lanman, Letters from the Alleghany Mountains, 125. For brief descriptions of Warm Springs and other antebellum resorts in western North Carolina see John Disturnell, Springs, Waterfalls, Sea-bathing Resorts and Mountain Scenery of the United States and Canada (New York; J. Disturnell, 1855), 137-138. "A. R. Newsome, ed., A. S. Merrimon Journal, 1853-54," North Carolina Historical Review (July 1931), 315. M Newsome, "Merrimon Journal," 310. "George W. Featherstonhaugh, A Canoe Voyage Up the Minnay Sotor, Volume 2 (London, 1847; Reprint, St. Paul, 1970), 281. "Porte Crayon, The Old South Illustrated, 230,231. "Myron H. Avery and Kenneth S. Boardman, eds., "Arnold Guyot's Notes on the Geography of the Mountain District of Western North Carolina," N. C. Historical Review (July 1938), 27. "John P. Arthur, A History of Watauga County, North Carolina (Richmond, 1915), 147-153. 38 Art Gallaher, Jr., "The Community As a Setting for Change in Southern Appalachia," in Lloyd Davis, The Public University in its Second Century (West Virginia Center for Appalachian Studies and Development, 1967), 26. "Wilma Dykeman, The French Broad (New York, 1955), 59. "Dykeman, The French Broad, 59. "Otto H. Olsen and Ellen Z. McGrew, eds., "Prelude to Reconstruction: The Correspondence of State Senator Leander Sams Gash, 1866-67," North Carolina Historical Review LX (January 1983), 40. "See the survey for the various entries in Calvin J. Cowles Papers, Southern Historical Collection, UNC Library, Chapel Hill. ""The Late Bacchus J. Smith," Asheville Citizen, August 6, 1886. 167 �"Francois Andre Michaux, Travels to the West of the Alleghanies, reprinted in Reuben G. Thwaite, ed., Early Western Travels, 1748-1846 (Cleveland, Ohio, 1904), 290. *SA. R. Newsome, ed., "Twelve North Carolina Counties in 1810-1811," North Carolina Historical Review V (October 1928), 420. "Various entries, Calvin J. Cowles Papers, Southern Historical Collection and NCDAH. "Alexander, Here Will I Dwell, 93-95. 48 See various bills, receipts, and correspndence, 1850-1854, in Joseph Cathey Papers, NCDAH. The community of Forks of the Pigeon later changed its name to Canton. "Lanman, Letters from the Alleghany Mountains, 123. "Thomas L. Clingman to J. S. Skinner, February 3,1844 in Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Hon. Thomas L. Clingman of North Carolina (Raleigh, 1877), 116. *This paper is the winner of the Appalachian Studies Conference Student Paper competition. 168 �THE THREE R'S: RESEARCH, RESOURCES, RECORDS The Great Smokies: Diverse Perceptions of the Park as a Resource David Carpenter; Western Carolina University; Cullowhee, NC Regional Research in Federal Archives Charles Reeves; Gen. Serv. Admin., Regional Archives; Atlanta, GA Portraying Diversity: An Appalachian Atlas William Hrezo; Radford University; Radford, VA Convenor: Helen Kimsey; Mountain Regional Library; Young Harris, GA The Great Smokies: Diverse Perceptions of the Park as a Resource by David Carpenter The 50th anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is being celebrated this year. This park, the most heavily visited national park in the country, provides many types of recreational experiences for its visitors. People visit the park for a number of different reasons, with many kinds of expectations. They see the park as a place to take the family camping, and pitch their tent or park their recreational vehicle in one of the park's campgrounds; they go to the park for a backpacking trip, to hike many miles into the wilderness-like interior of the park; people also use the park as a drive-through scenic area, often between their stops in Cherokee and Gatlinburg, and see the park through the windshield of their car or other vehicle. Some individuals think of the park as a wildlife refuge, and visit it with hopes of seeing bears or other animals. The park serves as a museum to yet other people, who take tours of the pioneer homestead at Oconaluftee, or who might visit other preserved cabins, gristmills, or other exhibits and reminders of the lifestyles of the early settlers in the region. A survey of park visitors, conducted in 1975, found that most visitors believed that the purpose of a national park was two-fold; "To preserve wildlife" and "to provide a place where people can come to enjoy nature." The survey also found that three out of four people (73%) agreed that in the park and its region that "you can find just about everything you want."1 An individual's perception and resulting attitudes toward the park, or for that matter anything else, is largely a function of the person's past history and present situation. Two people can look 169 �at, or think about the same thing and have two very different perceptions of it, or ideas as to what it represents. In its 50th year, as in the preceding 49 years, there is a wide range of opinions as to what represents the essence of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park or its greatest value. If we look back to the years just preceding the park's establishment, or even many, many years earlier, we find a wide diversity of opinions as to what kind of resource was thought to be represented by the lands of the Great Smokies. As early as 15,000 years ago, nomadic hunters called the Paleo-Indians moved eastward from the Great Plains region and probably used the park area for big-game hunting. Sometime around 7000 B.C., the descendants of these nomadic people gradually changed into a larger, more sedentary population. Gathering activities became more important, and over the following centuries, agricultural activities gained dominance over hunting and gathering activities as a way of life for the Indians. The first European contact with these resident Indians, the Cherokees, occurred around 1566 or 1567.2 Around the year 1760, white settlement in the region gained momentum. By the early 1800s, the centuries-old villages, culture, and homeland of the Cherokees had been swept over by the incoming flood of white settlers and their need for more land. By the time of the Civil War, virtually all of the land suitable for farming was occupied by white settlers.8 The region in some ways became a preserve of sorts for a traditional way of life for many years. Industrial development, modernization, and various social and cultural developments did not come as swiftly to the mountain region as to other areas. The mid-nineteenth century saw a few wealthy "flatlanders" begin coming up from Charleston, South Carolina and other lowland areas to escape the oppressive summer heat in the much cooler mountain climate. Some of these people also built summer homes. Thus was started the summer home/tourism industry which in later years was to have such a significant impact on the mountain region—its land, its people, and its culture. In the 1880s lumber companies had begun to mount large-scale commercial logging operations in the region.4 The face of the region began to change. It was in the 1880s, also, that the idea of a national park in the region was first proposed. Rev. C. D. Smith of Franklin, North Carolina may have been the first person to write a proposal for a park in the southern highlands,5 but this is not known for sure. It is recorded, however, that Dr. Henry O. Marcy of Boston, Massachusetts read a paper before the American Academy of Medicine in New York on October 29,1885 entitled: "Climatic Treatment of Diseases: Western North Carolina as a Health Resort."6 In the closing paragraph of his paper, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Marcy said that: "The wise legislator, seeking far-reaching results, would do well to consider the 170 �advisability of securing under state control a large reservation of the higher ranges as a park."7 Another physician, Dr. Chase P. Ambler of Ohio, received a reprint of Dr. Marcy's paper and was impressed by his idea for a park. When Dr. Ambler moved to Asheville, North Carolina in 1889, and became aware of the beauty of the area first-hand, he became a strong advocate for the establishment of a park. On a fishing trip up to the Sapphire region of western North Carolina, Dr. Ambler asked the advice of his companion Judge William R. Day, also from Ohio, as to how a park could be promoted. Judge Day, who had just returned from the Paris Peace Commission Conference, suggested the formation of an organization in Asheville to push the national park proposal.8 In November of that same year, a convention was held in Asheville and the Appalachian National Park Association was established.9 An active campaign was launched to garner support for a national park in the Southern Appalachian mountains and, in 1900, the Association presented a memorial to Congress. This document listed numerous reasons for establishing a park, and also supplied maps with proposed locations for the park.10 Soon after this, however, the Association found out that the federal government had already gone on record as opposing the purchase of lands at any future time for national park purchases. The Association then changed its name to the Appalachian National Forest Reserve Association, and changed its goal accordingly.11 In December 1905, the Association, after its years of promoting the establishment of first a national park and then later national forest reserves, asked the American Forestry Association to take over its campaign. An agreement was reached and the Appalachian National Forest Reserve Association was dissolved. Its efforts, however, had helped contribute to a compaign which was later to result in the passage of the Weeks Act in 1911. The Weeks Act authorized the establishment of national forests, and stimulated interest in the idea of national parks.12 By the early years of the nineteenth century, the lumber companies had moved their operations into the Smokies. The furious pace of largescale logging operations had far-reaching effects on the region, its economy, and its people in the early years of the century. Around 1909 the logging reached its peak in the Smokies and the region.13 Mountain sides had been stripped of large tracts of virgin timber, prized for its size and quality. Destructive timber-cutting practices sometimes described as "git, slash, & go"14 were reported to have been widespread. But the demand for lumber remained high, and the timber industry remained a very strong force in the mountain region. Another force, however, was building strength. Horace Kephart, author of Our Southern Highlanders, was only one of a number of people who were to contribute to a second, ultimately successful, national park movement. This second major movement to 171 �establish a national park in the Southern Appalachians began around 1923, and it was begun on the other side of the Smokies, in Knoxville, Tennessee. In the summer of 1923, Mr. and Mrs. W. D. Davis of Knoxville had made a western vacation trip and had visited some of the national parks. Mrs. Davis admitted that the scenery in the western parks was very pretty, but she insisted that the Great Smoky mountains contained scenery just as beautiful. "Why can't we have a national park in the Great Smokies?" she asked her husband. Mr. Davis, who was then manager of Knoxville Iron Company, liked the idea and as soon as they had returned to Knoxville began enthusiastically telling his friends about "this wonderful national park we are going to get in the Great Smokies."16 Mr. Davis submitted his idea for a Great Smokies national park to Dr. Hubert Work, Secretary of the Interior, in the Fall of 1923. Around thirty other claims for national park sites in other areas of the East had also been received by Secretary Work, though, and he decided to appoint a committee to investigate the proposed park sites.16 In December of the same year, a dinner meeting at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C. helped to begin an active campaign for a national park in the Appalachians. Stephen Mather, Hubert Work, and Zebulon Weaver, a Congressman from Asheville, N. C., were present at the dinner.17 The following week Congressman Weaver made a public statement in support of a park's establishment. The momentum was gaining for a new national park in the Southeast, but there was some amount of disagreement as to where it should be located. The Southern Appalachian National Park Committee, appointed by Secretary Work to study the proposed locations for a park began its study in 1924. Ironically, the committee would not schedule a visit to Knoxville to hear about the Great Smokies area, but were due to stop in Asheville to study the Grandfather Mountain/Linville Gorge area as a possible site for a park. Despite efforts by the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association to get the committee to visit Knoxville and study the Great Smokies park proposal, the committee refused to change their schedule. They did, however, finally and reluctantly agree to give a hearing to representatives of the Tennessee association during their stop in Asheville. A delegation from Tennessee, well-armed with enlargements of numerous pictures taken in the Great Smokies area by the association's official photographer, Jim Thompson, met with the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee in Asheville. After a three-hour meeting with this delegation, and after the pictures of the Great Smokies had captured their interest, two of the five members of the committee agreed to take a personal look at the area. They were to be greatly impressed with their tour of the Smokies and sights such as the flame azaleas in bloom on Gregory Bald. Other members of the committee later visited the area and also had high praise for the Great Smokies.18 172 �A recommendation from the committee was made in December 1924 for the establishment of both the Shenandoah and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In their official report the committee said: "The Great Smokies easily stand first because of the height of mountains, depth of valleys, ruggedness of the area, and the unexpected variety of trees, shrubs, and plants."19 In the following months bills were passed in the Senate and the House to approve land acquisition for the park. In April 1926 President Coolidge signed a law allowing purchase of lands for the park.20 The legal stage had been prepared for the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But a very large obstacle remained. The creation of the seventeen national parks prior to this time had been accomplished by the setting aside of lands already belonging to the federal government. But the minimum 300,000 contiguous acres needed for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park would have to be purchased from the private owners of some 6,600 separate tracts of land21 and then later offered by the states of North Carolina and Tennessee for acceptance by the Secretary of the Interior. The Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association in Tennessee and its sister organization in North Carolina, called the Great Smoky Mountains, Inc., had already begun campaigns to raise money and gain public support for the purchase of the land. Over a span of years, roughly 12 million dollars was to be needed for the purchase of the park lands.22 The money came from North Carolina and Tennessee state expenditures and from private donations. Five million dollars in matching funds were donated by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. from the Laura Spellman Rockefeller Memorial Fund. And finally, federal money, allotted by President Roosevelt, completed the park land purchase fund.23 But although the money to purchase park lands was eventually found, and the long campaign to establish the park was ultimately successful—it is important to understand the reasons why people spoke out, sometimes eloquently, both in support of the park, and also in opposition to it. The local western North Carolina newspapers were some of the strongest supporters of the park movement. The timber and pulpwood companies, who owned approximately 85 percent of the land in the proposed park area, were some of the strongest foes of the park movement. TheAsheville Citizen in December of 1925 had this to say about the lumber industry: When the life of the forest is turned into death in the wake of the juggernauts of the lumber industry, there appear the naked skeletons of former sylvan monarchs, sacrificed to feed industry that eats without thought for the moment.24 Four days earlier the paper had printed a full page advertisement paid for by the Champion Fibre Company, which owned over 92,000 acres of 173 �the choicest land in the Great Smokies area.25 The Champion ad had stated, in part, that: The proposed area once established as a National Park withdraws for all time and regardless of changed economic conditions one of the very large national resources of Western North Carolina from all industrial use. The acquisition for Park purposes of the virgin timber area of the Smoky Mountains involves problems that are extremely difficult of solution because of the fact that these lands were purchased for specific industrial uses.26 The Jackson County Journal, in an article on February 9, 1927, portrayed the battle between park proponents and the lumbermen as: A fight between nearsightedness and farsightedness; a battle between those who love their state, and are anxious that she shall continue in her glory and those who believe that the natural resources of the country are the property of a few men of this generation, and that the coming generations are not to be considered.27 The conflict seemed finally to be between conservation and industrial consumption—and a decision as to whether tourism or manufacturing would be most characteristic of the region's economic future. In the mountain region in the 1920s and 1930s there was an increasing emphasis on the economic benefits of tourism, and the establishment of a national park was seen as having extremely beneficial consequences for tourism and the regional economy. An article hi the Asheville Citizen in 1931 included a quote by Ray Lyman Wilbur, at that time Secretary of the Interior, who pointed out that: "The crop of visitors is easy to harvest—recreation gives them health, happiness and satisfaction and they in turn give prosperity to park neighborhoods."28 A pamphlet published by the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association of Tennessee speculated that: Not only will multitudes of vacationists be attracted by the splendors of the Great Smokies; the same multitudes will at the same time be attracted by the enjoyments promised enroute. Those multitudes will spend freely, just as similar multitudes do in Montana and California. But it is not only money that will be turned loose, it is tourists—with eyes and ears open. Returning home, they will advertise both states by word of mouth. Americans of the best type will find much to tempt them to settle down and stay— 174 �among other things, the survival of old-time standards of morals and manners and the absence of aliens.29 The conservation and preservation of the proposed park's vegetation cover was also seen as providing another type of economic bonus for the region. A publication by the Wachovia Bank and Trust Co., in 1931, noted that: "The Great Smoky Mountains act as a watershed for many streams having enormous possibilities for water power development . . ."30 The Outlook weekly in 1925 had previously stated, in support of the establishment of eastern national parks, that: One reason China is a decadent, famine-stricken country is because individual interest has gradually consumed the trees and left the surface barren. One reason that India has hundreds of abandoned dams and water reservoirs is because the mud has washed down from deforested areas and filled them full of earth. The brightest prospect of modern business and social life lies in the expected development of electricity by water power. How can we keep the water clear? By keeping a plant-life cover on all unused land.31. A Tennessee pamphlet predicted that: "The Tennessee Valley is destined to become an American Ruhr, the industrial zone of America. [And that] the Tennessee [river] possesses even greater energy than the stream which turns the wheels of German manufacturing."32 A recognition grew that the new national park in the Smokies would likely greatly increase and firmly establish tourism as a dominant "industry" in the mountains, and would also serve as a huge sponge-like watershed for hydroelectric projects downstream from its headwaters. With the once-booming timber business already on a decline in the area, support for the new park increased. Condemnation privileges had been granted by the federal government and gave new leverage to landpurchasing activities. The lengthy land purchase negotiations with the timber and pulpwood companies appeared to be on their way toward resolution. The large tracts of land critical to the park's formation were at last being acquired, but there were other parcels of land which also had to be purchased. Land which meant much more than just a raw industrial resource to the people who owned it. There were around 1,000 families who lived within the boundaries of the Great Smokies before the National Park Service took over the area for park management. These residents owned about 400 log cabins, barns, and other buildings, and 700 frame structures.33 Many stereotypes existed of these people, who were often called "mountaineers," "highlanders," or "hillbillys." Some had called them "the 175 �purest Anglo-Saxon stock in America."34 This mistaken belief or "fable" about the mountain residents was only one of many persistent images of these people.36 They were sometimes described in a positive sense as hardy, self-sufficient people. Other more prevalent stereotypes pictured the mountain residents as lazy, uncivilized, poverty-stricken, criminal, ignorant, or backward. Two assistant editors of the National Geographic, in 1930, thought that the Park Service should let the inhabitants of the Smokies area stay on the land, because "the mountaineers, not the scenery were the real tourist attraction." Arno Cammerer, then Assistant Director of the National Park Service, did not agree, and called these editors "all wet." He went on to say that "the worthy mountaineers . .. would leave; the only ones anxious to stay were those anxious to make money from the tourists. And that "there is no person so canny as certain types of mountaineers and none so disreputable."36 It is interesting to note that one of the strongest motivations of many of the local businessmen and social leaders in promoting the park was also to "make money from the tourists." Some of the inhabitants of the Smokies were glad to sell their land and move away, but other residents did not want to move. They had spent their lives in the area and to them the Smokies were home. The Walker sisters of the Little Greenbriar section of the Smokies belonged to the latter group. The Walker sisters, of whom there were originally seven, were self-reliant and preferred a traditional lifestyle which was closer to that of their preceding generations than to their contemporaries. The Walker sisters loved their farm and log house. Louisa Walker summed up their feelings about their home and the coming of the Park in a poem. Dr. Hans Huth, hired by the Park Service to compile a report on the preservation of mountain culture, noted that this poem was "ironically enough a satire on the Park Service. Whether this was purely naive, or a clever little speculation on the mind of the public, is difficult to tell."37 I think that it is quite clear that Louisa Walker meant to communicate in her poem. Following are some excerpts from her poem, entitled "My Mountain Home": There is an old weather bettion house That stands near a wood With an orchard near by it For all most one hundred years it has stood. But now the park Commissioner Comes all dressed up so gay Saying this old house of yours We must now take away 176 �They coax they wheedle They fret they bark Saying we have to have this place For a National Park For us poor mountain people They don't have a care But must a home for The wolf the lion and the bear But many of us have a title That is sure and will hold To the City of peace Where the streets are pure gold And no park Commissioner Will ever dare To disturb or molest Or take our home from us there.38 The Walker sisters kept their house and farm through a concession by the federal government and the Park Service that allowed, in "meritorious cases," for individuals to be issued leases on their property. The leasees, called "stay-ons," were paid for their land, but then could live on it under certain restrictions for the rest of their lives, after which time the authority for the lease expired. Only people judged to have good character and unclouded reputations were to be granted leases. The leases were designed to lessen the resentment of the Smokies residents to the ultimate loss of their land, and allowed some of the older folks to finish out their lives in their long-time homes.39 In 1941, there were approximately 200 families living within the park on leased property.40 As the park land was being acquired, many individuals expressed fears that the cultural history of the Smokies area might be lost. The Park Service also had a growing recognition, if somewhat limited, that aspects and examples of mountain culture should be preserved. A report, prepared for the Park Service, offered suggestions as to how the Service could preserve mountain culture. This report contained a proposal for the establishment of a "mountaineer museum"41 which could show "types of mountaineers in photos."42 The report also explored a suggestion that a "buffer area" could be created in some traditional community of "mountain culture" on the border of the park. This buffer area would be preserved by "making it inaccessible and by discouraging intercourse with the outside world." In looking at a proposed buffer area, though, it was determined that most of the inhabitants were "undersirable people, many having criminal records .. ."43 The problem of finding good examples of virgin mountain 177 �culture with desirable people, was not the only objection to the plan. The Walker sisters were used as an example of what might likely happen to "protected 'old mountaineers' undergoing acculturation by unavoidable intercourse with tourists."44 In addition it was noted that "progress . . . cannot be kept out of an area indefinitely with radio propaganda pouring in daily . . ." Lastly, the question was asked: "Is it legitimate to try to retard the development of an entire section of the country, even through it might be for a worthy purpose?"46 The buffer area plan was scrapped. A second proposal entailed the relocation of carefully selected settlers to live in the park and to do farming or crafts work. These people would work under supervision which "would correspond to the procedure employed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in dealing with the Indians. Supervision must be even closer, so that only certified work can be put on the market."46 But it was concluded that if mountain culture was dying and it could only "be found among old mountaineers whose character was shaped many years ago and who, by chance, might be available for transfer to the park, it would be very doubtful whether the undertaking of the complicated experiment would be worthwhile." However, it was decided that younger settlers could be utilized who "must be mountain people" but would not necessarily have to come from one of the border areas that were supposed to be in a "culturally primitive state." Especially since it was thought "highly doubtful" that there were any " 'naive' mountaineer who would go into the traditional way of life if he could avoid it." In order to find prospective, respectable people for "settlers," the president of Asheville College was interviewed and responded to a question that yes, "among his students there were quite a few girls who would probably be quite happy to live in the park . . ."" Some of these proposals and the early attempts of the National Park Service to develop new programs and policies aimed at meeting the Service's additional responsibilities for cultural preservation may now seem humorous to us. But, the Park Service had previously been predominantly concerned with the preservation of natural resources and the plants and animals of the parks. It took time for the Service to begin to understand and encompass the responsibilities of cultural preservation and interpretation. The Park Service increasingly recognized the value of the human/cultural history of the park, and established interpretive displays and exhibits in many locations in the Great Smokies. An archives collection was established. Efforts were made to stabilize a select few of the abandoned dwellings and other structures in the park. A former Assistant Superintendent of the park, David Condon, said in reference to the former residents of the area that: "Although their homes are now gone from within its boundaries, [they] have left behind them an aura of mystery and a lore and history of outstanding appeal."48 In the past, the Great Smokies area has been seen in many ways—as 178 �a hunting ground, as a raw industrial resource, as a proposed health resort, and as a home to many families. The Smokies came to be seen as an extremely valuable resource, worthy of protection and preservation. People's perceptions of the Great Smokies had changed over the years as their country and society had likewise changed. Representative Zebulon Weaver from Asheville, North Carolina gave a speech before the U. S. House of Representatives in 1926, and had this to say about the Smokies as a national park: We have had, it is true great stretches of wilderness in riotous abundance, but now they are disappearing. It is not only important but it is necessary to look to the future. The setting aside of this area is necessary because of the vast increase of population. People are beginning to crowd upon themselves. More and more they are turning to the outdoors for health and recreation and life itself, for nature is the mother of us all, and contact with nature and the out of doors is still the sovereign remedy for the ills of man, both physical and mental. For this purpose there is no place in eastern America that surpasses the Great Smokies.49 Today, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has such a diverse recreational appeal that over eight million people visit it annually. It has been classified as an International Biosphere Reserve and serves as a living laboratory for scientific study. But, to a majority of its visitors, the park is an experience to eagerly look forward to on their vacations, to be savored during the visit, and to be remembered and talked about afterwards. Robert Sterling Yard, an executive secretary of the National Parks Association who had come to visit the Smokies and determine if they really were worthy of park status, was asked by Horace Kephart what his verdict was about the Smokies. He replied: "They have one quality that is unique." Kephart asked what this quality was. Yard answered: "Charm." He continued: "The Smokies are natural wonders; but they are more than that. One can see a stupendous phenomenon of nature that awes one with its majesty; but when he has seen it once—well, he has seen it. But the Smoky Mountains have enduring charm. Having seen them once, they lure you back again and again."60 179 �NOTES 'Amusement/Recreation Marketing Service, Inc., Visitor Sampling Survey, Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Final Analytic Report (n.p.: n.p., 1975), p. 40. 'U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Final Environmental Impact Statement for the General Management Plan, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina—Tennessee (Denver, Colo.: National Park Service, Denver Service Center, 1982), pp. 57-58. "Ibid. 'U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, General Management Plan, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina—Tennessee (Denver, Colo.: National Park Service, Denver Service Center, n.d.), p. 12. "Virginia T. Lathrop, "The Great Smokies Become a Park," Greensboro News, 13 May 1934. 'Charles Webb, "History of Park Traced," Asheville Citizen, 31 August 1939, p. 4, cols. 1-2. 'George W. McCoy, "Dedication of Park Climaxes Movement Launched Years Ago," Asheville Citizen Times, 1 September 1940, sec. B, p. 3, cols. 6-7. 'Lathrop, "The Great Smokies Become a Park." '"Article in 1899 Citizen Tells Story of Origin of National Park Movement," Asheville Citizen, 17 June 1934, sec. B., p. 4, cols. 2-5. '"McCoy, "Dedication of Park Climaxes Movement Launched Years Ago." "Ibid. "Ibid. 13 Wilma Dykeman and Jim Stokely, Highland Homeland, the People of the Great Smokies (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1978), p. 123. "Carlos Campbell, Birth of a National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains (Kingsport, Term.: The University of Tennessee Press and Kingsport Press, Inc., 1960), p. 94. "Campbell, p. 13. "Campbell, p. 22. "Jesse R. Lankford, "The Campaign for a National Park in Western North Carolina, 1885-1940," Master's thesis, Western Carolina University, 1973, pp. 47-48. '"Campbell, pp. 22-28. "Campbell, p. 29. 20 Campbell, p. 138. "Campbell, p. 68. 22 Campbell, p. 135. 2a McCoy, "Dedication of Park Climaxes Movement Launched Years Ago." ""Bleak Skeletons, Monuments to Lumbering," Asheville Citizen, 29 November 1925, caption to photograph, p. 2, cols. 2-4. 26 Campbell, p. 80. 26 "The Champion Fibre Company and the Proposed Smoky Mountain National Park," Asheville Citizen, 25 November 1925, full-page advertisement, p. 3, cols. 1-8. 27 "Now and Hereafter," Editorial, Jackson County Journal, 9 February 1927, p. 4. 28 "Title to Vast Tract in Park is Transferred," Asheville Citizen, 3 November 1931, p. 1, col. 7. 29 Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association, Great Smoky Mountains (n.p.: n.p., n.d.), p. 18. """The Purpose of this Issue," The Wachovia, 24, No. 10 (1931), p. 15. "'William C. Gregg, "Two New National Parks?" The Outlook, 30 December 1925, p. 663. "Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association, p. 23. "Hans Huth, Report on the Preservation of Mountain Culture in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (n.p.: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1941), p. 2. 180 �"Maude Waddell, "South Gives Nation Its Most Beautiful Playground," Charlotte Observer, 18 January 1931, sec. 3. "Charles L. Perdue, Jr. and Nancy J. Martin-Perdue, "Appalachian Fables and Facts: A Case Study of the Shenandoah National Park Removals," Appalachian Journal, 7, No. 1-2 (1980), pp. 85-86. M Ibid. "Huth, p. 12. "Robert R. Madden and T. Russell Jones, Mountain Home: The Walker Family Homestead (Washington, B.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1977), pp. 18-19. "Leon M. Siler, "U.S. to Allow Deserving Folk to Live on Land," Asheville Citizen, 13 September 1931, p. 1, col. 1. 40 Huth, p. 2. 41 Huth, p. 4. "Huth, p. 7. "Huth, p. 11. "Huth, p. 12. "Huth, p. 13. "Huth, p. 15. 47 Huth, p. 17. "Campbell, p. 57. "Zebulon Weaver, The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, U.S. Congress, House, 14 May 1926 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1926), pp. 9-10. "Horace Kephart, "The Last of the Eastern Wilderness: An Article on the Proposed Great Smoky National Park," World's Work, Apr. 1926, pp. 630-632. 181 �This page intentionally left blank �TOURISM THEN AND NOW A Change in Helen Helen, Georgia Chamber of Commerce Appalachian Tourism: An Historical Overview Stuart Sprague; Morehead State University; Morehead, KY A Plunge into the Past: Henry Ford and Friends Tour the Southern Appalachians Charles Gunter; E. Tenn. State University; Johnson City, TN Convenor; Scoop Scruggs; Helen, GA A Plunge into the Past: Henry Ford and Friends Tour the Southern Appalachians by Charles Gunter In the midst of World War I, four famous Americans—Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs—gathered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in August, 1918, to commence a two-week trip which would take them through portions of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Maryland (see Figure 1). This was not the first trip for a portion of the party, nor was it to be their last. The idea of their trips germinated at the time of the 1915 World's Fair in San Francisco, when Ford and Firestone journeyed there to celebrate Edison Day at the fair. With time to spare, the three of them decided to visit Luther Burbank at his home in Santa Rosa; and ran up there in their private rail cars.1 Enroute to San Diego, after visiting Burbank, Firestone suggested that the party proceed by automobile since crowds of people were threatening to make it impossible for them to keep moving. They had such a wonderful time together that Edison suggested that the three of them go camping the next year.2 The 1916 camping expedition, the first of the back-to-nature junkets, was a tour of New York and the New England states. John Burroughs, a friend of Edison, joined the group at his home in Roxbury, New York; but unfortunately, Henry Ford was unable to join the group due to business commitments. The 1916 trip set in motion the roles that the men followed for subsequent trips, including the 1918 camping trip. Firestone assumed the responsibilities of being general manager and commissary 183 �FIGURE 1 184 �officer. When Henry Ford joined the group in 1918, he contributed his expertise in keeping the mechanical equipment in working order. John Burroughs, a seventy-nine year old naturalist, would be expected only to ply his craft of observing the landscape—both physical and cultural.3 Perhaps, the best explanation of what Edison was to do was written by Firestone, when he commented: Mr. Edison was to decide where we should go. He has always chosen the route. First, he writes to us giving the route. Then he writes again, giving another route, and when we actually start he commonly selects a third route. We never know where we are going, and I suspect that he does not, either. He rides in the front seat of the front car and directs the caravan by compass. He dislikes paved roads and never does he select a main highway if he can find a byway. And never does he take us into a large town if he can find another way around. When he thinks we have gone far enough, he decides to camp, and then we camp.4 A trip planned for 1917 was cancelled due to America's entry into World War I. However, by August, 1918, conditions in Europe had improved enough; and the party decided to break away from the war effort for several weeks. "Except for Mr. Burroughs," Firestone said, "we were all head over heels in our war work, but we had decided that a couple of weeks off would freshen us all a bit and make us better able to go on with our jobs."5 One may ponder how Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, John Burroughs, and Harvey Firestone—each a national figure in his own chosen profession and used to having his own way—could come together for annual camping trips and deepen their friendship for one another.6 As Charles E. Sorensen pointed out, Ford always was grateful for Edison's enouragement when he initially was experimenting with his gasoline engine in 1895. Their friendship began at that time. However, aside from the camping trips they seldom saw one another. Although Ford and Burroughs shared a common interest in birds, the naturalist was primarily Edison's friend. Ford and Burroughs saw each other only during their camping trips. Ford's relationship with Firestone was mainly of business origin.7 One journalist has said that "if you want to probe beneath the surface and get at a man's real character, watch him when he is at play. When he plays he is like a horse out of harness."8 David Lewis in The Public Image of Henry Ford mentions that many movie theaters throughout the United States in 1918 showed Ford, Edison, and Burroughs participating in "high-kicking, stair-jumping, sprinting, tree-chopping, and tree-climbing contests."9 185 �Instead of lounging around on a verandah at a mountain lodge or journeying where roads were in excellent condition, these men—especially Edison—sought to travel to new country; the more untraveled and remote it was, the better the group liked it. They choose to sleep in tents and eat their meals in the open. When night came, they built their own camp fire and enjoyed talking, on some occasions, to almost midnight (see Figure 2).10 When the caravan started from Pittsburgh on August 18,1918, it included "three touring cars and three trucks, laden as one writer described with 'genius and generalship and cooks and culinary contraptions'."11 In addition to the famous four, there were also Harvey Firestone, Jr., two or three friends, a Japanese chef, and various assistants.12 They were ten days in making the journey from Pittsburgh to Asheville, North Carolina; and only once did some of these distinguished gentlemen sleep under a roof.13 It is only the last three days of this journey to Asheville that this study seeks to investigate. A previous study by Donald Rice has explored their travels in West Virginia;14 and the purpose of this paper is to continue the route they followed through Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina (to Asheville), and to identify some of the party's interesting experiences while in this region. Left to right are John Burroughs, Henry Ford, Harvey Firest, Jr., Harvey Firestone, Sr., Thomas Edison, and unidentified. Location unknown. Photo courtesy of Archives, The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. 186 �On Sunday, August 25, the party set out from their camp on Wolf Creek, which was between Narrows, Virginia, and Princeton, West Virginia; and proceeded through Princeton and Bluefield before making camp in Tazewell County, Virginia that night.16 "Coming into the South for someone from the North," wrote John Burroughs in Under the Maples, "is a plunge into the past."16 Elaborating, he said, when you go into Virginia there is a change which is reflected in a more local or provincial attitude. One frequently encounters individuals who are unacquainted with the world beyond their door-steps. He remarked, "their unsophistication is shocking to see."17 In referring to the cultural landscape, Burroughs noted that the quality of the roads left much to be desired. Understandably, an eighty-two year old man might be concerned about the constant bouncing around of an automobile on a dirt and gravel road. He declared that occasionally one would pass from a fine stone road to a rather rough dirt road. Many times there were no bridges over small streams, but fording places were accessible. He recalled that in certain portions of Virginia, the county rather than the state constructed the roads.18 The first major stop in Southwest Virginia was Tazewell, a community of some 1,500 people in 1918, located about twenty miles from Bluefield. The party would have traveled on a rock paved road and would have had to ford streams on four occasions enroute from Bluefield. Mr. H. H. Thompson, a Tazewell native, was a young man when he saw the group on the main street of the community dressed in "duster coats" and wearing "goggles." He states: I was a young boy around nine years old when I came on four or five "T" model Fords parked on Main Street in front of L. A. Tynes' Ford Agency. Tynes, who also operated a garage, was standing on the sidewalk in front of his place shaking hands with Henry Ford. Thomas Edison was leaning against the car and, I think Firestone and Burroughs were still sitting in the back seat. It must have been around 4 p.m. as I was driving cows lower down the street to customers. In those days everybody had a cow and pastured them in rented pasture. I was very close to the company of men, but just looked them over and went on with my cows . . . Later that afternoon, the party continued along on the old Fincastle Turnpike, went into the west end of the cove, and camped on Senator (State Senator) S. J. Thompson's farm which was located approximately fifteen miles from Tazewell... S. J. Thompson talked to them for quite a while and gave them permission to camp any place they liked. The site chosen was near the top of a hill just beyond 187 �the senator's home. This camping site was in the western end of the county about five miles east of Wardell.19 The trip was nearing its conclusion almost a week later when the weekly Clinch Valleys News (of Tazewell, Virginia) reported in its August 30th edition that distinguished visitors passed through last Sunday. "These gentlemen were on vacation," the writer said, "and slipped into town from the east and out again stopping a few minutes in front of the hotel."20 A piercing remark by the writer of the newspaper article perhaps expresses the sentiment of citizens of the community. He declares: The people of Tazewell regret exceedingly that they did not have the pleasure of shaking hands with the distinguished men, but wish it distinctly known, that these famous men would have been wiser and happier perhaps by a little personal contact with Tazewell people.21 On Monday, August 26, the party left their camp early, and proceeded on what was then the best road—mostly clay and rock—which routed them through Elk Garden, the home of the former governor of Virginia (Henry Carter Stuart of Russell County). Following a visit there, they drove approximately ten miles to Lebanon, the county seat; and spent several minutes there, before pressing on to Bristol, via Hansonville and Abingdon.22 In all likelihood, the headlines of the August 27th edition of the Bristol (Tennessee) Herald Courier could have read "Thomas Edison and Henry Ford Are Visitors Here," but war news pushed this article to page three.23 When the visitors arrived in Bristol around noon on the twenty-sixth, they proceeded to the Hotel Bristol on Moore Street. Although no notice of their coming was given, scores of local citizens came to an informal reception hastily arranged after the visitors ate lunch. After the reception, members of the party separated from one another to enjoy their individual pursuits. Mr. Burroughs retired to a hotel room for a brief rest and didn't rejoin the party until they were ready to leave. Ford, Firestone, and his son, Harvey, Jr., took a brief tour of the city. They visited the local Firestone agency of Charles J. Harkrader on Cumberland Street where they posed for pictures. While Firestone talked about automobiles and tires with local dealers and manifested an interest in everything going on around him, the topic of conversation with Ford concerned the war and his own candidacy for U. S. Senate from the state of Michigan. Asked how long he thought the war would last, Ford said, "Well, of course no one knows, but I would say about another year. I think it is safe to say that the Allies have retreated for the last time. The retreating 188 �hereafter will be done by the Germans. We want peace on the right terms and we'll get it."24 Referring to his candidacy for the U. S. Senate, Ford indicated that he was not seeking office, and furthermore, that his campaign had not cost a single penny.26 Interestingly Ford was a candidate for both parties and won the Democratic nomination.26 Ford did tell local townspeople, during the visit, that "the country in this section is magnificent. I was greatly impressed with the mountain scenery through Southwest Virginia and am glad we took this route."27 Edison, in contrast to Ford and Firestone, "contented himself digesting the latest war news in the hotel lobby." Apparently unconcerned by the close scrutiny of the crowd, he intently read his newspaper and smoked his cigar.28 Leaving Bristol, the tourists traveled approximately eight miles to "Maplehurst", a 265 acre farm owned by W. H. Cox. Cox, a prominent businessman of Sullivan County, Tennessee, was a relative of John I. Cox, Governor of Tennessee in 1907, who previously resided at "Maplehurst." The visitors expressed their delight over the visit, after an inspection of the farm and a glass of cool buttermilk. Ford complimented Cox on owning one of the best tracts of land that he had observed on their trip.29 Although only seven years old at the time, Walter C. Smith vaguely remembers seeing the party. His family resided on the estate, while his father was farm manager. His only recollection of the visit pertains to a request for his older brother to run up to the house and get a glass so that the visitors could get a drink at the springhouse. Heretofore, a tincup had been used by everyone.30 Leaving "Maplehurst" early in the afternoon, the visitors traveled through Bluff City, Elizabethton, and Milligan College enroute to Johnson City, Tennessee. The presence of an old mill at Milligan College likely caught Ford's attention. One observer remarked about Ford: The old fashioned grist-mills along the road, with their huge overshot wheels, were of never-failing interest to him ... he is never tired of talking of how much power is going to waste everywhere.31 Later in the afternoon a crowd estimated from 500 to 1,000 people turned out in Johnson City to get a peep at four of America's most illustrious citizens. The Johnson City Staff newspaper office was overwhelmed by people seeking information after a brief notice appeared that the party was coming through the city.32 A chauffeur on the trip, whose account was later transcribed by Lester Hopper said: 189 �Coming into a skyscraperless village, known as Johnson City, I led our caravan right up to the main street. In a few minutes the thoroughfare was crowded; folks came running from every direction... stores were forgotten; political arguments and whittling bees were disbanded; the town closed shop to pay its respects to the great visitors.33 As the party rolled to a stop in front of the Majestic Theater on Main Street, John Burroughs, looking very much like a Rip Van Winkle with his gray whiskers, stepped from a car and started walking down the street. Ed Brading and Munsey Slack, two prominent citizens of the town, immediately recognized Burroughs and introduced him to several directors of the Chamber of Commerce.34 Edison, who was seated in a car with Ford and Firestone, was, according to a newspaper account, one of the most modest men that had ever visited this part of Tennessee. One resident of the community told Edison that he wanted to shake hands with the "greatest man in the world." Due to his hearing difficulties, Edison blushed and modestly denied the accusation.36 Abe Slack, a Staff carrier, was most fortunate in having the opportunity to sell Thomas Edison a paper. When Edison's car stopped on Roan Street the inventor waved to him. Upon receiving a paper, Edison gave the youngster a dime. As the youngster fumbled in his pocket for change Edison grabbed another paper and told him to keep the change.36 Before their departure for Jonesborough, Ford and Firestone expressed that they liked the city and this section of the country. They were favorably impressed with the paved streets and the "general air of progressiveness."" When the tourists arrived in Jonesborough, evidently the party stopped briefly along the main street before proceeding to the Will Lee farm located south of the community. Likely, the party inquired about a possible camp site and were told the the Lee farm located along the Bristol to Memphis "Highway" was considered a good location.38 Upon their arrival at the Lee farm around 4:30 p.m., a member of the party sought permission to camp, but he failed to identify who they were. With permission granted, a site was selected about a quarter mile from the road, and some six to eight tents were erected in close proximity to a spring and a wooded area. Burroughs, however, wished to be able to hear the birds when he awoke in the morning, and his tent was set up about an eighth of a mile away from the main camp. Edison even rigged electric lights for the camp, running wires to the battery of one of the automobiles (see Figure 3). While setting up the camp, several of the Lee children took up with the campers. It was during this time that one of the most publicized 190 �View of Camp Robert E. Lee near Jonesborough, Tennessee. Photo courtesy of Archives, The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. incidents of the entire trip was recorded. Henry Ford and one of the youngsters began cutting fire wood. While using a small cross-cut saw, Ford remarked,"Young man, do you know that you are sawing wood with Henry Ford." The youngster, eight years old at the time, quickly replied, "Do you know who you're sawing wood with?" And, when Ford answered, "No," the youngster said, "You're sawing wood with Robert E. Lee." Ford and the others laughed heartily. No doubt, the play on names was what amused the group.39 Around the camp fire that night some forty to fifty local citizens joined the famous party, although they tore down a portion of the Lee's fence in achieving their objective. Several stayed until almost midnight. Apparently, the tourists enjoyed the company and were not perturbed that people came and talked with them.40 One anecdote of the visit to the Jonesborough area told of a youngster, George DeVault, who, when he saw Edison, immediately greeted him as a well known friend. He had read about Edison's experiment of trying to incubate eggs. He said: Say, Mr. Edison, I've read about you. You have, smiled Edison, and what was it you read. Why I read about you settin' on those eggs to hatch 'em. Mr. Edison joined in the shout of laughter that followed. Don't ever try it son, he advised soberly, it won't work.41 191 �When the party pulled out around 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, August 27, they sent someone up to the door who gave the Lee family $5.00.42 On the way to Asheville, North Carolina that morning they stopped briefly in Greeneville before driving on to Newport, Tennessee, where they had lunch at the Mims Hotel. Although the hotel had no advanced notice, a "scrumptious" dinner of fried chicken, country ham, steak, and a variety of fresh vegetables all for the grand charge of 50* each awaited the party.43 Further stops were made at Mars Hill and Weaverville, North Carolina before the campers arrived at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville around 8:30 p.m. Enthusiastic students and friends at both Mars Hill College and Weaver College insisted on greeting the visitors and calling for speeches. Firestone obliged by referring to Edison as the greatest man in the scientific world in a brief but well-worded speech at Weaver College. Entering the outskirts of Asheville, the visitors were met by Secretary Buckner of the Asheville Board of Trade, who headed a welcoming delegation and was driving a Ford car. In his remarks, he graciously assured the party that "the Asheville atmosphere had been specially talcumed and perfumed for the occasion." On Wednesday, August 28, the party inspected the Grove Park Inn, which had opened five years earlier as one of the nation's finest resort hotels; visited Overlook, an English Gothic style castle being built for Fred L. Seely, who designed the Grove Park Inn; and saw Chunn's Cove, which had tentatively been selected by Seely as a possible camp site had the party wished to camp out. Later in the morning, in what appears to be a spur-of-the-moment decision, the party decided to resume their journey.44 Thus, the camping portion of Ford and his famous friends' tour through a portion of the Southern Appalachians had ended. John Burroughs left the party at Asheville and went to Washington, D.C. by train. The others forsook camping as they made their way to Hagerstown, Maryland, where the 1918 trip ended. NOTES 'H. S. Firestone (by Samuel Crowther), "My Vacations with Ford and Edison," System the Magazine of Business, vol. 49 (May, 1926), p. 644. 2 Ibid. 'Dorothy B. Huyck, "Over Hill and Dale with Henry Ford and Famous Friends," Smithsonian, vol. 9 (June, 1978), pp. 88-89. 'Firestone, loc. cit. 6 (by Samuel Crowther), "Was There Ever Another Vacation Like This?," System, the Magazine of Business, vol. 49 (June, 1926), p. 790. 192 �"Mary B. Mullett, "Four Big Men Become Boys Again," American Magazine, vol. 87 (February, 1919), p. 34. 'Charles E. Sorensen (with Samuel T. Williamson), My Forty Years with Ford. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1956, p. 19; Keith Sward, The Legend of Henry Ford. New York: Rinehart and Company, Inc., 1948, p. 110. 'Mullett, foe. cit. 'David L. Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1976, p. 223. '"Mullett, foe. cit. "Donald L. Rice, "Clearing Up a 'Hazy Proposition': Ford, Firestone, and Edison Explore West Virginia," Goldenseal, vol. 9 (Spring, 1983), p. 47. l2 Mullett, foe. cit "Ibid. "Rice, op. cit, pp. 46-50. "The map and itinerary of the 1918 camping trip is a part of "Our Vacation Days of 1918" written by John Burroughs (reprinted in Men and Rubber) and Under the Maples by Burroughs. Courtesy of The Edison Institute, Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village. 18 John Burroughs, Under the Maples. Boston and New York: Houghton Miffin Company, 1921, p. 120. "Ibid., pp. 120-121. li lbid., p. 121. "Letters from H. H. Thompson, Tazewell, Virginia, March 1 and 6, 1984. ^"Distinguished Visitors Pass Through," Clinch Valley News (Tazewell, Virginia), August 30, 1918, p. 4. "Ibid. ™Ibid.; Thompson, op. cit, letter of March 6, 1984. 23 "Thomas Edison and Henry Ford Are Visitors Here," Bristol (Tennessee) Herald Courier, August 27, 1918, p. 3. "Ibid. K Ibid 26 "Ford Is Behind in Election Returns," Bristol (Tennessee) Herald Courier, August 28, 1918, p. 2. ""Thomas Edison and Henry Ford Are Visitors Here," toe. cit. "Ibid. "Ibid.; Muriel C. Spodon, Historical Sites of Sullivan County. Kingsport (Tennessee): Kingsport Press, 1976, p. 175. ""Interview with Walter C. Smith, Bristol, Tennessee, February 13, 1984. "Firestone, "Was There Ever Another Vacation Life This?," op. cit, p. 792. 32 "Edison, Ford, Firestone and Burroughs Visit Johnson City," Johnson City (Tennessee) Staff, August 27, 1918, p. 3. S3 Lester Hopper, "Five Wizards in the Wilds," Unpublished paper, courtesy of Archives, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. 193 �""Edison, Ford, Firestone and Burroughs Visit Johnson City," he. cit. "Ibid. K Ibid,: Interview with Mrs. Nat Copenhaver, Bristol, Tennessee, March 7, 1984. Mrs. Copenhaver, the daughter of Munsey Slack, the owner of the Johnson City Staff in 1918, has confirmed much of this account. She indicated that the dime given to her brother by Edison is still in the family's possession. "'"Edison, Ford, Firestone and Burroughs Visit Johnson City," he. cit. M "Ford and Edison Spend Night Here," Jonesborough (Tennessee) Herald and Tribune, August 29,1918, p. 1; Interview with Robert E. Lee, Johnson City, Tennessee, January 10, 1984. "'George Kelly, "Robert E. Himself Describes Big Event," Johnson City (Tennessee) Press-Chronicle, May 23,1956, p. 4; Interviews with Robert E. Lee, Johnson City, Tennessee, January 10 and February 2, 1984; "Ford Saws Wood With Robert E. Lee," Bristol (Tennessee) Herald Courier, August 30, 1918, p. 4. "Interview with Robert E. Lee, Johnson City, Tennessee, January 10, 1984. ""Mr. Edison Gives Advice to Jonesborough Boy," Johnson City (Tennessee) Staff, August 29,1918, p. 8; conversation with George deVault, Bristol, Tennessee, March 14,1984. Mr. DeVault, eight years old at the time of the visit, was brought to the Lee farm by his uncle, Sidney Murray, who was then major of Jonesborough. Although he saw the whole party, his visit was confined mostly to Thomas Edison. When brought to Edison, Edison put young George on his knee. The exchange between the two occurred but Edison's method of incubating eggs was changed from trying to hatch them using body heat to "settin' on them." "Interview with Robert E. Lee, Johnson City, Tennessee, January 10, 1984. "Letter from E. R. Walker, III, Newport, Tennessee, January 29,1984. Mr. Walker quotes Mrs. James Murray, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Mims, the proprietors of the hotel. ''"Thomas A. Edison, Henry Ford and Party Now Here," Asheville (North Carolina) Citizen, August 28,1918, p. 1; "Edison-Ford Party Left City Yesterday," Asheville (North Carolina) Citizen, August 29, 1918, p. 10. 194 �MOONSHINE AND BEYOND More Than Moonshine: Aspects of Mountain Cooking Sidney Fair; Berea College; Berea, KY A Touch of Mountain Dew: Art and History of Whiskey-Making in North Georgia Ray Rensi and Leo Downing; N. Georgia College; Dahlonega, GA A Touch of Mountain Dew: Art and History of Whiskey-Making in North Georgia by Ray Rensi and Leo Downing INTRODUCTION In order to understand the art of moonshining one must first examine the people involved. The two cannot be separated as the act of producing illicit whiskey is an extension of the values, beliefs and lifestyles of the moonshiner. Moonshiners are an individualistic people who believe they have the "right" to do whatever they choose with the product of their labor. Their cultural heritage is one of distrust and hatred of what they perceive as unwarranted government intrusion into their private affairs. However, in a mass society that demands conformity their days, and thus this occupation, seem to be ending. This study examines the practice of moonshining in northern Georgia and attempts to explain some of the reasons for its decline in the region. The study is presented in three sections. The first gives a brief historical review of the practice of moonshining in America. Only by examining the actions of their ancestors and what moonshining meant to them is it possible to understand the current moonshiner. The second section will detail the more common manufacturing methods used in making corn "likker." The third section offers several explanations for the most recent decline of moonshining in northern Georgia. The information and explanations put forth in the second and third sections were gathered from interviews with revenue agents, local law enforcement personnel, ex-moonshiners and some individuals still engaged in moonshining. The explanations offered by them are impossible to empirically verify, but should be viewed as the opinions and experiences of the best experts in the field. 195 �MOONSHINE AND MOONSHINERS Man's search for a good stiff drink seems to be as old as civilization itself. In fact, some historians refer to the manufacturing of alcohol as "the second oldest profession" (Carr: 1972). Until the discovery (or more probably the rediscovery) of the distillation process by mid-east alchemists professional technique was largely limited to the natural fermentation processes of various fruits and grains. Grapes and the art of winemaking were introduced to Europe by Phoenician traders through ancient Greece and Rome. A type of beer, produced from barley, was also introduced at approximately the same time. These drinks were well received by the populace and their method of manufacturing was spread throughout empires of both civilizations. While there remains considerable controversy over the exact discoverer of the distillation process, the knowledge seems to have been disseminated by mid-eastern alchemists. By the end of the eleventh century, most of Europe had some operating knowledge of the distillation process. (Kellner: 1971) The roots of north Georgia moonshining can be found in early Ireland and Scotland. Both societies made widespread use of the distillation process in the manufacture of whiskey from barley. The skills of both groups had advanced to a very high degree when, through the actions of King James I, they began to combine their skills. In 1610, in an attempt to solidify his control over Ulster (Northern Ireland) James I, through land grants, enticed thousands of Scots to emigrate and settle there. The new residents, though at political odds with the older occupants, exchanged their collective knowledge on the art of distillation. For more than thirty years, the manufacturing of whiskey was unhindered by any government intrusion. In 1642, Parliament ended this respite and imposed an excise tax on liquor. This tax evoked a considerable amount of hostility throughout Ireland and Scotland and, in order to escape the tax, led to the first illicit manufacture and distribution of whiskey. Public sentiment was so strong against the tax that government employees in charge of collecting the tax were openly subject to harrassment and even death in trying to discharge their duties. (Trevelyan: 1952) The Ulstermen (Scots-Irishmen) began to emigrate to America in large numbers beginning in 1717. This migration was largely motivated by the promises of freedom from government intrusion offered in the new land. Though there had been continuous resentment in Ulster against the government, several new restrictions on economic trade imposed on Ireland by England prompted the mass immigrations in the early eighteenth century. The migration continued until 1776 with an estimated 250,000-400,000 Ulstermen coming to America. Most settled in Pennsylvania and pushed down the Appalachian Mountain range. 196 �These new citizens brought with them both a love for whiskey and a dislike for "unnecessary" government intrusions or restrictions. They found the new land fulfilled these desires and developed a fierce loyalty toward it. When the Revoluntary War broke out, they fought bravely for the patriot cause and distinguished themselves in many battles, particularly at the Battle of Kings Mountain. After the war these patriots returned to their homes (and their stills) intending to reap the full benefits of freedom for which they had fought an oppressive English government. The rewards and benefits of the war were short lived as feelings of hostility and alienation from the new government began to emerge. The first problem involved a redrawing of the land possessions of Virginia and Pennsylvania. This shifting resulted in many backwoodsmen losing their homesteads or incumbering new heavy mortgages on their already "owned" property. The second, and the most significant development was the introduction of an excise tax on stills and distilled liquor. The tax was introduced by the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, as a means of eliminating the twenty-one million dollar war debt. This was seen as a tremendous burden for the frontiersmen because they had found new uses for their whiskey that greatly increased its importance to them. The pioneering spirit of this group usually put them at the forefront of the early migratory waves in this country. As a result of this they settled in some of the more "wild" mountain areas of Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. This isolation, though providing a bountiful food supply, cut them off from the trade centers of early America and created problems in transporting their crops to market for hard coin and necessities. They soon discovered that by first distilling their harvest into moonshine a pack mule (the only method of transporting goods available to them) could carry twenty-four bushels in liquid form compared to four to eight in raw form. Distilling thus became an economic necessity for many of them and the new excise tax was seen as a threat to their livelihood and survival. The tax became law on March 3, 1791 and not only required a tax to be paid on liquor, but provided for the payment of bounties to snitches who turned in an unregistered still. The reaction to the new tax was similar to the earlier excise tax imposed in Ireland. Revenue agents across the country were threatened, beaten and even "tarred and feathered." Tension built up over the new tax and finally erupted in the first case of open insurrection in this young country's history, referred to as the Whiskey Rebellion. (Hofstadter and Walace: 1970). The rebellion was instigated by the enforcement of the tax against a group of western Pennsylvanians. It was finally put down by an army of over 10,000 state militiamen from four states under the personal leadership of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton at a cost to the country of $1,500,000.00. In addition to creating a great deal of hostility, the excise tax and 197 �foreclosures in Pennsylvania resulted in a migration of the former Ulstermen and their descendants to more remote parts of the country. These pioneers pushed further south down the Appalachian Mountains and further west by way of the Cumberland Gap and Ohio River. These movements gave them some respite from government intrusion. However, it was not needed for very long as under the support of President Thomas Jefferson, Congress repealed the excise tax on June 30,1802. Other than a short three year return to the tax to pay off the debt from the War of 1812, the mountainmen were free from all government intrusion into their whiskey making until 1862. On July 1,1862, Congress passed legislation that created what would become the Internal Revenue Department and improvised taxes on a large number of various items including moonshine. A short time later, they provided for various agents to enforce the new system and prosecute violators. Due to the isolation of the moonshiners, the small number of agents and the large number of tax evaders it was difficult for agents to enforce the law. They often had to resort to snitches or entrapment techniques. Both methods of law enforcement did little to endear them to the general populace and resulted in increased isolationism and mistrust among the moonshiners. A type of respectful battle of wits continued for many years between the moonshiners and the revenuers until it finally escalated to a full blown war when National prohibition went into effect on October 28,1919. While doing little to curb the nation's thirst for alcohol, Probation was a blessing for moonshiners as the value of their wares increased by ten-fold overnight. Due to the increased demand for illicit alcohol and the riches available for those who could produce it a major change took place in moonshining. The production of moonshining went from a craft to an occupation. Unscrupulous men from various urban areas, with promises of riches, recruited moonshiners to work for them in the mass production of illicit whiskey. Emphasis was now placed on producing as much liquor as possible in the shortest period of time. These goals contradicted the laborious care taken by the old time moonshiners and so new techniques and additives were found to speed up the entire process. These changes often produced a harmful or even deadly alcoholic drink that paralyzed more than 15,000 people nationwide. (Dabney: 1974: 108). Various law enforcement agencies increased their enforcement efforts nationwide. However, because of the large amount of money at stake and the less than honorable men involved in the operation, it often resulted in a gun battle with casualties on both sides. The battle between the two forces was often glamorized in the accounts of the day with colorful stories of Al Capone and his battles with Eliot Ness. The glamorized battles were far removed from the rural moonshiners working under contracts for middlemen and go-betweens in organized crime. However, the effect on moon198 �shining art was dramatic, as the moonshiner's greed quickly stripped him and his occupation of any honor. The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 did not eliminate the market for illicit moonshine, but it did reduce its price considerably. Because of the availability of legal liquor on which excise taxes had been paid, the only way to meet the competition was to reduce the price of moonshine below legal liquor. This resulted in the end of the enormous profits and greatly reduced organized crimes' involvement in the moonshining industry. To fight this continual evasion of tax laws the Bureau of Internal Revenue created the Alcohol Tax Unit in 1934, which evolved into the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division of the IRS (taken over in 1973 by the Treasury Department). After the prohibition era, and still today, most of the larger moonshining operations (what few are left) are designed to produce quantities of cheap "rotgut" to the urban ghetto areas of major cities. These 'shiners are in the same mold as their Prohibition predecessors with little care or attention paid toward the quality of the product. An old adage in the business is, "This whiskey is made for selling, not drinking." Smaller operators or individuals sometimes attempt to ensure drinkability (not quality), but because of time restraints, cannot produce the same liquor as their ancestors. Generally run-ins with the law for both the small and large operations were limited to the transportation aspects of the business. Delivery men, referred to as "trippers," often engaged in high-speed chases with federal, state and local authorities in making their deliveries to urban centers from the rural manufacturing sites. However improvements in communications and transportation, along with increased cooperation between law enforcement agencies, has made the life of a tripper extremely harrowing and short-lived at best. Few remain in the business for long without being caught and once caught they are watched carefully, thus ending their illegal careers. THE MANUFACTURE OF CORN "LIKKER" The procedures used to produce moonshine can vary greatly from moonshiner to moonshiner depending upon the technology in use, the amount and type of spirits desired and the speed of manufacturing needed. The discussion that follows will detail the simple methods first employed as well as some of the more common variants of the trade. The first step in the process was in choosing a proper site for the procedure. The moonshiner had two important points to consider in making his decision; secrecy and water. Secrecy was needed, not only to protect the operation from the legal authorities, but also pirating neighbors who might steal his mash or his tubing. Fresh water was needed for both the 199 �mixing and tempering of the moonshine as well as a coolant for the condensation part of the distillation procedure. Soft branch water being the most desirable, moonshiners can often judge the quality of the water by examining the flora surrounding the branch. Red horsemint or yellowroot generally indicate good whiskey water, while touch-me-nots grow around unsuitable hard water. Another testing method is to fill a jar with water and shake well, then tilt it on its side. If air bubbles rise when it is tilted, then it's good water. The second step in moonshining involves the fermentation of the grain. It is through the fermentation process that the starches in the grain are broken down through enzyme action into sugars and then alcohol. In moonshining, the fermenting mixture is referred to as "mash." Mash is generally composed of grain (usually corn}, water, sugar and malt or yeast. The moonshiner selects the corn carefully and discards any discolored or mildewed grains. He then changes the starch of the corn into sugar obtaining what is called "corn malt." This is accomplished by wetting the unground corn with warm water and keeping it warm until it sprouts in four or five days. The sprouting process can be accelerated by burying the corn (in sacks) in a manure pile. The added warmth of the oxidation generally cuts the sprouting time in half. After the corn sprouts, it is dried and ground into a course meal called "chop." The chop is then mixed in mash barrels, usually made of poplar or oak, with the other ingredients used. If it is a straight chop and water mash (usually one bushel of sprouted corn to l/i barrel of water) then it could take as long as ten to fourteen days, depending on the temperature. If sugar is added, the time is cut to as little as three to four days. The addition of sugar also greatly increased the alcohol yield of the mix but would result in a change in flavor of the resulting whiskey. During the fermentation process, the barrels would be kept warm by burying them, packing them with straw or leaves or bringing them indoors. After several days of rolling and bubbling, the moonshiner would then thin out the mash by adding warm water and rye malt or yeast. This would then turn the "sour mash" into "sweet mash" for the purpose of distillation in a few more days. After the mash is fully fermented, it is a soupy yellow mixture with approximately a 10% alcohol content and is referred to as "still beer" or just beer. The beer mixture must be distilled in a short time or it will go sour. The third step in the manufacturing of moonshine is the distillation of the mash. It is through this method that the alcohol is separated from the mash and other impurities. The distillation of mash is accomplished in three stages. First, the mash is heated, then the alcohol is vaporized, removed, and finally condensed. The distillation process can be used to separate the alcohol from the mash because the boiling point of alcohol is 176 °F, while water boils at 212 °F. Thus by heating the mash to 176°, 200 �the alcohol would be vaporized and the water and other impurities left behind. The distillation process took place in what is referred to as a still. Though there are many variations on the exact structure, all stills consist largely of a heating drum or cooking pot, a neck for carrying the vapors away from the pot and a worm (copper tubing) for the cooling of the vapors. The distillation procedure (referred to as making a run) would begin by straining the fermented mash through a cloth or bedsheet and into the cooking pot. The cooking pot was usually a copper container often shaped like a large kettle with a round lid and long spout. Heat would be applied to the container to heat the mash to 176 °F. Once the mash begins to cook the lid would be put on and sealed with a paste of flour and water. The cooking is done at a constant even heat as the mash cannot cook too fast or too slowly. When the alcohol begins to vaporize, the only place for it to go is into the long spout where it is carried into the worm. The worm is a long system of tubing (usually copper) that is either placed in a container of cold water or has cold water running over it to cool the vapors from the cooking mash. The condensation is then collected in a container for another run. The first run of the mash is called "singling" and produces a murky whiskey full of impurities and excess water. To remove these, the moonshiner would repeat the distillation process on the liquid, this run is referred to as the "doubling run". Before the doubling run could be initiated, the moonshiner would have to thoroughly clean the still and all of the connections to remove any sour odors. The doubling run was made slower than the first and at a lower temperature to insure the removal of as many impurities as possible. Many moonshiners eliminated the need for a doubling run by using what is known as a "thumper keg". This thumper keg was situated between the cooking pot and the condensing worm. The vapor from the cooking pot would be forced into the bottom of the thumper keg, which was half filled with beer. The vapor would rise through the beer and exit the keg at the top through a connecting pipe and enter the worm for cooling. This process of filtering the vapors through the beer removes almost as much of the impurities as the doubling run. The final end product of the doubling run (or thumper-keg run) ranged from as high as 190 proof (at the beginning of the run) to a low of 70 proof (toward the end of a run) and now had to be mixed with branch water for the desired consistency. Some moonshiners would also age their whiskey hi charred oak barrels (bourbon) or by adding ground charcoal or hickory chips. Unless the whiskey was for personal consumption, the aging of the brew was generally kept to a minimum. 201 �THE DECLINE As discussed earlier, the art of moonshining declined considerably during the Prohibition era. Greed and expediency replaced the pride and care that formerly was taken in manufacturing whiskey as the quantity of the liquor produced began to matter more than the quality. However, even after the decline in craftsmenship, the moonshiners in the hills of northern Georgia continued to ply their trade, producing huge quantities of illicit whiskey. As late as the mid 1960's Dawson and Lumpkin counties were considered to be the major producers of moonshine not only in the state of Georgia but nationwide. (Dabney: 1974). According to local law enforcement officials, ex-moonshiners and current moonshiners three major developments have led to the recent decline and possibly the eventual demise of moonshining in these areas. They are: (1) The drastic increase in cost of the raw materials needed to manufacture moonshine (2) the introduction of marijuana and other drugs as an alternative cash crop and (3) the encroachment of civilization on even the most remote areas of southern Appalachia. Because profit is now the primary motive in moonshining the first two factors combine to draw the greedy quick-buck moonshiner into other areas of exploitation. Over the last twenty years the cost of sugar and copper has risen so dramatically that the moonshiner must now charge a price for his product that is comparable to legal liquor. With most of the northern counties in Georgia having gone "wet" in recent years store brands are available to most of the population. Thus competition with "legal" liquor has forced the price down to such a degree that the profit is minimal. With the large federal crackdown on drugs in Florida a considerable amount of drug traffic has moved into the hills of northern Georgia. (Newsweek: 1982). Backwoodsmen who formerly used secluded areas to run moonshine are now using these areas to grow marijuana or as landing strips for drug deliveries. According to local Georgia Bureau of Investigation officers, small planes equipped with bladder bags of fuel fly in from several Central American countries loaded with drugs (usually cocaine) and unload their cargo in secluded mountain airstrips. Drug trafficking is far more profitable than moonshining as a recent load of cocaine discovered in Gilmer County was valued at $500,000,000 with a possible street value of 1.5 billion dollars after being properly (or improperly) cut. The enormous profits to be gained from drug operations has drawn many shiners away from their traditional stills despite the potentially harsher penalties. The final major development that is bringing about the end of moonshining, and probably the biggest factor, is the encroachment of civiliza202 �tion. Increased development has been spearheaded by the large population increases in many of the rural areas. Much of the increase is a result of the migration of "northerners" and Floridians into the area. These groups have not been exposed to the tradition of moonshining and so do not view it as an acceptable livelihood. They have also had the influence of relaxing many of the prohibitions regarding lawful liquor sales thus increasing competition for the moonshiners. These new residents are also less tolerant of "good-old-boy" law enforcement techniques which often allowed many of the shiners to engage in their work unhindered by the threat of arrest. The large influx of new people has resulted in the intrusion of building developments into many remote areas. These new developments have also brought about the improvement of transportation methods to gain access to these communities. All of which are limiting the amount of secluded land for moonshine operations. These aforementioned factors have contributed to a sense of hostility between many of the "locals" and the new "fornerrs". While moonshining has declined considerably in recent years, (only 2,477 gallons were confiscated by law enforcement officials in 1980) it has not disappeared totally from the scene. Many local families run a small still for their own personal consumption. Local law enforcement officials are usually aware of most of them and leave them alone as long as it doesn't develop into a "business". As one Dawson county deputy told me, "How can I arrest them folks for what I used to do when I was younger?" This attitude of tolerance and empathy is still very widespread amongst the local populace. Most feel that as long as you're not hurting anyone what you do is your business and no one else's. This individualism is a reflection of the attitudes of their pioneering ancestors that led them to settle in such remote areas to begin with. Unfortunately for them there are no new frontiers to retreat to and the onslaught of the "civilized" world is upon them. REFERENCES Carr, Jess, The Second Oldest Profession. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1972 Coulter, E. Merton, Georgia: A Short History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1933 Dabney, Joseph, Mountain Spirits. Lakemont, Georgia: Copple House Books, Inc., 1974 Hofstadter, Richard and Michael Wallace, American Violence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1970 Kellner, Esther, Moonshine: Its History and Folklore. New York: Weathervane Books, 1971 203 �Morgan, Edmund, The Birth of the Republic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956 Newsweek, "Gun, Grass and Money: America's Billion-Dollar Marijuana Crop". October 25, 1982, pp. 36-43. Powell, Levi, Who Are These Mountain People. New York; Exposition Press, 1966 Randolph, Vance, The Ozarks. New York; The Vanguard Press, 1931 Trevelyan, G. M., History of England: The Tudors and the Stuart Era. Garden City, New York; Doubleday Anchor Books, 1952 Whitelock, Dorothy, The Beginning of English Society. Baltimore, Maryland; Penguin Books, 1966 Wildson, Charles, Backwoods America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935 Wiltse, Henry, The Moonshiners, Chattanooga, Tennessee: Times Printing Company, 1895 204 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publications Description An account of the resource This collection contains digitized monographs and collections from the Appalachian Consortium Press. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Date Issued Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource. June 1, 2017 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource <a title="Digital Scholarship and Initiatives" href="http://library.appstate.edu/services/digital-scholarship-and-initiatives" target="_blank">Digital Scholarship and Initiatives</a> Publication URL https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636849/the-many-faces-of-appalachia/ Digital Publisher Digital Republication Appalachian State University Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Many Faces of Appalachia Description An account of the resource This volume of the <em>Proceedings of the 7th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference</em>, held in 1985 at Unicoi State Park in Helen, Georgia, offers a look at diversity and Appalachian identity.<br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KjQG06V6sK7ivoDercDfeSksmOJGW_fS" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636849/the-many-faces-of-appalachia/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UNC Press Print on Demand</a> Subject The topic of the resource Appalachian Region--Congresses Cultural pluralism--Appalachian Region Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Proceedings of the 7th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference Abstract A summary of the resource. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gray, Sam Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1985 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Conference proceedings Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/4199921/helen.html Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant ||||osm Helen (Ga.) Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1980s Multidisciplinary/ Appalachian Studies https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/beafb32509e8b140c2efb2de8953c3ab.pdf 089eb0bccb65d660784e854a83cf70d9 PDF Text Text �CONTEMPORARY APPALACHIA: IN SEARCH OF A USABLE PAST Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Appalachian Studies Conference Edited by: CARL ROSS Managing Editor: JANE SHOOK �The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From 1973 to 2004, its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program, Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press. www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Original copyright © 1987 by the Appalachian Consortium Press. ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-3678-8 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-3680-1 Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press www.uncpress.org �Table of Contents INTRODUCTION, Carl Ross 1 KEYNOTE SPEAKER, Ron Ella 3 I. GENDER ROLES IN APPALACHIA Comfort in Confinement: Gender Roles in the Old Regular Baptist Church, Howard Dorgan 11 II. APPALACHIAN STUDIES STUDENTS Appalachian Studies And The Native Student: Resource Or Refuge?, Ricky Cox 21 Dialect Effects In Appalachian Students' Written Composition, 27 Becky Eller Old Catawbans and "Mountain Grill": The Appalachian in Thomas Wolfe's Short Stories, Sally Bruce 37 III. CREATIVE READINGS The Loom House, "The Apprentice," "A Spinner in Her Hundredth Year," Bennie Sinclair 49 IV. FEDERAL IMPACT Appalachia's Path To Welfare Dependency, Paul Salstrom 56 V. ENVIRONMENT Past Commitments, Current Problems, And Future Choices: Water Use In Appalachia, Dennis Soden 65 VI. OLD FURNITURE—NEW ROOMS: THE POETICS OF SPACE IN APPALACHIAN LITERATURE Divine Right And The Red Tent, Parks Lanier 83 FOLK MUSIC: SURVIVAL AND REVIVAL Fiddling in the Poconos: Survival or Revival?, John McLaughlin 90 VII. �VIII. SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN FOLK ARTISTS The Frank Proffitt Family—Watauga Folk Artists "Gone Across The Mountains, O Fare You Well," Betsy Covington99 IX. COLLECTIONS AND EXHIBITING Somewhere Over Beech Mountain: Contemporary Appalachian Artifacts And The Land Of Oz, Charles Watkins 106 �1986 PROGRAM COMMITTEE Carl Ross, Chair Patricia Beaver Laura Binder Richard Blaustein Barry Buxton Clay Estepp Mike Kline Parks Lanier Ruby Lanier Gordon McKinney Mike Mullins Karl Raitz Helen Roseberry James Sessions Jim Stone �This page intentionally left blank �Introduction The Appalachian Studies Association was formed in 1977 by scholars, teachers and regional activists who believed that a shared community of ideas and interests had been and would continue to be important for those writing, researching and teaching about things Appalachian. The first Appalachian Studies Conference was held at Berea, Kentucky in March of 1978. We have learned much since that first conference. We now more fully realize how dynamic Appalachian society has always been. Today, we can see that there has long been a reciprocal interaction between the Appalachian region and the larger American society. All of us make judgements and decisions based on what has gone before. The better our understanding of these past events, the more we are able to act with intelligence and sensitivity in the present. No one can understand his society without a comprehension of its evolution. Understanding our past will not always explain everything we want to know about our current state of affairs, but it can help us to make sense out of many matters which are otherwise bewildering and remind us that although we live in a complex era, previous generations have confronted equal complexities. Knowledge of the past can be a source of consolation in a bewildering world. We must be careful not to accept present institutions and policies as the best and wisest, but neither should we reject them out of hand. By drawing upon the perspectives of the past, we can approach the present with greater sensitivity. Conversely, we will never understand our present or be able to deal with the future unless we can in some way make sense of our past, learn its lessons, and use that knowledge to shape our future. The 1986 Program Committee chose to direct its attention to contemporary Appalachia and to focus on our search for a usable past. In doing so, we affirmed our belief that a better understanding of our past will enhance our sense of identity, show that we are products of our own culture, enable us to learn from our past, understand our present, and shape our future. The papers included in this publication are a representative sampling of those presented at the conference. Budgetary and editorial considerations precluded the inclusion of many other papers. It is our hope that this volume will contribute to a wider understanding of our region. Carl A. Ross, Chair 1986 Program Committee 1 �This page intentionally left blank �The Search For Community In Appalachia by Ron D. Eller University of Kentucky The mountains have much to share with the rest of the country. The story of the mountains is the story of the nation writ small. It is the story of man's relationship to the land, of man's relationship to man—exploitation, racism, sexism, conflict, despair, pride, and triumph. It is the story of democratic people struggling with mass culture, mass thinking, capitalism, and individualism. In recent years we Americans generally have expressed growing concern about the decline of "community" in our land. Such diverse writers as Simone Weil, Christopher Lasch, Peter Berger, Wendell Barry, and a host of others have lamented the individualizing tendencies of modern culture and have called for a revival of community structures that once provided the safety net for most Americans.1 The "Roots" phenomenon of the 1970s reflected as much a desire for conectedness in our present lives as it did a desire to rediscover our ancestors. Recently, Robert Bellah and his associates have renewed the debate over our national character with their best seller, Habits of the Heart.2 We in Appalachian studies should be doubly interested in this debate since the search for community has been central to our work in the region for many years. No theme has been stronger in our literature than the effort to understand the Appalachian character and to explain the nature of the mountain community. If we agree with John Stephenson that Appalachian studies is as much a social movement as an academic enterprise, then that movement itself emerged out of our collective concern for the survival of the mountain community.3 From another perspective, it is our common search for roots and for meaningful relationships in a rootless society that brings us all together as the Appalachian studies community. Certainly, no aspect of mountain life has been so frequently studied and yet so misunderstood and maligned as "community." In fact, for over a hundred years observers of mountain life have denied the existence of "community" altogether in our region. Emma Bell Miles, who was otherwise a perspective observer, wrote in 1905 that "there is no such thing as a community of mountaineers. They are knit together, man to man, as friends, but not as a body of men "4 Writers from that time to the present—including Horace Kephart, Samuel Tyndale Wilson, 3 �James Watt Raine, Jack Weller, Rupert Vance, Thomas R. Ford, and many others—have continued that traditionals view. Jack Weller summarized their attitudes: he wrote in 1965 that the mountaineers "have no community life as such or life outside their very limited family group They are virtually impossible to organize into groups and are traditionalistic in the extreme."5 Given this perceived absence of community, John C. Campbell concluded that the dominant trait of the mountaineer was independence, "independence raised to the fourth power Heredity and environment," he wrote, "have conspired to make (the mountaineer) an extreme individualist."6 Campbell devoted an entire chapter in his classic book to the individualism of the Southern highlanders, and almost every writer since has found individualism to be one of the most powerful, definable traits of "mountain character." According to this received vision, the mountaineer is the extreme individualist who cares nothing for cooperation and has no commitment to community beyond what he can get out of it for himself. This notion of mountain individualism has provided grist for the theoretical mill of those who would see the region as uncivilized, backward, barbaric or degenerate. It has become the popular symbol of the mountaineer in cartoons and the media and has been used to explain everything from labor violence to poor health. In fact, the origins of this individualistic image are deeply rooted in the "idea of Appalachia" itself and lie entwined in the work of turn of the century writers who associated individualism with the passing frontier and community with the progressive and civilizing forces of modern, urban life. Campbell, for example, drew his accounts of the early history of Appalachia from the work of Theodore Roosevelt and Frederick Jackson Turner, men who believed that the frontier had been an individualizing experience, one which had given rise to the great independent spirit of American democracy.7 More recent historians, however, have all but turned the "Frontier Thesis" on its head and have pointed to the persistence of community in the westward movement rather than to settlement by independent pioneers. Far from being extreme individualists forced to adapt to a harsh environment, the early frontiersmen were more likely to be part of an extended community of interdependent families, and by practicing communal and cooperative efforts they were able not only to survive but to flourish. Contemporary scholars associate the rise of individualism with the growth of capitalism and modernization, not with the persistence of the frontier.8 Unfortunately this scholarship has had little effect upon Appalachian studies, and the communal heritage in the mountain character has been all but lost to our collective memory. Research into the nature of the mountain community, therefore, would undoubtedly reveal a split tradition. In Appalachia, like the rest of 4 �the country, individualism and commitment have both been part of our common heritage. As Robert Bellah and others have argued, Americans have always spoken a dual language—one rooted in images of radical individualism, private achievement, personal consumption, and individual success; the other in images of civic responsibility, social equality, public virtue, and commitment. This second, public language was central to the republican tradition that dominated the early years of our history, while the voice of individualism emerged to dominate the cultural revolution that accompanied the rise of modern capitalism.9 Many contemporary observers of American society believe that this first language of individualism has so displaced our second language of civic virtue that it is undermining our capacity for commitment to one another and threatens the very fiber of our democratic life. "Almost all Americans in the 1980s," writes Harry Boyte, "have experienced some form of wrenching detachment from the communal settings that might nourish a deep and continuous sense of what it means to be an American."10 Expressive individualism, these critics believe, not only saps us of the connectedness necessary for personal identity, but it weakens the social values of cooperation and responsibility necessary for a democratic society. Individualism separates us from the society around us and causes us to forget our ancestors, to forget our traditions, and to imagine that our whole destiny is in our own hands. We live for the present, lack concern for the well-being of others, and base our actions upon how we feel at the moment because we have little understanding of how others before us have acted. Like Jim Wayne Miller's Brier, "we don't know any more about our history than a dog knows his daddy We try to live in somebody else's house (We're) educated, don't believe in nothing."11 But we in Appalachia do profess to believe in something—in our land, in our families, in our traditions, in our God, and in our sense of social justice. Perhaps that is why Appalachian studies has been throughout its history a challenge to the cultural hegemony of modern American life. It allows us to believe that we are doing more with our lives than just serving ourselves. Some of us have focused our challenge to modernism on political and economic relationships that have left our region exploited and impoverished. Others have focused criticism on the loss of certain moral values or on the modern restraints to self-expression and identity. As a result of these diverse responses to modernism, we in Appalachian studies used to divide ourselves into the "action folk" (politically oriented people) and the "creative folk" (literary and artistic people), as if knowledge, creativity, and politics were somehow separable.12 But politics and culture are part of the same whole, and any effort to change economic conditions must be considered within a cultural context. We are all engaged in the search for purpose in our lives, in the search for rootedness that gives meaning to our work. 5 �Roots, however, don't exist in a singular vacuum; they require commitment to others—an interconnectedness that gives life to the whole. Thus, the challenge is not simply to abandon our first language in favor of the second, our private world in favor of the public sphere, but to reorient our individual lives for the benefit of the community as a whole. Our pioneer ancestors placed a high value on self-reliance, but that selfreliance had a clearly collective context. It was as a people that they acted independently and a self-reliantly. With the rise of modernism the collective note was muted and our primary obligation has come to be to ourselves. The differences which divide us in Appalachian studies today, therefore, may have less to do with action-seeking vs. creativity than with the reasons for our involvement with this work itself and the level of our commitment to personal and collective goals. But how do we nourish the collective spirit? For us in the mountains to renew our communities and build a more just and equitable future for our children will require a new commitment and a fundamental realignment of our values. As we have learned in recent years, Appalachia will not be rescued from the outside, whether by the federal government or the private sector. Renewal must begin from within, with the revitalization of communities and of the spirit of self-help and civic virtue. The recovery of community will require that we move beyond a defensive reaction against the things which threaten us and assume a positive initiative to create a new cultural context for democratic change. Such an initiative requires that we relearn old skills and acquire new perspectives: how to talk to each other, how to share with each other, how to recover collective memories, how to discern common values out of diverse traditions, and how to connect personal troubles with social issues.13 Central to this process is the restoration of our collective memory. As is true with most social movements, the first step to collective consciousness is the recovery of those common experiences and customs which grant dignity to the individual and an alternative view of the prevailing culture. Martin Luther King recognized the importance of historical memory to the civil rights movement and encouraged his followers not only to recover the lost history of blacks in America, but also to recover the lost meaning of democracy as well. For King the civil rights movement was "not only directed at the transformation of unjust structures; it was also a school for citizenship through which ordinary men and women would acquire "a new sense of somebodyness."14 Having an understanding of how others before us have acted gives us the confidence to make decisions in the present, to create out of traditions for the past new visions for the future. Robert Bellah consideres historical memory to be essential to community: 6 �Communities... have a history—in an important sense they are constituted by their past—and for this reason we can speak of a real community as a "community of memory," one that does not forget its past. In order not to forget that past, a community is involved in retelling its story, its constitutive narrative, and in so doing, it offers examples of the men and women who have embodied and exemplified the meaning of the community.15 We in Appalachian studies have made great strides in the recovery of our collective memory, but we have far to go in beginning to share that memory with ordinary men and women in the region. Modern culture, with its emphasis on change, has a way of robbing us of historical memory. Appalachians have been especially victimized by that tendency, and until we do a better job recovering and retelling our history, we will be unable to recognize and evaluate the alternative social visions that have existed within our past. Only then can we hope to develop an Appalachian conception of the meaning of a good life and thus an alternative vision for the future. Recovering our collective memory will also help us to learn once again to talk to each other, to share with each other, and to discern our common values. As the oral history students of the 1970's learned, recording the oral traditions of their neighbors required more than mechanical skills. It taught them how to communicate and how to listen, how to think across time, and how to relate the lives of individuals to the larger social order. Above all it gave them insight into the lives of the men and women who sustained them. In the process, they became tied to that community of memory themselves. Renewing our individual ties to our communities of memory is a further step toward building active, democratic citizenship. Classical republicanism evoked an image of the active citizen contributing to the public good, and this, notes Bellah, requires us to see the individual within the context of the larger community rather than seeing the "self" as "the only or main form of reality."16 Remembering our heritage involves accepting our origins—including the painful memories of prejudice, poverty, and exploitation that the pressures to modernize have attempted to deny. Accepting these painful memories is often the wellspring for social consciousness. Thus leaving behind one kind of individualism, Bellah suggests, will help us acquire a new civic individualism, that entails care for the affairs of the community and a new definition of the relationship of individuals to society. Let us take, for example, the meaning of work in our modern world. How does the way that we define work affect our relationship to community? How does the way in which we in Appalachian studies define our 7 �roles as scholars, teachers, and activists affect our ability to relate to mountain communities and mountain people? When I was growing up, I was encouraged to "make something of myself" by moving beyond my raising, beyond my family and the cultural community of which I was a part. Success was defined by my teachers as moving up the economic and social ladder, escaping the hillbilly world of "yesterday's people." Education became the utilitarian route to getting a job, and work became simply a way of making money and achieving personal success. Gone from this modern, individualistic notion of work is the older sense of work as a "calling," wherein one's work was morally inseparable from the needs of the community. In pre-industrial mountain communities, work was a moral relationship between people not just a source of material or personal reward. The work of each person contributed to the good of the whole, and the success of that work was judged by its contribution to the success of the community rather than what the individual could get out of it. I wonder to what extent those of us in Appalachian studies today feel this sense of our work as commitment to that larger community which we profess to study or to what extent we simply use that community to further our own careers and institutional goals or to test our most recent intellectual theory. Is our work in Appalachian studies defined in terms of self-fulfillment or in terms of its contribution to the common good? If we are to be about the business of nourishing community in our society, we must be more than just a gathering of like-minded individuals whose union depends entirely on spontaneous interest. We must carry a shared sense of civic virtue and committed citizenry into our classrooms and into the communities in which we live and work. We must recognize the many forms of community that still survive in the mountains and support their efforts to bring dignity and meaning to the lives of mountain people: volunteer fire departments, religious organizations, self-help societies, neighborhood associations, reform groups and other associations up and down the ridge which sustain public vitality and the egalitarian spirit. Such associations challenge people to think of themselves as a community—giving, sharing, cooperating,—and they provide living demonstrations of democracy at work.17 As for ourselves, we must live out our own understanding of community and bring knowledge and action together in the fulfillment of our professed beliefs. If Appalachian studies is to continue to fulfill its origins as a social movement, it must sustain the power to galvanize widespread political action for reforms of the structures that threaten mountain communities. This means the revival in our own minds of the old Jeffersonian, republican notion of democratic citizenship which requires the active participation of the individual in the political life of the whole. Commitment to community requires both servanthood and servant lead- 8 �ership, and public virtue necessitates politcal action to right the wrongs created by the excessive exercise of private power. We who profess to believe in Appalachia must work beside our brothers and sisters in the base communities of the region to support their struggles for democracy, jobs, and a better quality of life. We serve only ourselves if we study mountain culture, write mountain history, evaluate mountain conditions without applying that knowledge to the living community and using it to shape an alternative future. Rebuilding the community will, finally, require more from us in the future than we have provided in the past. It will mean above all that we take seriously the challenge to provide a vision of what things might become in the mountains and in the larger society. It has often been said that we in Appalachian studies have a better idea of what we are against than of what we are for. We have been quick to react to specific threats and issues, but we have been slower to build a collective vision of what life in Appalachia might become. Martin Luther King recognized the importance of vision and dreams to his people, and he constantly reminded them of that dream. King knew the meaning of that verse in Proverbs: "Where there is no vision, the people perish."18 We might add that where there are no visionaries, the dreams perish as well. Building a vision of an alternative future based on strong community ties will require a new kind of thinking, a new kind of mind for Americans whose culture has been so strongly shaped by modern individualism. Yet we may have within our own mountain traditions the roots from which new spiritual values may arise: ethics of respect, hard work, family, self-reliance, personal dignity, tolerance, fairness, cooperation, and democracy. Our task is to fashion these strands of individualism and community into a practical ideology that is appropriate for a new era. Eudora Welty once observed, "One place comprehended can make us understand other places better. Sense of place gives equilibrium; extended, it is sense of direction."19 Pehaps the search for community in Appalachia may provide a sense of direction for the rebuilding of community in America. ENDNOTES 1. Simone Weil, The Need For Roots, trans. Arthur Wills (New York: Putnam, 1952); Christopher Lasch, "Mass Culture Reconsidered," in Democracy (October 1981); Peter Berger, Facing Up To Modernity: Excursions Into Society, Politics and Religion (New York: Basic, 1977); Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (New York: Avon Books, 1978). See also Kirkpatrick Sale, Human Scale (New York: Putnam, 1980). 9 �2. Robert N. Bellah, et. al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 3. See John Stephenson, "Politics and Scholarship: Appalachian Studies Enter the 1980's," Appalachian Journal, Vol. 9, Nos. 2 &. 3 (Winter-Spring 1982), pp. 97-104. 4. Emma Bell Miles, The Spirit of the Mountains (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1975), p.71. 5. Jack Weller, Yesterday's People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965), p. 88. 6. John C. Campbell, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1969), p. 91. 7. See for example, Campbell, The Southern Highlander, pp. 93-94. 8. See for example, Berger, Facing Up To Modernity; Rowland Berthoff, "Peasants and Artisans, Purtians and Republicans," journal of American History, 69 (Winter, 1982); Craig Calhoun, "The Radicalism of Tradition: Community Strength or Venerable Disguise and Borrowed Language," The American Journal of Sociology, 88 (March 1983); and John Kasson, Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America (New York: Penguin, 1977). 9. Bellah et. al., Habits of the Heart, pp. 27-35 &. 142-144. 10. Harry C. Boyte, Community is Possible: Repairing America's Roots (New York: Harper and Row, 1984) p. 31. 11. Jim Wayne Miller, "Brier Sermon: You Must Be Born Again" in The Mountains Have Come Closer (Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1980). 12. See discussions of this "division" in essays included in "Assessing Appalachian Studies," Appalachian Journal, Vol. 9, Nos. 2 &. 3 (Winter-Spring 1982). 13. Boyte, Community Is Possible, p. 11. 14. Boyte, Community Is Possible, p. 217. 15. Bellah et. al., Habits of the Heart, p. 153. 16. Bellah et. al., Habits of the Heart, p. 143. 17. See on this subject the work of Harry Boyte and Sara Evans, Free Spaces: The Sources of Democratic Change in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1986) and Gar Alperovttz andjeff Faux, Rebuilding America (New York: Pantheon, 1984). 18. Proverbs 29:18. 19. Quoted in C. Vann Woodward, "District of Devils," The New York Review (October 10, 1985), p. 30. 10 �GENDER ROLES IN APPALACHIA Convenor: Alice Matthews, Western Carolina University Comfort in Confinement: Gender Roles In The Old Regular Baptist Church Howard Dorgan, Appalachian State University The Status Of The Study Of Appalachian Women Kim Duckett, Appalachian State University The Gender Specific Class Consciousness of Appalachian Coalminers: An Initial Exploration Mike Yarrow, Ithaca College Comfort In Confinement: Gender Roles In The Old Regular Baptist Church by Howard Dorgan Outside of Amish and Mennonite communities, it will be difficult to find American social orders in which gender roles are more absolute than they sometimes are in Old Regular Baptist congregations. In many of these fellowships, highly traditional models for male/female behavior, forged for the most part from Pauline biblical mandates, stand as the socially accepted paradigms for conduct in dress, speech, involvement in church governance, physical appearances, and family relationships. The result is a set of gender codes that are exceptionally confining, but which provide a few comforts in that confinement. This paper first examines some gender-role-related actions taken in recent annual meetings of the Sardis Association of Old Regular Baptist, the Church of Jesus Christ, and the Union Association of Old Regular Baptists of Jesus Christ, actions relative to dress and hair styles permissible for women of this Baptist sect. Then examination is made of certain biblical passages employed by Old Regulars as justification for their gender codes. Next, the theme "Comfort in Confinement" is briefly explored, followed by a discussion of "cracks in the tablets," preliminary indications that even in these highly traditional fellowships some women are beginning to demand at least a small degree of liberation. 11 �Sardis and Union Association Actions, 1975, 1979, 1982, and 1983 The Sardis and Union Associations, two of six such confederations of Old Regular fellowships operating in the Appalachian region1, are composed of twenty-nine and sixty-seven churches respectively, scattered all the way from Michigan to Florida, but located primarily in western Virginia and eastern Kentucky. These fellowships exist as some of the most "old time way" religious communities in the Southern Appalachian region, preserving customs that mirror values and beliefs of the midnineteenth century. Old Regular association meetings are held each year and are governed by a moderator and assistant moderator, a clerk and assistant clerk, and three delegates for each member fellowship. The role of these annual sessions is to deliberate all matters of association governance, including such behavioral codes as might be applicable to members of the affiliated fellowships. In 1975, 1979, 1982, and 1983 the Sardis and Union Associations debated two topics relevant to the issue of gender roles in these traditional Southern Appalachian religious communities: (1) the manner of dress acceptable for women members of these fellowships, and (2) permissible hair lengths for both male and female members. The first of these issues, the proper dress for women, has been a thorny question for years in both the Sardis and Union associations, with some member churches holding to more traditional practices than those followed by other congregations. Within the Sardis group of churches, the dispute reached a peak in 1975 when one of the more conservative fellowships, Dix Fork Church of Sidney, Kentucky, introduced the following query during that year's session: "Does the Sardis Association believe in Sisters wearing pants, slacks, or shorts?"2 As is usually the case in such circumstances, the Dix Fork query was first referred to a special committee, with instruction that these individuals advise the rest of the delegates as to what action should be taken. The committee in question, however, refused to recommend an absolute position, and instead threw the matter back in the hands of the individual churches: 12 �Dingess, W.Va. September 13, 1975 Sardis Association of Old Regular Baptists Brethren: In answer to the Query from the Dix Fork Church asking "Does the Sardis Association believe in Sisters wearing pants, slacks or shorts?" We as an Advisory Council and not as a law making body say: To answer this Query in the affirmative would be interpreted by some Brethren too liberally and they would say we have laid down the gate and opened the doors to anything and everything. To answer this Query in the negative would be interpreted by some Brethren too strictly and they would say we have shut the door on everything and Committees would flow from Church to Church like water. We believe the Sardis Association should advise the Churches to advise their members—both Brethren and Sisters—to dress soberly and modestly and to conduct themselves in a manner that becometh a Child of God. We believe that each Child of God will adorn themselves in such a manner that they can easily be identified from the World. We feel the Bible, the infallible Word of God, sets forth and the Spirit will teach us how we should dress and conduct ourselves. We believe, and the Association has so stated in the past, that each Church in the Sardis Association holds the key to its own door and is the sole judge of the conduct of its members as long as they follow the orthodox principles of religion and keep up a Godly discipline according to the rules of the Gospel as laid down in the Scriptures. In fact, Article 3 of our 13 �Constitution guarantees that the Association shall not infringe on any internal right to the Churches. Elder Wayne Herald Brother Ralph W. E. Varney, Jr. Brother James M. Ray3 Thus, this committee advised the association not to take any action on this question but instead to allow individual churches to institute their own dress codes for female members. The "holds the key to its own door" language is very traditional in Old Regular rhetoric and always means that the individual fellowship retains the right to decide whom to include in their membership and whom to exclude. Obviously in this instance, the standard for inclusion is proper dress, and the local church is given the right to set and enforce that standard. In the 1975 debate, the Sardis Association simply accepted the special committee's report and took no further action, thus leaving the matter in the hands of local congregations. This 1975 action, however, did not settle the issue, and the more conservative churches in the association have continued to push for an absolute code for the entire Sardis body. The result has been that twice in recent years (1982 and 1983) the session delegates have voted to republish the special committee's response to the Dix Fork query.4 Essentially the same dispute has erupted in the Union Association of Old Regulars. In 1979 the Little Martha congregation of Leemaster, Virginia, requested that their fellow Union Old Regular churches join them in the adoption of a rigid code for both dress and hair lengths. The Little Martha group made their request by placing the following proposal before the Union delegates: We the Little Martha Church of Old Regular Baptist of Jesus Christ... send a request to the Union Association not to allow Sisters to wear pants or pantsuits. We ask them to be as our Sisters of Old, only to be worn as for safety, or if they are working on a job that require them to be worn. Even at this they should be worn loose not in a way to show their bodies in an ungodly manner. We also ask that Brothers and Sisters not to wear Bathing suits or shorts for any reason, also ask the Brothers not to wear their hair long enough that it might be an offense to another Brother or Sister. We are asking that all Moderators advise their Churches that if any Brother or Sister is guilty of the above that they be advised to stop such practice and if they refuse to do so that they be excluded, until such time that they have stopped such 14 �practice, then the Church from which they were excluded may restore them to full fellowship. We the Little Martha Church is sending this request not to tear the Churches apart, but to try to unite them into full fellowship with each other to be united as one. Signed by Order of the Church Elder John C. Layne, Moderator Elder Russell Hicks, Assistant Moderator Brother Hufford Coleman, Clerk5 By a vote of one hundred and thirty-one to fifty-three the Little Martha request was denied, but the fifty-three votes in support of the motion indicate that approximately twenty-nine percent of the delegates favored very rigid dress and hair style code for Old Regular women. However, had the vote been exclusively on length of hair the support would have been much greater: In both the Sardis and the Union Associations there is broad agreement that women should not cut their hair and that men should do just the opposite. For example, the Sardis Association reaffirmed its position on hair lengths for women in 1982 and again in 1983, passing a resolution that is not open to a wide range of interpretations: "The Association, by regular move and second, said that if a Sister cut her hair, she should be asked to let it grow out; if she fails to do so and cuts her hair again, she will be excluded."6 To be "excluded" means to be removed from membership in the congregation. The judgement carries with it factors of social ostracism that may become quite severe, depending upon the community involved. Nevertheless, the punishment is usually not as harsh as apparently "shunning" is within Amish communities, and does not include, for example, the mandate that the excluded individual never be addressed by any conforming and legitimate member of the fellowship.7 A major problem, however, relative to enforcement of the no-cutting mandate is that the rule must be interpreted. Is it permissible, for example, simply to trim one's hair—to keep the ends even and neat? Is shoulderlength hair acceptable, or must a woman allow her hair to grow as long as it will naturally grow? A conversation with Mrs. Edwin May, wife of the moderatior of the Sardis Association, has suggested that there usually is some discretion allowed in these matters, and that most fellowships do not stand eager to reprimand and exclude at the slightest hint of scissors having touched hair.8 Still it has been my observation that the vast majority of middle-aged and older Old Regular women allow their hair to grow long enough that it must me worn in a topknot or braided bun, and that unloosed this hair would fall to the middle of the back or lower. 15 �Old Regular men, on the other hand, must keep their hair reasonably short, never allowing it to extend down around the lower neck or to flow over the ears in any feminine fashion. To illustrate this requirement I will tell a story about one of my favorite Old Regular elders, Bill Campbell of the Bull Creek fellowship in Maxie, Virginia. Campbell is a relatively young elder, only in his mid-thirties. He joined the Old Regular faith at the age of twenty-nine, after several years of a life style which he now describes as having been quite depraved. In fact, when he approached an elder of the Bull Creek Church with his interest in being baptized he looked—by his own description—"a mess," possessing a full beard and a head of hair in the style of the "flower childrend" of the late '60s and early '70s. The result was that the elder refused to baptize Campbell until he had made himself more presentable to the fellowship. This did not mean that he had to shave his beard, but it did mean that his long hair had to go.9 Biblical Mandates for these and Other Gender Codes Old regulars can point to a biblical passage as justification for their stances concerning the length of hair. The passage in question is 1st Corinthians 11:14-15: Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her; for her hair is given her for a covering. [King James Version] This, of course, comes from the writings of Paul, the New Testament voice upon which Old Regulars most depend for guidance in gender role proprietyPaul is also the authority upon whom these congregations rely when they hold tenaciously to a church policy that is exclusively male controlled. In 1st Corinthians 14:34-35 Paul had this to say: Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. As a result of this particular biblical passage, Old Regulars maintain church governance systems devoid of any formal female participation. This 16 �does not mean, however, that women maintain total silence in Old Regular churches. They sing, shout, pray, and praise; but they play no official roles in worship procedures or in business deliberations. During formal business sessions, they have no voice or vote, and they assume no duties that place them before congregations in positions of leadership. Indeed, about the only way in which they affect church policy is through the informal influence they might bring to bear upon husbands or other male members of the fam- ily. Even this latter option, however, is severely restricted in the more rigidly traditional Old Regular household. Here, again, the advice of Paul is followed: Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church; and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Ephesians 5:22-24 Of course Paul added, "Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church..."; but he did not say, as Old Regular males observe, "Husbands, submit yourselves unto your wives." Therefore, in these very traditional Old Regular homes, the women have little more to say than they have in church, at least relative to religious doctrines or church social policies. Old Regular fellowships do not believe in Sunday schools (or Sabbath schools as they call them), and part of the reason for this position touches on the proper role of women in church. These Old Regulars note that in other Baptist subdenominations in which Sunday schools have been instituted, it has been the women who do most of the teaching. This, of course, violates the Pauline mandate that "women should keep silence in the churches." Children, they argue, should be raised "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord [Ephesians 6:4]," but this raising should be accomplished in the home. Furthermore, Old Regular elders are quick to point to the fact that Paul said, "ye fathers... bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."10 This places the primary responsibility for the spiritual upbringing of a child on the shoulders of Father, a situation quite opposite from comparable circumstances in most Protestant American homes. 17 �Comfort in Confinement My general impression of Old Regular women is that the majority of them are not particularly disturbed by the restrictions I have been discussing, that they have become more comfortable with these confinements and desire no other life style. One thing to note here is that Old Regular members tend to be quite old on the average, with the result that both males and females have settled into relatively unchanging life patterns. As significant factors in these life patterns, fixed gender models provide a form of security, firmly guiding individuals through the otherwise confused maze of life's choices. One elderly member of the Bethany Old Regular fellowship of Kingsport, Tennessee, told me that she had absolutely no desire to complicate her life by taking on all those issues she felt belonged to men of her church: "I've got enough things to do, thank you. There are squabbles that go on in the church that I'd just as soon let the men handle. That leaves me free just to enjoy the singing and preaching."11 In this woman's eyes, the franchise in church governance would simply be another burden to bare. Cracks in the Tablets Is everybody happy, however, with the rigid rules of the past? Is there no dissatisfaction among Old Regulars with the gender roles that were prescribed by Paul? The mere fact that the positions reported earlier as taken by the Dix Fork Church in the Sardis Association and the Little Martha Church in the Union Association have become minority positions would seem to suggest there has been some movement among Old Regulars towards modernism of gender roles, at least relative to clothing. That movement, however, has been slow. What could add some speed, nevertheless, would be (1) an increasing concern among Old Regular women over their gender's lack of rights, and (2) a growing awareness of was to translate this concern into protest. I have no documentation to support a charge of some great ground swell of indignation occurring within Old Regular feminine ranks. Instead, all I have is a small amount of anecdotal evidence which may suggest the beginnings of dissatisfaction. This first story was related to me by Darvin Marshall of St. Paul, Virginia, who became my first contact with the Sandy Ridge Old Regular Church of that vicinity. According to Marshall, during the 1979 Union Association debate over the Little Martha Church's request, a few women did not respond to the issue with total passivism. Indeed, one Sandy Ridge female, Marshall recalls, showed a strong repugnance for the reasoning of an elder who directed a scathing attack against certain items of contemporary 18 �women's dress, including panty hose. This woman's response, says Marshall, was to steal into the parking area during the session, locate the respective elder's automobile, and stretch a pair of panty hose across the front windshield wipers of the vehicle, much to the later embarrassment of this conservative gentleman.12 My next story relates to a lengthy discussion I had, February 15, 1985, with Elder and Mrs. Edwin May. As previously noted, Elder May is Moderator of the Sardis Association. He invited me to his home in Abingdon, Virginia, for a daylong interview concerning Old Regular doctrines and various customs of the Sardis Association. Early in our dialogue I asked about the role of women in the church and received much of the information I related above. At one point, however, I turned to Mrs. May, who sat quietly by during the entire interview, and asked her if she had any objections concerning the lack of female involvement in church business. Her response was very much in line with the one I have already related, the comments made by the Bethany Old Regular matron. Mrs. May said she had no real desire to take on all those problems. Later, I moved in my queries to an issue which appears to have been particularly complicated for Old Regular fellowships, the question of how to handle divorced members. The precise topic being discussed was Old Regular policy governing the acceptability of divorce and remarriage, and conditions under which a divorced and remarried individual could remain in the church. As I interviewed Elder May on these questions Mrs. May appeared to be very interested. In fact, at one point she even asked for clarification of a doctrine, suggesting by her question that she had never heard of this issue discussed before in detail. May was explaining that fellowships of the Sardis Association would not retain in membership individuals, male or female, who had "put away their companions" for any reason other than the charge of fornication. He further noted that if fornication became an issue in any particular deliberation, the charge would have to be heard in a regular business meeting of the fellowship. It was at this point that Mrs. May seemed to have some trouble accepting the association's policy. In fact, for a moment she seemed to forget her "position," making a statement that appeared to question the propriety of such a charge being heard in an open meeting. Nevertheless, she did not push the issue. I, on the other hand, said something that may have overstepped the decorum of the moment: I asked her if she would like to vote on this policy. For a moment she made no response, and then simply smiled, recognizing at that instance—I felt—the contradiction lying between her interest in this issue and the earlier passive position she had taken.13 I quickly moved away from the question, fearing that I might offend Elder May, but I had a strong feeling that I had witnessed another slight "crack in the tablet." 19 �I do not want to suggest, however, by these two stories that radical changes are imminent, that any week, or month, or year Old Regular women will rise to the cause of women's rights. I simply do not see that happening. Traditional gender codes are just too firmly set in these fellowships. But if the Old Regular subdenomination is still around in, let's say, 2025— and I suspect it will be—some wearing away of this rock-ribbed traditionalism will probably have taken place. So as the winter freezes come and go, a few cracks will keep occurring. ENDNOTES 1. Other Old Regular Associations with churches in the region are the Indian Bottom Association, the Old Friendship Association, the Philadelphia Association, and the New Salem Association. The Northern New Salem Association is composed of fellowships located primarily in Ohio. 2. As reprinted in Minutes of the Sardis Association of Old Regular Baptists (Published by the Association, 1983), 8-9. 3. As reprinted in Minutes of the Sardis Association of Old Regular Baptists (Published by the Association, 1983), 8. 4. Minutes of the Sardis Association of Old Regular Baptists (Published by the Association, 1982), 8; and (1983), 8-9. 5. Minutes of the Union Association of Old Regular Baptists (Johnson City, Tenn.: Interstate Graphics, 1979), 6. 6. Minutes of the Sardis Association of Old Regular Baptists (Published by the Association, 1983), 9. 7. Interview with Darvin Marshall, member of the Sandy Ridge Old Regular Church, St. Paul, Virginia, December 16, 1984. 8. Interview with Mrs. Edwin May, February 15, 1985. 9. Interview with Elder Bill Campbell after service at the Bull Creek Old Regular Church, June 10, 1984. 10. Interview with one of the elders of the Bull Creek Old Regular Church, June 10, 1984. 11. Interview conducted at Bethany Old Regular Church, July 10, 1983. 12. Interview conducted in Marshall's home, July 28, 1985. 13. Interview conducted on February 15, 1985. 20 �APPALACHIAN STUDIES STUDENTS Convenor: Barry M. Buxton, Appalachian Consortium Appalachian Studies And The Native Student: Resource or Refuge? Ricky Cox, Radford University Dialect Effects In Appalachian Students' Written Composition Becky Eller, University of Kentucky Old Catawabans and "Mountain Grill": The Appalachian in Thomas Wolfe's Short Stories Sally Bruce, Western Carolina University Appalachian Studies and the Native Student: Resource or Refuge? by Ricky Cox When time came last October to submit proposals to the Appalachian Studies Conference Program Committee, I had a rough idea of what I wanted to say, but no paper, certainly no title. The one you saw printed on your progam came up at the last minute, as did the proposal itself. It serves pretty well what I want to say, but I feel I owe you all some explanation. Originally, I had intended this to be an overview, almost a survey of native Appalachian students' reactions to, and attitudes about Appalachian Studies courses. I wrestled with this for a couple of months and found myself always faced with what I think most perceive as a problem in Appalachian studies or any study involving people. I found myself trying to classify, to group, to stereotype Appalachian students. It is difficult, and I think, unwise to attempt to identify the typical Appalachian student, just as it is hard to find that average American family with 1.8 children. What I've finally arrived at is more of a personal view of Appalachian Studies. While I believe that some of the ideas and feelings expressed here will have meaning for some of you, I do not claim that they apply to all native students or to any except myself. With this in mind you might wish to amend the title to read: "Appalachian Studies and a Native Student: Resource or Refugee?" I guess I should present my credentials as a native Appalachian student. I grew up in Floyd County, Virginia, about sixty miles west of Roanoke, on the eastern edge of official Appalachia, and I go to school. In my half-hearted search for the typical native student I decided that I am most definitely not this elusive person. I was twenty-six when I began attending Radford University full-time as a History major, so am subject to 21 �the condition quoted by Gratis Williams in describing Appalachian people. "... when one chances to leave for the outside world before his personality has become set in the mold of his culture he is likely to climb far" (Williams 498). I'm afraid I've waited too long. Maybe I am set in my ways and perhaps my perceptions and expectations of Appalachian Studies have been colored by the ambivalence demonstrated by my late arrival. I came back to school because I felt 1 had missed something, and that failing to return while I was able, I would one day regret it. Still, it was a struggle, giving up my job and trying to explain to my family and friends what I was doing. I suppose they thought it was a mid-life crisis twenty years early. I did finally make the commitment but not without self-doubt. Consequently, I think my involvement with Appalachian Studies has been, in part, an attempt to reconcile the two very different environments of school and work. Now, let me tell you a little about Appalachian Studies and a native student. You may notice a few we's and our's thrown in for variety, but I have no real right to use them. 1 hope, though, that some of you can accept them and maybe feel a part of the I's and me's that appear far too often. I suppose the proper way to go about answering the question posed in the title of this paper is to examine each alternative closely, weigh its relative merits, pull everything together, and then tell you in the last paragraph that I still don't have an answer. I can, however, see far enough ahead to say now that there is an answer. Appalachian Studies is both a resource and a refuge for the native student. It is a means for the native student to get around the old "apples and oranges" problem. It offers a way to compare lifestyles that revolve around two different concepts of success. I will attempt no definition of this difference, but I will offer as an example what I consider to be the most visible and painful conflict experienced by those of us who are at least exploring the possibility of seeking our fortunes in the wide world: To go or to stay? It seems sort of senseless to spend time and money preparing yourself for a career that will never be pursued if doing so means moving beyond easy driving distance of home. I like to think that education is valuable and desirable for its own sake, but the fact remains that people expect us to "do something with" and education and that we expect the same of ourselves. We feel pressured by the mainstream notion that we must reach our fullest potential and realize our dreams if it takes marching all over Hell and half of Georgia to do it. I listen to people at home talk and I've decided that Appalachians, at least the ones I know, don't have dreams, as such. We have "idees" or things we'd like to do if the world stands, if we live. Maybe it's setting yourself up for disappointment to say you have a dream or maybe it sounds too pretentious to say it out loud. I used to think that we come to school seeking dreams for ourselves, but perhaps we are only trying to unearth the ones we bring with us. 22 �Jesse Stuart talks about drinking lonesome water and how it bind the mountaineer to return home (Stuart 179). It works both ways, it seems. We set out intending only to sample history, literature, philosophy and other such learned things. The tastes are strange sometimes, even bitter, but once familiar, are not easily forgotten. You would think that even the best spring water would seem pretty plain compared to heady wines. It's hard to judge. There is a choice to be made then, and choice implies difference. I can speak with certainty only of the difference I feel each time I go home. I can't see it, so I have no color slides to show you, but I feel it and so may many of you when you read Jim Wayne Miller's "Brier Sermon" (Miller 41) or hear James Still's Lark say, "I ought ne'er thought to be a scholar" (Still 47.) With only the words of others to offer as proof, I maintain that there is a difference. To deny it is to concede that the Appalachia of the heart is a creation of the mind, a sentimental pilgrimage to places that never existed. Appalachian Studies cannot erase the differences; it may even highlight them. It cannot make choices for young people, but hopefully it can offer a forum for more informed decision-making. Although I've completed only two Appalachian Studies courses, I can see that there are no cut and dry approaches to the what and why of Appalachian Studies. Already, I've heard many voices saying many things about Appalachia. The first voice I heard was Loyal Jones, telling me about Appalachian values (Jones 507). It was quite a revelation to learn that my personal quirks are shared by twenty million people. I found this piece comforting the first time I read it, and still do, but there is a burden there, waiting to fall on our shoulders. Appalachians have their own ideas about groups. We are wary of them for belonging entails responsibility for the other members. It is not required that we love or even like them, but we must look our for them, for they are ours. This newfound identity then, is not so wonderful as it first seems for those who associate membership with responsibility. Are we bound to this group as we are a family, in which ties begin at birth and last as long as hand-me-down memories hold the threads that link names on headstones with the ones on our mailboxes? No, but there is something here that does not set well with me. Once, I was concerned with a network of shared genes, memories, and values that haven't spread much beyond two or three counties in nearly two hundred years. Suddenly there are 397 counties and twenty million people and I just don't know if I can look after that many. When I saw "Harlan County, U.S.A." I wanted to jump up and say, "This has nothing to do with me. These people have no connection to me. I'm not responsible for them, and I won't be made to feel guilty about de23 �nying them. There are no coal mines where I come from, and I have no ties with them." But I do. Last fall I had a chance to learn a little about coal mines on an Appalachian Studies field trip to the exhibition mine in Beckley, West Virginia. I was impressed, but felt no kinship with that way of life or the people who live it until I started talking to the old man who guided the tour. In following the ritual of establishing who each of us was, in terms of our respective places, I discovered that this man's father-in-law had come to West Virginia from Willis, Virginia, all of ten miles from my own home. He had been there once himself for a funeral, years ago. One of his wife's cousins had bought my Grandfather's house in Floyd. I had mistaken this man for a stranger and we were practically neighbors. Connections exist, then, even outside the coincidental mutual acquaintance with people or places. Even if we share nothing in the way of memory or experience there is a kinship in the way we relate to new people, in the way we deal with familiar ones, and in our approach to life in general. So we've come full circle back to Loyal Jones' list of values. To my mind his words are valid and true, as much as anything can be about such a diverse region as Appalachia. But this very fact illuminates the paradox that has evidently frustrated just about every would-be saviour of the southern mountaineer. Their validity in giving us identity as a group renders us politically ineffectual as a group, for one of our characteristics, as a group, is that we do not like groups. Others have heard this same voice but have drawn a different meaning from the words. They, in turn, begin to speak and say, "Use these shared traits and attitudes as both foundation and mortar in building political coalitions. Band together and demand what is rightfully yours. Wake up and smell the coffee. Save Appalachia!" Appalachia cannot be saved, at least not the one quality which makes possible all the other characteristics we point to as Appalachian. This quality is independence for ourselves and acceptance of it in others. We say that we expect others to look out for themselves and their own; it might better serve to say that we allow others to be responsible for themselves. From this precept come some of the best qualitites of Appalachian people: pride, self-sufficiency, love of place, and strong sense of family. And from the same spring head flow the worst things about Appalachia: ignorance, prejudice, poverty, and exploitation of resources, both natural and human. The voices say we can change all of this and that is absolutely true. We can change all of this, not part of it. We can't sort through and pick out the pretty pieces for a quilt and make the rest into a rag rug. Save Appalachia. Appalachia cannot be saved. We can create a new one yes, and that may be a good idea, I don't know. But the old one is dying this morning and a new one is evolving to take its place. It will live or die on 24 �its own. It will slip quietly away when it goes and no one will know until forty years later. We can all pack up and go to Washington and get things done, but we may not recognize home when we get back for it will have changed, just as we will have changed, in learning to rely on a group rather than on ourselves. Once we have acquired this civilized trait, we will be ready to live in the modern world, ready to dictate to others what is best for them, whether they know it or not. As soon as we realize our strength as a group, we can do all the things groups like to do. We can shop around for another group to feel superior to, or maybe find some people in need of cultural salvation. If asked, I would reply to those voices, "Do as you please. Your intentions are the best, your theories are sound, and your arguments are true, but they are not of the Appalachia that I know." We talk so much about intervention and how unsympathetic it is to individual rights and concerns. When we have organized ourselves enough to eject or manipulate interventionist institutions, be they cultural, industrial, or governmental, we will ourselves have become the interventionists, and I'd rather curse someone I've never seen than the man I see in the mirror every morning. I'm half ashamed to tell you these things. My words seem hard and callous. The humanities tell me to be a citizen of the world, to accept responsibility for my fellow man, and I find it increasingly difficult to check my attitudes at the classroom door and pick them up on the way home. They begin to seem ugly and outdated, but I am not yet ready to leave them behind. But what of Appalachian Studies? What are the voices saying? Must the native student reject individualism and fatalism to make constructive use of the insights Appalachian Studies may provide into ourselves and into our culture? I should know better than to ask, for concepts of the purpose of Appalachian Studies are as numerous as the voices that speak, the hands that write, and the minds that ponder about Appalachia. I will not ask for an answer. Instead, I will repeat the answer to my own much neglected original question. Appalachian Studies is a resource for the native student who would not carelessly trade the time-worn values of home for the shinier ideals of the larger world. It is a refuge also, for every story, every song, every triumph and every failure has some ring of the familiar, even for those like me who know nothing of coal mines or cotton mills. I have used the idea of voices in this paper, and while it seems a bit superficial, as do all such devices, I do not think it inappropriate as ours is an oral tradition. Voices mean much to us in conversation and song. I have told you of the voices from within Appalachian Studies. I will leave you with a voice that I have yet to hear, a voice that I have wanted to hear and have listened for so intently, a voice to say, "Go home. Why worry with studying Appalachia when you can live it?" I've waited to hear that voice and sometimes I half imagine that I do. 25 �When things aren't going well I want to go home and be that fellow from Indian Valley what picks a guitar and won't drive nothing but a Ford, Carl Cox's third boy, one of Taswell Hollands worth's grandchildren. But I know that I never will hear that voice, and if I do I'll call the speaker a liar. I can go home, yes, and be happy there even, but I cannot go back. My people await my return and though I may see them with an altered perception, they have not changed. The road to home is still there; broken a little more by four winters, worn a little more by the wheels that roll out and back in each day, but still the same road. It is the curious traveler who has changed. WORKS CITED Jones, Loyal. "Appalachian Values." Voices From the Hills. Eds. Robert J. Higgs and Ambrose N. Manning. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1975. Still, James. "Journey to the Forks." The Run for the Elbertas. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1980. Stuart, Jesse. Beyond Dark Hills. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972. Williams, Gratis. "Who Are the Southern Mountaineers?" Voices From the Hil!s.-Eds. Robert J. Higgs and Ambrose N. Manning. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1975. 26 �Dialect Effects in Appalachian Students* Written Compositions by Rebecca Gaeth Eller Declining test scores over the past decade have produced a public outcry for educational reform. "Getting back to the basics" has become an oft-repeated motto, although no one has ever bothered to clearly define what is meant by "the basics." Illiteracy has been at the forefront of the controversy, and the accountability movement has generated renewed interest in grammar and phonics instruction coupled with rigorous competency testing programs. One factor which has consistently correlated with low academic achievement has been socioeconomic status. A number of reasons for this phenomenon have been postulated, ranging from difference/deficit models to teacher and administrative bias. It has also been suggested that lower scores in language usage may be the result of "dialect interference;" i.e. because students from lower socioeconomic classes also frequently speak a non-standard dialect, their oral language may actually "interfere" with communication through formal standard English. The extent to which certain dialects "interfere" with reading and writing standard English has been the subject of much research in recent years and has generated a great deal of controversy. Studies of language differences in reading, however, have generally failed to substantiate any dialect effects (Goodman and Buck, 1973). Research studies examining dialect influences in writing have had mixed results (Schwartz, 1982). Some researchers have found dialect-related errors in the writing of Black sixth grade youngsters to be as high as 36%, and those of Hispanic third graders to be as high as 39% (Cronnell, 1984, 1985). Other studies report some dialect influence, but have found that they have a limited effect on writing (Whiteman, 1981). Researchers who have examined the compositions of college students have found either inconsistent and weak evidence of dialect influence (Wolfram and Whiteman, 1971; Sternglass, 1974), or no significant differences between the nonstandard English usage of black and Hispanic students and their white counterparts (Kirschner and Poteet, 1973; Farr and Janda, 1985). While there have been a number of studies which have examined dialect effects in the writing of Black and Hispanic students, few studies have been conducted which have explored dialect influences of Mountain Speech, despite the fact that Appalachian students consistently score lower on standardized tests in the area of language ability (DeYoung, 27 �Vaught, and Porter, 1981). The Appalachian region has a rich oral tradition and has developed a distinct linguistic system which contains unique grammatical and phonological features (Wolfram and Christian, 1976; Wolfram, 1984). Since significant dialect effects have been found in the written compositions of elementary students from other non-mainstream populations, I was curious to see if such effects might at least partially explain the low test scores of Appalachian students. I therefore decided to explore the extent to which the features of Mountain Speech would be revealed in the compositions of youngsters from the region. I also chose to compare their writing samples to those of younsters from outside the region to determine if the two sets of compositions could be differentiated. With the assistance of two colleagues, I obtained writing samples from two groups of sixth grade students. One group of students attends a school located in a rural mountainous county in western North Carolina, and the second attends a suburban school located near a moderately large city in central Kentucky. The youngsters were instructed to write essays on the topic of "Working Women." In order to determine which dialect features the students regularly use in their oral language, the teachers were asked to complete a lengthy dialect feature list. The written compositions were then examined for dialect influence revealed in grammatical patterns, spelling, and word choice. The findings of the study were quite revealing. First, a mere 14% of the total surface errors of the Appalachian samples could be attributed to dialect influence. This figure is a conservative one, and in fact may overestimatedialect-related errors. When there was a lack of subject-verb agreement, for example, this error was generally designated as being dialect-related, although admittedly this is a frequent error of all youngsters who are learning to write. Second, spelling errors accounted for 38% of the total errors in the Appalachian samples, and 30% of the errors in the non-Appalachian samples. Very few of these errors were dialect-influenced; rather, most reflected standard pronunciations which were simply misspelled. This finding supports previous research which shows that phonological differences rarely occur in writing (Whiteman, 1981). Finally, there was a lack of consistency in both the number and type of dialect-related errors. Some students had no dialect-related errors in their compositions, while others had a number of such errors. To illustrate the variation in errors, only one youngster used indirect questions (i.e. "So you say who would take over the house."), and only one student used the characteristic to + verb form ("Some people think women ought not to work."). In contrast, a number of students used "set" for "sit." In comparing the compositions from the Appalachian and non-Appalachian students, there were obvious differences between the two groups. On the surface, the non-Appalachian samples were longer, neat- 28 �er, and contained fewer errors. The non-Appalachian students averaged 6.6 errors per sample or .27 errors per line; the Appalachian students averaged 23.6 errors per sample or 1.3 errors per line. There were also differences in style. The non-Appalachian compositions were quite formal, whereas the Appalachian compositions resembled personal narratives. If the analysis stopped here, we might conclude that the non-Appalachian students, or at least this particular population of students, are considerably more adept at writing than the Appalachian students. Writing, however, is a form of communication. It is more than using words appropriately and placing them on the page in the proper order. Writing is a means by which we explore and transmit ideas. To focus on surface features at the expense of the ideas being conveyed neglects the true nature of written communication. An examination of the ideas expressed in the compositions of these sixth grade youngsters again reveals substantial differences. The non-Appalachian students organized their ideas in clear paragraphs in response to specific "prompt" questions which they were asked to consider in completing the assignment. For example, in response to the question "Would it make a difference if the woman has children?," several students began the second paragraph with statements such as "If a woman has a child, it should matter." While the ideas in their compositions were certainly interesting, informative, and well-organized, there were relatively few variations in their statements. In contrast, the compositions of the Appalachian students were more personal and individual. They were replete with vivid imagery and colorful expressions. For example, one student expressed his feelings on the subject of working women by stating that "[w]omen are not dogs or slaves for men." Another said that if women didn't work, "[t]hey would eat out of trash cans and wear rags." A male student said, "I bet women work harder than men. When women work, they work." Finally, one student expressed the real reason why women should work: "Women have to work. If they don't women will get bored and start smoking and drink coffee so bad that they will get hooked on cigarettes." In short, these compositions reflect a school environment which has capitalized on their rich oral tradition and unique culture by allowing students to express themselves freely in their own dialect. What can we learn from the results of this research? I believe there are a number of important implications for both teachers and educational policy-makers. Before we discuss these implications, however, it is important to point out that we all speak a non-standard dialect. Every native language speaker deviates from the norms of standard English. Written language is not a direct representation of spoken language; i.e. it is not "speech written down." Speech is transient and occurs within a specific situational context. Written discourse, on the other hand, remains 29 �relatively stationary over time and functions as a standard system of communication despite variations in speech patterns. Furthermore, writing has its own special conventions. It is generally more formal than speech; it contains punctuation markers which designate particular intonation patterns; it is more highly structured and organized. Thus, while one youngster might enter school speaking a dialect which more closely resembles the written standard form than another youngster, the task for each is still the same. Both children must familiarize themselves with a more structured "literate" style, and both children must master the unique conventions of written discourse. The findings of this study suggest that oral language variations do influence the writing of Appalachian students to a limited degree. However, dialect effects account for a relatively small number of errors. It can also be legitimately argued that the non-standard spoken dialect of all youngsters "interferes" with the writing task. Yet the Appalachian students appear to generate a proportionately greater number of surface errors in their writing than the non-Appalachian students. How can we account for these results? I believe we must first examine how language is acquired. We do not learn language strictly by imitation, nor do we learn it by memorizing a series of rules. Rather, we learn language by using it in meaningful contexts. Written discourse is a separate "language" with its own standardized forms and conventions. The only way our students can learn the registers of written language is through exposure. We must provide ample and varied experiences with writing. We must read to them regularly at all grade levels. In short, we must immerse them in print. Appalachian students come to school with different experiences and aspirations than those of their middle-class counterparts. Because of their working-class environment, they have had fewer experiences with written language. In many homes, books are considered a luxury, and consequently young children are not exposed to the standard English form in the critical years when their language is rapidly developing. Unless the schools provide a multitude of meaningful reading and writing experiences, these youngsters may never "catch up." This lack of exposure to written language is reflected in the high percentage of spelling errors of both groups of students. The spelling error rate was particularly high in the compositions of the Appalachian students. Most persons erroneously assume that English is a phonetic language. Rather, it is an alphabetic language, and our spelling system is generally morphemic rather than phonetic; i.e. it tends to maintain the meaningful relationships between words at the expense of maintaining strict letter-sound relationships. (Consider, for example, sign and signal, or medicine and medical.) This system is largely learned through exposure and usage, not through memorizing a series of letter-sound correspon- 30 �dences, and one could rationally argue that a high number of spelling errors reflects a lack of experience with the formal printed code. The socioeconomic conditions in the mountains may have other, less obvious effects. Since the low-skilled jobs of their parents do not require much reading and writing, many Appalachian youngsters do not see their parents modelling literacy. The economic reality of the region dictates that they, too, will probably be limited in the types of jobs they will be able to obtain. Furthermore, the values which the school is trying to impart are sometimes in direct contradicition to those of the home. It is certainly not a coincidence that the female students in the non-Appalachian region state in their compositions that they intend to become veterinarians, nurses, and office managers, whereas the female students from Appalachia believe that they will work in the local factories or become waitresses or hairdressers. Developing facility in writing cannot be very high on your list of priorities when career opportunities are simply unavailable. Other barriers to the attainment of literacy have also been associated with low socioeconomic conditions. It has been suggested by a number of researchers that teachers are unconsciously biased against students who speak variant dialects, largely because such dialects reflect a lower-class status. In fact, although we may not wish to acknowledge that such prejudice exists, this argument has been substantiated by a considerable amount of research (Piche, Rubin, Turner, and Michlin, 1978; Rosen, 1979; Leibowicz, 1984; Ford, 1984). Joseph Leibowicz argues that "[i]f literacy is defined in such a way that students' identities and cultural norms are threatened by that definition, they will not succeed" (Leibowicz, 1984). A youngster's language is integrally related to his self-concept, and to deny his language is to deny his culture and his sense of self. When we continually imply that a child's language is "wrong," we are telling him that the language of his kinfolk and the culture which it represents are inferior. In his article entitled "The Status and Politics of Writing Instruction," Richard Hendrix states that: [u]ntil we can be sure that teachers have real insight into language, and into the emotional difficulty of cultural assimilation, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that minority and working class students have to go the extra mile in mastering writing... The extra effort may be justifiable in practical and social terms (many black parents now insist on it), but writing teachers at least need to acknowledge this situation, and rethink the relative weight given to different aspects of writing for the developing writer. Writing is hard enough in its own right, without becoming the arena for unacknowledged social differences (Hendrix, 1981). 31 �Language is the essence of self-expression, and Appalachian students need to be able to express themselves freely, without fear of incrimination. Unfortunately, present instructional practices may hinder, rather than promote, the attainment of literacy in Appalachia. In an overzealous attempt to raise test scores, there has been a resurgence of interest in grammar instruction. In addition, the rules of grammar are often being taught in isolation from actual writing. Not only has instruction in grammar been shown through research to be largely ineffective, but it also takes precious time away from meaningful writing experiences which provide practice in the application of standard English usage (Elley, 1976; Hillocks, 1984). As school systems become more familiar with the skills being measured on the adopted standardized tests, scores may improve for a time, but I believe that they will eventually level off and may even begin to decline if rules continue to be stressed at the expense of writing. Language simply cannot be learned outside the context of meaningful communication. We have reached the point in educational decision-making where we are allowing the tests to dictate our curriculum, rather than the needs of our students. An overemphasis on proper grammar usage and form might also reinforce the notion of students that they "just can't write." A returned composition which has been peppered with teacher corrections can discourage even the most motivated writer. Consider the following statement of a college student from California: The papers you write in class—their whole attitude toward them is bad. They say the structure is not too good and the style is bad, when you are writing from your heart... it's like they are rejecting your whole culture (Hoover and Politzer, 1981). When teachers focus only on surface errors and fail to acknowledge the validity of the ideas being expressed, they unconsciously communicate to students that their ideas are not important. Consequently, students "stop taking chances" and aim for proper form at the expense of generating new ideas. If we regard writing as a way of creating and organizing concepts, which I believe it is, an overemphasis on surface errors may actually stifle thinking. I am not suggesting that we ignore the writing errors of our students; I am merely suggesting that we keep them in proper perspective. In conclusion, I would like to make several recommendations for those who are responsible for improving the writing ability of Appalachian youngsters. First, I believe it is vitally important that we build on students' strengths rather than emphasize their weaknesses. All youngsters enter school with a complex, highly developed language system. Appalachian students also have the benefit of a rich oral tradition and a distinctive 32 �heritage. Their oral language is highly expressive and colorful, and we must allow this language to shine through in their writing (Elbow, 1985). We must motivate them to write by having them communicate about things that are meaningful to them. Writing is a form of expression, and it cannot be separated from the culture which it reflects. Schools need to build upon this culture rather than reject it. Second, it should be recognized that learning requires error. The errors in the writing of our students demonstrate transition as they struggle to master the printed code. An overemphasis on surface structure can have the detrimental effect of stifling creativity and the expression of ideas. It is important to recognize that a person can write a series of grammatical sentences, and yet have nothing to say. Third, I believe structural elements should be taught within the context of actual writing, the conventions of written discourse can only be learned by writing, not by memorizing a grammar book. Students learn these conventions as they require them. Similarly, habitual errors can best be corrected within the context of writing by instructing students to focus on these features as they write. Finally, I must again emphasize that it is critical that youngsters be immersed in print. Reading and writing are mutually reinforcing; both provide exposure to the formal standard code (Applebee, 1977; Kennedy, 1980; Eckhoff, 1983; Stotsky, 1983). Because of their distinct linguistic system, Appalachian students may actually require more experiences with formal written language than students from other cultures. The Appalachian dialect is not inferior to the standard English dialect, it is simply different. In our attempt to acculturate those who remain outside the mainstream, we may be eliminating many colorful and highly expressive features of Mountain Speech. More importantly, we may be causing youngsters to reject their language and the culture associated with it. Maintaining pride in their language while developing standard written form creates a challenge for the best of teachers, but it is not an impossible task. REFERENCES Applebee, Arthur N. "ERIC/RCS: Writing and Reading." Journal of Reading, 20 (March, 1977), 534-37. Baghban, Marcia. "The Application of Culturally Relevant Factors to Literacy Programs in Appalachia." Reading Horizons, 24 (Winter, 1984), 75-82. 33 �Birnbaum, June Cannell. "Why Should I Write? Environmental Influences on Children's Views of Writing." Theory Into Practice, 19 (Summer, 1980), 202-210. Cronnell, Bruce, ed. The Writing Needs of Linguistically Different Students. Los Alamitos, Ca.: SWRL Education Research and Development, 1981. Cronnell, Bruce. "Dialect and Writing: A Review." Journal of Research and Development in Education, 17 (1983), 58-64. Cronnell, Bruce. "Black-English Influences in the Writing of Third- and Sixth- Grade Black Students." Journal of Educational Research, 77 (March/April, 1984), 233-236. Cronnell, Bruce. "Language Influences in the Writing of Third- and Sixth- Grade MexicanAmerican Students." Journal of Educational Research, 78 (Jan./Feb., 1985), 168-173. DeYoung, Alan J.; Vaught, Charles; &. Porter, Julia D. "Evaluating Educational Performance In Appalachian Kentucky." Appalachian Journai, 9, (Fall, 1981), 50-58. Eckhoff, Barbara. "How Reading Affects Children's Writing." Language Arts, 60 (May, 1983), 607-616. Elbow, Peter. "The Shifting Relationship Between Speech and Writing." College Composition and Communication, 36 (Oct., 1985), 283-303. Elley, W.B. "The Role of Grammar in the Secondary School English Curriculum." Research in the Teaching of English, 10 (1976), 5-21. Farr, Marcia and Janda, Mary Ann. "Basic Writing Students: Investigating Oral and Written Language." Research in the Teaching of English, 19 (February, 1985), 62-83. Fink, Paul. Bits of Mountain Speech. Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1974. Ford, Cecilia E. "The Influence of Speech Variety on Teachers' Evaluation of Students with Comparable Academic Ability." TESOL Quarterly, 18, (March, 1985), 25-40. Gonzalez, Roseann Duenas. "Teaching Mexican American Students to Write: Capitalizing on the Culture." English Journal, 71 (November, 1982), 20-24. Goodman, Kenneth S. & Buck, Catherine. "Dialect Barriers to Reading Comprehension Revisited." The Reading Teacher, 27 (October, 1973), 6-12. Halpern, Jeanne W. "Differences Between Speaking and Writing and Their Implications for Teaching." College Composition and Communication, 35 (October, 1984), 345-357. Hartwell, Patrick. "Dialect Interference in Writing: A Critical View." Research in the Teaching of English, 14 (May, 1980), 101-118. Hendrix, Richard. "The Status and Politics of Writing Instruction." Writing: The Nature, Development, and Teaching of Written Communication. Edited by Marcia Farr Whiteman. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawerence Erlbaum Associates, Pub., 1981. Hillocks, George, Jr. "What Works in Teaching Composition: A Meta-analysis of Experimental Treatment Studies." American Journal of Education, 93 (November, 1984), 133-170. 34 �Hoover, Mary Rhodes &. Politzer, Robert L. "Bias in Composition Tests with Suggestions for a Culturally Appropriate Assessment Technique." Writing: The Nature, Development, and Teaching of Written Communication. Edited by Marcia Farr Whiteman. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Pub., 1981. Kennedy, Mary Lynch. "Reading and Writing: Interrelated Skills of Literacy on the College Level." Reading World, 20 (December, 1980), 131-141. Kirschner, S.A., &. Poteet, G.H. "Non-Standard English Usage in the Writing of Black, White, and Hispanic Remedial English Students in An Urban Community College." Research in the Teaching of English, 1 (Winter 1973), 351-355. Leibowicz, Joseph. "ERIC/RCS Report: Classrooms, Teachers, and Nonstandard Speakers." Language Arts, 61 (January, 1984), 188-191. Lipscomb, Delores H. "Perspectives on Dialects in Black Students' Writing." Curriculum Review, 17 (August, 1978), 167-169. Meier, Terry Ryan, & Cazden, Courtney B. "Research Update: A Focus on Oral Language and Writing from a Multicultural Perspective." Language Arts, 59 (May, 1982), 504-512. Piche, Gene L.; Rubin, Donald L.; Turner, Lona J.; & Michlin, Michael L. "Teachers' Subjective Evaluations of Standard and Black Nonstandard English Compositions: A Study of Written Language and Attitudes." Research in the Teaching of English, 12 (May, 1978), 107-118. Porter, Julia Damron. "Appalachia: Adrift in the Mainstream." Theory Into Practice, 20 (Winter, 1981), 13-19. Rosen, Lois. "An Interview with William Labov." English Journal, 68 (March, 1979), 16-19. Schwartz, Judith 1. "Dialect Interference in the Attainment of Literacy." Journal of Reading, (February, 1982), 440-446. Sternglass, M.A. "Close Similarities in Dialect Features of Black and White College Students in Remedial Composition Classes." TESOL Quarterly, 8, (September, 1974), 271-283. Stotsky, Sandra. "Research on Reading/Writing Relationships: A Synthesis and Suggested Directions." Language Arts, 60 (May, 1983), 627-642. Stubbs, Michael. Language and Literacy: The Sociolinguistics of Reading and Writing. Boston: Routledge &. Kegan Paul Ltd., 1980. Whiteman, Marcia Farr. "Dialect Influence in Writing." Writing: The Nature, Development, and Teaching of Written Communication. Edited by Marcia Farr Whiteman. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawerence Erlbaum Associates, Pub., 1981. Wolfram, Walt, & Whiteman, Marcia. "The Role of Dialect Interference in Composition." The Florida FL Reporter, 9 (Spring/Fall, 1971), 34-38, 59. Wolfram, Walt, &. Christian, Donna. Appalachian Speech. Arlington, Va.: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1976. 35 �Wolfram, Walt. "Language Assessment in Appalachia: A Sociolinguistic Perspective." Appalachian Journal, 4, (Spring/Summer, 1977), 224-234. Wolfram, Walt. "Is There an 'Appalachian English'?" Appalachian Journal, 11 (Spring, 1984), 215-224. 36 �Old Catawbans and "Mountain Grill": The Appalachian in Thomas Wolfe's Short Stories by Sally Bruce They have been described as hillbillies, hicks and backwoods clodhoppers. Even before the turn of the century, the people of the southern Appalachians were singled out as "different." Different in their speech, in their way of living, in their outlook and in their customs. Those that visited the region capitalized on this difference. Writers such as Mary Murfree and John Fox, Jr. described the quaint way of speaking and curiously rural way of life to the rest of the country. By the early 1920's, even those from the area saw the backwoods mountain people as different, different even from their neighbors in the cities. One of these people was Thomas Wolfe. Beginning with folk plays during his years at Chapel Hill and Harvard and continuing through his final project, "The Hills Beyond," Wolfe describes in eloquent and poetic language the people from his native mountains. Drawing on folklore and regional history told to him by his mother and her people in the Swannanoa Valley, Wolfe paints the picture of another kind of Old Catawban. Although not above relating the tall tales and worst side or "mountain grill" of the Appalachians, Wolfe does not single out the mountaineer for particular scorn. Indeed, his portraits of Boston and New York are just as scathing. Influenced by the stories and writers of the period, his own relatives and related from a viewpoint which was half northern, Wolfe's Appalachian is an intelligent, resourceful, industrious, backwoodsman who represented not only his own mountains, but indeed the entire fabric of America. Although Wolfe was born in a town of fifteen thousand, many considered his own "larger than life" character to be typically mountaineer. In 1937, he wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald: "The Little fellows who don't know may picture a man as a great exuberant six foot six clodhopper straight out of nature who bites off half a plug of apple tobacco, tilts the liquor jug and lets half of it gurgle down his throat, wipes off his mouth with the back of one hairy paw, jumps three feet in the air and clacks his heels together four times before he hits the floor again and yells "Whoopee boys, I'm a roarin', tootin', shootin', son of a gun from Buncombe County - out of my way now, here I come!."..1 37 �In fact, Wolfe's own background was far from the backwoods. The Asheville Wolfe was born in what was already a cosmopolitan town undergoing a real estate boom which drew people from all across the country. He spent half his life in Boston and New York City and, as he wrote his mother in 1923; "I have stepped on toes right and left -1 spared Boston with its nigger sentimentalists no more than the South which I love but which I am nevertheless pounding."2 Indeed, Wolfe's heritage was only half southern, as his father was from York Springs, Pennsylvania. In 1933, Wolfe wrote a boyhood friend: ... I have had that feeling of familiarity and home only in two places. One is the country where I was born, western North Carolina, and the other is my father's country, among the farms and orchards of the Pennsylvania Dutch in southern Pennsylvania.3 Wolfe's objective point of view toward mountaineer culture came in part from his father's side of the family. That was not to say that W.O. Wolfe was an objective observer of mountain people. It was W.O., after all, who originated the term "mountain grill" as a derogatory stereotype of his own creation. In later years, when Mrs. Wolfe was asked where her husband had obtained the phrase, she replied; "I guess he made it up. A mountain grill must be somebody that is ignorant; not much above an animal. East Tennessee mountain grill if he wanted to make anybody mad he would say, 'Nothing but a mountain grill.' "4 Nevertheless, that northern outlook from his father and from his years at Harvard and New York provided Wolfe with an identity separate from the mountains which allowed him to step back and see the area more objectively than would otherwise have been possible. Wolfe was also influenced to some extent by local color writers of the era. His first encounters with literature came from his father's library, now part of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, Wolfe's boyhood home in Asheville. W.O. Wolfe's books range from Balzac to Stevenson and include many of the early local color writers such as Washington Irving and Brett Hart, which reflect Wolfe's own descriptions. One of these became an example for Wolfe of what he did not want his own work to become. In 1923, he wrote his mother from Harvard about a play he was working on: The point to this play, mama, grows out of my indignation at the idea most people have of mountain life, growing out of the romantic stories of mountain life by such writers as John Fox, Jr. and others. You and I know this is not the truth.5 38 �Despite these protests, however, Wolfe's early work incorporated many of the same stereotypical elements he disdained. He adopted a different kind of stereotype from James Boyd, author of Drums and Marching On. According to Wolfe's friend, Jonathon Daniels, Wolfe was tremendously impressed by Boyd; particularly in his sentiments toward the piedmont, that "flat lands make a flat and colorless people."6 It was this belief that led Wolfe time and time again back to his own roots in the southern Appalachians. Though influenced by other writers, Wolfe's prose was uniquely his own. It was the influence of his mother's people from the Swannanoa Valley just east of Asheville that Wolfe gained the inspiration for his short stories on the area. Julia Westall was born a year before the Civil War to a family of eleven children. Her father, Thomas Casey Westall, was a farmer, surveyor, teacher, carpenter and major in the North Carolina militia. He married his first cousin, Martha Penland, who was a great-granddaughter of Robert Patton, one of the first settlers in the area. It was through the Patton connection, too, that Wolfe was related to Davey Crockett, who married a Patton girl.7 After the Civil War, the family moved farther up the Swannanoa Valley to a hundred acre farm and it was the stories from this mountainous tract that Mrs. Wolfe passed on to her youngest son. Wolfe inherited not only his storytelling ability but also his remarkable memory from his mother and grandfather. As Mrs. Wolfe recalled; "Father was a very fine man. None of his children took after him. Tom was the only one that took after him in writing. Tom was named after him. None of his children measured up to him."8 Although some of the Westalls moved to Asheville, many continued to live in the hills, giving Wolfe an excellent first person account of some of the rich background and heritage of his ancestors. Wolfe's original plan for the material dealing with his Appalachian forebears was to create a novel, orginally entitled The Hills Beyond Pentland. This book would trace the history of Eugene Gant, the hero in Wolfe's first two novels, Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River, back to the 1830's and his grandfather's day. Wolfe also had plans for three more novels which would further chronicle the Gant and Pentland families and ultimately depict American life from colonial days, with the arrival of the first Pentland to America, to the Depression of the 1930's and Wolfe's own career as a novelist.9 Although he ended up abandoning his plans for the three intervening novels, The Hills Beyond was still at the back of his mind even as he worked on his manuscript for The Web and the Rock. When finally published after Wolfe's death in 1938, the book contained many portions of the Pentland family saga in its first half. As early as 1934, Wolfe added in a postscript to his mother a request for information on the older branches of her family to provide a background for his project. 39 �... if I tell how one family like your own, for instance, going back a hundred and fifty years or more to pioneer and Colonial days and with all their settling in various places, pushing Westward marrying into other families everywhere, etc., finally weaving a kind of web, it would have the whole history of the country in it.10 When he began working on the project in earnest, however, he found that much of the material had already been published in the form of short stories and other novels and he was forced to begin once more from scratch. He changed the name from Pentland to Joyner and the fragment, called "The Hills Beyond," was eventlually included in a book of short stories by that name after his death. Several other short stories in this collection contain portrayals of mountain life as described by Wolfe, including "Chickamauga" and "The Return of the Prodigal." Two other short stories based on Appalachian life appear in his first collection of short stories, From Death to Morning; "The Web of Earth" and "The Men of Old Catawba." In each, Wolfe puts his own observations of the mountain people which still provide valuable insights into Appalachian culture. The first of Wolfe's short stories to deal with his mother and her family was entitled "The Web of Earth," published in the spring of 1932. It originated from a conservation he had with his mother in January of that year when she visited him in New York. Mrs. Wolfe's long, rambling narrative is an excellent example of Wolfe's mastery of dialect, for the entire ninety page story consists of the rememberances of Eliza Gant from her childhood during the Civil War to her husband's previous marriages and the birth of her children: I reckon that they tried to put it down in books, all of the wars and battles. Child, I guess they got that part of it all right, but Lord! - how could these fellows know the way it was when they weren't born, when they weren't there to see it; they made it seem so long ago and like it happened in some strange land - what could they know, child, of the way it was.... n "The Web of Earth" portrays Eliza Gant as a type of "earth mother" and her husband as the "far wanderer."12 Through Wolfe's skillful weaving of many different story lines, she evolves from a rather confused, misplaced mountaineer to a woman in full possession of her faculties, anxious to impart to her son some of the vivid memories and stories in their family history. And in fact, nearly all aspects of that family history are touched upon in the narrative. Wolfe wrote his mother in May of 1932: 40 �The story is about everything that goes to make up life—the happiness, the sorrow, the joy, the pain, the triumph, and the suffering.... As for the person who tells the story, everything that is written is written as an honorable tribute to her courage, strength, and character.13 Many critics, including Wolfe's editor Maxwell Perkins and literary agent Elizabeth Nowell, consider "The Web of Earth" to be one of Wolfe's best works.H His style of writing is particularly suited to this "stream of consciousness" prose; the piece was one of the few which Perkins returned to Wolfe with the comment, "Not one word of this should be changed."15 "The Men of Old Catawba" did not receive the same critical acclaim as "The Web of Earth." Indeed, it appears to be very much a forgotten story, included in the same short story collection as "The Web of Earth" and essentially ignored thereafter. Wolfe did not forget the story, however. Although orginally written in 1935, Wolfe drew on the same descriptions for the opening of "The Hills Beyond" as he did for "The Men of Old Catawba": "On the middle-Atlantic seaboard of the North American continent and about a day's journey from New York, is situated the American State of Old Catawba."16 In "The Hills Beyond," this became: "About midway along the Atlantic Seaboard of the North American continent lies a strip of land which is known today as the state of Old Catawba."17 Where "The Hills Beyond" goes into the story of the Lost Colony, however, "The Men of Old Catawba" relates the story of the discovery of Old Catawba through a one-eyed Spaniard and his quest for gold. The story was originally written as two separate tales, one called "Polyphemus" and the other "Old Catawba." It was incorporated into one when included in From Death to Morning. Wolfe is attempting to set the stage for his Appalachian characters in these stories and they prove the admiration Wolfe held for the people of his native state: Their character has strong Scotch markings: they are cautious and deliberate, slow to make a radical decision. They are great talkers, and believe in prayer and argument. They are perhaps the most immensely conservative people on earth, they reverence authority, tradition, and leadership, but when committed to any decision, they stick to it implacably. 18 At least one of the stories in this essay came from a professor at Chapel Hill. When Wolfe himself was teaching at Washington Square College in New York University, he had his students read books, like Glenway Westcott's The Grandmothers, which dealt with the same material 41 �Wolfe had always planned to work on in his own novels.19 The character analysis was Wolfe's own, however, and his insightful descriptions into the mountaineer psyche are in many ways applicable even today. "The Return of the Prodigal" was a deviation from Wolfe's Hills Beyond Pentland, but it nevertheless presents some interesting insights into Wolfe's view of Appalachian culture. The first part of the story, "The Thing Imagined" was written in 1934 when Asheville's reception of Look Homeward, Angel was still fresh in Wolfe's mind. It relates an imaginary trip back to his hometown in which even his own mother does not recognize him but receives him as just another roomer in her boardinghouse. The second half, written after Wolfe's actual visit home in 1937, proves that the people of Asheville had actually forgiven him, though it took nearly seven years for them to arrive at that point. Wolfe came home by way of Burnsville, just north of Asheville, where he met many of his mother's relatives still living in the area: Yore grandpaw, son, was my own brother. He was born, like all of us, on the South Toe in Zebulon. He married yore grandmaw thar and settled down and raised a family. His paw before him - my paw, too - he come in thar long years before. I've heerd him tell it was wild country then. Thar was Cherokees when yore great-grandpaw first come in thar. Yes, sir.20 Wolfe's account of this stopover in Burnsville is full of warmth and humor, quite a different attitude from the bitter one which raised the wrath of his hometown in his first novel. Even an account of a brutal shooting in the streets of downtown Burnsville is interpersed with humor as the murderer turns to "Eugene" and says: "Who's this?" "Must be a cousin of yours, Ted. Leastways, he's a cousin of mine. You know - the feller who wrote that book." With a slow and sullen grin Ted shifts the gun and offers his hand. "Why, sure, I know about you. I know your folks. But, by God, you'd better never put this in a book! Because if you do - " with a shake of the head and a throaty laugh - "you and me's goin' to get together!"21 In real life, Wolfe actually was a witness to an encounter between the two men he wrote about, if not the actual murder, and was called back from New York to give testimony at their trial.22 The whole affair had a deep effect on Wolfe, who felt the murder had taken place in part because of 42 �the men's wish to become part of one of Wolfe's novels. They did. Wolfe wrote about the encounter not only in "The Return of the Prodigal," it was also incorporated into his last novel, You Can't Go Home Again. The trip home in 1937 also provide Wolfe with the source for another story, "Chickamauga." While in Burnsville, he spoke in length with his ninety-five year old great-uncle John Westall, who remembered the Civil War battle in great detail. Wolfe later spoke quite warmly of Uncle John to his editor, Edward Aswell, and said that "the old man told his story in almost exactly the words in which it appears "23 We never knowed how hit would be there in the cedar thickets beside Chickamauga Creek. And if we had aknowed, if someone ha a-told us, why I reckon that none of us would a-cared. And as fer knowin' - law! The only trouble about knowin' is that you've got to know what knowin's like before you know what knowin' is. Thar's no one can tell you.24 Through his use of folk speech to tell the story of the battle, Wolfe's "Chickamauga" has veen called "one of the most effective representations of mountaineer speech in American literature."25 The story is effective more for this reason that because it gives an accurate account of the battle. By telling it from the perspective of Uncle John, Wolfe did not need to be concerned with historical accuracy, for the story does have many discrepancies when compared to the actual battle. Wolfe drew on his own imagination as well as the recollections of his great-uncle and his own reading of history; whether or not there was actually cedar thicket at the Battle of Chickamauga becomes immaterial, the fact that Uncle John remembers it is not. Critics of the time were not enamored of Wolfe's story. Though he sent it to a dozen different magazines, trying to earn some pocket money between novels, each rejected it in turn until in desperation he finally sent it to the Yale Review. The Review paid him just enough to buy a good overcoat, which was badly needed.26 Other pieces did better in magazines and, in all, Wolfe published nearly sixty pieces of fiction in various magazines, from Redbook to The New Republic, emphasizing his wide appeal to the reading public. Perhaps the most important of Wolfe's accounts of mountain life come in the form of a fragment from the piece he was working on right before his death in 1938. Dropping the name Pentland to separate the work from his previous novels, Wolfe called it "The Hills Beyond." It traces the Joyner family back to the 1970's with their first settling in Zebulon County, North Carolina. This has been called Wolfe's most objective work; the characters, with one or two exceptions, are fictional. He 43 �had moved away from the romanticism that marked his early efforts to a realistic account of frontier life. He recounts not only the story of the Joyner family, but also many legends and tall tales that marked frontier life, making his work valuable as folklore as well as regional history. The story begins with William "Bear" Joyner and his family; seven children by the first marriage, sixteen by the second; a character based on Wolfe's own great-grandfather. Bear is also a likenss to a man found in another family tree; that of Zebulon Vance, North Caroina's Civil War govenor. In fact, many similarities can be drawn between the two families, a fact which was not lost on Wolfe. Zachariah Joyner, one of Bear's sons, is based on Vance. In fact, Wolfe claims to have collected "more than eight hundred stories, anecdotes, and jokes that are told of him, and of this number at least six hundred have the unmistakable ring—or smack—of truth. If they did not happen—they should have!"27 He goes on to relate many of these tales; Vance's backwoods humor was legendary even among the people of his homeland, such as the tale in which he assures the U.S. Senate that he "could—halfway across the stream" and the Vice President declares him out of order. "Mr. President, sir, you are right," declares the Senator; "If I was in order, sir, I could—the whole way across it!"28 Legendary feats are also the basis of Wolfe's description of Bear Joyner, a fact which Wolfe puts into perspective from the first: Bear Joyner, like his famous son, was increate with myth, because the very nature of the man persuaded it The Myth is founded on extorted fact: wrenched from the context of ten thousand days, and rutted roads, the desolations of lost voices long ago It is important then to know that William Joyner "chewed the b'ar." But it is even more important to know that William Joyner was a man who learned to read a book.29 Wolfe's mountaineer in "The Hills Beyond" is not a slow, ignorant farmer as some had portrayed him. He was instead a strong, industrious, intelligent man who incorporated many of the traits of Americans as a whole. Indeed, several of the sons of Bear leave the rural mountain life for professions in the city, including Lafayette, the grandfather of George Webber, Wolfe's hero in The Web and the Rock and You Can't Go Home Again. Had he been able to finish the novel, the storyline would have taken the family to the opening of The Web and The Rock. As it is, it brings the story through the generations of the Joyner family up to 1880, or twenty years before George's birth. Thus it is only a fragment of the intended novel, but it is an important one to his development as a writer and his perception of the mountaineer stereotype. Thomas Wolfe's short stories depict a mountain people as diverse as 44 �the country they settled in. From the rambling reminscences of Eliza Gant and Uncle John Pentland, to the violence and threats of a local murderer, the political oratory of Zachariah Joyner, and the legends and tall tales of the men of Old Catawba and Bear Joyner, Wolfe's stories cannot be said to fit any one stereotype. His characters are neither all "good Old Catawbans" nor all "mountain grill." They would instead settle in all parts of the country, founding families in Boston, Massachusetts and Seattle, Washington as well as Asheville, North Carolina. Wolfe's northern heritage, his wide readings of other authors, and his extensive travels abroad gave his mountaineer a universal appeal which made him just as popular in Germany as in the United States. His plan was to tell the story of the whole country through her people; a massive job which Wolfe's short twelve year career as a novelist did not allow him to complete. That which was completed provided an overwhelming body of work with all of the sights and sounds which Wolfe absorbed over the years. His powers of observation were so renowned that the science fiction writer Ray Bradbury based his short story "Forever and the Earth" on him. The story brings Wolfe back to life in the year 2257 to describe an interplanetary journey to which only Wolfe could do justice. His descriptions of space, as his descriptions of Appalachia, are based on a viewpoint which is at once objective yet filled with warmth and insight that marked so much of his later works. Wolfe's descriptions are timeless and his writing, whether on his home mountains or on outer space, are universal. ENDNOTES 1. Elizabeth Nowell, editor, The Letters of Thomas Wolfe (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1956), p. 644. 2. C. Hugh Holman and Sue Fields Ross, editors, The Letters of Thomas Wolfe to his Mother (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1968), p. 42. 3. Nowell, p. 376. 4. Hayden Norwood, The Marble Man's Wife (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947), p. 76. 5. Holman and Fields, p. 17. 6. Jonathon Daniels, "Poet of the Bloom," Tar Heels (Dodd Mead &. Co, 1941). 7. James Meehan, "Thomas Wolfe as Regional Historian," The Thomas Wolfe Review, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 1977, p. 9. 45 �8. Norwood, p. 46. 9. Richard S. Kennedy, The Window of Memory (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1962), p. 199-200. 10. Holman and Fields, p. 234. 11. Thomas Wolfe, "The Web of Earth," From Death to Morning (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970), p. 214-215. 12. Kennedy, p. 242. 13. Holman and Fields, p. 220-221. 14. Bruce R. McElderry, Jr., Thomas Wolfe (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1964), p. 111. 15. Kennedy, p. 243. 16. Thomas Wolfe, "The Men of Old Catawba, From Death to Morning (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970), p. 185. 17. Thomas Wolfe, "The Hills Beyond," The Hills Beyond (New York: The New American Library, 1982), p. 157. 18. Thomas Wolfe, "The Men of Old Catawba, From Death to Morning (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970), p. 201. 19. Kennedy, p. 241. 20. Thomas Wolfe, The Return of the Prodigal," The Hills Beyond (New York: The New American Library, 1982), p. 49. 21. Ibid., p. 103. 22. Floyd C. Watkins, Thomas Wolfe's Characters (Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1957), p. 134-135. 23. Edward C. Aswell, "A Note on Thomas Wolfe," The Hills Beyond (New York: The New American Library, 1982), p. 297. 24. Thomas Wolfe, "Chickamauga," The Hilis Beyond (New York: The New American Library, 1982), p. 78. 25. Floyd C. Watkins, "Rhetoric in Southern Writing," Georgia Quarterly, XIII, Spring 1958. 26. Aswell, p. 298. 27. Thomas Wolfe, "The Hills Beyond," The Hilb Beyond (New York: The New American Library, 1982), p. 174. 28. Ibid., p. 174. 29. Ibid., p. 169-170. 46 �BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Holman, Hugh C. and Ross, Sue Fields, ed. The Letters of Thomas Wolfe to his Mother. Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1968. Nowell, Elizabeth, ed. The Letters of Thomas Wolfe. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1956. Wolfe, Thomas. From Death to Morning. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970. Wolfe, Thomas. The Hills Beyond. New York, New American Library, 1982. Secondary Sources Aswell, Edward C. "A Note on Thomas Wolfe," The Hills Beyond. New York, New American Library, 1982. Daniels, Jonathon. "Poet of the Bloom," Tar Heels. Dodd, Mead and Company, 1941. Field, Leslie A. "The Hills Beyond: A Folk Novel of America," Three Decades of Criticism. New York, New York Univeristy Press, 1968 Geismar, Maxwell. "Thomas Wolfe: The Hillman and the Furies," Yale Review, 1946. Higgs, Robert J. and Manning, Ambrose N., ed. Voices from the Hills. New York, Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1975. Holman, Hugh C. The Loneliness at the Core. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1975. Kennedy, Richard S. "Thomas Wolfe and the American Experience," Modem Fiction Studies. Purdue University, Volume XI, Number 3. Kennedy, Richard S. The Window of Memory. Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1962. McElderry, Bruce R. Thomas Wolfe. New York, Twayne Publishers, 1964. Meehan, James. "Thomas Wolfe as Regional Historian," The Thomas Wolfe Newsletter. Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 1977. Muller, Herbert J. Thomas Wolfe. New York, Vail-Ballow Press, 1947. Norwood, Hayden. The Marble Man's Wife. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947. Perkins, Maxwell. "Thomas Wolfe," Harvard Library Bulletin. Autumn, 1947. Walser, Richard. "Major Thomas Casey Westhall," The Thomas Wolfe Review. Volume 8, Number 2* Fall 1984. Walser, Richard. Thomas Wolfe: An Introduction and Interpretation. New York, Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1961. 47 �Watkins, Floyd C. "Rhetoric in Southern Writing," Georgia Review. Volume XII, Spring 1958. Watkins, Floyd C. Thomas Wolfe's Characters. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1957. 48 �CREATIVE READINGS Convenor: Sharon McCrumb, Virginia Polytechnical Institute Appalachian Voices: In Search of a Usable Past Anne Shelby, Appalachian Center University of Kentucky The Loom House, "The Apprentice," A Spinner In Her Hundredth Year" Bennie Sinclair, Cleveland, South Carolina Old Sunrise Hill c 1985 Charles Tunstall, Tusculum College Appalachian Crafts As Literary Subject by Bennie Sinclair As a contemporary writer I have found our Appalachian handcrafts to be a challenging subject for poetry and fiction. The language and work ethic of crafts, as well as the craftspeople and their produce, offer stimulating ground for the creative writer. The crafts of pottery, spinning, and weaving are represented here in poems and novella excerpts. Nowhere in the New World has the pervasion of handcrafts been greater than in the Southern Appalachians. Forests yielded logs for carving and lumber for furniture as well as bark, berries, and plants for dyeing and "woods pretties," baskets and brooms. The earth gave clay and gemstones. Hillside pastures nourished sheep whose coats were a harvest, and fields grew cotton that likewise could be transformed into the miracle of fiber. Isolation made it easy for highlanders to be self-sufficient. Idle hands were a sin, busy hands were a virtue. "Use it up wear it out; make it do or do without" led to thrifty and clever use of usable objects designed to be attractive and inexpensive. With all or many stages of the production done by hand, the work ethic became as important as the work itself. As a child I was surrounded by crafts still in use in our home, from dough bowl to quilts, and, though stilled, my great-grandmother's spinning wheel was a reminder of how the woven coverlets in our linen closet had begun as thread. All of my adult life I've been closely involved with the crafts field through my husband, Don Lewis, and his work as a potter and member of the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild. An awareness of how the past continues into the present in the area of crafts, and a con- 49 �stant re-evaluation of that relationship by the craftsperson comparing old ways and new, old values and new, is to me symbolic of the writer's dilemma as well. The Apprentice I live in the potter's house, a house transformed of clay; of tools, dust, machinery; mounds that wait in vinegary stillness, for their metamorphic day. Of the potter's hand I take myself transformed into each shaping hour, an humbled, hopeful witness to the miracle of clay made whole by that most destructive of elements, fire; or coming ever back into itself wet down, dried out, wet down again; pounded, thrown on the potter's wheel into shapes both basic and fine, coming of purpose at last from the potter's magnificent hand while I, the novitiate, cannot come so close of the clay can only pretend to sense its lifelike resiliency as I carry unpromising mounds from the bins to his wheel. On glazing day I stand in the muck of chemicals and watch the potter select for each a piece of skin: considering, for a cup, how its rim will feel upon lips or, if a bowl, how its texture might seem to a woman's sensitive hands. Each form that the potter makes 50 �becomes, as himself, an image reflected. Through his miscalculations I learn that this work leaves nothing to chance; the smallest detail of design has bearing over the whole— the pitcher not fully thought out will never pour cleanly; the lid less carefully turned will ruin the effect of a jar. From the moment his process begins through the final stages of the kiln the potter gives life, or destroys, of his worth. Myself, I have yet to be judged. Seven years in the potter's house shall teach me technical skill: but whatever I make of my clay will depend; will depend. I was deeply moved when I first saw Doris Ulmann's photograph, "A Spinner In Her Hundredth Year." In it, it seemed that continuity existed not so much in the craft of spinning and weaving as in this particular craftswoman's longevity, which transcended generations. When I began research I was struck by the poetic possiblities of the language related to these skills especially pattern names. "A Spinner In Her Hundredth Year" from the photograph by Doris Ulmann Once, she herded colors like sheep from off the hillsides, perfecting the dyeing science that all hues of light and shadow might hold fast— a greater span she learned to reason in. In spring, she envisioned the little lambs grown coats like Joseph's— matched eyes the deepness of sky to indigo; their blood to madder. 51 �In and out of our time her low or high wheels flew, their miles concentric. Whenever the spindle was stilled threads and yarn she had drawn carried her through the night like a wind-blown spider— adrift in years, as seasons, each coming round again. Children, grandchildren, great great grandchildren... so many times she witnessed color and cloth of her hand in and out of the church; the tomb or the marriage bed; she came to remember only the names of the thread, or their design. Mornings, she ran the sheep from their stalls into the high pasture: evenings, she gathered them in, calling them by their names; watching the spread of her patterns fashion itself to their skins: Rose in the Garden Rose in the Blossom Rose in the Wilderness: and each spring, a dozen new lambs; skeins running now on the mountain. My novella The Loom House follows a young weaver's career through the crafts revival of the 1960's through the 1970's. During this period Trudy sees crafts re-identified as "art," and the integral dictum "produce or perish" altered by creation of the National Endowment for the Arts and accompanying states arts agencies which award grants money to those educated and industrious in seeking it. She sees, in her own field, the painstaking learning of a skill confused with instant interpretation of 52 �the medium. She finds a moral dilemma in being a modern craftsperson. Should she spend time refining her art and seeking out markets... or in filling out grant applications and cultivating contacts? Is it demeaning to pay to submit her work to exhibits? In seeking answers she becomes a scholar of the past as well as the present world of weaving. Following are three excerpts. Three excerpts from The Loom House: ... And, as if to prove it, she stood up, stretched, and went into her studio. But the sudden colors of her yarns, pinned close to the rafters on closeline, touched her with the same effect, of memories. "Well, then, I guess I'd better get going," Ola said, from the doorway. "It's a long way back to civilization. I'd feel so much better if you had a phone..." Trudy waved goodbye. She listened to the Mercury slough its way through the mud to the paved road and then, sighing, reached up and plucked a skein of gray wool from the line, holding it to her face like a flower. In the dyepot it had stunk of sumac and the copperas she used as a mordant, but now it was cleaned and fresh, waiting for the loom. Before this depressing period of lethargy had set in, in which she could get nothing done, she had spent weeks at dyeing, working toward certain hues that haunted her, though she had no idea how she would use them. On clear days she had foraged her woods and fields for dyestuffs. Her basketfuls of weeds and flowers and leaves, roots and lichens and barks filled the cabin's old rooms with fresh pungency. And slowly out of the dyepot strange and true colors had begun to bloom: sombre and rich reds of sassafras and dogwood root; a vibrant, painfully youthful green of oak leaves crushed and pounded, the color held fast by salting; mournful purples and blues from a half-dozen or more different berry plants; and one special shade that almost eluded her, a glowing and elegant brown that she thought must be the same richness of her late mother's hair. That brown had come, finally, of walnut gathered after frost, a mixture of hulls, roots and bark, tended and stirred to an exact moment. It had seemed particulary fitting that this shade needed no mordant to "sadden" it or make it hold true, as it did in Trudy's mind. "Mother's Hair," "Finch's Wing"—it was her habit to give names to her colors, once she had achieved them. The un-named gray in her hand was as soft and indistinct as fog, or the mists that rolled from the hills each morning. It was so subtle it would be difficult to work with, she knew. And, against her will, she saw the gray as something else..." Childhood?" That hazy period of first becoming aware of that tragedy being played out around her? 53 �During her first years, the war years, it had seemed so strange, as if there was a cadence in the air that everyone seemed to hear—a roll of drums and a sound of taps, the rumble of convoys passing in the night. It seemed a different world then, something to do with camaraderie; unspoken feelings somehow shared. Often she had stood on the sidewalk to wave at the military traffic moving to and from the air base just outside of town. In a newsreel, when she saw a thin, tow-haired little girl waving at truckloads of soldiers, she cried out loud, in amazement, "That's me!" "No, dear, that's a little girl in England," her mother whispered, and around them, in the darkened theatre, everyone laughed good-naturedly. ... Her father, Hamp, felt sorry for himself. In the throes of self-pity drank and stayed home from work. Growing suddenly sentimental, he decided to take Trudy on a pilgrimage to her mother's homeplace, where the child's great-grandmother, whom he always referred to as "the crone," still lived. It was the first time since leaving the hospital that Trudy had felt truly awake. They rode for hours in the afternoon, stopping in some small foothills town for supper. As it began to turn dark the road became narrow; mountainous; frightening. Trudy lay under a blanket in the back seat and closed her eyes, terrified—but when she woke she was in a bed, and the sky was lightening. Her gnarled and tiny great-grandmother bent over her like some creature remembered from a dream, shushing her to be quiet, pointing warningly across the room where Hamp lay snoring. Conspiratorially the old woman led her into the warm kitchen, helped her dress, and fed her a steaming breakfast. Then, her watery eyes eager as the child's she took Trudy on a tour of the homeplace that, amid morning mist and bird music, again seemed familiar, like a dream. Perhaps her mother had described it to her, or there had been pictures. There was the cluster of old log buildings, the waking cackle of hens, the cow. Tools lay in the high grass, abandoned and rusting; the barn and smokehouse were rotting from leaky roofs. Clutching her heavy skirt up about her knobby knees, the old woman led the way slowly through the morning damp while Trudy limped as slowly behind, falling instantly in love with each and everything she saw. They visited the hens and cow, the deserted buildings where kittens spilled from the rafters like mice. Then her great-grandmother unlocked the door to the loom house and led Trudy in. Two great looms stood idle, one strung and abandoned in the middle stages of a coverlet now ghostly gray with dust. Yet, despite the disarray, the sight of those threads in their paradigm captured Trudy's imagination. As instinctively as a young spider coming into her own first web, Trudy responded to the compelling pull of thread and loom. 54 �... Now, standing alone and somewhat afraid in her studio twenty years later, Trudy recognized the colors around her, that she had been creating. In a moment of unexpected understanding, Ola had once sent her a clipping, a quotation from Joyce Carol Oates; "One always thinks of a few people, day after day; there's no escape. A father, a mother, a few beloved people—that is the extent of the universe, emotionally. And if something has gone wrong inside this small universe, then nothing can ever be made right." Long ago, Trudy had given up wanting to be a writer because she could not bear the pressure of words: their intensity. Weaving had seemed like the perfect substitute—a craft, not an art, she could practice and enjoy. But the forces that drive and compose had played their trick on her. From a hundred different skeins ghosts and memories glowed or were subdued in their own mutability. Even the damselfly of that fateful day was there in a range of purples and greens, robbed of its irridescence, but not its richness, by the years between. For three years she had worked at a job she hated in order to clear her great-grandmother's estate of back taxes and legal fees. But now that the farm was finally her home, she found that the determination which had sustained her through so much had disappeared as quickly as mist from the hillside. "Am I one of those for whom nothing can ever be made right?" she asked aloud, softly. There was no one to answer. Around her the fabulous colors of her own making glowed, challenging her like the unknown force in a dream. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bennie Lee Sinclair has received a Stephen Vincent Benet and the Winthrop Award for poetry, and a BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORY citation for fiction. She is an advisory editor of Appalachian Heritage magazine. 55 �FEDERAL IMPACT Convenor: Harley Jolley, Mars Hill College The Blue Ridge Parkway And Its Effects On Local People Kimberly Burnette, Radfbrd University Mud Creek Clinic: A Model of Grassroots Health Care Eula Hall, Mud Creek Health Clinic Appalachia's Path To Welfare Dependency Paul Salstrom, Brandeis University "The modern world, by multiplying necessities, multiplies the needy, and makes the peaceable practicing of Poverty more and more difficult. ... Whether we wipe out the superfluous poor by cannon-balls, or destroy entire harvests of wheat by fire, or throw tons of mild into the river, they are all identical ways of meeting the situation." —George Bernanos, A Diary of My Time (New York, 1938), p. 159. "There is a modern technique of granting assistance to the weak, to the disinherited, to the wretched of all kinds. But from the standpoint of techniques in general, the pure and simple suppression of such people would cost less. Therefore, technology will sooner or later suppress them." —George Bernanos, The Last Essays of George Bernanos (Chicago, 1955), p. 8. Appalachians Path to Welfare Dependency by Paul Salstrom As of 1840 Southern Appalachia figured as one of the most self-sufficient regions of the United States. By 1940 it had become one of the country's least self-sufficient regions. Between 1880 and 1930 the southern mountains experienced a rapid transition toward industrialization. During that half century, the region's self-sufficiency in food production waned. Late, when industry faltered in the 1930's, the federal govenment provided relief on a massive scale. Relief became so extensive that it 56 �brought many mountaineers a degree of economic and social stability that their families had not known for generations—since industrialization began or before—but in the process it also made many mountain farmers more dependent on regular cash income than they had ever previously been. In this paper I will talk only about economic dependency, not about psychological dependency. Claude Dillion, who was born in 1918 in the Marrowbone Creek neighborhood of Mingo County, West Virginia, and who lived through the Depression there, formed the opinion that "the public works programs that were prescribed to put people to work, simply took them away from farm life, took them away from self-sufficient way to do things."1 And a storekeeper in the Upper Mud River section of Lincoln County, West Virginia shared that view, saying, "It was the WPA that started farming on its downhill path all around here. The WPA paid farmers to work on roads, and work on this and that, till they started counting on that money and neglecting their land."2 New Deal policymakers evidently felt no misgivings about the usefulness of pumping cash into "backward" areas like Appalachia. Harry Hopkins and his colleagues often bucked local political opposition in Appalachia to attain their relief quotas. (The phenomenon of this political opposition in Appalachia cannot be equated with the opposition manifested by the Deep South's oligarchy. Tenancy, share-cropping, and farm wage labor were all pervasive in the Deep South, but were exceptions to the rule in Appalachia. In the Deep South, federal relief became a de facto alternative to low-paid farm labor, but in Appalachia it displaced mainly the traditional localized economic system that I call the "subsistence-barter-and-borrow system." Below, I will go into detail about that system. I believe that it constitutes a crucial part of our "usuable past," and I want to share with you news about rural pockets in which that traditional economic system is being revived, using a model devised two and a half years ago in British Columbia and called the LETS system—the Local Exchange Trading System. I do not claim that the New Deal singlehandedly created Appalachia's dependence on federal transfer payments. That would be an over-simplification. The region's dependency grew gradually, becoming toe/are dependency only in its last stage.3 From the beginning, Appalachia's trade with the outside world (consisting of agricultural exports and merchandise imports) depended upon outside capital, and later, industrialization during the 1880-1930 period also depended upon outside investment. In both cases, the main source of investment capital was the Northern United States.4 You can say whatever you want about that investment capital. My purpose here is not to moralize but to analyze, and in the late 1920's, when demand for coal quit growing, the coal industry became more com- 57 �petitive, Appalachia was able to successfully compete, and its coal capital was not withdrawn. The reason Appalachia could successfully compete, however, was because its miners did not need as much wage (that is, cash) income as their Northern counterparts. The Appalachian miner's lifestyle was more rural than was the Northern miner's. The average Appalachian miner and his family subsisted in part off the land, raising a large garden and keeping some livestock.5 And because wages could be scaled lower in Appalachia, coal mining here was conducted by more labor-intensive methods. In 1933, with the New Deal and in particular the National Recovery Administration, wage and price supports were imposed on the country. This penalized labor-intensive operations in favor of those more capital intensive, delivering a blow to not only Appalachian mining but also Piedmont textile manufacturing, and this came at the very time when the Depression had curtailed opportunities to move out of the South. The great growth of those Southern industries, remember, had only been possible because they could compete in their respective markets—which they could do only because they did not pay their workers a fully familysupporting wage. Subsistence agriculture (which incidentally is also labor-intensive, since by definition it pays no cash return on cash investment, and thus attracts no capital)—subsistence agriculture had provided the necessary supplement to the low wages and, in Marxist terms, completed the cycle of "reproduction" by reproducing the labor force in the subsistence mode (the household mode of production). Labor reproduced itself prolifically under these circumstances but soil fertility did not. From the beginning, Scotch-Irish farming customs were not well suited to so hilly a topography. The land's diminishing strength yielded diminishing returns, but most mountaineers resisted migration. They stayed put eventually enduring impoverishment and injuring the land.6 They stayed put, primarily, because they ranked proximity to their parents and siblings higher than individual economic enrichment. This family-orientation, mind you, was not comparable to a communitarian lifestyle such as exemplified by the Russian mir (village commune). Rural Appalachia's basic socioeconomic group was smaller, composed (as one eastern Kentucky case study found) "of two, three, or more family-households that were particularly solitary and bonded together by strong ties of mutual friendship, and frequent visiting exchanges, as well as by ties of kinship. These were primarily groups of siblings' families or of siblings and their parental families." Beyond these family groups (the same study found) there was "little cooperation in common tasks for the good of the whole neighborhood. Few interfamily economic relationships, such as borrowing farm implements or exchanging labor, existed."7 A similarly pronounced "familism," accompanied 58 �by a comparable lack of community cooperation, was discovered by a West Virginia case study.8 A decline of community solidarity began quite early, according to the Depression-era union organizer Jim Garland (whose family went back many generations in southeastern Kentucky). Garland writes that "when there remained no more unclaimed farmland to take up,... two classes of people emerged Thus, even before the coal operators came into the region, mountain society had begun to disintegrate."9 As their living standard fell in the mountain fastness, many Appalachian farmers gladly went to work for wages that were lower than those paid for the performance of comparable jobs elsewhere in the United States. In the competitive coal industry of the 1920's this proved to be an advantage and Appalachian coal was consistently able to undersell Northern coal until 1933, when the National Recovery Administration's price and wage supports threatened this situation.10 Appalachia's coal areas then began to grow dependent on federal welfare payments. Capital did not so much take flight from the mountains as it took flight from wages—from labor. It went into making Appalachian mines as capital intensive as Northern mines. Since the coal areas had already become largely cash-dependent before the Depression began, I would have agreed that welfare provision was the best policy for the New Deal to adopt in these coal areas. By contrast, I believe that in areas where subsistence agriculture was still predominantly practiced full time, federal relief (including work relief under the WPA) produced a great increase in dependency. Through cash injections, such areas were weaned from conditions of relative local autonomy —from local subsistence undergirded by intense family-group networks of borrowing and barter—to a situation in which cash became a pre-condition for a far larger proportion of economic transactions. In terms of avoiding dependency, what is important about the subsistence-barter-and-borrow system is that (1) it needed to produce no profit on investments which originated outside the region, and (2) it produced its own consumption items and thus (despite a scarcity of cash) wealth was not drained out of the region through heavy purchases. The system's small cash requirement was not onerous. [See Figure.] The system required an initial investment (which was unnecessary for some heirs) to purchase agricultural capital goods—tools, for instance, and also animals and animal-drawn farm implements. After that, the system required just a few dollars annually for tool replacement and a few more for consumption items which were not native to Appalachia. [See Figure.] The only serious obstacle was that the subsistence-borrow-barter system required use of an agriculturally viable piece of land. This could be a daunting obstacle for young people coming up into adulthood but, given adequate land, Appalachian family groups which engaged full time 59 �in subsistence farming were virtually autonomous vis—vis economic forces beyond their neighborhoods. Let me emphasize that Appalachia's full-time subsistence farmers were not thus self-sufficient as separate individuals or even as separate conjugal families. Each conjugal family did not live by using only the tools or equipment that it personally owned, or by subsisting entirely off the animals and produce that it personally raised. It lived by combining a degree of such self-sufficiency with a prodigious amount of barter and borrowing of both objects and labor. This borrow-and barter activity was continuous (except for occasional feuds) but it did not exist with equal intensity between all residents of a neighborhood. It flourished primarily within family groups as defined above: "two, three, or more family-households" which were generally "groups of siblings' families or of siblings and their parental families." Such family groups drew on resources beyond their own numbers, however, since some of their members were simultaneously members of other family groups (holding multiple membership), and also since some borrowing and barter bore no reference to family groups. Folklore reveals much about this aspect of rural Appalachian life. Gossip networks are a by-word and there exists an unspoken expectation that everyone will give some account of his goings-on. No one is willingly allowed to shut himself off and to refuse to render a running account of his material life. An economic function lurks barely below the surface of this rural snoopiness, and manifests in the proposals which frequently follow on the heels of prying questions. Having asked "What are you working on these days?" your neighbor may next say, "So in that case you're not using your ladder"—or your winch or your railroad jack. "Reckon then you're not using your railroad jack. Though I might change my sill log." And rather than hire the two or three helpers required to change his sill log, he would expect free help, it being understood that he would return equal labor on request, or repay in goods at a mutually convenient time. A relatively poor farmer might contribute mostly labor within this system, whereas a relatively prosperous farmer might more readily lend equipment. During the Depression, in the least developed neighborhood of Pendleton County, West Virginia, "it was customary for several of the more well-to-do farmers to buy a piece of machinery in common which all their neighbors would use until it wore out, at which time the same persons would purchase another."11 Probably such equipment lending was balanced to everyone's satisfaction by labor contributions from the poorer families of the neighborhood. All three of Pendleton County's banks had failed in 1931 and the web of barter transactions grew very complex there. Most of the country's merchants and professionals then still raised livestock on the side and were thus able, with little inconvenience, to accept payment in animals and grain.12 60 �Urbanites have difficulty weighing the contribution made by borrowing and barter to rural life. (And for all their "research," most scholars are urbanites.) Cash is admittedly the most transportable and universal form of asset, but these attributes often hold limited appeal for people who intend to stay where they are, and who share with their fellow locals a very specific environment worked with specific implements. Generalizations about poverty which are based on annual per capita income (even if income "in kind" is included, and home production) reflect urban assumptions about what comprises a standard of living. In the daily affairs of cash-poor farmers, a cash-price citation for something obtainable through barter bears no practical relation to the cash figures on the price tags of items obtainable only through a cash payment.B Thus, the workings of a subsistence-barter-and-borrow system cannot be understood through a sequence of equivalents in a different economic system, a system in which cash does often change hands. If we look beyond farm products (that is, beyond consumption items) and examine the position of productive durables within the two contrasting economic systems, we find the maximum amount of divergence between market-value and use-value. Within a subsistence-barterand-borrow system, numerous people have access to a tool or implement when they need it, and yet need to possess no equity in the item. Productive durables such as tools and farm implements were borrowed and reborrowed, traded and re-traded, in Appalachia. Cash too circulates at a certain rate, of course, but cash is of no direct use to a person while he holds it. In rural Appalachia, a tool or a plow has exchange value, like cash, but in addition it has direct productive value. Subsistence production, borrowing, and barter (including labor barter) operated in Appalachia as a unified system. No one of these activities would have been of so much benefit without the other two.14 What significance does all this have? Is it purely academic? How we measure things influences how we value them. It is impossible, even today, to measure the real income of the Appalachian region or of any part of it, for we have no quantifying yardstick to render a subsistence-barter-borrow system even roughly comparable to the cash system. Without a quantified comparison, urbanites (including most scholars) will continue to puzzle over the supposedly "self-limiting" (or, to their partisans, "selfless") features of Appalachian thought and behavior. We will continue to confuse ways of life with standards of living, as does no less a thinker than Rupert Vance in his introduction to The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Vance says that the New Deal's "standards made at least half the population in certain Appalachian areas eligible for relief" which in turn "introduced the people to the money economy and increased their wants. The depression, then, actually served to raise standards for many families in the region who had lacked contact with the 61 �American standard of living." Vance does hasten to add that the Depression "left the region with a high rate of relief and a low basis for economic security," but he lets stand his implicit equation of "the American standard of living" with a raised standard and not merely with "the money system."15 You can go further left in the political spectrum and still find such clichs where there should be analysis. The clich "self-sufficing farm" is no more examined among the romantic left which lauds the image (Scott and Helen Nearing, et al.) than among the revolutionary left which disparages it. But unitl the left begins to economically disassociate itself from the American economic behemoth, its protest against that behemoth will remain largely symbolic. True, we cannot be self-sufficing as single individuals or as separate conjugal families. At the other extreme, however, if we organize economically on too grand a scale we will inevitably be co-opted. Michael Linton, the British Columbian who organized the first LETS barter system, suggests that fifty to two hundred people is the ideal size for a non-cash system of economic exchange. LETS stands for "Local Exchange Trading System" and the system functions as a combination information network and cashless bank. Each member of a LETS system has an account and receives monthly statements of what their "balance" is—that is, whether their account is in debit or credit, and how much. In the system as a whole, debits must equal credits, since every exchange (whether of labor or of goods) is debited to the receiving person and credited to the providing person. The value of each exchange is determined by mutual agreement between its receiver and its provider. The first LETS system employs a computer to facilitate bookkeeping. A telephone answering machine is used to record the members' transactions, and once a day the transactions are entered into the computer. As for the "information network" aspect of the system, this consists of a monthly sheet which reports the goods and services currently offered by each member, with prices cited in dollars. This sheet is mailed out each month to each member along with his "statement." (Like a bank statement, the LETS statement is a computer print-out which reports all the transactions of the past month, and the balance of the account. ) A supplemental information sheet can be issued to tell members of each other's needs, like a want-ad sheet.16 The applicability of this updated version of old-fashioned barter is obvious in the cash-poor sections of Appalachia. How often the lack of money prevents a rational and humane distribution of goods and services! What LETS does is to extend the traditional circle of barter, so that people can exchange goods and services indirect^. You may not directly need what someone else has to barter. Through a LETS system, you can barter with them indirectly, using the entire system's membership as intermediaries. In my own country, I know, this will prove a great boon, expecially to the new homesteaders how have settled there. 62 �ENDNOTES 1. Quoted in Michael T. Tierney, "Bread on the Water: Education in an Isolated Mountain Community," Human Services in the Rural Environment 8, no. 3 (Winter 1983):7. 2. June 1983 interview by the writer with Ray Gene Black, manager of Black Brothers General Merchandise at Myra, West Virginia. 3. For a concise summation of dependency theory, see Richard White, The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change Among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. xv-xix. As a definition, White quotes Theotonio Dos Santos: By dependency we mean a situation in which the economy of certain countries is conditioned by the development and expansion of another economy to which the former is subjected. The relation of interdependence between two or more economies, and between these and world trade, assumes the form of dependence when some countries (the dominant ones) can expand and be self-sustaining, while other countries (the dependent ones) can do this only as a reflection of that expansion, which can have either a positive or negative effect on their immediate development. (Quoted in Richard White, p. xvii.) 4. As regards the dependence of Appalachia's early commerce on Northern capital, see Lewis E. Atherton, The Southern Country Store, 1800-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1949) pp. 129-34. On Northern capital sources for Appalachia's industrialization, see Ronald D. Eller, Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982), pp. 134-53. 5. David Akn Corbin, Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880-1922 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), pp. 33-35. 6. With more rational farming methods, Appalachia's fertility need not have been squandered. A 1916 article, "Farming Appalachia" by J. Russell Smith, challenged America's vast agricultural research establishment of that day to "develop and teach a mountain agriculture that will make the mountaineer prosperous and leave him his mountain." After a world tour to study hill-farming methods, Smith recommended "good little permanent terraced fields" such as he had found in Corsica. He also encouraged tree planting to provide fruits, nuts, and seeds, putting emphasis on "the mulberry, the persimmon, the honey locust, the acorn, and the chestnut, [which] are primarily forage crops, chiefly pig feed, but also good for poultry, sheep, goats, and cows." As forest-grown human foods, Smith recommended walnuts and pecans. Smith emphasized that hog-forage crops should received priority in Appalachia, since Appalachia's people were used to eating pork, and any surplus of hogs could be marketed. See J. Russell Smith, "Farming Appalachia," American Review of Reviews 53, no. 3 (March 1916):329-36. Smith's suggestions (which also included pawpaw trees) remain excellently suited to Appalachia. For general ideas on sustainable agriculture for hill regions, see J.R. Smith, Tree Crops (Old Greenwich, Conn.: Devin-Adair, 1950); and J. Sholto Douglas and Robert A. de J. Hart, Forest Farming (London: Watkins, 1976). 7. Harry K. Schwarzweller, James S. Brown, and J.J. Mangalam, Mountain Families in Transition: A Case Study of Appalachian Migration (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971), p. 40. 63 �8. John Craft Taylor, "Depression and the New Deal in Pendleton: A History of a West Virginia County from the Great Crash to Pearl Harbor, 1929-1941," Ph.D. dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 1980, pp. 124-27, 133. 9. Welcome the Traveler Home: Jim Garland's Story of the Kentucky Mountains, ed. Julia S. Audrey (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983), pp. 18-19. 10. It might be some consolation if one could think that, while marginalizing Appalachia's coal, the National Recovery Administration anyway did help the United States ecomony as a whole. But it has now been shown that the price supports written into the NRA's codes completely negated an 8 percent annual GNP growth which otherwise would have flowed from the 14 percent monetary expansion created by Roosevelt's gold policy. See Michael Weinstein, Recovery and Redistribution under the NIRA (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1980), pp. 273-79. 11. Information from 1973 interviews used in John Craft Taylor, "Depression and New Deal in Pendleton," p. 130. 12. Taylor, "Depression and the New Deal in Pendleton," p. 819. 13. In a classic article, Michael Merrill made this point by saying that money-of-account does not function the same as money. See Michael Merrill, "Cash Is Good To Eat: Self-Sufficiency and Exchange in the Rural Economy of the United States," Radical History Review 5(Winter 1977):56. But it is important not to forget that there are points of reference between the cash system and the subsistence-borrow-barter system. As Karl Polanyi reminds us, "unless [a market] pattern is present, at least in patches, the propensity to barter will find insufficient scope: it cannot produce prices The principle of barter depends for its effectiveness on the market pattern." Karl Polany, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), p. 56. 14. Among the urban poor, barter and borrowing has also routinely occurred—in their case without subsistence production. An exemplary analysis is Ellen Ross, "Survival Networks: Women's Neighborhood Sharing in London Before World War One," History Workshop 15(1983):4-27. 15. Rupert B. Vance, "The Region: A New Survey," in The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey, ed. Thomas R. Ford (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1962), p.5. 16. Susan Meeker-Lowry, "The Local Exchange Trading Systems," Green Revolution 42, no. 3 (Fall 1985):l-2. 64 �ENVIRONMENT Convenor: Karl Raitz, University of Kentucky Down To Earth: The Appalachian Family Farm Maxine Kenny, Clinch River Educational Center A Bioregional Perspective On Appropriating The Appalachian Past Linn Mackey, Appalachian State University Past Commitments, Current Problems, And Future Choices: Water Use In Appalachia Dennis Soden, Appalachian State University Past Commitments, Current Problems, and Future Choices: Water Resources in Appalachia by Dennis L. Soden Preface This paper is the first step in studying water-related issues in the Appalachian region. As a transplanted westerner who has focused almost entirely on water policy issues in the western states, the author attempts in this paper to summarize initial reaction to the state of water resource issues and management mechanisms in Appalachia. Further, a glimpse at what may lay in waiting for the Appalachian region if water resource use and development are not placed high on the political agenda is developed. As a goal, a better feel for potential conflict which may come to the fore and a choice of options which may be available to natural resource administrators and civic leaders is sought. Introduction A struggle is developing in the Appalachian Region about how to best manage the region's vital water resources. At the core of this developing struggle are increased water use patterns incompatible with past and existing standards. Southern mountain people have a reputation for their jealous efforts to preserve their environment's quality and natural resources (Schoenbaum, 1979). As population increases, new demands are placed on water 65 �resources. Without too much speculation, we can safely say that these emerging demands will create widespread water supply problems in the eastern United States.' As this problem develops, public attention will increasingly focus upon water use and water development policies. Thus, it is both appropriate and timely to make an assessment of water policy practices and opportunities as a first step in searching for a future which nurtures development while maintaining the region's resources. This paper will attempt to put the present period—a period of "transition"—into perspective. This transition in water policy and management has been characterized as a period in which an "appropriate balance between water quantity and quality aspects" has not been achieved (Hufschmidt, 1979:1). This paper does not attempt to be definitive. The field of water policy is complex, interdisciplinary and dominated by technical, scientific and legal considerations. A grasp of the system can, however, be obtained. The basic policy issues are not any more difficult to analyze than those of pollution control, toxic and nuclear waste disposal or land-use policy, all topics of current concern in the region. Four areas of water policy important to the discussion of Appalachia are considered in this paper. First, existing water law which serves as the major management mechanism is reviewed. Second, the potential for conflict which exists as part of water use and development will be addressed, particularly the instream verses consumptive nature of water usage. Third, a consideration of major management concepts which exist in the current natural resource and environmental policy literature will be undertaken. These natural resource management concepts will be evaluated for their practicality in a riparian doctrine situation like that existing in the Southern Appalachians. Fourth, a management concept for "safe development" of the region's natural resources—a community-based model, based on the work of leading water policy scholars Stephen B. Mumme and Helen Ingram will be forwarded. Fifth and last, implications for future research into this salient issue will be forwarded. Water Law: The Stage for Water Resources Use and Development The states of the Southern Appalachians embrace a mixture of water rights systems. In nearly every state, the common law water rights of the past have proved inadequate in water scarce environments (Ausness, 1983:547). Consequently, the common law rules relied upon in the past have "typically" been either supplemented or replaced by some form of statutory water allocation system. The success or failure of the present system has been discussed elsewhere (Ausness, 1983) and this paper does not attend to a full description of water law practices (see instead; Trelease, 1979; Cox, 1982). As an aid in understanding the issue, however, a brief review of water law is given here. 66 �Historically, in the area of surface water which this paper focuses upon in general, the riparian system of water law has prevailed in the eastern United States. In contrast, the western states have adopted the prior appropriation system in its different forms.2 The riparian system of water law was developed from English common law and subsequently reflects the cummulative decisions of the courts of that heritage. Simply, under a riparian system, rights to use of water are obtained from ownership of land bordering natural water courses. The use of riparian water is restricted to the land bordering the water course—the riparian land. Two concepts direct the riparian water order. First, riparian landowners are entitled, via the "natural flow doctrine," to have water flow through their land in its natural condition—not restricted or polluted except from normal domestic uses or upstream riparians. Non-domestic use is permitted, only if a perceivable dimunition in natural flow is absent (Cox, 1982:110-111). The second concept is the "reasonable use rule." The rule allows each riparian to make any use of the water provided that his use is reasonable relative to the needs of other riparians. Reasonableness is a gray area of the law and provides a context for both conflict and conflict resolution whenever one riparian user feels injured by another. Until the accelerated population growth and economic development of the last four decades, which has been even more pronounced in the last decade in the Appalachians, riparian doctrine sufficed since there was a plentiful natural supply of both surface and groundwater (Howells and Grigg, 1978:2). Dissatisfaction with the common law and riparian system has led a number of Appalachian states to consider adoption of statutory system of water rights. The states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and West Virginia have given serious consideration to abandoning the riparian system in favor of appropriation standards used in the western United States. While only Mississippi among eastern states has actually adopted the appropriation doctrine, virtually all eastern states, including those of the Appalachian region have incorporated a portion of the prior appropriation system into their new permit systems (Ausness, 1983: 554). In basic terms, a fundamental shift has been made which enables non-riparian landowners, previously unable to hold water rights, to perfect a water right by obtaining a water use permit. In the Appalachians, this is the case in Virginia and is considered to be implied in Kentucky (Ausness, 1983:554). The permit system which emerged in the 1970s and which continues to develop in various forms in the states of Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, provides for a state agency to administer water rights programs. Perfecting a water right requires successfully obtaining a permit from the state. The permit may 67 �be denied if other water users are adversely affected or if the "public interest" is threatened. A permit system is the first step in the adoption of the prior appropriation system, but unlike the west, in the east water rights are not held in perpetuity. In addition, water rights are not transferable to other landowners in the eastern modification. Instead they are appurtenants to the land (Ausness, 1983:553) which are attached to the property declared in the permit. Political Conflicts Among Water Users In the brief discussion of water law and changes which may impact the Appalachian region, the uses of water have not been considered. What characterizes an allocation system like that used in western states is the development of statutory priority to water use as a means of resolving conflict. In the east this event has yet to occur, largely due to legislative refusals to explicitly address the difficult and complex issues inherent when states allocate resources. For regional observers of the Appalachians, this means that regionally held water may in the future be declared surplus—water not being put to its most beneficial use. Consequently, the large quantity of Appalachian water which we can safely say most presently is taken for granted, may become the object of downstream interests, short in both quality and quantity of water. Despite the evolution which is occurring in eastern water law, designed to deal with emerging problems occassioned by water development, there exists considerable potential for conflict among competing water users. Figure 1 displays some water resource uses which have been recognized as "beneficial uses." Figure 1 over simplifies, but demonstrates potential conflict which residents and natural resource managers in the region must be aware of. The cells in Figure 1 indicate the impact of a particular use upon other uses. It is important to note those uses which are incompatible with each other; these are the areas where the greatest conflict may be expected to emerge. This is a subjective chart, and the reader may disagree with some cells or envision impacts which are not noted. The intent is not to imply that proper management cannot accomodate multiple uses, but to underscore likely conflicts. Beneficial uses have been grouped into consumptive and non-consumptive categories. Consumptive water uses are those which take water from a waterway and do not directly return it (municipal, industrial and irrigation uses for example). Return flows may seep into groundwater, into different stream, or return to the same stream in reduced quality and very often in reduced quantity. In contrast, non-consumptive uses in68 �elude those which divert water from a stream and immediately return it (fish hatcheries, hydroelectric power and those uses in the stream such as instream recreation). Consumptive uses tend to conflict with one another and with nonconsumptive uses. The severity of this impact depends primarily on the volume of water withdrawn. If non-consumptive uses were maximized, they would obviously be in conflict with consumptive ones. Further, many non-consumptive uses may be incompatible with each other (industry/wastewater with preservation/recreation). The perspective given in Figure 1 can be viewed in light of the discussion of water law. The development of a permit system may establish priorities based on date, not type of use. The permit system as "textbook" designed is neutral among water uses except in times of scarcity. Consequently, a neutral system may hold considerable potential for harm to certain uses by other, unknowingly and indirectly, as well as directly. Figure 1. Potential Conflicts Among Water Users Agriculture (irrigation) Energy - - Transportanon Recreation Preservation (Esthetics) - - - - - - + - - Transportation - + Industrial - + - - Domestic Domestic Agriculture (irrigation) - Energy - - - Industrial + Recreation - - - - Preservation (Esthetics) - - - - + + + = Compatible or Beneficial - = Incompatible or Harmful Contemporary Appalachia is experiencing a transition in population and demography, in addition ot changes in the use of natural resources like water. Simultaneously, parallel changes are occurring in our institutional mechanisms for managing resources. For the Appalachians, the critical question must be asked, can changes in water law be perfected in 69 �time to service and resolve conflict likely to arise among new and competing users in a transition era? The answer to this question is not easily attained. A system of management for the region's water resources requires a coordinating, comprehensive, planning policy process as the most efficient means of implementing decisions regarding both development and preservation of resources. The move toward permit systems has been heralded as a significant and important first step (Ausness, 1983:589). Nevertheless, many deficiencies exist. A water use and development scheme requires a "gameplan," "framework" or, in the jargon of the academic, a "theoretical thrust" to direct policymaking.l The next section will discuss the most dominiant conceptual frameworks which are used in natural resource policy today. By looking at these frameworks a sense of alternative water resource use and development futures is obtained. Without consideration of these policymaking and planning alternatives, a "primitive and incomplete" view of the issue is obtained and conflict is more probable. Approaches to Water Resource Management: Contending Views A central issue concerning water use and development in the Appalachian region, as in any other, is the need to develop consistent analytical devices. Put another way, it is paramount that a "gameplan" be formulated for water resources use and developmen. In this section two of the more commonly used resource management frameworks are reviewed. Following this, a third framework is put forward in light of the unique social, economic and political characteristics which the Appalachian region holds. This exercise may seem frivolous or trivial to many, however, only by beginning to promote discussion of what could become one of the most serious problems we face regionally and nationally in the next decade—water resources management—steps in the right direction may be taken (Congressional Quarterly, 1981). The two models reviewed include: first, the model of the "Commons," and second, the private ownership approach labeled "new resource economics" by scholars in the field. In response to these a derivative of the public choice approach called community-based management will be proposed as an alternative for water resource management for Appalachia's future. THE COMMONS MODEL. One consideration of water development and protection brings to light the classic questions of equitable choice—namely who plays and who doesn't pay for development or protection, pollution and degradation versus preservation and aesthetics. In the case discussed here, the "common property resource" belonging to the Appalachian community is the set of water resources, whose devel- 70 �opment or protection can politically benefit or cost all or none in one way or another. The attainment of community-wide benefits requires that disproportionate costs be borne by some citizens, while at the same time greater benefits accrue to some than to others. The decision to undertake management of water resources is based on a belief in the common property aspects—that each citizen has a right to access of some portion of a potentially diminishing resource. The decision to avoid what we have come to know, in natural resource and other policy fields, as a "Tragedy of Commons" (Hardin, 1968) is a situation where "the remorseless working of things leads individuals, acting in their own best interest, to produce joint consequences not in their long-term interest (Hardin, 1968)3. Appalachian water resources are an excellent example of a commons, in as much as: (1) ownership of the resource is subject to many common ownership characteristics (i.e., the flow of streams past numerous riparian land holders, or the sharing of groundwater pools); (2) a large number of users are exercising independent rights to the resource (i.e., through riparian rights or permit systems); (3) no other user is able to effectively control the activites of others without utilization of specified instructional mechanisms (i.e., the court system), and; (4) in the long-term, total demand upon the resource will exceed the capacity of the common resourceto provide benefits (Hardin, 1968). In a commons dilemma, recognition of a pending crisis within the area eventually triggers community decsions to formulate plans and to initiate development of commons management institutions as a way of responsibly managing the available resources for the "benefit of the community." Presently, the characteristic "commons" nature of Appalachian water resources has been only partially recognized. Few efforts to achieve collective action among regional neighbors to avert Hardin's predicted "tragedy" exist, but as they say there is no better time than the present to begin.4 If institutional measures designed to protect the region's water resources from overuse are not implemented, the commons will be exhausted and each individual will lose the economic or intangible values associated with use of the resource (Ciriacy-Wantrup, 1975). In the case of Appalachian water resources, government intervention at the state, interstate-regional, as well as local levels is required to prevent overuse and excess degradation of the resource. The Commons Model is popular and intuitively makes sense. It has a long and rich history among natural resource managers and scholars. Recently, however, it has been challenged by a new wave of literature which also focuses upon institutional needs required for the management of scarce national resources. 71 �NEW RESOURCE ECONOMICS. The New Resource Economics school of thought has been characterized by one commentator as "an almost libertarian outpouring of market-oriented recommendations for allocating water" (Griffin, 1984). From the New Resource Economics perspective water shortage comes about because of the lack of a balance between supply and demand, not a shortage of total available water. Water is treated as any other ecomonic commodity and proponents of the school propose that water shortages, in either quality or quantity, can be solved by transferring the commondity from lower to higher valued uses (Andersen, 1983; Mumme and Ingram, 1984). Proponents of this view suggest that the existing institutions (i.e., government management, especially at the state level) act as an impediment to "accurate translation of society's real preference for water use" (Mumme and Ingram, 1984:1). A recent and influential book by Terry L. Anderson exemplifies this perspective: Water prices have been kept below market clearing levels, and the inevitable shortages have followed. The government has responded by attempting to constrain demand, ration water, and increase the available supply. Except in isolated cases where shortages have been caused by drought and where a cooperative community spirit has developed, efforts to ration water have not been successful. Increased water supplies have only been possible though the construction of massive water projects, which have dammed many of our free-flowing rivers and built thousands of miles of aqueducts. These projects have been extremely costly, and it is questionable whether funds for them will continue to be available. Without a price mechanism operating on water supply and demand, crisis situations will continue to arise (Andersen, 1983:5). Andersen, one of the "gurus" of this movement, prescribes developing a free market for water, whereby individual property rights over water would supersede state or other government's control. The "crisis" of water shortage could be dealt with by prices sufficiently attractive to bid water away from owners whose uses are of low value. This literature adopts very strong value positions at odds with traditional thinking about water. Obviously, considering water as a commodity which can be privately traded is in sharp contrast to the long-standing notions that water is a commons good or public good, with special characteristics meeting needs which are not "practically" dealt with in market transactions (Soden, 1986). Further, the New Resource Economics recommendation seriously threatens the interest of some poor, rural groups 72 �who view the control over water as essential to community security, selfdetermination, and culture and lifestyle. Much of the Appalachian region, it can be contended, is represented by communities with these attributes. This study critically examines the basic assumptions of New Resource Economics with respect to Appalachian water resources and suggests that the commons model has greater validity. The commons model in conjuction with an alternative framework—community-based management—may provide a means more amendable to the communities of the Appalachian region. It is also useful to note that New Resource Economics has gained political appeal at the same time as the beneficiaries of federal intervention (money supply to large scale water development projects) have shifted. As Stephen Mumme and Helen Ingram suggest: It is widely conceded that the era of water development has given way to one of water management where available water is reallocated among users rather than new supplies being developed. Few new projects are being authorized which serve the interest of developmental constituencies (Mumme and Ingram, 1984:4, emphasis added). We are entering a period where other interests who have not previously shared in the benefits of federal water projects are beginning to assert themselves. More specifically, as water demands have pressed close upon available supplies, Appalachia may hold the water necessary to alleviate crisis elsewhere. Interbasin transfers of water are now practical and have reached the South, as evidenced by the effort of the Virginia Beach/Newport News and other Virginia areas to obtain needed water supplies from Lake Gaston on the Virginia-North Carolina border (Cox and Shubman 1985; Walker and Bridgeman, 1985). Is Appalachian water next? New Resource Economics proposes that we transfer institutional control to individuals and "radically decentralize water policymaking" a move which could have dramatic and perhaps damaging implications for the Appalachian region.5 The present, which many suggest is a time of transition in the Appalachians, may provide a useful case for evaluating New Resource Economics and to suggest an alternative management framework for development and use of the region's water resources. 73 �Searching for Alternatives: Community-Based Management The incompatablity between the New Resource Economics approach and water resource allocation problems in the Appalachian region can be demonstrated. The political plight of the many low-income rural communities of the Appalachians, and the importance of control over water resources, can be illustrated by drawing parallels from John Gaventa's work, Pouter and The Powerless-ness (1980). Gaventa discusses the lack of political power among the historically less-advantaged communities, and the continued economic poverty which prevails in much of the region. Gaventa sees three aspects of political power in the Appalachians: (1) their participation in politics is ineffective for reasons relating to a lack of economic resources, lack of political skills, poor political strategy and failure to build support; (2) they are excluded from channels of participation by existing biases in the political system, values of elite decision-makers or procedural biases within the political system; and, (3) they are exluded because these communities themselves accept the policy norms of the prevailing system as their own, contrary to their material and cultural interest, and thus acquiesce in their exclusion from the political and policy process systems. Gaventa's explanations have been used to study the politics of water use in the western United States, particualrly the water crisis which has come to the fore on the numerous Indian reservations in the Southwest (Ingram and Mumme, 1984, 1985). It is appropriate that it come home to roost, so to speak, and be a source for discussion of water politics attendant to the Appalachians. Gaventa's first explanation emphasizes the importance of economic and political resources as a base of political power and influence. Water has long standing political and economic value, especially when conditions of prior appropriation and permits exist. Further, water is closely linked to political cohesion (Soden, 1985a; Mumme and Ingram, 1984, 1985; Pierce and Lovrich, 1980). Water is not a commodity which is absent of special meaning for a community, but is indeed a "different kind of resource with effects and significance beyond its material value. Water has been described as a "fundamental social resource" (Mumme and Ingram, 1984:26). Its social characteristic links it inextricably to economic and political power, social welfare and equity, community security, cultural cohesion, and the nature of economic and social change wihtin a community (Mumme and Ingram, 1984:26). Along this line of reasoning, Robert and Eva Hunt conclude that "... there is a strong case to be made for a linkage between control over water resources and control over other decisions in the local unit (Hunt and Hunt, 1976). Other findings by researchers in the water politics field point to the connection between control over water resources and levels of public 74 �participation (Maas and Andersen; Ingram, et. al., 1980; Pierce and Doerkson, 1976). Rural communities's control over water use and development has been recognized as a strong incentive which obtains political cohesion. The most powerful conclusion which has emerged from a number of case studies of rural water issues is the extent to which water users in these communities seek control over their destinies and the use of their resources (Mumme and Ingram, 1984:27; Soden, 1985a). Control over water resources is a primary source of political power, organization and political participation for low income rural communities. Maintaining and reinforcing this control is likely to be crucial for the survival, or development of some communities and is an important base upon which communities can build political influence and pursue economic development vital to their community's interest whether those interests be monetary or non-monetary in value (Soden, 1986). Gaventa's second explanation for the lack of politcal power of poor rural communities relates to the bias of political institutions particularly as it affects what issues are placed upon the political agenda for solution. The literature on water law and perfection of water rights illustrates a dynamic process; a process which will greatly affect the Appalachian region. There does not exist, nor is there a major effort to impose a single regulatory system over the nation's or the region's water resources, although efforts to move in this direction exist. The federal rule in the area of water policy has been historically limited to ensuring water rights exist to support federal water projects. However, a growth in the interest in and number of interstate compacts and the federal government's role in negotiation of water disputes, looms on the future. Further, as eastern states turn more and more towards a permit system with similarities to the western states appropriation doctrine, federal claims under the Winter's Doctrine (which allows for federal rights over water resources), may be part of the long term public agenda. States' institutions, laws and regulations predominate, but their focus, more often that not, is on ways to enhance the large population centers "down-the-mountain." As in other parts of the nation, state boundaries and institutions do not serve the broader needs of the region. The area which includes northern Idaho's panhandle, western Montana and eastern Washington is an example of a region (known as the Inland Empire in the Northwest) which maintains unique regional concerns unattended to by political instiutions of both the state and federal governments designed to service the area. Further, it might safely be suggested that an Appalachian regionalism exists and, that as a region, the Appalachians are often overlooked or not recognized by the political instiutions which govern them. As a result, water policy and planning at both the state and federal levels may involve decisions which may adversely affect the region. As demands are pressing closer to supplies, uncertainty threatens to deprive regional control over water resource. 75 �This issue is far from the top of the political agenda. Given the nature of the multiple agenda which exists in environmental politics about water usage (Soden, 1985b) the result may be that when the issues of water use and development do rise to the top of the agenda they will not be framed in a way which proves beneficial to the region. This appropriately introduces Gaventa's third face of power. Gaventa explains that powerless people tend to be highly dependent and susceptible to the "internalization of values of the dominant." Put another way, they accept the definitions of political reality as offered by the dominant classes or governmental institutions (Gaventa, 1980:17). Until recently, the issue of water in the Appalachians has been framed in terms of water quality or "pork barrel," whereby federal government monies were made available to localities which had political support and a worthy project. In general, water quality was a non-issue, mainly on the grounds that the time was not ripe for politicalization of water. Currently, the political reality is changing. Water transfers are suggested as replacements for federal development projects, as sources of water to alleviate problems in water shy or poor water quality stricken areas. With this in mind, New Resource Economics would suggest use of an economic efficiency criterion as the governing process. Viewed from Gaventa's perspective, a set of normative tenets, such as those of New Resource Economics, to the extent to which they prevail or act as guideposts in the larger political system, may "well underwrite the exclusion of low income rural communities from participation in the policy process," perpetuating political and economic relations among a core (urbanmetropolitan) and its periphery (rural poor). Since Graham Allison's (1971) seminal study of the Cuban Missile Crisis, political scientists have recognized that the choice of framework for evaluation of political alternatives is far from benign. Instead, the choice of analytic framework influences the interests that are considered legitimate, the information that is relevant, and the values and conclusions drawn. The application of New Resource Economics, based on notions of economic man to water resources, biases the definition of public interest in water rights and disregards the non-mobilized rural poor. Ingram and Mumme have proposed in their studies of Indian communities in the southwestern United States, that a different, more community-oriented mode of analysis would be more appropriate. Table I illustrates the characteristics of the community-oriented mode as compared with the "pop" New Resource Economics. Community-oriented analysis relies heavily upon political and bureaucratic approaches to policymaking. While rational action based models have proved useful, as Allison notes (1971:5), "there is powerful evidence that it must be supplemented, if not supplanted, by frames of reference that focus on the governmental machine—the organization and political actors involved in the policy process." 76 �TABLE 1. Alternative Frameworks for Analyzing Water Policies and Institutions New Resource Economics Community-Oriented Analysis Basis of the Interest Individual Group or Collective Nature of the Interest Material and Quantifiable Affective and Symbolic Basis of Decision Making Instrumental to Maximizing Individual Benefit Support and Maintenance of Institutions; Conformity to Norms and Practices Mode of Interaction Strategic Action to Maximize Private Interest Reciprocity, Sharing and Cooperation Participation A Cost Incurred In Obtaining Relevant Information To Make Individual Exchanges An Intrinsic Good That Increases Sense of Belonging; Community Self-Determination Arenas for Action Markets and Individualized Exchanges Politics and Administrative Processes Source: Mumme and Ingram, 1984 Ingram and Mumme's community-based approach recognizes the group, rather than the individual as the basic unit of interest (Mumme and Ingram, 1984:29). This fits the issue of water resource management which historically, even in the most riparian situations, has been regarded as a community or "common" resource. Within rural communities, Maas and Andersen observe that there have evolved strong traditions of community control over water resources stemming from the desire to maintain the integrity of the social and economic community. In these communities protection from injury results when the actions of individuals promote values which pertain specifically to their communities. The result is the loss of valuable water resources from the community as a whole. This point has clearly emerged at some points in time having been expressed cyclically in Appalachian natural resource politics, including water (Soden with Wilson, 1986). Consequently, it can be expected to return as the "stakes" become higher. The collective mode of analysis is far more emotional and symbolic rather than purely objective and material. In this regard, water is valued 77 �by communities not primarily for the economic return, but for what it means for security and community self-determination. The community-oriented perspective on water management relies on the notion that rationality is a social and political process of collective evolution, consent, and action. From one community to another this process may vary considerably, ranging from "informal councils to the establishment of tasks force and water districts" (Mumme and Ingram, 1984:30). Whatever the form, this collective action essentially serves, to varying degrees, the individual interests of the members of the community. Community values are reinforced in teh process, galvanizing the citizenry as well as providing the potential for innovation and adaptation by the community body. The basis for decision-making in the community-oriented analysis model emphasizes reciprocity, sharing, and cooperation in contrast to market procedures, which reward egoistic pursuit of one's own interests. In the community-oriented model altruistic values tend to provide the glue for community bonds. Systems of mutual cooperation "encourage individual participation and responsibility, mutual trust, and nurture a sense of security and equity with the community" (Ingram and Mumme, 1984:31). The result is diminished conflict and increased social cohesion within the community itself. Participation is not seen simply as a cost to the individual, but as an opportunity for individual development and strengthing of community bonds. "Empowerment" is the term Gaventa proposes for the solidarity fostered by reciprocal, cooperative relations. As a collective body, communities have the strength to hang onto their water resources and to distribute them in ways more serving their social, as well as, economic goals (Maas and Andersen, 1978:368). Repeatedly, studies have shown that rural communities, when they perceive threats to their water resources by actions of outside actors behave in this way (Soden, 1985a; Maas and Andersen, 1978; Mumme and Ingram, 1984, 1985). Contrary to New Resource Economics, distrust of government, and politics in water management, a community-based approach views politics and administrative processes as essential. As Ingram and Mumme note, low income rural communities outside the political mainstream face political and economic challenge by those seeking to secure abstract entitlements to their resources or otherwise enlarge their resource base. These communities, by definition lack the economic clout to obtain equal treatment through the marketplace (Mumme and Ingram, 1984: 32). The communities of "Appalachia" are often removed from mainstream politics and are economically non-competitive. Subsequently, they must learn to use their community solidarity as a resource to participate in the political and administrative system, to lobby, and to negotiate and influence political activism and collective action is no panacea, in78 �deed it entails risk, but it does afford the possibility of building on the basic political resources of hertofore non-mobilized rural communities to achieve greater equity. Conclusions In reviewing the conflict among water resource use and development which may arise in the Southern Appalachians and the changes in eastern water law, it is apparent that water issues could become politically salient. Obviously, lawmakers and policymakers view water issues as part of the political agenda in the South as the permit system continues to develop. Historically, water resources have been viewed as a commons in many areas, but more recently have been challenged by free market economists through the literature of New Resource Economics. The New Resource Economics movement proposes to alleviate water problems by radically decentralizing control over water resource decision-making and by employing market mechanisms. If these proposals gain wide support, the interests of rural communities—politically and economically poor— could be adversely affected. This paper has examined the policy model of the commons and proposes that a community-oriented process under assumptions of collective action will best serve the long term interests of Appalachians better than will New Resource Economics. Water is a "fundamental social resource." Globally, social values such as security, equity, and community self-determination have been more important than economic efficiency, particularly in the management of water. Successfully laying claim to and managing water is a challenge and an opportunity for the Appalachians, especially as the current legal system attendant to water rights undergoes fundamental change. For the people of the Appalachians, participation in the legal and political process necessary to secure water resources can be a process of empowerment in the present political environment, empowerment unattainable under the scheme of New Resource Economics. The proposal or prescription of a community-oriented framework, by which collective action to protect the region's resources emerges, can be a first step in the process of securing a viable future for the region, as it relates to water resources. The community-based proposal draws on the insights of experienced Appalachian scholars like John Gaventa to better understand the political, administrative and economic processes which may parallel experiences in the water resource issues area when the regional residents are short on political and economic clout, and hopefully lay a framework for establishment of policy direction at the subnational level as we search for a future in the Appalachians. 79 �ENDNOTES 1. As Richard Ausness (1983) points out, according to estimates, by the end of this century, only three of the 18 federally designated water regions in the continental United States will be able to live comfortably with their water supplies. See also, "Is U.S. Running Out Of Water?," U.S. News and World Report, July 18, 1977:33. 2. The two basic forms of appropriation doctrine include: the "Colorado Doctrine" under which riparian rights are not recognized in the western states of Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Under the "California Doctrine," riparian rights may co-exist with appropriative water rights. State following this doctrine include California, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregan, South Dakota, Texas and Washington (See Ausness, 1983:548). Because riparian and appropriative systems are not particularly compatible, most "California Doctrine" states place limitations on the exercise of riparian rights (Trelease, 1954). 3. The Garret Hardin example (1968) is best known of the conventional views on thinking about common property. Hardin tells a parable about a pasture that is open for use by all with no restrictions. Each person grazing livestock on the pasture looks only at the private benefits and costs of grazing. All the additional benefits of adding an addititional animal to the pasture are captured by the owner of the animal, while the costs of reduced forage are spread to all users. The results are overgrazing and the depletion of the commons. The original development of the economics of free and open access is Gordon's (1954) discussion of fisheries as common property resources. 4. The most visible exception to regional action is the forces which collectively acted to halt hydroelectric development on the New River in the Early 1970s. 5. The New Resource Economics: The Revelance of Its Core Concepts Fundamental to the New Resource Economics critique of contemporary U.S. water policy is a set of assumptions derived from utilitarian social thought. These notions are currently expressed as basic principles of public choice micro- economic theory. They include: (1) reducing collective decisions to individual choice; (2) a utilitarian concept of rationality involving the ranking of value preferences and consistency of choices to maximize values; (3) exchange agreements among individuals (contracts and markets) to adjust individual interests and equitably and efficiently satisfy social welfare requirements; and (4) a highly limited role for government regulation of market processes, functionally restricted to enforcing the legitimacy of contracts legally made through officially sanctioned procedures. These precepts are interactive and mutually reinforcing. We intend to examine each of these precepts in turn, paying particular attention to their limitations as applied to the reform of contemporary water institutions (from: Mumme and Ingram, 1984:6). REFERENCES Allison, Graham (1971) Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, Boston: Little Brown and Co., Inc. Anderson, Terry L. (1983) Water Crisis: Endign the Policy Drought, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 80 �Ausness, Richard (1983) "Water Rights Legislation in the East: A Program for Reform," William and Mary Law Review, 24:546-590. Congressional Quarterly, Inc. (1981) Environment and Health, Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, Inc. Ciriacy-Wantrup, S.V. (1975) "'Common Property' as a Concept in Natural Resource Policy" Natural Resources Journal, 15:713-27. Cox, William E. (1982) "Water Law Primer," Proceedings, American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. 108. New York: ASCE. Cox, William E. and Shabman, Leonard A. (1985) "A Proposal for Improved Management of Interjurisdiction Water Transfer: Special Report No. 19. Blacksburg, Virginia: Virginia Water Resources Research Center. Gaventa, John (1980) Potfer and the Pouerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Gordon, H. Scott (1954) "Economic Theory of a Common Property Resource: The Fisheries," in Journal of Political Economy, 62:124-142. Griffin, Ronald C. (1984) "Institutionalized Economic Efficiency in Water Allocation." Paper presented at the 20th Annual Meeting of the American Water Resources Association Conference, Washington, D.C., August. Hardin, Garret (1968) "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science 162, 3059 (December 13): 1243-1248. Howells, David H. and Grigg, Neil S. (1978) Legal and Administrative Aspects of Water Allocation and Management in North Carolina, Report No. 133, Raleigh, N.C.: Water Resources Institute of the University of North Carolina. Hunt, Robert C. and Hunt, Eva (1976) "Canal Irrigation and Local Social Organization," Current Anthropology, 17, 3:394-397. Ingram, Helen M., Laney, Nancy K. and McCain, John R. (1980) A Policy Approach to Political Representation: Lessons from the Four Corner States, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Maas, Arthur and Andersen, Raymond (1978) ... and the Desert Shall Rejoice: Conflict, Grouth and Justice in Arid Environments, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Mumme, Stephen P. and Ingram, Helen M. (1984) "Empowerment and the Papago Tribe: Water Politics in Southern Arizona." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., September. Mumme, Stephen P. and Ingram, Helen M. (1985) "A Comparative Analysis of Three Southwestern Indian Communitites' Participation in Water Resources Decision-Making." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, LA, September. Pierce, John C. and Doerksen, Harvey R. (1976) Water Politics and Public Involvement, Ann Arbor, MI: Ann Arbor Science Publishers, Inc. 81 �Pierce, John C. and Lovrich, Nicholas P. (1980) "Belief Systems Concerning the Environment: The General Public, Attentive Public and State Legislation," Political Behavior, 2, 3. Schoenbaum, Thomas J. (1979) The New River Controversy Winston-Salem, N.C.: John F. Blair, Publishers. Soden, Dennis L. (1985a) "Small-Hydro Development and Public Decision-making" in Waterpower/'Ss. New York, American Society of Civil Engineers. Soden, Dennis L. (1985b) "Assessing Public Opinion in Subnational Environmental Politics: The Low-Head Hydroelectric Controversy in the Pacific Northwest." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, Las Vegas, NV, March. Soden, Dennis L. (1986) "Public and Collective Goods: A Primer." Mimeo. Soden, Dennis L. and Wilson, Zaphon R. (1986) "Public Choice in Land and Water Use and Development in Appalachia: A Summary of Research Findings." Paper presented at the 1986 Citadel Symposium on Southern Politics, Charleston, S.C., March. Trelease, Frank (1954) "Coordination of Riparian and Appropriative Rights to the Use of Water," Texas Law Review, 24:24-25. Trelease, Frank J. (1979) Cases and Materials on Water Law. St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing Co. U.S. News and World Report (1977) "Is the U.S. Running Out Of Water?," U.S. News and World Report, July 18:33. Walker, William R. and Bridgeman, Phyllis (1985) "Anatomy of a Water Problem: Virginia Beach's Experience." Sf>ecial Report No. 18, Blacksburg, VA: 82 �OLD FURNITURE-NEW ROOMS: THE POETICS OF SPACE IN APPALACHIAN LITERATURE Convenor: Parks Lanier, Radford University Panelists: Bill Best, Berea College Grace Edwards, Radford University Nancy Joyner, Western Carolina University Parks Lanier, Radford University Keith O'dell, Radford Univeristy Charlotte Ross, East Tennessee State University Melinda Wagner, Radford University Divine Right And The Red Tent by Parks Lanier Introduction In a session called "Old Furniture—New Rooms: The Poetics of Space in Appalachian Literature," Bill Best, Grace Edwards, Nancy Joyner, Parks Lanier, Keith O'dell, Charlotte Ross, and Melinda Wagner discussed the significance of land, houses, even particular rooms, in fiction by modern and contemporary Appalachian writers "in search of a usuable past." Typical of the discussion is the essay presented here on Gurney Norman's novel Divine Right's Trip (1971), a story which tells how a child of counter-culture comes home to embrace more traditional values in his own unique way. In the new rooms of his heart and mind, Divine Right finds a place for the old furniture—an entire way of life— left him by his Uncle Emmet. How this experience becomes possible is the subject of the study which follows. In 1966 Edward T. Hall published The Hidden Dimension, a book concerned with proxemics, "a term [he] used for the interrelated observations and theories of man's use of space as a specialized elaboration of culture"( 1). This important work on how people react and relate to their environment was reviewed in The Last Whole Earth Catalog in which Gurney Norman's novel Divine Right's Trip first appeared, a novel in which proxemic figures as an important cultural indicator. The Cataiog review begins with a quotation from Buckminister Fuller, who said, "Don't try to reform man, reform the environment" (182). By the end of Norman's novel, Divine Right is dedicated to environmental reform as 83 �president of Magic Rabbit Incorporated, "a scheme to reclaim the soil of the homeplace that had been killed by the strip mining on the slopes above the farm" (Norman 421). He will use rabbit manure and redworms for "soil redemption. Salvation! Healing by miracles, signs and wonders" (Norman 431). Divine Right's birth as a reformer, reclaimer of the environment, comes in a red tent through an encounter with crosscultural proxemics. "The Red Tent" is the eighth section of the first part of Divine Right's Trip. D.R. and Estelle have just gotten their trip eastward underway. When they stopped at Eagle Rock State Park, The campground was incredibly crowded, but at last [Estelle] found an empty space... a narrow slot between a CMC pickup... and a green Porsche parked in front of a red pup tent. (Norman 19) The pickup with the impressive camper on it belongs to William F. Dixon, a.k.a. The Lone Outdoorsman. The more modest red tent nearby belongs to two European women, one of whom comes to borrow sugar from Estelle: D.R. asked the woman where she got her red tent. "You like it?" "I've never seen a tent like that before." "Would you like to see inside? It is very lovely." (Norman 27) Divine Right accepts and goes inside. According to what Edward T. Hall has to say about how protective Europeans, especially Germans, are about their private space (135), it seems remarkable that the women would welcome Divine Right into their tent. But camping out has a way of eliminating such barriers; perhaps that explains their hospitable nature. Divine Right's curiosity is also a flattering compliment to two such adventurous and independent women so far from home. The interior of the red tent is impressive: D.R.'s first hit was off the the fantastic quality of the light inside. It was mid-morning by now. The sun was above the tree-line, shining directly into all the little clearings on the western side of the campground. It filled the red tent with the most completely restful light he'd ever seen before. A whole tension that had screwed his face all morning went away as his eyes gulped the quiet rose of the tent's interior. (Norman 27) 84 �In their study Body, Memory and Architecture, Bloomer and Moore observe, "The face is truly a facade which acts as an important sign and message system for the body. Facial expressions and activities are metaphors of experiences that can be, or have been, consummated by the body" (43). D.R.'s relaxed face indicates that the red tent has had an immediate salutary effect on his whole body, even though he is in rather cramped quarters: It wasn't large at all. There was only one place a person oculd half stand up, and two sleeping bags side by side would cover most of the floor. Yet somehow it struck D.R. as the most spacious, elegant room he'd ever been in. (Norman 27) On this phenomenon of actual space and perceived space, Bloomer and Moore quote from Geoffrey Scott's Architecture of Humanism (1914) concerning the "mechanical, visual, and bodily measures" of a structure: In any building three things may be distinguished: the bigness which it actually has [mechanical measurement], the bigness which it appears to have [visual measurement], and the feeling of bigness which it gives [bodily measurement] ... it is the feeling of bigness which alone has aesthetic value. (28) It is precisely this "feeling of bigness" which Divine Right experiences. From outside, the red tent looks small, dwarfed by The Lone Outdoorsman's gigantic GMC camper. From inside, it has a psychic spaciousness which mirrors D.R.'s own expanding consciousness. D.R. next turns his attention to the tent's interior details: It was immaculate. In the corners of the tent near the entrance were two rolled sleeping bags. On top of each bag were small blue and white flight bags, both neatly zippered, the carrying straps arranged just so. Except for a strip of grass down the middle, the ground was covered by two straw mats. On each mat was a rubber air mattress, deflated and folded into a perfect square and stashed in the far corner of the tent. In the middle of the far end stood a short, three-legged table with a candle on it, and a single wildflower of some kind, in a glass of water. (Norman 27) Here in elegant simplicity are displayed the "microcosms of earth, air, fire, and water which renew our recollections of a world inhabited over 85 �time, of primal beginnings not yet altogether forgotten" (Bloomer &. Moore, 51). Divine Right responds powerfully to the poetics of the space around him: D.R. was amazed. He hadn't smoked any dope in over twelve hours now, and yet he felt completely stoned on the perfect arrangement of the small red world around him... he stretched himself out on one of the mats and stared up at the slanting red roof above him. (Norman 27) D.R. lies down in order to daydream. "If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house," says French phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard, "I should say: It allows D.R. to dream in peace, which means that he comes most vitally awake to its potentialities. Divine Right's experience is not unlike the epiphany of Diogenes Teufelsdrckh in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus: The Everlasting Yea. Diogenes, whose name "born of God" is akin to "Divine Right," awakens from the Center of Indifference to "a new Heaven and a new Earth": Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, musing and meditating; on the high table-land, in front of the Mountains; over me, as roof, the azure Dome, and around me, for fawll, four azure-flowing curtains,—namely, of the Four azure winds, on whose bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding. (Carlyle 129) For Diogenes, the universe is one great "skyey Tent." D.R. had seen his "spirit-name form" in the clouds above the meadow where he was lying in the grass looking up and breathing deeply in awe of how really simple everything is when you come right down to it" (Norman 11). Now, in the red tent, he rediscovers not only "how really simple everything is," but how everything is "connected." Thomas Carlyle's Diogenes speaks of "organic filaments," exclaiming, "Wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and all 1 say, there is not a red Indian, hunting by Lake Winnipic, can quarrel with his squaw, but the world must smart for it It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the Universe" (Carlyle 139). In the red tent, Divine Right the balance freak contemplates such "filaments," intersections to which the whole universe vibrates: A tent, he thought. A room of space... marked off and set aside by these walls of red canvas that weren't here yesterday probably and probably won't be here tomorrow, but 86 �they are here today and I am here too inside the particular space they enclose. This space has always been here. But it has not always been a room, at least not this room, becaus it has never been enclosed by this particular tent before. The space is here. The time is now. And they are intesecting in a way that no other tent has ever caused before. (Norman 29) In imaginative reverie, Divine Right lies there in the red tent as at the center of a cosmic mandala connected to all things, and connected to himself as the space he occupies connects with the time which is "now." Into the pool of his imagining Divine Right tosses another pebble: This very space where I am lying has been tented over before, closed up in other canvas rooms. And so the question seems to be: would another tent around this same space recreate this room, or does this room disappear forever once this red tent has been removed and taken somewhere else? (Norman 29) Had Gaston Bachelard, in his chapter on shells in The Poetics of Space, pursued his musing on the hermit crab "that goes to live in abonadoned shells" (126), he might have answered Divine Right's question. The red tent is not like the nests, drawers, chests, or wardrobes which fascinate Bachelard. It is more like a shell, which may be a moveable house, or a house into which one moves like the hermit crab. But the tent has other attributes, quite unlike the shell: And what about when this tent is pitched in another place? If you pitch it in the Blue Ridge Mountains, take it down and put it up in the Rockies, has the same room been in both places? Or is it another brand new room every time you pitch the tent again? (Norman 29) With such ephemeral houses Bachelard has nothing to do, nor does Edward Hall concern himself with the proxemics of tents as cultural phenomenon. Bloomer and Moore comment only in passing on the tent's association with "the power of nomadic conquerors" (83). Gurney Norman, however, readily perceives the proxemic values of the red tent, and their cross-cultural significance. It is important, first of all, that the red tent belongs to Europeans, not Americans. Edward Hall notes that "according to European standards, Americans use space in a wasteful way" (132). In the red tent, however, there is no space wasted. Each occupant has her own space, carefully delineated by the strip of grass between the straw mats. The 87 �amenities of life are shared on the little table in the middle. For all its nomadic associations, the tent is civilized by the little flower in a glass of water. Edward Hall says that Americans in Europe are likely to be uncomfortable with unfamiliar proxemic patterns. The effect of this different pattern on Divine Right, however, is electrifying. In the section following, called "A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place," D.R. is discovered madly cleaning up his space, his "tent," the VW microbus, Urge, who is himself European. Urge had been made in Germany and bought in Germany by an American serviceman. Now fellow Europeans and their immaculately organized red tent are responsible for the first good cleaning Urge has had in ages. In the midst of his work, D.R. exclaims to Estelle, This is here and we are now and the intersection of time and space is just special as hell, and I'm going to find out some things we need to know. I believe there's going to be better relations between east and west. (Norman 31) If Diogenes is right about organic filaments binding the whole world together, then Divine Right's getting "ten cardboard boxes of identical size and [labeling] them with what they're supposed to hold" (Norman 31) will have profound repercussions for world order. As Estelle pitches in to help with the cleaning, D.R. stops her. "Don't throw that glass away," he says. "Here. I'll wash it out after while, I want to put a wildflower in it" (Norman 31). In reading this, one cannot help but think of that famous newsphoto of peace demonstrators putting flowers in soldiers' rifles. Filled with optimism, D.R. says, "I think love and gentleness and neighborliness and human harmony are going to prevail. I think the stars are moving into very particular cosmic arrangements. And we've all got to do our parts. I believe it all depends on everybody doing his part" (Norman 31). What is this but an echo of Carlyle's Diogenes who cried, "Up! up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might" (Carlyle 134) and who looked into his own heart for the Promised Land and declared "Americca is here or nowhere" (Carlyle 133). The experience of the red tent stays with Divine Right all the way to Kentucky where he buries his Uncle Emmet and inherits the rabbit farm. Because the farm hous is threatened by overburden from the stripmine, "a wall of dried mud and shale and blasted rock high as the roof in some places" (Norman 421) which inches forward inexorable as a glacier, D.R. abandons it for the barn, where he plans to "remodel two of the stalls into a weather-tight room, and live in it that winter If Estelle would come, they would convert the whole end of the barn into a house, and live there together by the rabbits and the worms near the garden" (Norman 425). 88 �The novel ends with Divine Right planning his barn-house, his rabbit farm with thousands and thousands of hutches, and his land reclamation project with rabbit manure. It will come to pass if Estelle comes back to him, and she does. They are married. Perhaps they will live in the barn, or in the VW microbus. Gaston Bachelard says, "Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it.... It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality" (61). Swami High-Time from Santa Cruz who officiates at the wedding, refers to his Book of Tao, would have no trouble understanding the French phenomenologist's love of houses still unbuilt. For it all, there is the red tent to thank. WORKS CITED Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Trans. Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969. Bloomer, Kent C. and Charles W. Moore. Body, Memory, and Architecture. New Haven: Yale UP, 1977. Carlyle, Thomas. Sartor Resartus. In English Prose of the Victorian Era. Ed. C.F. Harrold and W.D. Templeman. New York: Oxford UP, 1938. Hall, Edward T. The Hidden Dimension. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Doubleday, 1969. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. Merleau-Ponty, M. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. New York: Routledge and Kegan, 1962. Norman, Gurney. Divine Right's Trip. In The Last Whok Earth Catalog. Menlo Park, California: Portola Institute, 1971. 89 �FOLK MUSIC: SURVIVAL AND REVIVAL Convenor: Bill Lightfoot, Appalachian State University Ola Campbell Reed: Views On Music And Appalachia, Past and Present Paula Anderson-Green, Dekalb Community College Pocono Mountain Fiddling: A Videotape Presentation John McLaughlin, East Stroudsburg University Huntington's Search For A Usable Past: Festival, Rite, Drama, Or Spectacle? Karen Simpins, Marshall University Fiddling in the Poconos: Survival or Revival?1 2 by John McLaughlin Scots-Irish settlement of the Appalachian Chain was not confined to its Southern links, but extended from Maryland through Pennsylvania to New York, and from Massachusetts up through Maine. This being the case, one might expect that the distinctive cultural heritage of the ScotsIrish might not be confined to the Southern Mountains, but might also be found in the Northern Appalachians. But Jan Brunvald's standard introduction to folklore, [ The Study of] American Folklore (Norton, 1968) identifies seven clear and distinct folklore areas of the United States, among which is Southern Appalachia, with an East-West axis dividing the North across New England (p. 23), and this neatly-drawn map has been picked up by researchers in other fields; for example, Getis, Getis and Fellman's Human Geography: Culture and Environment cites "folk cultural maps" from the early works of Glassie, Lomac and Carney (pp. 182-85) which purport to break off the "Southern Backwoods" or "Appalachian Song Family" at the MarylandPennsylvania border, with a consequent disjunct Northern and Southern folk heritage. However, when one finds himself collecting fiddle tunes like "Arkansas Traveler" and "Black Mountain Rag," "Mississippi Waltz" and "Turkey in the Straw" from elderly square dance fiddlers in Northeastern Pennsylvania, he must at least begin to suspect that these early folk cultural maps are in need of some redrawing, along a North-South rather than an East-West axis, perhaps. Maybe there is more to Pennsylvania than the notorious Dutchies, after all.3 We begin, then, with the question of whether or not the Scots-Irish 90 �fiddle traditions fo the Pocono Mountains of Northeast Pennsylvania— attested to by 93-year-old Papa Jake Miller and 77-year-old Julian Teeple (Interviews, 2/22/86)—has in fact survived two World Wars, the coming of the interstate roads and satellite TV. Or has it merely been given some kind of artificial respiration by outsiders fascinated by the quaint backwoodsmen (analogous to what Burt Feintuch found in Northumbrian small-pipes revivals—AFS paper, Oct. 1985), or by nostalgia buffs seeking to save the children from rock-and-roll (Dick Blaustein, discussion of Missouri Old-Time Fiddlers Associations, AFS paper, Oct. 1985). If the latter, have some of the well-meaning efforts to restore the fiddler to a place of honor led to unforeseen, even ironic displacements in social function for the fiddling itself, as contests have replaced squaredances as performance venues? When "hot" fiddling wins the prizes, what happens to the fiddler who has spent his performing life providing back-up to a caller? (Interview with Ray Cortwright, 70 year old fiddler for Doc Runsey's Mountain Dewers, with his distaste for "that bluegrass stuff—they play too darn fast!" - 2/20/86). In fact, Ray Cortwright has never won a fiddle contest in the last twenty years—they go back no further than that in this area of Pennsylvania—and he knows no other old-time square dance fiddler who has won such a contest. I asked him if it were possible that some fiddlers might become discouraged and hang up the fiddle after enough times of that happening, and he answered, "Oh yeah—if I hadn't had the band to play in, I might have done the same thing myself! I mean, I know I'm an alright fiddler—no star or anything like that, y'know—but I know I can fiddle, and I've been playing nigh on forty years like that. So it's not that I can't play. But the judges, y'know, they're influenced by the crowds, the applause, so they don't pay attention to whether the tune's played in the right time or nothing like that. But there's fellas I know who have just give it all up in disgust—'Hell, I guess I ain't no good after all, bud!'" (Interview, 2/20/86). Asked what the judges should be looking for, Ray answers, "Well, first of all they don't want none of that bluegrass music. I mean, I like it alright myself, like to listen to it and all, but it doesn't—shouldn't—have any place in an old-time fiddle contest. They should be looking for the old tunes, for a start—none of that 'Orange Blossom Special.' They should be looking to make sure they can play a waltz, not just a fast breakdown. And this music is dancing music, like I say—they have got to play it in time, or it's not being done right. At least, as far as I'm concerned." (Interview, 2/2/86). Papa Jake Miller, who lives in a 12' by 12' foot shack with an outhouse in back, about fifty feet from the edge of a spreading development outside Portland Village, concurs with his younger colleague. "Now, I re91 �call back when there was dancing six nights a week all around here—a body couldn't get to all the dances there was around here! And some of them contests like you have now—some kid who's learnt maybe six tunes in his life gets up there and them judges, some of them don't know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to old-time fiddling!" He is quick to assert that he personally has done all right in his day— "But you can see some of these kids got prizes in the contests, and be damned if they could fiddle all night long for a square dance like I done all my young years." (Interview, 2/22/86). Papa Jake at one time played six nights a week for dancing, 8 pm to 2 am, at the Eagle Valley Corners Inn, near East Stroudsburg, with sets in three different rooms and people waiting to take the dancers places immediately there was a pause between tunes, just him and a caller, all night long, for ten dollars a night, seventeen years in a row, "And I'd get up in the morning and go to work in the quarry as a blacksmith, and all them farmers had to get home and milk their cows." (Interview, 2/22/86). While those glory days may be gone now, he still plays host to young fiddlers who come around to learn tunes and swap stories with him in his shack, which he shares with two lapdogs and his trophies from fiddle contests. On the day of our interview, he had to set straight a visitor who called one of his tunes "The Oil City Quickstep." "Naw it ain't no 'Oil City Quickstep,'" he said. "That there tune was learned by my daddy off this nigger who come up from the South. Didn't have no place to stay, and he was just passing through. So he played us this tune, and my daddy played it after him. And his name was Jimmy the Nigger, so we called that tune its name, and it's Jimmy the Nigger's Tune,' Yes it is. Come from North Carolina, he did. Jimmy the Nigger." (Interview 2/20/86). The question of origin of repertoire is an interesting if vexed issue, as the preceding anecdote attests. In fact, the tunes played by Papa Jake and Ray Cortwright and Julian Teeple—of whom more later—are standard tunes, to be found in almost any collection of fiddle music, although they may well have been learnt, as Papa Jake's Daddy learnt them, by ear rather than from the printed page, since none of the fiddlers mentioned so far can read a note of music—"Nary a one," says Papa Jake cheerfully. Julian Teeple, for example, presents an interesting case. A lifelong bachelor, this old man lives alone in a small house a little off a main highway some thirty miles north of Stroudsburg. He has never played for square dancing, although he has fiddled all his life. Too shy to play "out in company," as he puts it, he's a classic example of the "parlor fiddler," who plays for family, friends and fellow-fiddlers, but very rarely in public. "Oh, I might go to the occasional dance, just to hear the fiddler, dont' you know, but then if he wanted to take a break and maybe dance, I'd sit in for a tune or two. But I've never played for a whole dance. It's just not my nature." (Interview, 2/22/86). 92 �However, he has been a keen radio listener all his life—at least, as far back as there was radio—and he was out of these mountains during World War Two, when he was called "Pop" by his outfit, with whom he shared a prisoner-of-war experience he can still remember vividly; along the way, he has befriended a couple of well-intentioned fiddle enthusiasts, who have kept him supplied with records and, now, cassette tapes of fiddle music. As a result, Julian can play you Graham Townsend and Eugene O'Donnell tunes, along with some of the half-remembered English tunes his grandfather brought over from the North of England over a hundred years ago. "Well, you see, whenever I'd get with a fiddler, I'd pick up on his tunes, then the next guy I'd pick up his, and so on and so on. So that means I remember the last ones better than the earlier ones, like you do, so I sometimes can't remember some of the great old tunes. More's the pity." (Interview, 2/22/86). Among the up-and-coming young fiddlers Julian is in touch with, there is a 29 year old dairy farmer by the name of Steve Jacoby, who is perhaps somewhat more representative—talent aside—of the mainstream fiddling than "Uncle Julian." Steve is a member of the revivalist organization referred to earlier, the Fred Williams Friends of Old Time Music, which was founded about ten years ago to "preserve and perpetuate" old-time fiddling and Appalachian music. Never mind that the members wear cowboy hats and boots to play, or that the small band within the group—Country Cooking—has a singer whose repertoire is drawn straight from the country-and-western charts. In the words of Andy Cavage, one of the founders, "Fred saw that the old music was dying out—maybe because of rock-and-roll, I don't know—and he determined to keep it alive, to keep it going, and so that's how we got set up in the first place. To have the old music, and to see if maybe we could get the young folks interested in it—something for them to do with their time" (Interview, 1/28/86). Among the things that they've done with their time is bring Graham Townsend—one of Steve Jacoby's idols—down to the Poconos for concerts at a local high school. I was asked by Steve if I would like to videotape the concert, and, although it was at the time a bit off my taste, I agreed, hoping that serendipity would strike as it so often does when you give it half a chance. The concert was a success, Graham Townsend had no objection to the taping—"for educational purposes"—although he was quick to make it clear to the audience that he had records and cassettes out in the hall to be autographed at intermission, etc. I made the promised copy for the Friends (9/7/85), and thought no more of it until this past April, when I asked if I could travel to a grange social, where the Friends would be playing. In the middle of the concert, Steve stepped up to the microphone, and announced he was going to do "The Mockingbird." It is the tune, of 93 �course, with which Graham Townsend won the World Championships at Sherbourne, in 1962, and with which he had brought his Honesdale audience to their feet the preceding September. With my video camera rolling, Steve then proceeded to produce a near note-perfect copy of Townsend's performance, right down to "patter" and fiddle-taps ("That's a woodpecker!"). As far as I know, Steve Jacoby had never seen Graham Townsend in performance before that September show. On the other hand, he had had the videotape available for study during the following winter months If I am correct, then, we have a demonstration of how videotaping can enter into the oral processes of tradition, no different in kind than phonograph records or audio-cassettes, but with the added dimension of the visual image for the apprentice fiddler to learn the master's bowing and fingering—and tapping. In this case, then, it could be argued that I am in no different case than the enthusiasts referred to earlier, who had loaned Julian Teeple cassettes of Irish music and thereby interfered with his memory of English tunes. I stand guilty as charged, I supposed; both cases, in fact, might stand a bit closer scrutiny, since it seems to me that they are perfectly natural processes, no more to be rolled back than the waves for Canute. Indeed, the only caution I would make in situations like this is for the collector to be aware of these and other "interferences" from "outside the tradition." Otherwise, he might collect an item from a fiddler and misidentify its sources, through ignorance of these intervening possibilities. A case in point might be a tune with a French-Canadian-sounding name, "The Joys of Quebec," which I collected in a session of the Fred Williams Friends of Old Time Music, in their weekly practices. Especially since Andy Cavage had cited French-Canadian as one of the three major ethnic influences in Pocono Mountain fiddling (the others being Scots-Irish and German), I might have been tempted to look further North—let us say to Graham Townsend?—for the source for this tune. But it so happens that it has also been recorded on the June Appal label (out of Kentucky) by the Dutch Cove String Band, among others; could it not also belong among the tunes passed along to Papa Jake by Jimmy the Nigger... ? The point is, of course, that both are clear "possibilities," neither is the exclusive "correct answer," and the collector who insists upon tracking down the sources will have a long and dusty road to travel to get there. Another caution might also be in order, for the unwary collector in Pennsylvania. There are a number of fiddle contests in this area each year, run as part of local fairs and, more recently, by resort hotels as part of their tourist attractions. At one such—this one run as part of the Greene-Dreher-Sterling fair in Newfoundland last August—I videotaped 94 �a dazzling, intricate display of Irish fiddling, by a young man with forearms like hams and thick, short fingers, a swarthy chap wearing a cowboy shirt and the inevitable boots. In fact, he won the contest, with a combination of "Tennessee Waltz," "The Irish Washerwoman," and "Katy Hill." To the neophyte collector—and we have been forewarned that the Governor's Heritage Commission is soon going to be hiring a fresh young Ph.D. to come up into the Northeast and begin fieldworking his way around the mountains—this might have been caputred as a prime example of the revival of fiddling in the Poconos and all that. As it happens, I know this chap from elsewhere. He is Tony De Marco, who was once the fiddler in "Flying Cloud," the house band at the Eagle Tavern in New York City, and a veteran fiddler with two albums of fiddle music—one a twin-fiddling album with Brian Milner—on the market. Tony owns a house in the vicinity, and is a friend of Steve Jacoby, through whom he heard about this new contest, with its prize money waiting for the best in show—which he clearly deserved (Contest videotaped, 8/28/85). Now, this is not to say that Tony or anyone else should have been "flagged off the track"—although I did hear some mumbling from other young fiddlers about "damned ringers"—it is just to caution the unwary to watch where they are putting their feet before they make too-quick pronouncements concerning the state of the art in fiddling among the Pocono Mountains. It is with these contests that I would like to close this quick survey of what I have found to be the case so far in my research. Their motives are obviously mixed—to preserve the old-time fiddling, to entertain the tourists until casino gambling is legalized, to enrich the local fair programs —but it is clear that they have taken over from the square dances as public venues for fiddle music in this area. Doc Rumsey's Mountain Dewers may play the local YMCA, and Fred Williams Friends of Old Time Music may play the grange or the local high school; but the prize money, the crowds, in short, "the action," is at the fiddle contests. In theory they are judged by old-timers who know the music; but in fact, as Ray Cortwright somewhat bitterly attests, they are also crowd-pleasers, and the young fiddler who steps right up to the mike and fires off some trick-and-fancy fiddling stands to gain not only an ovation but also the prize money. As noted earlier, this may be having the ironic and unintended effect of discouraging the very fiddlers whom they were set up to honor and preserve in the first place; for the ego-strokes that we all need, performers especially perhaps, the old-timers have to turn to young enthusiasts, not necessarily well-informed about their music, unless they are fortunate enough to have a Steve Jacoby, who respects their music and will sit in with them at home and play the old tunes with them (Unfortunately bad videotape, with less than minimal lighting, at Julian Teeple's cabin, 11/26/85). 95 �Ignorant crowds are no way to treat old-time square dance music; but if we are not to retreat into the dusty museums, we have to recognize that it is among those ignorant, beer-swilling crowds that we will find our young fiddlers these days. Some, like the aptly-named Johnny Ace, can win in the more traditional settings such as the old-established West End Fair contest (now in its 15th year), with such tunes as "Old Joe Clark" or "Mississippi Waltz," then turn around and walk away with prizes by playing Bill Monroe's "Jerusalem Ridge," at a newer contest the following night (Videotapes, West End Fair, 8/28/85, and Greene-DreherSterling Fair, 8/28/85); Johnny also plays in a hot country band, "Penn Station," which plays at the local resort hotels. Some, like Steve Jacoby, a member of 4-H and devoted to the farm he lives on, are as at home playing for the grange halls (4/22/86 videotape) as they are running off with the Trick-and-Fancy Division at the West End (8/27/85) or sitting in with their friends in a farmhouse basement for a weekly practice session, where the tunes go around the room and nobody insists on being the star (Videotape at John Wargo's house, Honesdale, PA, 1/28/86). But that Pocono Mountain fiddling is alive and well is beyond question. That it shares repertoire as well as heritage with the fiddle music of the Southern Appalachians also seems beyond question, although of course the effect of syndicated programs such as "Hee Haw" (referred to admiringly by a number of these fiddlers in passing) cannot be ruled out here, either.3 That it will continue to evolve, under pressures to please the crowds and to satifsy the fiddlers' own love of novelty and variety, there can be little doubt, either. The field has not yet been studied in anything approaching the depth with which, for example, the Southern Appalachians, or even the Central and Southern Pennsylvania traditions have been studied (See the work of Matthew Guntharp and Bob Doyle, Learning the Fiddler's Ways, and Samuel P. Bayard's Hill Country Tunes). The enticing title of George Korson's early collection of coal-miners' songs, Coal Dust on the Fiddle, threatens to distract us westward to the Scranton coal region before we have fairly begun to evaluate our findings here! That there is more work ahead, then, goes without saying. That there is room for more workers should be equally obvious (side-comments about newly-hatched Ph.D.s to the side). That the chosen recording medium, 1/2 inch VHS, would eventually lend itself to further circulation, possibly through historical societies' interests in preserving the record of the old-timers, is a suggestion which the current author intends to explore in the near future. Let me say only in closing that I am now in process of exploring the possibility of a folklife conference at my home institution next year (tenative title: "Pocono Foxfire: The Folklife of the Northern Appalachians.") You are invited.4 96 �ENDNOTES 1. The videotapes listed in the "Works Cited" were all obtained through the kind permission of the fiddlers and contest organizers involved, specifically for educational purposes, and with my offer of a souvenir copy gladly accepted, for the recipients' own agendas; one told me quite serenely, in front of her husband, that this would be a good way to remember Pa, especially for the grandchildren, "after he's passed on." Steve Jacoby's use of the Graham Townsend tape is described more fully in the text of this paper. I have oral permission to share these tapes with other investigators, if they would be of any educational value. With that restriction, that they not be re-used other than for research and educational purposes, I will be only too happy to send copies of any of the videotapes listed within the text and cited at the end of the paper, to anyone who will send me a blank 1/2 inch T-120 VHS videotape; it may take some weeks to get your copy back, since it must be copied in "real time" on facilities used for other purposes. 2. I am indebted to Bill Lightfoot of Appalachian State University for the predicate of this title, the emblem of the folk music session within which the videotapes underlying this paper were originally presented at the Ninth Annual Appalachian Studies Conference, Boone, NC, March 22, 1986. 3. I am indebted to Dick Blaustein for a number of things, not least a lively discussion of the North-South re-orientation of Appalachian folklore studies which this paper supports. 4. Recognizing that the name "Foxfire" is of good lineage and is probably copyrighted, I have applied to the Foxfire Fund for their permission to incorporate it into the proposed title of this hoped-for conference. A good title is worth a lot. WORKS CITED Bayard, Samuel P. Hil! Country Tunes. AGS Memoirs, 1944. Blaustein, Richard. "Missouri Old Time Fiddlers' Associations." Paper presented at American Folklore Society Convention, Cincinatti, Ohio, October 1985. Brunvald, Jan H. The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction. Norton, 1968. Feintuch, Burt. "Revivals of Northumbrian Small-Pipes." Paper presented at AFS Convention, Cincinatti, 1985. Getis, Arthur, Judith Getis and Jerome Fellmann. Human Geography: Culture and Environment. MacMillian, 1985. Guntharp, Matthew [and Bob Doyle]. Learning the Fiddler's Ways. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980. Korson, George. Coal Dust on the Fiddle. Folklore Association, 1965. 97 �VIDEOTAPES COLLECTED Fred Williams Friends of Old Time Music, at Dreher Grange Hall, So. Sterling, PA, 4/22/86. Fred Williams Friends of Old Time Music, Practice Session at John Wargo's Farmhouse, Honesdale, PA, 1/28/86. Graham Townsend at Honesdale High School, Honesdale, PA, 9/7/85. Greene-Dreher-Sterling Fair Fiddle Contest, Newfoundland, PA, 8/28/85. Julian Temple, Lord's Valley, PA, 2/22/86. Papa Jake Miller, Portland, PA, 2/22/86. Ray Cortwright, Marshalls Creek, PA, 2/20/86. West End Fair Fiddle Contest, Gilbert, PA, 8/27/85. 98 �SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN FOLK ARTISTS Convenor: Eric Olson, Appalachian State University The Frank Proffitt Family—Watauga Folk Artists "Going Across The Mountains, O Fare You Well" Betsy Covington, Appalachian State University Willard Watson's Instructional Narratives: Growth And Maturations David Huntley, University of North Carolina Vintage Fiddling In Eastern Kentucky Marynell Young, Morehead State University The Frank Proffitts, Watauga Folk Artists "Going Across the Moutains, O Fare You Well" by Betsy Covington Some of America's finest traditional mountain music has been performed by the Proffitts, Frank Sr. and Frank Jr., of Watauga County. More than one hundred twenty folk songs were passed down through the oral tradition in their family and shared with the world through their performance. Frank Proffitt, Sr. was born on June 1, 1913, in Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee. He was the son of Wiley and Rebecca Creed Proffitt, who moved from Wilkes County, North Carolina to the Cracker Neck section of the eastern Tennessee mountains shortly after the Civil War. When Frank was a young boy the family moved back to North Carolina to the Beaver Dam Section of Watauga County, just a few miles below the Tennessee border. Frank Proffitt grew up with a deep fascination for the songs sung for generations by his family. The first folklorist to visit and publish songs sung by Frank Proffitt was Frank C. Brown in 1937. Although discovered by Frank Brown, it was the sustained interest in the Proffitts by Frank Warner which gave both Frank Proffitt, Sr. and Frank Jr. the opportunity to perform outside their native mountain area.1 In the Autumn 1973 Edition of the Appalachian Journal Frank 99 �Warner describes his first visit to Beech Mountain, when he went to get a dulcimer from Nathan Hicks: It was June 5, 1938, when we first reached the house on Beech Mountain. A crowd of some twenty-five kinfolk and neighbors were waiting for us—with guitars, homemade banjos, dulcimers, fiddles, and French harps. The best singer and guitar player among them turned out to be Nathan's son-in-law, Frank Proffitt, who had walked ten miles across the mountains from his home in Pick Britches Valley to sing with us.2 Before long everybody was making music. The sound and the people, that afternoon gave us a feeling we have never lost. It was the beginning of our life-long interest in traditional music and the people who remember it. We had not come with the idea of collecting songs, but Anne couldn't help taking down in shorthand the words of three songs Frank Proffitt sang: "Dan Doo," a version of the Child ballad, "The Wife Wrapt in Wetherskin;" "Moonshine," a story about the effect of homemade liquor; and "Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley." .. .3 "Tom Dooley" became part of Frank Warner's repertoire; and when he sang it, he told the story of collecting it from Frank Proffitt. Frank had learned it from his father, who had learned it from his mother, Adeline Perdue, who had been aquainted with Tom Dula when she lived in Wilkes County. In 1868 she had journeyed with her brother to Statesville to see Tom and to go to his hanging. She said she heard him singing the song about himself while sitting in his jail cell. She learned it and sang it throughout her life.4 "Tom Dooley" Hang your head, Tom Dooley. Oh, hang your head and cry. Killed little Laurie Foster. Poor boy, you're bound to die. CHORUS: Hang your head, Tom Dooley, Hang your head and cry, Hang your head, Tom Dooley, Poor boy, you're bound to die. I met her on the mountain, And there I took her life. I met her on the mountain, And stobbed he with my knife. CHORUS 100 �Hand me down my banjo, I'll pick it on my knee. This time tomorrow, It'll be no use to me. CHORUS This time tomorrow, Reckon where I'll be. Down in some lonesome valley, Hanging on a white oak tree. CHORUS5 Frank Warner taught "Tom Dooley" to Alan Lomax, who published it in Folk Song U.S.A. in 1947. It was the Folk Song U.S.A. copyrighted version which was recorded on Capitol Records by the Kingston Trio in 1958. The song rose to the top of the charts and sold over three million copies. It was during their beginning popularity that the Proffitts witnessed the Kingston Trio in concert on television. When Frank Proffitt, Sr. heard them singing "Tom Dooley" and saw them swinging their hips and cutting up, he felt sick at heart. Tears came into his eyes, and he went outside to think it over. It just did not seem respectful to the memory of Laurie to sing their story in such a flippant manner.6 Believing that they, too, should share in the royalties, Frank Warner, Alan Lomax and Frank Proffitt sued Capitol Records. This was the first case of rights being claimed to a copyrighted folk song, so there was no clear-cut precedent to follow. After many months of negotiating, an out-of-court settlement gave Warner, Lomax and Proffitt the rights to the song from 1962 on.7 Speaking of that time in their lives Frank Proffitt, Jr. says, "My father was satisfied for the way the settlement came out. He thought it was selfish to wish for more than he needed to make it. He was a humble man."8 Though the royalties did not approach the earnings during the time of its greatest popularity, they made a significant improvement in the lifestyle of the Proffitts. The first check which came was for $700.00, and bought food and new shoes for the family. The most money which came in yearly was four to five thousand dollars, but seldom was it that much. Along with the money came recognition and interest from the public. Newspapers and magazines came to interview, and others came to visit. Orders for homemade fretless banjos and dulcimers Frank had learned to make from his father increased. He was surprised and pleased that people from all over appreciated the traditional music he knew so intimately. It was through the friendship of Frank Warner that Frank Proffitt received his first invitation to perform outside the North Carolina moun101 �tains in 1961. The University of Chicago was holding its first Folk Festival. Frank Proffitt referred to himself as a "shy mountain man;" it took a lot of encouragement and soul-searching for him to be willing to go. He felt he was coming apart at the seams, yet he was proud that others appreciated "the simple things" and respected the mountain culture. He felt he should do anything he could to preserve the music of his people. This was a top priority with him, and it was what enabled him to overcome his timidity. He journeyed across the mountains to Chicago to the Folk Festival. While waiting to go on stage, he observed the performance of some "blue-grass boys" in cowboy hats and wondered about his plain clothes. He questioned if needed a white sparkling tuxedo or something to "give it an extra lick." He decided what he had to offer was himself and his traditions, so he would go out and do it the old way. Frank sang, and the audience was charmed. They gave him a standing ovation. There was much joking as to whether Frank saw the audience standing, being the spotlights had been turned up and the audience lights lowered to help him overcome his stagefright.9 Even when he received great acclaim he did not "let it go to his head." He remained the same "shy mountain man." When he was asked once why he did not change, he replied, "I wouldn't know what to change to."10 He wanted to be a representative of his kind of people, never to exalt himself.11 Sandy Paton was so impressed by the talent and authenticity of Frank Proffitt that he wanted to record him for Folkways Records. He took recording equipment from New England to Watauga County and recorded him at home. The resulting album was Frank Proffitt Sings Folk Songs (1962 copyright). Recording Frank at home in 1961 was the inspiration from which came the founding of Folk-Legacy Records. Folk-Legacy's first album was by Frank Proffitt. Frank Proffitt, Reese, North Carolina (1962 copyright). It was made from tapes recorded in that winter of 1961. A later Memorial Album (1968 copyright) formed a total of three sound recordings of Frank Proffitt.12 From 1961 to 1965 was a period of significant activity in Frank Proffitt's musical career. He was invited to a number of colleges, universities, and festivals. Some of the places he performed were the Pinewoods Music Camp, Berea College, the Newport Folk Festival and the 1964 World's Fair. He received the Burl Ives Award in 1963 for his two-finger method of banjo picking.13 Frank Proffitt died suddenly in his sleep, November 22, 1965 at age fifty-two. He had been to Charlotte to take his wife, Bessie, for an operation. After he drove back home, he went to bed and did not awaken. He was buried in the Milsap cemetery at Bethel, not far from his home, after the memorial service at Bethel Baptist Church.H 102 �To raise money for a tombstone, Frank Warner organized a concert at Hunter College in New York City in 1966. Among those singing were Doc Watson, Jean Ritchie and Pete Seeger. A granite marker was erected in 1967.15 The family suggested the words of one of Frank's songs to be engraved into the headstone, "Going Across the Mountain, O Fare You Well." The song "Going Across the Mountain" is a Civil War song which came to Frank Proffitt through his father, Wiley Proffitt. Wiley's father, John Proffitt, had been one of those to go join the Union Army in Tennessee. 16 "Going Across the Mountain" Going across the mountain, Oh, fare you well; Going across the mountain, You can hear my banjo tell. Got my rations on my back. My powder it is dry; I'm a-going across the mountain. Chrissy, don't you cry. Going across the mountain To join the boys in blue; When this war is over, I'll come back to you. Going across the mountain, If I have to crawl. To give old Jeffs men A little taste of my rifle ball. Way before it's good daylight, If nothing happens to me, I'll be way down yander In old Tennessee. I expect you'll miss me when I'm gone, But I'm going through; When this war is over, I'll come back to you. Going across the mountain, Oh, fare you well; Going across the mountain, You can hear my banjo tell.17 Frank and Bessie Hicks Proffitt had six children, and one of them, Frank, Jr., is a folk musician in the same tradition of his father. Born Franklin Benjamin Proffitt on September 8, 1946, Frank learned to play when he was ten years old. He worked on it secretly to pass the time, listening to his father's records and imitating him. When his father caught him practicing, he was surprised and pleased that he played so well.18 His first trip to play in concert with his father was to Berea College in 1965. Since then, he has performed at the 1969 Newport Folk Festival, the 1982 World's Fair, the summer festivals at the Smithsonian Institute and many other gatherings. He has been making a living with his 103 �music since 1978. He became an "artist in the schools" through the North Carolina Arts Council at that time.19 For this year 1985-86 he is the artist-in-residence at Western Piedmont Community College in Morganton. Frank Proffitt, Jr. is a delightful storyteller, as well as musician. He says his storytelling comes from the Hicks side of the family. His mother's cousins, Stanley and Rey Hicks, renowned storytellers, told him many tales as he was growing up. These tales about Jack and his adventures are retold humorously and artfully to Frank's audiences.20 Considering his talents a gift from God, Frank is appreciative for his heritage. In speaking of his father he says, "I was proud of him and wanted to be a part of it—the magic and wonderment of it all. I still feel that way."21 ENDNOTES 1. Personal interview with Frank Proffitt, Jr., 12 April 1983. 2. Anne and Frank Warner. "Frank Noah Proffitt: Good Times and Hard Times on the Beaver Dam Road." Appalachian Journal. Autumn 1973, pp. 164-165. 3. Ibid. 4. Personal interview with Frank Proffitt, Jr., 24 August 1985. 5. Ibid. 6. Frank Proffitt, Jr., "Mountain Music Concert." McAllister School Auditorium, Concord, North Carolina, 14 February 1983. 7. Proffitt, personal interview, 25 August 1985, Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Warner, Ibid., p. 175. 12. Sandy Paton, Jacket Notes, Frank Proffitt Memorial Album, Folk-Legacy Records, 1968. 13. Personal interview with Frank Proffitt, Jr., 2 May 1983. 14. Ibid. 104 �15. Warner, Ibid., p. 191. 16. Proffitt, personal interview, 2 May 1983, Ibid. 17. Frank Proffitt, "Going Across the Mountain," Frank Proffitt, Folkways Records, 1962. 18. Telephone interview with Frank Proffitt, Jr., 15 February 1986. 19. Proffitt, personal interview 25 August 1985, Ibid. 20. Proffitt, personal interview 2 May 1983, Ibid. 21. Proffitt, telephone interview, 15 February 1986, Ibid. REFERENCES Paton, Sandy. Jacket Notes, Frank Proffitt Memorial Album. Folk-Legacy Records, 1968. Proffitt, Frank, Jr. "Mountain Music Concert." McAllister School Auditorium, Concord, North Carolina. 14 February 1983. Proffitt, Frank, Jr. Personal interview. 12 April 1983. Proffitt, Frank, Jr. Personal interview. 2 May 1983. Proffitt, Frank, Jr. Personal interview. 25 August 1985. Proffitt, Frank, Jr. Telephone interview. 15 February 1986. Warner, Anne and Frank. "Frank Noah Proffitt: Good Times and Hard Times on the Beaver Dam Road." Appalachian Journal (Autumn 1973):162-193. 105 �COLLECTIONS AND EXHIBITING Convenor: Tyler Blethen, Western Carolina University Presenting Cooperative Exhibits: The Appalachian Consortium Museum Cooperative Helen Roseberry, East Tennessee State University Sam Gray, Marion, North Carolina Somewhere Over Beech Mountain: Contemporary Appalachian Artifacts And The Land Of Oz Charles Watkins, Appalachian State University Historical Photographs Of Southern Appalachia: Documenting Activites Of The Settlement Schools Gerald Roberts, Berea College Panelists: Shannon Wilson, Berea College Patricia Ayers, Berea College William Richardson, Berea College Somewhere Over Beech Mountain: Contemporary Appalachian Artifacts and The Land Of Oz by Charles Alan Watkins The Land of Oz was a theme park based on the L. Frank Baum Oz characters atop Beech Mountain in Avery County, Western North Carolina. Its birth in 1970 was intertwined with the land rush and concomitant ski boom that occurred in the mountains during the decade of the 1960's, and its demise in 1980 reflected the fallout from financial woes that the ski and second home industries suffered in the early 1970's. In the summer of 1985 and throughout 1986 Appalachian State University's new museum facility, the Appalachian Cultural Center, acquired a large number of significant artifacts from The Land Of Oz to serve as a centerpiece for its planned exhibition on the history of tourism in the mountains. The acquisition and announced plans to exhibit the Oz material has brought into focus a number of questions that museums of Appalachia will increasingly have to deal with, and Oz makes an interesting case study by which to examine these questions. To understand the Land of Oz, one must first consider its parent company, the Carolina Carribbean Corporation (CCC). The genesis of CCC occurred in 1964 when Grover and Harry Robbins, two Watauga 106 �county natives, purchased a large tract of land atop Beech Mountain from Dr. Thomas H. Brigham, a Birmingham, Alabama dentist who had been influential in developing skiing as a sport in Western North Carolina. The Robbins Brothers had gotten their start in the sawmill and lumber business but increasingly their interests turned to tourism and resort development. Their father Grover Robbins, Sr., had owned and operated the original Blowing Rock tourist attraction in Blowing Rock, and Harry Robbins recalled that his first job had been to put Blowing Rock bumper stickers on visitors' cars. In 1956 they began to develop Tweetsie Railroad as a theme park and this was followed in 1964 by construction of Hound Ears, a second home and golf resort between Boone and Linville, North Carolina. What Grover and Harry Robbins envisioned atop Beech Mountain made their other enterprises pale by comparison, however. In 1964 they formed the Carolina Carribbean Corporation, so named because their North Carolina resort was to be linked with a condominium development, The Reef, in St. Croix, the Virgin Islands. Property owners on Beech would have membership in the Carolina Carribbean Club and would have priveleges at the St. Croix development. An airline was envisioned that would shuttle people back and forth between Beech Mountain and the Carribbean, as well as pick up skiers from various locations in the Southern United States. At heart, CCC's business on Beech Mountain was to sell resort and second homesites. Grover Robbins had unlimited faith in the area, stating that, "For years to come, the best things will be happening in Western North Carolina's mountains.... It is inevitable... for this is the best place of all." The Robbins' believed that vacation homes were within the reach of many Americans, and the CCC desigend a model "cottage" that could be built for $13,500-$ 14,500. Presumably this cottage would appeal to the same sort of people who drove Volkswagens and was therefore, dubbed Volkshause. All of the amenities at Beech were simply inducements to purchase one of the 4,000 planned homesites, and there were amenities to spare. CCC planned to offer two 18 hole golf courses, one 9 hole course, horsetrails, streams and man made lakes for trout fishing and an area for bird hunting. CCC even hired famed coach Paul Dietzel to develop a family fitness program for Beech residents. The major attraction, however, was a series of ski slopes at the top of the mountain. As land scales were at the true center of CCC, skiing was at the company's promotional center—it was the flagship activity of the resort and the one that made land purchase attractive. Because skiing was a promotional activity at Beech rather than part of the business, it was never really expected to make a profit and apparently it never did under CCC management. 107 �Nevertheless, the plant investment in skiing was enormous, and the corporation wished to be able to use the chair lift and gondola systems in the summer also. For that reason, CCC planned for a small theme park at the very top, the Pinnacles. To that end, a young Charlotte designer, Jack Pentes was brought to the mountain. Pentes had done other work for the Robbins brothers. In addition to redesigning the Blowing Rock, Pentes' firm had also done much of the design work at Tweetsie and a small history gallery of the Green Park Inn, at that time a Robbins property. Pentes remembers that the idea of recreating Oz came to him as soon as he reached the top of Beech, "Those beautiful trees all seemed to have faces,... and their limbs seemed to be reaching out for me. Then I saw a cave and realized it was the Cowardly Lion's cave—just where it should be. It was over the rainbow—part of another world." By February 1967, plans were sufficiently underway for CCC to announce that a tourist attraction called the Land of Oz would be included in the development. Oz opened officially on June 15, 1970 and was fully operational on July 3. As planned by Pentes, the park was truly a vest-pocket park, comprising only about sixteen acres, of which seven were left undeveloped. Visitors to the park had the option of riding one of the ski lift systems to the top of the mountain where the park was located or riding a specially painted bus to the top. Once there visitors first toured the L. Frank Baum Museum which exhibited a number of costumes, props and articles of furniture from the MGM auction that was held on May 17, 1970 to raise funds to build the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. From the museum, visitors were taken to the Judy Garland memorial overlook which offered a dramatic view of the Elk Valley far below. Then came Uncle Henry and Auntie Em's farm that included a Gothic style farmhouse, barn and some outbuildings. Crops were actually cultivated at the farm and there was a petting zoo of farm animals, sponsored by Purina, in the barn area. Visitors were then taken in groups for a tour of the farmhouse. While inside, the people were suddenly informed that a cyclone was on the way and that they should all go to the cellar. In the cellar, they were treated to a rear screen projection of a cyclone, actually made of a film of water being stirred in a bucket with superimposed effects, and appropriate sound effects. When the all-clear was given, the visitors were told that they were being taken back into the house, but instead they were led into a duplicate house built onto the back of the original and one story lower. This house was an exact duplicate of the other one including the furniture, but here things were in disarray—chairs thrown about, tables turned over, pictures askew. To give the effect that the house was no longer on flat land, Pentes designed the floors to be built at a slope, an effect that made visitors stagger drunkedly out the door toward Oz. Outside, the legs of the wicked witch could be seen sticking out from the house where it had 108 �supposedly landed on her. Visitors then preceded down the yellow brick road, constructed of specially made bricks with a yellow glaze on the upper surface. They went through Munchkin Land featuring small Munchkin houses and some 500 Mushrooms, all made of sprayed foam. Along the way, the visitors met the other Oz characters—the Scarecrow had his own little house from which he emerged to lip-sync his greeting to the visitors, then do a song and dance routine. Similarly, the tin man performed in front of another house while the visitors watched from an overlook gazebo, and the lion appeared from his den to perform his own special routine. The Wicked Witch was next and her song, also lipsynced, made it clear that she was a harmless bumbler who could not get the recipes right for her magic potions. At the end of the road came Emerald City, consisting of a group of buildings that served as a theater, shop and office area. Here, miniskirted Munchkin girls distributed Greenie Glasses, made of cardboard and colored plastic, to the tourists so that they could view Oz in the proper hue. At set intervals, a stage show, the "Magic Moment," took place. In this, the tour's grand finale, the various Oz characters met the Wizard, actually a rear screen projection of opera star John Richards McCrae, received their hearts' desire and watched Dorothy disappear in one of the balloons that comprised an aerial ride around the park, each balloon suspended from a converted chair lift system. The shops sold items such as Oz Cream, a specially designed ice cream that had green chunks of candy in it. Pentes was determined that his park would be an original and he refused to copy from the film, "The Wizard of Oz." He brought together a remarkable team that relied heavily on home grown talent. Music for the park was written by Charlotte composer Loonis McGlohon and Alec Wilder whose songs had been recorded by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. The only song that remained from the film was "Over the Rainbow." One of the vocalists, Lorri Ham, later recorded "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing." Charlotte sculptor Austin Fox created the costume designs for the Oz characters and the sculpture of Dorothy and Toto that was used in the Judy Garland memorial overlook. Fox had earlier gained success as the sculptor of the Femlin characters for Playboy. Costumes were made by Brooks Van Home, the New York theatrical costumer. Hollywood choreographer Alice Leggett laMar created special dances for each character and choreographed the "Magic Moment" stage show. Pentes even specially designed the souvenirs that were to be sold in the shops in Emerald City. The hard work paid off. The Land of Oz won the annual Washington, D.C. Daily New Award for the year's outstanding tourist attraction. According to Myron Glaser, manager of Resort and Travel News for the Scripps-Howard newspaper, the Land of Oz was "the hands down winner." Glaser described the park as "exquisite" and said "We've never 109 �seen a more beautiful natural setting nor a finer marriage of a place and an idea. It is truly an adventure, imaginative and unspoiled." The award was decided upon even before the balloon ride was completed—that ride opened on July 3. The park attracted over 400,000 people that first year and it became the state's leading tourist attraction almost overnight. Just as fast, though, the fortunes of the park began to decline. According to Tom Seig who served as a publicist for Oz, "Commercialization by Carolina Caribbean Corp., the original owner, had begun the second year, when people's shoes began to stick on ice-cream wrappers and cotton-candy cones on the Yellow Brick Road. The hawkers had come to Oz, and so had Japan and Taiwan, souvenirs would no longer be tailored to the story and park, and the emeraldstudded Oz cream would become plain ice cream. Everything would be cheapened by the price of admission." At heart, Carolina Carribbean was in trouble. Beginning in 1971, the tightening economy began to work against the Company. Inflation pushed interest rates high and damaged second home sales. The gas crunch of 1974 exacerbated conditions, and heavily crippled tourism. Further, a series of mild winters from 1971 through 1973 severely damaged the ski business. This overall downturn pushed all the Western North Carolina land sale/ski developments to the wall, but CCC was especially vulnerable. Grover Robbins had died in 1970 but the projects he had spun off, including the Dominican Corporation, a resort city on the coast of the Dominican Republic, a camper park enterprise called Land Harbors and Walden, a planned community near Charlotte, were all subject to the same forces affecting CCC, thereby increasing the pressure on the Beech development. Then in September, 1972 machine gun-weilding terrorists killed four people on the Fountain Valley Golf Course in St. Croix. That effectively ended any profitablity that the Reef might have had. the company reported that it lost over $6 million in the first nine months of FY 1973 and $9 million in FY 1974. The company sought cutbacks and by August 1974 was listing the Land of Oz as one property being considered for sale. But it was too late. On November 25, 1974 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ordered trading suspended in CCC stock. In February 1975 CCC reorganized in an effort to stave off bankruptcy but it closed down operations in September 1975. On October 31, 1975 a judge ordered planned liquidation of the assets of CCC but the Beech Mountain Property Owners Association leased the village and restaurant and the skiing facilities for the winter of 1975-76. The title to The Land Of Oz passed to the mortgage holder, Tri South of Atlanta, Georgia. 110 �The trouble for Oz had just begun, however. On December 28, 1975 a fire at Oz destroyed the theatre, along with all the costumes and audio visual material. The museum was vandalized and a number of artifacts including the dress Judy Garland wore during the filming of the Wizard of Oz were stolen. Tri South vowed to reopen Oz and it did so with a number of changes. These changes, perhaps based upon sound managerial practice, tore at the heart of Jack Pentes' concept. No longer would there be an elaborate stage show with rear screen projection. Now there would be a live Wizard and a puppet show. Replacement costumes were ordered not from Brooks van Home but from a Charlotte costumer who closely followed the styles of the film. Oz continued operation until 1980 when Jack Pentes was called to assess what it would take to do Oz really well again. Pentes reported that $165,000 would have to be spent immediately and $1,000,00 soon thereafter to update Oz. In Pentes' mind, the alternative to spending the money was to close the park altogether. Beech Mountain officials chose the latter course and the 1980 season was the last for Oz. Beech Mountain officials found it difficult to stop vandalism of the park that began soon after Oz was shut down. People threw bricks throughthe styrofoam faces on the trees and denuded the witch's castle of it crennelation. Antiques from Dorothy's house disappeared along with most of the 500 mushrooms. By 1985 the park was in ruin. Yet amid that ruin had been a dream. "It was supposed to be magic," said Jack Pentes, "and it was magic, I think, the first year." But it was a magic that could have happened in the mountains, and in virtually every respect, Oz was a mountain project—built by mountain people for owners who were themselves mountain people. The park's design was in part dictated by the availability of local skills such as stonemasonry, and eve the Birdhouse Tree was constructed by the famed blacksmith, Daniel Boone V. The employees were kids from the surrounding area, and the existence of the park itself symbolized the change in the regional economy from farming to tourism. Nothing could better illustrate this change than a comparison between the CCC side of the mountain and Beech Mountain's other side, the eastern slope in Watauga County, which had been virtually inaccessible until quite recently. Folk scholars and musicologists had long recognized this area as one in which certain family such as the Hicks' and the Presnell's, had held onto older traditions. It was, therefore, highly symbolic of modern Appalachian change that both Munchkins and pre-industrial mountaineers simultaneously inhabited the same mountain. Yet when the Appalachian Cultural Center began to acquire objects from the park, a number of people reacted unfavorably to Oz, questioning what relevance a theme park had to Appalachia. This should not have 111 �been surprising since even our national museum is occasionally faced with similar criticism. When for example, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History received the Archie Bunker chair and the Fonz's leather jacket, the museum became involved in a "storm of controversy" because "virtually no one outside the collecting division [of the Museum] perceived any cultural relevance whatsoever in preserving these items." It was clear that the Appalachian Cultural Center was in somewhat a similar bind. In rethinking the appropriateness of acquiring Oz, the Center developed some cautionary guidelines that served, not only to place Oz into perspective, but also a good deal of contemporary Appalachian material culture as well. These include: 1. Don't let the collection run the museum. Museum collections are obviously based on objects that have survived to the present day and yet within that pool of surviving artifacts some are considered better than others. As one museum authority notes, certain objects tend to be " 'preselected' by time and consensus." In the instance of Appalachian artifacts, time has been a significant factor since the hardiest objects—those made of metal, for example—tend to last, while paper items usually disappear quickly. This means that what survives from a culture may not be the most representative or descriptive of objects, such as early kitchen implements and farm tools, were ubiquitous in rural America and are not specifically Appalachian at all. When such artifacts are exhibited in a context that refers to them as uniquely Appalachian—either overtly or implied—the our understanding of the nature of the region is severely skewed. Magnifying this problem is the inability of the region's museums to move beyond the paradigm of Appalachia that was estabhlished by cultural entrepreneurs of all sorts over the past century. The tenents of this belief system are well-known and include such concepts as "pioneers in an industrial age," "the romance of log cabin living," "craft work for spiritual uplift," "carefree muscians," and "the land that time forgot." this is a paradigm that is repellent but attractive too because the ejects that fit the scheme—dulcimers, period log cabin interiors, crafts of all sorts—are themselves compelling and lend themselves to the story so well. But now it is time that the region's museums either use the old objects to tell a new story or find altogether a new set of objects. Mountain culture is simply too rich and varied to allow material survivals or the canonization of certain objects to dictate how the story of the region will be told. 112 �2. Many objects have multiple meanings. A single object can be significant in a variety of contexts, each one emphasizing a different aspect of the object's meaning. Increasingly, museums in Appalachia must reach beyond the standard interpretation of their collections if they are to make a contribution to the understanding of their region. For example, the hand tool in a museum's collection may have been purchased from a general store, an idea that brings into focus many questions about the meaning of the store itself and the concept of puchasing in the mountains. How did the original owner acquire the object—with money or by barter? Who owned the store and what was its influence on the community. Do records from the store make a comment on the idea of isolation in the region? When thoughts such as these are considered, perhaps where the tool came from is more important than the tool itself. In the case of Oz, the Center acquired Uncle Henry's large farm tools—the hay rake and seeder that stood in front of the barn. On one level these were used as props for an amusement park but they were also purchased by the park's designer from farmers sho had used them on Beech Mountain. Again, these objects have meanings within meanings. In this vein it is useful to remember the baseball player Ritchie Ashburn who was once in a hitting slump and decided that, metaphysically, something was wrong. Ashburn began to take his bat to bed with him and when asked why, he replied that he wanted to get to know his bat better. I suggest that, like Ritchie Ashburn, museums need to get to know their objects better. 3. Don't get hung up on the past when interpreting the past. In the search for the old and the rare objects of a perceived Appalachian heritage, museums stand in danger of losing the objects of today which may even be more useful in broadly interpreting the culture of this region. While we do surveys of log buildings, we pay little attention to the significance of kit rnach houses that everywhere surround us. In the same vein, we celebrate the early craft of heritage of the region but overlook the folk iconography of many roadsigns for Baptist churches, which are frequently in the shape of churches. Recently the Center acquired a large sign that had been used by a wholesale nursery and greenery dealer. On it was a painting of a primeval mountain forest that is certainly the rival of anything done by artists such as Eliot Dangerfield or William Frerichs in portraying the majestic scenery of the region. It is however only some 20 years old and barely escaped the owner's chainsaw. Dangerfield landscapes are expensive and rare but contemporary depictions of the forest are neither, and museums may find that to get at the past, contemporary objects may serve well. 113 �4. Establish a purchase fund. Even contemporary objects cost money and museums without funds to acquire objects are at a serious disavdantage if they are seriously attempting to develop a collection designed to tell a specific story or to follow an interpretational concept. As Edith Mayo, Associate curator in the Smithsonian's dividison of Political History puts it, "collecting wihtout funding doubles the problems of acquisition. It usually takes great persuasion to convince individuals or groups to part with objects for which they feel personal attachment, or items that embody a commitment central to their lives. It is even more difficult to acquire those objects without offering compensation." This is not to say that our regional museums will not continue to receive valuable and useful gifts. It must be recognized, though, that rising prices for antiques and collectables put great pressure upon people of middling financial circumstances to sell pieces rather than to give them away. A tax deduction is not much inducement to people who are working to make ends meet. Thus the museum must compete in the marketplace with dealers and private collectors for the best pieces. The advantage is that as museums redefine what Appalachian artifacts are, they will automatically have first crack at the best examples since it will be the museums themselves that will first call attention to some of these objects as valuable and collectible objects. Many of these objects should and will be contemporary. For example, many of the Oz souvenirs that can still be found in flea markets in the Boone area are expected to rise in value when the Oz exhibition opens. 5. Let us not abdicate our professional responsibilities. The field of material culture was developed in museums and it is in museums that the field is practiced best. Today, only television rivals the museum as an interpreter of history for the public and museums are doing a far better job of it than the mighty cathode. This means that museums, and especially Appalachian museums, should never act like ships adrift, sailing at the whim of pervailing wind, waiting for published scholarship to point the way. They should be an active force in the reconstruction and the reorganizing of the past. Most importantly, museums of Appalachia must stop following the paradigm of the region imposed by an outside culture. It is this paradigm that leads museums to laud Doris Ulmann photographs when Appala114 �chia's real story is in the family albums of the people who lived here. It leads to a romantic appreciation of split rail fences while John Ward of Watauga Falls, North Carolina—a man who held international patents for a portable fence he invented—is forgotten. And it leads to a belief that The Land Of Oz, though built and staffed by mountain people and located on one of the highest mountains in Western North Carolina, somehow is not Appalachian. But Oz existed and still does—in a museum and in memory—and as S. Dillon Ripley, former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution said, "In this brave new world of ours, perhaps only objects which inherently possess truth can teach truth." ENDNOTES 1. My discussion of Carolina Carribbean Corporatoin is based on material contained in the clipping files of the Appalachian Collection, Appalachian State University. The appropriate files are entitled "Skis and Skiing," "Land of Oz," "Robbins, Harry and Grover," and "Beech Mountain, N.C." For two good summary articles about CCC see "Robbins' Brothers Start $8 Million Recreation Project," Watauga Democrat, February 2, 1967, "Robbins, Harry and Grover" file and "New Ski Resort Opens This Week," Winston-Salem Journal, December 22, 1967, "Skis and Skiing" file. 2. The basis of the material on Jack Pentes comes from a number of interviews with Jack Pentes, Ruth Pentes and Tom Seig. A good overview of Jack Pentes' role can be found in Tom Seig, "Land of Oz Crumbles," Winston- Salem Journal, May 19, 1985, pp. Cl and C6. Another interesting view of Pentes and The Land Of Oz can be found in Aljean Haremetz, The Making of the Wizard of Oz, New York: Limelight Editions, 1984, pp. 297-8. 3. "Follow the Yellow Brick Road," n.p., n.d., "Land of Oz" file, Appalachian Cultural Center, ASU. 4. "Oz Gets National Award," n.p., n.d., Clipping in "Land of Oz" file, Appalachian Cultural Center, ASU. 5. Seig, "Land Of Oz Crumbles." 6. Ibid. 7. Edith P. Mayo, "Contemporary Collecting," History Netus, October 1982, p. 10. 8. Mayo, "Contemporary Collecting," p. 9. 9. Ibid., p. 11. 10. Ibid., p. 9. 115 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. 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Title A name given to the resource Contemporary Appalachia: In Search of a Usable Past Description An account of the resource The <em>Proceedings of the 9th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference</em>, held in 1986 at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, offers a look at contemporary Appalachia and topics such as gender roles; native Appalachians; welfare dependency; the environment; and culture.<br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=195p45c3vjQIfWtDYY6Ay2Z17iJNtrAwk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636788/contemporary-appalachia/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UNC Press Print on Demand</a> Subject The topic of the resource Appalachian Region--Congresses Appalachian Region--Civilization Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Proceedings of the 9th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ross, Carl Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Conference proceedings Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/4456703/boone.html https://www.geonames.org/12212302/appalachia.html Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a> Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1980s Multidisciplinary/ Appalachian Studies https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/7bdb3f32f5ec110884ddbb8d302fc314.pdf 29e762645d7f2b5361adec66a70ab22b PDF Text Text �Toward 1984 The Future of Appalachia A P P A L A C H I A N CONSORTIUM PRESS BOONE, NORTH CAROLINA 28607 �The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From 1973 to 2004, its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program, Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press. www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Original copyright © 1975 by the Appalachian Consortium Press. ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-3674-0 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-3676-4 Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press www.uncpress.org �May 13-16, 1974 SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGIONAL CONFERENCE Sponsored by The Appalachian Consortium Appalachian State University Blue Ridge Parkway East Tennessee State University Ferrum College First Tennessee-Virginia Development District Lees-McRae College Mars Hill College U.S. Forest Service Warren Wilson College Western Carolina University Western North Carolina Historical Association �ACKNOWLEDGMENTS American Petroleum Institute 1801 K Street, N. W. Washington, D. C. 20006 Appalachian Regional Commission 1666 Connecticut Avenue, N. W. Washington, D. C. 20235 Fed. Chairman: Donald W. Whitehead Atomic Energy Commission Washington, D. C. 20545 Chesapeake & Ohio Terminal Tower Cleveland, Ohio 44101 COALition Against Strip Mining Washington, D. C. 20003 Commission on Religion in Appalachia Ernest Nesuis, Chairman West Virginia University Morgantown, West Virginia Common Cause 2100 M Street, N. W. Washington, D. C. 20037 Duke Power 422 S. Church Street Charlotte, N. C. 28201 E.T. & W.N.C. 132 Legion Johnson City, Tennessee Exxon Corporation 1251 Avenue of the Americas New York, New York 10020 Mary D. Houska Associate Professor, Economics Rollins College, Virginia Richard C. Jackson Lees-McRae College Banner Elk, North Carolina Jack S. Kelley USDA Forest Service Box 2750 Asheville, N. C. 28802 LENOWISCO Planning District Commission Duffield, Virginia 24244 Helen Lewis, Sociologist Clinch Valley College Wise, Virginia 24298 Sources for Position Papers National Independent Coal Operators' Association Post Office Box 354 Richlands, Virginia 24641 Louis Hunter, Exec. Secretary Natural Resources Defence Council 36 West 44th Street New York, New York 10036 Norfolk & Western 8 N. Jefferson Street Roanoke, Virginia 24011 Pocahontas Land Corporation Bluefield, West Virginia F. Schmidt-Bleek Environment Center University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee Dennis C. Shultz Sierra Club Matthews, North Carolina Southern Coal Producers' Assn. 1307 Kanawha Valley Building Charleston, West Virginia 25301 Quin Morton III, Exec. Vice Pres. Tennessee Valley Authority New Sprankle Building Knoxville, Tennessee 37902 Chairman: Aubrey J. Wagner United Mine Workers of America 900 15th Street, N. W. Washington, D. C. U. S. Steel Corporation 71 Broadway New York, New York 10006 Gratis D. Williams Appalachian State University Boone, North Carolina 28608 World Future Society Box 30369, Bethesda Branch Washington, D. C. 20014 For further information contact: Dr. Terry Epperson Associate Director Southern Appalachian Regional Conference Appalachian State University Boone, North Carolina 28608 �TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments Foreword Introduction First Session: Energy Second Session: Land Use Third Session: The Human Spirit Conclusion Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C iv vi 1 3 33 71 99 108 113 128 �FOREWORD In the fall of 1973 a proposal was sent to the National Center for Improvement of Educational Systems (Department of Health, Education and Welfare, United States Office of Education) from Appalachian State University and the University's Task Force on Appalachian Consortium Affairs, requesting funds to support a conference on Southern Appalachia. The proposal was subsequently funded and the Appalachian Consortium was asked to co-sponsor the conference and publish the proceedings. The funds from the National Center for Improvement of Educational Systems were administered through PROJECT OPEN, which was itself an outgrowth of the federal Training the Trainers of Teachers Program. Triple T was a $40 million effort by the United States Office of Education to get at the retraining of teacher trainers and break down the traditional walls that exist within educational systems and between educational institutions and their various constituencies . The six cluster groups* in Triple T were deeply concerned with the organizations and systems that influenced educational institutions. PROJECT OPEN was a continuing attempt to move forward what had been learned through five years of Training the Trainers of Teachers experiences and to build on it. This past year, PROJECT OPEN activities have involved interactions among persons from public schools, universities, and communities. These meetings, held across the United States, provided a variety of forums and action opportunities for the development of communications that might contribute to new learning and improved community relationships. �The organization of the Southern Appalachian Regional Conference was built around the idea that local, insular change is an inadequate goal and that a dynamic social-change strategy could begin to build a connected movement of institutional and personal change that would go beyond the isolated successes and failures of individual programs and places. It was realized that this change process could not impose prescriptions and directives from above or from outside. No longer could funding sources concentrate on any one individual program or institution and thereby overlook the possible inter-relationship and inter-dependence of all of the parts of any social equation. These conference proceedings will provide the reader with a classic example of how interested and concerned citizens in one region of our country got together to define common problems and propose solutions. It was known that these problems were being worked on constantly by various, discrete components—educational, political, economic, and social. It was hoped that the Appalachian Consortium with other organizations would be the constant mechanism for bringing together the coal miners, representatives of energy, zoning, and planning commissions, and those in political power within the states involved, to deal with each other and to listen to each other's point of view from some common base of information and shared concerns. The plan was to make the group even richer by inviting those concerned with preserving and enriching the environment for the human spirit itself— the preservation of our deeper value and the growth of personal learning. �Left to right: ASU Chancellor Herbert Wey, Governor James Holshouser (Conference Director) and Terry Epperson (Associate Conference Director) at the opening session. When this combination takes place, the opportunities for new perspectives arise and new groups form and increase immensely. The leadership of The Honorable James E. Holshouser, Jr. , Governor of North Carolina, who directed the conference and Professor Terry Epperson of the University Faculty who ably assisted the Governor is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks also go to the Director of the Appalachian Consortium, Borden Mace. Special thanks go to Hazel Horn for editing the proceedings and to Kay Carfagna and Nancy West for typing the manuscript. Herbert W. Wey Chancellor *Cluster Leaders: Appalachian State University Boone, North Carolina Hobert Burns, California State University, San Jose Richard Ford, Clark University William Hazard, Northwestern University Charles Ruch, University of Pittsburg Eugene Slaughter, Southeastern State College, Oklahoma Herbert Wey, Appalachian State University �Southern Appalachian Regional Conference Toward 1984: The Future of Appalachia? Proceedings INTRODUCTION As part of Project Open of the United States Office of Education, the Appalachian Consortium sponsored the Southern Appalachian Regional Conference (May 13-16, 1974) at the Center for Continuing Education at Appalachian State University. To be sure that as many points of view as possible were presented, the Consortium solicited papers from diverse organizations. Those represented are listed in the acknowledgments. At the opening banquet, the audience was addressed by Governor James E. Holshouser, J r . , North Carolina; John B . Howard, American Petroleum Institute; and Gratis Williams, Acting Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Appalachian State University (Appendices A, B, C) . For convenience of discussion, the conference was divided into three main themes: Energy, Land Use, and The Human Spirit. The reader of these proceedings, however, will soon discover that these divisions could not be strictly maintained. Certain attitudes and conditions pervaded all three sessions. 1 �Strip mining, for instance, was acknowledged to be a quick contribution to the nation's energy resources , but was condemned as a threat to the land and therefore to the spirit of the mountaineers. Deep mining, on the other hand, would require long-range development before adding to the energy supply, but would do far less damage to the environment and, by providing long-term employment, would contribute substantially to the wellbeing of the region's workers. Another pervasive theme was how to retain for Appalachia its fair share of its vast wealth. Most of the profits now go to absentee landlords — not just to the corporate mineowners, but also to the developers of the scenic areas and second-home resorts. Other overlaps will become apparent to the reader as the f i l m s , position papers, discussions, comments, and summaries are covered in the following pages. The one general certainty seemed to be that each participant would go home, not only reinforced and better informed, but also aware of other experts' overlapping or discrete problems. 2 �First Session: ENERGY The session began with two films. The first, by Harley Jolly of Mars Hill College, showed the despoliation of Appalachia's mountains and streams. The junk yards and litter spots could be removed with reasonable ease, but other insults to the landscape appear to be ineradicable. The second film, by Phil Shelton of Clinch Valley College, showed efforts at reclamation—some good, some poor, some deliberate, some by chance— but a dismal prospect over all. The films were only a prelude to the discus- sion of energy resources and their immense importance to the region—namely how to develop them with minimum residual damage. An overshadowing problem is that, since the region does not control its own resources, the owning corporations can invest or not according to their own profit expectations and to the relative cost of other fuels. Too, the corporations are generally more interested in the current profit than in the long-term development and stability of the industry (although this may change when the international scope of the energy dilemma is fully realized). Twenty small groups discussed various aspects of the energy problem—as it exists worldwide, not j u s t in Appalachia. Summaries of the 3 �discussion have been distilled in the following paragraphs. More than one speaker pointed out that the natives of Appalachia have lost control of the development of their coal resources because they are so independent they will not band together even to fight exploitation. They have divided themselves and can be conquered by any enterprising mining corporation (or land developer, for that matter). Laws cannot prevent an individual from selling his coal, land, or timber, but they should certainly discourage him from doing so, e . g . , by regional zoning laws and state and federal long-range development plans. Above all, the local people, not the vested interests, should have the most say in the planning. The use of Appalachia's energy resources should bring prosperity to the area, since it is expected to provide for the whole nation, but how to retain the profits is a complex problem. Small owners can lease their coal to large operators who, in turn, resell it at higher prices (and the strip scar may or may not be reclaimed). If deep mines are to be opened or reopened profitably, they will probably be so highly automated that they will give comparitively little local employment and, again, their earnings will go elsewhere. Coal prices must remain competitive with other fuels, notably petroleum, by appropriate laws or other legislation. Improved technology such as liquefication and gasification at the mine-mouth might also help coal hold its price edge . The short- and long-run effects of both strip and deep mining came up in many of the discussion groups. Stripping leaves the deep coal inaccessible and presents a reclamation problem. Deep mining removes the coal 4 �efficiently but requires expensive machinery and must follow costly health, safety, and pollution regulations. Cooperative and concentrated planning seems to be the only way to establish a workable trade-off between the advantages and the disadvantages. If other fuel sources could be developed, high-grade Appalachian coal could be put to its best use, namely, in the metallurgical industries. Recycling waste and speeding the use of inexhaustible solar and nuclear power would go a long way toward solving this problem. The Tennessee Valley Authority was both praised and condemned, for its ends and its means are frequently in conflict. It is pledged to supply cheap power, but to do so it often uses strip-mine coal, floods usable agricultural land, or commits other ecologically harmful acts. Advertising by the public utilities was criticized by some as promoting overuse of a scarce resource. In rebuttal, it was maintained that such advertising sought to encourage conservation and proper use of water and power. Many participants were concerned with the future of Appalachia and its dependence on coal. Fuel prices will undoubtedly go up, bringing profit to the region for some time to come but, in the meantime, the resources will be depleted. If other resources are developed, what of the coal? Are present legislators well enough informed to set up laws to protect the future of the area? The speakers touched briefly on some points; they examined others repeatedly and at length. The principal concerns are apparent in the following position papers. 5 �ENERGY U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Washington, D.C. 20545 OUR ENERGY PROBLEM. The Atomic Energy Commission believes citizens should know what they can do to assure abundant, clean energy in coming years. World reserves of fossil fuels cannot last forever, and before we run out, we must have good alternatives to take their place. We must also use the alternatives we have more wisely and efficiently. Energy, of course, is essential to American life, but we are already experiencing shortages. Environment, technology, investment capital, foreign policy, trade balance, regulatory policies, and energy costs are a few of the complex factors that must be considered. HOW CRITICAL IS THE PROBLEM? Our overall energy consumption is doubling every fifteen years, and our electrical energy consumption is growing at twice that rate. In the next 30 years we will need more energy than throughout our 200-year history. We burn fossil fuel at the rate of 1.9 billion tons a year (accounting for more than 95% of our power) and oil at the rate of 18 million barrels a day. In less than 10 years, we will need from 20 to 25 million barrels a day. The natural gas problem is more acute, even with foreign sources to supplement our needs for this efficient and clean fuel. In 1970, imports provided only 4% of our supply. By the year 2 0 0 0 , they will provide at least 28%. Coal is plentiful (our known reserves are estimated at 2 trillion tons), but it is dirty—both to burn and to recover economically. Although strip 6 �mining is the most economically feasible method of obtaining coal, many ecologists want it completely banned. WHAT ARE THE SOLUTIONS? As our energy will not remain cheap and inexhaustible, we must, for the short term, conserve it—if necessary by establishing priorities and rationing. For the longer term, we must reduce inefficient use and develop additional resources. There is enough coal for hundreds of years, and processes are being developed to use it without contributing to environmental pollution. These include removing pollutants from coal during combustion or from waste gas before it goes out the stack and converting coal to gaseous and liquid fuels. For generating electricity, nuclear power competes with fossil fuels, but it now supplies only about 1% of our needs; it will probably supply as much as 50% within 25 years. A high-priority nuclear program is the development of the fast-breeder reactor. This will extend the life of our uranium reserves for thousands of years, because it will use up to 75% of the uranium energy, compared with 2% by present-day reactors. These breeders are expected to be in commercial operation in the 1990s. Controlled nuclear fusion, by which the sun generates its energy, is also being developed. It would be safe and clean, and its probable fuel, deuterium, is abundantly available from seawater. Vast deposits of oil shale promise increased oil supply. In the United States, such deposits contain more oil than the total world oil reserves. Costs for extracting the oil are not yet competitive, but improvements are being sought. In other areas, researchers are seeking ways to tap energy from the sun and to use geothermal energy. 7 �Both in our homes and in industry, less energy can be used to serve the same needs through technological improvements and new standards for equipment and construction. Our ingenuity and resourcefulness are challenged to solve the energy problem by balancing conservation against the need for ample energy and a clean environment for future generations. 8 �American Petroleum Institute 1801 K Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20006 The United States is faced with a serious energy shortfall. It did not begin with the Arab oil embargo, but developed because oil was forced to bear a disproportionate share of our sharply increasing energy demands. Other energy sources were unable to furnish much additional fuel. Coal use was curtailed; nuclear power came onstream more slowly than anticipated; and little additional energy was available from hydropower. Inadequate development of domestic petroleum sources made it necessary to import increasing amounts of oil. Then came the Arab oil embargo—and we were faced with a crisis. The crisis brought some benefits. The embargo reminded us that lack of energy leads to economic stagnation, unemployment, and spreading poverty, and that we cannot rely on insecure foreign supplies . If we are now convinced of the need to develop domestic energy resources, the embargo served us well. The failure to develop domestic supplies was the result of many forces: the rising energy needs of a growing population, restrictions on energy development brought on by concern for the environment, fragmented policies and inappropriate government decisions that discouraged domestic development, lack of foresight by industry, and imprudent energy use by consumers. There are three ways to solve the energy problem: decrease energy demand, increase energy supply, or combine the two. Energy demand can be cut either by allocation and rationing of fuel, -9 �or by encouraging more frugal use of it. Allocation and rationing offer no real solution; they are designed merely to share scarcity. Conservation is another matter. Permanent solutions will take time, but most people can start practicing conservation today. Many Americans, however, still have no car, no air conditioner, and no TV set; they should not be condemned by energy scarcity to poverty or second-class citizenship. Petroleum will have to furnish most of our energy needs for several decades. Coal, nuclear power, or new energy sources cannot supply enough to meet expected demand. Oil companies must go where there are large amounts of oil and gas, drill for them, move them to refineries—and construct more refineries. Six years ago, the largest oil field in this hemisphere was found in Alaska, but it will be 1977 before the pipeline is completed. The Outer Continental Shelf alone may contain twice as much of both oil and gas as we have consumed throughout our history, but industry cannot drill without obtaining a lease. Until recently, lease sales were few. Offshore drilling must be accelerated to tap these resources. Increased lease sales on the Outer Continental Shelf in the past year, the coming Alaska pipeline, and improved oil prices have finally brought an upturn in drilling after 15 years of almost steady decline. This will not bring an immediate increase in petroleum supplies, but is the surest route to increased domestic supplies and reduced dependence on foreign energy. 10 �Duke Power Company Charlotte, N . C . 28201 While the role of electricity has not been as prominent in Appalachia as in the more prosperous Piedmont Plateau of the Carolinas, it is beginning to catch up. Over the last five years, for instance, in the 29 Appalachian counties of North Carolina, 112 new industries and 267 expansions of existing industries have resulted in $641 million in new investment and in a payroll addition of $127 million for 2 4 , 2 5 5 new jobs. The six Appalachian counties of South Carolina, during that same period, acquired 81 new industries, 118 expansions of existing plants, and an investment of $706 million, resulting in a payroll of $92 million to be shared by 17,553 new jobs. Every one of these 193 new industries and 385 expansions in Appalachia required electricity in varying amounts . When it was needed, it was there, most of it generated by Duke Power Company. As for the future, the supply needed by new and expanded industry will be sufficient. By 1983, Duke Power will have expanded from a $3 billion investment to almost $12 billion. Of the amount allocated for generation, $6.5 billion will be invested in nuclear generating plants with a capability of about 12 million kilowatts. Much of the remaining money will be invested in pumped storage hydroelectric power for peaking purposes. 11 �Louis H. Hunter, Executive Vice President National Independent Coal Operators' Association Richlands, Virginia 24641 The United States, with 6% of the world's population, consumes approximately 33% of the world's total energy—much of it wastefully—and energy use has doubled in the past 20 years. Of the energy we use today 50% is oil, 30% gas, 15% coal, 4% hydroelectric, and 1% nuclear. We have vast coal reserves in this country, much more than all the other energy sources combined. The Appalachian area should develop more mines, more safely, more economically, and with better reclamation methods. The United States needs doubled coal production by the year 1983 from 600 million tons today to approximately 1.25 billion tons annually if we proceed with the present plans for coal gasification. We have been slow in this development and should strive toward it. Coal is being gasified in South Africa successfully, profitably, and more cheaply than other sources of gas supply. The great amount of water needed for gasification is a real problem for our Western states, which have plenty of coal. This is one reason we in the Appalachian area should take full advantage of our surrounding resources. Research should be done on a better method of heating with coal. It could be pulverized and cleaned and burned without a loss of even one BTU. It would be put in a completely sealed unit with very little waste going into the atmosphere. This can be done by recycling through water and other chemicals. Pulverized coal would be a great saving of other energy such as oil, natural gas, and bottled gas. Today there is a great loss of heat and 12 �energy through stacks and chimneys. Little has been done to improve the burning of coal. Industry, with government help, should use the millions of cubic feet of methane gas being extracted from the coal seams and wasted by dilution into the atmosphere. Even small seams of coal (8- to 15-inch seams) could be burned in place and the different gases used instead of left lying in the earth. The economy in Appalachia would suffer greatly if laws were passed to abolish or curtail surface mining. We must strive to keep good mining, both surface and underground, operating in our area. Surface mining is much safer and healthier than underground mining. Underground mines have been punished by much less production, because of many unneeded laws and regulations. 13 �Tennessee Valley Authority Knoxville, Tennessee 37902 Energy is so taken for granted in our society that only in times of shortage do we begin to comprehend its effects on our economy and on our daily lives. Energy supply has been vital to the advancement of civilization. To a considerable degree, man's wealth, health, and general wellbeing have directly reflected his use of energy. For example, the average American citizen uses the energy equivalent of 7 tons — 1 4 , 0 0 0 pounds—of coal each year and contributes $3,000 to the gross national product. In India, on the other hand, the average person commands the use of only 1/5 ton—400 pounds—of coal energy equivalent and contributes less than $100 to the gross national product. One wonders how we let the present energy crisis arise. Besides population growth, the environmental awakening of the county has helped to precipitate the crisis. Our accumulation of environmental problems clearly could not continue, but in our efforts to reverse the trend quickly, we have created new problems. For example, to reduce polluting fumes from coal-burning plants, industries turned increasingly to oil and gas, our scarcest fuels, and this action hastened their depletion. Our concern that strip-mined lands be reclaimed has led to actions that in some instances threaten to stop the flow of coal from surface mines. Our concern for the discharge of heated water into our streams and lakes has delayed and, in some cases, stopped the construction of needed energy-producing plants. Another reason is the delay in bringing nuclear generating stations into operation. 14 �There is a critical imbalance between our energy resources and how we use them. According to a recent study at Cornell University, only about 4% of our proven energy reserves is in oil, yet 42% of the energy we use comes from oil. Thirty-three % of the energy we use comes from natural gas, but less than 6% of our proven reserves is in gas. Coal, on the other hand, constitutes 86% of our known energy reserves, but only 18% of the energy we use comes from coal. At the present time only 1% of our energy is supplied from nuclear resources , using what we call light-water nuclear reactors . If we rely solely on them, they can use less than 1% of the uranium ore we mine. This fraction constitutes just over 4% of our total energy reserves and would be exhausted in 20 to 30 years. However, TVA has joined with others to build a demonstration breeder reactor near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. If it is successful, it will produce from the balance of the uranium ore more fuel than it consumes and so extend the life of our uranium reserves to provide for our energy needs for many centuries. Obviously, to solve our energy problems, we must rely more heavily on coal and on the breeder rea ctor. In the short term, heavy emphasis must be placed on conserving energy—turning down our thermostats, driving our automobiles less, and taking many other conservation measures. We must regulate strip mining of coal to provide satisfactory reclamation, but not to stop production, as half our present coal supply comes from surface mines. We must get new coal mines opened and, for the sake of the consumers, bring the runaway pricing of coal under control. 15 �Our air quality control regulations must be realistic. Ambient standards—the standards that control air quality at ground level—must be met, but emission standards can be given second consideration (at least until technology for sulfur dioxide removal has been proven). Finally, we must find ways to speed up the licensing and construction of nuclear plants without sacrificing safety standards. For the long term (to the end of this century), we must rely even more heavily on light-water nuclear reactors like those now being built. We must perfect the nuclear breeder reactor; we must learn how to use coal as a clean fuel; we must develop the fusion reactor, solar energy, and other power sources that offer unlimited supply and even better environmental acceptability. Research in these methods of energy production should be pushed vigorously. Substitution of electricity for scarce fossil fuels will be part of our long-range energy adjustment. In the years ahead, electricity will carry an increasingly large proportion of the ultimate energy load. Our fossil fuels are bound to become increasingly scarce and higher in price. About 25% of all the energy we consume in this country is now used to generate electricity. It is estimated that, by the end of the century, as much as 50% of our energy will be so used and that perhaps as much as 75% of all our end needs for energy could be met with electricity. In a very real sense, then, electricity is the solution to our energy problem, not a part of it. This leads to the problems of power supply in the TVA region. The TVA power system is the largest in the United States , with presently over 20 million kilowatts of generating capacity. It is a publicly-owned system 16 �responsible for providing power on a self-supporting, nonprofit basis, at the least possible cost to the consumer. More than 80% of its generating capacity'is in coal-burning thermal plants, and the rest in hydroelectric generation at large dams. The first nuclear generating unit is j u s t now being tested. When the construction of all nuclear generating units now under way or already purchased is completed, TVA's nuclear capacity will be about 16 million kilowatts, constituting 40% of the total generating capacity. The power system's two present major problems are fuel supply and fuel cost. For several months, TVA purchasers have been unable to contract for new coal in significant quantities. The system is burning more than it can buy and stockpiles are going down. New mines simply are not being opened. With the increased nationwide demand for coal and with the decreasing supply, the effect on prices has been disastrous for the consumer. As recently as four years ago, the average price TVA paid for coal was about $ 4 . 5 0 per ton. Today it is as much as $11.30 per ton, and reports arrive every day of some buyers paying as much as $20 to $25 per ton. About half the cost of electricity produced in the TVA system is represented by coal, and its coal bill last year was about $300 million. Unless something is done to stabilize the cost of coal, electric rates are going to rise dramatically. However, TVA power is still a bargain compared with other living costs. In 1940 the average family in the Tennessee Valley spent about 4-1/2% of its family income on power bills; today it is about 2-1/2% while using over ten times as much electricity. 17 , �Pocahontas Land Corporation Bluefield, West Virginia Coal is America's most abundant natural energy resource. It represents 88% of our known energy fuel reserves and 50% of the world's, yet it supplies only 20% of our nation's energy demands. Of the 790 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves in the United States, 150 billion tons (19%) are located in Appalachia. Because of its high metallurgical quality, bituminous coal mined in Appalachia is considered to be the finest coking coal in the world and is in high demand for domestic and foreign steel mills. In 1973 Appalachia supplied approximately three-fourths of all coal produced in the United States. Since coal plays a major role in Appalachia's economy, any changes affecting the coal industry will have a farreaching effect on the region. For several decades, coal has been a stagnant, secondary industry in our economy. It has been constantly faced with market dislocations and plagued with increasingly stringent and unattainable environmental regulations and an apathetic or even hostile government attitude. For example, under the Clean Air Act of 1970, large industrial plants using coal were required to reduce their stack emissions to certain levels by July 1, 1975. Since technology for meeting such standards was unavailable, many utilities converted from coal-fired boilers to oil- and gas-fired boilers. The result was a drain on two natural resources already in short supply and continuing market losses for coal. The Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, which became effective in 1970, brought the coal mining industry additional woes. Although many 18 �of the goals of that legislation were admirable, many of the regulations are unrealistic and burdensome. For example, the Act requires that all underground mines install certain "permissible" electrical equipment designed to prevent explosions from the ignition of methane gas by sparks from electrical machinery. Even though methane gas is not present in all underground mines , all mines must comply with the requirement. Unfortunately, the equipment is too expensive for smaller mining operators and is often unavailable even for those who can afford it. As a result, many mines that do not have the "permissible" equipment will, more than likely, have to shut down. When mines are closed, even for a short period of time, employees take other employment and are not always available if the mines reopen. Through compliance with the Act, it is estimated that the coal mining industry has suffered a production loss of about 15%-25%. As a result of this loss and of additional labor and supply requirements imposed by the Act, underground mining costs have increased 20%-30%. Another threat to the viability of the coal industry is House Bill 11500—the proposed Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1973. Although the Act would permit surface mining, it does so with a number of restrictions that would, in effect, discourage surface mining or make it infeasible. When combined with reasonable reclamation procedures, sur- face mining can be an asset to both the environment and the economy. It makes possible the recovery of millions of tons of valuable coal that otherwise could not be mined economically and that often could not be mined by any other method. Such mining produces about 50% of our present coal 19 �supplies. Surface mining is not only more productive than underground mining but also safer. In 1972 the average tons of coal produced per miner per day through strip mining and auger mining (the two forms of surface mining) were 35.95 and 43, respectively, while underground miners averaged only 11.91 tons per day. In 1973, of 11,050 nonfatal injuries suffered in mining accidents, 9 , 4 5 0 resulted from underground mining and 1,600 from surface mining; 107 fatalities occurred in underground mining while only 25 resulted from surface mining. Our present emergency has brought the importance of our coal resources and their use clearly into focus . Our relatively low reserves of energy resources other than coal, the undesirability of depending on foreign f u e l , and the staggering balance of payments problem all point to coal as the keystone of our future energy economy. Coal is now seen as a primary industry, and its development as a national priority. For coal to expand and fulfill this new role, basic changes must be made in the legislative, governmental, environmental, and economic perimeters of the industry. 20 �LENOWISCO* Planning District Commission Duffield, Virginia 24244 One approach to the energy problem, particularly relevant to Central Appalachia, has not been dealt with extensively. In much of this area, the coal mining industry is the basis of the economy. Certain areas suffered heavy losses when the mining industry began to automate in the early '50s. They could do so again with any major fluctuation in the coal market or in production techniques since they have, as yet, failed to develop a stable economy independent of the mining industry. Whereas any industry or corporation has a responsibility to its employees and its community, this is particularly true when that industry is the mainstay of the local economy. What happened in coal producing areas in the '50s should never be allowed to happen again. The community and the industry should see to it that they are prepared for fluctuations that can affect a large segment of the community. The locality cannot be prepared for these changes without the cooperation of the mining industry. This responsibility has been largely ignored by industry, which can no longer be allowed to consider only its own survival. In many parts of Central Appalachia, the coal industry is the lifeblood of the economy, but it is extracting the most valuable resource and transporting it elsewhere for profit. When the coal resources are depleted or no longer in demand, the corporations will move on to other areas, but Appalachia and its people *The Cities of Lee, Norris, Wise, and Scott, Virginia. 21 �will remain, possibly with a shattered economy, a ravaged landscape, and a broken spirit. We are finally learning that our resources are not infinite, and Appalachia must look to its future. We must do everything in our power to assure that, when the coal mining is gone, we have something left, and that, as long as it is here, the people affected get their fair share. The coal industry must be more open in discussing those aspects of its business that affect the surrounding area, and if the nation wants our coal, we want a larger say in its marketing. The coal industry already has that kind of power, but the people who live with the coal, its benefits and detriments, have little or no say in national policies. We must face our responsibility to Appalachia and ourselves and see to it that those who affect us do likewise. 22 �Mary D. Houska Associate Professor, Economics Hollins College, Virginia 2 4 0 2 0 This commentary has three parts: (1) an analysis of changes in the energy market; (2) an analysis of the impact on the market for Appalachian coal of any future federal legislation restricting surface mining; and (3) an analysis of the probable impact of the first two on the economy of these mining regions. There are also recommendations for the direction of public policy. The two major markets for Appalachian coal are metallurgical use and power generation. Much of it has a high BTU content and is a high-carbon, low-to-medium volatile coal. This unique characteristic, plus seams from four to six feet thick, has made this coal the international source for metallurgical purposes. Power generation does not require such a highgrade coal, but a high BTU content is an advantage. Large power plants can switch fuels (from coal to petroleum and vice versa) at will and have done so as the relative cost of these fuels has varied. Furthermore, petroleum may be used for heating operations in metallurgical plants and it is possible to mix the high-carbon coals with lower-quality bituminous. From 1958 to 1968 the prices of coal and petroleum changed little, and resulted in a sharp recovery of the sales of bituminous coal, reaching a peak in 1970. Then bituminous prices began to rise rapidly and, by December 1 9 7 2 , they were 2 0 9 . 4 % of their 1967 level, while domestic refined petroleum prices had increased only 12% over their 1967 level. This sharp price increase caused both total and export bituminous sales to 23 �decline steadily, with the domestic output leveling off in late 1973, when the relative price between petroleum and coal had again shifted. The decline in bituminous output may be due to improved environmental standards for power plants operating in urban areas , but this cannot explain the sharp decline in export sales or the failure of sales of lowsulfur coal to increase. The Japanese market illustrates the impact of these extraordinary price increases on the export sales of U . S . metallurgical coal. In 1970, 50% of the coal imported by Japan came from the United States; in 1973, only 2 8 . 2 % . Coal imports by Western Europe have followed a similar pattern. Thus it is apparent that the large bituminous price increase in relation to the price of other fuels brought about a substitution of other fuels and a reduction of exports from 1970 to 1973. These circumstances changed abruptly late in 1973, with heavy cost increases in the use of refined petroleum. The domestic price of petroleum in December 1973 increased 125% over December 1972, while the price of bituminous coal increased only 17% in the same period. The price of petroleum is likely to stabilize at the present higher level. If so, and if the price of coal does not increase appreciably, the use of coal should increase briskly. The next point to consider is the impact of federal legislation limiting strip mining. In any market, the price of a homogeneous commodity such as coal is determined by its productivity and the cost of producing it, regardless of source. This means that a homogeneous product (e.g. , coal of various grades) sold in the same market will have the same market price. Since surface-mined coal has been selling for about 60% of the price of 24 �deep-mined coal, we conclude that much of the surface-mined coal is of lower grade than the deep-mined coal and that probably much of it is being sold for local power generation. Certainly, some surface-mined coal is high-grade coal and is apparently being sold to larger deep-mine firms and remarketed at the higher prices . Sales of metallurgical-grade coal (almost half the Appalachian coal) will not be affected by strip-mine legislation. If the legislation calls for the return of the land to its original contours, cost calculations suggest that profits would be high enough to permit reclamation of surface mines with high-grade seams. If the slope limitations placed on strip mining eliminate Appalachian strip mining, metallurgical coal, at present prices, can be deep-mined at a relatively high profit margin. The question of the marketing of Appalachian deep-mined coal for Eastern power generation is more complex. If only the higher-grade coal were mined, could it compete with the higher-priced petroleum? It has a higher BTU content than the coal presently used in power generation and much of it is low-sulfur. Should the present price differential between petroleum and coal hold, it is likely that, even with added costs of desulfurizing where necessary and of more stringent enforcement of mine health and safety regulations, deep-mined Appalachian coal of high-quality could be competitive in Eastern markets for power. Much also depends on shipping costs. At this time. Western coal cannot compete for the Eastern or MidWestern power generation market, because of its heavier water content and its lower BTU value. It is possible that Western sub-bituminous can be 25 �economicaliy converted to manufactured gas and transported by pipeline east of the Mississippi and be price-competitive. A coal-gasification project is now being developed in the Southwest. Gas conversion seems to be the only way that Western coal can compete for Eastern and MidWestern power generation. No public data are available estimating probable costs of this conversion or subsequent transportation of the manufactured gas. Because of the depth of the Western coal seams, if this coal is stripped, labor costs and the cost of reclamation are likely to be low per ton. Since the quality of the coal is low, any per-ton added cost (UMWA pension fund contribution or the Seiberling amendment) would have a greater impact on Western than on Appalachian coal. However, any requirements to reclaim Appalachian strip-mining operations similar to the present Pennsylvania law would probably end the stripping of poor quality and/or narrow seams in the Southern Appalachians as well. Another possible alternative energy source is nuclear power. The higher the cost of petroleum and coal, the better nuclear power will seem. Much, therefore, depends on the relative prices of coal and petroleum, and the price policy is now controlled by the petroleum industry. Furthermore, as for strip-mining legislation, any law that leads to the elimination of part or all of it would have to allow sufficient lead-time for the reopening of abandoned deep-mine operations and the opening of new ones. It is estimated that one to three years would be necessary for reopened mines to be fully operational and three to five years for new deep mines. Legislation that did not provide for this lead-time would cause 26 �extraordinary price increases for Appalachian coal and severely limit its competitive position with Western sub-bituminous or petroleum. Should legislation pass that gradually limits Eastern stripping but does not eliminate Western surface mining, we can expect the following: 1. an increased use of deep-mined Appalachian coal for Eastern power generation, with some price increase 2. given present Middle Eastern national petroleum policy, the preference of domestic petroleum firms probably to sell this Western coal rather than Middle Eastern petroleum for Eastern power generation (In the long term, they see their most profitable alternative in the development of Western coal reserves and other domestic sources of petroleum.) 3. -in about ten years, increased competition for Eastern power generation f u e l sources from nuclear energy and gasified Western coal. The effect on the economy of the Appalachian coal-producing areas should be large employment increases for about ten years. This increase would be derived from both the increase in coal production and the substitution of deep mining for some or all of the surface mining. We have the labor force in the area to fill these new jobs. This employment would generate about one other job in the region for each new job created in mining. Unfortunately, to date the economy of this region has not benefited from the presence of this valuable resource. By any social or economic measure, the coal mining regions are grossly behind the national average and similar to other isolated rural areas. States and localities should 27 �consider a tax to compensate them for the removal of this resource and for any social costs that result from this mining activity. Technological developments may occur in the next ten years that will help Appalachian coal keep its competitive position. An example is much larger-scale deep mining with at-site coal gasification. The major companies , however, appear to be focusing their research on Western subbituminous rather than on Eastern bituminous. Any future public policy must balance the economic importance of lowcost fuel against the potential environmental damage (both in extraction and use) and the human costs involved. Both the human and long-run environmental and economic costs can be minimized with sound public policy. 28 �Hugh B. Montgomery The Appalachian Regional Commission Appalachian rock is rich in entrapped energy—in its coal, petroleum, and natural gas—but the energy of the land, its waters, and its soils interweaves with still another energy—that of the human spirit, an energy of spirit that builds and destroys. In a geologic sense, m a n ' s destructive habits are no match for the constructive forces of nature. In a historical sense, so far, man's disruption of the surface exceeds the earth's regenerative powers. Today this imbalance between nature's ways and man's schizophrenic drive to enjoy and destroy brings Appalachia to a crossroads of conscience that tries both the human spirit and the Appalachian land. Appalachia's bounty is its millstone. Its coal has served the energy markets of the nation and it is expected to deliver even more. Whether or not coal will be supplied from here is not a question, but from exactly where, by what mining methods, at what rate, and for what price are major questions. Who will mine the coal—which corporate superstructures, which local companies, with which miners are also important questions. But the major consideration is "What will Appalachia be like when all of its economically minable coal is gone and no substantial mining industry is left to operate in the coal basin?" The Appalachian Regional Development Act and its administering instrument, the Appalachian Regional Commission, recognize the economic lag and the need to overcome the development deficiences caused both by the collapse of an earlier high level of coal mining activity and by the industry's apparently inherent inability to create 29 �a diversified economic structure that can shift to other actions as coal mining periodically subsides. The Appalachian Regional Development program has sought to help the states overcome those economic and social shortfalls that originate partly from the region's strong dependence on an economically and socially inflexible industry. The coal in the ground and its removal have been a qualified asset to Appalachia in the past and will be so in the future. However, the physical, social, and economic scars of the past use of coal and other resources must not be the heritage of the future. Miners should have reasonable health and post-mining economic security. The land and waters should nourish the wildlife and human life after the mining has moved on. The communities' and the state's coalmining areas must be able to finance their continuing needed services with adequate schools, hospitals, water and sewers, social and artistic outlets, the ability to travel to and from work, and the enjoyments of living. Man's link with the land determines his well-being. Land can be consumed in the sense that its characteristics can be obliterated, but it can be at least partially recycled. Nature itself recycles land, moves it about, reorders its characteristics, redresses it in greenery, and repopulates it with living creatures. Man should respect these processes. Energy extracted from the ground and moved about requires the digging of mines, wells, and shafts at the surface and subsurface, and rights-of-way cut swaths across the land for highways, service roads, railroads, pipelines, powerlines, and waterways. As energy is produced and moved around the country in larger quantities, more of these diggings can be 30 �expected and wili require even more attention to the consumption of the quantities and qualities of land, water, air, and wildlife. Furthermore, men will also continue to use convenient or available land that is subject to energy disorders of natural or man-stimulated hazards such as landslides, surface collapse, and flooding. The Appalachian Regional program has recognized the states' interests and needs in land use. It has served as a medium for defining and developing new ideas and the means for coping with the organization and financing of naturalhazards prevention and recovery from catastrophes. Looking ahead, as the population grows, as energy is developed, and as the land is re-formed to accommodate man's growth, we must develop a general land and wildlife ethic among our adults and young so that they can manage the limits of the earth as well as its bounties. Such an ethic should also be the foundation of economic development and governmental institutions serving the peoples' survival and well-being as it is vested in all of the land, regardless of ownership. Although the earth has always been bountiful, man must win the bounty. During the winning, he learns to love that land and develops a spiritual relationship with it. If his relationship to the land is rewarding, his community benefits from a full human spirit. Within the community, men can work together in ways most fulfilling to all. Chief among man's tools, outside of his constructive individuality, is that he can guide and settle matters of common concern. The clans of old were founded and perpetuated on leadership, respect, and structured 31 �relationships. Pride in these relationships added to the satisfaction of a fulfilled human spirit. In our time, our clannishness has given us government that can also be a just vehicle for insuring a satisfied human spirit. The Appalachian Regional Commission is only one useful expression of this. Individuality can bring us m u c h , but working together can compound the rewards. What we cannot do for ourselves, we must look for from our family, friends, and government. The tolerating, in the governmental process, of inadequate officialdom or questionable loyalties can and must be resolved by each man expressing his interests on his own behalf. The Appalachian Regional Commission is a government instrument of the people. All of the people of the nation share in its federal aspect, and all the people of the thirteen Appalachian states share in its state aspects. The future demands much of Appalachia's energy resources, its land, and, most of all, its people. Many have attempted to define a quality of life. It requires of every man (in government or in private) the intent to seek a full reward from the land, while assuring future generations an Appalachia worth inheriting. 32 �Second Session: LAND USE Of the several exhibits illustrating Appalachian life, the documentary "Appalachian Genesis" showed the effects of current exploitations on the young people. It showed how they lacked the small graces and comforts that most Americans take for granted, such as adequate education and basic medical services. The movie related these lacks to the effects of strip mining on the land and of deep mining on the people. The next movie showed how road building, generally considered a public good, can affect the land nearly as badly as strip mining. The moral, though unspoken, appeared to be that both road builders and miners should select their sites with greater care, determine ahead of time whether reclamation is possible, and attend to the restoration of the scarred land immediately. A third movie, "The Region—in Change," examined the impact of change on the environment of the Southern Highlands area as voiced by local citizens and officials. They questioned the present system of values and development processes, especially as practiced in the resort areas and second-home communities. 33 �The subsequent concurrent sessions on land use raised more questions than they answered. The proposed solutions ranged from strictly local determinations through a regional land-use policy to areas totally and deliberately denuded by technology. If the reader will keep in mind that no one item can be neatly separated from energy requirements and the needs of the human spirit, herewith are comments, opinions, and queries on the vexacious subject of land use. We must be aware of the shocks—both cultural and agricultural—of development. Growth is not necessarily good; material possessions do not necessarily lead to a better life. The medieval notion that man holds dominion over all he surveys is no longer upheld; on the contrary, he seems to be a misfit in the ecosystem, both naturally and socially. He puts buildings orr the most fertile land and will soon have no more food land. He has established an adversary relationship between the developers and the longrange inhabitants for the benefit of the outlanders, e.g. , campers, seasonal recreation users, and summer home owners. Public support is needed to inspire communities to petition for strict local zoning laws instead of following easy state standards. Such zoning could prevent the growth of industry along highways (especially the Blue Ridge Parkway) and confine it to the fringe areas of towns. Good land would thus be saved for agriculture and its related industries. Careful zoning would also eliminate high-density building by demanding adequate sewerage and minimum-sized lots, and would keep developers off the tops of ridges by requiring good sewerage systems, access roads, water and power supply, and erosion control. As conditions change, the zoning code 34 �would have to be reviewed regularly, of course, to see that no one man was locked into a life of sheep-raising while his neighbor was allowed to sell his land for quick profit. Taxation, too, could be used to offset misuse of land. The concept of private property has been considered unassailable and its ownership has admitted little or no responsibility for its misuse. This concept is now showing signs of erosion, even of revision. A recognition of public welfare, neighbors' or descendants' rights, utility, and justice is emerging, albeit slowly. (After all, private business is unlikely soon to curtail its own profits.) When private property is taxed, its true cost to the community should be considered, e.g., poor access roads, overuse of existing roads, uncontrolled runoff, and the like. Where possible, taxes should be heavier on projects that drain off municipal funds or deplete local resources and progressively lighter on those that do not do so.* The Appalachian citizens appear to need a Bill of Rights. Who, for instance, decides where energy sites are to go? Who insists on the reclamation of the devastation? The people need to be educated to want reform, to ask for a regional assessment of their environment, to demand a reorganization of their tax structure that will reflect a true best use of their land, not just the most profitable one. In short, they must find some one or some agency that will understand and work for those most affected. Such funds for local use will undoubtedly have to come from the federal government. The greatest frustration is where to start. *In spite of these zoning and tax precautions, the regional folk life is bound to be eroded by modern education, the influx of tourists, and voluntary emigration. 35 �The process of democracy is related to a Bill of Rights for citizens. It is exceedingly slow and the time for conservation is rapidly running out. As with depressed people generally, the mountaineers are inclined to reelect those who preserve their misery. (They distrust the federal government, in spite of its abundance of funds, for its custom of riding over everything local in its path.) Occasionally, both strict zoning and corrective taxation meet head-on with local practical politics. The local incumbent may be willing to press for either or both, but, if he should pinch off someone's immediate profit, he may not be re-elected. All this politician can do is hope that his electorate will see the wisdom of such a course and actually come to request it. Some Appalachians no longer wish to be "folks"--alternately exploited or patronized--but to be world citizens , weighing local needs against national and international needs. The frustration, again, is where to start. As resource use rises and benefits diminish, technology becomes demonstrably untrustworthy. Recreation and tourism have been satisfactory for some sections such as the reforested areas . (Absentee owners do pay relatively high taxes for slight tax use.) Little account, however, has been taken of the fact that industrialization affects urban areas differently from rural areas. In urban areas, local technicians are employed while, in the rural areas, few or no technicians are trained; instead the local citizens are given only unskilled or semi-skilled jobs in the factories and tourist complexes . A special example of technocracy in action is the Tennessee Valley Authority, which has both benefited and distorted the area. It has taught 36 �the inhabitants good resource husbandry and provided cheap power, but its flood control dams use the fertile flat lands and displace the people. Fol- lowing its mandate to provide cheap power, it has used strip-mined coal for its low cost, but has had questionable success in reclamation. As for the use of the forest lands it seems that the effects of overcutting are much the same as for strip mining. State forest services provide advice on the proper use of timber land, but only on request. The U.S. Forest Service's long-range planning concentrates on sustained-yield management, which takes account of the ecological balance--wildlife, watershed, soil, flora, etc. It includes both regenerative and intermediate thin- nings, followed by planting or seeding and encouragement of natural regeneration . Assignment of land for parks and recreation is a heartening project, especially if recreation is considered in its broadest sense, namely as recreation, not as duplication of the comforts of home. The human spirit would indeed be refreshed by visits to true wilderness areas. Cluster building in resort areas would preserve more of the wild surroundings by limiting the intensity of development to a level tolerable to the fragile environment. Urban centers could also profit from a variety of parks; bike trails, picnic areas, and green islands in shopping malls are only three examples. Support must be found for local and regional zoning laws and for subdivision regulations that favor the best recreational land use and expansion, especially in local communities. If any or all of the foregoing land-use plans are not used soon, man may be driven to the most radical solution of all—selective technical 37 �denudation.* Our current random destruction would be replaced, through ultra-long-range planning, by the choice of specific areas of the world for total consumption of the earth's crust. This would mean the use of all material, to and through bedrock, at this site and would have the advantage of confining the blight and pollution within its own boundaries. As the particular area was being systematically denuded, its surface resources (timber, farmland, etc.) would be re-established elsewhere. One summation of the land-use ideal was given as "land planning from local to state to national to world—with emphasis on the unique at each stage." The following precis of position papers elaborate on the points made above. *Robert E . Reiman. "Environmental Heresy: Ultra-long-range Planning for Technological Denudation." Boone, N.C.: Appalachian State University, 1974. 38 �LAND USE American Petroleum Institute 1801 K Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 2 0 0 0 6 Second only to the talents and energies of her citizens, America's most valuable resource is the land, but, in an age of rapidly expanding industrialization and urbanization, we have almost lost sight of this fact. As a result, far-reaching decisions on the use of land are being made with too little thought for their ultimate effects on our entire way of life. It is impossible to over-estimate the need for policies that insure wise use of land. The current shortage of available energy is perhaps the best example of what can result from inadequate land planning. All but a small fraction of our energy needs are met by fuels extracted from the ground. Although energy and land are inseparable, the development, generation, and transmission of energy have been severely limited by inappropriate land-use policies. For example, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find suitable sites for petroleum refineries and deepwater terminals along our Eastern seaboard, where they are critically needed. One state has prohibited all petroleum development in or near its coastal zone and similar legislation has been proposed in other states. The expansion of off-shore oil production, which has been found after careful study to be environmentally acceptable and is urgently needed to increase domestic energy selfsufficiency, will be impossible if states prohibit the construction of pipeline and storage facilities onshore. 39 �Industry cannot bring new oil supplies from the ground unless it has access to the land; it cannot transport the crude oil to refineries unless pipelines and related facilities are permitted; it cannot refine the crude oil unless refinery sites are provided for; and it cannot move the finished products to consumers unless the transportation network is available. The failure of many states and localities to consider the need for energy has inhibited the consumer's ability to obtain the fuel he needs to heat and light his home, to power his factories, and to run his vehicles. The needs for energy facilities—needs clearly national in character—are inseparable from land. The failure of land-use plans to provide adequate domestic energy can lead only to increased dependence on foreign sources, to the dangers of even more serious supply interruptions than already experienced, and to rapid price increases. The United States would find it difficult to pursue an independent foreign policy, and its economy would be marred by the heavy expense of massive imports. Energy self-sufficiency is a high national priority. While energy industries must be permitted access to the land, they must recognize that in past years they have given insufficient attention to preservation of the environment. Probably the most glaring example of this short-sighted approach is in Appalachia itself, where strip mining of coal on steep slopes and insufficient attention to reclamation resulted in serious damage to the land and in pollution of rivers and streams. Fortunately, laws now exist to assure the continued preservation and restoration of ecological balance. 40 �Economic development (including energy development) and environmental integrity are not mutually exclusive goals. Land-use policies should be flexible to accommodate changing national growth patterns, technological advances, and economic needs, while assuring the maintenance of a healthy environment. Through careful land-use planning, we can conserve environmental values and still provide the energy to meet the growing demands of the consuming public and a healthy economy. 41 �F. Schmidt-Bleek Environment Center University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee We must reconcile our energy needs with protection of the environment. We are talking about the quality of life—about being healthy and warm, and having transportation, about power and the goods we need without drowning in pollution. Energy is a key factor in the quality of life, as the American people have begun to realize, but it will take a good deal of energy to protect us from the negative impact of producing energy. Coal is the energy source with which we at the University of Tennessee Environment Center are most concerned. In the mining of coal, in both deep mines and strip mines, we incur quantifiable, measurable, and considerable environmental impact. The major thrust of our coal research project is to find out just how expensive and extensive these environmental damages are. Some of the obvious damages from deep mines include slag piles and contamination of streams. One effect, not so obvious, is the high incidence of death, disease, and injury to the miners. No other occupation is as hazardous. In Central Appalachian surface mining, the greatest impact is from the large land area involved. Typically, two to three acres of surface are disturbed for the production of 5000 tons of coal. Water quality is sharply affected, and water run-off problems lead to considerably increased flooding. Topography is changed and, in some cases, entire mountain tops are removed. Possibly the damage most difficult to calculate is the visual 42 �damage. It is fair to say that 50% to 70% of Central Appalachia has been visually affected by strip mining. We need more coal—and we can get it and still repair the damage caused by mining. More input in machinery, capital, and manpower will be required. Environmental restoration will necessarily increase the cost of coal, and the price of coal products, e.g. , electricity. In the mass media and in announcements by the energy industry, such price increases are frequently portrayed as enormous, but very adequate restoration of surface mines, for example, would increase the electricity end-price by only 5%. This seems rather insignificant compared to the enormous price increases TVA, for instance, has posted during the last 24 months. It is a mistake to think that the environment is going to "wait" until we decide to go back and repair the damage. The fact is that people who live in the mining areas are already experiencing costs as a result of the mining activity. Their lands are flooded, their agricultural activity is hurt, the visual beauty of the landscape is destroyed. These real costs are being borne by those least able to stand them—the residents of the affected areas. The cost should be borne by those who benefit from the use of a product—in this case, energy. We must make a serious effort to identify these damages and repair them, not just continue to behave as if the costs are imaginary and, after some catastrophe, scramble to patch things up. If we do not take care of environmental costs as early and as efficiently as possible, they will increase very steeply. We must try to recognize the true costs and make wise decisions on how to meet them. Otherwise, these costs we have been piling up will have to be paid all at once. 43 �For years now, our energy has been cheap and apparently plentiful, and the cost of providing environmental protection has seemed large in comparison. Because of increased demand on the one hand and decreased supply on the other, the costs of all kinds of energy are going to rise sharply and, in the future, environmental protection may not seem so prohibitively expensive. At any rate, it is time to talk in rational, dollars-and-cents terms about total costs and benefits and about how to distribute them. It is time to understand environmental damages as real costs and let them be reflected in realistic end-prices of goods and services. American consumers should have the right to make this decision, and should not continue to be fooled by pricing mechanisms that are bound to spring extremely unpleasant surprises on them from time to time. 44 �Louis H. Hunter, Executive Vice President National Independent Coal Operators' Association Richlands, Virginia 24621 If land was put on earth to be used by man, we should remove the natural resources, put them to their best use, and put the land back to a more productive state. The coal should be mined by safer methods, more economically, for a better environment, and with good reclamation. Appalachia needs more industry, and more land for homes, schools, churches, gardening, and many other things. This can be accomplished by proper, well planned surface mining of coal, especially in very steep terrain in certain areas, keeping in mind successful reclamation. In recent years a college, large elementary schools, airports, greenhouses, industrial plants, small farms, and many expensive homes have been built on reclaimed, surface-mined land in Appalachia and this can continue in the future. If it had not been surface-mined, it would remain a steep terrain of little or no use except for growing timber (of use a hundred years from now). With the shortages of today, we (worldwide) will more than likely have a food shortage, and all land will be needed for raising food for the hungry. The surface-mine benches left in the steep terrain, in addition to raising food, are useful for raising cattle and sheep, and are good for wild game. Many productive orchards and berry patches have been planted on surface benches. In Switzerland, Austria, and other European countries, the people reside on the side of the mountains and use the flat lands for farming only because the mountains are too steep for farming. In the Appalachian moun- tains, many small farms are being made by surface mining. 45 �With proper grading, these surface-mined areas can prevent land erosion and the washing of silt and topsoil down into the streams, although silt and topsoil washed into the streams can be very useful. The lowlands along the rivers have been fertilized by flooding for many years, long before surface mining of coal and other minerals was even thought of. It has been suggested at various times that the abandoned underground mines might be used for burial grounds, for storage, for aging of cheese and other foods that need even temperatures, or for garbage disposal. Recently an attorney at a surface-mine hearing stated that he purchased 500 acres of mountain land (without an access road) for $ 7 , 5 0 0 ($15.00 per acre). After this land, which is of steep terrain, is surfacemined and reclaimed, he plans to sell it for $80,000 to $100,000 for housing developments. Land use should be controlled by local and state, not federal, government because every locality has different soil and terrain. The proper way to use land in North Carolina and Virginia would be entirely different from Colorado and California, especially for land reclamation. We should be permitted to use our land as we see fit, rather than have someone else come in and tell us what to do. 46 �Tennessee Valley Authority Knoxville, Tennessee 37902 Beginning with the congressional deliberations that established TVA, wise use of land, including reestablishing the valley's badly eroded land base, was a central goal in its program for regional development. It was needed to overcome the economic and social troubles stemming from the ravaged land. Early TVA activities supplied the system of dams and reservoirs to reduce river flooding, creating protected land areas for settlement and other productive uses. The system also maintains sustained streamflows and assures water for domestic, industrial, and recreational purposes. Erosion of the land base was attacked through reforestation, reduction of fire damage, and improved forest management. Better soil management was achieved through promotion of the shift from row crops to pasture and other agricultural methods calculated to reduce erosion. Through the work of the National Fertilizer Development Center and cooperating state agencies, increased crop yields and improved agricultural practices have been realized both in the Tennessee Valley and throughout the nation. Other tools were provided to aid economic growth, including a commercially navigable Tennessee waterway and the TVA power system. These and other available resources enabled the region to begin developing the economic base needed for balanced regional growth. Community development has also been a TVA objective, and technical assistance in planning is one of the tools it has made available. The Norris new-town experiment was undertaken to test new ideas in community living 47 �and to demonstrate an alternative to large urban areas as human living environments. Under its tributary area-development, Townlift, communityimprovement programs, TVA has made available to participating communities many kinds of special assistance. Maps and data on flood hazards have enabled many communities to develop and enforce appropriate land-use regulations to avoid damage in flood plain areas. Using these tools, the Tennessee Valley region during the last 40 years has evolved from an underproducing agricultural region to an urban-industrial economy, with widespread community development and accompanying land-use problems. Today the urban pattern of the valley can best be described as a system of cities, ranging from communities of 50,000 to a few hundred people. An improved transportation system links these communities and makes possible considerable interaction among them. A special feature of the Tennessee Valley region during the 1960s, unlike the nation as a whole, was that a greater share of the region's growth occurred in the small- and medium-sized communities. While this smalltown growth offers a choice of environment to valley residents, it will also tend to increase pressures on the valley's land base. As the small- and medium-sized towns increase in number and size, and as rural growth occurs, there will be increased competition for the use of land. Land-use changes in wildlife, recreation and forest areas, prime agricultural lands, flood plains, and natural areas are likely to become more frequent and controversial. A related matter is the need to provide locations for facilities vital to the continued growth of the region—for example, power plants, power 48 �transmission corridors, and transportation facilities (highways, railroads, and airports). In adjusting to these changing conditions and to the needs of regional growth, we will need new approaches. Land-resource management is primarily a regional problem, and a regional problem-solving framework is needed. In the American system, state government is the principal regional governmental unit. A primary state objective in developing and carrying out a land-use planning program should be to promote economic growth and the protection of the human environment. This objective should be based on an understanding of environmental tolerances, land capabilities, and the needs of people. Further, technology must be used to help supply solutions to problems created by an urban society. For example, technology is particularly important in assuring air and water quality, in providing for waste disposal; and the' location and operation of power plants and other energy sources require technological assurances that the human environment will not be diminished. In addition, the state land-use planning program should provide for the use of special techniques for managing human needs. For example, new town developments should be guided, and modernization of older communities and revitalization of others should produce attractive and efficient places to live and work. Also in state land use, the value of the land for irreplaceable primary production such as minerals, food and fiber, and scenic beauty should be 49 �protected. In spite of the growth and visibility of nonfarm-related industry, farm-dependent business remains a viable segment of the economy, and farming an important source of income. Growth that depends on land primarily for space should be guided to areas that interfere minimally with the use of land for primary production or to compatible joint uses of land, such as disposal of urban wastes to rehabilitate strip-mined land or as a soil conditioner on farm lands. Technical assistance, drawing on TVA's multipurpose program and on information in a variety of functional areas related to land-use planning, is available to the states. TVA help in mapping, power plant siting, industrial park location and design, recreation planning, and community improvement are just a few examples of where collaboration can bring about better overall land-use planning. TVA will also continue to take on problemsolving activities involving more than one state. 50 �Dennis C. Shultz Sierra Club Matthews, North Carolina "Strip Mining Can Be Made Acceptable," said a headline over the comments of W.J. Burton of Duke Power Company in The Charlotte Observer of March 12, 1974. That headline is correct. Strip mining is already acceptable. It is acceptable to Duke Power, Consolidated Coal, the American Mining Congress, and others who expound cheap power without regard for tomorrow, as has been demonstrated by the continuing rape of the Appalachian mountains. The question really is whether strip mining can be made acceptable to the people who live in Appalachia, to those who love the hills, to those who live downstream on acidic and polluted rivers, to the 188 persons who lost their lives when a mine dam burst on Buffalo Creek in West Virginia, and to the future generations who will be forced to live among denuded hills, silt-choked, acidic rivers, and barren rock walls, and obliged to carry the burden of supporting a geographic area that has been physically and economically stripped. I hoped Mr. Burton would reveal how this might be accomplished. To my dismay, there was not a word about how Duke Power activities were to make strip mining "more acceptable." It appears that Duke is taking the position of talking the problem away with public relations rather than by facing it directly. What effort is Duke expending toward the reclamation of strip mines? How many professionals in mining engineering, forestry, hydrology, geology, or agronomy are employed for this objective? How does this budget 51 �compare with advertising, public relations, lobbying, and other activities that add to Duke's expenses without directly contributing to the generation of power? This problem is more immediately serious than coal costs. We, as responsible people, are charged with the stewardship of this land, which means that, despite fee titles and documents of ownership for today, we must shape the land legacy of our descendants. Severe regulatory legislation is the product of abuse, a form of coercion necessary to reestablish balance. Responsibility is not a product of coercion and, until responsibility is demonstrated, it will be necessary to force compliance with reasonable expectations of responsibility by legislation. Mr. Burton notes that strip mining is cheaper than deep mining. It would seem only reasonable that some portion of this differential be used to prevent acid drainage, siltation, and gross negligence of the stripped areas. This would still be compatible with avoiding deep mining because of its hazards and cost. The total economic and social costs associated with strip mining are not too well known. The reason is simple: American mining practices have been traditionally based on exploitation, not on conservation. To understand the degree of this exploitation, consider how little is spent to protect the environment. Coal can be stripped at an estimated $1.50 per ton less than deep-mined coal. Based on a productivity of 3 , 5 0 0 to 5 , 0 0 0 tons per acre, which is common in the East, the $200- to $500-peracre spent on reclamation (as estimated by TVA) amounts to 10 cents per ton 52 �for the environment. If this were increased to $1.00 per ton, it would still be competitive with deep-mined coal. In West Germany and Great Britain, where land stewardship is taken seriously, this is exactly what is being spent on reclamation. Why can we not learn from their experience? Must we wait until there is no recourse? As the article states, it is possible to reclaim some of the land to productive use, implying that some of the land cannot be restored. I understand that the bill originally co-sponsored by Representative Jim Martin was simply to prevent mining of nonrestorable land and insure restoration where possible. How can Mr. Burton object to this approach, if he accepts the premise that strip mining must be "made acceptable"? The question is, to whom? 53 �Duke Power Company Charlotte, North Carolina 28201 Duke Power Company owns thousands of acres in North and South Carolina, with a wide variety of environments from mountains to swamps, from city business districts to remote forest coves. The uses of the land are also varied—power generating plants, water reservoirs, watershed forests, marinas, transmission lines, coal mines, etcetera. Only land, of all the tangible possessions of m a n , is unique. This uniqueness gives land use the highest priority. The basic principle that guides all land use by Duke Power is that it must be used in a way that will improve the quality of life for the affected community. Decisions on land use for any particular location require both subjective and objective evaluations. In recent years, knowledge of the environmental sciences has expanded greatly, reducing the degree of subjectivity in decisions on land use, but it is far less than needed to eliminate it. From this background, let us consider the major kinds of land use in which Duke Power Company is involved. 1. Traditionally, Duke's power plant siting program has focused on large generating complexes, which often bring together in one area several feasible electrical energy generating modes. Lake Norman and the Keowee-Toxaway Project are examples of this long-range planning. Recent regulatory changes have necessitated selection of more geographically diversified sites, but such sites undergo the same intensive investigation as do sites of long-standing public record. Power plants require use of air, land, and water resources. Sites are selected after thorough consideration of social and economic 54 �factors, physical characteristics, and environmental impact. Duke is committed to locating its power facilities so as to maintain and enhance the quality of life in its service area to the maximum practical extent and in compliance with all governing state and federal regulations. 2. Obviously, power generating facilities must be linked with transmission and distribution lines to serve the more than one million customers in Duke's service area. Transmission-line routing is a product of detailed studies similar to those made for plant sites, and results in a prime route and several alternative routes. 3. The main reason for Duke Power to construct a water reservoir is the generation of electrical energy. The energy developed in the head of impounded water is converted into electricity and/or the impounded water is a vehicle to return accumulated waste heat to the natural environment in a diluted form over an extended period of time. Water reservoirs require large areas of land; therefore Duke Power believes it is wise land-use policy to expend additional funds and effort to maximize public use of the water for recreation (consistent with the primary hydroelectric purposes). 4. Generating plants require energy in the form of fossil or nuclear fuels. Duke Power owns land on which the immediate use is mineral extraction or coal mining by surface and deep mining. Since coal can be mined only where it occurs, the land use is dictated. However, mining is only one phase of land u s e . If mining of coal is a valid 55 �use of land, its reclamation for future production and use is equally important. 5. Duke Power owns land that is not used for plant sites, water reservoirs, or coal mining, but is typical rural real estate. We call it "non-utility land." Location, access, and amenities are the principal factors governing the use of non-utility land. Most of it has been developed for commercial timber and watershed protection. Commercial timber forests are used to provide additional recreation opportunities for the public and, through leases with state agencies, to promote growth of wildlife . 6. Certain small parcels of non-utility land are subject to intensive man-made developments. Decisions for land use in these cases are based mostly on social and economic considerations. Land use in the immediate neighborhood of a site is important. In some situations, the social factor takes precedence over the economic factor. Land use decisions require the utmost in careful fact-gathering and analysis. Duke Power attempts to use its land in an orderly system that produces the most benefit without waste, protects critical pieces of land, and includes information and opinion from many disciplines. 56 �Pocahontas Land Corporation Bluefield, West Virginia The term "land use" has many connotations, ranging from a farmer's rotating his crops to obtain maximum benefits from the soil to a government's regulation of certain land for specific purposes, i.e. , residential, industrial, public. Because of the rugged topography of Appalachia, land use in that region is frequently thought of as synonymous with mining. Many areas are unsuitable for any other purpose, and land level enough for farming, industry, and homes is both scarce and expensive. Roads and railroads cost from three to five times more to build in the mountainous region of Appalachia than in level areas of nearby states and are generally confined to narrow valley floors. Access roads are few, and many small communities are isolated even though only a few miles from large cities. Timber, oil, and gas are important resources in Appalachia, but coal is the most plentiful. As a result, coal mining plays a major role in Appalachia1 s economy, bringing boom and recession periods as markets rise and fall. Of the two basic methods used to recover coal, surface mining is the more controversial. It began in the mountainous areas of Appalachia during World War II under few restrictions or regulations. At a time when manpower was scarce and quick recovery of coal was vital to the nation's welfare, surface mining offered a quick solution to an energy problem. In addition, many coal deposits that were not recoverable through conventional underground mining became available through the surface method. A minimum of 57 �preparation, manpower, and investment was needed, and the percentage of coal recovery was high. Unfortunately, however, after such mining was completed, few efforts were made to reclaim the land. Such irresponsible use of the land brought a host of problems: soil erosion, landslides, stream pollution, floods, and resentment from residents and conservationists—associations that are still difficult to live down. As a result, many people today still think of surface mining as it was in that era and fail to see that, when accompanied by conscientious planning and reclamation programs, it can exemplify good land use in its fullest sense. Not only does the process yield mineral resources but it may also make the land more useful and valuable than it was before mining. Advanced planning and improved methods are breaking surface mining away from its shadowy past. For example, in a new approach to surface mining called box-cut back-hauling, all the earth that is removed from a cut made perpendicular to contour is redistributed or back-hauled into the preceding cavity or cut. Instead of soil being shoved over the mountainside it is restored to approximate the original contour. High walls are either reduced or nonexistent, and vegetation can be grown on the entire site. Another new approach is the mountaintop-valley-fill method. As its name implies , the entire mountaintop is removed down to a coal bed and the resultant overburden is placed in an adjacent valley. After mining, large plateaus of usable land have been created. Reclamation of surface-mined land has come a long way. No longer is the mere tossing of grass seed and the random planting of trees acceptable. Land reclamation has become a science, with the grading of land and 58 �the selection of vegetation tailored precisely to a particular environment. Mountain terrain formerly too rugged for any use but mining can be and has been converted into timber forests, lakes stocked with fish, grazing pastures for cattle, agricultural land, and flat areas suitable for homes and industry. In a region where level land is at a premium, proper surface mining and land reclamation offer residents of Appalachia valuable acreage and an opportunity for a better way of life. 59 �Richard Cartwright Austin, Co-Chairman COALition Against Strip Mining Washington, D . C . 20003 The new concern for energy and for the productivity of our land strengthens the position of the COALition Against Strip Mining. Strip mining should be phased out in an orderly manner in favor of expanded underground mining. This would develop the mining methods that can reach all our coal resources, including our abundant low-sulphur resources. It would also enable our ranchlands to raise meat, our farmlands to raise other food, and our Appalachian hardwood forests to raise timber. It would protect surface owners from the destruction of their property, and residents of the coalfields generally from sliding mountains and flooding streams. It would rebuild the coal industry nearer to what is needed and reduce transportation costs and transmission inefficiencies. Rebuilding underground mining could provide 100,000 new jobs where they are both needed and wanted—some in the West, more in the Midwest, most in the depressed Appalachian mountains . Three years ago, the national debate on strip mining stressed the environmental consequences of stripping and the damage to people and property. In the past year, attention has shifted to the question of how to obtain adequate energy supplies and still protect the productive capacity of timberlands, farmlands, and ranchlands. We have discovered that meat, other food, lumber, and energy are all in short supply. During this period. Congress has been considering legislation to regulate strip mining for coal. The Senate passed its Bill S425, in the first session of the present Congress. The House is currently considering its 60 �version, HR11500. Federal strip-mining legislation may give citizens important new tools to fight for adequate reclamation, but it will not win the struggle by itself. The legislation may provide means for banning strip mining in certain critical areas. It could abort the present plans of the energy industry and the Nixon administration to shift coal mining from Eastern deep mining to Western strip-mining where windfall profits can be made. It is on this point that the toughest fights remain. Up to now, a cautious Congress has been reluctant to ban strip mining altogether, but as it continues to replace deep mining, and as mining investment shifts from the East to the West, it is becoming apparent to more congressmen that these trends are destroying valuable lands while actually decreasing our capacity to use coal as a long-term energy resource. THE COAL IS DEEP. Using today's methods, there is eight times as much coal available for underground mining as for strip mining. As technologies improve and energy prices rise so that more coal reserves become profitable to mine, there will be 33 times as much coal available to deep mining as to stripping. Strippable reserves will be exhausted in some Appalachian states in one decade, but there is enough low-sulphur, deepminable coal in Appalachia alone to last this country for several decades. When technologies develop for the cleaner use of high-sulphur coals, the supply will become virtually unlimited. Coal is our nation's only truly abundant fossil fuel. The trend has been away from deep mining because strip mining has been more profitable to the operator. He has not had to pay for the long- term destruction of the productivity of the 3 , 0 0 0 square miles of America 61 �already stripped for coal. Deep-mine production and employment have dropped in the past decade. Squeezed by the competition, underground mines have cut corners at the expense of the health and safety of the miners. PRODUCTIVE, SAFE MINING. American underground mining technology is antiquated by world standards and the mines are unnecessarily hazardous because the energy industry has not been investing in underground research, development, and capital improvements. New methods, such as longwall mining, could remove 90% of the coal seam, double productivity, and greatly increase mine safety. A new government project has demonstrated that explosive methane gas can be piped from the coal seam in advance of mining. This not only improves safety, but will also, over time, nearly double our reserves of natural gas. Such developments can help make 18 billion tons of low-sulphur, high-energy coal available in Appalachia alone. This is thirty times as much as our total annual coal production. THE RACE WEST TO POOR COAL. Nevertheless , the largest coal companies are in a race to the West even though the major demands for coal and electricity from coal remain in the East. Western coal and lignite are generally of poor quality, having about half the energy per ton of Eastern coal, but stripping the very thick seams under the farms and ranches is so cheap and easy that a quick profit can be made. It takes a lot of energy (diesel oil and electricity) to operate the big machines that dig the coal. More energy is lost in thousand-mile transmission lines or expended for unit-train trips from Montana to Chicago to deliver low-energy coal, but 62 �these costs (and resulting shortages) would be passed on to the consumer through the utilities' rate structures. The people of the West don't want to be stripped. The people of Appalachia don't want to lose their major industry. The shift West is an inefficient way to obtain increased energy for our country. Nevertheless the shift is under way because capital investment in Western stripping brings a quicker return. DEEP MINE RESEARCH. The implications of these facts were beginning to dawn as the full Senate debated the strip mining bill last October. On the floor, the findings of the bill were amended to state that "the overwhelming percentage of the nation's coal reserves can only be extracted by underground mining methods, and it is, therefore, essential to the national interest to insure the existence of an expanding and economically healthy underground coal-mining industry." The purpose of the bill was strengthened to "encourage the full utilization of coal resources through the development and application of underground extraction technologies." The Mansfield amendment was added to halt the development of stripping of federal coal under private surface in the West; this would remove a significant portion of Western coal reserves from surface exploitation and slow the present movement to the West. And $20 million were authorized for coal research and demonstration projects for "coal mining technologies which provide alternatives to surface disturbance and which maximize the recovery of available coal resources, including the improvement of present underground mining wastes to the mine void, methods for the underground 63 �mining of thick seams and very deep coal seams . . . and safety and health in the application of such technologies. . . . " SEIBERUNG AMENDMENT. In November the House sub-committees went further and added the Seiberling amendment to the House bill in an attempt to redress the economics that presently favor strip mining over deep mining, at the expense of the land. This amendment would fund a program to reclaim previously stripped lands through a fee of $ 2 . 5 0 per ton on every ton of coal mined by any method. Before paying the fee, strippers could deduct their actual costs of reclamation, while deep mine operators could deduct the costs of health and safety equipment required by the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, plus the costs of black lung benefits also required by that law. The net effect of the f e e , minus the deductions, would be to add about 25<£ a ton to the cost of deep mining, to add about $1.50 a ton to the cost of Eastern stripping, and to add about $ 2 . 2 5 a ton to the cost of Western stripping. This would make deep mining competitive with strip mining again, and enhance the economic incentives toward the development of new deep mines, which will be more useful in building a long-term capacity to meet our energy needs. Deep mines will also provide more employment and do less environmental damage. The vast Western reserves of low-grade coals and lignite can be developed usefully when technologies such as underground gasification are perfected to remove the energy in large quantities without disturbing the surface. It is folly to use today's primitive technologies—strip mines, steam plants, transmission lines, unit trains—to move Western energy inefficiently to the East and to destroy much of the West in the bargain. 64 �The Seiberling amendment and similar initiatives are being opposed vigorously by the energy industry—and by its bought-and-paid-for Nixon administration—because these proposals would upset the speculative investments that have been moving to Western strip mining. It is around these issues that the most intense battles will be waged as the House completes work on the strip-mining bill. 65 �LENOWISCO* Planning District Commission Duffield, Virginia The development of regional planning in Appalachia has only recently, and quite belatedly, recognized the necessity for land planning. Broadly speaking, activity in recent years has centered around the stabilization of Appalachia, with an emphasis on economic development, flood control, and transportation. Appalachian program development and activity have lacked broad goals to provide the needed direction for the basic finite resources, among them the land base. Consequently, it is imperative that land planning be included in this stabilization process. Furthermore, national and regional developmental policies must be clarified and adopted, and a concerted effort made to apply them in our day-to-day decision making. Regional planning can contribute in this effort. Many will ask if regional planning as a concept has a role in this process of land planning. The answer of those who work in regional agencies is clear. A broader interpretation, however, is given by decision makers at the national, state, and local levels. Here we find an increasingly greater thrust towards regionalism, especially in land planning. Therefore, to a significant extent the role of regional planning agencies in land-use planning is being formulated by other segments of the American system. It is suggested that the scale at which regional planning functions is a major reason it is being looked upon *The Cities of Lee, Norris, Wise, and Scott, Virginia 66 �as a mechanism that can make concerted efforts in applying policies in the daily decision-making activities of both the private and public sectors. Approaches to the implementation of land-use policies, planning, and programs at the regional level would best center around the informationcoordination-technical assistance functions of these areawide agencies. Within such a three-part framework, the regional planning agency can effectively initiate and develop land-use planning techniques. Information can be disseminated to local governments and citizen groups on new federal and state enabling legislation, on new techniques in land-use planning, and on the role of land-use controls in their particular region. The coordination can occur where the regional agency brings together local government agencies, elected officials, and citizen groups to effectively inform them about new developments, new problems, and present activities in land-use planning. Technical assistance can occur where the regional agency designs and completes the actual zoning ordinance and/or land-use plans. This array of functional activities can then be matched against three land-use planning objectives. The first would involve the development and adoption of a regional land-use plan, multi-county in scope, dealing with broad developmental growth trends and policies, closely related to the efforts of a state land-use planning system, and recognizing and reacting to any national land-use policies and programs. Secondly, the development of countywide land-use plans can serve the purpose of an official document for the county, delineate basic problems facing it, and offer specific landuse planning recommendations. Thirdly, land-use plans and their related legal tools may be reduced to a smaller scope involving planning area 67 �land-use plans, and perhaps where necessary to an even smaller scope that would involve a site-design land-use plan for a specific area. As a result of this framework or any like procedure, the many complex land-use issues that face Appalachia can be dealt with in such a way that the ultimate goal will be to achieve concrete and tangible results. Many of the prevailing issues of land use in Appalachia, such as growth or no-growth, the spatial arrangement of socioeconomic activities, and environmental preservation or use can be approached in a positive and constructive way. More specifically, these issues reflect the hard choices needed for the development of land for industry, commerce, and residential use (a "growth is good" philosophy) versus controlled population and socioeconomic growth; the arrangement of these activities in designed patterns versus uncontrolled and unregulated growth; the effect on the natural environment of Appalachia of the extractive nature of some economic activities. In short, land-use planning in Appalachia cannot be simply a reiteration of "critical issues" facing the region. These issues, which have time and time again been published, stated, and restated, must be placed in a mechanism that can operate in a constructive fashion. It is time for positions and policies to be carried out through whatever means we have at our disposal. For, without a concerted effort in applying these policies in our day-to-day decision-making routine, they become nothing more than the overblown rhetoric with which we are all too familiar. 68 �Jack S. Kelley USDA Forest Service National Forests in North Carolina P.O. Box 2 7 5 0 , Asheville, N . C . 28802 Most forest land in the Appalachians is in private ownership, usually of small acreage. These forest lands are not being managed on sound landuse principles, but on the policy of short-term economic gain rather than long-term management of their natural resources. Most states and local governments throughout the Appalachian Mountains do not have land-use regulations. State Forestry departments assist small landowners in marketing their timber and using wise land-use procedures to insure future crops of timber, but the service is not regulated and is only provided to those who request it. Presently much forested land is being developed for resorts, summerhome sites, and other uses, resulting in overdevelopment of marginal sites. The question isn't so much whether or not a summer home should be built on a mountain top, but whether the natural resources, mainly the soil, will support such a structure. Also, will the soil properly handle sewage dis- posal, et cetera? Large landowners and public land-managing agencies such as the U . S . Forest Service have long-range planning processes to insure the perpetuation of natural resources. In timber management, this is called sustainedyield management. The National Forests within the Southern and Central Appalachians contain 5 million acres. They are the Monongahela, Pisgah, Nantahala, Cherokee, George Washington, Jefferson, Chattahoochee, and part of the Sumter. 69 �Management decisions in this area integrate the needs of people— both attractive surroundings and opportunities for gainful employment, with effective management of the natural resources. The Appalachian hardwood ecosystem is a basic unit of nature comprising both organisms and their environment, interacting with each other. Multiple-use planning begins with an understanding of this ecosystem and its interactions, for together with social and economic considerations, it provides a basis for coordinated regional land-use planning and management. Management within the ecosystem considers the needs of all species of plants and animals as well as what it can produce. In harvesting timber, product considerations are made for wildlife, stream protection, and effective recreation opportunities. Harvest methods are regeneration and intermediate thinnings. Regeneration cuts are accomplished by either seed tree, shelterwood, or clearcut methods. Intermediate cutting is by either non-commercial or commercial thinnings . In 1973 on National Forest land in the Appalachians of North Carolina, silvicultural work consisted of planting or seeding over 3,000 acres; natural regeneration established about the same acreage. Thinning has been accomplished on nearly 2 , 5 0 0 acres. A 250-acre seed orchard is in operation to produce seed for superior trees. Virgin stands of timber are scattered throughout Appalachia but only a few are of any size, namely Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest in North Carolina with 3,800 acres, Linville Gorge with 7 , 6 0 0 acres, and Ramseys Draft in Virginia with 1,800 acres. 70 �Third Session: THE HUMAN SPIRIT After introductions by Borden Mace, of the Appaiachian Consortium, Reverend R. Baldwin Lioyd, of the Appalachian Peoples' Service Organization, led off the group session with his feelings on the human spirit, especially as shown in the mountain regions. Fundamentally he felt that its strength lies in knowing oneself and one's brother and sister, in understanding them in relation to community life, and in living in harmony with the creative forces of life. If God gives man dominion over the birds, beasts, and fishes, it is only so that he may share and care for and love His creation. To use and to be in harmony with creation are a blessing; to abuse it is a curse that leads to loss of the human spirit. As demonstrated in Appalachia, the men who have become corporate men have lost sight of this spirit in the poor and thereby in themselves. Mr. Lloyd observed with regret the absence at the conference of representatives of the miners and the poor. Mr. Mace replied that, although many had been invited, few had been able to attend. Novelist and historian Wilma Dykeman Stokely followed with a conversation on the human spirit as it has been eroded but survives in the 71 �region. Regarding the prevalence of misery and exploitation, her overall observation was that the past is never past—past problems unmet, compounded by apathy and neglect, are still present problems. Beneath this visible misery, however, still lies the real Appalachian character, with its strength, independence, and integrity. She illustrated this with exten- sive and appropriate passages from her books. 1,2,3,4 By the nature of the subject, the small-group sessions were unable to arrive at a definition of the human spirit, not so much because it is vague as because it is so complex. The outcome of these concurrent sessions was therefore fragmentary, not conclusive. Among the observations were that: 1. while material comforts can frequently dull man's spirit, they can also relieve him from hunger, drudgery, and disease 2. the wants and needs of the nation must be weighed against its spiritual choices 3. the colonial, urban viewpoint dulls the native, rural values 4. appropriate energy use can give man leisure for spiritual and intellectual contemplation iwilma Dykeman Stokely. hart & Winston, 1962. 2 Tall Woman. New York: Holt, Rine- The French Broad. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1966. 3 Look to This Day. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968. 4 The Far Family. New York: Avon, 1972. 72 �5. Appalachian independence is vanishing under the influx of outsiders (students, tourists, second-homers), some of whom are semi-permanent, some transient 6. even when mountain folk go away to work, their regional spirit survives 7. certain unique qualities of the Appalachians (language, dialect, music, crafts, dancing) may affect their acceptance or rejection by the outside world 8. on occasion, we blame not the exploiter, but the exploited—for being ignorant, for selling his birthright for little return 9. not all regions of Appalachia are alike in want or need, e.g. , Kentucky and Georgia 10. the effects of absentee ownership have been generally disastrous when compared with the small but immediate benefits of income, education, and health services 11. a frustration by givers and receivers alike is determining where help ends and interference begins 12. some regional values, both spiritual and material, must change to meet the future 13. local action must establish the limits of cooperation vs. competition 14. both the cultural universals and the folk insights should be preserved; outside agencies are likely to destroy, rather than encourage, unique traits; options, not directions, should be given 73 �15 . aspirations should not be raised without the means to achieve them 16. the attitudes of the change agents should perhaps be changed, rather than the mountaineers' outlook 17. mountain crafts should be promoted as a form of creativity, not for their quaintness 18. Appalachian resources are needed nationally and worldwide, but the region must receive its fair share 19. corporations have been maximizing their profits; it is now time for Appalachians to maximize the quality of their daily lives 20. remnants of a belief in white magic and the benign practices of witchcraft have given mountain people a sustaining harmony with their surroundings and the spirit of God and man 21. the spirit, insofar as it implies transcendence, freedom, and creativity is destined for destruction in Orwell's 1984; the manifestation of the Appalachian spirit refuses to be intimidated by this prospect of a dehumanizing technology 22. the gross exploitation of Central Appalachia's natural wealth is having a dire and direct effect on the spirit of its inhabitants, for it is eroding their trust in their fellow men and their government 23. the spirit of Appalachia is well demonstrated in the spirit of the freedom-loving loners who sought out and settled in the mountains to keep their independence and self-reliance 74 �24. the distinctive culture of Appalachia is threatened both by the corporate exploiters and by the intrusive do-gooders 25. the Appalachian inherited a sturdy, self-reliant, stoic, reserved, and gentle way of life; it is in danger of extinction through loss of family cohesiveness even though material progress has brought improvements in health care, job openings, education, and housing 26. whether the mountain spirit can challenge, where necessary, and adapt to, where appropriate, the outside forces in control of so much of their resources must be faced 27. if urbanization and technology cannot be contained, their advance may mean the inevitable destruction of Appalachian spirit and culture 28. education should enable the mountain folk to communicate their special spirit, not replace it with new values 29. if the human spirit, Appalachian or otherwise, is truly transcendent, the future is open, not predetermined, unchangeable, or mechanistic 30. how best can the regional spirit survive the assaults of industry and a mainstream society whose temptations may rob and deplete it? From this rich array of observations, both hopeful and fearful, the reader will no doubt absorb the same feeling of frustration as many of the participants--a definition of the Human Spirit never emerged. The question 75 �of its nurture, however, was no problem—it can be fed in many ways as long as the diet is rich in love, compassion, and respect for a man's dignity. 76 �THE HUMAN SPIRIT Helen Matthews-Lewis Clinch Valley College University of Virginia Wise, Virginia 24293 Appalachia has a long history of struggle for survival in a long history of exploitation. Strip mining, tourist development, and industries seeking cheap labor are just recent chapters. It is an area incredibly rich in natural resources. Descriptions of it when early explorers came tell of the bounty of land and forest. The first exploitation was probably the game. Then the wealth of timber was discovered and the lumbering industry unmercifully cut away one of the finest forests of the world's temperate zone. The discovery of coal by geologists , industrialists, and New York and British financiers was the next documented take-over. Coal mining has since removed billions of tons of coal with little return to the area. Strip mining, dams, and ski resorts may be the death blows, but they are only insult added to years of injury. Those who once lived off the land and forest have become timberers, coal miners, cheap labor for factories , and economic refugees in the city. But mountain people have resisted and survived, and some mountain culture has been preserved through the families and the mountain churches despite the massive invasion of outside colonizers and civilizers who developed "brought-on" churches, schools, and other social institutions inimical to mountain ways. Their failures have been a testimony to the strength and persistence of an integrated culture. 77 �The traditional mountain way of life is antagonistic to urban, industrial, class-structured ways and values. It is more egalitarian and cooperative. Based on hunting and subsistence agriculture, it developed a way of life that stressed both independence and mutual aid. People should be selfsufficient and not depend on others for help, but if they can, they should be accommodating and help their neighbor. This mutual aid operates from a position of equality, a way of life that is antagonistic to situations of inequality, elitism, or hierarchical organization. Early visitors remarked on the friendly, equal relationships, on how generous and uncompetitive the mountain people were. Today, teachers find mountain students lacking achievement motivation, cooperative in play, and avoiding conflict. Mountain people were said to be free from selfconsciousness, direct, open, dignified, and courteous. It was not a cold, staid culture, but an expressive one with rhythm, eloquence, and great emotion shown in speech, song, theology, and religious expression. The destructive process still goes on and, although it is more dramatic where strip mining now occurs, it is happening throughout the mountains. Land, timber, natural beauty for recreation, and cheap labor are still sought and secured in Appalachia. With strip mining, we see more dramatically the dwelling places of mountain people destroyed and damaged. Strip mining also destroys a way of life and a way of looking at life. Strip miners treat mountains as just another commodity to develop or exploit, while mountain people have traditionally been less manipulative, more adaptive to the physical environment. 78 �Strip mining with its callous destruction results from a way of life based on competition, drive for profit, and a belief in the superiority of a technological world. As we destroy and sacrifice Appalachia for the energy needs of the country, we are destroying a culture more humane, more in balance with nature, and more concerned with a good life than with a good living. 79 �J . P . Lucas, Jr. , Vice President, Public Affairs Duke Power Company Charlotte, North Carolina 28201 For years the Appalachia of the sociologists has been the native heath of a clannish and homespun folk given to small arts and crafts, folkdancing, and the operation of countless illegal stills, all in a setting of hardship, if not grim despair. But the influx of outside support, the strengthening of education, new medical and other social services, the advent of substantial industry, and the incredible land boom have changed a way of life. The risk is that in this rapid change mountain men and women may lose some of the human values that made them a unique segment of American society. The qualities of directness and candor, of fortitude and faith, and of independence of spirit can gradually erode in a new-found prosperity. Many social problems still press in upon people, and opportunity is needed for the application of new knowledge and for the employment of many skills by a new generation of mountain f o l k . A people may choose to be farmers, factory workers, teachers, technicians, or real estate agents—but citizens they must be, citizens with as much as education can give them of personal integrity, community responsibility, and spiritual awareness. With so much emphasis on things that society does for the deprived individual, it is important to distinguish between social security and personal security, which proceeds only from what the individual does for himself. Encouraging people to believe in their own helplessness holds the seeds of tragedy. This is worth thinking about as a regional group as we 80 �face new dimensions of living in a new and perilous world. Our sense of national purpose must arise out of voluntary thought and action, and must represent the sum of the convictions, ideals, intelligence, and deepest desires of the people. Unless our primary goal is to be a great people we cannot for long expect to be a great nation. As a nation, we need a leavening of the pioneer tradition and a way of life that is more than the pursuit of money. The time has come when men may look less to Washington and more to their native hills. 81 �American Petroleum Institute 1801 K Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20006 The American Petroleum Institute claims no particular expertise in the human spirit. We would like to point out, however, that the availability of energy has been a powerful factor in human development and profoundly affects the human spirit. The United States is blessed by energy abundance. In the age when wood was the major energy source, our forefathers came to a continent covered with forests. When the age of coal arrived, we found that areas such as Appalachia contained what then seemed to be inexhaustible reserves. When oil became a major energy source, it seemed that our Southwestern states were floating on oil. The correlation between energy consumption and living standards is extremely close. Nations with high living standards have high per-capita energy consumption; those with low living standards are associated with low energy consumption. Some people in Appalachia still rely upon wood and on human and animal power for energy. All too often, these are in places of hardship, poverty, and despair that crush the human spirit and destroy human initiative. Human progress involves more than the mere acquisition of material goods. A human being is not necessarily better off if he has an electric blanket instead of a regular blanket. Such items are not necessarily uplifting to the human spirit, but some aspects of higher living standards do have value. For example, people with higher living standards can eat more nutritious foods, are healthier, and usually live longer. They can afford 82 �proper medical and dental treatment. Health affects human attitudes and the enjoyment of a full life. Another benefit of the higher living standards associated with energy consumption is increased leisure. No longer does man have to work from sunup to sundown just to provide food and clothing for himself and his family. He has time to get an education, to learn more about the planet on which he lives, and to enjoy art, music, or literature. These things act to expand man's horizons and uplift his spirit. Mankind has not yet learned to make full use of the benefits of being freed from devoting all his energies to obtaining the basic necessities of life. He is still beset by constant fruitless wars, by the increasing population, by a too-hectic pace of life, and by increasing violence and crime. These problems will not be solved by a return to the hardships and misery associated with low energy consumption. In our nation, energy has always been cheap and abundant and, as to be expected, it has often been wasted—a waste we can no longer afford. Wise use of energy can contribute to the advancement of the human spirit, to human progress, and to man's general expansion and development. Decisions on how it will be used must be made by all members of society. 83 �Tennessee Valley Authority Knoxville, Tennessee 37902 One day in 1907, as Gifford Pinchot, chief forester under President Theodore Roosevelt, rode through the park, he was struck by a new concept: The forest and its relation to streams and inland navigation, to water power and flood control, to the soil and its erosion, to coal and oil and other resources—these questions would not let [me] be. ... Suddenly the idea flashed through my head that there was a unity in this complication—that the relation of one resource to another was not the end of the story. . . . Seen in this new light, all these separate questions fitted into and made up one great central problem of the use of the earth for the good of man. Pinchot might have added that the proper use of resources, recognizing this interrelationship, opens the door for the human spirit. Tennessee Valley farmers of the 1930s depleted the soils, fostered erosion, and led impoverished lives . Drudgery was the burial ground of human energy—and the human spirit. Pinchot's philosophy, as embodied in the Tennessee Valley Authority, wrought great changes in this way of life. Farmers learned to use fertilizers, to heal their gullies, to plant pastures, and to shift to animal agriculture. Electricity brought labor-saving devices to the farm wife throughout the valley. New industries opened opportunities for skillful hands and alert minds. The horizons of the human spirit were greatly expanded. Today, the character of economic growth and social change in the Tennessee Valley has given a unique cast to many of the problems faced by the area. SOLID WASTE. An expanding population demands more products, many of which eventually wind up on the trash heaps. TVA helped in this field 84 �when it saw that many communities lacked the technical know-how for locating and designing landfills and enough private engineering consultants to do the job.. Its success is best illustrated by the junk car collection program. More than 25,000 junked and abandoned automobiles have been collected and recycled since the program began in the latter part of 1970. AVOIDING FLOOD DAMAGES. One persistent problem of any community is the management of its waters. Twenty years ago, TVA undertook a program of working with the people to avoid flood damage where floods could not be prevented—to "keep the people away from the water where you can't keep the water away from the people." On local request and with state participation, TVA flood control engineers analyze the flood problems of a community. More than 130 communities have taken advantage of this program. MAKING NEW TOWNS OUT OF OLD. Many small- and medium-sized towns were built in another era and are unequipped to serve the new industry, commerce, and tourism in the region. TVA's program in this field, called "Townlift," is designed to unite both public and private sectors in defining and seizing the opportunities available. HEALTH SERVICES IN RURAL AREAS. One of the most needed services in rural areas, and the most difficult to provide, is adequate health care. TVA has a number of sophisticated tools, acquired for its own use, which it is now using in cooperation with public and private medical organizations in the region. We hope that locally managed programs will evolve. EDUCATION. TVA's concern is directed in part to providing technical and financial assistance to public school systems, higher education, and 85 �any other segment of public education. RURAL FIRE PROTECTION . For a combination of reasons , tragically understandable and explainable, rural fire protection has been a neglected field of community action. TVA in 1973 made arrangements for a pilot project that revives the old-fashioned volunteer fire department principle dressed up with modern technology. For example, volunteers are summoned to an emergency by an electronic paging system using pocket-sized portable radio receivers. Man's ability to use his opportunities and solve his problems will always be limited. These examples, however, show TVA's pragmatic approach to working with the people of the region to remove some of the limitations and to encourage individual initiative. 86 �Louis H. Hunter, Executive Vice President National Independent Coal Operators' Association Richlands, Virginia 24641 Various concepts of the human spirit have been put forward by many individuals at different times in history. Let us develop the concept of the human spirit as a good steward. To do this, we must assume that the earth is the Lord's: "the world and they that dwell therein" (Ps. 24:1). All resources of the earth belong to God. Their use by the human spirit must at all times be governed by God's laws and guided by His purposes. The human spirit is then entrusted with the care and use of the earth and its resources. Private ownership of the earth is man-made and under the supervision of the human spirit. I believe that it is God's will that the resources of the earth be developed, conserved, and used in ways that bring maximum benefit, fulfillment, and abundance of life to all persons. Some advocate a ban on the use of resources and the land, but how could a human be a good steward if his life were lived out in doing nothing to help other people, understand who they are, why they are here, where they came from, and where they will go once this life is over? The human spirit as a good steward involves every area of life on this planet and is the investment of time, talents,energy, and abilities in the land and its resources. 87 �Pocahontas Land Corporation Bluefield, West Virginia Many visitors have tried to describe the human spirit of Appalachia and its people, but their accounts have failed to broaden an understanding of this spirit and have left the impression that the Appalachian people are a cold, close-knit breed who lack an interest in the outside world and live only with a hope that things will get better tomorrow. A native of the area finds all their views wanting. The people of Appalachia are a warm, generous people, who know and understand hard work and share everyone's desire for a better way of life. Appalachia is not without its problems, but through the dedication and inspiration of many individuals, corporations, foundations, and the federal, state, and local governments, the lives of the residents are improving. The efforts of Appalachian residents to lift themselves are exemplified by periodic stories of work on civic and regional improvements. The success stories include the development of the Appalachian Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, numerous schools and community colleges, and Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It should be remembered that, in each of those successful efforts, citizens understood the common objective and worked hard to achieve it, whether the effort was directed toward developing the Appalachian Trail, which traverses the entire region, or toward building an outdoor theatre for local events, as many cities and towns have done. While it is hard to define the human spirit of Appalachia and its residents, it is this spirit that tells the mountaineer he would like to have just one person—one day—come 88 �into his hollow and show some signs of approval—not try to change him without first attempting to know and understand him. 89 �LENOWISCO* Planning District Commission Duffield, Virginia 24244 We have a situation in America, and more recently in Appalachia, where the human spirit is no longer being glorified, but is in danger of being irrevocably damaged. The thrust of the American Democracy of 1776 was to place on the individual the burden of responsibility for his own life and for that of his country. In two hundred years, amid excuses of too many people, efficiency, and equality, this process has been almost completely reversed and many question whether we even have democracy. We have a situation in which we commonly refer to our elected officials as being "at the top" and the people "at the bottom." This terminology alone indicates that something is badly wrong. Some contend that only a revolution will reverse our direction, but there are more peaceful ways of dealing with this problem. Mid-Appalachia, being outside the mainstream of American life for so many years, has not been quite so affected. Consequently, we are what many refer to as a "stubborn breed." Appalachia is still rife with people who retain that native American spirit, who want to make their own decisions and be responsible for their own lives. It is the ideal place to begin to reverse what is happening in America. Contrary to the professed beliefs of the decision makers, people are capable of making the choices necessary to govern their own lives. Agencies involved in making decisions must start to make a real effort to involve the people they serve in the entire process. Regional planning agencies can and should play a major role in this transition. Much of *The Cities of Lee, Norton, Wise, and Scott, Virginia. 90 �the work of these agencies can profoundly affect the lives of the people they serve, and the people are rarely, if ever, directly involved in the planning. Admittedly, trying to involve a large number of people in decision making will require more energy than we are used to expending, but someone must start. 91 �W. Grady Stumbo, M . D . , President East Kentucky Health Services Center, Inc. Hindman, Kentucky 41882 Almost 60 years ago, Horace Kephart wrote that "the mountaineers of today are face to face with a mighty change . . . the mountaineer at last is to be caught up in the current of human progress." Nothing so dramatic happened, and again today, the Appalachian region has been rediscovered by more people and more programs than any of us can remember. Appalachia is a complex geographical and cultural society. One can describe the Appalachian as a proud backwoodsman of English ancestry who pays his own way in a life isolated from the rest of the world. One can also describe him as a ne'er-do-well, living off handouts, and wanting to be classified as totally and permanently disabled. Both descriptions are true, over-simplified, and prejudicial. Any attempt to stereotype him leads to incorrect assumptions. Huge agencies organized for the Appalachians' interest, with bureaucratic precision, generate band-aid remedies that are sold as concrete efforts at problem solving, but they signify only betrayed hopes and broken promises. The "do-gooders" have defined them not responsible and attempt to impose paternalism, a concept rapidly being rejected by Appalachian residents. They are becoming so organized that expanded programs within the area have begun to give new life to the region. Among perpendicular hills, people still live in hollows, some of which are isolated from the population centers in the area. The economic growth centers are booming and are developing many characteristics generally found in this country. Their development has resulted in a sharp separation 92 �of "the haves" and "the have nots." We have been told that the people who live in the hollows must move to the centers as defined by the government. The hollows must be flooded to serve as electrical and water resources for the rest of the country. The development of these "economic growth centers" now makes it possible for the hillbilly to become a migrant in his own land—in the move from the hollow to the county-seat town. Among bureaucrats, co-ordination is a dirty word. Each agency goes about its work in the hollows with nothing but contempt for the others. As justification for such actions, one is told how badly the Appalachian measures up against the rest of the nation—how far behind he is in infant mortality, educational opportunities, and social activities. Resident hillbillies have never had much say in such decisions, but today the number of young Appalachian leaders is growing; they do not buy such cultural destruction. They have become educated, they have seen the mistakes, and still they have maintained the ability to relate to the resident hillbilly. One program is called the East Kentucky Health Services Center, a family-centered, primary-care facility offering a wide range of services reaching out from a professionally staffed ambulatory care center into the community with programs of preventive medicine. Primary care is delivered in the clinic by a team of physicians, nurses, community health advocates, and para-medical support personnel. The outreach efforts involve all staff members. EKHSC brought into the area the first laboratory, the first X-ray facilities, the first round-the-clock emergency coverage, a sliding fee-forservice practice, and many other innovations. 93 �It is in this kind of effort, where the changes are initiated by outsiders but governed by mountaineers, that the future lies. Here the doors of isolation can be opened, not in one sudden leap, but gradually, thus retaining what is good about the mountain way of living. 94 �Richard C. Jackson Lees-McRae College Banner Elk, North Carolina The following viewpoint may fairly represent that of some people who have neither aligned themselves with any group nor formed their own. I believe that a person has the right to do as he sees fit with his talents, gifts, land, and money, but it would be wrong for me (alone or with others) to force another person to do what seemed right to me. It is wrong to attempt to coerce another to use his resources in a certain way. It is also immoral to use one's talents and resources without regard for the welfare and dignity of one's neighbors, for the needs of those who will come after, or for the well-being of the earth itself. Enough attempts have been made to push people into "right" decisions, with more than enough disregard for neighbors, posterity, and the earth. It doesn't matter a great deal if we call it zoning, land-use planning, development, or just progress. Zoning, land-use planning, development, and progress are not in themselves undesirable, but the ways we have gone about initiating them are subject to question. The particular danger lies in our tendency to claim goodness for what is not good and to base decisions on inaccurate premises. Entertainment, recreation, rest, quietness, and prosperity are all seen as good. Consequently, the means to these ends (promotion of tourism, second homes, resorts, etc.) are also regarded as good. We have not inquired much into how things have been accomplished, what the long-range costs are, who benefits most, or what are the implications of the kinds of recreation that have been promoted. Until we have examined these matters 95 �closely, we stand in danger of having accepted, and acclaimed, a kind of cheap progress that ignores some basic human concerns: Is health care better? Is there less crime? Has the judicial process improved? Has alcoholism declined? Do the aged have more options? Many manifestations are disturbing. The "mountain way" is touted as being quiet and restful, but a lot of the paraphernalia of urban regions is being brought in to support a growing population of people accustomed to "conveniences." In short, the qualities that attracted people in the first place are rapidly being eroded. I believe that community, an important concept, is endangered. I cannot understand the "community" that stations guards at the entrances or is composed primarily of absentees who leave their driveways blocked by chains and gates. 96 �Gratis D. Williams Appalachian State University Boone, North Carolina Traditionally, the life of the Appalachian mountain man was selfcontained, complete, harsh at times, frustrated by conflict occasionally, and marooned in isolation generally, but nevertheless a satisfying and challenging life in the midst of rolling hills where he pastured his livestock, followed his traditions as a hunter, found the timber for his skills with wood, and gathered medicinal herbs for his health needs. He was selfsufficient, independent, and fiercely proud. In his isolation, he has kept alive those virtues and qualities of character that for his ancestors, at the time of the American Revolution, had been the strength that enabled 13 struggling colonies to resist successfully the tyranny of one of the powerful nations of the world. By remaining content with fewer material goods and fewer creature comforts, he increased his wealth of confidence, leisure, and accouterments of relaxation. He had more time to do what he wanted than men in the larger society had, and he knew how to enjoy time as it came to him. The simplicity of life in the mountains and the rich texture of the traditions there have become the envy in recent years of a jaded and falling American middle class, that long-touted moral backbone of our civilization groping painfully for some sign of regeneration, for some hope of relief from the tax burden, from the pressures of a society in which even the production of food has been preempted by big business, from the disruptions of everyday processes by greedy self-seekers, from the decay of the cities, from 97 �the paving of the countryside, and from the pollution of the atmosphere and the water sources. Just when Americans look with longing toward the mountains, the mountains themselves, so long symbols of freedom and independence, have been preempted by the ruthless bulldozers that lay hopeless waste to the highlands themselves. To cultivate again the dormant culture of the mountains, to provide more room for the human being himself to function as a free individual, we must preserve the mountains and save Appalachia from becoming a wasteland. 98 �Conclusion In these days of endless (and frequently futile) conferences, the Southern Appalachian Regional Conference, in its earnestness and enthusiasm, was an example to all. Its main topics—Energy, Land Use, The Human Spirit—while convenient for starting points for discussion, turned out to be inseparable. The worldwide need for ENERGY makes Appalachia a prime target of both the needy and the greedy. The mineowners use a legitimate resource, but leave little profit with the original owners; skim off the easily stripped areas, leaving rich veins virtually inaccessible; and abandon the land, frequently beyond reclamation. The owners generally avoid the deep though richer mines because of higher wages to the workers and because of a growing insistence that they abide by costly health and safety regulations. This ravage of the land has side effects less immediately visible—the building of otherwise useless roads, the harm to existing roads by heavy trucks and other machinery, and leaving the denuded land open to erosion and flooding. All the energy acquisition and use are, of course, a major, if not the major, aspect of LAND USE in Appalachia. Other problems affecting the 99 �land are the preservation of food acreage in a world approaching subsistence reserves (if not starvation), the matter of cutting timber for lumber or pulp weighed against letting it stand for flood control and water supply, the opening of the wilderness beauty for the delight of all vs. its destruction by those whom it was meant to please. Appalachian energy resources and land use both affect the HUMAN SPIRIT of the region. Where is the limit for any of the following? 1. extracting the coal for genuine need 2. applying the profits to local individuals and communities 3. opening the scenic areas to outsiders 4. preserving the timber, the agriculture land, and the water resources 5. the distribution of the economic benefits of both land use and coal mining to the original owners in their fight against ignorance, drudgery, and disease. It can thus be seen that each benefit must be weighed against a possible harm. The participants in this conference have done exactly that, as the following statement by the Goals and Objectives Committee and a dissenting opinion from another group will show. 100 �Statement by The Goals and Objectives Committee SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGIONAL CONFERENCE BOONE, NORTH CAROLINA May 16, 1974 The following statement was derived from a careful consideration of the major suggestions, concerns, and objectives put forth during the concurrent sessions of the conference. Recognizing that the patience of the people in Appalachia has been strained for many years, recognizing that past practices of the extractive and other industries have imposed not only great injustices, but also social and private costs upon the people, anticipating further a major increase in coal production for the immediate future, we urge the consideration of the following* observations, objectives, and concerns: 1. Since change is inevitable in Appalachia, and long-range planning for the quality of life in the region is desirable, it must include a concern for traditional values and cannot be done without the people shaping their own destiny. 2. The people of Appalachia must therefore become more active in the decisions that affect their future. Of particular significance are the decisions affecting educational institutions, land use policy, and economic development. Many important decisions about the future of the region must come from local communities; the people therefore urgently need to develop a sense of selfdetermination and a more sensitized, equitable, and responsive mountain leadership. *The sequence of items is no indication of their priority. 101 �3. Educational institutions in Appalachia must relate more consciously to the mountain experience. They must include a concern for the rich historical and cultural heritage of the region, an awareness of the relationship between human beings and their land, and of the alternatives for the future and for the human values involved. As for land-use planning, the following objectives are of major importance. Planners must: 1. develop through education the understanding by decision makers and by the general public of the physical, human, and economic impact and consequences of their decisions and of the effective use of the planning process as a tool for making their decisions and actions produce the maximum benefits to individuals and society. (Decisions might result in no change as well as controlled change.) 2. obtain the recognition at local, state, and national levels that the mountain terrain is a sensitive environment of limited capacity for development. It is essential to realize that the lack of rational, informed guidance and control of land use can generate crisis conditions in which subsequent recovery costs are excessive and the opportunity to protect and preserve basic values may be foreclosed 3. accumulate a considerably improved data base for the region, for sub-regions, and for localities so that land-use decisions can be 102 �supported factually, and develop the methodology to facilitate the use of this information for decision making 4. establish local implementation and enforcement of land-use controls that are locally determined instead of using the minimum standards and guidelines established at state and federal levels; the acceptance of state and federal guidelines is still necessary because land use and its changes affect areas beyond local political boundaries 5. establish patterns of land use that favor clustering over widespread dispersal wherever it can be shown that the environmental and social impact can thereby be minimized 6. provide for the development at local levels of land-use policies that reflect local values and the development capacity of the region. The relative long-term effects of growth versus no-growth policies should be critically examined 7. establish and maintain as basic the right of all individuals potentially affected by land-use changes to be heard through public hearings and petition 8. establish as a responsibility of those who cause change to provide all pertinent information that will allow for a comprehensive evaluation of the on-site and off-site, short-term and long-term effects of the proposed change for purposes of approval. In ad- dition, the principle of planned sequential use should be applied to all extractive industries to insure long-term community benefits as a consequence of their practices 103 �9. devise feasible ways to reclaim areas that have suffered from inappropriate land use in the past 10. facilitate the use of experts in tax-supported colleges and universities as a public service available to the community to protect its interests and the interests of society in general. In the area of energy supply and consumption we find the following observations vitally important. The goals of national energy policy ought to be equity and efficiency. We therefore make the following specific recommendations: 1. The goals of energy conservation and the promotion of increased energy production can best be achieved by permitting the price mechanism to work. We recognize that at present certain barriers distort these market forces, namely: a. the lack of accurate information b. uncertainty c. market imperfections such as the ownership of the major fuel sources by the international petroleum cartels. Where the price mechanism causes special hardship to segments of the population or to certain workers or businesses, the inequities ought to be corrected, but distortion of the basic market system ought not be used to achieve the corrections, e . g . , where low-income families are adversely affected by higher fuel costs or where a changing fuel market brings about unemployment. A solution to the first hardship might be some form of income supplement; a possible solution to the second would be funds for 104 �retraining, for moving costs, or for easing the burden of sudden unemployment. 2. Prices and costs of each energy producer ought to reflect full costs, including all social and private costs, so as to prevent, as far as possible, harmful social and private costs. This could best be achieved by federal legislation, setting national standards in health and safety, environment, and reclamation. States should have the option of setting higher standards. In addition, for certain social and private costs (such as highway construction, welfare costs, and damage to property), only states and localities can and should provide remedies. It is understood that such legislation must be vigorously enforced. 3. Increased research and development to explore existing and alternative energy systems are needed. These systems must be exam- ined in terms of extraction, transportation, conversion, and use. We need to study the technology, economy, and impact on the individual and society of these questions. It is important to look not only at individual components of energy systems, but also at their interrelation. For instance, coal is in direct competition with nuclear fuels, oil, and gas in electric power production. Thus technological or market changes in any of these fuels will have repercussions on the coal industry and thus on Appalachia. The following members of the Goals and Objectives Committee participated in the drafting of this statement of objectives and take full responsibility for its content: 105 �John R. Moore James Noel F. Schmidt-Bleek, Chairman Neil M. Walp Don aid F. Crickmer Ronald Eller James Hackett Ernest E. Hendrix Mary D. Houska 106 �MINORITY REPORT STATEMENT We recommend that this conference adopt a proposal to extend the Appalachian mountains a stay of execution. By this we mean that, while we are struggling with solutions to land use and stripping, it is imperative that the destructive actions be stopped until a reasonable study and policy be implemented to satisfy the will of the inhabitants of the affected areas. As it is, we are losing around 25 acres of land for each hour we carry on this dialogue. We find it irresponsible to sit in a burning building while planning ways to put the fire out. Frank Kilgore Rick Kirby Frank Taylor John Tiller Catherine Tiller Jack Wright Robert Raymond Burt Purrington Rhoda Cerny Kent Cave Judy Cornett Helen Matthews Lewis Kenneth Murray Jerry Williamson Charlotte T. Ross Jane Cummins James Branscome Steve Fisher Peggy Rives Beth Bingman Linda Johnson Mary Ellen Griffith 107 �Appendix A Speech by Governor James E. Holshouser, Jr. Regional Conference on the Future of Southern Appalachia Conference Theme Toward 1984: The Future of Appalachia? 13 May 1974 We're all here for this conference because we share an interest in this unique and special part of the world known as Appalachia, and because we all have a role in shaping its future. This is a big region. Its potential is unlimited, and its problems are complex. No longer is Appalachia an isolated, remote place of beauty, but, because of its vast and essential resources, its future has become closely and critically meshed with the future of this country—and even the world. That's why we are here . . . that's why this conference is taking place. We will have different opinions . . . our interests may seem to conflict, but all of us recognize that the future of Appalachia (and perhaps the future of all of us) demands that there be careful and thoughtful consideration, a free exchange of ideas and viewpoints, and sound and sober planning . I grew up in these mountains, and I've watched them change. Right here in this county, I have seen many changes in j u s t a few short years. We've seen a gradual influx of new industry, providing better incomes to many of our people. We've seen this area develop into a major, year-round tourist and recreation resort. We've seen the impact of such attractions as "Horn in the West," "Tweetsie Railroad," Grandfather Mountain and the Land of Oz on our economy and our way of life. 108 �We've seen mountainsides transformed into ski slopes, bringing thousands of visitors and part-time residents to share our winters with u s . We've seen total communities grow up around these resorts, complete with golf courses, swimming pools, and tennis courts. We've seen this campus grow from a small teachers' college to a major state university, producing leaders and scholars in many fields, while Western Carolina University and the University of North Carolina at Asheville have made great strides. We've seen community colleges and technical institutes spring up throughout the mountains, bringing greater opportunities to our people. None of these things could have happened without roads—the roads that have made these former "lost provinces" readily accessible to the world outside. In recent years, we have seen dramatic improvements in the highway systems serving all parts of Appalachia and have seen many airports constructed in the region. The most important single force for these changes and economic improvements in this region has been the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC). When the Appalachian Regional Development Act was passed in 1965 , the 13-state Appalachian area had one of the largest concentrations of rural poverty in America. Unemployment was high, health services were sorely inadequate, and transportation systems were poor at best. This program began as one of our nation's first large-scale experiments in state-federal partnership. The success of this partnership has been a major factor in the emergence of the so-called "New Federalism" 109 �that has reversed the flow of pow er to Washington and is starting to send it back to state and local governments. Over the past eight years, Congress has pumped some $ 2 . 2 billion into this region through the Appalachian Regional Commission. In the 13state area, it has spent $1.3 billion for highways, $258 million for health programs, $169 million for vocational education, $ 9 . 5 million for housing, and $330 million in supplemental grants for various public works projects. In North Carolina alone, the ARC has provided more than $115 million to the 29 counties that are part of the Appalachian Region. This total includes more than $54 million for development of highways, almost $4 million for local access roads, $5 million for child development programs, $17 million for health programs, $1.5 million for soil conservation, $ 7 7 , 0 0 0 for timber development, almost $1 million for housing, $ 9 . 7 million for vocational education, almost $3 million for research, and $19 million to supplement other federal grants for construction of water systems, sewer systems, libraries, hospitals, industrial parks, solid waste systems, and other facilities. The Appalachian Regional program has played a vital role in improving the quality of life for our people. State and local officials, and private business and industry have made great contributions to this goal. This is not to say that the job is done, or even that we're approaching the finish line, but we have made progress. Yet progress, too, has its hazards. If we rush pell-mell to develop these mountainsides, to harness the rivers, and to remove the mineral resources, without looking to either side to see what is happening, we could 110 �wake up one day and find ourselves wondering if this is the same land that we all knew and loved. We know that this region—possibly more than any other—offers our best hope for solution of the country's energy problems and for enabling the United States to meet its energy needs independent of other countries. We know that the coal is there, but we also know the environmental dangers involved. It's, a big job, but one we can do. America has met so many challenges . . . the challenge of landing on the moon . . . the challenge of finding a vaccine for polio. Who is going to say that we cannot lick this challenge? With careful determination, we can find a way to remove the tremendous reservoir of coal that remains in the ground without doing irreparable damage to the mountains. In this, however, as in all we do, we must plan and work to make sure that we protect ourselves , that we don't wake up to find someday that we have let slip all the good things these mountains mean to us. An elusive term known as "quality of life" includes the ability of a man to provide for himself and his family, but it encompasses more than that—more than income or bricks and mortar. It also encompasses our environment—the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the beauty of the earth and trees and flowers . That's what this conference is all about—Energy, Environment, and the Human Spirit. I talked about growing up here in this corner of Appalachia, I talked about the changes I've seen, but I didn't mention the things that haven't changed, the intangibles that had an even greater impact on me. Ill �I'm talking about the great human and moral values that are ingrained in our people—values such as thrift, paying our own way, knowing that, with most people, a man's word is as good as his bond. These values are a vital part of Appalachia—perhaps the best part. As we look to the future of Appalachia, let us not neglect the importance of preserving these values and sharing them with the rest of the world. 112 �Appendix B John B. Howard Deveiopment of Energy Resources An Address to the Southern Appalachian Regional Conference Boone, North Carolina 13 May 1974 I was asked to come down to speak on one of the three topics of this conference—energy. In a sense, the entire conference is on energy. Since all but a small fraction of the energy we use comes from the land, land use and energy are inseparable. Energy also has a powerful impact on the hu- man being—since lack of energy can mean poverty and despair and a dampening of the human spirit. It is a pleasure for me to return to Appalachia. I say "return" because I was a reporter for U.S. News and World Report for a decade. This was the decade of Lyndon B. Johnson's war on poverty, and much attention was directed toward Appalachia. When we realized Appalachia was to be in the news, we decided to find someone who understood the region. I was impressed by a book entitled "Night Comes to the Cumberlands," written by Harry Caudill (whom some of you may know) and decided to go to Whitesburg, Kentucky to interview him. Following that interview, we got in his car for a tour of Appalachia I will never forget. We drove up the "hollers," over roads that were indescribable; I saw poverty such as I had not seen in our big cities. I met people to whom welfare was a way of life. I saw, long before environment became a cause in this country, the results of environmental negligence. Mountains had been literally ripped apart, streams poisoned by acid, places 113 �of great scenic beauty destroyed. The impact on my thinking was lasting. I returned twice to write stories on the progress, or lack of progress, of government programs to help Appalachia. If at any time in the rest of my speech I sound like an anti-environmentalist, believe me I am not. Even if we have to crawl on our hands and knees from one town to the other for lack of energy, we cannot rape our land and destroy it for future generations. Right off, of course, I am in deep trouble. You show great courage in asking someone from the oil industry to speak on energy here in coal country, but maybe it is appropriate after all. People working in the energy field recognize that they must look at the total energy picture—not j u s t at one particular fuel. In recent years, we have seen dramatic demonstrations of the interrelationships between energy sources. What happens in one energy field can have a heavy impact on all others. When you get right down to it, why do we have an energy problem? It is because coal can no longer be used in many of its major markets , because nuclear power has come on-stream much more slowly than anticipated, and because little additional energy has been available from hydropower. This means that petroleum—oil and natural gas—have had to bear a disproportionate share of the sharply increasing energy demand. Inadequate development of domestic petroleum resources made it necessary to turn to foreign oil to make up the energy shortfall. Then came the Arab oil embargo, and we discovered the folly of this policy. The events of the past winter, grim as they were, probably had some beneficial effects. For one thing, we were reminded that our society is sewn together with the thread of energy. We had been told, ad nauseum, 114 �that the United States, with only 6% of the world's population, consumes over 30% of its energy. This fact was supposed to fill us with horror because of its supposed inequity. It is true, of course, that this country has wasted energy. Resources that are cheap and abundant are usually wasted, but if a nation had 30% of the world's population and 6% of its energy consumption, it would contain a poverty-stricken people slaving from sunup to sundown to try to feed and clothe themselves and their families. Energy availability determines life styles. In the last century, the availability of coal, especially along our Eastern seaboard, transformed our nation from an agricultural to an industrial society. In this century, the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine has had equally far-reaching effects upon our lives. Just since World War II, we have seen a steadily increasing concentration of population in our large metropolitan areas and a huge expansion of suburbia made possible by the automobile. An intricate system of superhighways links our cities, and jet aircraft whisk us from one end of the country to the other in the time it took our grandfathers to travel to the nearest town. The increased ability to commute longer distances and more leisure time led to a booming travel business and an unbelievable expansion of resort areas along our coasts. I pass no value judgment on whether these changes were desirable or undesirable. I only note that none of them would have taken place without petroleum energy and the internal combustion engine. The Arab oil embargo and long gasoline lines served as a reminder of the importance of energy. Automobile and airline workers were laid o f f , and suppliers of these industries were affected by cutbacks in orders. Builders 115 �in resort areas suffered nightmares; they were joined by people in the travel business and manufacturers of powerboats, snowmobiles, trailers, and other gasoline-consuming pleasure vehicles. We had a brief demonstration of the inescapable fact that lack of energy can lead to economic stagnation, unemployment, and ultimately to spreading poverty and a decline in living standards. Another beneficial effect of the embargo was to provide an early warning of the consequences of heavy reliance on insecure foreign energy supplies. Reputable estimates by both industry and government experts, prepared in early 1973, indicated that by 1980 we might be dependent on foreign nations for half our oil needs, and that by 1985 this might reach two-thirds of U.S. oil requirements. If we ever come to depend on foreign nations for two-thirds of our petroleum, the measures that have helped us greatly to meet recent energy problems—such as turning back thermostats, driving more slowly, and carpooling—would be exercises in futility. If we are now convinced of the folly of excessive dependence on foreign supplies and of the need to develop our domestic energy resources, the embargo served us well. Had the embargo taken place five years later, when our dependence on Arabian oil was far greater, the result could have been a national disaster instead of merely a painful and unpleasant experience. In energy presentations, the usual approach is to discuss the shortage, trace its origins, then point the finger of blame at every group except the one you represent. Today, I propose to eschew Monday-morning quarterbacking. Let us admit that our energy shortfall is the result of many complex forces 116 �converging at once: the rising expectations and resulting energy needs of a growing population; restrictions on energy development brought on by an emerging—and too long delayed—concern for man's environment; fragmented and inappropriate decisions by government agencies that discouraged domestic energy development; too much business as usual and lack of foresight by energy industries; and imprudent energy use by American consumers stemming from our long history of energy abundance. We do not have to look very hard to find plenty of blame to pass around. We are now at the point in the energy crisis where rhetoric must give way to constructive solutions. Let us spend our time addressing the crucial issue of solutions, and leave history to historians. U . S . energy consumption is massive. It is measured in quadrillions of b t u ' s , billions of tons of coal, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, or billions of barrels of oil—sums and quantities too big to be grasped. (Speakers should avoid them like the plague.) A few figures, however, are important to keep in mind. Fossil fuels today provide 95% of U . S . energy. Petroleum accounts for 78% of total energy needs. Oil alone furnishes 45%, which means that the United States consumes about 18 million barrels of oil a day. Coal sup- plies 17% of our energy, hydropower provides 4%, and nuclear power, the remaining 1%. Basic logic tells us that there are three ways to solve the energy problem: we must either decrease energy demand, increase energy supply, or do a little of both. Let us take a brief look at the options now open to us. To cut energy demand, we must do one of two things: (1) restrict 117 �demand by allocation and rationing of fuel; (2) reduce demand by encouraging more frugal use of energy by U.S. consumers. Allocation and rationing are not solutions to energy problems. They will not produce one more barrel of oil, one more cubic foot of natural gas, or one more watt of electricity. They are designed to share scarcity. When shortages reach unacceptable levels, these programs are vital to insure that essential users such as farmers, policemen, and doctors receive adequate fuel, but they never have and never will operate very effectively. Energy conservation is another matter entirely. It is extremely important. The oil industry and all energy industries are behind conservation programs 100%, and are spending millions of dollars every day on radio, TV, or newspapers to urge conservation. Unlike more permanent solutions, which will take time, we can start practicing energy conservation today. If we can curb demand, supplies will stretch farther. But energy industries are not seeking permanent 55-mile-per-hour speed limits, permanently chilly homes and offices, poor airplane service, darkened cities, and all the other problems, including higher unemployment. We need to provide citizens with energy, not deny it to them. I can walk ten blocks from my office and find Americans who still have no car, no air conditioner, and no dishwasher. I have seen with my own eyes the poverty in parts of Appalachia. These people have few or none of the energy-using appliances most Americans take for granted. Our country will be in deep trouble if we fail to supply them with energy, and condemn them to a life of poverty. 118 �Energy conservation, of course, involves a lot more than lower speed limits and lower thermostats. As about 40% of energy is used in industry, there is a big potential for energy savings in this field—but it cannot be realized immediately. It requires new equipment and processes to use energy more efficiently and re-use heat. I hope that we will develop a conservation ethic and make wiser use of energy. (I believe we will, especially since energy will be more expensive.) But even if future demand falls short of present forecasts—and these forecasts indicate almost a tripling of energy demand by the end of this century--we must still have huge increases in energy supplies. Energy conservation can reduce the growth rate of demand. The elimination of frivolous energy use is long overdue, but it is only part of the solution to the energy shortfall. We must operate on the supply side of the street as well as on the demand side. How can we increase energy supplies? For one thing, we can take a fresh look at coal. We have a sufficient supply of coal to last 300 to 500 years, but most of it cannot be used since its high-sulfur content cannot meet environmental regulations. As a result, thousands of manufacturing and commercial firms have been forced to switch from coal to oil—and when these environmental demands could no longer be met, the energy crisis was upon us. The oil industry does not now and never has favored scrapping the Clean Air Act. Protection of the environment is a necessity, not a luxury. Regulations designed to protect human health are essential. A number of regulations in effect, however, are not essential to human health. These can be looked at more critically. There are barriers to increased use of coal, including a lack of readily available 119 �coal supplies. There are also, as you well know, problems involved in the mining of coal. I pose as no expert in this field. It is very clear that strip mining cannot and should not be carried out in areas where reclamation is not feasible. It is clear that there are major health and safety problems connected with underground mining. It is also clear that we must solve these problems and make increased use of coal. This is really not an option—it is a necessity. Unfortunately, until coal can be converted to the more environmentally acceptable liquid or gaseous forms, its role in meeting future energy demands will be limited. The nuclear age is dawning, but very slowly. Almost 30 years after the splitting of the atom, it provides only 1% of our total energy. Nuclear plants have been delayed by both technical and environmental problems. Cumbersome and slow licensing procedures have been a major bottleneck. Fortunately, the government is attempting to speed up and streamline these procedures. The faster they can be brought on-stream the better. However, even if this is done, most experts agree that even by 1985 nuclear power will provide only about 10% of our total energy needs. Another option is to develop widely-discussed new sources of energy, such as oil and gas from coal, oil from tar sands, nuclear f u s i o n , or solar power. Indeed, although research and development of synthetic and "exotic" fuels must be accelerated, it is essential to look at the time frames for development. Oil shale, coal gasification, and coal liquefaction are mid-term solutions to energy problems. A few synthetic fuel plants may be built starting later in this decade, and many more in the next decade, but they will supply relatively little energy until the end of this century. The use of 120 �nuclear fusion and solar power, and harnessing the oceans' tides are solutions to 21st Century energy problems. Although we must have these new technologies available to supplement and eventually replace fossil f u e l s , to solve today's and tomorrow's energy problems, and those of the next decade, we shall have to rely on existing technology and conventional fuels. It is clear to anyone who has studied the energy problem that it cannot be solved without oil. What can be done to develop our domestic petro- leum resources? The answere are really not difficult. We have to go where the geolo- gists tell us we can find large amounts of oil and gas, drill for it, construct the necessary pipelines or other transportation facilities needed to move it to refineries, and construct more refineries. Let's talk first about the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). While estimates vary, and some new estimates are lower, it is thought to contain about half of our estimated recoverable oil and gas resources. It may contain twice as much of all the oil and gas we have consumed since Colonel Drake struck oil in 1859. Do not confuse available proven reserves with potentially recoverable reserves. Sometimes, I read articles that leave readers with the impression that we have run out of oil and gas. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are not "out" of oil and gas. We are out of available supplies that we can tap and use now. Oil under the oceans off our coasts or the Arctic tundra cannot heat homes or run cars. We remain rich in energy resources. Certainly our fossil fuels are finite—that is obvious to everyone. Also, we will run low on oil and gas about the middle of the next century and on coal 121 �in two or three more centuries, but these resources are available now and we need them now. Why haven't we developed our offshore resources? First, the federal government owns the OCS. Industry must bid for leases if, as, and when the government offers tracts for lease. But lease sales have been small and few. Environmental opposition has strongly influenced government leasing policies, with the Santa Barbara spill in 1969 a powerful factor in curtailing OCS development. Nobody can defend an oil spill, but we think our overall environmental safety record is good. We have worked hard to develop foolproof devices to avoid oil spills, and additional ways to clean up those that do occur. We think the risks of environmental damage from offshore drilling is smaller than the risk of tanker accidents due to collisions , storms, and the like that will occur if we foolishly continue to rely on imports—imports we may or may not receive. Even though only about 2% of the OCS has been explored, we already get close to one-fifth of our domestic oil and gas from it. However, as a result of small lease sales, the percentage actually went down last year for the first time since offshore drilling began a quarter of a century ago. While strict environmental safeguards are essential, and must be rigidly enforced, we must sharply accelerate the development of this rich national resource. Second, let us talk about Alaska. Six years ago the largest oil field ever discovered in this hemisphere was found at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope. This oil is still right there. Although we finally have clearance to build the pipeline after seemingly endless delays, it will be 1977 122 �at the earliest before it is completed and we get the first drop of that ten billion barrels of oil. Alaska may have a lot more oil, but for six years exploration and drilling have been virtually suspended since there was no assurance that any oil found could be marketed. We really do not know how much oil there is in Alaska. We may find two or three more Prudhoe Bays. We may need a second oil pipeline in Alaska, as well as a gas pipeline. We are confident that this valuable oil and gas can be extracted with minimal impact on the ecology of Alaska. Although the Outer Continental Shelf and Alaska are believed to contain most of our oil, much is still left in the lower 48 states. The "easy oil" close to the surface has been found, but there is still a lot of it deeper in the ground. The deeper you drill, the more it costs—and costs increase geometrically rather than arithmetically with depth. The production of this oil depends greatly on whether the price of oil is high enough to yield an adequate return on investment. Drilling is a high-risk business. The deepest well ever drilled went down over 3 0 , 0 0 0 feet in Oklahoma last year—and it was a dry hole. In fact, out of every 100 new-field exploratory wells drilled, only nine strike oil and gas, and only two contain commercially significant amounts. If there is little prospect of an adequate return, the risks will not be taken. An adequate price will also encourage the use of more sophisticated recovery methods, including what is called "secondary" and "tertiary" recovery. This uses water or chemicals to force more oil out of the pores of rocks, where it is tightly held, and bring it to the surface. 123 �As these methods are expensive, their use cannot be justified if oil prices are depressed. Between 1956 and 1973, the number of wells drilled in the United States fell by more than 50% because of depressed oil prices and the limited access of the industry to the most promising fields. Increased lease sales on the OCS in the past year, the prospect of being able to build the transAlaska pipeline, and improved oil prices have finally brought an upturn in drilling. This will not be reflected immediately in terms of increased energy, since it takes three to ten years to develop an oil field—but it is the only route to increased domestic petroleum supplies. Unfortunately, even if we can increase domestic oil supplies and reduce dependence on foreign nations for crude oil, we have another problem. Crude oil, by itself, is of little value; it must be turned into fuel oil, gasoline, kerosene, and all the other products we need so critically. Even if U.S. refineries run flat out, they cannot meet all our needs. There are not enough refineries to do it, because just about every conceivable factor has worked to discourage rather than encourage new refinery construction. One problem has been uncertainty about crude oil supplies. Obviously, you cannot build a plant without some assurance that the basic raw material needed to operate it can be obtained. Changes in the oil import-quota pro- gram last year removed some of this uncertainty, but, obviously, the Arab embargo raised new fears about crude oil availability. Economics has been another deterrent to new plant construction. A 150,000-barrel-a-day refinery can cost $200 million or more. Before deciding to invest that kind of money, a firm needs some assurance that the 124 �expenditure will be recoverable in the marketplace. The situation in the last several years, with Phases I to IV and various off-again, on-again price controls, has not encouraged heavy investment in additional refining capacity. Another problem involves location or siting. Everyone seems to want refineries as long as they are in someone else's back yard. Environmental opposition has been vocal and effective. One state passed a law completely banning refinery construction in its coastal zone. This problem is especially acute along the East Coast, which has the greatest need for refineries. The Atlantic Seaboard requires 40% of total U . S . oil consumption, but has only 12% of its refining capacity. We need to find reasons to grant permits to build refineries, instead of reasons to block or delay construction. It is estimated that we will need the equivalent of 60 new refineries to meet expected demands by 1985. Even if this figure turns out to be high, and we need only 40 or 50 as a result of energy conservation or more rapid development of other energy sources, you should know that only one new refinery came on-stream last year, one small one will come on next year, and none the next. This is because only the one refinery is presently under construction--and it takes at least three years to build one. A number of plans were announced last year to build new refineries. The Arab oil embargo shelved some of these plans , but it is hoped that they will now be revived. These announced plans for new refineries have already met powerful opposition. Many are likely to be delayed or never built at all. We have a few more problems in the oil industry, such as a need for deepwater ports and some worrisome material and manpower shortages . None 125 �of these problems is unmanageable if we are determined to remove bottlenecks and produce more oil and gas. Are we really determined to develop domestic energy resources? Will we be willing to use more coal? Will we speed up development of nuclear power? Will we accelerate development of new fuels? Will we develop our vital oil and gas reserves? Will we continue to practice energy conservation? Or will we go back to sleep, rely increasingly on foreign energy, and find ourselves one day confronted with far more serious energy problems than we have already experienced? We cannot be sure. In Congress, we have seen proposals to roll back crude oil prices to levels that would discourage the development of domestic petroleum resources and slow the pace of development of more expensive new fuels. At the very time when the industry requires much capital to undertake drilling and exploration, accelerate research and development, build refineries and deepwater ports, we see proposals to tax away much of the money needed to accomplish these things. There is talk of breaking up or nationalizing the industry. Higher taxes, lower prices, and a less efficient industry are not solutions to energy problems. We have a chance to reverse our earlier drift toward energy dependence and restore some semblance of self-sufficiency. Can we achieve this by 1980 as President Nixon said last year? I doubt it, but it is the direction that is important and not the timing. Future generations will hold us to blame if, at this key point in our history, we fail to take the steps 126 �necessary to insure energy self-sufficiency and enable them to live in a strong, independent, and free nation. 127 �Exhibit C Heritage of Appalachia Address by Gratis D. Williams Acting Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs Appalachian State University to the Southern Appalachian Regional Conference Boone, North Carolina 13 May 1974 Appalachia can be seen as a vanishing frontier and the people as frontiersmen, suspended and isolated, while the rest of the country moves across the twentieth century. Although we are not as far behind now as we were 20 years ago, we are still close enough to the frontier days to describe them with some degree of confidence, for we have become concerned about recording the fullness of our heritage, particularly our cultural heritage. This cultural heritage probably owes more to the Scotch-Irish than to any other sub-national group. Although we cannot say that a certain percentage of the blood of the average mountaineer is Scotch-Irish, we know it dominates because the Scotch-Irish were a particular kind of people who dominated their communities even when they were outnumbered. I must tell you something about the Scotch-Irish, for this is mainly what we are today in the mountains. The Scotch-Irish, first of all, were survivors. They were a hardy group who had achieved a homogeneity over a period of 2 ,000 years by being pushed as remnants before various invaders into the hilly country of the middle of Great Britain—the Scottish border. They were not Scotsmen as we typically think of Scotsmen, nor were they English. They were a strange 128 �mixture, not only of the Scots and the English, but of other invaders who in turn were forced into the hills. This meant that they developed a physical quality that differentiated them from other British people. More than anything else, they became the kind of people who could survive on a shoestring. They were resourceful; they knew how to make do; and this in time affected their basic philosophy. They were, therefore, among the first to pitch wholeheartedly into the Reformation as it developed on the island of Great Britain, and their whole philosophy and history prepared them for Calvinistic theology, which they embraced with great fondness. They were, of course, in the center of the War of the Reformation. They followed Cromwell and John Knox. They were troublemakers. They were stubborn. They were literalists. When the time came to'resettle North Ireland, the Crown thought it best not to pick people who would in time either mix with the Irish or feel any sympathy for them. This meant that the Highland Scots were excluded. The English people themselves, being good Episcopalians, were still close to Catholicism. The ideal people to interest in going to Ireland were ones who would have nothing to do with Catholicism, namely, these middle Scotch-Irish who at that time had no label. So North Ireland, after the defection of the Earl of Tyrone, was resettled by these people, where for the first time in their history they had an opportunity to show what they could do. They developed linen industries that were a threat to the London merchants . They knew how to develop the soil to make it productive. They developed the first system of education similar to a public school system in America. They became the best educated common people in Europe. 129 �Within a 100 years, they became a threat to the established order. Laws had to be passed to protect the rest of English civilization against the advances of the Scotch-Irish. Tax laws were passed so that their linen industries could be held in place, and at that point the Scotch-Irish began to hate the British. Then the famines came and, by the middle of the 1730s, the Scotch-Irish had to move out. They came to America. At this time they found much land already taken in America. They had to pay indentureships because they were very poor. They came as bondsmen and paid off their indentureships often by serving as instructors or tutors in the homes of the wealthy. In time, when land was available along the border, they took it up. Here they reestablished their culture, supported by a hardy outlook on life and sustained by a Calvinistic philosophy that enabled them to be fatalistic about whatever lay ahead. They multiplied rapidly because they believed in large families. They were patriarchal because they thought father was the head of the household. The woman accepted this role and deferred to his wishes, as she still does today. Along the border they fought back the Indians . They went into the valleys and brought forth whatever was there. They were not yet differentiated from other frontiersmen. (They were not labeled as mountaineers until after the Civil War.) When the Revolution came, however, they remembered their experiences with the British in North Ireland, and almost to a man, were anti-British. When the time came to say "Let us see what we can do with Ferguson at Kings Mountain," they all came together without any rehearsal. They marched on Kings Mountain and took it, though mountain men were not soldiers in the usual sense, and they lacked some of the 130 �niceties and points of honor of soldiers. When the British (really, they were not British but sons of South Carolina—Tories, who were nice people then—and who simply wanted to defend the colonies against the intruders) came marching down the hill waving their white flags, the Scotch-Irish accepted them as prisoners of war but, not knowing what to do with them,they lined them up and shot them. There is still a quality of violence about us. (You can forgive me for anything I say, because I am a mountaineer. My people were all on the border at the time of the Revolution, and they have lived there ever since. I have in my background all those mountaineer traits, including whiskey-making and mountain feuds.) What did the Scotch-Irish bring with them? When they came to the border, they were supra-representative of our settlers. Probably they had higher intelligence than any other one group that came to the borders. They furnished the leadership that went over the mountains and into the valleys, carved out the Northwest Territory, and moved beyond the Mississippi. The cousins stayed in the valleys in the mountains and multiplied--like rabbits— because this is the way mountain people do. When the Civil War came, they were on the wrong side, and by this mistake, they fated themselves as mountaineers later. There had been no differentiation before the Civil War. That the mountain folk remained loyal to the Union was not known to either the North or the South while the war was going on. After the war was over, it became obvious to those who were in power again in the South that the mountaineers had been traitors. Consequently, such tax resources as were available in the states were not shared with the Appalachian area, but were used to reward the faithful. The road 131 �and the school funds were used to help those who had been good. As the mountaineers were allowed to support themselves only on lands that had no tax value, some public schools closed for 18 to 20 years. This meant three or four generations of youngsters who were absolutely illiterate and, though the grandfathers had come to the mountains with calfbound copies of the English poets, the grandsons could not spell their own classical names. They usually gave their children classical names, but these became disordered by the time the illiterate grandsons of the first illiterate generation were ready to write their names again. This also happened to some of the family names. Mountain culture became an oral culture. All that had been known in illiterate fashion settled down to the oral way. There was a redacticism in culture, when the English language itself went backward, and travelers began to observe things that reminded them of Anglo-Saxon. Those who came, looked, and listened said "A-ha! Pure Anglo-Saxon still being spoken." There is some doubt about that, but this purest old-fashioned English is a part of our culture. There had been great theologians, but now the grandsons were illiterate and their theology was simple folklore—passed on by word of mouth. Even the ministers could not read the Bible, but their theology was sound; if they knew how to preach, they could be ordained because it was assumed they knew what to preach. In the meantime, of course, with the revival along the border, mountain people had learned to compromise their theology so that there could be an "experience" of knowing that one is among the elect. Consequently, mountain people, although they were most theological and religious, waited for an "experience" before becoming a "joiner." They 132 �admired the flesh and the devil and found sin so delightful that they postponed the day of salvation as long as possible! The young people then were missed by the church completely, and it became an organization of older people. No matter what the denomination was, the basic theology was still Presbyterian. Forty-seven different brands of Baptists invaded the mountains, but were all basically Presbyterian. The Methodists were very successful in the mountains, but wherever they went, the basic theology remained Presbyterian. Religion was conservative, old-fashioned, and literal. It was a religion of the old people, and one became a "jiner" simply to protect himself from whatever waited after death, for religion had no particular bearing on community life. It was religion, pure and simple, not to be confused with social purpose, interpretation, or even conduct for that matter, because many people were most skillful in using religion as a cloak for their devilment. The artistic traditions were carried on as "foolishment," if you please. This word "foolish" does not mean foolish in the sense you might think, but rather it means "playful." When the mountain woman says, "Oh, this is just a bit of my foolishment," she means it is creativity in her mode and place. We have in this attitude the whole tradition of mountain crafts in the sense that they are used just as gimcracks. On the other hand, when women were quilting and had time to be playful, they were careful about the patterns they used. If they simply needed bed covering, they made crazy quilts. The men were the same way. If the blacksmith had time to be playf u l , he turned out something delightful, but most of the time he was doing 133 �something practical. He was always modest and apologetic about his artistic creations, his "little bits of foolishness." One did not learn to play an instrument, but simply played an instrument. This is an aspect of the Calvinistic view of life—you are either predestined to play an instrument or you are not, and if so, you pick it up and play it. If you are not, all the practice in the world could not help. The same thing is true of an ability to sing. This meant, of course, that mountain folk, being conservative people, carried on the old traditions of singing—the chanting of the Middle Ages, the "histing" of tunes, the exclusion of instruments from their religious services, the best singer in the community simply "tuning his nose" in the manner of Chaucerian characters, and everyone else joining in. There was no part-singing and no attempt to be artistic, for such was not religious. (You remember that Plato excluded the poets from his Republic. Poets fool people, and Presbyterian mountain folk had basically the same notion about the arts.) They found art a little sinful. They were always apologetic about art, even though they were quite skillful with it. Mountaineers were also conservative politically, extremely rugged, and independent, and these qualities we still have. We have a whole tradition of spoken English that is now different from any other part of the English-speaking world, though it is different more in quantity than in quality. We have the singing tradition, wherein people not only know more of the old ballads than anybody else in the English-speaking world, but also being in the tradition, they know how to use it to make ballads of their own. Now the country has been invaded from outside, and the old people who 134 �know these things are dying. We are interested in preserving our traditions for contemporary and future generations. Similar communities and groups in the past were allowed to dissipate their traditions without recording them for posterity, but we have the equipment and facilities nowadays to preserve them. As a matter of fact, we have seen in our own generation the rejection of things associated with contemporary civilization for things that have been in the mountains from the beginning. This is the proper use of our traditions. We should like to preserve them for the future. 135 �JUST RELEASED — BOOKS WE ALL HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR Superb books by, for and about people of Western North Carolina and the Southern Appalachians 001 "... a right good people" by HAROLD WARREN "One of a limited number (of books) that will win the approval of native mountain people."—Loyal Jones, Director, Appalachian Center, Berea 128 pages: 37 ills. paper $2.50 002 Down to Earth—People of Appalachia by KENNETH MURRAY "The memory will last forever."—Ambrose Manning, Professor of English, East Tennessee State University 128 pages; over 200 ills. paper $2.95 003 Bits of Mountain Speech by PAUL FINK A bodacious collection of tidbits of mountain speech. "Excellent . . ."—flogers Whitener, in Folk Ways and Folk Speech 32 pages paper $1.25 004 Western North Carolina Since the Civil War by DRS. INA and JOHN VAN NOPPEN "A proud, positive history of a proud and independent people . . . Superb . .. Should be in every home."—Dr. W. H. Plemmons, President Emeritus, Appalachian State University 436 pages; 132 ills.; indexed cloth $12.95 005 Western North Carolina Since the Civil War by DRS. INA and JOHN VAN NOPPEN paper $4.95 006 The Birth of Forestry in America by CARL ALWIN SCHENCK A reprint of the illustrated history of the first school of forestry in America, which was founded in Western North Carolina at the Biltmore Estate. "It will hold your attention—don't fail to read if—Journal of Forestry 224 p'ages; illus. cloth $10.95 007 The Birth of Forestry in America by CARL ALWIN SCHENCK paper $4.50 008 The Southern Appalachian Heritage Seventy full four-color illustrations plus a full color cover; 20,000 word text, including ballads, recipes, folklore, history, etc.; shrink wrapped. "Without a doubt the most beautiful, delightful, big book about our colorful region ever produced . . . Long overdue."—Borden Mace, Executive Director, Appalachian Consortium paper $5.95 009 Toward 1984: The Future of Appalachia SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGIONAL CONFERENCE 144 pages paper $2.95 Ordering Information: We offer 10% discounts when three (3) or more books are ordered Add 3% N. C. sales tax where applicable We pay postage and handling charges on all prepaid orders Order from: The Appalachian Consortium Press 407 East Howard Street Boone, North Carolina 28607 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publications Description An account of the resource This collection contains digitized monographs and collections from the Appalachian Consortium Press. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Date Issued Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource. June 1, 2017 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource <a title="Digital Scholarship and Initiatives" href="http://library.appstate.edu/services/digital-scholarship-and-initiatives" target="_blank">Digital Scholarship and Initiatives</a> Publication URL https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636740/toward-1984/ Digital Publisher Digital Republication Appalachian State University Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Toward 1984: The Future of Appalachia Description An account of the resource Though titled the <em>Proceedings of the 1st Annual Appalachian Studies Conference, </em>this volume contains the speeches and papers of the Southern Appalachian Regional Conference held May 13-16, 1974 at the Center for Continuing Education at Appalachian State University. Governor James E. Holshouser, Jr. of North Carolina; John B. Howard, American Petroleum Institute; and Cratis Williams, Acting Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Appalachian State University each spoke at the opening banquet. The primary topics of the conference were energy, land use, and the human spirit. The conference was sponsored by the Appalachian Consortium and was a part of Project Open of the United States Office of Education.<br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FEpcojJtOfGbGa2M9fRbPl2NY6pAabQU" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636740/toward-1984/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UNC Press Print on Demand</a> Subject The topic of the resource Appalachian Region, Southern--Congressess Regional planning--Appalachian Region, Southern Energy policy--Appalachian Region, Southern Land use--Appalachian Region, Southern Appalachian Region, Southern--Social conditions Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Proceedings of the 1st Annual Appalachian Studies Conference Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Roseberry, Helen Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Conference proceedings Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/4456703/boone.html Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a> Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1970s Multidisciplinary/ Appalachian Studies https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/3cd9e47db4f3fd25d3147f78d5222812.pdf 243bc2d64f32745dca2d58f6f4c471a9 PDF Text Text �The Appalachian Experience Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Appalachian Studies Conference Editors Barry M. Buxton Malinda L. Crutchfield William E. Lightfoot Jacqueline P. Stewart �The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From 1973 to 2004, its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program, Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press. www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Original copyright © 1983 by the Appalachian Consortium Press. ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-3671-9 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-3673-3 Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press www.uncpress.org �TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction, Jim W. Miller I. Appalachian Images and Issues of Ethnic Diversity Images of Appalachia: A Critical Discussion, Melinda B. Wagner, Allen Batteau & Archie Green vii 3 Correlates of Appalachian Identification among Appalachian Migrants, William W. Philliber 10 Ethnic Conflict in an Appalachian Craft Cooperative: On the Application of Structural Ethnicity to Mountaineers and Outsiders, Susan Emley Keefe 15 A Preliminary Look at the Welsh Component of Celtic Influence in Appalachia, Loyal Jones 26 The Retreat from Consensus: An Exploration of Conflict Analysis Richard Drake 34 II. Appalachian Literature "Rings around a Hurt": The Dialectic Structure of The Mountains Have Come Closer, John H. Mongle 45 "Naked Words That Have No Subtle Meaning": Poetry and Teaching in the Writings of Don West, Michaelh Mary Lee Settle's Transmontane Society, Nancy CarolJoyner III. Appalachian Politics and Government Newsmaking and Social Change in Eastern Kentucky: "Why Aren't They Telling Our Side?" Sally Ward Maggard 54 61 67 The Congressional and Gubernatorial Elections of 1982 in Appalachia, Phillip A. Grant, Jr. 81 Appalachian Origin and Political Activity, Phillip J. Obermiller & Robert Oldendick 87 When the Bank Failed, John L. Bell, Jr. 95 Progressive Government in a Company Town, Russell D. Parker 102 IV. Aspects of Daily Life: Yesterday and Today Store Talk in Appalachian Social Life, George B. Ray 117 Locally Produced Religious Broadcasts in the Mountains of Northwest North Carolina, Howard Dorgan 123 One-room School Life in Appalachian Kentucky, James, M. Gifford 131 Beyond the Quaint and Curious: Folklore Research in Appalachia, Jean Haskell Speer... .138 �h T The Black Appalachian Church: An Agent for Change or System Maintenance? Stanley Taylor & ArthurJ. Cox 145 Race Relations in Asheville, North Carolina: Three Incidents, 1868-1906 Eric]. Olson 153 VI. Culture, Mental Health and Personality The Folk Banjo and Clawhammer Performance Practice in the Upper South: A Study of Origins, William H. Tallmadge 169 Mental Health Problems of Rural Appalachians with Pulmonary Diseases: An Exploration of the Relevant Issues, Mania F. Barron & John G. McNutt 180 VII. Economic Development in Appalachia: New Perspectives The ARC—Some Questions Relative to Its Past and Possible Future, Edgar Bingham 191 Appalachia as an "Enterprise Zone": Some Speculation on the Future Direction of Federal Policy toward the Region, Thomas R. Shannon 199 Housing Aspirations of Central Appalachian Coal Miners, Rosemary Carucci Goss 205 VIII. The Humanities in Appalachia: Progress Reports Missing Chapters: West Virginia Woman in History, Barbara Matz 219 A Case for a Humanities Curriculum Incorporating Sciences and Local Studies, Myra Jones 226 Library Outreach in Eastern Kentucky, Judy Martin 231 A Report on the East Kentucky Grass Roots Poetry Project, George Ella Lyon 235 Developing an Appalachian Literature Anthology, Nellie McNeil &Joyce Squibb 237 IX. Abstracts Involving Youth in Appalachian Studies: Collaborative Efforts between University and High School Faculties, Grace T. Edwards & Joyce L, Graham 241 Black Hillbilly Music: Black Influence in Non-Blues, Secular Music in the Southern Mountains, Edward ]. Cabbell 242 Lily May Ledford and the Coon Creek Girls: Radio's First All-girl String Band, Ellesa Clay High 242 Oral Histories of Appalachian Women—By Women, Joy Huntley 243 Women's Work, Women's Lives: Factory Labor and Its Impact on Women in Western North Carolina, Mary Anglin 244 "We're Looking for Work": Perspectives on Workplaces in Appalachia, Dick Futrell 245 Highlander in the Center of Black Southern Politics: The Problems and Prospects of Interracial Cooperation in Social Change, William H. Turner 246 �The Class Experience of Appalachian Coal Miners, Michael Yarrow 246 Staying Alive, Chemical Hazards in Maintenance Work, Paul Becker 247 Reclaiming Our Health: Grass Roots Epidemiology along Yellow Creek, Kentucky, Sabrina Cherry 248 Appalachian Environmental Education for Elementary Teachers: The Pine Mountain Journals, 1980-83, Walter P. Oldendort 249 A High School Festival Can Work, Shirley Underwood 249 Old Men and New Schools in the Mountains: A Gallery of Legendary Uncles, David E. Whisnant 250 Where the Old New River Flows: Contemporary Folk Music in Summers County, West Virginia, Deborah J. Thompson 250 Mountain Masters: Slaveholders in Western North Carolina, John C. Inscoe 251 �This page intentionally left blank �Introduction The papers gathered here reflect the diversity of disciplines, perspectives and concerns that make up Appalachian Studies, a community of scholarship of rather recent origin. For a long time there have been outstanding individuals concerned with understanding southern Appalachia and with working toward solutions to the region's problems and realization of its promise. From the early part of the century one thinks of Emma Bell Miles, Horace Kephart, and John C. Campbell. In more recent years outstanding contributions have been made by Harry Caudill, writer and historian; James Brown, the rural sociologist; and Gratis Williams, student of the region's literature and history. The efforts of these individuals, and others, have often been aided by organizations. The Council of Southern Mountains dates from the 1920's. The Highlander Center, established by Myles Horton, celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1982. Don West founded the Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia, where the 1983 Conference was held. But none of these students of the region had what exists today: a network of people and organizations informed about Appalachia's past and present, concerned with and committed to working for the region's future—a community of scholarship represented by the Appalachian Studies Conference and reflected in the papers and abstracts brought together here. Over fifty years ago, when the Vanderbilt University Agrarians were attempting to work up a regional program for the South, Allen Tate, a member of the group, saw the need to create "an intellectual situation interior to the South." Where the Agrarians by their own estimate failed, it appears that people interested in mounting some similar program for Appalachia have succeeded—or at least made a start. Students of Appalachia have created—through the Appalachian Studies Conference, the Appalachian Consortium, Inc., Appalachian Studies centers throughout the region, through the involvement of young people on college and university campuses and, now, in secondary schools—an intellectual situation within the region that did not—and perhaps could not—exist before. In the past Appalachia has experienced change largely as the result of outside intervention—on the part of entrepeneurs, missionaries, planners, developers, assorted "change agents" and advocates of regional uplift. David Whisnant has written about such efforts in Modernizing the Mountaineer. But the new things we are involved in is an effort on the part of Appalachians to intervene in the life and culture of the region from the inside. (The landmark study of the Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force is a significant recent result of this effort.) Appalachian Studies looks more and more like a program of action as well as of ideas, carried on by two groups referred to by Lawrence Thompson as "action folk and creative people." Both groups are represented in papers presented at the 1983 Appalachian Studies Conference. The action folk illuminate aspects of the region's social, economic and political complexity. They contribute to a better understanding of ethnic diversity in a region thought of, until only recently, as having an almost exclusively white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant population. They focus on contemVII �Both groups are represented in papers presented at the 1983 Appalachian Studies Conference. The action folk illuminate aspects of the region's social, economic and political complexity. They contribute to a better understanding of ethnic diversity in a region thought of, until only recently, as having an almost exclusively white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant population. They focus on contemporary problems and issues in the areas of housing and health care, education, government and economic development—areas which typically make news in Appalachia and contribute to the region's media image. The creative people concern themselves with a deeper and fuller understanding of the region's history; with religious beliefs and practices; with the language of everyday life (an important index to the way people take themselves); with music, art and literature—the news that stays news. The two groups represent two powerful drives—the urge to change the world, and the desire to understand it and enjoy it as it is. Occasionally the needs for change and for continuity are seen to be compatible, as in the recommended use of biography as a change agent, or in a study of the writing of Don West, where art, religion and politics are fused in literary expression. The contributions of both groups have their uses. Appalachian, along with other Americans, have been deprived of much of the region's history of a complicated set of circumstances. Typography, settlement patterns, and events that were to flow from those patterns, made Appalachia a geographical, historical, and ideological American borderland too frequently subsumed under contrasting myths of the Savage South and the Sunny South. Even where Appalachia has been understood as a kind of "separate South," myths about mountains and mountain people have obscured the region's history. The French student of modern mythologies, Roland Barthes, speaks of a general "bourgeoise promoting of mountains" which, since the 18th century, has caused otherwise intelligent people to take enraptured leave of their sense "any time the ground is uneven." More and more, however, Appalachians and other Americans are casting off myths and stereotypes in favor of a better understanding of what the historian Carl Degler has called Appalachia's complicated "triple history"—the notion that not only does Appalachia figure significantly in American and Southern history, but that the region also has a history of its own as a borderland between North and South, a place between places. Our understanding of regions and their relation to the rest of the country has also changed. In the past regions and regional cultures have tended to be associated with primitive areas and peoples. Regions have been regarded as remnants of the past "curious survivals in a standardizing world." Regions have been equated with reactionary views and blinkered provincialism. Regionalism has been suspect, a potentially divisive force, or a futile effort to take refuge in a past believed to be simpler and pleasanter. Nowadays we know regions have as much to do with the future as with the past. We view regions in national and global contexts. All over the world people are rediscovering their regions and provinces. We have witnessed a revival of regionalism that complements a global view. It is possible to think of the world of the future as one world containing many local worlds. This significantly altered understanding of Appalachia's region to the rest of the country, and of regions generally, offers the prospect of depth and breadth as students of Appalachia address the needs identified by Gratis Williams: "...the learn the write our history...define our identity...write our own books...solve our own social problems...manage our own institutions, and build our own economy." VIII �From the vantage points of their several disciplines, the contributors of these essays and abstracts address those needs outlined by Gratis Williams. They show the Appalachian Studies Conference to be an alliance of action folk, creative people, scholars and nonscholars, all working to combine thought with action, knowledge with power, scholarship with citizenship in a region important to the nation and the world. —Jim Wayne Miller, Chairperson 1982-83 Appalachian Studies Conference IX �This page intentionally left blank �Appalachian Images and Issues of Ethnic Diversity 1 �This page intentionally left blank �Images of Appalachia: A Critical Discussion Melinda Bollar Wagner, Allen Batteau & Archie Green INTRODUCTION Wagner The purpose of this workshop is to draw together persons who are interested in images of Appalachia and to create an agenda for further research and thinking about this topic. What do we mean by "image"? An image is the ideas, the mental constructs, people have about one another. An image is a symbol of a basic attitude and orientation a person has toward another. Since it is socially and culturally constructed, it's more difficult to define what an image is—or what is included in a particular image—than it is to define a material object like a chair. As we learned in Appalshop's session this morning, it's easier to make a film about a chair, or chairmaking, than it is about image, or image-making. Image is often spoken of in the same breath with "identity." By "image," we mean the ideas we have of others; "identity" is the image we have of ourselves. Your identity adds meaning to your life. It's the hook you hang your life hat on. The image we have of others helps to define ourselves by opposites—by alter egos—and by putting what we think we are into relief. It seems there are several questions which could be asked about the image of Appalachia: 1) What is it, and who has it? 2) Does it fit or match reality? 3) Why is it like it is? I'm not sure that questions one and two have been answered adequately, but we are most interested in the last question—Why is the image of Appalachia like it is? Answers to this last question seem to fall into two "camps": Many scholars assume that images are created by dominants to justify or validate intergroup relationships—a kind of image imperialism. But others are beginning to talk about cultural symbols, paradigms, or archetypes being expressed in images of Appalachia. One side sees "images" as a function of economic and social organization, and as just so much cultural fluff. The other side recognizes that images are shaped and changed by economic and social conditions, but also recognizes the deep place cultural paradigms and archetypes have in images. So, in discussions about images, there has been an underlying argument about which is the tail and which the dog. One side would seem to say that Appalachian images are imposed from the "outside", created full blown for the use and gain of a particular segment of society at a particular time. The other would find in these images elements which are always "there" as parts of American culture. They would agree that these elements are at times picked up and used for "imperialistic" purposes, but would argue that this is just one of the functions and motivations served by images. The three of us are all on this last side. For example, in previous writings Allen has asked for a "recognition of the centrality of symbolic functions even in a modern society." Today, we 3 �want to discuss ways of achieving that recognition in the study and understanding of images of Appalachia. Allen and Archie will deal with when, how, and why various elements of the Appalachian image were created. They find elements of the image rooted in experiences which predate not only the discovery of Appalachia by outsiders, but also the original settling of Appalachia; these elements may, in fact, hark back to the onset of civilization itself. We each see Appalachia's image as functioning to (among other things) mediate cultural strains, in the way anthropologists say "myth" is supposed to do. In order to focus the discussion of why the Appalachian image is as it is, we have developed these questions for discussion: 1) Where does the image come from? This will lead us to think about the differences in "stereotypes" and "archetypes." 2) Why does the image of Appalachia exist? What is its social context? 3) Why does it take the particular form it does? What are the functions of this form? 4) How can this image be "used"? This question deals with "controlling" the image, especially from within. Allen will begin with his thoughts on these questions: Allen Batteau Stereotype or Archetype? I see the fourth question, "How can the image be used?", as a question about how to control the image of Appalachia, especially from within Appalachia. I will leave that question to Archie, who has thought more about it; I would simply say that my bias is that the image cannot be used or appropriated until one has understood how others have used it. The other three questions, ironically, can be answered with very little reference to the people of the southern mountains. Most of the image-making took place in the discourse of an educated elite outside of the mountains. The image-makers had their own motivations, and the southern mountaineers were convenient pawns for them in some larger games that they were playing. To understand these motivations, an essential distinction has to be made, between the image qua stereotype and the image qua archetype. The stereotype is the picture of the Appalachian as the Beverly Hillbillies, as seen in Paul Webb cartoons, in L'il Abner, and just last week on a television episode of "The A Team and the Killer Hillbillies." The archetype, on the other hand, consists of some basic ideas within our cultural understandings; these predate not only the discovery but also the population of Appalachia. One of these archetypes is the very basic distinction between civilization and nature, and the processual archetype that I have identified as the "Sacrifice of nature" in the service of civilization. As a nation, America has defined itself through this process of sacrifice of nature, and the consequent identification with and deification of the victim that accompanies any act of sacrifice. Symbols of nature, whether Natty Bumppo (Daniel Boone) or the Indian (red or white), are an important part of America's selfdefinition; and as we victimize these, we simultaneously identify with them, deify them, and in so doing, deify ourselves. Thus we set ourselves off from Europe, as Nature's Nation, of which Appalachia is a symbol par excellence. These national symbols are important, because nations, just as much as individuals, have to define themselves. America, over the last two hundred years, has 4 �created a set of images for itself, created them out of myth, legend, ritual, and dramatic episodes. Appalachia, I would suggest, has been a very important part of this. The national symbols associated with Appalachia include the pioneer heritage, the Revolutionary War, and the identification with Abraham Lincoln that William G. Frost constructed. Appalachians, one can read time and again, are in some manner archetypal Americans, and many of the images of Appalachians that have been constructed include the idea of Appalachians coming to the rescue of the national cause. A second question is "Why does the image of Appalachia exist? What is the social context of this image? The important point here is that the image was created by urban people talking to urban people; the literary circles of Boston and New York figure prominently in this. The motivation behind the images, I'm suggesting, were in that social context. To be sure, there are motivations like those of John Fox, Jr., or the National Park Service, or the missionaries, whose purpose in creating a stereotype of Appalachia was to position themselves in a relationship of superiority vis-avis Appalachians. But I would suggest that the positioning took place in the context of a larger game, and we have to understand some of the motivations involved in that larger game if we are to understand why the image was created. The third question asks about the form and function of the images of Appalachia, and gets at the heart of motivations. Images do not descend from the clouds, nor are they just thrown out broadcasts. Rather they exist within a certain discourse, within certain symbolic forms. If you want to understand what the person is trying to accomplish in propagating the image, you have to look not only at the content, but at the form, the symbolic vehicle that carries it. I have identified several forms used to propagate the Appalachian image. Each of these forms has its own typical author, its own distinctive content, and its own historical function. Some of these are: • Myth. Mary N. Murfree's short stories have many of the qualities of myth: they repeatedly set up the same contrasts between nature and culture, between woman and man, between mountain and lowland, between domestic and civil affairs, arranged in an analogical order; they invoke certain mediating figures, and they take place in a timeless never-never land, "The Tennessee Mountains," part Cumberland and part Smokey. The methods for analyzing myth developed by Levi-Strauss work perfectly on Murfree's stories, an exercise which I would invite any anthropologist to indulge in. • Journalism, particularly as presented by Harry Caudill in Night Comes to the Cumberlands and derivative documents, is a form of drama. Once one has arranged the diverse journalistic accounts of Appalachia from any era together into an extended narrative, one finds that they have their own dramatic rhythms, drawing on familiar archetypes, and building to such climaxes and resolutions as a congressional confrontation or a UMW election. Qua drama, journalism is a means of giving meaningful form to contemporary events, creating a new order of understanding out of the natural crises and climaxes of political and industrial strife. As an example of this, you could look at the journalism of Appalachia of the 1960s: from about 1959 to 1965 there was intense journalistic interest in Appalachia, climaxing in 1964. Out of that was created a new federal order, variously known as the Great Society or the War on Poverty; Appalachia was in many respects a tool for creating that order. • Pilgrimage. The trips that many hippies made to Appalachia in the 1960s had the distinctive aspects of pilgrimage, parallel to that of the 1930s when many left-wing and student groups made trips to Harlan County, the font of authentic radicalism. In both cases you find in their 5 �reports a sense of personal transformation for having made the trip, and a greater focus in the report on the pilgrim and his transformation, than on the mountain people. • Commodity. Appalachia qua commodity is, I would suggest, one of the biggest problems we will have to deal with in the coming years, especially in terms of appropriating or controlling the image from within. The mass production of "Appalachia", whether on TV, in the movies, in country music, or by various "handcraft" stores is the major way that the American public today derives its image of Appalachia. The examples are numerous, from "Foxfire" to "Coal Miner's Daughter" to the "Dukes of Hazzard," each of which for the sake of merchandizing obliterates other formal distinctions (between oral history and Broadway play, between personal history and song and autobiography and film, for example). The examples are so numerous, in fact, that the commodity form patterns representations in other vehicles: songs are written and plays are staged in terms of what will sell, rather than what is accurate or excellent. • Expository writing. The kind of descriptive prose that academics use has contributed the least of all forms to creating an image of Appalachia. Myth, pilgrimage, and journalism are the forms that have figured prominently in the imagemaking of Appalachia. In terms of dominant motivations for creating this image, I can identify three sorts: denying history, creating a national image, and promoting class mobility. For example, lately I've been looking at the way the New York Times reported and editorialized about the labor wars in Appalachia from 1912 to 1938. The Times denied that there was any historical significance to this activity, arguing that in no way did the strikes represent class conflict. Instead, the strikes are portrayed as an atavistic resurgence of primitive American individualism. And, as you might expect, they found a few atavistic types up in the hills to buttress this image. This denial of history was necessary, I would suggest, because the Times was afraid that the class conflict up in the mountains might be contagious—might spread to the working classes closer to home. The other motivation is the creation of a national image. For example, around the year 1889, there was much national self-doubt. There was the sense that the country was in a crisis; these immigrant hordes, it was suggested, were overrunning the country. And then somebody (William G. Frost, to be precise) discovered all the wonderful Anglo-Saxons locked up in the hills. One writer went so far as to suggest that the hillbillies would come to the salvation of the nation. The mountaineers did indeed come to the salvation of another national symbol approximately seventy years later in the Kennedy campaign in West Virginia. Again this was a time of national self-doubt, and the mountaineers provided a national symbol for American salvation. The third motivation for image-making is class mobility. Quite often the image of Appalachia has provided a vehicle for one class to move upward. In the 1960s this was the case with many university-educated middle class member who seized on Appalachia as a way to make their mark and get themselves established within the federal system. Civil Rights, Appalachia, and the various causes of liberation were vehicles of class mobility in the 1960s. All of these motivations can be seen at work in the forging of Appalachian images. But lacking in the making of the image of Appalachia is the motivation of making history—the motivation to push forward human events in a way that recognizes the importance of human actions and human agency. Time and again what one sees in the image of Appalachia is no sense of the Appalachian mountain people as being in any way responsible for their fate. They exist outside history, "frozen in time," in the words of William G. Frost. To put Appalachian Mountain People back in history should be, I would like to suggest, the next step in creating an image of Appalachia. 6 �Archie Green Let us carry attention to Appalachian images back into pre-history, back to the earliest European evidence of ideas about group identity. We look to traditional narrative forms, myths and legends, for formulas about tribal origin. Those accounts intrigue us which depict men and women emerging from the sea or babies suckled by wolves. We trace the story of a particular clan's genesis down to the ideology which girds a modern national state. Eventually, such ideas about a people's purpose and place reach contemporary eyes and ears: a New York Times editorial, a Mary Murfree sketch, a John Fox, Jr. novel, an Appalshop film. Appalachian activists fret constantly about stereotypes—comic, grotesque, demeaning. We can distance such negative portraits by consideration of two types of folktale. A myth is a sacred narrative; a legend, a secular narrative; a legend, a secular narrative. It seems that humans cannot live orderly lives without locating themselves in time and space. Myth and legend, together, explain the past, validate the present, and guide the future. As we secularize society, we turn religious myths into historical legends, but the underlying themes in each set of stories are the same. Myth content flows readily into that of legend. The ideas within these tales continue to play themselves out in fresh fiction as well as popular stage and screen drama. I would isolate three dominant strands in the making of the archetypal Appalachian story. The first explorers/entrepreneurs who ascended the Blue Ridge Mountains carried ideas as well as packs. Whether travelers from Spain, France, or England were formally educated or not, they accepted a triadic set of intellectual values. They know the Bible, Greek and Roman mythology, and the emerging science of the Renaissance. Within Biblical texts, the notion of dichotomy between Israelite and Philistine lasted long enough to touch Appalachian experience. Roanoke Island settlers identified with Israel, as did later pioneers in the Piedmont and the Blue Ridge. Chosen by Britain's rulers, Virginia's colonists saw Indians as Philistines. The Bible, itself, became a weapon in the destruction of Indian life as New Jerusalems were planted on American shores. The second aspect of European polarity encompassed reference to diverse peoples and rival citystates: Greek vs Barbarian, Athens vs Sparta. Many of the first explorers knew the Classics. They assumed that Athens represented civilization, and Sparta, the "backwoods" or "boondocks." Hence, their task was to bring New World Spartas up to Olympian heights, for example—Appalachia to Boston or Philadelphia. English historians and antiquarians developed the most important of the tensions pressed into service to depict Appalachian life: Celt vs. Anglo-Saxon. Hugh MacDougall in Racial Myth in English History (1982) describes the genesis of this paramount explanatory strategy. Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welshman, in History of the Kings of Britain (1136), created an idealized past and has extended the Arthurian legend. Upon turning to King Arthur, today, one reads imaginative narratives which invert the role of Celts, actually subordinate to Anglo-Saxons at that distant time. Geoffrey, in his chronicles, switched a minor ruler of a conquered people into Britain's greatest monarch. Essentially, he stood a negative symbol upon its head by making Celtic Arthur a shining beacon for the ages. (We have used "Yankee" similarly, for originally it served as a term of British derision against the colonists.) Uncertain whether mountaineers today are moral giants (Sergeant York) or mindless hicks (Lil Abner), concerned Appalachians can appreciate something of Geoffrey's chosen task and lasting achievement. Polydor Vergil, an Italian scholar who came to England in 1502, rewrote Geottrey's history. Anticipating the importance of scientific learning, Polydor asserted that the true founders of the 7 �English nation had been Norsemen, Goths, or Anglo-Saxons—all upright, dynamic, practical, competent. Within Elizabethan Britain, imperialism and science came together to underscore this belief in Germanic priority and virtue. The new image helped a colonizing people achieve world power. Englishmen who embraced the Protestant Reformation grounded themselves in AngloSaxon "realities" rather than Celtic "superstitions." Clearly, we can use this three-pronged formulation of cultural difference (sanctioned by the Bible, Classics, and Science) to advance Appalachian studies. On the agenda for further consideration, we need especially to examine the diaries and travel accounts of early travelers and explorers who reached the highlands. We need to know the mind-set of those who came, blazed trails, subjugated the Indians, stole their land, and, in the process, became Indianized. I see exemplars of Appalachian life—Daniel Boone, Davey Crockett, John Sevier—as Indianized whites who played a double role, a role fraught with tremendous ambivalence. This ambivalence stemmed from beating the barbarians in the name of civilization, and becoming near-savages in the process. Appalachian frontiersmen in coonskin caps, buckskin garments, and native moccasins lived like Janus—facing contrasting lifestyles, balancing dual codes. All people engaged in a shift from mainstream to marginal life (in either direction), internalize various anxieties. Myth and legend ease tension and mark troubled paths. I suggest, here, that Appalachian images surfaced initially when white Europeans sensed their own ambivalence in dealing with native Americans. Narratives by and about Boone, Crockett, and Sevier helped these men and their peers mediate polarities between "backwards" and European life, and, as well, between regional and national life. Familiarity with the earliest history of ideas reveals that notions of region, tales of savagery, and depictions of wilderness adhered long before any local colorist wrote a Great Smokies or Cumberland short story. Upon beginning their careers, Mary Murfree and John Fox, Jr. accepted a body of thought which placed Appalachians in a framework of time-tested dichotomies. The so-called "inventors" of Appalachia, of the 1870s, validated a past and anticipated a future because they dipped into a body of ready-made rationalizations for cultural dissonance. Discourse about Appalachia can root literary and socio-political imagistic narratives in a past of tribal myth and legend. We empower ourselves by carrying current Dukes-of-Hazzard TV productions far back in time to assertions of difference between Israelite/Philistine, Greek/Barbarian, Anglo-Saxon/Celt. To look back gives strength to march forward. One need not quake before images as stereotypes; their complexity serves as challenge. We can embrace present-day notions of Appalachian identity, confident that such acts help open new definitions for self and community within region and nation. Discussion Batteau: It should be clear that all this image-making of Appalachia didn't just drop out of the clouds in the last 110 years. Even our own activity as scholars of Appalachia is, for better or worse, "imaging," whether we are observing, brokering, or creating an image. Looking at the way the image-making went on, especially in the 1880s and 1890s, I think should provide some cautionary tales for our own imagemaking. 8 �Wagner: Batteau: Green: Batteau: Wagner: Batteau: Green: For example, the fact that Mary Murfree used pre-existing formulas should suggest that we ourselves have to pursue our own work with greater creativity, lest we fall by the same wayside as Mary Murfree has. Another example would be William G. Frost. He is a more interesting example because he thought he was saying nice things about the people. In the context of his time, he though he was coming to their defense. I sometimes wonder if we ourselves won't be viewed the same way eighty years from now. Another example might be Harry Caudill. Ron Eller points out in his article, "Harry Caudill and the Burden of Mountain Liberalism," that Caudill paints a very negative picture of Appalachian people, but we Appalachian scholars seemed to have ignored that in our rush to embrace his work and his ideas. We were looking for a hero. We have the image that the people in that day all came down from the North to impose this false legend upon us. We now put them down as missionaries, as misguided social workers, as fotched on ladies. But I wonder, what motivated them? How complex were they as human beings? What was it in the mountains that they recognized as being true or beautiful? One answer to that question may be that many of those people had much ambivalence about progress. For example, Malcolm Ross, a Quaker missionary in the 1930s, said "If the hill people could have remained as they were, I for one would have been content to leave them in their innocence...free from civilization's boredom and irritations." I think this has been a fairly common motivational threat runing through the works of many of these people. Another motivational thread, which I'm borrowing from Archie, may be the dichotomy between those who wish to find difference and those who wish to deny difference. It's my thought that we could trace the history of that and perhaps it would be a parallel to progress/no progress and some other threads. Looking at the recent history of this dichotomy, some of the denial of difference has, I think, been the result of the denial of the culture of poverty idea. We perhaps threw the "cultural difference" baby out with the "culture of poverty" bath water. But Archie carries this dichotomy forward and looks at the possible political implications of wishing to find differences or wishing to deny them. Those who want to deny differences are claiming political sovereighty now. They are saying "We are like middle America, that's where sovereignty lies, therefore sovereignty lies with us." The folks who claim difference, if they carry that out to its logical conclusion, are seeing a vision of our nation as different than it is now. That is, we tend to say, this difference is probably here for a reason—we say that on various spiritual levels—and so what is that reason, if we don't mean that in the future there may be some different kind of nation where those differences can be useful? The denial of differences is the denial of alternatives. You have to ask, politically, what is David Stockman's vision for the mountains? What is James Watt's vision for the mountains? If you are going to take pride in your difference, then at some point you're going to be in the forefront of a movement to change the sovereignty of the nation state. 9 �Correlates of Appalachian Identification Among Appalachian Migrants William W. Philliber Ethnic group formation may be thought of as a process in which people assumed to share a common ancestry identify themselves and are identified by others as belonging to the same group (Singer, 1962). Ethnic group formation among Appalachian migrants is believed to have occurred as a response to discrimination designed to eliminate them from the competition for scarce resources and rewards, especially jobs, in the cities to which they moved (Philliber, 1981a). Appalachians migrated to the midwest at a time when the economic base of that region was beginning to decline. The competition for fewer jobs which natives of the midwest faced with each other was made more intense by the migration of Appalachians and southern blacks. Discrimination developed to eliminate Appalachians from this competition. McCoy and Watkins (1981) have collected jokes told about Appalachians which indicate their unsuitability. These jokes spread negative stereotypes and strengthen negative images about Appalachians in the minds of the native population. Obermiller's (1982) study of labelling against Appalachians found that especially strong negative images were held by working class whites who were not from Appalachia. It is this group which is in most direct competition with Appalachians and therefore would benefit most from discrimination against them. Philliber (1981a; 1981b) demonstrates that, with the exception of college educated Appalachians from middle class homes, white Appalachians obtained poorer jobs and lower wages than did other whites even after adjusting for a number of other differences. The penalty for not having a college education or coming from a middle class home was greater for Appalachians than for others. Three studies to date have demonstrated the extent to which Appalachian migrants have developed an identity with each other (Miller, 1978; Philliber, 1981a, Obermiller, 1982). These studies suggest that less than a third of the Appalachian migrants identify themselves as Appalachians, a figure comparable to ethnic group identification among other more recognized ethnic groups (Campbell, et al., 1964). However, these previous studies have not analyzed how Appalachian migrants who identify themselves as Appalachians differ from those who do not. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the correlates of Appalachian identity among Appalachian migrants. Data Data for this paper come from a 1975 survey of 595 adult residents living in Hamilton County, Ohio. Hamilton County is the location of Cincinnati, Ohio. Participants in the survey were selected through a random selection of blocks with quotas proportionate to sex, age, and employ10 �ment used to select people within blocks (Sudman, 1966). Details of the survey can be found in Appalachian Migrants in Urban America (Philliber, 1981a). Participants were categorized as Appalachian migrants if they or either of their parents were born in a county of Appalachia as identified by the Appalachian Regional Commission. Appalachian identification was determined by asking participants "Do you consider yourself to be an Appalachian?" Responses were classified as yes or no. Findings The correspondence between Appalachian status and Appalachian identification presented in Table 1 suggests that Appalachia as identified by the Appalachian Regional Commission is probably close to the broadest definition of the region that is possible. Only 1% of the people without a background in the region believed they were Appalachian and only a minority of those from the region identified themselves as such. Remembering that the Appalachian Regional Commission was created by a political coalition which had to secure sufficient support in Congress to pass necessary legislation, it is possible that areas not actually part of the region were included in exchange for political support. If this is so then a more restrictive definition of the region should show higher rates of identification among Appalachians. We will return to this possibility later in the paper. Table 1: Percentage of Appalachian Identifiers by Appalachian Status Percent Appalachian Identifiers Non- Appalachian 158 1% Appalachian N 18% Appalachian Status 372 Table 1 may also be interpreted to show that for a substantial number of first and second generation Appalachian migrants, identification of themselves as an Appalachian continues to occur. Although 18% is only a minority of the possible identifiers, that percentage translates to over 35,000 Appalachian people living in Hamilton County, based upon an estimated 200,000 Appalachian population. The comparison of Appalachian identifiers and non-identifiers shown in Table 2 should be interpreted as only suggestive of the differences between the two groups. The actual number of white Appalachians who identified themselves as Appalachians was only 24. * The means and percentages based upon this group are subject to wide sampling variability. The conclusions made can therefore be only tentative. The variables on which Appalachian identifiers and non-identifiers are compared are in no way definitive. Other variables might show yet greater differences. However, these variables reveal some unexpected findings. 11 �Appalachian identifiers are as likely to be black as are Appalachians who do not identify themselves as such. This finding was unexpected in light of other findings that the experiences of black Appalachian migrants are more similar to other blacks than to white Appalachians (Philliber and Obermiller, 1982). It may be that blacks are especially conscious of minority group memberships and therefore recognize their Appalachian status. However, we have no evidence that blacks and whites act together as a single group. Table 2: Differences Between Appalachian Identifiers and Non-Identifiers Identifiers Non-Identifiers 14% 17% (28) Percent black N (130) Mean years in Cincinnati area* N 21 28 (24) (104) Mean age* N 46 41 (24) (108) Percent first generation* N 88% 53% (24) (106) Mean years of education* N 10.6 (24) 11.0 (108) Percent manual workers* N 75% 66% (16) (65) Percent living in inner-city* 25% 40% (24) (108) N Percent fundamentalist* N 48% 36% (23) (105) Percent male* N 58% 41% (24) (108) Percent Southern Appalachian* N 83% 87% (24) (108) *Whites only. Appalachian identifiers are older in years but more recent in migration than are Appalachian non-identifiers. The average age of persons who identified themselves as Appalachians was 46 compared to the age of 41 for non-identifiers. They had lived in the Cincinnati area an average of 21 years compared to 28 for non-identifiers. These findings suggest that many Appalachians are assimilating into the Cincinnati area over time. Older persons who have been in Cincinnati fewer years perhaps had more established ties in Appalachia. Younger people, many of whom were born 12 �in Cincinnati, lost those ties. Although in the competition for goods and services they may be seen by others as Appalachians and treated as such, they no longer identify themselves in that manner. Appalachian identifiers have slightly lower socio-economic attainments than non-identifiers. Seventy-five percent are manual workers with an average education of 10.6 years compared to 66% of manual workers among non-identifiers with an average education of 11.0 years. Very few Appalachians in this survey were found among non-manual workers or people with more than a high school education. That lack of variation in the population makes only limited differences possible between identifiers and non-identifiers. On the other hand, the fact that some difference does exist is consistent with the expectation that ethnic group formation is stronger among non-middle class people. Fewer Appalachian identifiers than non-identifiers lived in the inner-city of Cincinnati—25% compared to 40%. It is often assumed that when people move out of the inner-city neighborhoods which served as gateways to the suburds they are assimilating into the local area. Such is not the case, at least among Appalachians. Instead the data suggest that Appalachians living in the suburbs are still living in Appalachian neighborhoods (Philliber, 1981a). They do not move at random but instead locate in neighborhoods where other Appalachians are found. That factor may be an important step in the emergence of Appalachian identification among migrants. An important factor in ethnic group formation is the presence of institutions which serve the group in question and facilitate interaction between persons. Churches often play such a role. The largest percentage of Appalachians are found in fundamentalist churches such as Pentecostal or Baptist while the native population is most frequently Catholic. Appalachian identifiers are more often found in these churches than are non-identifiers—48% compared to 36%. These churches may well be havens where Appalachians gather to share stories of the region or pactice customs not familiar to others, such as pot luck dinners. One of the major differences between identifiers and non-identifiers is that the majority (58%) of the identifiers are male while only a minority of the non-identifiers are (41%). This difference may in fact make more sense than one would imagine. Many women in Appalachian migrant families do not work outside the home. The men who do work outside the home come in contact with non-Appalachians more often where they may be the target of jokes, stereotypes, and sometimes plain discrimination. These experiences may have made them more sensitive to the fact that they are Appalachian. Finally, Appalachian identifiers are no more likely than non-identifiers to have come from Southern Appalachia. People who came from the Appalachian portions of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York are as likely as Southern Appalachians to identify themselves as Appalachians. Three interpretations are possible. First, almost all the Appalachians in this study were from Southern Appalachia. If every Appalachian identifier in this study was from Southern Appalachia, 83% of the non-identifiers would also be, given the marginals in these data. It may not be possible to observe the effects of region given the data. Second, whereas people living in the Appalachian portions of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York may not think of themselves as Appalachians, upon migrating out of the region they may be grouped by others as Appalachians and treated as such. Such treatment may produce an Appalachian identification. Third, it may be that portions of these states really are part of the region and scholars have simply been slow to recognize it. 13 �Conclusions Two different conclusions emerge from these findings—one supportive of assimilation, the other of ethnogenesis. That assimilation of Appalachians is occurring is supported by findings that younger Appalachians who were born in Cincinnati or have lived there for a long time do not see themselves as Appalachians. Appalachian identification is stronger among people born in Appalachia who have lived fewer years outside of the region. This is perfectly consistent with the notion that a "melting pot" effect occurs over time. Other findings, however, are more consistent with an ethnogenesis argument. Appalachian identification is stronger among lower socioeconomic males who participate in fundamentalist churches. Migration to the suburbs is also associated with stronger identification, instead of an indication of assimilation. All this is consistent with the argument that ethnic groups in urban areas are formed as a reaction to discrimination designed to eliminate them from competition for rewards within the system. The development of ethnic identification is the last step in this process. Whether Appalachians will form a strong urban ethnic group or assimilate into the dominant society perhaps will best be answered by the third generation, many of whom are now born and will soon take roles as adults in society. Footnotes 'Blacks were excluded from analysis because of the high correlation between race and many of the other variables. References Campbell, Angus, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes 1964 The American Voter: An Abridgement. New York: John Wiley & Sons McCoy, Clyde B. and Virginia McCoy Watkins 1981 "Stereotypes of Appalachians in urban areas." Pp. 20-31 in The Invisible Minority William W. Philliber and Clyde B. McCoy (eds.) Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Miller, Tommie R. 1978 Urban Appalachian ethnic identity: the current situation." Pp. 243-52 in Perspectwes-on Urban Appalachians Steven Weiland and Phillip J. Obermiller (eds.) Cincinnati: Ohio Urban Appalachian Awareness Project. Obermiller, Phillip J. 1982 Labeling Urban Appalachians: The Role of Stereotypes in the Formation of Ethnic Group Identity. Unpublished dissertation Union Graduate School. Philliber, William W. 1981a Appalachian Migrants in Urban America. New York: Praeger 1981b "Accounting for the occupational placements of Appalachian migrants." Pp. 154-62 in The Invisible Minori- 'y William W. Philliber and Clude B. McCoy (eds.) Lexington; The University Press of Kentucky. Philliber, William W. and Phillip J. Obermiller 1982 "Black Appalachian migrants: the issue of dual minority status" Pp. 47-53 in Critical Essays in Apapalchian Life and Culture Rick Simon (ed.) Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press. Singer, L. 1962 "Ethnogenesis and Negro Americans today." Social Research, 29 (Winter): 242-55. Sudman, Seymour 1966 "Probability sampling with quotas." journal of the American Statistical Association, 61 (September): 49-1. 14 �Ethnic Conflict in an Appalachian Craft Cooperative: On the Application of Structural Ethnicity to Mountaineers and Outsiders Susan Emley Keefe The question of ethnicity in Appalachia has been raised by a number of researchers with inconsistent results. Some authors argue Appalachian people are not a unique subculture (Billings 1974; Fisher 1978; Ford 1962), while others believe mountaineers either have a distinctive culture (Jones 1978; Pearsall 1966) or in any case form an identifiable group exploited by the larger society (Batteau 1980; Lewis et al. 1978). Part of the problem lies in the racial and historical heritage of Appalachians, who are predominantly of white Anglo-Saxon and Scotch-Irish extraction and descendants of early American pioneers who settled the area in the 18th and 19th centuries. To many researchers, this makes them fundamentally "American" (Miller 1978; Whisnant 1976). Considering the complexity of the debate, we must begin with an examination of the concept of ethnicity. Scholars have come to no agreement on the meaning of the term (see Isajiw 1974). There appear to be at least three standard approaches to the concept of ethnicity: structural, cultural, and symbolic. The structural aspect of ethnicity refers to the boundedness and opposition of groups within the larger society. Cultural ethnicity is based on a distinctive pattern of cultural traits shared by members of a group Lastly, the symbolic approach to ethnicity puts emphasis on ethnic identification and pride. For some researchers, any one of these three aspects is sufficient for the identification of an ethnic group. For example, Glazer and Moynihan (1963) find the five ethnic groups they studied in New York City have little cultural distinctiveness but, rather, survive structurally as groups due to their action as political interest groups (see also Earth 1969; Leach 1954). Taking a symbolic perspective, Edward Spicer (1980) concludes that despite the loss of traditional cultura, ethnic groups endure because they adopt symbols of cultural difference and continue to perceive themselves as unique. Most scholars, however, believe ethnicity is a multidimensional phenomenon and find the interaction of two or more dimensions contribute to the formation and persistence of ethnic groups (e.g. Despres 1975; Keyes 1976). It is the purpose of this paper to develop the notion of structural ethnicity with respect to Appalachian natives. According to the distinction made above, the structural approach emphasizes conflict and the competition for scarce resources as the basis for ethnicity. The larger society is subdivided into ethnic groups which are defined by social boundaries—social interaction being primarily intra-ethnic. The ethnic groups support their own social, economic, and political institutions and form separate ethnic communities. The ethnic groups are stratified and differ in their relative accumulation of wealth, status, and power. Minority ethnic groups are discriminated against and ex- 15 �ploited by the majority group. Members of ethnic groups generally perceive the presence of different ethnic groups within the society and these perceptions are generally associated with identification with one group, prejudice toward other groups, the emergence of stereotypes and derogatory labels, and (among minority ethnic groups) the perception of discrimination by and feelings of inferiority in comparison to the dominant group. Finally, from the structural perspective, an ethnic group comes together to act as a political interest group in the larger society and thus comes into conflict with other groups over political goals, issues, and leadership positions. The Context: An Appalachian Craft Cooperative The empirical context for the investigation of Appalachian ethnicity was the study of a handicraft cooperative in the mountains of western North Carolina. At the request of the new manager of the co-op who required a better understanding of the large and diverse membership in order to better meet members' needs, the author undertook a membership survey and supervised personal interviews with members.1 The survey questionnaire was mailed to all 370 dues-paying members in March, 1982, and 172 were returned. The return rate of 46% is fairly high for mailed questionnaires. A comparison of craft production and residence data from the returned questionnaires with that from the membership cards on file at the co-op indicates the survey respondents are very representative of the membership as a whole. In addition, the manager and 13 members of the co-op were interviewed, including five members of the Board of Directors. Several Board meetings and membership gatherings were also attended. The co-op was first established by a federal Community Action Program (CAP) agency in an effort to help low-income residents in a four-county area. In 1964-65, shortly after its formation, the local CAP agency decided to encourage craftmaking as a means to supplement the income of poor mountain families. As Woods (1972) points out, a crafts program is well suited to Appalachian peoples' needs because: (1) the crafts can be made at home, allowing participation despite isolation or household and child care responsibilities, (2) the crafts can be made in spare time and need not interfere with a regular job, (3) those crafts made from natural materials require little or no capital investment, and (4) craftmaking takes advantage of already existing skills and creative knowledge. Skills such as sewing, quilting, and wood working are traditional to the Appalachian region and uniquely qualify the native people for craft production. At the same time, however, it is recognized that the production of traditional craft items such as wood-carved toys and rag dolls yields relatively small profits. But even the minimal supplementary income provided by craftmaking can be vital to those in poverty. As one low-income member put it, "If you can't make big money, I say make little money." The crafts program was successful, and in 1968, with the help of a grant from OEO, a nonprofit craft cooperative was established. The development of the co-op was far from unique. Cooperatives have often been advocated as a means of economic development, especially in rural areas (Counts 1966; Kuhm 1974), and co-ops emerged as an important means of organizing the poor during the social reforms of the 1960s (Marshall and Godwin 1971). Members join the co-op by purchasing one share for 10 dollars. This ensures membership control of the co-op. A Board of Directors is elected by the membership to set policy, and the co-op employs a manager to supervise craft production and sales. Crafts are marketed in three ways: (1) at two craft stores operated by the co-op, (2) during two craft fairs sponsored by the co-op, and (3) through wholesale distribution from a co-op warehouse. Members sell their own crafts from in16 �dividual booths at the craft fairs. Members receive immediate payment from the co-op for craft items accepted by the stores and the warehouse. Payment for crafts sold in the stores is 50% of the retail price. Despite what seems like an excessive number of members for a successful cooperative, the co-op has always had a large membership. In the year before incorporation, 480 craftspeople in four counties participated in the crafts program. After incorporation, craft classes sponsored by the CAP agency continued to bring in new members. By 1970, there were 6-800 craftspeople in the co-op. In the early 1970s membership also expanded geographically to include several adjacent counties. By 1982, membership had climbed to over 1,200. However, two-thirds of these had failed to pay their dues and were eventually dropped from the co-op by the Board in May, 1982, leaving a participating membership of around 400 craftmakers. Sales climbed as the co-op grew, going from $24,000 in the years before incorporation to $281,000 in 1981-82. Financial problems, however, now plague the organization which has run in the red for the past three years. Over-expansion appears to be a major problem. Due to the inability to meet operating costs, the co-op renegotiated their mortage in 1980 on the craft store they own and got a loan. Then the organization found it difficult to meet the higher loan payments in addition to their operating costs, and while the co-op managed to keep their mortgage payment current, payments to members for finished crafts were delayed. In 1981, the co-op obtained another loan from the North Carolina Rural Development Fund to cover expenses. Although the financial problems have developed primarily as a result of internal factors, the economic recession beginning in 1980 contributed to the recent precipitous financial state. Craft sales have declined and craft cooperatives everywhere are feeling the crunch. In addition, however, the co-op has suffered at one time or another from all of the difficulties enumerated by Arnold (1977) as common to cooperatives for low-income people: undercapitalization, inefficient management, marketing difficulties, insufficient volume due to inadequate membership participation, and poor record keeping. As co-op membership grew in the 1970s, it also diversified. Low-income status was not established as a requirement for joining the co-op, and members came to include more highly educated, middle-income people and professionally-trained, contemporary craftmakers. These new members are not Appalachian natives for the most part and have been attracted to the mountains by the life-style, aesthetic environment, and the area's reputation for craftmaking. Because the co-op has unrestricted membership, many of these new members do not even reside in the mountains but have merely joined the co-op as another means of seasonally marketing their crafts. Conflict has emerged in the last few years between the Appalachian natives and the newcomers provoked by the critical financial problems, competition for leadership, and the growing realization that the two subgroups have different values, needs, and participation styles. The development of co-op conflict based on a division into similar subgroups is evidently not unknown in Appalachia. For example, Wright reports: The Southern Highlands Handicrafts Guild was organized in the early 1930s to promote and market the handicrafts of the mountain people, and few would disclaim its indispensable role. In recent years a new kind of craftsman has come upon the scene—contemporary in feeling, often college educated, fineart oriented, aggressive, and less provincial. Contemporary craftsmen have taken an expanding role in the Guild, and some of the traditional craftsmen feel it has been at their expense. (1982:2) Internal conflict threatens the very basis for voluntary organization of co-operatives which is why 17 �specialists urge co-ops to maintain culturally homogeneous memberships (Marshall and Godwin 1971). It was the emergence of internal conflict in conjunction with the financial problems which prompted the co-op to seek the help of outside consultants and, eventually, the author. Ethnic Division Within the Co-op The perception of two different subgroups within the co-op has not escaped many of the members and leaders of the organization. The terms used to distinguish the two groups vary but generally they imply different cultural or geographic origins (e.g. "mountain people" or "locals" vs. "outsiders"; "locals" vs. "regionals"), different craft training (e.g. "folk" or "traditional craftsmen" vs. "professionals"; "indigenous craftsmen" vs. "trained, contemporary craftsmen") or a different approach to craft production or marketing (e.g. "craft workers" vs. "craft producers"; "wholesale people" vs. "craft fair people"), Despite the different terms used, the opposing groups which are perceived in fact amount to a distinction between native-born Appalachians and people born outside the region (referred to here as non-Appalachians). 2 The co-op membership is about equally divided between the two groups. Many of the characteristics referred to in the various terms cited above appear to be based on fact. For example, according to the survey data, most of the Appalachian members (77%) were born in the mountains of North Carolina. Another 14% were born in the nearby mountains of Virginia and Tennessee. In a true sense, then, they are "locals." The majority of non-Appalachians were born outside the south (58%) or outside the United States (8%). The label "outsider," therefore, is also relatively accurate. Moreover, over one-third of the non-Appalachian members currently live outside the Appalachian region (36% vs. 4%), and most of these do not even seasonally reside in Appalachia. Only 47% of the non-Appalachians live in the mountains of North Carolina as compared to 82% of the Appalachian natives. In fact, 68% of the Appalachian natives live in the original four CAP counties versus only 26% of the non-Appalachians. The nonAppalachians who reside in the Appalachian region are relative newcomers as well. They have lived in Appalachia an average of 13 years; one-half have lived here less than 10 years. Again, the labels "local" and "outsider" appear to be based to a great extent on actual background characteristics. Differences in craft production and training are also supported by the survey data. Appalachianborn members primarily (71%) make soft goods (e.g. dolls, stuffed animals, bonnets, etc.), quilts, canopies, and natural material crafts (the "traditional" crafts). Another 11% make wood crafts, many of which can be considered traditional. On the other hand, only 19% of the nonAppalachians make crafts in the four traditional categories. Half the non-Appalachians make crafts of wood or pottery. Only non-Appalachians produce metal or glass crafts and candles, while only Appalachians make canopies. Both groups often claim to be self-taught in their craft, but, in addition, non-Appalachians frequently have learned their craft from a teacher/professor, while Appalachians more often were taught by a relative, friend, or craft class instructor. Furthermore, the majority of non-Appalachians are likely to produce crafts year-round (51%) and to devote more than 30 hours per week to craftmaking (59%) while Appalachians are more likely to produce crafts part-time (61% devote less than 30 hours per week to crafts) and seasonally (64%), especially during the fall and/or winter. The approach to craft marketing also varies by subgroup. Almost all non-Appalachians have a diversified marketing approach and sell their crafts in additional ways outside the co-op: the majority sell through craft fairs and retail stores, and at least one-third sell to other co-ops or out of their home/studio. The majority of non-Appalachians (59%) belong to other craft organizations 18 �generally for the purpose of expanding their market. Within the co-op, the non-Appalachians are most likely to have sold crafts through the co-op stores (63%) and/or the co-op sponsored craft fairs (48%) rather than through the warehouse. The Appalachians, on the other hand, are more likely to be dependent specifically on the co-op for marketing their crafts. Most Appalachians (77%) do not belong to other craft organizations. Although two-thirds of the Appalachians also sell their crafts outside the co-op, this is most likely to be out of their own home or through local craft fairs. Appalachians put more time than nonAppalachians into working specifically for the co-op. For example, one-quarter of the Appalachians put more than 30 hours per week into making crafts just for the co-op compared to only 3% of the non-Appalachians. Furthermore, although non-Appalachians claim more income from total craft sales, the Appalachians receive a greater proportion of their income from sales through the co-op; 21% of the Appalachian members report one-fourth or more of their income is from the co-op compared to 9% of the non-Appalachians. Finally, the Appalachians (59%) most commonly sell their crafts through the co-op warehouse, which primarily markets traditional crafts. The survey data also bear out the existence of significant socioeconomic differences between the two groups. Appalachians are less likely to be employed in outside jobs (18% vs. 24%) and are less likely to have white-collar occupations (50% vs. 82% of those employed). Almost half the Appalachians (46%) are low income making less than $8,000 per year compared to 22% of the nonAppalachians. 5 The Appalachians are less educated; 40% have only eight years of schooling or less compared to 3% of the non-Appalachians. On the other hand, 51% of the non-Appalachians have college degrees versus only 13% of the Appalachians. Thus, the stratification within the co-op is not unlike the socioeconomic differences between Appalachians and mainstream Americans in the larger society. There is evidence of ethnic political leadership stratification within the co-op as well. The current manager and the President of the Board of Directors are both from outside Appalachia. In fact, both moved to the local area in the last five years. Only one of the current Board members is a native Appalachian. This appears to be a recent development to some extent, and it should be noted that the current Board and the manager have worked hard to encourage the participation of locals. The recent reticence of mountaineers to participate in leadership roles seems to be related to the organization's problems of the last few years. As one informant put it: When we hired our previous manager, we figured he was a good mix of business and crafts. But while he was manager, the co-op lost over $60,000 in the wholesale warehouse business. The mood on the Board became 'Since the wholesale isn't profitable, let's get rid of it.' That was when it started to break up into sides: the wholesale people versus the craft fair people—When we had all that trouble with the wholesale part of the co-op, the locals didn't know what to do to fix it, and the professionals didn't really care. At this time, the co-op solicited the services of an outside consultant, a specialist in business management. Based on an analysis of the co-op's financial statements and interviews with the President of the Board of Directors and the manager, the consultant made several recommendations beginning with the following: The major recommendation is to close the wholesale operation—this is a total drain on your cash flow due to its continuing loss position for the foreseeable future. This formal threat to the mainstay of the mountain people's participation in the co-op further antagonized these members. But perhaps more crucial to the growing political division and the mobilization of the locals on their own behalf was the failure of the past manager to pay members 19 �for crafts on delivery. Since more crafts bought by the co-op were for wholesale through the warehouse, this primarily affected the mountaineers. The amounts due traditional craftmakers increased as the co-op's financial status continued to decline while warehouse orders remained in force. The craftmakers, many of whom it will be recalled make less than $8,000 per year, were forced to continue buying materials to make their crafts without any financial return for months. For example, the co-op owed one quiltmaker $1800 for over five months before reimbursement. It was the lack of payment for crafts that prompted a group of mountain people to seek legal services and negotiation with the co-op leadership. One result was the termination of the manager—an action causing considerable internal conflict because many Board members liked him personally. The new manager, hired shortly thereafter, set about paying members immediately for all crafts bought by the co-op in the past and has returned to the policy of direct payment for crafts upon delivery. Due to the events of the last few years, most active co-op members recognize the two factions in the organization. The stereotypes portrayed in the remarks of a non-Appalachian informant seem in many ways to reflect the real situation: There are bitter feelings, especially by the locals against the professionals. The people who come from Pennsylvania and elsewhere to participate in the craft fairs to market their items are an entirely different type of people from the little old lady making rag dolls from scraps of material in her house in the backwoods. This causes trouble with representation on the Board. Each group wants to have more representation, voices, and power than the other. Moreover, active members tend to identify with one of the two groups and often express prejudice and even outright hostility towards the other group. For example, one member commented: Yes, I see a difference between the local people and members who are not from around here, especially the people who are from places like New York. They think they know it all. Those people think they know everything about making crafts. I really don't know from who or how they learned craftmaking, but they seem to take away from traditional local crafts. Also, they try to run the organization. It seems to me that they think they know how a fair is supposed to run. It is perhaps significant that this member chose to label outsiders as people "from places like New York" when none of the co-op members currently reside in New York (although a few were born there). Instead, "New York" is used to identify an alien place which has little in common with the people and culture of Appalachia. At a co-op meeting where the author's research findings were presented, mention of the division between the two groups caused much discussion. One woman, a middle-income mountaineer, broke in with an emotional story of a conversation she had had with neighbors who said they had heard the warehouse was having trouble filling its orders: They said this was because the old codgers back in the hills were too lazy to work! It made me so mad! I don't mind outsiders, but I think they are taking over the organization which was started for mountain people. We need to limit the membership some and make sure our people get represented. Other mountaineers have suggested similar measures. Some have suggested limiting membership to the immediate geographic area. In countering the consultant's suggestion, some wholesale people have recommended eliminating the co-op's craft fairs to help solve the financial problems. Special anger has been expressed against members who are also in other "competing" co-ops (and who, as described above, are primarily non-Appalachians). One informant complained in particular 20 �about another local co-op which was created years ago by college-educated, contemporary craftmakers who were also members of this co-op: They stole the idea for a co-op from us and now they are also taking over our Board. In fact, three current Board members are members of the other cooperative, and in the course of revising the bylaws in 1982, the co-op established a new rule which does not allow Board members to belong to other craft cooperatives. While current problems have exacerbated competition between the two groups, many informants see the need to ensure that both traditional and contemporary crafts continue to be marketed by the co-op. The need to maintain traditional crafts is cited not only to adhere to the original purpose of helping low-income people and to aid in the survival of traditional crafts, but also because of the drawing-card of folk handicrafts in marketing. In order to maintain production of the traditional crafts, on the other hand, these members also recognize the need to offer training in marketing and business skills especially for low-income members. The professional crafts people, of course, would be well qualified to lead workshops in these areas. One informant commented on the importance of better incorporating the traditional craftmaker into the organization: The co-op has changed to a focus on trained craftsmen. This is a problem. The trained people dominate the others. It isn't good. The indigenous craftspeople are very necessary to the organization. The contemporary craftspeople don't realize that they need the indigenous craftspeople. The indigenous craftspeople are the pull. Without them, the co-op would be like any other craft store in the world. Although it was not specifically the focus of this study, there is some evidence to suggest that important cultural differences characterize the two groups. Sex roles differ, for example, both as general cultural concepts and within the organization. Whereas non-Appalachian co-op members are about equally divided by sex, the vast majority of Appalachian members are women (86%). It is difficult to determine why Appalachian men are less likely to join the co-op. It could be that they are less likely to make crafts or to see craftmaking as a viable occupation and potential source of income, or perhaps they are less likely to join voluntary organizations. In any case, they are not well represented in the co-op. Researchers have suggested sex roles are separate and distinctive in Appalachia and that women are not likely to take on formal leadership roles (Beaver 1979; Hicks 1976). One informant pointed out the way in which this affects co-op politics: Mountain people won't say much at the meetings, especially the women. They think it's the men's decision and they're not supposed to overrule. Most local, mountain women don't like the current manager because they think she's a "bossy woman." She says what she thinks at the meetings. And it doesn't help to have a female President of the Board either. She's seen as being outside, a Women's Lib woman, and bossy—which is still very disliked here in the mountains. When the Board elected her President, the vote was four to three, outsiders versus locals. The preference for male leadership among the Appalachian members makes their political mobilization more difficult due to the small proportion of Appalachian men in the co-op. On the other hand, it is apparent that Appalachian women do become involved politically. For example, the group which sought legal services resulting in the ouster of the previous manager was made up of mountain women. Another cultural difference between the two groups has to do with age roles. The Appalachian members tend to be older than the non-Appalachians (54 vs. 47 mean years of age). There is a comparatively large group of young non-Appalachians under the age of 36 (347o vs. 13%) and a com21 �paratively large group of older Appalachians over the age of 64 (31% vs. 16%). Elderly widows make up 11% of the membership and almost all are Appalachian women. According to the data from this organization, craftmaking for income is done primarily by older people among mountaineers and by younger people among non-Appalachians. Many of the young non-Appalachian craftmakers have come out of the counter-culture movement and see craftmaking as a way to combine expressive and creative art with relative occupational freedom, an informal lifestyle, and profitmaking. Young mountaineers, on the other hand, frequently see craftmaking as "old fashioned" and, to some extent, symbolic of the poverty of the region. Of courser-the traditional crafts with which mountaineers are most familiar are not very profitable and could only serve as a source of supplemental income. Those craftspeople most likely to be able to live off their income are potters (Neapolitan and Ethridge 1982) and most potters in the co-op are non-Appalachians. A final cultural difference concerns the value of cooperation and avoidance of conflict which is more characteristic of mountaineers. Several ethnographers have remarked on the egalitarian nature of mountain people (Hicks 1976; Pearsall 1959), and Ross (1977) emphasizes the importance of the "communal" trait in contributing to the success of the Kentucky Hills craft cooperative, whose membership is exclusively native mountain people. Several informants perceived a difference between the two groups in the co-op with respect to participation styles. The non-Appalachian, contemporary craftspeople are perceived as more self-serving and less committed to the co-op as a whole. As one informant said, "The professionals aren't as used to the reciprocity of a co-op. They're more capitalist." The mountaineers, in comparison, are perceived as more group-oriented. In the words of a second informant, "There was and still is more cooperation and loyalty to the coop among mountain people." This informant goes on to contrast the more competitive decisionmaking style of the outsiders with the more collective orientation of mountaineers: You have to understand local, mountain people. They won't say anything one way or the other at meetings, until it's too late...When we had all that trouble with the wholesale part of the co-op, the profesionals would fight for their position and the locals wouldn't. It just wasn't and isn't their way. Now it's difficult to get locals to serve on the Board. Many have resigned in the past two years. They get frustrated, give up, and quit with bad feelings. The survey data supports this difference in collective orientation between the two groups. The Appalachian members are much more positive about the benefits of the co-op (e.g. income, craft market, craft training, etc.) and they are less likely to be critical of the co-op. Only 45% of the Appalachians listed a criticism compared to 59% of the non-Appalachians. This is especially interesting considering the fact that Appalachians selling to the wholesale warehouse were the members most directly affected by the recent mismanagement. Of course, many of these members may have since dropped out of the organization or for some other reason not answered the questionnaire. Nevertheless, the fact remains that for the most part the mountain people continued to sell to the warehouse despite the lack of payment while the contemporary craftmakers stopped selling to the co-op immediately. Conclusions As Ronald Cohen (1978) has pointed out, ethnicity emerges when cultural groups come into contact and there is the potential for conflict over resources. Researchers in Appalachian studies have frequently referred to Appalachian migrants in northern cities as an ethnic minority group (Maloney 1978; Obermiller 1977). Mountaineers who have stayed behind, on the other hand, are 22 �less commonly considered ethnics, perhaps because researchers tend to characterize the mountain population as homogeneous and isolated. Yet, tourism has been an important industry in Southern Appalachia since World War II, and the region is now an area of immigration and population growth. The popularity of the area for second homes for the wealthy also contributes to the diversity of the population. In his ethnography of a rural area in western North Carolina, for example, Hicks (1976) mentions the presence of Floridians during the summers and their resentment by the locals. Writers using the colonialism model have most frequently employed the notion of conflict between different cultural groups in Appalachia, specifically mountaineers versus outside corporations and absentee landowners (Gaventa 1980; Lewis et al. 1978). However, the concern here has been less with defining the nature of the Appalachian group and more with defining the nature of the exploitation and domination by the outside interests, particularly in the coal fields. It has been the purpose of this paper to suggest that mountaineers and outsiders who are recent immigrants interact in the mountains as separate social groups which are structurally differentiated and compete for resources. Although the case described is of a craft cooperative, this division is evident in general mountain life in the area as well. Members of these groups generally perceive each other as different and identify with a single group, identification being based on the ascribed trait of birth in the mountains as opposed to outside the mountains. The groups come into conflict as political interest groups which serves to further intensify group boundaries. It is suggested that the concept of structural ethnicity thus fits this case of mountaineers versus outsiders and that indication of cultural differences between the two ethnic groups strengthens the case for applying a general model of ethnicity to mountain people. Footnotes 'The research was conducted by the author and students in an anthropology methods class at Appalachian State University. The students included Kay Casstevens, Glenda Henderson, Wendy Jo Jackson, Carol Moeller, Linda Reed, Beverly Sizemore, and Vicki Watson. In addition, a graduate student, Deanna Dillingham, gathered information concerning the history of the co-op. Appreciation is expressed to all of these students for their dedicated and professional help in this research. 2 For the analysis of the survey data, Appalachian natives were defined as those people born in any of the counties designated as part of Central or Southern Appalachia by the Appalachian Regional Commission. This includes all of West Virginia and the mountains parts of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. According to the survey data, 56% of the co-op members are Appalachian natives. 3 Of course, a large proportion of the Appalachian members might be expected to be low income given the history of the co-op, organized to help low-income mountain people. However, most of the Appalachian members surveyed joined the coop in the last 10 years after it became independent of the CAP agency. References Arnold E. Carroll 1977 Barth Fredrik 1969 "Appalachian Cooperatives: Economies of the Third Kind." Appalachia, 11:20-27, December. "Introduction." In Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, F. Barth (ed.). Boston: Little, Brown & Co. Pp. 9-38. Batteau, Allen 1980 "Appalachia and the Concept of Culture: A Theory of Shared Misunderstandings." Appalachian Journal, 1 23 �Beaver, Patricia D. 1979 "Hillbilly Women, Hillbilly Men: Sex Roles in Rural-Agricultural Appalachia." In Appalachian Women: A Learning/Teaching Guide, Sharon Lod and Carolyn Patton-Crowder (authors and editors). Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare. Pp. 65-73. Billings, Dwight 1974 "Culture and Poverty in Appalachia: A Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Analysis." Social Forces, 53:315-323. Cohen, Ronald 1978 "Ethnicity: Problem and Focus in Anthropology." In Annual Review of Anthopology, Vol. 7, B.J. Siegel, A.R. Beals, and S.A. Tyler (eds.). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, Inc. Pp. 379-403. Counts, Charles 1966 Encouraging American Handicrafts: What Role in Economic Development? U.S. Economic Development Administration. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Despres, Leo A. 1975 "Toward A Theory of Ethnic Phenomena." In Ethnicity and Resource Competition in Plural Society, Leo A. Despres (ed.). The Hague: Mouton Publishers. Pp. 187-207. Fisher, Stephen L. 1978 "Victim-Blaming in Appalachia: Cultural Theories and the Southern Mountaineer." In Appalachia: Social Context Past and Present, Bruce Ergood and Bruce Kuhre (eds.). Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing. Pp. 139-148. Ford, Thomas R. 1967 "The Passing of Provincialism." In The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey, Thomas R. Ford (ed.). Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press. Pp. 9-34. Gaventa, John 1980 Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Glazer, Nathan and Daniel P. Moynihan 1963 Beyond the Melting Pot. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press. Hicks, George L. 1976 Appalachian Valley. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Isajiw, Wesvelod. W. 1974 "Definitions of Ethnicity. Ethnicity, 1:3-25. Jones, Loyal 1978 "Appalachian Values." In Appalachia: Social Context Past and Present, Bruce Ergood and Bruce Kuhre (eds.). Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing. P. 101-105. Keyes, Charles F. 1976 "Towards a New Formulation of the Concept of Ethnic Groups." Ethnicity, 3:202-213. Kuhn, Johannes 1974 "The Role of Cooperatives in LDC's." Intereconomics, 4:116-119. Leach, Edmund R. 1954 Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure. Boston: Beacon Press. Lewis, Helen Matthews, Linda Johnson, and Donald Askins (eds.). 1978 Colonialism in Modem America: The Appalachian Case. Boone, NC: The Appalachian Consortium Press. 24 �Lewis, Helen, Sue Kobak, and Linda Johnson 1978 "Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia." In Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case, Helen Lewis, Linda Johnson and Donald Askins (eds.). Boone: Appalachian Consortium Press. Pp. 113-139. Maloney, Michael E. 1978 "The Implications of Appalachian Culture for Social Welfare Practice." In Perspectives on Urban Appalachians, Steve Weihand and Phillip Obermiller (eds.). Cincinnati, Ohio: Ohio Urban Appalachian Awareness Project. Pp. 253-259. Marshall, Ray and Lamond Godwin 1971 Cooperatives and Rural Poverty in the South. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Miller, Jim Wayne 1978b "Appalachian Values/American Values, Part IV." Appalachian Heritage, 6(3):23-34. Neapolitan, Jerry and Maurice Ethridge 1982 "Self-Perception in Terms of Professionalism and Skill Leads to Concept of Craftworker and/or Artist." The Crafts Report, 8(80): 13, May. Obermiller, Phillip J. 1977 "Appalachians as an Urban Ethnic Group: Romanticism, Renaissance or Revolution?" Appalachian Journal, 5. Pearsall, Marion 1959 Little Smokey Ridge: The Natural History of a Southern Appalachian Neighborhood. Tuscaloosa, AL: Univ. of Alabama Press. Pearsall, Marion 1966 "Communicating with the Educationally Deprived." Mountain Life and Work, 42(1):8-11. Ross, Smith 1977 Come Co With Me. Pine Knot, KY: Kentucky Hills Ind. Spicer, Edward H. 1980 The Yaquis: A Cultural History. Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press. Whisnant, David E. 1976 "Brief Notes Toward a Reconsideration of Appalachian Values." Appalachian Journal, 4:46-48. Woods, Ernie 1972 "A Kentucky Group Learns to Design and Market Its Crafts." Appalachia, 5:27-30. Wright, W.B. 1982 "The State We're In." The State: Down Home in North Carolina, 49(11):2. 25 �A Preliminary Look at the Welsh Component of Celtic Influence in Appalachia Loyal Jones I have long been interested in the number of Welsh surnames in the Appalachian region and the fact that historians have paid scant attention to the Welsh as a distinctive group or have included them with the English. About 40 percent of the people in Wales have the names of Edwards, Evans, James, Jones, Lewis, Morgan, Morris, Phillips, Price, Roberts, Thomas and Williams. 1 Edward Hartmann claims that 39 Welsh names and their variant spellings include about 95 percent of all of the Welsh (including additionally such names as Richards, Owen, Davis, Hughes, Howell, Jenkins, Evans, Harris, Pritchard, Powell and Vaughn) names common in the region. Forrest and Ellen McDonald have shown through studies of surnames in the 1790 census that, contrary to earlier ethnic projections, the Celts (Welsh, Scots, Irish, Scotch-Irish) made up a large percent of the population in the colonies that border on the Appalachians: Pennsylvania, 42.8; Maryland, 38.7; Virginia, 41.7; North Carolina, 52.5; and South Carolina, 53.4. When Germans and other non-English are added, the English were a minority in each of these colonies.2 Celtic culture was not English culture. AsJ.G.A. Pocock put it, "The Celtic peoples are no more English than Britain is European." 3 Yet scores of romantics have written for years about the "Elizabethan" culture that is preserved in the mountains of Appalachia. Of the Celts, the Scotch-Irish have gotten the most attention, partially because they had two strong writers, Ford and Hanna, 4 to argue their case. The Welsh have had no writers of similar rank, and thus the Welsh have been a largely-ignored minority. The purpose of this paper is to argue that this was a mistake and that the Welsh had considerable influence in Appalachia as they did throughout America. Numerically, the Welsh were the smallest of the Celtic groups, making up the following percentages in the 1790 census; Pennsylvania, 5.9; Maryland, 7.1; Virginia, 9.5; North Carolina, 11.6; and South Carolina, 8.8. The numbers of Welsh heads of families projected were: Pennsylvania, 4,482; Maryland, 2,662; Virginia, 3,577; North Carolina, 5,942; and South Carolina, 2,215.5 Because of their relatively low numbers in the 1790 census, it is necessary to argue that there were later Welsh immigrants and that there was a Welsh distinctiveness that was influential. Wales lost its independence in 1282 when Kind Edward I of England killed the last Welsh prince, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, and installed his own son as Prince of Wales. Yet Edward had to build a string of castles throughout Wales to assert English authority in the small mountainous country. Jan Morris wrote in an article in the New York Times Magazine: Yet despite centuries of subjugation by the English, Wales has somehow managed to retain its own identity—recognizably a different nation, honoring different values, cherishing different styles, even possessing a dif- 26 �ferent language, from its overwhelmingly English neighbor. It is a classic example—perhaps the classic example—of a small country defying all the odds of history, geography, economics, sociology, and cultural pressure to retain a sense of itself.6 The Welsh resisted with arms from time to time. In 1400 they rose under the leadership of Owain Glyn Dwr, and life in Wales was disrupted for years before they were brutally put down.7 With the Protestant Reformation, religious dissenter groups began to appear in Wales, some meeting clandestinely in remote vales. With such groups, especially the Baptists, came radical teaching, having to do with separation of church and state and religious liberty, baptism of believers (not infants), local autonomy and the scriptures as sole norm of faith and practice. People began to emigrate to the New World, usually in denominational groups. Arminian Baptists went with the Quakers to Penn's colony, and beginning in 1700, a large group of Calvinist Baptists went from south Wales to Pennsylvania. 8 David Williams describes the importance of the American connection: The late eighteenth century was a hinge of fate for the people of Wales. The first modern Welsh "Nation" was born with the American and French revolutions...It was a time of beginnings In the same period, the Welsh, by the thousand and thousand score, began their long march out of Establishment and into the spiritual world of Dissent. It is in the 1790s that this decisive change registers on the historical consciousness, in the crisis of modernization which cracked a society and a crisis of identity which created a "nation" and generated a millenarian migration to the USA.9 The "nation" Williams speaks of is the sense of Welshness which was ever in conflict with England and which several imaginative Welshmen tried to establish in the New World. Wales became a hotbed of political and religious dissent. With the beginning of the American Revolution, Richard Price published and distributed 60,000 copies of his Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, which argued that the American conflict was to legitimize popular sovereignty and the natural rights of man. This pamphlet was distributed in America, and the Continental Congress invited Price to advise the new republic. So popular was his Reflections on the Revolution in France that the French National Assembly went into mourning when he died in 1791.10 In 1782, David Williams, another pamphleteer, published Letters on Political Liberty which defended the Americans and advocated a radical program that included manhood suffrage, the ballot, small constituencies, annual parliaments and freedom of the press.11 Other Welshmen wrote less influential treatises on liberty. The nineteenth century brought much turmoil to those who remained in Wales. Eighty to eightyfive percent of the people became nonconformist in religion. The Rebecca riots protested toll charges for farm conveyances on public roads, and the Chartist demonstrations paved the way for labor unions. It was a time of enclosure laws, industrial penetration with attendant boom and bust, social upheaval and emigration. 12 Many Welsh believed that a countryman, Price Madoc, had discovered America in 1170 and that there were Welsh speaking Indians beyond the frontier who were either converts or descendents of Madoc and his followers. 13 Gwyn Williams explains the importance of the Madoc myth in the emigration of the Welsh to the New World: Madoc had been the catalyst for the whole process....The Madoc myth massively reinforced a sense of identity. It called out the missionary impulse so strongly rooted in Welsh Dissent....Ministers and elders were obsessed with the country, the Monongahela, Kentucky, the Ohio....It was deeper than that. For the Madoc legend was an almost perfect mythic projection of both the hopes and the predicament of the people who wished to be both Welsh and free The new Wales was to be an exemplar of univeral liberty— u 27 �In the minds of many of those who emigrated was the hope that they would link up with the Welsh-speaking North Americans and create the New Cambria (Wales), free from the restraints of England. The Baptists were the first of the Welsh to penetrate the Appalachians and influence the minds of those who were spilling into their eastern ramparts from the populations reservoirs of Pennsylvania and the Carolina Piedmont. A main purpose of this paper is to show that their influence is still apparent in the region today. The best known of the Welsh Baptist churches in America was the Pennepek church in Philadelphia, established in 1683 to become the mother of all Baptist churches in the middle colonies. Other Pennsylvania Baptist churches established by the Welsh in this early period were: Trediffron or Great Valley in 1711, the Brandywine Church in 1715, the Montgomery Church in 1719 and the Tulpohoken Church in 1738.ls The Welsh Tract in Delaware was settled by new Welsh and Pennsylvania Welsh in 1703. The Iron Hill Baptist Church of the Welsh Tract, a strongly Calvinistic one, spawned eight new Baptist churches in Delaware and Pennsylvania, and also the Welsh Neck Baptist Church in the Welsh settlement on the Peedee River in South Carolina.16 The Welsh Tract confession, from Rhydwilym, Wales, became the basis for the influential confession of the Philadelphia Association of Baptists.17 The South Carolina colony attracted the Welsh to the Welsh Neck settlement by allowing them a tract of 173,000 acres of rich land on both sides of the Peedee to be settled exclusively by the Welsh. Most of the tract, which was enlarged in 1737, was taken up mostly by Baptists from Delaware, Pennsylvania and Wales by 1746.18 The Welsh also settled in North Carolina in the 1730s along the Cape Fear Valley.19 There is no doubt that the Welsh also entered the migratory stream from eastern and western Pennsylvania, together with the Germans and Scotch-Irish, to spill into Virginia and North Carolina and eventually the rest of the Appalachians. Many immigrants from the old countries lost track of those back home, and likewise those who migrated from Pennsylvania or Deleware never communicated again with those whom they left behind. The Welsh appear distinctive in maintaining contact with one another. Partly it was the power of the church, not just Baptists, because large numbers of Welsh Anglicans, Quakers, Congregationalists and Methodists also immigrated to America. The National Library in Aberystwyth holds many collections of letters between scattered Welshmen, as does the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, containing comments on church matters, politics and economic conditions. Welsh people at home were intensely interested in the New World, and those who had come to America wanted news of their homeland and relatives. Likewise, in this country, the religious groups helped to establish churches in new areas and kept an active interest in how they were doing. North Carolina attracted Baptists and Quakers, as well as other dissenting groups because its Lord Proprietors had built religious freedom into its charter.20 The first Baptist churches in North Carolina were Arminian in belief, were loosely organized and without an adequate confession of faith. The Welsh Calvinist Baptist of the Philadelphia Association and those of Welsh Neck were concerned about the state of these churches. Robert Williams of Welsh Neck began preaching in the Kehukee Church in North Carolin, attempting to lead it back to Calvinist beliefs. He called on the Philadelphia Association for help. They sent John Gano, the eminent Calvinist Baptist, as well as others, and they won 16 General Baptist churches to Calvinism, patterned after Welsh beliefs.21 This happened just before Shubal Stearns came south preaching his Separate Baptist beliefs with in28 �cendiary effect, which turn the majority of Baptists toward the more optimistic gospel of free will and universal atonement, but there were those who have stuck to the old Calvinism of the early Welsh Baptist churches. The radical views of Baptists soon got them in trouble in the North Carolina colony. The colony's publicized toleration wore thin over the Regulator uprising of the later 1760s and early 1770s, which was concerned with regulating unjust or uneven taxes. Baptists objected to paying taxes in support of the established church. The matter came to a head in the Battle of Alamance in 1771. Governor Tryon hated Baptists, calling them "enemies to society and a scandal to common sense," and he blamed them and the Quakers for the Regulator troubles.22 He shortly arrived with a large body of troops and proceeded to hunt down or expel known Baptists. As many asl.500Baptist families fled to the Watauga country or into western North Carolina.23 Eleven of the signers of the Watauga Association document were of Welsh descent. Welsh colonists were apparent throughout the Revolutionary cause. Five signed the Declaration of Independence (although in Wales the myth was that a majority of the signers were Welsh). Some were prominent in the cause, such as: Robert Morris, "financier of the Revolution;" Generals Evan Shelby, Allen Jones, Daniel Morgan, John Cadwallader, Francis Nash; Dr. John Morgan, Physician in Chief of the Continental Army; and Revolutionary governors Button Gwinnett of Georgia (also a general) and Abner Nash of North Carolina.24 Two were commanders at Kings Mountain, Colonels Isaac Shelby (who became the first governor of Kentucky) and James Williams (killed in the battle), and at least 120 of the soldiers bore Welsh surnames.25 The fires of both the American and French Revolutions lighted political hope throughout Wales. Large numbers of Welsh people made plans to emigrate to the New World, plans often thwarted by restrictions on emigration and by Royal Navy press gangs. Nevertheless, Welshmen published tracts calling for mass emigration of Welshmen to find their destiny among Madoc's lost people and the Welsh who had helped to establish freedom in America. Kentucky and Ohio were seen as the promised land. A New Cambria seemed possible. Morgan John Rhys organized a joint stock company for establishing a community to be called Beulah. He landed in New York in 1794 and began a long scouting journey that took him through Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia. His heart was set on Kentucky, but slavery repelled him, and Beulah was eventually established in western Pennsylvania. It failed for a variety of reasons. However, other less ambitious settlements were established in the hills of southeastern Ohio that prospered and retained their Welsh character into this century. The Welsh continued to immigrate into and around the Appalachians throughout the nineteenth century. Religiously, these later groups tended to be Methodist, reflecting the effect of the Methodist revivals of the preceding century. In the 1850s, Samuel Roberts, a noted preacher and writer, attempted to establish a large Welsh settlement on a purported hundred-thousand acres on the Cumberland Plateau near Huntsville, Tennessee, just south of the Kentucky line. The settlement foundered on disputed and overlapping land titles, disagreements between Roberts and the settlers over land and money and statements Roberts had made that appeared to justify Southern slaveholders, the last of which infuriated the strongly anti-slavery Welsh both in America and abroad.26 Many of the Welsh who hoped to settle in Tennessee stayed in Pennsylvania and New York or moved on to join the settlements in Ohio or those further north and west. However, some settled in Kentucky or elsewhere in Tennessee. 29 �The burgeoning coal and iron industries in the Appalachians brought skilled miners, managers and ironworkers to the region in the latter part of the century. Correspondence in the archives of the National Library of Wales gives some hint of the number of these industrial workers. Welsh miners and steel and iron workers provided needed skills in these industries. Permanent settlements resulted from their work in such places as Soddy, Chattanooga and Knoxville in Tennessee, Mason City and Hartford City in West Virginia, Birmingham and Jefferson County, Alabama, Jackson County, Ohio and Frostburg, Maryland.27 Place names elsewhere show the presence of Welsh people: Glomawr, Pembroke, Selwyn, Glen Wyn, Radnor and Nantyglo. I return now to the Baptists, because it is in the Old Regular and Primitive Baptist churches that the Welsh influence is most noticeable today. The Old Regulars are located mostly in eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia, although some are in neighboring states and in areas where Appalachians have migrated. Primitive Baptists are fairly common throughout the Appalachians and the South. Primitives are strict Calvinists. Old Regulars are modified Calvinists in that they do not hold with strict predestination. Both groups are traditionalistic, preach a separation from the things of the world, and guard against new beliefs and practices. Neither group uses musical instruments in worship and both brought "lining" hymnody into modern times. "Lining" a method of giving out the versus from noteless songbooks, line by line, to be sung in unison, is still the only method approved in the Old Regular churches; the Primitives, however, have gradually changed mostly to noted books, and lining is seldom used, except in black churches. Both of these churches subscribe to the "successionist" theory of Baptist history, and rely for authority on documents that show a direct lineage of people with appropriate beliefs from early times. An influential book was Joshua Thomas' History of the Baptists in Wales (1778), translated, abridged and added-to by John Davis as History of the Welsh Baptists From the Year Sixty-Three to the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventh and published in Pittsburgh in 1835. The attempt here is not to justify this theory of church history but rather to show the power of belief. Even John Edwards wrote that "the doctrine of uninterrupted succession is necessary only to such churches as regulate their faith and practice by tradition, and for their use it was first invented." Nor did the Baptists claim that there were Baptist churches earlier than the seventeenth century. Edwards explains: (A) Baptist has not the least trouble about what is called a lineal or apostoloc succession. His line of succession is in faithful men, and it is a matter of indifference with them, when or where they lived, by what name they were called, or by whom they were baptized or ordained A Baptist is one, who holds that a profession of faith, and an immersion in water are essential to baptism. 28 Just this year, an Appalachian Baptist, in discussion of Baptist history, asked me if I knew about the "Catholic Baptists." He referred, of course, to early Catholics in Wales and elsewhere who believed in baptism of adults rather than children and had other beliefs compatible with Baptist views. Regular and Primitive Baptist histories, such as Lawrence Edwards' The Baptists of Tennessee with Particular Attention to the Primitive Baptists of East Tennessee and Rufus Perrigan's History of Regular Baptists and their Ancestors and Accessors,29 refer to the influence of the Welsh. Perrigan writes: The Welsh Baptists claim that the principles of the Gospel were maintained pure and unalloyed in their mountainous principality all through the dark reign of popery. God had a regular chain of true and faithful believers in this country in every age, from the first introduction of Christianity to the present, and it was the Baptist faith. 30 30 �Perrigan also recounts that the Welsh affirm that the Apostle Paul preached in Wales in the year 68 and that Claudia, a Welsh princess, and her husband Budens were converted and baptized by Paul in Rome and that they came home to win converts. Perrigan also notes the contribution of the Welsh Baptists through their confessions of faith, especially the Philadelphia Confession which is the basis of belief for most Regular Baptist churches.31 Lawrence Edwards notes the influence of Welsh Baptists on Primitive Baptist beliefs, stating that this influence "held sway from New York to South Carolina." He believes that persecution in Virginia and the Regulator troubles, culminating in the Battle of Alamance were the chief causes of the influx of Baptists into the mountains.32 William Tallmadge writes that the practice of lining was noted and approved by the Westminster Assembly of 1644 and was transferred to the Colonies shortly thereafter. He states further that the Calvinistic Baptists were promoters of congregational singing in that period and credits a father-son team, Benjamin and Elias Keach, with furthering the practice. Elias immigrated to America about 1690 and became pastor of the predominantely Welsh Lower Dublin Church in Pennsylvania.33 Tallmadge quotes Louis Benson as believing that the promotion of singing among Baptists in the Colonies was from the Delaware Welsh Tract Baptists, whose articles of faith included an article written by the Reaches that proclaimed singing as a holy ordinance.34 It is important to note that in this period the General, or Arminian, Baptists were non-singers, and that hymn singing was in its infancy. The standard method in leading the hymns was lining them out. This method has been preserved in Regular Baptist churches as the proper, or only, way to lead singing, and such was the case also in Primitive Baptist churches until recent years. Some Primitives still hold to lining. It is part of the deep attachment to tradition. The theology of the early Welsh Calvinist is preserved practically unchanged in the Primitive Baptist churches, but has been somewhat modified by the Regular Baptists. However, among the Regulars and Primitives ordination of "called" ministers, the types of persons ordained, their relationship to the church and their preaching styles appear to be similar to those of the early WelshAmerican churches. Hartmann writes: Very few of the early Welsh-American...were college trained men. This condition remained pretty general throughout the nineteenth century. Most of the preachers were well-informed men, having obtained their knowledge through self-discipline, diligent application, and from the school of experience generally. Upon obtaining sufficient background in theology..., they presented themselves...as candidates for ordination. If accepted, they then served a period of apprenticeship—going about the country as itinerant preachers. In due time they were examined carefully by special committees If found worthy, they were then ordained....In practically every case, these clergymen had some other specialty of occupation to help support themselves....(They) worked during the week as farmers or miners...and some of them still do today." Somewhere along the way the Regulars and Primitives decided that the preacher was compromised when he accepted a living from the church, and therefore, their preachers continue to support themselves, eschewing contributions from the church. Hartmann quotes Erasmus W. Jones, a nineteenth century preacher, on the Welsh preaching style, a technique called hwyl (indescribable eloquence) by the Welsh: The effect often produced by the popular Welsh preacher is wonderful....(T)heir preaching...is usually marked by a great variety of intonations. I do not know the origin of this chanting style of preaching prevalent among the Welsh.... The judicious use of it is confined to the more passionate or pathetic parts of the sermon. It differs entirely from the monotonous tone that is heard in English churches...; it is a melody of the purest nature....The minister is never at a loss how to apply the words to the melody; they appear to 31 �ran together as by mutual attraction. The sentence is started, for instance, on E minor. The minister has his own peculiar melody. It ranges from here and there to the fifth, often reaching the octave, and then descending and ending in sweet cadence on the keynote. I am sure that in the genuine hwyl the intonations are always in the minor mode....36 Anyone comparing this statement with the preaching of Elder Russell Jacobs, of the Left Beaver Old Regular Baptist Church, Floyd County, Kentucky (who is featured in APPALSHOP's film, In the Good Old-Fashioned Way), would see a strong similarity. The lining chants, the sermons, the prayers of these modern Calvinistic churches are highly melodic and the practicioners are keenly aware of rhythm and the poetic turn of phrase. I believe that the influence of the nonconforming, religious, poetic and musical Welsh can be found in the character and practices of the Primitive and Old Regular Baptist churches in presentday Appalchia. There are other similar characteristics that one could note between Welsh and Appalachian people. Helen Lewis and John Gaventa have explored the similarities between the exploitive industrial systems of the two mountainous regions and the response of industrial workers to their situations. One purpose of this paper is to encourage additional work on the relationship between Wales and Appalachia. Footnotes 'Forrest McDonald and Ellen Shapiro McDonald, "The Ethnic Origins of the American People, 1790," William &Mary Quarterly (XXXVII, No. 2, April, 1980), pp. 179-99. 'Ibid. 'Ibid. 4 Henry Jones Ford, The Scotch-Irish in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1915, and Charles A. Hanna, The Scotch-Irish, or the Scot in North Britain, Ireland and America. 1 vols. New York: G. Putnam's Sons, 1885-86. 'McDonald and McDonald, of. cit. 'Jan Morris, "The Unconquerable Welsh," The New York Times Magazine Vol. 70, No. 23, Dec. 12, 1981), pp. 46 ff. 'David Williams, A History of Modem Wales. London: John Murray, 1950, p. 16. •Gwyn A. Williams, The Search for Beulah Land: The Welsh and the Atlantic Revolution. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1980, p. 20. 'Ibid., p. 1. "David Williams, op. cit., p. 16. "Ibid., p. 170. "Ibid., pp. 229-45. "For a full treatment of the Madoc myth, see Gwyn A. Williams, Madoc: the Making of a Myth. London: Eyre Methuen, 1980. "Gwyn Williams, op. cit., pp. 135-36. "Edgar George Hartmann, Americans from Wales. New York: Octagon Books, 1978, p. 47. "Ibid., p. 50. "Interview with Hywell Davies, Baptist authority, Aberystwyth, Wales, 7-22-82. "Hartman,, op. cit., p. 53. "Ibid., p. 52. William s. Powell, North Carolina: A History. New York: W.W. Norton, 1977, p. 42. "George W. Paschal, History of North Carolina Baptists, Vol. 1. Raleigh: The General Board, Baptist State Convention, 1933, p. 48. "Ibid., I, pp. 211-15. M Ibid., I, p. 361. "Ibid., Vol. II, 1955, p. 163. "Hartmann, Op. cit., pp. 285-91. 32 �2S Numbers of Welsh signing the Watauga petition and at Kings Mountain were obtained from analysis of surnames listed in: J.G.M. Ramsey, The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century. Philadephia: Lippencott, 1860, p. 138; J.D. Bailey, Commanders at Kings Mountain. Greenville, S.C.: A Press, Inc., 1980, and Pat Alderman, One Heroic Hour at Kings Mountain. 'Published by the author at Erwin, Tennessee, 1968, pp. 55-64. M See Wilbur S. Shepperson, Samuel Roberts: A Welsh Colonizer in Civil War Tennessee. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1961. Also the Tennessee Papers in the archives of the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. 27 Hartmann, op. at., pp. 81-82. "John Davis, History of The Welsh Baptists From the Year Sixty-Three to the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy. Pittsburgh: D.M. Hogan, p. 171. "Edward's work is a master of arts thesis, University of Tennessee, 1940, privately published the same year by the author. Perrigan also privately published his book at Haysi, Virginia, in 1961. '"Perrigan, op. cit., p. 34. "Ibid., pp. 32-33. "Edwards, op. cit., pp. 6-11. "William H. Tallmadege, "Baptist Monophonic and Heterophonic Hymnody in Southern Appalachia," Yearbook of Inter-American Musical Research (Vol. 11, 1975), pp. 106-07. "Louis F. Benson, The English Hymn. Richmond: John Knox Press, 1962 (rpt.), p. 99. 35 Hartmann, op. cit., p. 110. "Erasmus W. Jones, "The Welsh in America," Atlantic Monthly (XXXVII, Mar., 1876), pp. 305-13. 33 �The Retreat from Consensus: An Exploration of a Unified Theory of Conflict Analysis Richard B. Drake Most American writing in the social sciences in the 1940s and 1950s was impressed with the forces that have held the United States together. Our immense, continental and heterogenous nation which performed so well in the Great War rather overawed scholars by its suprising strength and unity. Historians discovered various unities which held us all within the American experience. Daniel Borrstin, Samuel Eliot Morison, Henry Steele Commage, Alan Nevins and Richerd Hofstandter, among others,1 all saw various unifying factors that provided the consensus of the American genius. David Potter, after searching amongst the social sciences as well as the American past, discovered "abundance" in his People of Plenty2 - a consensus that Turnurians, economists and sociologists applauded. And the economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, reinforced this view with his book, The Affluent Society.3 Though other social scientists may have disagreed as to the force which unified us as a people, most in these years also found some unifying force which they thought the essential one: Louis Hartz in The Liberal Tradition in America saw us all as sons and daughters of John Locke,4 David Riesman discovered the "inner directed personality" spawned by the Renaissance, the retreat from which he traced in The Lonely Crows as our society was becoming dominated by "other directed personalities."5 Scholars from that troublesome portion of the United States, the South, even diluted past divisions by celebrating regionalism, an approved variety of divisiveness that could be celebrated, rather than a divisive sectionalism which had threatened national unity in the past.6 But most of the writers of history and in the social sciences in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s have written to the rhythms of a different drummer. Recent writers have generally focused on the issues that have divided American from American. Even as American life itself became more fractured, William L. O'Neill celebrated this division by entitling his history of American Society in the 1960's, Coming Apart.7 No sooner, indeed, had Galbraith's Affluent Society identified the plenty that united us, than Michael Harrington, reminded us that there were several "other" Americas who did not share in the nation's affluence - in Appalachia, among Delta blacks, ghetto Puerto Ricans and among the elderly - all citizens of The Other America.' The rise of Black Studies was probably more important than any other movement in encouraging the growth of ethnic and class-based views that have presented the many challenges to the consensus view. We have come to discover various "ethnicities" (a term unknown until 1941') based on race, sexual and religious-recency-of-arrival bases, and on perceived cultural differences. So great has been the recent outpouring of writing on ethnicity that one scholar was led to remark that any attempt to draw up a bibliography of "ethnology at this time is like taking a snapshot of an avalanche."10 34 �In these same years - perhaps due to questions raised about the American system of government and economy, and its connected university and research program - a renewal of interest has emerged in Marxian and class-conflict analysis as the basis of division within American life. Marxian analysis, in fact, was never absent from the American academy even in the consensus years - Herbert Aptheker and Louis Hacker in history, and C. Wright Mills in sociology for example, present different, but clearly Marxian-based analysis of the American experience. But in those days of the early Cold War, most scholars were reluctant to pursue a careful class-conflict analysis. So great was the general suspicion of any analysis that suggested an economically based class antagonism between rich and poor that recognized scholars such as Charles Beard and Harry Elmer Barnes were derisively labelled as "Marxian", even though their presentation of economic-influences was far more Populist, even Progressive, than Marxian. The suggestion that class divisions were crucial to understanding the nature of American conflict, however, far antedated the arrival of Marxian analysis in America. For example, the writings of William Gouge provided a class-conflict basis for Jackson's attack on the U.S. Bank, and William "Coin" Harvey's criticism of the gold standard in the 1870's provided the background for the Populist, agrarian-based attack on Wall Street. Even George Fitzhugh's defense of the Slave System was an analysis predicted on class-conflict assumptions, and was a bitter critique of the free-labor system. Writers as diverse as James Madison and John C. Calhoun were convinced that economic differences provided the real basis for political conflict. The 1960's and 1970's have seen the emergence of an impressive neo-Marxian literature in America. Perhaps not the avalanche in quantity that describes ethnic analysis, but the quantity and quality of neo-Marxian writing is impressive. Such historians as Eugene Genovese, William Appleman Williams, Bernard Kolko, Staunton Lynd, Christopher Lasch and a host of others have created an analysis of American history that must be taken seriously by us all. A general review of this neo-Marxian literature has recently appeared entitled "The Left Academy", an analysis of Marxist scholarship on American university campuses, edited by Bertell Oilman and Edward Vernoff. Clearly, consensus has evaporated, and American scholars now seem caught up more in an analysis of the forces and issues which divide us than in a search for unifying themes. But so partisan have some of the scholars of conflict analysis become that occasionally they have been led to attack one another bitterly. Sharp divisions have developed in the scholarship of conflict analysis, largely between those who believe that class-based issues are the most fundamental, and those who believe that ethnic issues have been the most significant. In this paper I will attempt to: 1) say something about these two orientations of conflict analysis - the one emphasizing horizontal or income differentials, and the other emphasizing religious, traditional and general cultural differences; 2) to say something about how these two orientations are related to the study of the Appalachian South; and 3) how these two approaches might be merged into a unified theory of conflict analysis. One does not have to search very far to find evidence of this bitter exchange in present-day conflict analysis. Many who emphasize the importance of ethnic divisions flay those who see classawareness as the most crucial as Marxian and un-American, as if to impose such labels in our postReagan, neo-Cold War era, is to place such analysis outside serious scholarship, even as Charles Beard's Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States was dismissed by ex-President William A. Taft in 1913. On the other hand, a disturbing number of those emphasizing the importance of class and economic divisions label those who believe that ethnic divisions are more crucial, 35 �as "romantic" or "neo-conservative."12 The debate is nationwide, and is present in literally all arenas of analysis that involve American minority/ethnic groupings that may have suffered exploitation. Whether the analysis involves blacks in slavery, women in the work-force, Amerind removal, discrimination against Catholics and Jews, or the exploitation of Appalachian resources, the struggles of the models of conflict analysis appear remarkably similar. Appalachian scholars such as Dwight Billings, David Whisnant and Helen Lewis, all most impressed with the class conflict analysis, have on occasion joined scholars such as Gunnar Myrdal and Andrew Hacker in making the charge that ethnic analysis is misleading politically and "romantic." Concerned as they are with a scholarship that will support progressive and action-oriented programs, such scholars seem to have little patience with analyses that may tend to blir the divisions that identify the groups they are trying to mobilize. Such charges may have some validity in some cases, but clearly the mere emphasis on ethnic or racial divisions is not sufficient grounds to conclude that such analysis is diversionary and escapist. On the other hand, some able scholars which I know in Appalachian colleges dismiss out-ofhand any suggestion that there may be a parallel between the exploitation of Appalachian mineral resources by American corporations on the one hand, and theLenninist-Marxian analysis of third world imperialism on the other. They label it as "sheer ideology, and betraying the blindness of a variety of Marxism that takes its lead straight from Moscow". One such scholar recently refused to read a paper by an undergraduate who had developed the concept of Appalachia as a colony of corporate interests, a comparison that many well-published scholars of the region have developed quite fully. To him, the idea was so absurd that he refused to dignify it with his time. It may be that the very complexity of the issues which divide us involves horizontal (or class) divisions as well as vertical (or ethnic) ones. It is my contention here that the issues that have divided us in the past have in literally all cases been at least partly ethnic as well as class-based. In fact, in the United States, even the most bitter class-based struggles in the labor movement have always had an important ethnic dimension. When struggles have been less violent, the divisions were generally not working in the same direction. Herbert Cans and others have even suggested that class and ethnicity may best be considered as somehow mingled, and has suggested for us the phrase, "working-class ethnicity".13 Most of our significant class conflicts have indeed been reinforced by ethnic divisions, as with the Irish Catholicism of the Molly McGuires and the racial basis of chattel slavery. Even today, many of the most aggressive advocates of class struggle make a great use of ethnic identification and folk expressions in song, language, dialect and religious style for the purpose of raising "working class consciousness". It may be that a unified field theory of conflict needs to be developed which will take into account both ethnic and class divisions. One could, for example, present a picture of how ethnic and class divisions mix in certain struggles on an x - y axis. Such a designation of how these struggles react to this depiction might look like the graph on page 37. If the major struggles in American history were to be plotted on such an x - y axis, it seems that all of them would have to be assigned values that involved both class and ethnic dimensions. Whether or not the specific values here assigned are totally accurate is subject to debate. But to attempt such an exercise is meaningful. Even the great labor strikes have all had very important ethnic dimensions. These largely class-based conflicts have often had a Protestant-Catholic dimension, or some other ethnic dimension that has often been nearly as important in setting capital against labor as the income differentials that separted them. 36 �The West Virginia mine difficulties of the post-World War I period involved a strong "insideroutsider" dichotomy which involved suspicions of damn yankees, and even suspicions of "agitators with a foreign ideology." Marxism in America has had to struggle with the ethnic disadvantage that Marx was Jewish and European. Even in Harlan, Bell, Letcher and Pike in the desperate strike of the 1930's which involved the Communist-dominated National Miners' Union, the "insideroutsider" separation was used by both sides, and attacks were made on the "foreign ideology", the interference of "outside missionaries", and the fact that "un-American conditions" were forced on American miners. Even in this perhaps most Marxian of our labor struggles, the ethnic dimension was considerable. Ethnicity It has long been observed by scholars that one of the characteristics of the American labor movement has been its very un-Marxian basis: American labor has not been sympathetic to the Socialist Party. Most American socialists have been intellectuals, reform-minded Christians or old-line Populists. And most successful American labor leaders have approached their jobs in the tradition of Samuel Gompers, following his approach of "safe and sane Unionism." In other words, such a labor leader approaches the sale of his commodity - labor - in an essentially business-like way: he wants to get as high a price (wages and working conditions) for his commodity as possible. In this case, the consumer is management, and he bargains in a market for as good a price as he can get. For the most part the American labor movement itself has really not bought the reality of class-struggle. Labor accepts the concept of opposition, to be sure. But this is more in the tradition of general adversarialism which permeates American law and the general competitiveness that characterizes American economic life generally. If we return again to our x-y axis above of class-ethnicity factors, we see that according to the placement of most of the major conflicts there appears to be a considerably stronger ethnicity37 �sectionalism quotient than class factors. Though there are those who would argue with this evaluation, most historians would agree with Carl Degler when he suggests: Contrary to the Marxists' assertion, it seems to me that the principal conflicts in American society have more often been related to racial and ethnic consciousness than to class consciousness. I suspect...there is considerably more evidence available from which to write history of the United States with racial conflict as the motive force than with class consciousness and class conflict." It may be that in Europe class-consciousness was the more important factor, but many agree with Degler when we look at the American experience. Our supreme struggle, the Civil War, seems clearly more ethnic, racial and sectional than based on any sense of class struggle. Charles Beard has indeed argued that the Civil War was basically an economic conflict, but between elites -between an industrial North and a plantation South." The separate laboring classes, in fact, generally supported their respective war efforts, though with the usual grumbling about "a rich man's war and poor man's fight". Clearly one of the characteristics of life in Appalachia has been conflict. In the period before 1750 when the area was held by American Indian nations - mostly the Iroquoian Cherokee and the 5 Nation Confederacy centered in New York state - the ethnic division was clearly predominant. The Indians fought desperately with Europeans, and racist rationales justified the complete dispossession of "savage lands." Surely there was economic repression, but a class solidarity that transcended racial divisions was almost entirely lacking. There were "back country" revolts within the British colonies such as Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, the Anti-Rent Movement in New York, and the Regulator Movement in the Carolinas. Yet even those inter-British struggles were largely ethnic, for different waves of Europeans came to the colonies at different times and occupied different regions. The initial migration of south Englishmen established in the American South the country gentleman ideal with its plantation system. And this group of Englishmen was very different from later waves of border and north-country Englishmen and Scotch-Irish who attempted later to realize the yeoman ideal on their frontier farms. In New York, the original Dutch poltroons established a feudal system in a land surrounded by small yeoman farmers. Clearly some classconsciousness was evident in such struggles, but more apparent was the ethnic and cultural separateness that the Scotch-Irish, Germans and others brought with them. In that period during which the citizens of Appalachia found it necessary to relate to the new United States government in the two generations before the Civil War, the principal conflicts were initially with the new federal government. The issue was taxation as seen in the Whiskey Rebellion. Though economic issues were predominant, the solidarity of the western country for the plight of the rebels was clear. The major responsible spokesman for the Whiskey Rebels, however, was the unlikely patrician, Albert Gallatin, graduate of the University of Geneva, owner of a princely acreage in western Pennslyvania, and later Secretary of the Treasury and leader of American banking. The glee with which most Appalachian yeoman fell upon the lands made available by Cherokee removal can be explained in largely racist terms, though of course simple greed was important. Though the open struggle with the Indians of the Southeast largely had ended by 1825, until separate Indian nations were removed from Appalachia, individual acts of blatent violence were frequent. The rationale was clearly ethnic. When the Civil War came, many mountaineers were forced into the armies of both sides, most against their wills. There is ample evidence of how repressive the drafting policies were considered, 38 �and horrendous desertion rates, especially in the Confederate Army, attests to a feeling of the poor being made to fight for the rich.16 Yet the fact that very many of those who were poor and who deserted were mountain whites, also demonstrates an ethnic division. The mountaineer was, for the most part, an opponent of slavery, and had long been resentful of the over-representation of the prosperious, plantation counties and their control of the politics of the slave states. A separatist sentiment of mountain counties was a traditional part of the ante-bellum politics in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky. Concerning the post-Civil War years, many recent scholars have deplored the lack of classconsciousness among Appalachians who, because of the lack of class- consciousness, have been increasingly pushed aside in the corporate quest for control of the region's resources. Ronald D. Eller, for example, in his recent Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers, sees the pre-Civil War Appalachian South as "only the quiet back-country of the Old South" which suddenly found itself "a new frontier for expanding capitalism."17 By 1930 most mountaineers "had become integrated within the new industrial system and economically dependent upon it as well"18 and hopelessly caught in "poverty and powerlessness." Eller suggests that "the failure of modernization in the mountains raises the fundamental question of our time"' about corporate greed and regional ineffectiveness.1' The clear plea is for an Appalachian consciousness based upon the region's shared lack of wealth and power which will right the wrongs brought by corporate exploitation. Lewis, Johnson and Askins, Colonialism in Modern America: the Appalachian Case, are much more specific than Eller concerning what the sources of Appalachian poverty and powerlessness are. Outside corporations have acquired our resources, and we have not developed mechanisms for the control of our own decisions and to gain back control of these resources. Warren Wright and John Gaventa claim that these resources were stolen from us.20 Mike Clark, Jim Branscome and Don Askins suggest a kind of education/literaray/media conspiracy to develop Appalachian institutions, literary heroes and entertainment stereotypes which are basically fraudulant, and have created debilitating arrangements which prevent the proper consciousness.21 According to the Lewis, Johnson and Askins studies, governmental programs have also been counterproductive in Appalachia. Thus, the best solution to the region's problems seems to be for scholarworkers to suggest new models of social science analysis that will enable us to work out a more equitable arrangement for Appalachia's citizens. Dennis Lindbert sees us presently as a "colony within a colony," and David Walls develops his "Internal Perifory Model" to account for some of the difficulties of a simplistic Lenninist analysis. Tom Plaut reminds us, finally, that there are deep cultural assumptions that separate Appalachian America from exploitive, corporate America, and that these two communities of English-speaking peoples still do not understand one another.22 It is exemplary that so many have been drawn into Appalachian studies from a burning desire to do something about the region's poverty and powerlessness. Most of our finest recent scholarship, in fact, has been clearly action-oriented, instrumentalist research, and most of it sees the Appalachian problem as a lack of class awareness.23 Yet the over-dependence on a too-simplistic class analysis does both mature scholarship and the region itself a disservice. If our call to action takes precedence over our attempt to understand a historical situation, we can be led into serious misunderstandings and serious misapplication of energies. Howard Zinn, because of his hatred for slavery and segregation, once said that he would not "tangle with cause, because once you acknowledge cause as the core of the problem, you have built something into it that not only baffles people, but, worse, immobilizes them."24 Terrible though we can agree Jim Crow segregation 39 �was, not to tangle with the ambiguities of historical events merely divides and dilutes the whole effort of understanding and improvement. Though ideology and myth can be great mobilizers, if they are built upon serious error, they can be counterproductive if not actually harmful. Serious scholarship needs to be as honest and as holistic as possible in order to guard against its abuse by either left or right-leaning politicians. Action-oriented scholarship can lead us into serious errors, as can apologetic court history. So let us listen to one another carefully, those of us who study the Appalachian experience seriously. Rather than joining in the ideological debate of mainline "Progressive scholarship", let us grant then that, in Appalachia at least, class or economic divisions have been mixed with ethnicreligious-cultural-racial divisions. It may be that individual clashes need to be considered on their individual merit. But in Appalachia, ethnic divisions are very real. Race, religion and pure chauvinism are not dead, and those differences in perception brought by unequal distribution of wealth cannot blur the traditional, ethnic divisions. On the other hand, as real want increases, and a prince and pauper economy becomes more and more real, the time may come in Appalachia when class issues may be the more significant. Footnotes 'Sec Daniel J. Boorstein, The Genius of American Politics, Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1953; Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People, New York, Oxford, 1965; Henry Steele Commager, Ther American Mind, New Haven, Yale, 1950; Alan Nevins, The Ordeal of Union, 2 vols., New York, 1947; Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It, New York, Knopf, 1948. 2 David M. Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1964. 'John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, Boston, Houghton, Micflin, 1958. 'Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, New York, Harcourt, Brace and World, 1955. 'David Riesman, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character, New Haven, Yale, 1950. 'See especially Rupert B. Vance, Human Geography of the South: A Study in Regional Researches and Human Adequacy, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1932; and Howard W. Odum and Harry Estill Moore, American Regionalism; a CulturalHistorical Approach to National Integration, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1938. 'William L. O'Neill, Coming Apart: an Informal History of America in the 1960's, Chicago, Quadrangle, 1971. "Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States, New York, Macmillan, 1962. 'Apparently Lloyd Warner first used the term in 1941. See Warner Sollors, "Theory of American Ethnicity", American Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3, p. 259-260. '"Ibid., p. 257. "Bertell Oilman and Edward Vernoff, The Left Academy: Marxist Scholarship on American Campuses, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1982. "See Gunnar Myrdal, "The Limits of Ethnicity", New Republic (25 June, 1977), p. 19. "See Herbert Gans, in Foreword to Neil C. Sandberg Ethnic Identity and Assimilation, New York, Praeger, 1974. "Carl N. Degler, "Remaking American History", Journal of American History, vol. 67, no. 1 0une, 1980), p. 17. This article is Degler's presidential address to the Organization of American Historians meeting in San Francisco, April 10, 1980. "See Charles A. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization, vol. 2, New York, Macmillan, 1936, p. 3-13, 28-37. "See especially Ella Lonn, Desertion During the Civil War, New York, Century, 1928. "Ronald D Eller, Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers, Knoxville, Tennessee, 1981, p. xix. "Ibid., p. xxiii. "Ibid., p. xxvi. 40 �"John Gaventa, "Property, Coal and Theft", in Helen Matthews Lewis, Linda Johnson and Donald Askins, editors, Colonialism in Modem America: the Appalachian Case, Boone, North Carolina, Appalachian Consortium Press, 1978, p. 141-160; and Warren Wright, "The Big Steal", p. 161-176, in the same book. 21 See Mike Clark, "Education and Explitation", p. 199-208; Jim Branscome, "Annihilating the Hillbilly", p. 211-228; and Don Askins, "John Fox, Jr.," p. 251-258; all in Lewis, Johnson and Askins, Colonialism in Modem America. "Dennis N. Lindberg, "Appalachia: A Colony Within a Colony?", p. 309-318; David Walls, "Internal Colony or Internal Perifory? A Critique of Current Models and an Alternative Formulation," p. 319-350; and Tom Plaut, "Extending the Internal Periphery Model; the Impact of Culture and Consequent Strategy," p. 351-364, all in Lewis, Johnson and Askins, Colonialism in Modern America. "The most recent Weatherford Award books have shared this vision of the region's problems. In 1981 David Corbin's Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields, won the award; in 1980 it was John Gaventa's Power and Powerlessness: Quintessence and Rebellion in An Appalachian Valley; and in 1979 John Havener's Which Side are You On? "Howard Zinn, The Southern Mystique, New York, Knopf, 1964, p. 7. 41 �This page intentionally left blank �Appalachian Literature 43 �This page intentionally left blank �"Rings around a Hurt": The Dialectic Structure of The Mountains Have Come Closer John H. Mangle No clearer portrait of the contemporary Appalachian experience exists than in Jim Wayne Miller's The Mountains Have Come Closer. This collection of poetry, Miller's fourth, traces the dawn of political consciousness in an Appalachian person who has left the mountains to find success in America's cultural mainstream. The price of this success is the disfranchisement of his culture and the dispossession of his homeland. Employing the Hegelian dialectic to structure this journey of consciousness, Miller establishes a group of "inciting experiences," which start the collection's persona on a series of transformations to emerge as the Brier, Miller's culturally attuned, politically aware contemporary Appalachian. "It's almost like the thesis coming from the past and all of the culture you've inherited, and then you've got the present demands as the antithesis, and they collide and out of that comes some sort of synthesis. This is what I'm trying to do individually, and then I'm trying to make it more broadly applicable in The Mountains Have Come Closer in that I live in two worlds individually in the same way I think most of the people in the region live in these two worlds. We live among the vestiges of a traditional culture and then we have the modern, contemporary world all about us. And these things mix."1 The collection opens with a group of poems which Jerry Williamson, editor of The Mountains Have Come Closer, describes as an "absurdist vision of fragmentation" caused by "being severed from one's roots and the sense of self that those roots—only—can bestow." This condition, portrayed throughout part one, "In the American Funhouse," makes the "need for rebirth a very compelling psychological fact."2 This image is vivid in the opening poem, "Saturday Morning." The speaker awakes to find that his house, the mainstream symbol of stability, is loose from its foundation and "plowing" through a "moderate green sea." Disillusionment and fragmentation are created not only because a house is an object supposedly firmly set on its foundation, but also because the location is "seven hundred miles inland." "Nothing else has changed," but order no longer exists. "Every room is a non-stop show." The speaker's entire life is in upheaval. "Bells ring, whistles blow, glass breaks, timbers shatter." There is "yearning" which fogs windows and there is anxiety which causes "the palm of a catcher's mitt" to "break into a sweat." By turning into a nervous cat in the precarious situation of "trying to back down a tree," the speaker escapes the "whines" and the "hum and drone" of the household machinery that haunts him. The speaker sees himself as a "hammer" to be driven, a "twenty dollar bill" to be spent, and, finally, as a "suitcase" he knows "someone else will live a life out of when we arrive." 45 �"Getting Together" is about "old friends," splinters of the speaker's own fragmented mind. These fragments gather "suddenly" after being "separated years back...lost in the American Funhouse." The funhouse "walls are angled mirrors multiplying us many times over" and revealing the dialectic. The multiplying effort of the mirrors createstwo images for each of the "old friends." The thesis is "the friend he knew." The antithesis is the "one this friend has become." Standing "shyly" in the background of this scene, "like an unacknowledged companion" and as yet "unseen by our friends," is the synthesis, "the person we know we are." These fragmented images of the funhouse make the speaker feel the "force of tradition and the past" confronting "the situation of the present time," but they do not resolve the conflict. The solution to this dilemma is shown to be within the capacity of the speaker because "the person we know we are" is a "companion," but an "unseen," "unacknowledged" one. The resolution cannot come while the speaker is "lost in the American Funhouse" because "we hold back all but the little horrors." To achieve the higher truth promised by employing the dialectic as a structural device, everything, not just "the little horrors," must be exposed to scrutiny. The first and last lines of the first stanza of "Getting Together" end with the refrain "laughter.'. "Suddenly old friends are in the house. Laughter...unseen by our friends, stands the person we know we are. Laughter." The repetition of "laughter" establishes an eerie cadence that dominates the poem. A gathering of "old friends" is expected to be a light, festive occasion. But there is nothing light about the gathering. The images are distorted; the "old friends" are disoriented. The "laughter" is ironic. Miller repeats it again in the last line, but the "laughter" here is a raucous scoff, not an empty chuckle. The speaker realizes "I have forgotten parts of myself." The parts he has forgotten are his roots, his "sense of self." This is the "someone who holds out a hand" that he tries "to hold out a hand to." This is the "unacknowledged companion" present, but just out of reach. In "Certain Dreams," the speaker is nearing the end of what Williamson calls his "psychic rope." In "Saturday Morning," the persona "woke to waves crashing beneath the bedroom window." The disturbing images are now visiting the speaker in his sleep. They are "dreams that make you wonder." These dreams are as startling as "whistling and fumbling with my keys...I'd open the door onto the solid rump of a horse quartered in my fourth-floor office." The speaker is being shaken from the numbness of life in the funhouse. The unfamiliar is beginning to appear in familiar places "as if you were troutfishing back on Little Snowbird...and looked up and there...lay an alligator sunning on a rock." "Certain Dreams" signals that the rebirth necessary for synthesis is imminent, but there must be death before there can be rebirth. "With children and foxhounds" the speaker of "I Share" possesses "a way of sizing up how a situation smells." Death is the prevailing image in this poem; death is the way every "situation smells." A cough echoes in a hall and blooms "like sprays of funeral flowers." The speaker feels compelled "to express sympathy to the bereaved family" at "commencements." He wants "to step out of the church and head for the gravesite" after a wedding. The speaker is so preoccupied with his own demise that he sees death in every situation. He fears being caught with "my overcoat buttoned to my jacket,—of standing in a drizzly parking lot." The next image is even more disconcerting. The speaker sits disoriented in the present, "but quite lucid about the girl who sat beside me at eighth-grade graduation." Once again, he is "fumbling with my keys" as he did in "Certain Dreams," not to find a "horse quartered in my fourth floor office," but a "horsehair hanging on a barbed-wire fence in a mountain 46 �pasture." He is escaping the cars, including the one in which he is sitting, and asphalt by imagining the "lanterns of night fishermen bob in waterbeads standing on a car," the girl in eighth-grade graduation, and the mountain pasture. With "I Share" Miller is reinforcing the thesis and antithesis, preparing the reader for the death dream in "Going South" and the emergence of the "Brier." "Going South" opens with a mocking apology "to have so private a thing happen in public." The "breach of decorum" in the impersonal, urban world of the "American Funhouse" is the speaker's death. The impact of this event on the outside world is "one stalled car, one lane of traffic backed up." This event is spectacular enough to make the ten o'clock news only because it is a "breach of decorum," only because "so private a thing happen(ed) in public." The "eyewitness who discovered the truth" refers to the realization that a spiritual transformation is the only way to escape the funhouse of concrete and asphalt. But this realization is fleeting, fading into a commercial. The "newsprint will disappear like sooty snow. Traffic will flow smoothly once again." The passing leaves no mark on the American Funhouse. "Journalists with their noses into news" have documented the snarled traffic and the ambulance crew's removal of the body "slumped over the wheel," but they have missed "the only story worth telling." Just as the "black river of birds turned slowly and flowed south," the omnipresent "I" of part one turns to the mountains and his lost heritage. With this symbolic death and rejection of America's cultural mainstream, the process of transformation in part two, "You Must Be Born Again," unfolds. The speaker in part one has been taken to what Williamson calls "the end of the psychic rope." Miller's Hegelian scheme is vigorously at work in part two as the Brier is confronted with painful memories of the funhouse, his sentimental notions about the past, and the political realities of the modern day mountains. The pathos created for the disfranchised speaker of "In the American Funhouse" is relieved in part two with the introduction of the Brier in a riddle. "Brier Riddle" is a playful enigma whose true solution may not be applicable to the transformation of the persona. However, its image of a frog being kissed by "a lost girl" into "a handsome prince" does serve as a comic transition from the "I" persona in part one to the "he" persona in sections two and three. This frivolity is shortlived though as the next poem, "No Name," points out. The speaker has "stopped being able to say T " and will not use the pronoun again until the final poem, "Brier Sermon." This inability to say "I" is accompanied by the loss of "the gift of idle talk" and an impatience of the words of others "that rose like bubbles from the mouths of pretty goldfish." Ironically, this first step in the speaker's metamorphosis is an "impediment of speech," which Miller likens to a stroke that has "frozen his face." "No Name" is also a harbinger of the painful confrontations of past and present the Brier will undergo throughout part two of the collection. He "must swim against a current or else panic, crowd, suffocate, and die." This swimming "against a current" is spelled out in "Turn Your Radio On" when the Brier cannot "hear his own thoughts in the city that never slept...his thoughts rose and fell in a storm of static." The first evidence that a transformation is occurring is seen in the line: "Asleep or waking, he tried to keep a sense of direction south." In "Going South," he, like the "black river of birds," "flowed south," and now he "tried to keep a sense of direction south." In his dreams "he never drifted home before he woke," but images come to him "all the way from the mountains." These are less disturbing than those seen in the first section of the book. Fragmentation and death were the subjects of the dreams recorded "In the American Funhouse," but these images were shed when the speaker embarked on his spiritual journey back to the mountains. In "Turn Your Radio 47 �On," the old man and the grandmother who visit the Brier urge him to take his place and to come to terms with "the friend he knew" and "the friend he has become" so he can be the person he knows he is. In "Chopping Wood," the Brier's nerves, tormented by the idling traffic's fumes and "smokefilled meetings," are numbed by chopping wood, and "pain goes to sleep as night falls over any small farm of flesh." With this line, the Brier is saying that he has come to see Appalachia's disfranchised sons and daughters in the same way as he sees the region's small family farms disappearing from the mountain landscape. But this reveling in the virtues of "hard labor" does not last long. The Brier's hands betray his ideals by "foraging for magazines, sniffling about pockets for cigarettes," and "turning on television sets when he wasn't looking" in "His Hands." Despite this tugof-war between the old self and the self undergoing transformation, the Brier, as the river in "Winter Days," is "sure of where it (he) was going, in no hurry." This does not imply, however, that the Brier will give up everything from his recent past to totally embrace the world of his grandparents or that of his youth. The Brier's persona is at once both tainted and enhanced by the disorientation of the funhouse. As he will later preach in "Brier Sermon," "you don't have to think ridge-to-ridge the way they did. You can think ocean-toocean." This complexity of being able to experience the "ridge-to-ridge" world along with the "ocean-to-ocean" world is the brilliance of the Brier persona. Williamson describes him as "...the hillbilly come home, one of those middle-class Hazard students who found success outside the mountains but who found fragmentation and political alienation, too. He has come home now, or is in the process of coming home, half angry at himself for being such a fool, for allowing himself to be severed from the roots that count; he is angry, too, at the forces that made being a hillbilly such a shameful thing. The designation "Brier," like "hillbilly," is a term of derision, especially in Northern industrial centers where so many of the mountain migrants have congregated over the last 30 or 40 years. But Miller's Brier embraces that derisive name definitely and inhabits it."5 Once the Brier returns to the mountains his feelings about the place are mixed. The mixture of thoughts going on in the Brier's mind are evident in "Brier Visions." "His mind became a plowpoint digging in" in the first vision. When his thoughts strike obstacles, "a snag, a rock or root," the "bright point" raises above the surface, but "then dove deep again to his gee and haw." The Brier's mind is becoming disciplined like an old draw horse with his strength pitted against the task of turning rocky mountain soil. With this "dipping in" that is "turning a furrow in his brow," the Brier finds hope. "His mind, when he took hope, turned sunlight slanting down through leafless trees," the speaker says in the second vision. The third and fourth visions are not as pleasant as the images of hard work and "redbuds blooming" in the first two. The Brier's mind flies "black as a crow" over strip mines "where muddy water heaving rose and fell" in the third vision. There are no longer "redbuds blooming." The muddy river is "red froth and foam, bubbles of blood in the mouth of a gutshot deer.'' The final vision of the quartet describes parts of the "American Funhouse" that have been transported to Appalachia "like floodwaters rising in the night, radio waves moved up the mountain valleys." Along with the hillbilly music shows from Nashville and Wheeling, the Lowell Thomas and Edward R. Murrow reports, the radio waves have carried with them "a rising music" of consumerism. Appalachia's people become like "trees cut loose by singing saws," taken in by the "receding suck of sung commercials," causing them to drift, "floated like rafted logs toward the mainstream." 48 �In "Brier Visions" the Brier finds the mountains themselves have changed. They are wounded and bleeding like a "gutshot deer." A similar revelation is found in "Down Home." In this poem it's the Brier's feelings that "he kept meeting...like old schoolmates, faces whose names he'd forgot." Other feelings "he could enter again only as a stranger might a house he'd once lived in." These old responses have changed like "a once-green pasture field grown up in pines too thick ever to enter again." The realization is poignant not because he has just discovered it, but because finall y , "he had to admit it: he didn't live here any longer." At the end of "In the American Funhouse," the speaker of the poems had to go through a symbolic death and "flow south" in order to re-emerge as the Brier in "You Must Be Born Again." In "Turn Your Radio On" the Brier tried to "keep a sense of direction south" only to find out in "Down Home" that "he was settled in a suburb north of himself." The idea of the thesis and antithesis which Miller described has dawned in the Brier's conscious. He has answered the call of the traditional culture only to find that it is lost to him. He can draw from it and build on it, as he does in "Restoring an Old Farmhouse," but he can't escape to it. "He kept coming here," to the "country feelings, settled and gray." He must restore the farmhouse into something more serviceable. Each old "warped, split board" must be pulled to find another "just as old but seasoned and straight." The Brier must occupy himself "dismantling these country feelings" just as he had to experience "certain dreams" to escape the "American Funhouse." This "tearing down, building up again from what was salvaged" of the past is crucial to attaining the higher truth Miller has promised by using the Hegelian dialectic in this collection. The line "a coming shape, a new room and view, rose from old flooring" is the first sign that the Brier will synthesize his past and present, that he, like "fresh sawdust, "will be "spumed yellow as sunlight from old timber" in "Brier Sermon." To achieve the dialectic synthesis, the Brier must become political. He cannot, having escaped the American Funhouse, hope to come to terms with his past and the sociological factors that disfranchised him from it without becoming political any more than he could hope to live in the old farmhouse without restoring it. "Set Apart" is the first poem in the collection that deals with the Brier's emerging political consciousness. The "gutshot deer" metaphor in "Brier Visions" is a symbol of the violence that has shaped the region and will shape the Brier. The poem follows two about death, "He Remembers His Mother," and "Bird in the House," which create the grief, loss, and separation that make the Brier's mind fly "black as a crow" in "Brier Visions." In "Set Apart," the Brier carries a grudge, "pearl-handled...snub-nosed, heavy, bolstered close to his heart." The whines, hums, and drones of household machinery the "I" found so distracting in "Saturday Morning" are now the sounds of his own mind driven "so hard it sang like wheels rolling high over gaps and gorges on trestles of determination." "His black thoughts" are now "hunched over entrails like buzzards eating carrion on the road." These are the sounds and sights along the road of America's mainstream that the Brier was escaping as he "drove toward the mountains and the self he would become." "Set Apart" is a stark contrast to "Winter Days," a poem of pleasant pastoral images of the mountains to which the Brier has recently returned. This earlier poem is idyllic; it is an expression of the Brier's happiness of having escaped the funhouse. However, this state of mind is no longer available to the Brier because his mind has "flown black as a crow." It has been driven "so hard it sang," because the Brier has realized that neither he nor the mountains are untouched by the mainstream. They both have "floated like rafted logs toward" it. The final lines of "Set Apart" again point to the synthesis that will blossom in 49 �"Brier Sermon " once the transformation is complete. The Brier has been disillusioned throughout "You Must Be Born Again." Dreams of the funhouse still haunt him and almost everywhere he turns he finds that the worst parts of modernity have arrived in the mountains. These realities have created the anger embodied in the violent images of "Set Apart." The anger here must be read as political because the Brier still "drove toward mountains, and a self he would become." He will stand an "old man in faded demin, gray as a weathered barn, a fencepost at field's edge—until he moved" because part of his transformation is politicization. This theme is re-enforced in "Every Leaf A Mirror." Williamson says, in correspondence with the poet, the Brier "succeeds in getting himself all the way back...succeeds in entering a kind of collective racial identity." In this poem, the first stanza speaks of raising corn in "mountain fields" and "tobacco in branchback bottom patches." Tending of the "little garden ground" was left "to his wife and younguns." "In slack time" he would "work a spell in timber—stay gone till it pleased him to come home again." These are all images of the past, the things the Brier had hoped to return to, but found missing. Instead, he has found that "radio shows sang out of junked cars rolled over on their sides along the creek." He cannot escape the "time ticking." He hears it "even in the woods." His face was reflected in "every leaf...among smokestacks, billboards, shopping centers, mills,and vacation cottages hanging like a mirage along the ridgetops." Time has not only caught up with the region and its people, it has "swept past roaring like a tractor-trailer" leaving them "in a wake of fumes." Continuing with the argument that the Brier has entered a "collective racial identity" in "Every Leaf A Mirror," Williamson says the consciousness here is "in full cry, full pain." The hopelessness and despair revealed in "Every Leaf A Mirror" create a climate for the Brier's conversion. This comes in the next poem, "Born Again." "His memory clouded like a muddy spring," at times leaves him helpless in his search for the past. "He could find no more than traces, scattered signs, as if no more remained of that lived time." This condition is temporary and fleeting though. He could sometimes "see some long lost day as plainly as if it were a shing quarter." This is the Brier's conversion. His memory lived, died, and lived again. Each re-birth restoring him to himself, saying: You must be born again and again and again. The transformation which began after the death dream, "Going South," is now complete as seen in "Long View," the final poem in "You Must Be Born Again." Here, the Brier is "shooting down the highway at seventy miles an hour" leaving the roadside scenery "in blurred panic, receding...like falling screams." The synthesis is completed because "his heart" has been transformed. In his heart the Brier carries the essence of his culture, that "herd of graceful beasts still undiscovered and unnamed." This essence is "still undiscovered and unnamed" because it is buried "so deep" inside the mountains, the culture, and the people. This state of mind is further expounded in "Harvest," the first poem in "Brier Sermon." The metaphor here is "songs landlocked two hundred years" that "held all past time green...and made all love and death and sorrow sweet." Those songs like cultural consciousness are "what was lightest" because they could be carried in the Brier's head or in his heart, which "paced itself by those Kentucky knobs" in "Long View." The distortion and fragmentation of the funhouse still lingers in the Brier's memory. The commercialization and the strip mining are still in the mountains. These are still 50 �issues for the Brier, but he now feels compelled by his political awakening to address them. They no longer threaten his being because he has re-attained the "only roots that matter." The entanglements of the mainstream pitted against the sentimental memories "of that time lived" are the "heaviness always left behind to perish, to topple like a stone chimney." The poems in "Brier Sermon" have a distinct political tone. In "The Brier Losing Touch with His Traditions," the chairmaker is forced to give up "wearing a flowered sport shirt and drip-dry pants" in public because they do not fit the mountain craftsman stereotype. Without the stereotype, people are no longer interested in buying his chairs. Bitter irony is at work in the poem when the Brier is interviewed by magazines and has to "get rid of them before suppertime" so he can dress as he pleases, "open a can of beer and watch the six-thirty news on tv." The people who buy his chairs ridicule mountain people, call them briers and hillbillies, but they have no use for a chair built by a man who is "clean-shaven" and uses "power tools." A similar tone is present in "He Sings Ballads" and "The Brier Reviewing Novels." The "scholars" and mainstream America "marvel" at the Brier when he sings the old songs down on the "homeplace in Madison." But singing "the Country songs right off the jukebox" in an Asheville bar after a day's labor "as a gardener at some fine houses" makes his "neck turn red" and he becomes a character in "five hundred third-rate novels." "The Brier Reviews Novels" addresses stereotyping in a more general way. Miller is talking about those "five hundred third-rate novels" here. The Brier finds himself "jerked along" in these books about the mountains that "made clowns of kings and dignitaries." He sees himself in all of the literary cliches of the mountaineer, "moonshiner, feudist, speaking Elizabethian English." The readers of such books are the "comfortable people," those well heeled enough to hold title to a second home in the mountains. When these people go to sun themselves at the beaches they take nothing of the mountain culture with them except the stereotypes and the cliches—the "drowsy episodes of wittys, mountain maids, granny women." The Mountains Have Come Closer ends with "Brier Sermon—'You Must Be Born Again,' " a narrative poem representing the culmination of the transformation that has been occurring throughout the collection. Miller says "the format of this poem is that this is a mountain preacher in a mountain town and he's using the rhetorical devices that were familiar to what we would call fundamentalist religions."5 These devices include rhetorical questions, first and third person anecdotes, and direct indictments of the congregation coupled with the solution of salvation and the threat of the fate that awaits them if they reject the offer of salvation. Just as a farmer or a miner might receive the "call" to preach and begin ministering to his home community, the Brier, according to Miller, "conceives of himself here as nothing apart from these people that he's just spoken to. He is of them and a part of them....This Brier is someone who has grown up out of those people and there is not a thing that he can perceive or say that has not already gone on collectively in those people."6 A prose introduction opens the poem and sets the stage for the sermon. It is a Saturday, not a Sunday, morning; the message will be secular instead of religious. The Brier takes his place on a sidewalk in a mountain town across the street from the "Greenstamp Redemption Store." By doing so, the Brier has pitted himself in direct opposition to the mainstream commercialization and consumerism that has disposessed him from his homeland. As Williamson explains: "The Brier—by now something of a revolutionary—preaches his sermon on the street in a mountain town, the one place most calculated to find his political and spiritual message uncongenial. He has a good eye for 51 �his targets: he sees how the mountain middle class is constantly selling out, compromised by greed and seduced by the mercantile blandishments of the very America that makes them ashamed to be hillbillies."7 The Brier tells his audience, "You've kept the worst and thrown away the best." He uses an anecdote about mountain "boys with their cars jerked up on a pulley out under a tree somewhere." They are "laying flat on their backs...their hands mucking around in grease and gears." Bringing the analogy home, the Brier tells them "that's how America's got you, that's just the view you have of this country." Acceptance of the Brier's invitation for salvation does not mean living the past. "You can't, even if you try," he says. "The past is living in you." The Brier offers the crowd a prayer of salvation in much the same way a preacher would a sinner he was trying to convert. This prayer plays off of the traditional Protestant uttering, "Help us see ourselves as others see us." "Buddy, that's not a prayer we want to pray. I believe we ought to pray; Lord, help us to see ourselves, help us to be ourselves from seeing ourselves as others see us." Salvation, as the Brier preaches it, is "going back to what you were before without losing what you've since become." This is the synthesis Miller promised by using the dialectic structure. "The friend he knew" and "the one this friend has become" have merged to allow "the person we know we are" to come from the background. This "person we know we are" is no longer the shy, "unacknowledged companion." He has stepped to the forefront and now preaches to those people who are, whether or not they realize it, "lost in the American Funhouse." The "forgotten parts" of the Brier are now acknowledged and remembered. All of the horrors of the disfranchisement and fragmentation have been exposed and the Brier has moved through them—just as he tells the crowd on the street—he has "been through all the books and come out yonside." The difference in the Brier and his congregation is he got "lost in the American Funhouse" by leaving the mountains, they are lost "sitting right in the churchhouse." The original ending of "Brier Sermon" establishes a dichotomy of cynicism and innocence in the characters of a lawyer, which Miller has acknowledged is Harry Caudill, and a young mountain boy: " 'Why do you waste your breath?' the lawyer asked. 'Because,' the Brier said, looking past the lawyer. 'Wherever we are, a little child is listening.' "' In The Mountains Have Come Closer, "Brier Sermon" ends with the Brier blessing an "invisible crowd on the sidewalk" and disappearing "behind a motor home." This revision is more satisfying than the original because it allows the verse in the poem to stand on its own without elaborations. There will always be cynics and innocents. The majority of the crowd will not heed the message. These things are obvious. If reality were any other way, the persona would not have been disfranchised. The sermon would not have had to be preached. The Brier is left alone, diserted on the street. This is the effect of the new ending, but it should not be construed as a negative implication. By the virtue of his spiritual journey and transformation, the Brier has become a visionary, alone with his higher truth. This disertion enhances and reinforces the stark truth of the Brier's message. The Brier "is nothing apart from the people he has just spoken to." They have the potential for a similar transformation just as the "I" persona had in "Getting Together." The crucail difference 52 �between the Brier and the crowd is that he was sick of the disfranchisement and disorientation; they have not reached this point. When they reach this point, they—like the Brier in the original version of "Turn Your Radio On" and like Miller when he sought out Horace Kephart at age 17—will be "like a sick dog that knows how to find the herb or grass to make him well."' With "Brier Sermon," the journey of consciousness is complete. The persona in the collection has been transformed from a mainstream American success who is a "familiar stranger" to himself to a state which Williamson terms "psychological and political wholeness."10 Attaining this wholeness allows the Brier to see the damage done to his homeland by the mainstream that disfranchised him as well as the damage he and his fellow Appalachians have done themselves. He is able to see the role that the "soft-handed son-of-bitches" in Washington played in the destruction of Appalachian culture as well as those played by him and others who "moved to the cities, moved to town and left our spirits in the mountains to live like half-wild dogs around the homeplace." The message is clear: "you can turn loose, you can do it." Footnotes '"An Interview With Jim Wayne Miller," Appalachian Journal, vol. 6, no. 3, p. 211. 'Jerry Wayne Williamson, "Appalachian Poetry: The Politics of Coming Home," Southern Exposure, vol. IX, no. 2, p. 72. 'Ibid, p. 73. 4 "He Sings Ballads" is clearly based on a 1970, 16 mm. film, The End of an Old Song, produced by John Cohen and distributed by Audio Brandon Films, 34 MacQuesten Parkway S., Mount Vernon, N.Y., 10550. The film is a documentary on Madison County, N.C., ballad singer Dillard Chandler. After the film crew documents Chandler singing in his mountain cabin, it follows him to Asheville where he is a gardener, and on to a Lawrence Avenue bar where Chandler does such "redneck" things as drinking beer, singing along with the juke box, and trying to pick up a woman. 5 "An Interview With Jim Wayne Miller," p. 221. "Ibid. p. 219. 'Williamson, "Appalachian Poetry," p. 73. '"Brier Sermon—'You Must Be Born Again,' " Appalachian Journal, vol. 5, no. 4, p. 389. 'Ibid. "Turn Your Radio On," p. 372. (Miller used this same image in a 1979 transcribed conversation with Jerry Wayne Williamson. In this instance, Miller was describing to Williamson how he happened to find a copy of Horace Kephart's Our Southern Highlanders when Miller was a 17-year old student at Leicester High School, Leicester, N.C. 53 �4 'Naked Words That Have No Subtle Meaning": Poetry and Teaching in the Writings of Don West Michael Henson Don West is, by all reports, an opinionated, almost cranky man. I admire these qualities. I believe they are eminently useful to anyone who sets out to go against the trends in this country. So it is appropriate that this will be an opinionated and cranky paper. My thesis is that Don West, read widely among workers but almost totally ignored among academics, is a poet and thinker who demands our attention, who has cut a furrow and planted seeds and raised a fine crop of poetry and original writing that we would do well to examine before history lets it go to seed or the academic franchise builds a McDonald's on top of it. To this effect, I intend to do battle with a straw man. Usually fighting a straw man is a sort of intellectual machismo, a subterfuge in which one builds a reputation by fighting ideas that do not really exist. Here I believe it is a necessity. I think there is a battle to be fought here, but it is not so much against any particular critic as it is against a way of thinking. I believe there are critics who practice this way of thinking and that their critical silence on Don West is as eloquent as their denunciations would be if they bothered to take them up. My assumption is that the typical literary critic with access to the journal, and with the power to decide who will be anthologized and who will be taught has a judgment of Don West. After all, he's been around for a long time and he has sold thousands of books, and I assume that this judgement runs something like this: Don West, as poet and thinker, is a rough equivalent to Rod McKuen and is therefore not worth my time to seriously study his work, to critique it, to anthologize it, and to recommend it to others. I intend to clear away some of the assumptions which underly this way of thinking and to place Don West in his proper context. I will not attempt to make false or inflated claims or to put him in a context he does not deserve. Instead, I hope to make a realistic assessment of what he has to offer us and what lessons this teacher has for us. The first of these assumptions has to do with the proper sources of a poetry and its referents. In "Tradition and the Individual Talent," an essay that has been a fundamental theoretical document for at least two generations of readers and writers, T.S. Eliot argues that this historical sense compels a man (sic) to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. Hence, "The Wasteland" with its Sanskrit, Dante, and built-in footnotes. Hence, as well, sixty years of other wastelands written by univeristy-trained poets. Eliot's thesis is true as far as it goes, but the wording leaves out at least one sex and several continents and races for consideration of the literatures "he" needs to carry in those writing bones. It also leaves out, by implication, several classes as well. Perhaps this has all been said before, but do we really, considering the training most 54 �of us receive as readers and as writers, do we really know what to make of a writer whose literary generations come from, say Africa rather than Europe? Or whose English has its roots in a Liverpool slum rather than Cambridge? Most of us are not so trained, at least not in our formal educations. The second assumption has to do with the complexity of a poetry, the notion that, before a poetry is worthy of our consideration, it must be full of dark referents, complex in structure and symbol, and twisting with ambiguity. This is, of course, a part of our literary heritage from Eliot. Marge Piercy and Dick Lurie identified at least part of the basis for this notion as lying in the "political economy of poetry." They said, Poetry which can support a large critical apparatus (thus keeping, in a minor way, the wheels of the economy turning) tends to have at least two properties: either it was written far enough into the past (Beowulf) or enough embedded in its own time and place to acquire or excuse an army of companion volumes explaining the references and context of the work. Or, the poem must be dense enough in its symbols and language and structure and difficult and ambiguous enough in its meaning to enable a complicated system to be erected on or alongside it. Poets in the tradition of Eliot who have developed complex ways of saying little have also developed such armies of experts to explain and defend them. Accessible poets like West are ignored. This is not to equate them. There are things—important things—that Eliot can do that West cannot. But that does not justify the imbalance that overrates one type of poet and slights another. The tendency therefore is to prefer the writers on whom we can do extensive critical work. It justifies our roles as teachers and critics. This tendency has two negative effects. First, it tends to leave accessible poets worth the study unnoticed. Second, in terms of modeling for younger writers, it tends to discourage accessible and simple writing. How many of us who are university educated have the courage to write in a simple and accessible style? Those who do, like West, or, to take the example of a younger poet, Lee Howard, run the risk of being ignored. Such poets can virtually guarantee that they will never be studied seriously, not so long as there is a Chicago School. The final assumption we need to address is that poetry is not supposed to say anything. "A poem," we are told, "should not mean but be." Everyone knows this is true, just as everyone knows, when they're honest, that every poem has something to say. Eliot, for example, has some very clear things to say about the English working class, about religion, and about poetry itself. The dishonesty is usually that we tend to attack the poem which carries an uncomfortable truth or one we don't like or a truth so simple and radiant as to deny us the luxury of moral ambiguity. Each one of us, if we have been educated in an American college or university, shares in these assumptions. I remember, in my own education, how immediately I took to Whitman and to Black, and how I had to be "educated" into an appreciation of Eliot. And part of that education we all had was learning to feel inferior at not having all those languages and references and also learning to consider inferior the poetry which lacks them. As readers and writers of poetry we are not trained or encouraged to look for our sources and models outside those largely white males of the upper classes who are sanctioned by history as Eliot defined it. Thus, my straw man holds the following assumptions about poetry: that it must be "literary" in its sources, complex in structure, and morally ambiguous. The poetry of Don West violates each of these sanctions, and is in a sense, a declaration of war on them. So my straw man, with his mindset inherited from Eliot, has ignored Don West for the last fifty years. Luckily, this racist, sexist, and class and culturally biased mindset is being broken down. This is not merely a matter of literary affirmative action, although that is important by itself. Rather it is a matter of knowing good poetry. 55 �We cannot know good poetry until we take a serious look at it, free of the debilitating notion that it cannot be worth our attention unless it is obscure in language and referent. But let's face it. In poetry, there are no rules. There never have been, save that poetry must use a human language to embody a human truth. The more powerful the language and the deeper the truth, the greater the poem. One of the root problems of our time is a debased language and an obscured truth. I maintain that one of the values in the work of Don West and one of the lessons he has for younger poets and writers is that he has a lifetime of "naked words that have no subtle meaning," or as he said it in "Advice to the Would-Be Poets," Away with pious references To patriotism and to prayer, As the naked child is born Let the truth lie cold and bare/ If there is a thing to tell Make it brief and write it plain. Words were meant to shed a light, Not to cover up again/ Therefore, our job is to stop all these complaints against our straw man, and to look, first at the context and tradition in which Don West works, and second, to look at what he as a writer has to offer us. One obvious forefather is Burns, both in the dialect poems with their affirmation of our common humanity, but also in the simple and musical verse of which each is capable. Compare the lines from "Afton Water" Flow gently, sweet Afton, among the green braes, Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise; My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. with West's "Memphis": Where Mississippi waters washed garbage from the street death came looking for a man and there the twain did meet. A sullen Southern dampness subdued the bullet whine it found the man in Memphis. He walked the picket line. The Afton and the Mississippi are very different rivers, but there is something of the same music, and a kind of clarity which is all too rare. In both poems, there is not one word out of place nor a word too many. The source in Whitman is obvious. We do not see in West the long line, the mysticism, or the never-ending catalogue. But we do see the same enthusiasm for the common person, the same insistence that we are all part of the same struggle for a greater and more collective consciousness, the same commitment to democracy, and the same attack on racism and prejudice. Yet another obvious source for the poetry of Don West is in didactic folk poetry, both printed and unprinted. These poems are written to preach, teach, and encourage and they appear in local 56 �newspapers, union newsletters, leaflets, pamphlets, and songs. Each week, look in the obituary section of the weekly paper of any mountain county and you will find samples of this form of popular verse. "The Dream of the Miner's Child," which was first published in a nineteenth century issue of The Mineworkers Journal is one good example of this verse. These poems make no pretense to be eternal art. They are universal, in the sense that they mean to teach. Like quilts, they are often socially produced, and they decorate the lives of the people who share them, but they are created primarily for use. We have gotten not of the notion of a poetry for use and have learned to despise it, but the truth is that art for art's sake as it has been taught most of us is a bill of goods. West makes no bones about his conscious break with this tradition. When asked once about the "educational objective" of his poetry, he replied, My poetry is very simple, very clear. I make no effort to be abstract or hard to understand. I feel that the responsibility of a poet is to try to "sensitize" his time and place, his people to the hurt and the hope and problems, the wrongs, the evils and the aspirations of plain ordinary common people. I feel that this is the poet's responsibility... We have been taught to disparage the teaching aspect of poetry. Yet teaching through poetry and in poetry has a long tradition. Pope, as just one example, believed strongly in the teaching aspect of poetry. In fact, the notion that poetry does not teach is the more recent and radical notion. In poetry and the art of poetry, there are, I believe, three kinds of teachers, each of them useful in a different way. The first is the teacher of rote learning, such as reading and the multiplication tables or automechanics or accounting or that tedious list of presidents of the United States. A good example is the first grade teacher each of us had. The second sort of teacher does not merely pass on skills and facts, but leads us to new ways of thinking. We see this dramatized in the Dialogues of Plato. We also see it in Engels in his very lucid writings on dialectics, Ely in recent poetry, or, if she taught us to trust ourselves and to open our imaginations, that same first grade teacher. The third teaches the basic truths which, in any society built on injustice and therefore on lies, are continually denied, mystified, or disputed. These truths must constantly be rescued from obscurity. The method is simple. Jesus was a master of this teacher, as were, in the novel, Tolstoy, and in poetry, Whitman. In our day and in our nation, Don West is one of the few such teachers we have. Listen: The people know more than they tell—always. The people know they don't have to live in misery forever, that they belong to each other, that they belong together... 1 1 Unity is an axe... The axe of wisdom— Sharpened in the University of Toil and Hunger. It's a mighty weapon In the hands of croppers and workers. It chops down fruitless trees. It is like a keen scythe Mowing down greed And exploitation. It's a sledgehammer 57 �Battering at the shackles That bind men. It is poetry and song On the lips of those who have long been silent... It might be objected that such a poem is something of a sledge hammer itself, that it lacks the subtlety, and ambiguity, and verbal play that characterize what we consider to be modern verse. Of course, this is all true, but it misses the point. West is deliberately avoiding subtlety, ambiguity, and verbal play. Clarity, simplicity, and repetition are the tools of a teacher. But there is a profound difference between such simplicity and simple-mindedness. Florence Reece's question "Which side are you on?" is an example of profound simplicity, for in such matters there are only two sides. Ambiguity, as it is explored by a poet like Robert Lowell, is a way of opening up the world to us. In other hands, and in certain situations, ambiguity obscures the world. For example, ambiguity in the hands of the Fugitive Poets obscures the reality of social relations in the South. What, exactly, is subtle about pellegra? Or a lynching? West's intention is not to explore subtlety where none exists or to obscure blatant social truths. His plan is to teach. This poem, "Unity Is An Axe," is a good example of West's didactic verse. It contains, in brief, several of the themes and motifs found in West's work. First, it is addressed to Kim Mulkey, West's own grandfather and an archetypal symbol in West's verse for the poor white Appalachian farmer who struggles against his own poverty and who passes down his humane values to his children and to their children. The poem itself is an attack on racism that obscures the real relations between Black and White. Forget your skin Is black or white. Pull back the scales That hide you From the future/ Unity, the axe, cuts through the lies and obscurities that keep us from a better future. This lesson is learned in the "University" of poverty, and this lesson is available to anyone who removes the scales from his or her eyes. Those who graduate from this university end their silence. They speak out, presumably, with the same clarity and force that this poem demonstrates and encourages. Unity, an end to the silence of the oppressed, the force of common speech, the dignity of labor, and a vision of a better life possible from the struggle are all touched on in this poem. Wipe your eyes, Kim. Look/ She waits to greet you. Shake her hand. Don't mind the dung on your own— She likes them oil-smeared. Look up, Kim, greet the Future, Give her your hand/ The symbols here are obvious. They are borrowed from the Bible, farm life, and the staples of political rhetoric. We have a personified Future which greets the liberated workers and croppers. There is some confusion as to antecedents, whether we are greeting Unity or the Future, but this is unimportant and in no way obscures the message. The poem is utterly opaque. There is nothing hidden in the verbal interstices. There is nothing startling here in image, thought, or form. And yet the poem strikes me as deeply felt and competent. Why? I think because West sets clear goals for 58 �himself in the poem and does what he needs to do. He has a truth, which is not a new or original truth, but it is an utterly necessary truth. And he has a language for that truth, which is simple and suitable for the job at hand. He is a teacher, not an innovator. "I have no desire to be different," he once told an interviewer, "in any way that does not make a difference." What does make a difference is his persistence, clarity, and commitment. Almost alone among his generation of Southern poets (one thinks also of John Beecher, another ignored poet) West raised these issues of class and race oppression. It is instructive to remember that, like the Fugitive Poets, Don West is also a graduate of Vanderbilt, although of a later period. The Fugitives, it will be remembered, were a widely respected school of modernist poets centered in Nashville. Their response to the crassness of Southern culture was to take flight in regionalism, traditionalism, and classicism. They were dutiful sons of Eliot and had read "Tradition and the Individual Talent.'' From that standpoint, they could write of a South of gentility and culture that, if it ever existed in any form, existed to mask genuinely brutal social relations based on slavery, landgrabbing, and poverty. Only rarely, as in Allen Tate's "The Swimmers," do they even acknowledge social relations as they really are. Thus, John Crowe Ransom could write of the South, in "Old Mansion," Emphatically, the old house crumbled; the ruins Would litter, as already the leaves, this petted sward; And no annalist went in to the lord or the peons; The antiquary would finger the bits of shard and so on. Compare the gentle irony of this piece to West's "Bill Dalton's Wife," His shore was painful The way Bill Dalton's wife Lay up thar on Bull Creek An' suffered out her life. The granny women from Over on Wolf Creek's head Come to tend the labor An' thar found Lizzy dead. The babe was crossed, Bill said. The doctor wouldn't come— Bill was powerfully in debt An" couldn't pay the sum. I would like to ask my straw man why the Ransom poem, and not "Bill Dalton's Wife" is the poem which is anthologized, taught, and held up as a model for younger writers. Is it really because of that gently irony, that careful rhythm? Or is it because of the racist lie that Ransom so delicately tells? "Bill Dalton's Wife" is just one of West's earlier poems in dialect, and one of his more successful. It has all the strengths of its simplicity, and again, we do not have a word out of place or a word too many. By placing such an elegy, with its simple dignity, in dialect, West is also making a statement about the dignity of the Appalachian poor. In later poems, he makes this lesson more explicit, as he does in his ground-breaking essays on Appalachian history and culture. There is much more that could be said about the poetry of Don West. We could look, for example, at the many bardic, prophetic poems that denounce the present social system and offer a vi59 �sion of the new, or the poems of historical sweep that cover generations of Appalachian history in a few lines. And we could look at the flaws and weaknesses in the poems, the flat prosaic language that sneaks in, his tendency to try to do too much. But we have said enough. My point is that Don West deserves the attention of critics and anthologists and that he has something to offer younger poets as a model. There are now a number of Appalachian poets who are working in region or classidentified modes, with a striving toward clarity, simplicity, and accessibility. They are working the same ground with new tools, and they can raise a different crop. But it was Don West who first plowed that field, who first showed that it could be done. 60 �Mary Lee Settle's Transmontane Society Nancy Carol Joyner Mary Lee Settle, native of Charleston, West Virginia, author of O Beulah Land, nine other novels, one autobiographical work, one historical study, uncounted short pieces of fiction and journal articles, winner of the National Book Award in 1978 for Blood Tie, a novel set in contemporary Turkey, is unquestionably one of the most significant Appalachian writers working today. I suspect that most of you are familiar with her name and few of you have read much of her work. That certainly was my situation until this year, when I was asked to write an article about her for a collection about contemporary southern women writers. Having set out to read as much as I could by and about Mary Lee Settle, I discovered a lot: principally that she has written more substantial, highly wrought novels than I imagined when I agreed to do this project, and that the critical attention to her is downright weird. On the one hand she has received laudatory reviews with each novel she has published since her serious writing career began in 1954, and on the other hand what little scholarship there has been about her—and there has been precious little—has about it an air of irrascibility. George Garrett, one of her few champions, is irrascible that she has not received her due attention by critics and reviewers. He has said that when she won the National Book Award in 1978 the Press seemed to be embarrassed by it, since its members generally had not read the book and so had nothing to say.1 Last July with the publication of The Killing Ground she made the New York Times Book Review's front page, where Aaron Latham goes on record as saying that since he had noticed her powers diminishing in the last °& years, he feared that this book would be "a stripped mine," but discovers after he gets in the middle of the book that it does contain ore worth mining after all.2 His conclusion is that Settle should go back over the five novels, remove the slag from them, and compress them all into a single work. That view is especially ironic in light of facts which Latham appears to have overlooked, that The Killing Ground is a revision of Fight Night on a Sweet Saturday and is double the length of the previous volume. Even the laudatory reviews are tempered by complaints about her prolixity, her confusing plethora of characters, her unwarranted shifting point of view, her too conventional treatment of her theme, her too unorthodox treatment of it, etc. The one serious critical article that I have found, which appeared in the Appalachian Journal in the Autumn, 1982, issue, is perceptive, well-written, and irrascible. In his article on the Beulah Quintet, William J. Schafer offers at the outset his opinion that Settle is "an ambitious, accomplished, and impressive writer of fiction and reportage."3 He then goes on to complain about her elliptical, fragmentary structure (like that of Forster but not so successful as his), her use of the little man rather than important historical figures in writing about historical events, (like that of Crane but no so comprehendable as his), and her tangential approach to history (like that of Tolstoy but not, you guessed it, as successful as his). After he holds her work up to compare it with that of past giants of the genre, he then goes on to mention, in one of the most insightful pieces of criticism I have read, her methods for achieving continuity in writing a five-volume series that 61 �covers a time span of over 300 years. This conclusion is that in the last analysis Mary Lee Settle lacks a broad, panoramic view of history. I agree with Professor Schafer's premise but not his conclusion. What I want to do today is to begin with the assumption that Settle's work is sufficiently accomplished and impressive to be worth study and to go about discussing some of the specific qualities of that art. My focus will be on the methods she uses to convey class consciousness in three of the novels in the Beulah Quintet. She does it principally through two kinds of details, interior decoration and dress.4 The first book I read by Settle, O Beulah Land, gave me a shock of recognition, for the frontier society which she portrayed was stratified. Not only were the settlers of different nationalities, but also they were of different backgrounds and circumstances. The first character we see is Hannah Bridewell, who has escaped from the Indians, having been captured during General Braddock's defeat. Hannah, we are later told, is in Virginia because she was transported, a convicted thief. She is rescued in the forest by Jeremiah Catlett, who had been sold as a bond slave by his father in Liverpool, and, after being mistreated in the new world and been born again, has escaped to the woods. The person most responsible for settling Beulah land, however, is Johnny Lacey, whose background is never specified but who has married into a wealthy family from the eastern shore. After Lacey has done his duty fighting in the French and Indian war, he stakes a claim just west of the Continental Divide and goes about establishing a settlement there. Several years after their marriage, he brings his wife, Sally Lacey, to the house he has built for her. Sally mingles with the other pioneers as little as possible, insisting that two campfires be built each night when they make camp. "I know ye're agin the two fires, but we got to learn them their place.' " she tells her husband. " 'Tis important to keep decorum, especially now' " (p. 201). The trip over the mountains is an arduous one, but there is only one real disaster, as Sally sees it. Just before their arrival, a wagon tips over and down and loses its cargo. Sally is distraught because in the accident are all but one of her "blue and white Cheeny plates, all sent from England" (p. 210). The single remaining plate becomes a symbol for status thereafter, being placed on a chimney ledge. When Sally has the other women in for hot chocolate, (which none of them knows how to drink) she allows each of them to hold it briefly and tells them that she once had had six such plates: "Ye niver had six of them/" Mary Martha was shocked. "I did too. I'll swear." Sal was firm. "Well, I'll be a cockeyed son of a bitch," [said another] and passed her leathery finger over the plate's surface (p. 227). Jonathan is dismayed beyond anger at Sally's behavior and tries to explain her new position in life, which her husband sees as basically democratic: "Now listen to me, ye poor leetle gel. There's a mightly lot ye've got to leave behind ye, over the mountains Tomorrow morning ye're goin to take a hoe over your shoulder, and ye're going down to the stockade field, and ye're going to work all day like a Negrew to show ye're one with the rest of us" (p. 223). But Sal didn't work in the field. The other women thought the work far to strenuous for someone with such delicate hands. They also wouldn't let her start such popish practices as holding Sunday services using a Prayer Book either. There is no doubt that Sally puts on airs. She calls the loft the second floor of the house, and is so unsatisfied with it, the finest house in the settlement, that she encourages everyone who passes by the river bank to bring home one rock so that the house might eventually boast a stone veneer. When her daughter marries beneath her, as inevitably she must, Sally manages the festivities all 62 �right, but when she thinks she is out of earshot she tells her husband, "All them cohees, common as dirt, entertained like they was quality. To think a daughter of mine should fetch up with such dirt as that." (p. 299). She insists on calling Beulah Cicero, the Greek reference apparently more upper class sounding to her than the Biblical one. In the second novel in the series, Know Nothing, the descendants of the Laceys, named Catlett, control Beulah. The novel begins in 1831, when the country was in a post-Jackson panic, and when the Brandon Laceys, the eastern branch of the family who are in financial straits, come to visit their "backwoods Catlett kin" (p. 13). Salley Lacey objects to Brandon's calling them that, and admonishes him that "they are Virginians even if they are transmontane." When they arrive they admire the new three-story brick house and the furnishings in the parlor, the red plush sofa, the table with the velvet covering whose fringe lay "gracefully abandoned on the flowered carpet, like a woman's skirts." (p. 58). Sally is gushingly enthusiastic: " 'Oh Brandon!" she said...Le dernier cri! They've got flock paper! Why can't we have it?...All the latest thing—oh, our little old furniture we've just had for generations!' " (p. 58) The backwoods kin are as conscious of fashion as their Tidewater relatives, and, by the mid-19th century, their position as members of the upper class has become as substantial as the heavy elegance of their house. The house belonging to the Laceys in the third volume of the Beulah quintet is even more imposing. The opening scene in The Scapegoats shows the daughters of the house gathered around the newest appendage, a Catling Gun in the front yard. It has been placed there not to be used, but as a warning to the incipient strikers in the coal mine owned by Beverly Lacey. Again the interior of the Lacey house is elaborately described, just as is the interior of the Catlett house, much less elegant now, for there some of the descendants of Beulah now reside, literally, on the other side of the tracks. Jake Catlett is employed by his cousin Beverly to work in the mine, and his wife is the cook for the Laceys. They gave her an old couch for her living room. Mrs. Lacey calls it Chippendale, but Jake, to tease, calls it Chickendale. The Catletts are of course socially superior to the Italian immigrants who work in the mine. When the threat of a strike appeared they were turned out of their cabins and were forced to pitch tents on Catlett property. If Settle is careful in her description of decoration of houses to indicate class, she pays even more attention to the clothes people wear, especially the women. In Beulah Land Hannah Catlett first appears having escaped from the Indians with her clothes in shreds. Her common law husband, Jeremiah Catlett, dresses her in deer skin and panther fur. When Sally Lacey writes to her husband away fighting with General Braddock, she tells him that she is to get a "new set of tamboured Ruffles" for her sister's wedding, but the sister will get a new dress, made of watered silk. When her daughter marries Ezekial Catlett, she is dismayed that he arrives for his wedding in buckskins "that had taken nearly the winter to make fine enough" (p. 295). A predominant theme in Know Nothing is the clothes of the women. One scene describes Melinda Lacey frantically cutting off the ruffles from the top of her dress and sewing them on her petticoat: "She closed her eyes and tried to recall the exact shape of the Northern ladies' Paris dresses, how they looked like they had risen out of clear water and not like a big gob of soapsuds" (p. 166). There is much talk of corsets, hoops, and ruffles, and whispers that some women are commiting the sin of wearing rings at breakfast. In The Scapegoat all the Lacey girls wear white. They are allowed to sit at the main table—for decoration—when a coal baron arrives in his private train (not a private car on the train, mind you, but in his private train). Lily, the eldest daughter, is determined to go into the mine and does so on 63 �the night the miners have walked out. Of course she gets her white dress filthy when she flits up to the coal face. Even so, the men who see her emerge think she is the ghost they have been told haunts the mine. Mary Lee Settle was a fashion model before she became a writer, a fact which may account for her skill at describing dress. My final example of her attention to clothes is a description of a hat that the middle sister, Althea, remembers. This passage not only indicates the symbolic significance of clothes in The Scapegoat, but also shows Settle's power and versatility as a writer: Oh I was the loveliest thing when I was a girl. Mother had bought me a hat in the Via Condotti in Rome. It was the loveliest thing you ever saw and it cost the earth, pale gray clouds of georgette with pink rosebuds faint behind them. I can still smell that smell of a costly hat before the Great War, smell of tissue paper, silk, and straw and hear the sound of the weightless lifting of it, a rustle and a falling breeze of tissue paper, and it had no weight at all and I moored it to my head with my best hatpin, filigreed gold, oh absolutely lovely, and I sallied out to meet my dear one who had followed us all the way from Lausanne. We were madly in love. Shit. I don't even remember his name. But I do remember the black trees, and the old, old shade, and I remember the hat, perched on the grass like a gray dove and I lost my cherry in the Borghese Gardens (p. 150). What I have done today is to talk about two minor motifs which decorate an extraordinarily rich and varied fictional canvas. Mary Lee Settle's books are large and complex and not easy to read. But I recommend her to you. She does us proud that we can claim her as an Appalachian writer. Footnotes '"Mary Lee Settle," DLB: American Novelists Since World War II, Second Series (1980). 2 "The End of the Beulah Quintet," NYTBR, 11 July 1982, p. 21. '"Mary Lee Settle's Beulah Quintet: History Darkly, Through a Single-Lens Reflex," Appalachian Journal, 10 (1982), 77-86. 4 Page numbers in parenthesis following quotations in the text are taken from the following novels by Mary Lee Settle: O Beulah Land. New York: Ballantine, c. 1956; 1981. Know Nothing. New York: Ballantine, c. 1960; 1981. (Also published under the title, Pride's Promise, New York: Pinnacle, 1976.) The Scapegoat. New York: Random House, 1980. 64 �Appalachian Politics and Government 65 �This page intentionally left blank �Newsmaking and Social Change in Eastern Kentucky: "Why Aren't They Telling Our Side?" Sally Ward Maggard Introduction Ever since Night Comes to the Cumberlands became standard reading on "the Appalachian problem," people have been altered to the fact that residents of mountain communities do not have control over use of the region's natural resources. Residents do not own the vast majority of the land. They do no own the minerals underneath the land. And they do not own the extractive industries which draw out these minerals.1 Domination in Appalachia, however, is much more complicated than control of land and natural resources. The economic and political power associated with patterns of ownership and control is integrally related to another form of power—the power to set the terms of a community's selfunderstanding. People with that power fashion the fools we use to interpret everyday life. They control access to information, and they influence values and self-perceptions. In short, through a series of subtle and complex processes, they wield a form of cultural power. The processes involved in shaping consciousness and situationally defining knowledge are complicated. As powerful interests strive to universalize their own beliefs, they attempt to use and influence a whole range of social structures and institutions—such as schools, churches, unions, the family, and the media. Taken together, these institutions—the cultural apparatus of a society—produce commonsense notions of what "reality" is like. In academic circles, the power to shape definitions of reality is known as "cultural hegemony." Central to any understanding of cultural hegemony is the recognition that domination may occur through ideas. If people believe, for instance, that individual profit-making, aggresssion, competition, and male authority are inherent in the "natural" order of things—are God-given, so to speak—then they will accept their own inferior statuses. Personal inferiority, inequality in general, and the exploitation of other people become part of a worldview that legitimates the power and privilege of dominant elites. No use of force or threat of force is needed to maintain the status quo. Instead, domination is maintained through widely held social, political, and cultural assumptions which saturate everyday notions of reality. This power is essentially the power to manufacture consent.2 It is within the institutions making up the cultural apparatus that the business of creating and maintaining cultural dominance is carried out. My concern in this paper is with one of those institutions—the news media. The media bring people their concepts, symbols, images of heroines 67 �and heroes, emotional charges, directional information, definitions of public values, even their language. As a result, there is great potential to reinforce the dominant order. Recent evaluations of the national news media have detailed ways in which modern news organizations produce a news product that is virtually always system-supportive. For instance, in Making News, Gaye Tuchman (1978) analyzes internal dynamics in newsmaking which "frame" the everyday world for news consumers in ways that legitimate the status quo. This framing process, she shows, inhibits inquiry, blocks analysis, and hinders social action. Todd Gitlin (1980), in The Whole World is Watching, reveals a series of denigrating techniques routinely used in covering protest movements which limit the terms of opposition in society. Harvey Molotch and Marilyn Lester (1974, 1975) expose the ways in which the news product mirrors the purposes and programs of powerful economicand political elites, rather than reality. And Robert Spiegelman's (1982) analysis of the media's manipulation of the growing antinuclear movement reveals subtle (and not so subtle) ways in which the media designates and controls the meanings of "issues." This body of research highlights routine aspects of newsmaking in modern news organizations, internal dynamics of the profession, and canons of the craft of journalism which operate to protect dominant interests. Little research, however, has been done on the hegemonic role of the local press in this country. It is this role of the local press that is the focus of this paper. In particular, this paper explores the relationship of community papers in eight eastern Kentucky counties to social change efforts. The Question of Press/Community Bonds Journalists have long tended to dismiss the provincial press as flatly unable to even approximate unbiased, investigative reporting which is supposed to be the hallmark of professional journalism (Ghiglione, 1978). Close intergration of the paper and the local community, including links between owners and local elites, the argument goes, prohibit the local press from operating as a neutral gadfly, protecting the public interest. This assumption—that distance from both the community and from powerful local interests will allow a critical news product—is faulty. In the first place, research on the national press, as indicated above, solidly documents the failure of even the cream of the profession to perform the "fourth estate," or protector-of-the-public role. Furthermore, some journalists believe that breaking community/press bonds poses a threat to any possibility for a "free" press. Ben Bagdikian is one of the few nationally known journalists to maintain an active critical stance toward his own profession. Alarmed by recent dramatic increases in the control of information organizations by a relatively small number of corporations, Bagdikian charges that some "one hundred men and women constitute a private Ministry of Information and Culture for the United States"—less than 100 corporate executives have ultimate control of the majority of each medium in this country (1979:15-16). As a result, journalism is now almost totally included in conglomerate corporations that are regularly reported, or unreported, in the media. The resulting conflicts of interest are frightening. Robert Spiegelman (1982) has recently shown that these fears are justified. In his analysis of coverage of the antinuclear movement, Spiegelman reviews intimate links between the major mass media organizations and the military-industrialbanking complex, which has much to lose if the movement breaks a national commitment to nuclear power and nuclear armament. He then dissects news coverage to reveal what he calls the militarization of the media, a series of reporting strategies which make disarmament unthinkable 68 �and depress and co-opt the real desire for disarmament into consensual support for an extended and elite-defined and managed arms control process. In addition to facing severe conflicts of interest with owners, managers of media organizations increasingly find themselves reporting to a new constituency. Stockholders now surpass both readers and advertisers as primary constitutents. Expanding size and rate of profit in order to maintain or gain a place on securities exchanges, the declaration of ever-growing dividends, competition for investment dollars as well as news consumers, are all forcing changes in the content and style of journalism, including a decline in the amount of serious news provided (Bagdikian, 1979; Tuchman, 1978; Gitlin, 1981). An additional challenge to the idea that distance from community increases chances for objective, investigative reporting comes from my own summary of the national press/Appalachia connection. The national press, despite its great distance from coalfield communities, has failed miserably in coverage of such issues and events as the 1977-78 national coal strike, wildcat strikes in the coalfields in 1976 and 1977, a West Virginia school textbook controversy, strip mine control legislation, persistent flooding, coal mine disasters, and federal development programs.3 The Local News Media and Social Change The question of closeness or distance from a community is not helpful in analyzing the media's role in setting the terms of a community's self-understanding. Instead, the media—both the national and the local media—need to be critiqued from the standpoint of their hegemonic role in a society. This approch raises much more appropriate questions such as how a news organization provides or blocks access to information, how it influences values, how it influences self-perceptions, and what tools it provides for interpreting everyday life. The kinds of issues and events generated in Eastern Kentucky have the potential for breaking through generally accepted interpretations of reality and exposing the operation of class interests in the social structure.4 Coverage of such events as coal strikes, mine disasters, citizen protests against strip mining, and community organizing around quality of life issues has the potential of demonstrating the inner workings of the social order. The possibility is there for reaching such bottom-line questions as, "Why does any one have the right to privately own and develop a country's energy resources?" or "Why, in a democracy, does a small group of people have the right to garner vast private fortunes from these resources while totally disregarding consequences to people and community?" Eastern Kentucky, then, located in the heart of central Appalachia, provides an excellent place to study the hegemonic functioning of the local press. Historically, the local press in the mountains endorsed the industrialization of the region as the arrival of the promised land. Generally speaking, the early local papers in central Appalachia were run by people who enthusiastically supported and helped legitimate the carving up of the agricultural economy into an industrialized natural resource base. They hoped to establish themselves in the new economy and in the new social hierarchy, welcome agents from financial centers of the nation and Europe with open arms, and blatantly denounce the preindustrial culture and history (Maggard, 1981: 33-42). They also served to help quell protest and block dissent which frequently broke out as the new economic order was established (Gaventa, 1980; Dreiser, 1970). Today, the Eastern Kentucky press defies simple catagorization. During the summer of 1977, I interviewed editors, publishers and staff members of local papers in eight eastern Kentucky counties. I also interviewed residents who had direct experience in trying to get access to local media. 69 �My objective was to develop a profile of the local newspaper business and to evaluate its response to a variety of organizing efforts, all of which raised serious challenges to corporate and government policy in central Appalachia. I expected that a fairly homogeneous picture would emerge. Instead, I found a diversified group of business people with a wide range of perspectives on local news and on Eastern Kentucky. And I found varying degrees of openness to critical analysis of issues, ranging from dramatic instances of the local press as protector of local elites to what is probably one of the most open papers in this country. Newspaper owner and editor Tom Gish has the broadest view of the power to inform of all the local editors I interviewed. His Letcher County paper, The Mountain Eagle,' has won national recognition for its solid reporting and strong stands. The list of topics regularly covered in The Eagle reads like a "Who's Who" of Appalachian problems: coal mine safety, unemployment, strip mining, education, welfare reform, statehouse and courthouse politics, toxic waste, federal development strategies, child care, health care, flooding, taxation, and on and on. Gish has been unique in his willingness to unleash young investigative reporters interning at the paper: "I stay out of their way except to avoid libel." They cut their journalistic teeth on some of the toughest issues in the mountains. Still, he feels it is an uphill battle to stay current on regional issues, and he would like to see an information-sharing network: Vast areas of public affairs are going unreported by anybody—education, child care, pollution, medicine. Keeping up with mine safety administration alone would take one full time person, and more. We need a dozen able people, separated into specialities to monitor programs....We're all proceeding in the dark as it is now. We are at a point of crisis in the mountains and don't know what to do about it. Your plans and schemes of the past haunt you. There is no question that there is massive development of coal and electricity ahead. That includes dams, water, coal waste, black lung. But this time it will be much more exaggerated than ever before. In Eastern Kentucky, Gish said, "just to keep up with the main news currents and breaking events, it would take ten reporters and one quarter of a million dollar budget." Gish's view of the proper domain of a newspaper would be comparable to visions of any of the country's most distinguished journalists. He believes that the local press in Eastern Kentucky sells its readership short and sells itself short: "They perceive their readers as ignorant and uniterested. All too many community papers are doing it." If The Eagle's relationship with its readership is any indication, Gish is right. The paper survived a long period when most local advertisers blacklisted it. Gish relied on subscriptions and sales until local businesses came back for advertising space in the widely circulating paper. The Eagle's popularity indicates that readers want more information, analysis, and involvement with their local papers.6 The kind of empowerment Gish envisions through access to information is a direct threat to the core interests of the elite in the mountains and in the nation. Giving rank and file miners broad rights to determine the conditions of their work, for instance, is a direct challenge to the dominant philosophy of coal mining in America which values production and profits over safety (Bethell, 1978). His paper survives without the support of most coal company people. "They won't have anything to do with us," he admits. "Working miners support us. The lines are drawn fairly sharply." Another refreshing paper in the overall Eastern Kentucky local media picture was the Herald Voice in Hazard, Kentucky. Even though the paper has since been sold and its progressive publisher has left Hazard, I include this summary to give more ideas about the potential in the local press. 70 �Publisher Don Gipson was one of several people running local papers who wanted to see a major daily come out of Eastern Kentucky as powerful as Louisville's Courier-Journal. "Hazard and Perry County make up a great news-producing area. I've never seen another place like it," Gipson said. "I'd move to a daily immediately if I could. We could help other Eastern Kentucky papers upgrade themselves, providing a photo service and a news service. I'd develop a mountain theme. You can be sure I would be printing both sides of the streams!" In the two and one-half years Gipson had been with the paper, there was plenty of evidence that he would run a news organization which would try to achieve such objectivity. He had already given news coverage to Perry Countians who never before had it: (1) a tribute to Frances "Granny" Hager whose death saddened hundreds of coal miners sympathetic to the UMWA and the Black Lung Association—this in a county noted for its anti-union power elite; (2) front page coverage of a neighborhood strip mine protest over damaged roads and threats to children riding school buses; (3) front page coverage of violence at a UMWA picket line which reflected miners' concerns; (4) front page coverage of complaints from public housing residents which reached a rentstrike stage and exposed deep-set racism in the area. Gipson's openness was, like Gish's, apparently paying off. His circulation was up from 3,400 when he took over the paper to 6,200. The paper's credibility seemed firmly established in the community, and not only with the local Chamber of Commerce of which Gipson was a member. Willard Akers, President for 16 years of the United Steel Workers local at the Hazard Appalachian Regional Hospital, summed up what he thought his fellow union members felt about the paper: We're proud of Don Gipson and our local paper. I've never gone to Don and asked for a story that we didn't get what we wanted. He's written our side of our contract strikes and he has run pictures of our local union members and our picket lines. That endorsement, from a man who was also one of the first United Mine Workers organizers in Perry County, indicates that the paper was committed to representing more than Perry County's local elites. Some local papers were not so easy to describe as progressive, although on particular issues, coverage was at times critical of Eastern Kentucky's power relationships. The best example of this sort of paper is the Floyd County Times (FCT). Since the paper was founded in 1927, the FCT has always born the mark of its first editor and long-time owner, Norman Allen. The Allen family's vision of the proper scope of the FCT stops at the county line. The Aliens see the paper as a nice, respectable business. They feel they cover the county's needs and that they live up to the promise of its masthead: "Speaking of and for Floyd County." But the Allen family and many Floyd County residents apparently have very different ideas about what it means to speak for the county. The paper's coverage of widespread abuse of federal medical programs by the area medical establishment provides an example. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Floyd County-based Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization (EKWRO) exposed the federal health care program operating there as one of the most corrupt in the nation and eventually got it defunded (Couto, 1975). But the FCT did not touch the issue until EKWRO had attracted the national press. A large public hearing was the turning point of the fight, and that was the first time the local paper covered the issue. Nick Frasure, then a member of EKWRO, described editor Norman Allen's response to the hearing: "He just grabbed someone at the end to get a story. There never was an analysis of the issues in the local papers." 71 �After the federal health program was shut down and efforts to reopen it with community people on the board failed, EKWRO moved to organize its own working class community clinic. The Mud Creek Health Project was born, a remarkable and historic effort by people usually thought to be fatalistic and ignorant. Eula Hall, EKWRO member and principal organizing strength behind the clinic, could not get local coverage for the clinic for years. She finally got one front page FCT story with pictures: "It was when we opened the miners' breathing clinic. But that was the first time they covered the clinic—after it was already several years old." EKWRO also waged a battle to get public school lunches and breakfasts into the Floyd County Schools. Kentucky lagged behind the nation in implementing the program, and EKWRO managed to get the first Kentucky lunch policy written. The local paper, however, ignored the issue and EKWRO's organizing efforts until the national and state press highlighted the controversy. Marie Childers, a UMWA widow at Auxier, Kentucky, led a 1977 fight against Austin Powder Company in Floyd County. The company's ammonium nitrate loading dock was plaguing the Auxier coal camp with chemical dust pollution, and trucks at its loading dock were completely blocking traffic. Paul Allen, reporter and photographer at the FCT and son of its owner, lived at Auxier. Still, Mrs. Childers could not get FCT coverage: The FCT has never come to see me or anyone else. I haven't ever seen them through this whole thing. I don't even know if they have any reporters! I've never known it if the FCT has covered a problem of any kind in this county...and they are the ones that could help us the most. I don't know of a house in Auxier that doesn't get it. David Allen, managing editor and another son, commented only: "We covered it." A general anti-union sentiment is clear at the FCT. Barbara Heinz, Allen's daughter who "does just about everything" at the FCT, described 1977 efforts to organize a chapter of the 1199 National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees at an area hospital: "It was union trouble. Some workers didn't want to join, but would have to if it went in." Shirley Hill, wife of a UMWA miner, complained that the FCT did not cover meetings of the UMWA, even during the wildcat strikes of 1977 that were getting national attention. There is widespread sentiment in Eastern Kentucky that local papers could provide information which citizens crucially need. Marie Childers pointed out that local papers could help save lives by focusing on mine safety: "We need coverage. Not just on explosions in the mines after they happen. We need stories before the disasters. That would help change the mines." Her husband had been a mine electrician and had held various offices in the UMWA from the time the union was first organized. She could not recall any unbiased FCT coverage of issues important to miners. Managing editor David Allen appears to have little interest in mine safety: "The small mines are better regulated now and the big companies have been a long time." The fact that coal mining remains one of the most hazardous occupations in the U.S. does not tie into the Aliens' vision of what a local paper in a coal county should cover. "Norman accepts deep mines as part of the scene, or as a job for the UMWA to worry about," explained John Rosenberg, director of Kentucky Appalachian Research and Defense Fund: "Most people don't realize safety is as fad as it is. Norman might write more if he knew more about it himself. He regularly reprints stories from the CourierJournal." Since those stories regularly highlight dangers in mining, I find Rosenberg's excuse unsatisfactory. Recent stories in the Courier, for instance, had suggested that small operators were shutting down during the day and working at night to avoid inspectors. I asked David Allen if FCT was planning any coverage: " No." Furthermore, Allen was sitting on top of some key stories 72 �which he should have run and could have fed into the national and state media, helping to interpret the 1977 coal strike. Ernest Day, President of UMWA Local Union 1827, and a miner at Island Creek's Pevler Mine, described reasons why wildcat strikes had erupted that year: We can't keep a safety committee up there. They take dead aim on the safety committee and bring charges against each miner. Then it winds up in arbitration and the men get thrown out. Somebody needs to expose what the companies are doing to block us from having any say on safety. We don't have any choice but to strike. They company won't honor the contract and our men are constantly harrassed. Day laughed when I asked him if the FCT covered such issues behind the winter's wildcat strikes. Nick Erasure, now director of the Floyd County Field Service Office of the West Virginia Appalachian Research and Defense Fund, stressed the need for information to interpret the coal contract strike that year. People were facing such complex issues as abuses of the miners' health care cards, coal company refusals to honor the 1974 contract, company efforts to undermine the arbitration process, the relationships between the Health and Retirement Fund and the Union itself: Most people don't even know the Fund and the Union aren't the same thing. The papers could really help. All you hear about is how the wildcats last year broke the Fund. Nobody will get into the issues...Nobody is sending out reporters to try and talk to the UMWA locals....In the FCT you find out what's happening to people—who dies, who is visiting from Michigan. ..But what we need is a paper that will jump on the issues the print the damn facts. Frasure added, "If the FCT has a roving reporter, it don't rove no further than the local drug store." An aggressive investigative stance by the FCT is highly unlikely. I asked each paper how it would change its coverage if it had an unlimited budget. The FCT's vision is very limited. The staff suggested more coverage from the State Police and the county court house, adding more local photographs, purchasing syndicated features, and expanding the "social notes." The FCT has voiced strong opposition to the broad form deed (which gives owners of mineral rights precedence over the owners of surface rights). Owner Norman Allen listed it as "one of my pet peeves." The family also seems generally opposed to strip mining. But that sentiment is restrained in print. "Dad has urged strong protection from strip mine abuses," David Allen said, "but he knows coal is the base of our economy here." When flooding, aggravated by stripping, in the spring of 1977 devastated the coalfields of southwestern Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and parts of West Virginia, then Kentucky governor Julian Carroll placed part of the blame on farming practices. "The whole county was mad about that statement," Barbara Heinz said. "The state has never done anything about strip mining. Julian Carroll is strictly business," David Bell added. But the FCT did not write anything about Carroll's refusal to link stripping and the floods. Both Heinz and Allen insisted: "We don't ever rabble-rouse here at the FCT." Covering publically stated positions by a state governor on an issue that affected thousands of residents was considered rabble-rousing—precisely because coverage would not challenge the position of dominant elites. The FCT does not offer the possibility for broad community access of feedback. It does little to encourage people to think about crucial issues. It censors by news blackout those conscientious efforts by groups to act on issues, thereby helping to contain threats to the existing power relations. "A nice, respectable business" as a vision is a far cry from Gish's approach to The Eagle or from what Don Gipson hoped to develop in Hazard. Further south in eastern Kentucky there is a "small city paper" which dramatically illustrated that the power of the media lies as much in what is unwritten as in what appears in print. The Tri 73 �Cities News (TCN) in Harlan County circulates through the coal towns of Cumberland, Benham, and Lynch. Founded by the Freeman family of Harlan County, it changed hands several times and was owned by Press Company at the time of my interviews. Again, I include this description to illustrate the state of the local press in the late 1970s. Press Company, which no longer owns the paper,8 also published a sports magazine and state parks publications. Editor Bob Watson was sent from northern Kentucky to run the paper, and he quickly learned how to fade into the woodwork of the coalfields: "I haven't received a lot of reaction from anything I have written. I can't recall ever getting a letter to the editor on anything I've done." "I have a good relationship with all the public bodies I cover," Watson said. "That's because I give objective, unbiased coverage." To Watson, those public bodies meant the town council, education boards, and police departments—a news net which leaves out a lot of the action in those three cities. Lynch, for instance, is the base of one of the largest and most militant UMWA locals in the nation. But Watson had not gotten up with that public body. In face, he brought the wrath of the UMWA down on his head soon after he arrived in the area when he ran an editorial critical of the United Auto Workers' contract. "I should have known better, right here in UMWA country," Watson said. The Lynch UMWA local has been one of the most outspoken groups calling for stronger mine safety legislation. But Watson had not tapped this obvious lead for news. "Mine safety? I don't know a hell of a lot about it. I've never been in a mine, and that's all a foreign language to me." Cumberland, one of the Tri Cities, is the site of two ripping methane gas explosions which killed 26 miners inside Big Black Mountain in March 1976. The blasts put the Tri Cities on the national map for a full year. At the time I interviewed Watson, the national press was again gearing up for a foray into the mountains, as a major civil suit brought by the widows against the company was about to go to court. "Scotia? Well, I covered the recovery of the bodies,"said Watson. He made no effort to do any investigative work, yet he was publisher of the paper nearest to the disasters. "I stick to local news," he said. Watson's vision for his paper? "I've tried to build up the editorial end of the paper. I figure the rest will fall into place." When asked about the editorial end, he added, "Well, I remind the people all the time what the press did to Nixon and Agnew." If he had more money, Watson would "expand the news staff so we can cover the state police, the county school board and the fiscal court...then, I want to take a vacation." Just a few miles down the road from the TCN in Harlan is one of two daily papers generated in Eastern Kentucky, the Harlan Daily Enterprise (HDE).9 1 1 Sitting in publisher Clyde Lemarr's paneled office with its three-inch carpet ad executive desk, it appeared that this paper was a breed apart from the TCN. But the news products of the HDE and the TCN were strickingly similar. The people of Harlan County have had a daily paper for over 50 years, and for just about that long, residents have felt it was a tool of area coal interests. The mood from Lemarr's office was complacency. "We don't have any competition in terms of newspapers," he said. "We don't write many editorials. We don't need to." I began to understand the stories I had heard about talented young writers who stayed only briefly at the HDE. The HDE had six people on the news staff and twenty-one full time-employees. Yet the circulation was only 7,000 in a county with over 40,000 people. Issues which Lemarr felt the HDE should cover include trash, water and sewage, city zoning laws, and the county court's vote of retirement benefits to local officials. With regard to housing 74 �shortages, Lemarr blamed older families who kept property tied up. When asked if coal or land companies were holding land suitable for housing sites, an issue raised by the Appalachian Alliance (Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force, 1981), Lemarr replied: "That's no housing problem. Eastover Coal Company just gave sixty acres of land to the Chamber of Commerce." • HDE's attitude toward Eastover, and its owner Duke Power Company, clearly defines its allegiance to the economic elite. Eastover operated the Brookside, Kentucky, mine where the famous UMWA organizing drive in the early 1970s ousted the Southern Labor Union, a company union which operates primarily to control labor. Minnie Lunsford is a member of the Brookside Women's Club, which carried much of the weight of the organizing drive at Eastover. She let out a big laugh when I asked about HDE's coverage of the strike. Whey, boy! We had to pack up and go to Harlan during Brookside. We were going to padlock the place if they wouldn't get out and come to the picket line. Everybody was getting shot at and our homes shot at. But where was the HDE? The man there told us his reporters had to go home and do the wash or see their wives. We let them have it!....The papers just won't tell about it. They will tell about a security guard getting shot...but what about that helicopter flying over the picket line and the UMWA rallies and the strikers and all the shooting at the men? She added that the Southern Labor Union gets frequent coverage, but the UMWA gets a news blackout. Hobart Grills, an organizer of the Black Lung Association and retired UMWA miner, said the same thing: They will come out when there is a UMWA strike. But they cover it from the company's point of view only. When we had our big victory celebration at Brookside, they hardly mentioned it. Yet, they just recently wrote a big story about a Southern Labor Union festival. Grills had similar trouble getting coverage of the Black Lung Association organizing efforts and meetings. Minnie Lunsford spoke for many Harlan Countians when she said: "Us poor shots up and down these hollers in Harlan County never see a thing we need to see in that paper." The Paintsville Herald (PH) in Johnson County also resembled the TCN and the Harlan paper. Owner Allen "Bud" Perry uses the paper to promote his, and his business associates', interpretations of economic development. To Bud Perry, the hottest development idea to come Johnson County's way in the late 1970s was the Paint Creek dam and reservoir project of the Corps of Engineers. He used the paper for active lobbying for the project. "Bud Perry is all for the dam," Geneva Sherman said. She was a member of the Paint Creek Committee, representing the families that stood to lose some of eastern Kentucky's prime agricultural land if the dam went in: The Paintsville businessmen think, "Our friends in Prestonsburg have a lake (Dewey Lake), so we should have one too." They want our homes so they can retire and put a boat on a lake in their own county! Although Perry ran letters to the editor from Committee members and did cover the group's participation in local events, the paper did not cover the controversial issues surrounding the dam. Chuck Hoffman, then chairman of Kentucky Rivers Coalition, said, "The PH has never initiated any coverage or detailed reporting or investigations about the opposition to the dams." Wendell Sherman, who eventually lost his farm to the project, said, "There is no way you could call the PH unbiased. They want that dam built and they use the paper to push it." News editor Roger Frazier summarized the PH's vision of the local press. "People buy a local paper to read local news. They know what has happened. What they want to know is who got 75 �caught.." Obviously, the people who lost their homes to the dam had a different interpretation of what people want in their community press. The PH did not cover miners' wildcat strikes, mine safety, or the recent Scotia disasters despite the fact that many workers and retired miners and their families live in the county. "We cover local news and local sports. We cover 18 Little Leagues and adult Softball. If people want anything else, they buy the dailies," Frazier said. There is an additional theme that appears in the PH and several other local papers in eastern Kentucky: a sort of hillbilly-is-beautiful theme. "Any story in the outside press that belittles eastern Kentucky or the county, Mr. Perry is quick to point out," Frazier said. "We are not backward, illiterate people here." Pushing eastern Kentucky as a respectable place to live appears to be a major goal of one of the newest papers that had appeared in eastern Kentucky, the Appalachian Express. It has since been bought by a newspaper chain which merged the Express with its competitor, the Pike County News. The new Appalachian News Express contains much of the flavor of the early Express. Founded in 1976, the Express attracted a young, liberal, professional-looking staff. Then editor Forrest Cameron voiced hopes that the Express could become a major daily for the eastern end of the state, in direct competition with the Courier-Journal. "The Courier puts our people down," Cameron said.10 "I call this area a 'hountopolis,' a whole society of mountain people. We want to make eastern Kentucky politically powerful and end the Courier's anti-mountain bias." In direct contrast to the know-nothing position of Bob Watson at the TCN, and the corporateonly position of Clyde Lemarr at the HDE, the editor at the Express and its owners were trying to incorporate the entire mining community into its readership. "I consider all of us in mining here," Cameron said. Growth plans depend largely on attracting major coal industry advertising dollars. "We're cheaper than the trade journals," Cameron said. "As we grow, I can't see why they won't look to us." And giving the area "credibility" and establishing its political clout involves changing the way the state views coal miners. On June 30, 1977, the Express "saluted the coal industry." News editor Rosalind Stanley and photographer Gwendolyn Sturm visited Standard Sign and Signal's Pike County mining complex. They produced a good tribute to coal miners, and the issue encouraged area residents to dig up mining history, bring in sketches and stories and poems about their lives, and recognize miners as industrial workers who contribute to the entire nation. There was a glaring omission in the coverage, however. In 1976, over 100 miners forced that company to recognize the UMWA. The 110-17 vote was based on concern over safety and job security. Pike County, the leading coal producing county in the nation, is a stronghold of nonunion mines. This victory was a major breakthrough in labor relations. Yet there was not one mention of the UMWA victory and presence at Standard Sign and Signal in the paper. Equally important was the failure to mention the landmark suit which had just been settled against the company in favor of Steve Ratliff. A foreman at the mine, Ratliff had been reinstated after nine months when he had been fired for refusing to take miners under an unsafe root. He filed a "safety discrimination" suit against the company under the 1969 Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. This was the first time the little-used provision in the act had been used to protect a safetyconscious foreman. Ratliff filed his suit within minutes before a 30-day time limit expired. He did not know he had such rights under the law. Ratliff summarized the role the local press could play if it were committed to the "public's right to know:" 76 �Every coal miner in Eastern Kentucky, in the U.S., ought to know that the clause is in the act. We've got to get this story out into the local papers, if they'll run it. This is a life and death thing—and not one of us knows we've got these rights!" The paper's failure to recognize the union and to cover the safety discrimination case represents the sort of news blackouts which keep people uninformed about crucial issues and about possible action on those issues. In Martin County, two local papers were at war, each claiming the other was a mere tool for a local politician. Both emphatically claimed the other prints only lies, in contrast to its own objectivity and factual reporting. However, one paper, which has since ceased publication, did appear to be much more open to the problems of working and poor people. Most obervers of the Martin County political scene say that families in the county line up with one or the other faction and that the fight relates to control over the school board. "That's a shotgun county if I ever saw one," summarized Chuck Hoffman, then Chairman of the Kentucky Rivers Coalition which opposes numerous Corps of Engineers water projects in eastern Kentucky. The Martin County Mercury (MCM) was started by Tom Kirk and his two attorney sons, Raymond and John. It promptly started giving press coverage to Martin County families who haven't had it before. When miners voted to have the United Mine Workers represent them at the Martin County Coal Company, the company refused to recognize the union. During the related strike, the MCM interviewed strikers and protested a mass arrest which landed 86 miners in jail at once. Tom Kirk remembered: We had a fish fry over that. We burnt everybod up over that—the state police, the County Judge, the state government. There was one bathroom and no heat in that jail. The men were so packed in that their noses were sticking through the bars. In addition to news coverage, Raymond Kirk offered his legal services to help get the men released. "The Mercury, they told our side of it," said Riley Horn who was fired from Martin County Coal Company for union activities. "If it hadn't been for Ray Kirk, we'd have gone down the drain during the strike," he said. "The Martin Countian (MCM is an anti-union as they come!" Frances Horn feels nothing but bitterness toward the Martin Countian and the Courier Journal. Besides a bias against the union, Mrs. Horn charged that they did not help investigate the death of her son and daughter-in-law. The young couple was killed in their sleep by a 75-ton boulder which crashed through their home situated near a strip mine. "Both papers said that rock just up and fell by itself, because of the rain and sunshine," she remembered. The coal company, however, gave the couple's two children a cash settlement. Don Riffe, former editor of the MCM, said, "I don't think the Martin Countian has ever taken any kind of stand against a coal company or strip mining in its history." Floyd and Marie Jude agree. Their trailer was smashed by flying boulders from MAPSO's Martiki Coal Company strip mine on Peter Cave Creek. The MCM ran lengthy coverage. The competing paper ignored the incident, except to suggest that Jude had no business keeping his trailer located there. Besides showing little support for labor, the MCM appeared to be an apologist for the coal industry. Editor Homer Marcum described his editorial policy as "guided by my inner beliefs and integrity....We are for any good that goes in the county." And that "good" includes the coal industry. "I don't think there would be any newspaper or radio station in Martin County if it weren't for coal," Homer Marcum said. The weakest paper I encountered was the Knott County News (KCN). If it was effective at accomplishing anything, that would have been in keeping Knott County residents uninformed about 77 �local events. With a circulation of 1,500, all centered within the county, it reached less than 10 percent of the population. "The KCN just ain't no news as far as I'm concerned," said Mart Shepherd, then chairman of a local citizen's rights organization and also an economic development project supported by over 1,000 families. Shepherd was disgusted with KCH: "You can't get any news from them. All you can get is just to buy an ad. They never report any facts on what is going on in the county and the town." The KCN maintained only one staff person in a small second story office in Hindman. Kathy Ann Ashley, the "secretary," handled all requests for news—mostly announcements of engagements, legal notices, or reunions. She saw her job, however, as "gathering all the top local news in the county." Owned by Charles Whitaker, whose Superior Newspaper also publishes a Letcher County paper in competition with The Eagle, KCN has since failed. Its last issue was at the close of 1982, left in the dust in the heels of an exciting new paper, The Troublesome Creek Times. At the time of my study, Whitaker was worried about competition from the new Knott County Observer, which existed briefly in 1977. It folded after a few months due to the publisher's family troubles. When I asked Kathy Ashley about subjects receiving editorial treatment, she said, "Mr. Whitaker writes real well. He does good editorials. He's done two, I think, in the past few months." One claimed that the KCN prints only facts, no gossip. She couldn't remember what the other concerned. Whitaker's comments on KCN's virtues were in response to the Knott County Observer. "People were buying that paper hand over fist," Slim Manns said. Manns was then Chairman of the Knott County Property Owners Protective Association which exposed a land swindle that threatened the strip mining of 24,000 acres of the county and hundreds of homes. He commented on Whitaker's approach to a local press: The few weeks that the Observer was published, they ran more news and hard facts than the KCN ever ran. They say the pen may be mightier than the sword. But heck, you've got to use the pen first. The KCN has never covered the land swindle story, even though public meetings were attended by several hundred county residents. According to Manns: It would have helped the people here if the paper had covered the land grab. But they'd have had to get mixed up with local politics, and this paper just won't do that. I realize politicians can give you a hard way to go, but other county papers print news. I've got a brother-in-law that wouldn't give 10 cents for 10 years of the KCN. Shepherd points his finger at Whitaker, the owner: I've seen good people come and go on that paper. Whitaker won't keep them. It's the same with that Community Press. That paper owner just doesn't want the news printed. Conclusions and Suggestions The news media remains one of the primary sources of knowledge and self-understanding available today. It provides a crucial basis for social action. This research indicates both that it is possible for the local press to adopt an aggressive news gathering and reporting stance, and also that readers in eastern Kentucky want the press to do just that. Culture/media politics need to be developed in Appalachia, fostered by a study of cultural hegemony and linked to a broad regional organizational base. If an information-sharing network 78 �were established, it would be possible to up the supply of information and analysis to local papers and increase access to the kinds of reporting people need in order to face community and regional problems. Such a base would also make culture critique possible. It would provide the means for an aggressive and critical response to the national media's treatment of regional issues. It would provide help to progressive local papers, many of which are open to better news coverage but are strangled by small staffs and small operating budgets. This help could, in turn, make progressive papers more competitive and more likely to get a corner on the market for the local press. Furthermore, a culture/media politics would raise an angry fist whenever journalists or media programmers fall into stereotypical interpretations of events, issues and people in Appalachia. An all-out attack on the denigrating and ridiculing definitions of the region is in order and should be a top agenda item for a regional cultural politics. While much of the local press corps in the mountains functions to inhibit an understanding of domination, this research shows that the situation is by no means as bleak as images of the provincial press in America would lead one to expect. Instead, there appears to be a good potential for re-evaluating the local media and for opening up the local press as an important source for informing social action. Footnotes 'For thorough documentation of these patterns, see the seven-volumn land ownership study conducted by the Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force, 1981. 2 For a detailed discussion of the theoretical advances in social science which are merging into a full-blown theory of cultural hegemony, see my forthcoming article, "Cultural Hegemony: A New Understanding of Domination," Appalachian Journal. 3 This review is used in the article cited above to illustrate hegemonic forces in operation in the national news media. 4 See Spiegelman (1982) for a review of the national press's failure to report the most basic questions raised by antinuclear activists—such as the link between nuclear armament, militarism, racism, sexism, and capitalism. These links lead logically to questions about the transformation of the social order. Spiegelman explains the failure of the major mass media in terms of hegemony: "This is not only because they violate the parameters of the ruling ideological consensus but because they also threatened to raise and publicize public desire and expectation and thus pose long-range threats to the hegemony of the national-security state and prevailing patterns of class power" (1982:14). s Gish and his family recently purchased the Tri-Cities News in Harlan County, a refreshing change in ownership since that paper was one of the weakest papers I studied. 6 In 1983 Gish instituted a "Speak Your Piece'' program allowing readers to call in anonymous comments on topics of interest. A maverick move in journalism, Gish believes the program is but his latest step in continuing The Eagle's tradition of publishing strong opinions. Growing from a few columns to almost an entire section in just three months, "Speak Your Piece" has touched on women coal miners, the federal trade deficit, homosexuality, overloaded coal trucks, rude sales clerks, gasoline prices, and local politicians. Circulation in the same time period has increased by 1,000, reaching a total of 8,500 copies sold each week. 7 The Herald Voice was then owned by the Worrell Newspaper Chain, which Gipson felt gave him a free hand with the paper's content. That appears to have been true, since Worrell also owned the Harlan Daily Enterprise whose editorial tone was just about opposite Gipson's. 8 See footnote 5 above. 'In 1982, the Harlan Daily Enterprise was purchased by the New York Times. I am currently studying the impact on local coverage of this and the other ownership transfers mentioned. 10 On example of the Courier's anti-mountain bias, according to the Express staff, was coverage of Pike County boxer Mayfield Pennington. The Courier felt judges should have ruled his opponent, Emile Griffith, the winner. "The Courier just puts down eastern Kentucky," Cameron said. 79 �Bibliography Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force 1981 Land Ownership Patterns anil Their Impacts on Appalachian Communities: A Survey of 80 Counties. 7 volumes. Washington, D.C.: Appalachian Regional Commission. Bagdikian, Ben H. 1979 The media-conglomeration, concentration. America Federationist 86 (March): 14-23. Bethell, Thomas N. 1978 The UMWA: now more than ever. The Washington Monthly (March): 12-23. Couto, Richard 1975 Poverty, Politics and Health Care: An Appalachian Experience. New York: Praeger Publishers. Covert, L. Catherine 1981 Journalism history and women's experience: a problem in conceptual change. Journalism History 8 (Spring): 2-6. Dreiser, Theodore 1970 Introduction. Pp 3-16 in Levy, Leonard W. (editor).Harlan Miners Speak' Report on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields. New York: DaCapo Press. Gaventa, John 1980 Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Ghiglione, Loren 1978 Small-town journalism has some big ethical headaches. In Rubin, Bernard (ed.). Questioning Media Ethics (New York: Praeger). Gitlin, Todd 1980 The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. Berkeley: University of California Press. New video technology; pluralism or banality. Democracy 1 (October): 60-76. 1981 Maggard, Sally 1981 From farmers to miners: the decline of agriculture in eastern Kentucky. Pp. 25-66 in Busch, Lawrence (editor). Science and Agricultural Development. Totowa, New Jersey: Allanheld, Osmun & Co. Molotch, Harvey and Marilyn Lester 1975 Accidental news: the great oil spill as local occurrence and natural event. American Journal of Sociology 81:235-60. 1974 News as purposive behavior. American Sociological Revieu>39: 101-12. Spiegelman, Robert 1982 Media manipulation of the movement. Social Policy 13 (Summer): 9-16. Tuchman, Gaye 1978 Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: The Free Press. 80 �The Congressional and Gubernatorial Elections of 1982 in Appalachia Philip A. Grant, Jr. On November 2, 1982 the citizens of the nation elected thirty-four members of the United States Senate and four hundred and thirty-five members of the House of Representatives. In addition to filling these congressional seats the residents of thirty-eight states chose governors and legislatures. As in previous off-year political contests, the congressional and gubernatorial elections of 1982 were viewed by many observers as indicators of the popularity (or lack thereof) of the party controlling the White House. Traditionally the party in power has lost at least a modest number of congressional seats and governorships in off-year elections.1 In November 1982 the Democrats continued that pattern by gaining twenty-six seats in the House of Representatives and seven governorships. There was a consensus that many, if not most, of these Democratic victories were attributable to a decline of confidence in the economic policies of the Republican Administration of President Ronald Reagan. Whether or not Reaganomics was the paramount issue throughout the country in 1982, it seemed incontrovertible that the various results proved genuinely encouraging to the Democrats and quite disappointing to the Republicans. Among the regions having substantial numbers of spirited electoral clashes in 1982 was Appalachia. Within Appalachian there were six well-publicized races for the United States Senate and four significant gubernatorial elections. There were also approximately ten sharply contested races for the House of Representatives. The purpose of this paper will be to provide a brief analysis of the principal elections of 1982 in Appalachia. In 1982 there were Senate contests in Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Virgnia. The Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, and Tennessee races involved Democratic incumbents who in 1980 and 1981 had been considered vulnerable to Republican challenges. In Pennsylvania a Republican senator seeking re-election occupied a seat held by his party since 1947. In Virginia there was a vacancy created by the retirement of the Senate's only Independent, a gentleman who had succeeded his illustrious father in 1965. In Maryland the Democrat, Paul S. Sarbanes, trounced his Republican opponent, former Congressman Lawrence J. Hogan, by 278,478 votes (62.8%). Sarbanes, who in 1976 had lost the three Appalachia counties in Western Maryland by an aggregate 40,861-27,361 majority, in 1982 had the satisfaction of prevailing in these counties by a 28,065-27,503 margin. 2 In West Virginia, the only state located exclusively within Appalachia, the Senate Democratic Leader, Robert C. Byrd, was challenged by freshman Republican Congressman Cleve Benedict. Benedict in 1980 had become the first Republican elected from the Mountain State's Second Congressional District since 1946. While most analysts expected that Byrd would be re-elected, few foresaw that he would overwhelm Benedict. The official 1982 figures were as follows: Byrd 81 �382,028'(70.9%); Benedict 171,432 (29.1%). Byrd, who had been unopposed in 1976, managed to carry all but one of West Virginia's fifty-five counties.3 The Ohio election had originally involved Democratic Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum and veteran Republican Congressman John M. Ashbrook. After Ashbrook's untimely death on April 24, the Republicans nominated State Senator Paul S. Pfeifer as their candidate. Metzenbaum, who had been elected to the Senate in 1976 by a relatively narrow margin, had aligned himself with Senator Edward M. Kennedy in the 1980 Democratic presidential race. Thereafter he became a severe and constant critic of President Reagan's economic policies. It was a source of elation to Ohio Democrats that Metzenbaum increased his 1976 plurality of 117,305 to 542,669 in 1982. Metzenbaum in 1976 had carried the twenty-eight Ohio counties encompassed within Appalachia by a precariously thin 4,004 votes. Consistent with his performance throughout Ohio, he handily won the state's Appalachia area in 1982.4 Tennessee was a state where Republicans had triumphed in four of the past five presidential elections and six of the eight most recent presidential contests. Defending his seat against ultraconservative Republican Congressman Robin L. Beard, Jr. was moderate Democrat Jim Sasser. In 1976 Sasser had been elected to the Senate by a mere 81,183 votes. Beard had completed five terms in the House and in 1980 had been re-elected without opposition. It was generally anticipated that the outcome of the Tennessee election would be reasonably close. Instead Sasser retained his seat by 287,863 votes (61.9%). Much of Sasser's success in 1982 was explained by his remarkably strong showing in the forty-nine Appalachia counties in the eastern half of Tennessee—counties which previously had supported Republican Senator Howard H. Baker and Sasser's 1976 adversary, former Senator William E. Brock. Collectively these counties in 1976 had voted for Brock 335,620-288,022. In 1982 the proportionate split of the vote was entirely different as Sasser prevailed over Beard 323,944-225,035.5 In Pennsylvania Republican John Heinz was considered by the leaders of both parties to be one of the most firmly entrenched Senate incumbents. Heinz, who had compiled a comparatively liberal voting record during his three terms in the House and one in the Senate, was endorsed in 1982 by the AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education (COPE). Re-elected by a landslide majority, Heinz carried all but two of the fifty-two Appalachia counties in Pennsylvania.6 Virginia was the scene of an extremely close Senate contest between Democratic Lieutenant Governor Richard J. Davis and Republican Congressman Paul S. Trible, Jr. After all the ballots were tabulated, Trible outpolled Davis by a 723,988-689,818 margin (51.7%). Although Davis was unsuccessful in his quest for a Senate seat, he accumulated more votes than any other Democrat in the Commonwealth's history. To a remarkable extent this electoral contest was a struggle between the Appalachia and Tidewater sections of Virginia. While Davis carried the mountainous Ninth Congressional District in Virginia's southwest corner, he was decisively defeated in Newport News, Hampton, and the rural counties of Trible's First Congressional District.7 Of the twenty-six House seats gained by the Democrats in 1982, seven were in Appalachia. In two states, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, the Democrats wrested two seats from the Republicans, while in two others, Virginia and North Carolina, they gained individual districts. In Tennessee the Democrats also won a newly created constituency. In West Virginia the Republicans in 1980 had won the Second and Third Districts. The Second District, consisting of the eastern half of the state, had elected Cleve Benedict (102,200-80,661), while the Third District, centered in Charleston and several nearby counties throughout the 82 �Kanahwa Valley, had chosen Mick Staton (94,084-84,976). After Benedict decided to relinquish his seat and run for the Senate, the Democrats nominated State Senator HarleyO. Staggers, Jr. Staton in 1982 was challenged by Staggers' colleague, State Senator Bob Wise. Both Staggers and Wise were victorious by substantial margins. Staggers, carrying all of the district's twenty counties, outpolled Republican J.D. Hinklejr.by a vote of 87,506-48,878 (64.2%) and Wise unseated Staton 81,669-58,914 (58.9%) and won eleven of the district's fourteen counties.8 In Pennsylvania, the Eleventh District, located in the City of Wilkes-Barre and the surrounding Wyoming Valley, had deviated from its Democratic heritage and supported Ronald Reagan for President and Republican James L. Nelligan for Congress. At the opposite end of the state the Twenty-Fifth District, wedged between Pittsburgh and the Ohio border, had voted for Reagan and Democratic Congressman Eugene V. Atkinson. In 1982 Nelligan was defeated by Democrat Frank Harrison in a contest which saw his 1980 plurality of 7,053 transformed into a deficit of 11,997. In the Twenty-Fifth District Atkinson, after supporting Reagan on several key tax and budget roll calls, had changed his party affiliation to Republican. Atkinson in 1982 was challenged by State Representative Joseph P. Kolter. In a dramatic reversal of 1980 Atkinson, who in that year had been re-elected as a Democrat by 60,638 votes (76.1%), was defeated in 1982 as a Republican by 35,935 votes (39.1%).' The major surprise in Appalachia in 1982 occurred in Virginia's Ninth Congressional District. The contest in the Ninth involved nine-term incumbent Republican William C. Wampler and Democratic State Senator Frederick C. Boucher. In one of the closest congressional elections in recent years Boucher edged Wampler by a 76,112-74,974 margin (50.3%). Although the two parties were fairly even in registration figures, Wampler in 1980 had been re-elected by 64,618 votes (68.8%). Indeed Wampler had averaged 59.7% in his nine victorious congressional races.10 Somewhat less surprising was the result in North Carolina's Eleventh Congressional District. In 1980 this district, whose principal city is Asheville, supported Ronald Reagan (100,868-89,129) and Republican William M. Hendon for Congress (103,215-89,330). In 1982 the Democrats nominated State Senator James M. Clarke to oppose Hendon. Clarke, who had gained substantial exposure during his six years in the North Carolina Legislature, outpolled Hendon 85,378-84,062 (50.3%). This race established a record voter turnout for an off-year election in the Eleventh District.11 As a consequence of the reapportionment mandated by the Census of 1980, Tennessee was allotted an additional congressional seat. The Legislature thereupon created the new Fourth Congressional District, consisting of twenty-three counties extending diagonally from Virginia in the Northeast to Alabama in the Southwest. Competing for this seat were two political novices, Democrat Jim Cooper and Republican Cissy Baker. Twenty-eight years of age, Cooper was the son of a former three-term Tennessee governor. Baker, two years younger than her opponent, was the daughter of Tennessee's senior senator, Republican Floor Leader Howard H. Baker. While Cooper was slightly favored because of the area's past voting patterns, his emphatic victory (93,506-48,586) over Baker removed any doubt about the political tilt of the Fourth District.12 In 1982 there were gubernatorial contests in Maryland, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The Maryland, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania elections were featured by incumbents seeking re-election to second terms. In Ohio a vacancy was created by the retirement of Governor James A. Rhodes, who had served as the Buckeye State's Chief Executive for sixteen of the previous twenty years. 83 �Democrat Harry R. Hughes was easily returned as Governor of Maryland, defeating his Republican challenger 692,247-424,247 (61.6%). In 1978, while winning his first term, Hughes had lost the three Appalachia counties in Maryland by a 32,718-27,469 majority. In a sharp reversal Hughes in 1982 carried these counties by a 32,975-26,675 margin." In Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander was re-elected by a resounding 736,553-499,942 margin (59.7%), marking the third such Republican victory in the Volunteer State since 1970. Alexander, who in 1978 had won Tennessee's Appalachia counties by an 87,615 vote plurality (58.6%), increased his winning margin in this area to 182,626 (66.8%) in 1982.u Certainly the most exciting gubernatorial contest in Appalachia occurred in Pennsylvania, where Republican Richard L. Thornburg was oppposed by Congressman Arlen E. Ertel. Thornburg had refrained from engaging in controversy during his first term and was considered a distinct favorite to defeat the relatively unknown junior congressman. It was not until late election night that Thornburg was finally projected the winner in a close race. The official voting statistics were as follows: Thornburg 1,868,240 (51.4%) - Ertel 1,754,601 (48.6%). Ertel fared particularly well in the Appalachia sections of Pennsylvania, which accounted for nineteen of the twenty-one counties he carried. His collective plurality in Fayette, Washington, and Beaver Counties in southwestern Pennsylvania was 112,560-73,256, while his combined margin in Luzerne and Lackawanna Counties in the northeastern part of the state was 104,77,117. Thornburg, however, by attracting 354,641 votes (66.9%) in the suburbs of Philadelphia, was able to withstand the Ertel challenge to his re-election.15 Ohio in 1982 furnished the most lopsided Democratic triumph in all the races for governorships. The Democrats had lost four of the past five gubernatorial elections in Ohio, and incumbent Republican James A. Rhodes was the nation's senior governor. The respective candidates in 1982 were Democrat Richard F. Celeste, a former state representative and lieutenant-governor, and eight term Congressman Clarence J. Brown. Most of the public opinion polls indicated a solid victory for Celeste, who had lost to Rhodes in 1978 by only 47,536 votes. Indeed Celeste did score an easy victory, outpolling Brown 1,978,635-1,302,583 (60.1%). In 1978 Celeste had been defeated by Rhodes, largely because of his inability to carry many of the normally Democratic counties in Ohio's Appalachia belt. In 1978 he had won only nineteen of Ohio's eighty-eight counties, while in 1982 he prevailed in sixty-one counties.16 In 1980 the Democratic Party achieved a noteworthy political comeback in Appalachia, a region where Ronald Reagan and the Republicans, two years earlier, had registered a number of impressive victories. Reagan, in 1980, had defeated Jimmy Carter in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee and had lost Maryland and West Virginia to the former President by comparatively small margins. The Democrats in 1982 countered by winning key contests in Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee and by making highly respectable showings in Pennsylvania and Virginia. Reagan in 1980 had carried Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, and Tennessee, all of which had favored the Democratic presidential nominee in 1976. These states had provided Reagan with an aggregate plurality of 910,556 votes. Reagan's successes in the four states had been in large measure due to the electoral results in Appalachia, where he prevailed over Carter in one hundred and twenty-two of one hundred and fifty-five counties. In Maryland and West Virginia, Carter in 1980 had a combined plurality of 115,810 votes over Reagan, a statistic which contrasted with the 1976 figure of 217,205 votes. Although Reagan had 84 �lost both states, he carried the three Appalachia counties in Maryland and twenty-three Appalachia counties in West Virginia. Reagan, in 1980, had won Virginia by 237,535 votes, marking the fifth consecutive Republican triumph there in a presidential election. In 1982 the Democratic senatorial candidate was defeated by only 34,170 votes, and unlike Jimmy Carter in 1980, won the Ninth Congressional District in Appalachia. Also, the Democrats elected a member of the House from the Ninth District, the first such victory since 1964. The elections of 1982 in Appalachia admittedly were waged within the confines of individual states and individual congressional districts. In most instances local issues and local personalities were the dominant components in these contests. Nevertheless, these elections clearly demonstrated that the Democratic Party had regained the political initiative and that the Republican Party had experienced conspicuous harm. In the wake of the elections the Democrats held three hundred and fifteen of the five hundred and thirty-five congressional seats and thirty-four of the fifty governorships. Probably reflecting the political climate of the nation, these elections both conformed to historical trends and suggested that most citizens were skeptical, if not hostile, to the basic philosophy of the Reagan Administration. Footnotes 'Except for 1934, the party in power has always lost congressional seats in off-year elections. In 1958 the Democrats gained sixty-four seats, while in 1974 they added fifty-one seats. The Republicans increased their membership by eighty-one seats in 1946 and fifty seats in 1966. ^Politics in America (Washington; Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1982), pp. 518-520; America Votes, 1976 (Washington: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1977), p. 166; Congressional Quarterly, October 9, 1982, pp. 2531-2532; November 6, 1982, p. 2829; Post, Washington, D.C., November 4, 1982, p. A29. 'Politics in America, pp. 1279-1281, 1285; America Votes, 1976, p. 396; Congressional Quarterly, October 9, 1982, pp. 2605-2606; November 6, 1982, p. 2825; Gazette, Charleston, W.Va., November 3, 1982, pp. 1, 6. 'Politics in America, pp. 932-934; America Votes, 1976, pp. 295-296; Congressional Quarterly, October 9, 1982, p. 2572; November 6, 1982, p. 2823. ^Politics in America, pp. 1121-1122, 1135-1137; America Votes, 1976, p. 347; Congressional Quarterly, October 9, 1982, pp. 2591-2592; November 6, 1982, p. 2824; Tennessean, Nashville, Tenn., November 3, 1982, pp. 1, 6, 8. 'Politics in America, pp. 1022-1023; America Votes, 1976, p. 3187; Congressional Quarterly, October 9, 1982, pp. 2580-2581; November 6, 1982, p. 2823; Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., November 3, 1982, p. D8. ^Politics in America, pp. 1234-1235; Congressional Quarterly, October 9, 1982; pp. 2600-2691; November 6, 1982, p. 2825; December 11, 1982, pp. 3012-3013; Times-Dispatch, Richmond, Va., Novembers, 1982, pp. 1, 10, 11, 13. 'Politics in America, p. 1286; America Votes, 1980 (Washington: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1981), p. 409; Congressional Quarterly, March 27, 1982, pp. 694-696; October 9, 1982, pp. 2606-2607; November 6, 1982, p. 2825; January 8, 1983, pp. 54-55; Gazette, Charleston, W.Va., November 3, 1982, pp. 1, 6, 12. 'Politics in America, p. 1046, 1073-1074; America Votes, 1980, pp. 340, 342; Congressional Quarterly, October 17, 1981, p. 2029; May 1, 1982, pp. 997, 1001; October 9, 1982, pp. 2582-2584; November 6, 1982, p. 2823; January 8, 1983, pp. 43-44. ^Politics in America, pp. 1248-1250; America Votes, 1980, p. 300; Congressional Quarterly, November 29, 1981, p. 2359; October 9, 1982, p. 2603; November 6, 1982, p. 2825; January 8, 1983, p. 53; Times-Dispatch, Richmond, Va., November 3, 1982, pp. 1, 11. "Politics in America, p. 917; America Votes, 1980, p. 300; Congressional Quarterly, June 5, 1982, pp. 1360-1361; October 9, 1982, pp. 2570-2571; November 6, 1982, p. 2823; January 8, 1983, p. 40; Observer, Charlotte, N.C., November 4, 1982, pp. 1, 21. "Congressional Quarterly, November 7, 1981, p. 2174; October 9, 1982, p. 2592; November 6, 1982, p. 2824; January 8, 1983, p. 47; Tennessean, Nashville, Tenn., November 3, 1982, pp. 1, 7. 85 �"Politics in America, p. 514; America Votes, 1978 (Washington: Congressional Quarterly, 1979), p. 164; Congressional Quarterly, October 9, 1982, p. 2532; November 6, 1982, p. 2820; Sun, Baltimore, Md., November 3, 1982, pp. 1, 10, 11. "Politics in America, p. 1117; America Votes, 1978, pp. 322-323; Congressional Quarterly, October 9, 1982, pp. 2591-2592; November 6, 1982, p. 2824; Tennessean, Nashville, Tenn., November 3, 1982, pp. 1, 4, 6. "Politics in America, p. 1021; Congressional Quarterly, October 9, 1982, p. 2581; November 6, 1982, p. 2823; Inquirer. Philadelphia, Pa., November 4, 1982, p. B6; Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., November 3, 1982, p. D8. ^America Votes, 1978, pp. 273-274; Congressional Quarterly, October 9, 1982, pp. 2572-2573; November 6, 1982, p. 2823. 86 �Appalachian Origin and Political Activity Phillip}. Obermiller Robert Oldendick The importance of ethnicity in the formation of a political culture among white immigrant groups has received a good deal of attention since the "ethnic renaissance" of the late 1960s and 1970s (Glazer and Moynihan, 1975, Krickus, 1976; Litt, 1970; Weed, 1973). More recently discussions and documentation of ethnic group formation among Appalachian migrants have begun to appear in the literature (Miller, 1976; Obermiller, 1977, 1982; Philliber, 1982). Marger and Obermiller (in press) have put forth a theory of emergent ethnicity based on a combination of four theoretical models. The first model posits the development of a culturally based community within the group in question; the second model requires the development of an ethnic identity among group members and recognition of the group by outsiders; the third model depends on the development of clear ecological patterns which contribute to in-group solidarity; the fourth model of ethnic group formation is that of political mobilization of group members. Political mobilization comes in response to competition from other ethnic groups, but the political consciousness centers on communal symbols and institutions. While each of the first three models have been subjected to a variety of empirical investigations among urban Appalachians (Obermiller, 1982; Philliber, 1981), the political model has had scant attention. The purpose of this paper is to examine the salience of American political culture in Hamilton County, Ohio. More specifically, two objectives will be pursued: to determine the degree to which a distinct political culture has emerged among Appalachians in the county, and to identify the critical factors which have contributed to the development of such a culture. Hamilton County and its largest urban center, the city of Cincinnati, have long been major destinations for Appalachian migrants (McCoy and Brown, 1981). Most Appalachian families came into the county seeking jobs. The Appalachian workers were generally young, married, and less well educated than their urban counterparts, and frequently in the unskilled or semi-skilled sector of the labor force (Brown, 1962; Philliber, 1981). They settled in various urban and suburban neighborhoods throughout the county, close to their places of employment and other Appalachian migrants (Philliber, 1981). In 1980 there were over 213,000 first- and second-generation Appalachians in the county, constituting just under a quarter of its population (Obermiller, 1982). Although a variety of historical and contemporary studies have focused on politics in the Appalachian region (Gaventa, 1980; McKinney, 1978; Ritt, 1967; Ryan, 1975), few have dealt with the political culture of out-migrants from Appalachia. In a 1959 survey Roscoe Giffin (1962) found no significant differences in political participation between "Southern Appalachian migrants and others of similar social status" in Cincinnati. Schwarzweller, Brown, and Mangalam (1971) noted a strong tendency toward individualism in party affiliation among Beech Creek migrants in Ohio. Ninety percent of the residents of Beech Creek were Republican, but only 65 percent of the urban migrants from that area were Republican, while 13 percent were independent, and 22 percent were Democrats. This group of migrants was also found to be on a par with national average for registra87 �tion and voting. In contrast, a recent study of Appalachians in Hamilton County conducted by William Philliber (1981) found that only 41 percent had voted in the 1974 elections (compared with 69 percent of white natives and 62 percent of the blacks) and that nearly half of the Appalachians in the county were not even registered to vote. McCoy, Brown, and Watkins (1981) observe that Appalachians in urban areas are neither recognized nor organized as a significant political constituency. They point out that this condition is not so much a function of Appalachian culture as it is a dysfunction of urban political structures. The earlier studies indicate that political differences between Appalachian migrants and urban natives are insignificant, while the later descriptions conclude that strong differences do exist without adducing evidence as to the nature, extent or cause of such differences. The present study addresses these questions by focusing on the political culture of the residents of Hamilton County, that is the political knowledge, affiliation, participation, and interest of county residents, and by comparing the relative positions within that culture of non-Appalachian blacks, white Appalachians, and non-Appalachian whites. The Data The data set employed in this study is taken from the Fall, 1980, Greater Cincinnati Survey (GCS). Using random digit dialing the GCS collected telephone interviews with residents of Hamilton County, Ohio, following the November presidential election. The survey included 753 white non-Appalachians, 237 white Appalachians, and 127 black non-Appalachians. Thirty-six black Appalachians have been deleted from the data set due to their small number and because of a reluctance to confuse race with ethnicity in the present study (cf. Philliber and Obermiller, in press). Respondents were coded as Appalachian if they were born in Appalachia (first generation) or if at least one of their parents was born in Appalachia (second generation). A slightly modified version of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) definition of Appalachia was created for this study; Clermont County, Ohio, was deleted from the ARC list of 397 Appalachian counties because of its proximity to Hamilton County. This avoided the problems of including residents of the eastern suburbs of Cincinnati in the Appalachian cohort. Discussion Appalachians in greater Cincinnati have the same general age profile and sex ratio as other whites and blacks. All three groups have, on the average, lived in the area approximately the same number of years. Distinct differences do appear, however, when the three groups are compared for educational attainment, occupational status, and income. Disproportionately few Appalachians and blacks have had any college experience when compared with the non-Appalachian white population; conversely the two groups are clearly overrepresented among those who have not attained a high school diploma. In terms of occupational status, all three groups have independent profiles. Fifty-three percent of the black workers in the county are found in the two lowest status occupational categories; the same is true for 29 percent of the Appalachians but only 17 percent of the other whites. Non-Appalachian whites predominate in the middle and upper status categories, followed by the Appalachians and the blacks. Income attainment for the Appalachians and other whites in Hamilton County is quite similar, but the average income for blacks is about $5000 less than that for the two white groups. �Table 1 Selected 1980 Demographics for White Non-Appalachians, White Appalachians, and Black Non-Appalachians in Hamilton County, Ohio. White NonAppalachians AGE LENGTH OF RESIDENCE 41 years 42 years 28 years (Mean) Black NonAppalachians 41 years (Mean) White Appalachians 24 years 28 years * LOCATION City of Cincinnati Balance of County 33% 67% EDUCATION Less than H.S. Diploma H.S. Diploma/Voc. Train. Some College or More 71% 29% 753 N= 31% 69% 236 126 27% 37% 36% 38% 31% 31% * 16% 36% 48% N= * * OCCUPATIONAL STATUS Professional /Technical Managerial/ Admin. Sales /Clerical Craftspeople Operatives Laborers /Service 21% 19% 9% 10% 38% 14% 7% 10% 664 113 31% 30% 39% 46% 29% 25% 613 INCOME $0-14,999 $15,000-24,999 $25,000 or more 227 30% 27% 43% N= 26% 17% 19% 10% 12% 4% 21% 10% 17% 36% 199 104 * N= *p « .05 When key indicators such as education, occupation, and income are combined to form an index of socioeconomic status, the relative status of the three groups becomes quite clear.1 Important differences are found among all three in both the high and the low status categories. Blacks are overrepresented in the low status category and underrepresented in the high status category. The same is 89 �Table 2 1980 Socioeconomic Status of White Non-Appalachians, White Appalachians, and Black Non-Appalachians in Hamilton County, Ohio. White NonAppalachians White Appalachians Black NonAppalachians HIGH 45.2% 32.6% 20.4% MEDIUM 42.4% 46.1% 42.8% LOW 12.4% 21.2% 36.8% true for Appalachians when compared with the other whites. In terms of schooling, work, and income, blacks are significantly less well off than the two white groups, Appalachians hold a middle position between the blacks and the other whites, and the non-Appalachian whites in the county are significantly better off than blacks and Appalachians. In order to compare the political cultures of blacks, white Appalachians, and other whites in the county, six questions were selected from the Fall, 1980, Greater Cincinnati Survey which reflect the respondents' political knowledge, affiliation, participation, and interest. When members of the three groups were asked whether they considered themselves politically liberal, moderate, or conservative, Appalachians appeared to be distinctly more liberal but less moderate in their political self-image than other whites. Although blacks are more likely to consider themselves liberal than the two white groups, they were not substantively different from the Appalachians in their responses. In response to a question seeking party affiliation, Appalachians and other whites were quite similar with over two-fifths of each group characterizing themselves as independent, better than a third as Republican, and less than a quarter as Democrats. Blacks were much more heavily Democratic and much less Republican in their party affiliation. The differences here are distinctly racial; blacks of all educational and socioeconomic levels, of all ages and both sexes, living in both urban and suburban locations reported similar patterns of party affiliation. When asked if they voted in the last election, only slightly more than three-fifths of the Appalachians said that they had, as compared with almost three-quarters of the other whites, and better than two-thirds of the blacks. Although Appalachians were overall less likely to vote than members of the other two groups, their rate of participation (or non-participation) in the electoral process is much more similar to that of blacks than that of other whites. As an indicator of political knowledge respondents were asked to name the two United States Senators from Ohio. Appalachians most closely resembled other whites in their responses, with significantly fewer blacks able to identify either senator by name. Political interest was probed using two questions, one asking about interest in government and political affairs in general and the other asking specifically about interest in the recent political campaigns. In both cases white Appalachians and non-Appalachian blacks resembled each other in their responses, contrasting significantly with those of non-Appalachian whites. The Appalachian and 90 �Table 3 Responses of White Non-Appalachians, White Appalachians, and Black Non-Appalachians in Hamilton County, Ohio, to Questions Regarding Their Political Knowledge, Affiliation, Participation, and Interest. White NonWhite Black NonAppalachians Appalachians Appalachians * CONSIDER SELF? Liberal Moderate Conservative 18% 44% 38% 681 N= 25% 35% 39% 208 32% 41% 27% 108 * PARTY AFFILIATION? Democratic Independent Republican 23% 46% 32% 223 127 73% 27% 61% 39% 69% 31% 723 227 125 35% 29% 36% 31% 27% 43% 17% 25% 58% 726 225 127 39% 45% 16% 41% 33% 26% 45% 31% 24% 721 225 127 34% 37% 28% 39% 27% 33% 36% 26% 28% 723 VOTE IN LAST ELECTION? Yes No 56% 36% 8% 701 N= 21% 42% 37% 225 127 * N= ABLE TO NAME SENATORS? Both One Neither N= * GENERAL POLITICAL INTEREST Very much Some Not much N= POLITICAL INTEREST IN RECENT CAMPAIGN Very much Some Not much * N= *p « .05 91 �the black cohort each displayed greater internal polarization between group members with a lot of political and campaign interest and those with little interest in these matters. The non-Appalachian whites tended to be more moderate in their general interest in politics as well as in their interest in the 1980 electoral campaign than the other two groups. Appalachians clearly form a middle group between blacks and other whites in the county according to the demographic comparisons. However, with two exceptions, they most closely resemble the black cohort in terms of their political culture. In light of the other findings, their resemblance to non-Appalachian whites in Republican affiliation may be more a function of the intergenerational transmission of party affiliations than a sense of common political cause (cf. Knocke and Felson, 1974; Schwarzweller, Brown, and Mangalam, 1971). Since over 61 percent of the Appalachians who migrated to the county came from eastern Kentucky or southeastern Ohio, both highly Republican areas, this explanation seems highly plausible. The differential ability of Appalachians and blacks to correctly name their U.S. senators is commensurate with the findings of similar studies (cf. Ryan, 1975). To the extent that strong differences appear between Appalachians and other whites, and modest differences appear between Appalachians and blacks for the variable tested, it seems reasonable to posit the existence of a distinct political culture among Appalachians in the county. In order to test the salience of an Appalachian heritage in the formation of the county's political culture, the four questions regarding political knowledge, participation and interest were combined into a Political Index which ranged from very little knowledge, participation and interest to very much knowledge, participation and interest (Labovitz, 1970, 1974). A stepwise regression analysis of this Political Index was conducted using the following demographic variables: sex, education, age, income, length of residence in the county, race, location in the county (urban/suburban), and Appalachian designation (Appalachian/non-Appalachian).2 The results of the regression indicate that educational attainment is the most important variable in explaining a high ranking on the Political Index. Following education as explanatory variables are, in order, age, sex, and income. The variables of race, residential location, Appalachian designation, and length of residence contribute insignificantly to the Political Index (See table 4, "Appalachian Designation). Another way of testing the salience of Appalachian heritage is to distinguish between the first and second Appalachian generations by inserting them into the regression as dummy variables, holding the non-Appalachian population constant. Again, the fact of being either first or second generation Appalachian has no significant explanatory power in the regression (See table 4, "Appalachian Generation"). Conclusion It seems that Appalachian ethnicity has very little direct influence on the establishment of a political culture within the county. On the other hand, socioeconomic factors such as education, age, sex, and income account for better than a quarter of the observed differences in political knowledge, participation, and interest found among the county residents sampled. Taken in themselves, these factors would appear to lend more credence to a social class explanation of the political differences observed than to an explanation based on ethnicity (Wright, Costello, Hachen, and Sprague, 1982). However, variables such as education and income can be strongly influenced by discrimination based on an individual's perceived ethnicity. If such were the case for Appalachians, class could in the end be an intervening variable between Appalachian ethnicity and political 92 �culture. This suggests that a simple dichotomy between class and ethnicity should be avoided in future studies and that a more sophisticated theoretical orientation, such as that of Milton Gordon's "ethclass" (cf. Danigelis, 1982), may be of more utility in understanding the nature of urban Appalachian political culture. Table 4 Stepwise Multiple Regression: Beta Weight for Variables Explaining Political Involvement of White Non-Appalachians, White Appalachians, and Black Non-Appalachians in Hamilton County, Ohio. Appalachian Designation Appalachian Generation EDUCATION -.371 -.366 AGE -.366 -.380 SEX .123 .124 -.122 -.124 LENGTH OF RESIDENCE .069 .079 RACE .022 .020 LOCATION .015 .018 APPALACHIAN DESIGNATION .011 — FIRST GENERATION APPALACHIAN — — .022 -.037 .50 .50 INCOME SECOND GENERATION APPALACHIAN Multiple R = Footnotes 'The socioeconomic index was created by combining weighted intervals of income ($0 - $14,999, $15,000 - $24,999, $25,000 and more), education (less than a high school diploma, a high school diploma and/or vocational training, some college or more), and occupational status (white collar, blue collar) into appropriate categories, in this case high, medium, or low. A respondent had to have had at least two our of three characteristics in the same category before being enumerated in that category. 2 Due to the manner in which the raw data were collected some retired people, full-time housekeepers and students were included in the occupational category of their last full-time occupation. Because of the potential distortion this situation could cause in the regression, occupational status was not included in the final regressional anaylsis. However, when test regressions were run including the occupational status variable, the results were not significantly different from those obtained when the variable was deleted. References Brown, James, S. 1962. "The Great Migration, 1940-1960," in Thomas R. Ford, ed., The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Danigelis, Nicholas L. 1982. "Race, Class, and Political Involvement in the U.S." Social Forces, 61:532-550. Gaventa, John, 1980. Power and Poiverlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 93 �Giffin, Roscoe. 1962. "Appalachian Newcomers in Cincinnati," in Thomas R. Ford, ed., The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Glazer, Nathan and Daniel P. Moynihan. 1975. "Introduction" in Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, eds., Ethnicity: Theory and Experience. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Knoke, David and Richard B. Felson, 1974. "Ethnic Stratification and Political Clevage in the United States, 1952-1968." American Journal of Sociology, 80:630-642. Krickus, Richard. 1976. Pursuing the American Dream: White Ethnics and the New Populism. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books. Labovitz, Stanford. 1970. "The Assignment of Numbers to Rank Order Categories." American Sociological Review, 35:515-529. 1974. "Statistical Usage in Sociology: Sacred Cows and Ritual." Sociological Methods and Research, 1:13-37. Litt, Edgar. 1970. Beyond Pluralism: Ethnic Politics in America. Glenview, 111.: Scott, Foresman. McCoy, Clyde B. and James S. Brown, 1981. "Appalachian Migration to Midwestern Cities," in William W. Philliber and Clyde B. McCoy, eds., The Invisible Minority: Urban Appalachians. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. McCoy, Clyde B., James S. Brown, and Virginia McCoy Watkins. 1981. "Implications of Changes in Appalachia for Urban Areas," in William Philliber and Clyde B. McCoy, eds., The Invisible Minority: Urban Appalachians. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. McKinney, Gordon B. 1978. Southern Mountain Republicans, 1865-1900: Politics and the Appalachian Community. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Marger, Martin N. and Phillip J. Obermiller. (In Press). "Urban Appalachians and Canadian Maritime Migrants: A Comparative Study Emergent Ethnicity." International Journal of Comparative Sociology. Miller, Tommie R. 1976. "Urban Appalachians: Cultural Pluralism and Ethnic Identity in the City." M.A. thesis, University of Cincinnati. Obermiller, Phillip J. 1977. "Appalachians as an Urban Ethnic Group: Romanticism, Renaissance, or Revolution?" Appalachian Journal, 5:145-152. 1982. "Labeling Urban Appalachians: The Role of Stereotypes in the Formation of Ethnic Identity." Ph.D. dissertation, Union Graduate School. Philliber, William W. 1981. Appalachian Migrants in Urban America: Cultural Conflict or Ethnic Group Formation? New York: Praeger. and Phillip J. Obermiller. (In Press). "Black Appalachian Migrants: The Issue of Dual Minority Status," in Richard Simon, ed., Critical Essays in Appalachian Life and Culture. Boone, North Carolina: Appalachian Consortium Press. Ritt, Leonard, 1967. "Presidential Voting Patterns in Appalachia: An Analysis of the Relationship between Turnout, Partisan Change, and Selected Socioeconomic Variables." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tennessee. Ryan, John P. 1975. Cultural Diversity and the American Experience: Political Participation Among Blacks, Appalachians and Indians. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. Schwarzweller, Harry K., James S. Brown, and JJ. Mangalam. 1971. Mountain Families in Transition: A Case Study of Appalachian Migration. University Park: Pennsylvania State University. Weed, Perry L. 1973. The White Ethnic Movement and Ethnic Politics. New York: Praeger. Wright. E.O. C. Costello, D. Hatchen, and J. Sprague. 1982. "The American Class Structure." American Sociological Review, 47:709-726. 94 �When the Bank Failed John L. Bell, Jr. On November 30, 1930, the Central Bank and Trust Company of Asheville, North Carolina, failed to open. The failure of this bank had great economic and political consequences for the city and county, and tragic consequences for a number of individuals. The purpose of this paper is to examine the background of this failure and to determine its impact on the community. Located on Park Square in Asheville, the Central Bank and Trust Company was chartered in 1912 and grew from a small-town bank into the third largest bank in the state by 1930. This phenomenal growth was largely the result of local economic growth and the astute management of the president, Wallace B. Davis of Asheville. Having only a fifth-grade education, the diminutive David started in banking at age sixteen and rose to the presidency of Central Bank at age thirty-five. Through his banking connections Davis bought controlling interest in the bank and numerous other corporations and was a millionaire by 1930. Under his leadership the bank established—in addition to savings and checking—trust, insurance, and bond departments. By 1930 the bank had total assets of $50 million, but it was teetering on the brink of insolvency.1 The basic cause of the bank's difficulty was a downturn in the local economy in 1927. Before then the economy had thrived as tourists and tubercular convalescents had discovered the cool and healthy climate of the Land of the Sky. Men like George Vanderbilt and E.W. Grove publicized the potential of the area, and realty development, hotels, and service industries soon followed. The population jumped from 28,000 to 50,000 in the 1920s. Unfortunately high pressure realty developers moved to Asheville in 1925 from Florida and sparked a frenzy of speculation with visions of unlimited riches for Asheville. Subdivisions sprang up like mushrooms, and the only thought was to buy today and sell at a higher price tomorrow. But there were more lots than buyers, and prices crashed in 1927 and slumped further in 1928. The speculation had ended, but the visions of Asheville's greatness continued, and banks and businesses held on by their teeth, believing that another boom was just around the corner. Even that hope was destroyed by the stock market crash in 1929.2 Wallace Davis and his bank were caught up in the speculative frenzy and lent money by the millions to buyers and purveyors of realty and even to mills to saw the lumber for buildings. The bank's problem was that it had lent too much money on real estate, some $5 million, and overextended borrowers were unable to make payments. Davis needed to call in loans or demand more collateral to get the cash needed to operate, for the state was unrelenting in its requirement of a fifteen percent cash reserve on demand deposits.3 To secure the cash needed and to avoid foreclosing on the leading businessmen in Asheville, Davis took varied courses of action. He called for more collateral, called in part of the principal on loans, and even foreclosed on $1.4 million in loans to lumber mills (but was forced to operate them at a loss when he could find no buyers). Davis even used slight-of-hand to turn questionable loans into assets. He created seventeen realty companies, assigned $3.4 million of the bank's slow real estate notes to them, and had the companies issue bonds to be held by the bank as assets.4 95 �Davis also found creative solutions to emergencies. When Thomas Ray Byrd, one of his largest borrowers and depositors, threatened to withdraw his money and ruin the bank, Davis wheeled and dealed. Byrd owned four mortgage companies worth about $3 million that had lent money mainly to real estate developers. Byrd also owed the Central Bank $620,000 on which he was unable to make payment. Davis's solution to this problem was to create the Central Securities Company to hold the stock of the mortgage companies, cancel the $620,000 note, give Byrd stock and bonds in the new company for the balance of his sale price of $1 million, and have the bank's seventeen real estate companies buy $550,000 in preferred stock to give the company operating capital. Davis became president and main stockholder in Central Securities which was used to raise industrial development capital through bond sales and to bring industry to the mountain area. But the stock market crash ended that plan. Instead, Davis used the $3.7 million raised by bond sales for a little Reconstruction Finance Corporation for the community—for extensions on loans, new loans to keep merchants in business, and money to replenish the bank's cash reserve.5 To his credit, Davis did work to attract industry to diversify and strengthen the local economy. He helped to secure the American Enka rayon plant in 1928, and he requested R.C.A., Firestone Tire, Victor Talking Machine, Colonial Radio, and even Hill Casket to locate in the area, but to no avail.6 Davis believed that the salvation of the Central Bank lay in the acquisition of a prosperous bank or investment trust company in the Northeast to give the bank access to cash and spread out risk. In 1928 Davis did acquire the American National Bank in Asheville, but its assets were meager, and it served mainly to give immediate credit for Central's checks drawn on other banks. Negotiations to buy a Philadelphia bank were fruitless, but Davis's search linked him up with another man who was in the market for bonds.7 This man was Luke Lea, former U.S. Senator from Tennessee, reputed Democratic boss of Tennessee, and a leading newspaper publisher. Lea and his partner, Rogers Caldwell, head of Caldwell and Company of Nashville, a $650 million investment bank, had the same problem as Davis. The collapse of a real estate boom and a lagging economy had left them short of cash. Lea proposed that he and Davis and Caldwell establish a giant holding company to hold the stock of Lea's newspapers and Caldwell's and Davis's banks. In addition Lea proposed to acquire, with northern financial support, a chain of banks extending through Tennessee, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. The latter part of the plan fell through when Lea's Northern financial support collapsed when the stock market crashed. Still, Lea and Davis cooperated through 1930, each lending the other their assets to keep one another afloat. Lea had even arranged a $1.5 million loan for Davis to buy his investment trust company when Caldwell and Company failed in early November, 1930, shattering Davis's plans.8 Davis still had a last major resource to save his bank. His connections with the Democratic party, in particular a small group of men known as the "Ring," who controlled the city and county governments, enabled Davis to secure unusually large deposits of public funds. By 1927 the city was keeping $3.6 million and the county $2.6 million on deposit constantly. To obtain these funds the city and county issued short-term notes secured by anticipated revenues. The total amount deposited was enough to keep each government operating for over a year. Although many people knew of them, the deposits were not publicized.9 Unfortunately for Davis and the bank, his connections with the Ring placed him in the middle of a taxpayers' revolt and a resurgence of the Republican party in 1928. The revolt was led by a county Taxpayers' League numbering some 1,800 members and headed by James M. Westall, a lumber dealer and Thomas Wolfe's uncle. (Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again recounts this boom 96 �and bust period from the League's viewpoint.) The League was appalled at the great debt of $50 million and the high city property tax rate of $3.62 per hundred dollars of evaluation that the Ring had saddled them with in order to provide all manner of services and buildings during the boom. And the debt and taxes were high; the debt was an eleventh of the total public debt in North Carolina, and the tax rate was the highest in the state. The League actively entered politics in 1928, unsuccessfully supporting anti-Ring candidates in the Democratic primary and charging the Ring with stealing the election. These charges of corruption in the primary, the Hoover-Smith campaign, and Democratic defections by the hundreds resulted in a great Republican victory in the fall elections. For the first time in thirty-two years the Republicans won every legislative seat and every county office but one. The Repubicans would have won the city elections, too, but they were held the year before in 1927, and the Democrats were safely in office until 1931.10 From 1928 on the League was convinced that the Central Bank provided the lite blood tor the Ring, and the Ring could be neutralized only by withdrawing the public funds from the bank. At first the League found an ally in Newton M. Anderson, the new Republican county finance commissioner who planned to redistribute county fund equitably among all the city banks. But Anderson, developer of the Malvern Hills subdivision, found that Davis owned the mortgage company that held his note for $600,000 and on which Anderson was unable to make a $100,000 payment. Davis graciously allowed Anderson to defer payment to a more convenient time, and Anderson increased the county deposits in the bank another million dollars. The League found Democratic Mayor Gallatin Roberts, an honest but pliable man, very uncooperative in its efforts to reduce the city's deposits, and he secretly increased these deposits by a million dollars in 1930." At first these public deposits were well secured, as required by state law, but unidentified enemies of the bank began writing the surety companies in 1928 that the Central Bank was a poor risk. Their purpose was to force the withdrawl of public deposits. The surety companies began cancelling their bonds with Central, but a local legislative act in 1929 enabled the bank to use commercial paper as surety for the public funds. Although this paper consisted of notes of the "best men in Asheville," it was deemed of doubtful value. Mayor Roberts trusted Davis and accepted whatever paper he offered, but the Republican county treasurer, L.L. Jenkins, worked diligently to upgrade the county's collateral. This use of commercial paper as collateral greatly hampered the bank, for by 1930 two-thirds of its assets were tied up as surety for public deposits.12 With these kinds of conditions, the bank was in its death throes by October, 1930. It took only a "whispering campaign," connecting Central Bank with the failed Caldwell and Company, to cause a steady withdrawal of $1.2 million in deposits in a few weeks. On November 20 the bank had insufficient cash to continue and closed. The next day the American National Bank closed also." The failure of Central and American National had an immediate and detrimental impact on other institutions closely connected with them. Within a month over twenty banks in twelve western North Carolin counties failed. In December,Central Securities and its mortgage companies folded also.14 At first the public reaction to this banking disaster was one of shock but confidence that Asheville could weather the storm. But shock soon turned to anger as auditors' reports on city and county finances were made public. The reports revealed that public credit had been perverted for the gain of a private institution and used far beyond what local fiscal needs dictated. Also, the security for the city's deposits, enough money to run the city for two to three years, was virtually wor97 �thless, much of it being in the form of second mortgages. The security for county deposits, thanks to the labors of L.L. Jenkins, was better. 15 The anger aroused by these events resulted in demands for the resignations of all officials involved in lending the bank public monies. Anderson, Jenkins, and the other Republicans were defeated in the election of 1930 and left office ten days after the bank failed, so the demands for resignations fell upon Mayor Roberts and his commissioners. By December 11 they had all resigned, protesting that they had done what they thought best for Asheville.16 Not satisfied with these resignations, the public demanded full investigations by federal and state grand juries. Federal officials moved first on February 4, indicting and arresting President Wallace B. Davis, his brother, Vicepresident Russell C. Davis, and Cashier J. Charles Bradford of the Central Bank and President L.L. Jenkins of American National on charges of conspiracy to violate national banking laws. On February 21 the state indicted all former city and county officials, the Davises, and eight other Central Bank officers on charges of conspiracy to pervert the credit of the city and county. More state indictments came in March as Davis and other bank officers were charged with violating state banking laws and Luke Lea and his son, an associate, and Davis were charged with conspiracy to defraud the Central Bank of its assets. Lea and his son willingly came from Tennessee to submit to arrest, claiming their innocence of all charges. More federal indictments swept up Davis and William D. Harris, president and vicepresident of Central Securities, on charges of using the U.S. mails to defraud buyers of Central Securities bonds. In April other state indictments were returned against lesser bank, city, and county officials on related charges.17 Some people broke under the strain of being arrested. J. Charles Bradford, Davis's right-hand man, tried to commit suicide on February 9 by slashing both sides of his throat with a safety razor, but his life was saved and he was committed to a mental hospital. On February 17 Arthur E. Rankin, vicepresident of Central's branch office, shot himself in the head. He had not been indicted, but he had made an unauthorized loan of $35,400 from the bank. On February 25 Mayor Roberts walked calmly to the restroom in his office building and put a .38 caliber bullet through his head. Making himself a sacrificial offering, Roberts wrote that he was laying down his life for his city and hoped that people could stop hating one another and work for the common good.18 In a series of six state and federal trials from May, 1931, through the summer of 1933, only three people were convicted of violating state or federal law. Wallace B. Davis was convicted of making a fraudulent report to the state bank examiner, and Davis and the Leas were convicted of conspiracy to defraud the Central Bank of its assets. Davis went to state prison in 1932 and served two years of a nine to thirteen year sentence before the governor paroled him. Luke Lea and his son fought extradition but finally went to state prison in 1934. After serving ten weeks, Luke Lea, Jr., was paroled because of illness, but his father served two years of a six to ten years sentence being paroled in 1936.19 Although these personal tragedies may have satisified the community desire for justice and vengeance, it required cool heads to meet the fiscal problems bobbing in the wake of the bank failure. The worst problem was the lack of money to keep the city and county governments operating, for they were left with only a few thousand dollars in cash and the normal incoming revenues. They could not borrow large sums because their debt was large and their credit overextended. Public officials therfore looked for other ways to obtain or save money. Back taxes and assessment amounted to some $4 million, and the tax collectors pounced on these delinquent accounts. The 1931 legislature authorized the local governments to combine their health and engineering departments and to establish a central authority to oversee their budgets, all with a 98 �view to saving money and coordinating the tax burden. By the summer the city and county had retrenched and cut their operating budgets in half. Parts of these cuts were made possible when the state took over the county prison and roads as part of a statewide plan.20 Yet these cuts were not enough to provide money to sustain the public school system, one of the best in the state. Providing classes from kindergarten through the new junior college, the system consumed over half of the operating budget. By February, 1931, the county could not pay the teachers, and the schools were kept open only because the school personnel agreed to work out the year without pay and at great personal sacrifice. In the fall the county received permission to use a debt escrow account to pay back salaries. The school system was thus saved, but it operated in the coming years on greatly reduced budgets with fewer personnel.21 The knottiest fiscal problem was the bonded debt. The city and county and special tax districts defaulted on their combined debt of $83.2 million, thirty percent of the assessed value of all property, in May, 1931. What should be done was not clear. Some people suggested declaring bankruptcy, but the thought of having receivers control local government for some forty years was not appealing. Others suggested repudiating the debt incurred under Ring rule, but this course promised only a poor credit rating. The course finally adopted was a compromise. The city and county would pay over the next five years the interest, but not the principal, on the short-term notes used to shore up the bank. They would pay neither the principal nor interest on the long-term bonded debt over the next five years in order to give time to attack the legality of certain debts. In 1936 the principal and interest on all outstanding debts was finally refunded with new bonds maturing over a fortyyear period, and only in 1976 did Asheville free itself from this earlier debt.22 The main political problem to be solved after the bank failed was the restoration of confidence in city government. There could be no confidence as long as it was possible for the Ring to rig elections and put its cronies in office. Although the mayor and commissioners hadresignedin December and new officers were appointed, people charged that the Ring still had its friends in key positions and was ready to operate the city for its benefit. Reformers wanted to change the structure of local government to minimize the influence of the Ring, but there was no consensus on how to do it or who should do it. There was agreement that the regular political parties could not be trusted to propose changes.23 Into this leadership vacuum moved three newly organized groups in December, 1930. The first group was the League of Women Citizens, a non-partisan group of six hundred women committed to establishing clean government. Next, about three hundred young business and professional men established the Young Men's Council to promote good government. In turn, the Young Men worked to establish a small Legislative Council, consisting of representatives from civic and professional clubs, to work with the legislators to secure laws modifying the form of city government.24 It was this Legislative Council, supported by the women and young men and the Taxpayers League, that worked out the reforms. Cooperating with the legislators, the Council secured the exemption of county local elections from the statewide absentee ballot law, a new charter changing the city government from the commission to the council-manager form, and non-partisan city elections. These last two changes were approved by popular referendum, a vote of about 5,200 to 3,000. The absentee ballot in local elections below the office of legislator was abolished because the Ring had used it so effectively to steal elections. The council-manager form of government supposedly helped to fix responsibility and promote efficiency in government. The new charter also provided for civil service to stop the practice of making firemen and policemen political appointees. Non-partisan primaries were used to nominate council members, and the general election was non99 �partisan and city-wide, making it more difficult for the Ring to elect its people. In the first general election in April, 1931, all nine elected council members had reform sympathies.25 Between 1931 and 1936 the city and county had thus worked their way out of these difficulties. If one can draw any single conclusion from the events surrounding the decline and failure of the Central Bank, it is that the people did not submit to despair but looked with hope to the future, expecting to work their way out of their political and economic difficulties. Other conclusions may be drawn also. The bank experienced a three-year period of weakness because of land speculation, lending too much money on real estate, and extending the bank's resources too freely to help people in trouble. Wallace Davis made many reasonable efforts to protect the bank, but his daily banking practices were loose, unwise, and downright illegal. Also, Davis had a run of bad luck, his industrial development and attempted acquisitions of banks coming at the wrong times. Davis was also unwise in using public funds to shore up the bank just when his political connections would bring the bank under attack. The main impact of the bank failure on the community was to curtail local fiscal resources immediately and for years to come. The trauma of this period spurred people to make political reforms which they hoped would bring more honest and open government. Footnotes 'Asheville Citizen, May 12, September 18, 26, 1931; State Bank Examiner's Report on the Central Bank and Trust Company, July, 1930, in State vs. Davis. 203 N.C. Reports, Original Cases, North Carolina Supreme Court Reports, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh. (Hereinafter cited as Bank Examiner's Report, 1930.) Charles Aurelius Webb, Asheville, North Carolina; Forty-Six Years in Asheville; 1889-1935; Reminiscences and Observations (Asheville, 1035), p. 19; William Howard Plemmons, "The City of Asheville; Historical and Institutional," (Unpublished master's thesis, n.p., 1935; Copy in Pack Memorial Library, Asheville, N.C.), p. 232; Asheville Citizen, September 26, 1931. 'Asheville Citizen, May 10, 1031. 'Asheville Citizen, May 12, 14, September 26, 1931. 'Asheville Citizen, September 18, 24, 25, 26, 1931. 'Asheville Citizen, September 25, 1931. 'Asheville Citizen, September 26, 1931; November 25, 26, 29, 1932. 'Asheville Citizen, December 14, 1930; January 18, March 4, July 1, September 26, 1931; State vs. Davis. 203 N.C. Reports 18. 'Taxpayers Bulletin (Asheville), April, December, 1930. (Copies in the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill, N.C.). '"Asheville Citizen, February 14, 18, November 1, 7, 1928; letter of James M. Westall to the editor, February 19, 1931; Asheville Times, August 10, 18, 1928; Zebulon Weaver to R.L. Doughton, November 15, 1928, in Zebulon Weaver Papers, University Archives, Western Carolina University Library, Cullowhee, N.C. "Asheville Citizen, May 22, 23, 1931. Taxpayers Bulletin, April, December, 1930. "Taxpayers Bulletin, December, 1930; Asheville Citizen, September 26, 1931, November 24, 27, 1932. "Asheville Citizen, November 21, 1930, September 26, 1931. "Raleigh News and Observer, November 21, 23, December 16, 17, 1930. "Asheville Citizen, December 6, 7, 1930, January 8, 1931. "Asheville Citizen, December 7, 10, 11, 1930. "Asheville Citizen, February 5, 22, March 17, 1931. "Asheville Citizen, February 10, 18, 26, 1931; Bank Examiner's Report, 1930. "Asheville Citizen, April 21, 1935, in Clipping File, Pack Memorial Library, Asheville, N.C. New York Times, May 10, 11, July 28, 1934, April 2, 3, 1936. "Asheville Citizen, November 22, 29, December 2, 3, 5, 6, 10,1930, February 12,15, March 12,19, 22, April 21, June 100 �10, July 2, August 7, 1931. "Raleigh News anil Observer, December 17, 18, 1930; Asheville Citizen, January 24, 27, February 1, 28, March 28, April 1, May 1, 13, July 15, September 25, 1931. "North Carolina Tax Commission, Report, 1932, pp. 182-194, 208-222; Asheville Citizen, December 21, 1930, February 6, April 29, August 21, September 2, 18, 1931; New York Times, June 3, August 27, November 16, 1936. "Asheville Citizen, December 4, 15, 1930, January 30, 1931. "Raleigh News and Observer, March 22, 1931; Asheville Citizen, January 21, May 2, 1931. M Asheville Citizen, January 30, March 27,April 17, 22, May 10, 13, 1931. 101 �Progressive Government in a Company Town Russell D. Parker From the time the city was incorporated in 1919 to 1956, when the first "outside" city manager was employed, ALCOA acknowledged that the city was the company's creature; the company, in paternalistic manner, dominated every facet of the lives of its citizens. A paradox, perhaps more apparent than real, existed in the adoption of progressive forms in municipal administration. Recent revisionist scholarship in the area of American progressivism serves, in fact, to bridge the paradox. "Progress" came to be identified with technological development as American industry succeeded in adapting progressive rhetoric to its own uses.1 The progressive era of the early twentieth century was an "experiment in bureaucratic order" in which authority became more centralized and occupation became more important than community.2 The early history of ALCOA's presence in East Tennessee is consistent with such an interpretation. By its contrived and rigid structure, the company town...precluded the development of a social and political hierarchy based on color ethnicity, that is, a caste system, within the working-class community. Its standarized living and working conditions prohibited socioeconomic competition and mobility, and its highly rigid capitalistic structure established distinct class lines, based not on an ethnicity or race, but on occupation. 3 A student of the phenomenon has defined a company town as "any community which has been built wholly to support the operations of a single company, in which all houses, buildings, and other real estate property are owned by that company, having been acquired or erected specifically for the benefit of its employees, and in which the company provides most public services."4 In the heyday of company towns, isolation from centers of population, lack of highways and transportation facilities made it essential for companies to provide housing and other community needs. Development of the automobile and highways has eliminated that necessity.5 This is not to say that the company town is extinct as an institution. It is alive and well, particularly in the South, where its paternalism—systematized, all-inclusive, and at the same time intimate—has done more than any other one thing to render workers uncomplaining and dependent. Certain "adverse consequences of a psychological, social and economic order" are demonstrated in lack of stimulation to assume civic consciousness and community responsibility.6 The concept is still widely employed in third world settings. The government of Guyana recently nationalized an operation of Aluminum, Ltd., Demerar Bauxite Company, Ltd., particularly as a response to dissatisfaction at the rigid stratification of the community of McKenzie into an exclusively white enclave of top company officials and middle management on the one hand, and on the other unskilled lower organizational workers. The latter had been obliged to sign leases providing that "I will vacate the house on request of the Company without any notice and in the event of any 102 �failing to leave, the Company shall have the right to take possession and eject me without recourse to the law." 7 In fairness, some paternal systems grew out of a social responsibility and some third world governments seek a pretext for nationalization. In the era of ALCOA's establishing a planned community in East Tennessee, there were models aplenty. Two suggest themselves as immediately contemporary and well publicized. George M. Pullman in his thinking was something of a precursor to the progressive ideal; he was obsessed by the need for system; businessmen must seek order and control through innovation and expansion.8 He hoped to demonstrate that industrialization need not lead to social disintegration. Proper housing and community planning would develop middle class standards; social reform and good business practices were complementary.' Pullman had patented the railroad sleeper car which featured an upper berth hinged to the side of the car and supported by two jointed arms, also a lower berth achieved by hinging the back seat cushions so that the back extended to meet its opposite number. He organized with partner Ben Field the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1867 and developed the vast system of Pullman car operations that came to embrace the whole nation. His first plant was at Palmyra, New York; removed shortly to Detroit, Michigan. Other plants were established in St. Louis; Elmira, New York; Washington, Delaware; and San Francisco. In the environs of Chicago twelve miles south of the business district he built in 1880 an entire town that bore his name and enjoyed an independent existence for sixteen years (until the state supreme court declared it in violation of the corporate charter). The town was everything that Chicago was not—planned, orderly, green and antiseptic—built to "reinforce virtues of self-help and personal discipline such as industry, frugality, and cleanliness..."10 In many ways the citizenworkers were made to feel that they were on public display and must conduct themselves in such a manner as not to bring shame on the company.11 Pullman secured four thousand acres, five hundred for the town. Gas, water, streets, sewer facilities, and housing were provided. A brick works supplied building material from the clay deposits around Lake Calumet.12 As the town developed, it contained 1,800 tenements, library, theatre, stores, parks and playgrounds. There was a dairy farm to supply the inhabitants. 13 Peak population was 12,500 around 1893—just before a major strike brought the town to national attention. All town officials were appointed by the company except the school board, which, although elective, were employees of the company. The chief administrator was the town agent, who supervised eleven municipal departments. 14 About the only enterprises not operated by the company were the retail stores.15 The Pullman Journal, a semi-official organ of the corporation, supported all of Pullman's policies.16 The company was determined that the town should bear its own weight. Consequently, rents were high. Leases forbade alteration of premises; no pigs or chickens were permitted.17 On the job there was blacklisting, nepotism, arbitrary dismissal and tyrannical foremen; Pullman, a calculating conservative, had no patience with talk of unionism.18 A strike was precipitated in May 1894, with four thousand workers, who had organized under the American Railway Union, calling for investigation of shop abuses, reduction of rents and restoration of wages, which had been slashed.19 U.S. Attorney-General Richard Olney, charging that the union was obstructing the mails, obtained an injunction restraining Eugene V. Debs, the union president. Federal troops were moved in; Debs and his lieutenants were arrested; the strike collapsed. A modern chronicler of the Pullman experiment concludes that "modern America's search for control and order through city and regional planning may have been derived in part from the early activity of the business community in its quest for industrial efficiency."20 103 �Another model in the same region, Gary, Indiana, has been termed "the largest attempt at urban genesis and town planning ever undertaken in American industry." 21 The founder was U.S. Steel, formed as a corporation in 1901. In 1906 the company began quietly (and anonymously) buying up a 9,664-acre tract. 22 A huge complex of mills and furnaces was laid out. In the townsite, the utility franchise was granted a U.S. Steel subsidiary.23 The work force, until around 1915, was predominantly east European immigrant. A bitter strike in 1919 and a national policy of immigration curtailment led the company to bring in Mexican and Negro laborers.24 During the strike the National Guard and federal troops were called in to quell the workers and render their efforts generally ineffectual. 25 ALCOA's planning incorporated both examples. Similarities to the Pullman case are especially striking, although ALCOA was not so idealistic, hence not so frustrated. Whatever form the community assumed must be traced in some measure to the domineering influence of Arthur Vining Davis, president of the company at the time of the city's establishment. Davis gave close attention to both the administration of ALCOA and more especially to a model town, Arvida, in Quebec which bore his name. On the Saguenay River, Arvida is the site of a reduction plant which processes bauxite. When Davis died in 1962, the town was a beneficiary of his $400-million estate.26 Municipal governments in the United States developed as concentrations of population created a need for such services as police and fire protection; health and sanitary measure including water supply and sewage and waste disposal; traffic regulation; and building construction regulation. Three forms have been common to the United States—mayor/council, commission, and council/manager. The mayor/council form, which has been most common over the years, features an elective legislative body and an elective executive. The mayor appoints and removes administrative officers (in a variation, some are elected), prepares a budget for the council's consideration, and passes upon ordinances submitted by the council. In the commission form, a number (usually five) of elected officials serve singly as heads of city departments and collectively as the legislative body for the city. One of the number acts as mayor—elected specifically or chosen by his colleagues. His powers are limited to titular head of the city for ceremonial purposes. The most recent form to gain acceptance is the council/manager plan, in which a small elective council appoints the manager for an indefinite period of time from (normally) out-of-town applicants. This has imbued the post with a certain professionalism. An engineering background is desirable and frequently required. The manager appoints and removes administrative employees, prepares a budget for the council's consideration, and carries out council policies. His tenure is generally determined by the results he achieves. The ALCOA form most nearly resembles the council/manager formula, although it was termed commission/manager. ALCOA was the second city in the state to adopt the city manager form; Kingsport, controlled by Eastman Kodak, was the first. The commission/city manager form is associated with progressivism and the degree to which the South was genuinely involved in that reform movement is the subject of some debate. Perhaps significantly, another Southern city, Staunton, Virginia, in 1909, was the first community in the nation to adopt the council/manager plan by popular vote in 1912; and Galveston, Texas, as an efficiency device after inundation by a tidal wave was the first to adopt the commission form (in 1900).27 104 �The quarrel among progressives with the popular mayor/council form was that the mayor, by manipulating the council and regimenting the city's wards through a cadre of carefully chosen lieutenants, could establish himself as "boss," perpetuate himself in office, and preside over a corrupt regime. Recent scholarship has brought to light that if the ward government of city bosses was corrupt, it was at the same time close to the people and sensitive to their needs.28 This sensitivity contrasts starkly with a concern for efficiency that characterized the progressive thrust, often at the expense of democracy. Evidence of that character lies in the imposition of the system. The people of Alcoa—and of many another model community in the South and elsewhere—did not opt for a city manager. He was the gift of the company—and a company employee. Alcoa's city charter in 1919 provided for a board of three city commissioners elected for twoyear terms by popular vote—they were to choose one of their number mayor—at the salary of one dollar per annum. The mayor enjoyed a vote but no veto in commission deliberations. The commission appointed and fixed the salary of the city manager; he served at their pleasure. They also fixed the salaries of the recorder, police chief, and city attorney, although the manager appointed them. The recorder had a seat, but no vote, on the commission. He imposed and collected fines and served as city judge. The chief of police brought cases before his court. The city attorney might attend meetings of the commission if he wished.29 That power and heavy responsibility of government rested with the manager and, in view of their shared duties, the city recorder was in no wise extraordinary, since the city manager form aimed at concentration of authority for efficiency's sake. As has been pointed up earlier, the manager for the bulk of the period under consideration in this study was Victor J. Hultquist, who held the position from the city's incorporation in 1919 until his retirement in 1948. He was succeeded by Arthur B. Smith, who had served through Hultquist's tenure as city judge/recorder/treasurer. Both were employees of ALCOA. Hultquist's responsibilities in that capacity as head of the Construction Department and Properties Manager were varied and awesome. He was a mechanical engineer and had been with the company since 1912 with prior assignments in New Kensington, Pa., and Badin, N.C. Smith who was hired by ALCOA in 1917, became assistant works manager and chief clerk of the Construction Department (later termed General Services) and bore no less a heavy load for the company.30 That either of them in their roles as city manager exercised any appreciable degree of independence from the company could hardly be sustained. The commissioners tended to be ALCOA men or employees of Babcock Land and Lumber Company, which became Bond-Woolf Company in 1934 and Veach-May-Wilson in 1946. The Babcock company had come in just before ALCOA's entry and had been cooperative from the beginning; C.L. Babcock was the first mayor. A long-time city official tells of ALCOA representatives—one a Democrat, the other a Republican—who orchestrated city elections under ALCOA's direction. Their expenditure of effort in campaigning was dependent upon whether the company's choice was opposed—he often was not—and the calibre of opposition.31 Since election of commissioners was staggered, citizens would be voting for one office-holder on the first Saturday in June, as prescribed by ordinance. Coupled with the necessity in the early period of a citizen's paying his poll tax (for educational funding) at a prior deadline to qualify for voting, the light turn-outs are understandable.32 The company was concerned that city government should be competent and honest, and the men who served as commissioners seem to have been for the most part public-spirited and serious about their responsibilities. Graft and corruption is singularly conspicuous by its absence in the city's affairs, which were carefully overseen by the company. 105 �The commission was early preoccupied with fashioning a workable framework of government. The manager controlled police, fire and education departments; he appointed both the superintendent of schools and all teachers and fixed their salaries; he was director of public welfare; he countersigned checks issued by the recorder, who was tax collector. The commission by ordinance levied taxes based upon the recorder's stated needs for the fiscal year.34 At the outset, until the city became more imaginative, the principal source of income was the property tax, which meant that ALCOA bore the lion's share of tax load. In its first year, with a tax rate of $1.15 per one hundred dollars assessed value, total city income was $94,946, of which $60,026 was derived from property tax. The assessed valuation of real and personal property for the year 1920 was $4,731,573. By contrast, in the terminal year of this study, with the tax rate still at $1.15 (although it had risen to a high of $1.75 during the twenties and thirties) the proposed budget was $672,830 with $227,900 from property tax. State and county school funds netted approximately $225,000, with additional income from state street aid, sales tax, beer tax, and rentals; a $64,000 unexpended balance was carried over from the previous year.35 Manager Hultquist expressed his regrets to his principal correspondent in the Pittsburgh office that the tax rate in 1923 would be $1.75, up ten cents over the previous year, due mainly to the decrease in ALCOA's assessment—down $222,170. There were "grumblers" at this development, he reported—"Watson Ford, the Hannums and Proffitts." The Maryville tax rate was only $1.50. When this news was conveyed to Arthur Vining Davis, the president informed Hultquist that ALCOA would contribute $5,000 to the education sector to bring the rate down to $1.65.36 Major expenditures went annually to public works and education. Allocation of the assessment in an early year (1924) was municipal expense, .866; general, .321; streets, .100; and debt retirement and interest, .455." There was a great deal of street grading and paving with sewer lines to be laid. Occasional bond issues were necessary to fund such projects or to build or improve schools. Interestingly, many people of the area are convinced that the company built the city schools, as was often the case in company town settings. In Alcoa this was true only to the extent that the company was a major taxpayer. In that capacity and as the city's overseer, the company was not reticent in making its feelings known. When city planners in 1923 fumed over where to locate Bassel School, Edwin S. Fickes, a Pittsburgh-based company official, strode to the present site, dug in his heel, and snapped in his curt, direct style, "Build it here."38 When Alcoa High School was constructed in 1939, WPA furnished almost half the funding. There is irony here, since company and city officials were notorious for delivering themselves of diatribes against the socialistic tendencies of the New Deal. There was no hesitancy, however, to accept that assistance nor the considerable federal aid to road-building projects in that era of depressed national economy. The company was not slow to voice its displeasure at the city's early plan to fund street repair through issuance of bonds for onethird of the cost and an assessment on lands abutting the streets to garner the other two-thirds.39 Salaries for city officials at the outset were: manager $2,000, recorder/treasurer $2,100, engineer $125 per month. A black principal's salary was $125 per month while two whites received one hundred dollars and eighty-five dollars, but John T. Arter, as discussed above, was meant to be more than principal. Teachers' salaries were at $75 per month. 40 At the depth of depression in 1932 salaries stood at: manager $1,850, recorder/treasurer $4,560, chief of police $1,710, school superintendent $3,325, teachers $27,875. The latter figure was a reduction from the previous year, illustrating the dictum that education is the first to feel hard times.41 Salaries were frozen the following year, but an added expense of $1,250 for special deputies speaks to the labor unrest in that year; it was a continuing expense in the thirties and totalled $3,750 in the explosive year of 1937.42 106 �The manager's job was considered part time, as is indicated in the pay scale. Hultquist usually spent half his day in a tour of the several posts for which he held responsibility in his company employ. Most of them touched intimately some aspect of city affairs, as his oversight of townsite construction and maintenance; the power, light and water utility; quarry, brick and tile works; concrete mixing plant and lumber mill. To illustrate, the Knoxville Power Company, a company affiliate, was awarded the franchise to "sell and dispose of water within the...limits of the City..."43 A control motive is discernible in the early ordinances. Some bore a feudal flavor, as one that discouraged employment agencies that might hire off ALCOA workers.44 A poll tax of one dollar (later two dollars) was levied on all males age twenty-one through twenty-five; males twenty-one through twenty-five were required to work on the streets of the city five days of each year. The alternative was to send an able-bodied substitute or pay the city recorder five dollars.45 The Aluminum Bulletin reminded Alcoans how lucky they were—the Blount County road tax was twelve dollars.46 Ordinances enacted during the twenties forbade "the sale of, transportation, or possession of intoxicating liquors," forbade "immoral conduct or the keeping of disorderly or bawdy houses," forbade "gaming and the keeping of gambling houses and gambling devices," prohibited vagrancy, defined as applicable to those possessing "no visible and lawful means of support," forbade "fighting or quarreling in a rude and boisterous manner in a public place," made it unlawful to "prowl after dark on or along the streets, highways, alleys or upon or about private property," or "to appear in public masked or in disguise." Businesses were closed on Sundays.47 An ordinance prohibiting prostitution was not passed until 1943, when World War II brought over-crowding and relaxed lifestyles.48 Reflecting the repeal of prohibition, an ordinance of May, 1933, regulated the sale of beer and other intoxicating beverages.49 Further reflecting the depression of the thirties, ordinances in 1934 extended deadlines for delinquent taxes and appropriated extra monies to the welfare fund. 50 During the labor upheaval of 1937 an ordinance provided that the city manager shall have the power and shall be authorized to appoint policemen in such manners as may be necessary and proper to protect and care for the property, lives and safety of the people within the corporate limits of the City of Alcoa. Another authorized borrowing of $25,000 for "emergency expenses of the city incurred during the strike and labor troubles."51 There were numerous petitions calling for street repair; this has been cited as a contributing factor to the workers' dissatisfaction which exploded in 1937. But the New Deal's green light to labor and the organizing initiatives of the CIO were undoubtedly more fundamental to that unrest. The city's police chief, Arthur L. Lively, has been characterized as "determined" and "nervous," as was demonstrated in his handling of the 1937 labor trouble. Lively, who held his office for over thirty years (1926-57) and his assistant, Tom Love (1929-46), ran a "tight" town. Their control of the black community was especially rigid, reflecting racial fears and expectations.52 Before the city purchased a police car, Love "walked" the town at night. A black community leader recalls that they were respected, with the reservation that Lively was "hard on chicken thieves" but permitted bootleggers to operate.53 A striking feature of Alcoa city government is that the company knew its man in Hultquist and he was allowed to serve longer in his manager's post than any other manager in the country to that time. He in like manner, once he found the personnel suitable to his purpose, was not given to ex107 �perimentation but stayed with people of proven quality. Whether he did it from instinct or from observing ALCOA's practice is problematical. The most obvious example is Arthur Smith, his strong right arm. Arthur Lively was chosen after a brief period of experimentation with other law officers. In the field of education, Hultquist tried two other candidates, then settled on V.F. Goddard, a Maryville College graduate employed at the State Normal School at Minot, North Dakota. Goddard was highly regarded in educational circles there and was considering making the race for state superintendent. Hultquist, who could be tight-fisted on the subject of paying educators, did not flinch at the $3,000 salary it took to bring Goddard to East Tennessee.54 The able superintendent retired in 1957 after thirty-three years at his post. In the course of his tenure his alma mater bestowed an honorary doctorate upon him.55 Alcoa's efficient administration attracted state and national attention. In 1949, according to the FBI, there was less crime in Alcoa than in any other city of comparable size in the United States.56 In 1956, Alcoa was cited by the Tennessee Muncipal League for twelve years without a traffic fatality, praised for the excellence of its annual report, its low per capita city debt, its recreation program and school system.57 Changing conditions, in particular a rapidly growing population at home, in the contiguous city of Maryville and in Knoxville close by, necessitated a more sophisticated approach to government. Although neither municipality seems to have pressed for the tardy realization of a major connecting artery,58 the Maryville-Alcoa juncture was achieved in 1943, creating a thoroughfare for tourist traffic through the twin cities. In 1944 a city ordinance provided for a three-member planning commission to concern itself primarily with streets. The city manager would serve and appoint with commission approval two others for two-year terms; in 1948 the city was divided into three wards; in 1952 a comprehensive zoning law was enacted; and in 1955 a recreation commission of five members with the manager and superintendent of schools serving permanently was created.59 The remarkable feature common to all these actions is that they were not taken earlier. A transaction negotiated in 1955 added considerably to the complexity of government. The city through a $1.5-million bond issue purchased the electric distribution system of Tapoco, Inc., the ALCOA subsidiary. It was an arrangement mutually beneficial to both city and company,60 and in 1960 the company would pass on its water utility as well. It became immediately necessary to appoint a utilities board. The city manager named five members to four-year terms; they were to appoint a superintendent of the electric system.61 The flurry of resignations by the "old guard" in the late fifties was, in all probability, coincidental to their serving out their long careers in chorus, but a more independent posture is evident in city affairs with the arrival of a professional manager in 1956. The issue of integration was pressing for resolution. The racial cauldron, on which the lid had been tightly secured through the years, would boil; heated tempers would flare. One suspects that the long-time public servants left with relief beyond the satisfaction of a life's work done. As to the company's role in municipal affairs, there was well under way by this time a gradual disengagement. The reasons were varied and are elaborated elsewhere in this study. To expect the company to remove itself entirely from the political arena would, of course, be unreasonable, but the more recent involvements appear not so corporate as personal. One illustration that goes beyond the purview of this account will serve as an ironic epilogue. In 1968 the city commission erupted in political in-fighting. This was not unknown in the past but restraint and decorum had been the rule. The company would not tolerate undue bickering. 108 �Moreover, since the company's point of view was paramount, the parameters of dispute were limited—fundamental program was never at issue, only mode of implementation. The explosion in 1968 revolved about the educational system. In the upshot, it was decided after half a century that the city should have an elected five-member school board. The city manager/commission's involvement would be limited to fixing the educational budget.62 In this rush to change, the commission, too, was enlarged to five members. In the course of vigorous debate, an ALCOA official, Public Relations Manager for Tennessee Operations, took a hand. He read a five-page paper enunciating the company's interest—and reckoned that since the company pays eighty percent of local property and sales taxes sustaining the city government, its voice should be heeded.63 His arguments were taken at face value, while his strident manner was viewed as anachronistic. He favored, incidentally, the changes. Since the modifications have been effected, politics in the city have been more raucous; there is evident a gutter quality more in keeping with American tradition. The public has become more interested and involved. A participant in the 1968 historionics that wrought a fundamental change in Alcoa city government, when asked to assess the government as presently constituted, responded, "Well, it's more democratic, but it's not as efficient."64 City Manager: 1919-1948-V.J. Hultquist 1948-1956-A.B. Smith Recorder & Treasurer: 1919-1948-A.B. Smith 1948-1957-W.H. Jones Assistant Recorder: 1919-1921-Vacant 1921-1940-A.R. Frye 1940-1943-Glenn H. Flack 1943-1949-H.D. Huffman 1949-1954-William L. Bolton 1954-1963-K.D. Boram City Attorney: 1919-1951-Homer A. Goddard 1951-19 -Joe C. Gamble (Assistant City Attorney - 1948-1951) City Engineer: 1919-1920-Blair Wilcox 1920-1920-R.T. Hale (April to November) 1920-1929-G.M. Bassel 1929-1947-R.T. Hale 1947-1949-W.W. Woody - Acting City Engineer P.P. Newman - Assistant City Engineer 1949-1950-R.V. Moschell - Assistant City Engineer 1950-1958-R.V. Moschell 109 �Chief of Police: 1919-1920-Charles Acuff 1920-1921-C.W. Wynne 1921-1922-O.L. Hicks - Acting Chief of Police 1922-1926-Henry Grizzard - Acting Chief of Police from May to July Jesse S. Hutton 1926-1957-A.L. Lively Fire Chief: 1919-1942-Vacant 1942-1958-F.L. Baker Superintendent of Schools: 1919-1925-Vacant 1925-1957-V.F. Goddard Health Officer: 1919-1929-Dr. J. Walter McMahan (Dr. K.A.Bryant, Assistant, 1929) 1929-1949-Dr. L.C. Olin 1949-1966-Dr. H.T. Vandergriff City Food & Dairy Inspector: 1920-1928-A.B. King 1928-1931-W.H. Wright 1931-1941-Fred H. Yearout 1941-19 -C.F. Lamb Property Custodian: 1942-19 -Thomas Claude Gray Commissioners: 1919-1921-C.L. Babcock - Mayor W.V. Arnold - Vice-Mayor S.A. Copp 1921-1923-C.L. Babcock - Mayor S.A. Copp - Vice-Mayor T.C. Gray 1923-1924-C.L. Babcock - Mayor S.A. Copp - Vice-Mayor L.S. Munch 1924-1925-C.L. Babcock - Mayor R.F. McLaughlin - Vice-Mayor L.S. Munch 1925-1928-R.F. McLaughlin - Mayor L.S. Munch - Vice-Mayor G.U. Thompson 110 �1928-1933-L.S. Munch - Mayor G.U. Thompson - Vice-Mayor J.H. Studley 1933-1937-G.U. Thompson - Mayor L.S. Munch - Vice-Mayor J.H. Studley 1937-1939-J.H. Studley - Mayor L.S. Munch - Vice-Mayor G.U. Thompson 1939-1941-J.H. Studley - Mayor G.U. Thompson - Vice-Mayor O.W. Brumfiel 1941-1943-J.H. Studley - Mayor O.W. Brumfiel- Vice-Mayor G.U. Thompson 1943-1944-O.W. Brumfiel - Mayor J.H. Studley - Vice-Mayor G.U. Thompson 1944-1947-O.W. Brumfiel - Mayor J.H. Studley - Vice-Mayor Thomas Blakely 1947-1950-O.W. Brumfiel - Mayor Thomas Blakely - Vice-Mayor J.H. Studley 1950-1955-O.W. Brumfiel - Mayor J.H. Studley - Vice-Mayor A.G. Chambers 1955-1963-O.W. Brumfiel - Mayor A.G. Chambers - Vice-Mayor Paul R. Hicks Footnotes 'Paul W. Glad, "Progressives and the Business Culture of the 1920's," Journal of American History, LIII (June 1966), 80, 81. 'Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill & Want, 1967), xiv. 'David A. Corbin, Life, Work and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880-1892 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 61. 4 James B. Allen. The Company Town in the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966),4. s lbid., 140. 'A.D. Shea, "Oilworkers" Housing and Community Integration in Isolated Areas," International Labour Review, LXX- XVIII (July 1963), 604. 'Quoted in Maurice St. Pierre, "Race, the Political Factor and the Nationalization of the Demerara Bauxite Company, Guyanan," Social and Economic Studies, XXIV (December 1975), 487. Ill �'Stanley Buder, Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning, 1880-1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), xiii. 'Ibid., 36, 230. '"Ibid., 228. "Ibid., 95. "Almont Lindsey, "Paternalism and the Pullman Strike," American Historical Review, XLIV 0anuary 1939), 274. "Ibid., 274-75. "Ibid., 276. "Ibid., 277. "Ibid., 279. "Ibid., 281. "Ibid., 273. "Ibid., 287. 20 Buder, Pullman, 232. "Anthony Brook, "Gary, Indiana: Steeltown Extraordinary," Journal of American Studies, IX (April 1975), 35. "Ibid., 39. "Ibid., 46. "Ibid., 41, 47. "Ibid., 42. 26 Thomas V. DiBacco, "Arthur Vining Davis," in John A. Garraty, ed.. Dictionary of American Biography, 1961-1965 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981), 167. 27 C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge: L.S.U. Press, 1951), 388-89. 28 Alexander B. Callou, ed. The City Boss in America: An Interpretative Reader, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 3. 2 'City of Alcoa, Ordinance Book, I, 1-32. '"Smith's widow asserts that he literally "worked himself to death" for the company and city. On much-needed vacations he must keep contact with Hultquist, who might wish to call him for information. Mrs. A.B. Smith, interview in Maryville, Tennessee, March 13, 1975. "Paul R. Hicks, interview in Alcoa, Tennessee, July 13, 1982. "A case in point is O.W. Brumfiel, who served as mayor from 1943 to 1965. Brumfiel worked as cashier at the fabricating plant. When he made the race for city commission on June 8, 1953, he was the only candidate; he received sixtynine votes. There was public apathy even when elections were contested. When Joseph H. Studley defeated J. Frank Snelson on June 4, 1949, the vote was 198 to 143. "Miscellaneous," City of Alcoa, General File, Alcoa, Tennessee. "City of Alcoa, Ordinance Book, I, 20-22, 43, 41, 16. "Ibid., 15. x lhid., 216-21; III, 1096-1100. "Victor J. Hultquist to Edwin S. Fickes, August 20, 1923; G.R. Giffons to Arthur V. Davis, August 23, 1923; Davis to Hultquist, August 29, 1923, City of Alcoa, General File. "City of Alcoa, Ordinance Book, I, 380-85. "J.B. Alexander, interview in Maryville, Tennessee, February 25, 1975. "City of Alcoa, Ordinance Book, I, 69. '"Ibid., 58-61. 41 Ibid., 535-40. <2 Ibid.,'568-73, 611-17. «Ibid.; 52-54. "Ibid., 295-97. «Ibid., 62-64. "•Aluminum Bulletin, II (September 1920), 46. "City of Alcoa, Ordinance Book, I, 95, 122-23, 137, 145-46. "Ibid., II, 762-63. "Ibid., 550-54. '"Ibid., 566-68. "Ibid., 609-10. 112 �"Ralph Love, interview in Maryville, Tennessee, July 11, 1982. "Beulah Brown, interview in Alcoa, Tennessee, April 14, 1975. "Hultquist to V.F. Goddard, June 24, 1924. City of Alcoa, General.File. "Tennessee Alcoan, VII (June 1953), 5. "Ibid., Ill (May 1949), 1-2. "Ibid., VII (July 1953), 1, 8; ibid., X (July 1956), 1. "Paul R. Hicks, interview, July l a , 1982. "City of Alcoa, Ordinance Book, II, 794-97, 857-59, 949-70, 1037-38. "Paul R. Hicks, interview, July 13, 1982. "City of Alcoa, Ordinance Book, II, 1070-72. "Knoxville News-Sentinel, February 11, 1969. "Ibid. "Paul R. Hicks, interview, July 13, 1982. 113 �This page intentionally left blank �Aspects of Daily Life: Yesterday and Today 115 �This page intentionally left blank �Store Talk in Appalachian Social Life George B. Ray The neighborhood grocery store is a common feature of the Appalachian landscape. The small, local store, often operated by one person, stocks commonly used goods, but selections are often limited and prices high. Limitations are even more striking when compared to goods available in modern supermarkets which seem to be increasingly appearing. Yet people choose to patronize local stores, often by their regular visits as well as by their purchases. Visits to country stores are common and important forms of social interaction in Appalachia (Coles, 1972, pp. 325-334; Hicks, 1976, pp. 84-87). Less well known are details which define the nature of talk in country stores. This paper presents a description and interpretation of talk in neighborhood grocery stores in Appalachia. After discussing the form of interaction in stores, the paper will address issues associated with functions of store interaction in Appalachian social life. Description of Interaction in Stores Several authors (Halliday, 1978; Hymes, 1974; Gumperz & Hymes, 1972) have discussed methods for describing naturally occurring occasions of speech. One useful approach is the ethnographic method advocated by Hymes (1974). Hymes's primary unit of analysis is the speech event: The term speech event will be restricted to activities, or aspects of activities that are directly governed by rules or norms for the use of speech (p. 52). It is important to view speech events as structured, according to norms, and specific. That is to say, a speech event is discernible from the many events going on in the group of interest. For the present study, the descriptive framework (Appendix A) contained these elements: 1) linguistic varieties; 2) linguistic units of description; 3) setting; 4) participants; 5) ends; 6) act sequences; 7) key; 8) norms; and 9) genres. The information was gathered through participant observation and intensive interview methods. The data for the study were gathered over a 15-month period of investigation. The author was a resident for three months during this period and a regular visitor during other times. The grocery stores observed were located in Chestnut Flat in Jackson County, Kentucky. Chestnut Flat is a small, rural community in southern Jackson County. There are approximately 350 residents in the community. Information obtained through interviews indicates that the community dates back to 1913 when a commercial lumber company was established. The community was literally started there and then as the lumber company was built. The owners bought up thousands of acres of virgin timerland and at one time reportedly owned up to one-fourth of Jackson County. At its peak of operations, the company employed over 500 persons and at that time many more people lived in Chestnut Flat than at present. By 1930 the virgin timber in the area had been logged and the lumber company ceased operations. The timberland was eventually sold to the Daniel Boone National Forest. The lumber company moved to Leslie County and reportedly offered jobs to those employees who were willing to relocate. 117 �From 1930 to the present, Chestnut Flat has been basically a farming community. The community lies about 20 miles from a city in which many people work and trade. Residents also work in other cities located up to 45 miles away. Other than farming, the occupations of those employed within the county include U.S. Government work (Dept. of Agriculture), state jobs (Transportation and Human Resources), county positions (school board), local small businesses (sawmills, store clerks, small coal mines), and a few who are self-employed (storekeepers). There are several mining companies that have come into the area and leased mineral rights, and lately some oil companies have leased drilling rights. Coal deposits are not extensive by most standards and several residents said the coal will be exhausted within ten years. No petroleum drilling has taken place as yet. The nearest school is an elementary school about four miles away with another, smaller elementary school about the same distance away. The only high school in the county is located near the County Seat, McKee. There are two churches in the community, a Baptist and a Pentecostal Holiness Church. Both churches have about the same number of regular attenders, roughly 100. The Holiness preacher receives pay while the Baptist preacher volunteers his services. Chestnut Flat has four grocery stores, three tilling stations, a laundromat, a restaurant, a roller rink, two insurance agencies, and a U.S. Post Office (open about two hours a day) with no rural route affiliated with it. The community is the location for one of the four voting precincts in that part of the county. Williams (1975, p. 505) classified residents in Appalachia as living in one of three types of settings: town and city dwellers, valley farmers, and branchwatermountaineers. In this scheme, the valley farmers live along river valleys, near the mouths of creeks, or on main highways, and are relatively prosperous people. The valley farmers comprise the largest of Williams' three residential groups. According to this classification, Chestnut Flat would most closely resemble the valley farmer setting. The descriptive framework led to the following explication of store talk: 1. Linguistic varieties: American English is used exclusively by all speakers. What has been called Appalachian English (Wolfram & Christian, 1976) is the dialect of American English common throughout the Appalachian region. There are many variations in the dialect throughout Appalachia, but similarities are quite striking. What seems to best characterize Appalachian English is the particular combination of certain grammatical and phonological features of speech. Wolfram and Christian reported extensively on the speech of their West Virginia speakers and many similarities seem present in the speech of Chestnut Flat speakers. Similarities in phonology included: 1) consonant cluster reduction (guest—gues'; just—jus'); 2) the intrusion of T in consonant clusters (cliff—clifft; once—oncet); 3) deletion of auxiliary verbs (I seen a fox last week.); 4) unstressed syllable deletion (She told me 'bout the fire.); 5) deletion of initial voiced TH (The patrolman said he'd stop 'em.; 'at old man couldn't say nothin'.); and 6) alternation of ER and OW in final positions (The tobaccer or baccer patch was drownded out.). Similarities in grammatical features included: 1) a-verb-ing (She came a-runnin'.); 2) subject-verb agreement, especially in the past tense of the verb BE (They was drivin' down the road.); 3) the use of DONE as a perfective marker (She done forgot to get the mail.); 4) the use of TO with participial verbs (The men started to cuttin' the baccer.); and 5) substitution of THEY for the expletive THERE (They's snakes along that ridge.). The use of these and many other linguistic forms is quite complex with regard to the age, sex, and status of speakers. Because the emphasis in this study was on speech usage rather than linguistic aspects of speech, detailed analysis of these forms was not attempted. One aspect of nonverbal communication was observed regularly. It was not uncommon for speakers to maintain low levels of eye contact. In some cases, men whittled wood and looked at their whittling rather than the listener. Another nonverbal behavior often seen was the use of one's fingers to indicate the size of 118 �something, for example, the length of an ear of corn. It was common for a speaker to refer to physical dimensions nonverbally rather than verbally. 2. Linguistic units of description: There seems to be no particular way of referring to store talk. Some men say, "I like to go to the store and talk with the boys.' Others speak of going to the store in order to visit. 3. Setting: The store in Chestnut Flat is open from 7:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. in the summer (sometimes it is open until 10:00 p.m.). The store has one entrance and one area where one goes to pay for purchases. Seldom do customers have to wait in line to pay. People standing near the cash register area are often talking after they have paid for their food. The store also sold sandwiches and during the noon hour many people came there for a meal. There are two types of store talk differentiated according to place, talk inside the store and talk outside the awning. Clerks are typically not very busy and customers can usually talk with them for brief periods. Outside the store was a setting for longer conversations. Other than the early morning and the supper hour, in the summer there are usually some people sitting outside the store talking. When the Post Office is open, one can see people sitting there where a bench is placed. The store is near a laundromat and a filling station and some people come to the store from these other places of business. 4. Participants: Store talk is engaged in by teenagers as well as adults, almost exclusively male. Only once this past summer were women seen outside the store. Women talked inside the store and occasionally women waited in front of the store in automobiles. Women also talked inside the laundromat, but during the summer there were relatively few customers at the laundromat. Other than teenagers, most of those outside the store were over 40 years of age. 5. Ends: The store is a place to engage in casual speech. Some participants are regularly seen at the store talking, but not necessarily at regular times. Some men came to the store to pass the time outside their homes. Most store talkers came to the store to talk, not to make purchases. This is especially true of teenagers who sometimes came to the store to meet their friends. Teenage meetings often occur after dark, especially on Friday and Saturday evenings. In the summer the roller rink is not open and the store is a substitute meeting place for some teenagers. The storeowner believed that teenagers meeting in the night left considerable refuse in front of the store. He got tired of cleaning up the refuse and decided to discourage the teenagers from meeting in front of the store. He removed the stumps, but within two days someone brought several concrete blocks to the store for use as seats. There is a pay telephone under the awning, but most people waiting to use the phone do not sit and talk. 6. Act sequence: Inside the store there are three phases. First is a greeting followed by short questions about one's general condition. The second phase is a brief exchange of news (weather, local events). Both of these phases may be omitted if the visitor is not known very well by the clerks. The third phase, taking leave, may follow the payment of goods if the visitor has little time. When a customer is about to leave the clerk does not ask him or her to stay, but the clerk may say, "Come back." Clerks usually said thank you to the customers. All food stores had signs saying "No Credit" but at least one store did in fact allow a few trusted customers to make credit purchases. Outside the store, talk had some of the same features as indoors, but the lack of definite expectations alters the sequence. The most basic sequence has two phases, greeting and leave taking. If speakers have the time to talk, then there may be casual talk and information exchange may be condensed into a few short utterances. A speaker not intending to spend much time at the store is likely not to sit down. 7. Key: During store talk, a relaxed mood prevails among interactants. There is a free and open atmosphere which makes it easy for whoever may come along to feel comfortable. When one goes to the store it is uncertain who will be there, who might come along during the visit, and how long anyone will be there. Such uncertainty makes store talk less of a setting for spending time with someone and more a time for just talking. Meeting someone at the store has fewer implications for one's relationship with someone. One can go past the store and feel no need to explain why he did not stop to see someone. No one at the store feels obligated to make another feel welcome or comfortable. Because of the uncertainty of time and participants' activities, store talk is not usually intimate. Two participants over a period of time may discuss some personal matters, but only if they enter into the conversation knowing they will be there for a period of time. Often one hears participants referring to intentions which signal the time they have to spend at the store. Unlike adults, teenagers sometimes arrived, talked, and departed as groups. 119 �8. Norms: Two aspects of normative behavior deserve comment. One norm is that adult women should not sit and talk outside the store. It is acceptable for women to talk inside the store, but not outside. One person said it would be "unladylike" for a woman to sit outside the store. Teenage women were usually not seen at the store during the day, but occasionally they were there in the night. Another norm concerns sitting while talking, except when there were no seats available. Preferences in sitting while talking may be due to discomfort of standing, although it appears that sitting signals an intention of taking time to talk. 9. Genres: The genres are casual speech (no particular topic) and storytelling (relating past experiences in narrative form). Several aspects of this analysis of store talk ought to be noted. It is significant that visitors who spend time talking at the store are almost exclusively male. Women shop at the store and sometimes linger indoors to talk, but women are rarely seen in front of the store. Although teenagers and adults talk at the store, adults predominate. When teenagers do talk at the store, they tend to talk only with other teenagers. There is a sort of segregation occurring at times when teenagers and adults are present. Individual males tend to talk with one group or the other and the groups stay separate. Purposes of speakers should also be noted. People going to the store for talking do not attempt to conceal their intentions. Instead of referring to shopping or visiting another establishment, men simply say they are going to the store. Talking at the store is a perfectly acceptable activity and there is no need to hide one's participation. So natural and typical is store talk that the store in Chestnut Flat is equipped with seats to accommodate visitors. The storekeeper did not provide the seats, but once seating appeared it remained and was used. As the description mentioned, when the storekeeper attempted to remove the seating, the seats reappeared. It is hypothesized that speakers wanted the store to be a place for talking and they were determined to provide seats to facilitate their meetings. The Store as a Locus for Interaction The grocery store in Appalachia falls into a category of places which are settings for interaction. Other places, such as the feed mill, the post office, or the filling station, are also important arenas for interaction. However, the store occupies a prominent position among these various settings. The prominence of the store as a meeting place is one reason for the importance of the store. As Hicks (1976, pp. 86-87) points out, networks of men are important communication linkages. Such linkages allow for the rapid dissemination of information, but more importantly, these linkages provide a social bond. The relationships established and maintained through gossip are important elements in the human contact that binds small communities. Aside from the binding function, stores also offer a kind of forum for discussion. Taxes, illness, foxhunting, and an innumerable list of other topics arise during store talk. To find out what topics are on the minds of people, the store is probably unparalleled as a place for speech. This public forum aspect of store talk appears similar to the kinds of talking that Clark (1964, pp. 35-54) referred to in his monograph on stores in the American South. There is something particularly rural about the interaction occurring at country stores. Perhaps it is the presence of the farming economy that gives periodic free time for men to set their work aside and seek out others. Another factor could be the need to discuss farming topics such as crops, methods, equipment, or prices. In any case, the store provides a setting away from the home where men can go to talk to other men. Store talk also functions in the maintenance of male role identities in Chestnut Flat. The store is a place for talk among men. Other speech settings are principally for males too, but the store offers 120 �ready access at various times of the day and evening. Part of the male role identity is to demonstrate an ease of conversing about certain topics (farming, hunting, etc.) with other men. Another aspect of male role identity is having time available for talking at the store. As Matthews noted in a Tennessee ridge community, "One of the most respectable activities for men is to loaf and loiter with other men" (1965, p. 86). Unlike other cultures in which loafing might be viewed as a waste of time or an unfavorable sign of laziness, in Chestnut Flat, loafing is acceptable, even necessary behavior for a man. Talking at the store not only functions as a means of sharing information, but as a way of providing vital involvement in a male network. Talking at the store means a man has shown he can freely choose to socialize away from his home on his own terms. This form of interaction has a way of allowing men to mutually confirm their identities much in the same way Watson and Potter suggested: "...sociable interaction gives form to the image of the self and the image of the other; it gives validity and continuity to the identifications which are the source of an individual's self esteem," (1962, p. 246), There is an interesting parallel between store talk in Chestnut Flat and talk at the La Havre Island general store (Bauman, 1972). Both communities are rural and both economies are tied to production of food, seafood in the case of the La Havre Islanders. Bauman notes that talk at the general store is nearly always among males and the most widely discussed topic is fishing. Talking at the La Havre Island general store was more important than any purchases that might be made there. What may be the most striking similarity between the two communities is the role identity function of store talk. As Bauman stated: "Much of what the men felt to be important about themselves could only be imparted to others by telling them about it. By the same token, these were the kinds of things each man wanted to know about others. The sessions at the store represented a forum in which this information could be exchanged (1972, p. 336). We see, then, in two separate societies, talk which seems to be performing a similar function, namely the maintenance of a male role identity. Aside from being a noteworthy social phenomenon, role enactment here reserves for speech a special quality. Talk becomes a valuable form of interaction, enjoyed for its own sake apart from instrumental purposes. Talking is part of the competence males in these two societies must have in order to be members of the group. As such, talk in the community store ought to be regarded as a significant activity not to be overlooked by students of Appalachian culture. Summary and Conclusion This paper discussed talk in stores in an Appalachian community. A framework for observing store talk was presented along with an application of the framework to observed instances of interaction in stores. Store talk was analyzed as an activity functioning to enable male role enactment in the community. The structure and function of talk in Appalachian stores can reveal some of the intricacies of verbal interaction in communities. As an arena for speech, grocery stores are rich sources of insight into social behavior. While store talk's functions are quite important, talk can also be viewed as a significant activity which in its own right deserves comment. This paper has been an effort toward that end. 121 �References Cites Bauman, Richard. "The La Havre Island General Store: Sociability and Verbal Art in a Nova Scotia Community," Journal of American Folklore, 85, 1972, pp. 330-343. Clark, Thomas D. Pills, Petticoats, andPlows: The Southern Country Store. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964. Coles, Robert. Migrants, Sharecroppers, Mountaineers. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1972. Gumperz, John and Hymes, Dell (eds.). Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1972. Halliday, Michael A.K. Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Inerpretation ofLanugage and Meaning. Baltimore: University Park Press, 1978. Hicks, George L. Appalachian Valley. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1976. Hymes, Dell. Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1974. Matthews, Elmora Messer. Neighbor and Kin: Life in a Tennessee Ridge Community. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1965. Williams, Gratis. "Who are the Southern Mountaineers?" in Higgs, Robert and Manning, Ambrose (eds.), Voices from the Hills: Selected Readings of Southern Appalachia. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1975, pp. 493-506. Wolfram, Walt and Christian, Donna. Appalachian Speech. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1976. Appendix A Descriptive Framework 'Linguistic varieties: What linguistic varieties (languages, dialects, nonverbal codes) are used in the community? 'Linguistic Units of Description: What are the local categories of speech events and speech acts? 'Settings: What are the times and places which serve as bounds or contexts of speech usages? Participants: What are the possible categories of participants in the uses of speech? 'Ends: What are the ends, goals, or purposes of the speech usage under consideration? 'Act sequences: What are the individual speech utterances and how to they function in a speech event? In what order to related acts in a speech event occur? 'Key: What are the various keys, tones, manners in which a message may be delivered? 'Norms: What are the specific behaviors and properties that accompany speech usages? 9 Genres: What are the categories of speech such as poem, story, oration, etc., which are present in speech events? 122 �Locally Produced Religious Broadcasts in the Mountains of Northwest North Carolina Howard Dorgan If you were to find yourself traveling through the mountains of northwest North Carolina on a Sunday morning and were to switch on your radio you would immediately be introduced to one of the phenomena that have characterized the life-style of this region—the extemporaneously programmed, highly emotional, culturally interesting, locally produced religious broadcast. The station to which you would be turned would probably be WATA, Boone, North Carolina; WKSK, West Jefferson, North Carolina; WJPT, Newland, North Carolina; or WMCT, Mountain City, Tennessee; and if you were to stay with that station for any length of time you would hear a series of religious happenings—few of which were planned and probably none of which were rehearsed—with titles such as "The Morning Star Gospel Program," The Old Fashion Gospel Time," "Gospel Airwaves," and "The Bread of Life Gospel Service." The sponsoring group might be identified as the Calvary Baptist Church, Damascus, Virginia; Mountain Union Baptist Church, Lancing, North Carolina; Shaun's Mission Church, Shaun's Mill, Tennessee; The Full Gospel Fellowship, Creston, North Carolina; or Rainbow Chapel, Sugar Grove, North Carolina. This paper will examine three aspects of these colorful media happenings: (1) the improvisational nature of the productions, (2) the delivery styles of these mountain preachers, and (3) the rhetorical themes that predominate within their sermons. The Improvisational Nature of the Productions As was mentioned above, these broadcasts appear to be only minimally planned and never rehearsed. In fact, it is a basic tenet among mountain preachers that they should not prepare their remarks; to do so would exclude the possibility of on-the-spot divine inspiration. Indeed, as this mountain preacher begins his sermon he usually asks his congregation, or the listeners "out in radioland," to pray for him as he searches for the message "God wants him to preach." Thus he claims merely to be the Deity's instrument of communication. If he falters that morning, if his sermon does not rise to inspirational heights, it is simply because on that day the Lord has chosen not to use him. This trait of improvisation carries over into the entire production—the question of what songs will be sung and to whom dedicated, the question of who will lead the various prayers, the question of who will give testimonies, and even the question of who will preach. The author has witnessed numerous situations in which a visiting "brother" has entered a studio and immediately been asked to "say a few words for the Lord." Indeed, on one occasion the author was asked if he would like to say a few words himself. 123 �Most broadcasts have a basic format to follow, but what happens within the loose confines of that format is left very much to spur-of-the-moment decisions. To understand fully these free-form happenings, however, the reader must visualize the typical setting for these broadcasts. To begin, there are only perhaps a half-dozen persons who are the regular personnel of one of these radio producations. There will be the preacher, perhaps his wife to make the various announcements and lead the singing, a piano player or a guitarist, and three or four singers. But these will not be the only persons who typically are crowded into the small production studio. The walls will be lined with friends and supporters, each of whom may only occasionally drop by to take part in these radio services. For example, a person will wander in to give the preacher 10 dollars for the continued support of the broadcast and then remain to help sing, to contribute to the "Amens," "Hallelujahs," and "Praise Gods," and even to contribute a testimonial. Regular supporters of the program do not hesitate to drop in and participate, frequently walking in on a show in progress. But always that supporter will be immediately greeted, perhaps on the air by name, and occasionally by requesting that he say a word or two to the radio audience. Such practices give these individuals a sense of importance and cultivate a body of followers who feed off these experiences, both in terms of self-image and spirituality. Thus, to a large degree, the programs become Sunday get-togethers of old friends and neighbors and are listened to probably as much for this old-friends-andacquaintances factor as for the purely religious factor. With a show such as the "Morning Star Gospel Program," which has been broadcast over WATA, Boone, North Carolina, at 9:00 every Sunday morning for 33 years, this old-friends-and-acquaintances factor can become extremely strong. While observing one particular broadcast the author witnessed the arrival of an elderly supporter—some 10 minutes after the show had begun—and saw the entire program group crowd around him to give hearty greetings to the "brother." The gentleman had been in a hospital for some weeks, and the group was obviously glad to see him return. Nevertheless, during all this the mikes were left unattended and listeners were treated to a jumbled sound of background noises. Finally the preacher brought the radio audience up-to-date with what was happening. Returning to the topic of the improvisational nature of the sermons themselves, it should be observed that there are several tricks of the trade that are employed by these preachers to facilitate this free-form style. We will see later—in our discussion of delivery—that these preachers speak at a very rapid rate. As a result they do not have much time to think about what comes next and must develop some of these tricks to keep the rhetoric flowing. First, an interesting partnership often develops between the preacher and some of his helpers relative to idea generation. These helpers—his within-the-studio congregation—are frequently throwing out comments of their own in the form of responses. The preacher then feeds off these comments and thus manages to keep his own thoughts flowing. Although in most cases one of these responses would only be an "Amen," "a Hallelujah," a "Bless him, Lord," or the like, in some instances it will take a "Tell us about " form. One preacher who has a regular program on the Mountain City, Tennessee, station—Brother James Simms, pastor of the Shaun's Mission Church—has developed an interesting rhetorical partnership with the woman who leads the singing for his show. Simms begins to preach so fast and furiously that after a while he loses his train of thought and begins to run down. Whenever this happens the woman in question simply throws out a bit of miscellaneous scripture, which usually has little or no relationship to what Simms has been saying. Nevertheless, Simms picks up the verses of scripture as his new theme and once again climbs to heights of eloquence. 124 �Another trick is that these preachers regularly employ what classical rhetorical theorists have called ' 'commonplaces,'' modular units of thought—or lines of argument—that can be memorized and integrated into messages in numerous combinations and for various effects. A verse of scripture and its interpretation, the recounting of a personal experience, a dire admonition, or a timely element of theological dogma can be pulled from the memory upon demand and used to illustrate, support, or extend the particular point of the moment. A final trick to be discussed relates to the preachers' uses of their own "Amen," "Hallelujahs," "Praise Gods," etc. as vocal segregates that in the same instance both fill space and slow down the flow of substantive rhetoric, thus giving the speaker more time to formulate thoughts. We will look at how this technique works by examining a sample of mountain religious radio rhetoric, again using Brother James Simms as our exemplar. On November 18, 1973, Simms delivered the following passage during his regularly scheduled radio sermon. Throughout his message Simms maintained a gasping rhythmical pattern that will be discussed later in this paper, and he employed the "Come on, Churchn" and "Amen!" interjections to whip his small studio congregation into a paroxysm of religious fervor. When they responded with their own "Amens," "Praise Gods," and "Help him, Lords" they provided a counter rhythm similar to the respondent effect in Gregorian chanting. Simm's part of the exchange went as follows: Neighbor, when the inside gets saved (gasp) the outside does too. (gasp) Come on, Church! Amen! Hallelujahn! (gasp) You can't wash teacups (gasp) unless you get the outside clean, (gasp) Come on, Church! Amen! (gasp) If you put it in the water— (gasp) Glory to God! Amen! Hallelujah (gasp) If you repent before God— (gasp) and go down in the water (gasp) of baptism in Jesus's name, (gasp) you got to be clean, (gasp) Come on, Church! Amen! (gasp) That's what's wrong (gasp) With a bunch of people today, (gasp) They go down a dry sinner (gasp) and come up a wet sinner, (gasp) The "Amens" and "Hallelujahs" that Simms and other mountain preachers interject into their rhetoric are not necessarily used as affirmations of the statements which they immediately follow. Indeed, the preacher might be in the middle of naming some social or theological evil when he throws in a "Praise God." If taken literally, the "Praise God" would pronounce approval of the evil. This, however, is not the preacher's intent. Notice how this principle works in the passage that follows, particularly the "Praise God" after "you're a-bound for hell." The excerpt was taken from a radio sermon sponsored by the Full Gospel Fellowship Church of Creston, North Carolina. The preacher was identified only as Brother Priest. So many people, Amen, (gasp) are just a preaching for money, (gasp) The love of money— (with rising inflection) Amen!—is all they're after, (gasp) 125 �Not for the soul of man. (gasp) Praise God! (gasp) If we lay aside (gasp) the lust of luxury (gasp) and all these things (with rising inflection) and get with the work of the Lord— (gasp) Amen! I'm a-talking, (gasp) Amen, to the preachers (gasp) out in this land and country, (gasp) Amen! If you're out there, (gasp) Amen, and a-preaching for money, (gasp) Amen, and not for the soul (with rising inflection) Amen, you're (gasp) a-bound for hell, (gasp) Praise God, (gasp) just as sure (with rising inflection) as I'm standing here (gasp) this afternoon, (gasp) Amen! (gasp) Delivery Styles These two brief examples of the rhythmical style of mountain preaching should lead us naturally into a discussion of delivery factors. Typically the mountain preacher begins his sermon at a slow pace, almost drawling out his opening remarks. He may have a few words to say about the joys of the day—the blessings that he and his listeners have received "at the hands of the Lord." Then he may issue a special welcome to someone in the studio—or out in the listening audience—who has been ill and has just been released from a hospital, and he may, as was indicated earlier, ask for prayers relative to the message "the Lord is about to provide." Usually this preacher employs the scripture reading to start his build, cautiously testing his voice, the tempo, and the "spirit," lest some hasty and not properly prepared passion burn out his oratorical wick before the fuel catches. Indeed, this is often the roughest part of the preacher's performance, since he tends not to be a good reader. He may stumble over words, misplace emphases, and generally confuse meaning. But he reads with conviction and fervor, even when he misreads. Occasionally there will be a false start or two as the preacher attempts to move from his scripture to the more rapidly paced rhythmic delivery of his sermon. At these moments he may subside, fumble awkardly in search of inspiration, read another verse or two of scripture, then catch the spirit and begin his climb once more. By the time this spirit and his homiletic theme have developed, the preacher's delivery will have accelerated in pacing, volume, and intensity until it has reached a kind of climactic plateau from which the speaker can climb no further. The physical limits of his voice and the mental restraints imposed by the demands of impromptu speech at such speed usually hold him at this plateau. He may occasionally drop down to rest or to regain inspiration, but for the most part he "hangs his toes in the heavens" and proclaims his message with all the passion he can muster. Now speaking at a rate of approximately °&& hundred words per minute and intoning his message in staccato bursts of rhetoric that are similar to irregular lines of unrhymed verse, with an occasional phrase that rises like an auctioneer's chant and approaches song, the preacher pours out his words with such a flow that at the end of each linear segment he gasps for air. It is this gasp, a 126 �sharp, bark-like sound, that constitutes the dominant beat in his rhythm and that is usually thought of as the hallmark of the Appalachian mountain sermonic style. An accomplished mountain preacher is able to maintain this rhythm even when integrating scripture into his sermons or when extemporaneously shifting from one unit of thought to another. Furthermore, once the initial climb has been completed and the speed and rhythm have been established, the preacher maintains this level of delivery until he slows down for one of his breathers. This means that everything is run together as if it were one long continuous thought. In fact it is often difficult to distinguish where one sentence ends and another begins. The following passage from a July 17, 1977, radio sermon by Brother Earl Sexton of West Jefferson, North Carolina, was all part of one climactic plateau. At no time did Sexton break the rhythm or slow the 200-plus words-per-minute rate of delivery, even when inserting scripture into his message. But thank God that light (gasp) has shined down into our hearts, (gasp) that guiding morning star (gasp) that Jesus said he was (gasp) there in the Book of Revelations, (gasp) Read that "I am the bright and Morning Star." (gasp) And again He said, "To him that overcometh (gasp) will I give the Morning Star." (gasp) Thank God for that Morning Star today/ (gasp) We read of wearied and down, (gasp) in a world of darkness, (gasp) And things are getting darker every day. (gasp) But praise God this morning, (gasp) amid all this darkness, (gasp) any child of God (sung with rising inflection) that can see the Morning Star (gasp) because it's a shining in your heart, (gasp) But thank God this morning (gasp) the Morning Star is shining, (gasp) And we come on up to the time (gasp) when Jesus built the church here in the world, (gasp) He went away for a period of time, (gasp) He's not come back yet. (gasp) But He's coming one of these days, (gasp) He told the disciples when He gathered them there, (gasp) just before He went back to the Father, (gasp) He said, "Let not your heart be troubled, (sung with rising inflection) Ye believe in God. Believe also in me. (sung with rising inflection) In my Father's house there are many mansions, (gasp) If it were not so I would have told you. (gasp) I go and prepare a place for you. (sung with rising inflection) And if I go I come again (sung with rising inflection) and receive you into myself, (gasp) that where I am (gasp) there you may be also." (gasp) Rhetorical Themes That Predominate Within These Sermons Nothing in our discussion of delivery should suggest that these mountain radio sermons are all style and no substance. These preachers know that their listeners will not pardon them for being 127 �anything other than real persons. This means that they must occasionally address themselves to the problems of ordinary life. It further means that in so addressing themselves they must employ the language and advance the values of the people. They must never try to rise above the congregations that they lead. Instead, they must recognize and declare their own commonness and thus their own vulnerability. The messages that they relate tend to be plebeian ones, colored by religious fundamentalism and social conservatism. They are laced with the values to which mountain congregations ascribe, and they expressed in imagery that is "down home" and uncultivated. There is much discussion of such common problems as drinking; marital discord—including infidelity; proper roles within families—father, mother, child; social cohesiveness in churches—the danger of congregational splits; the traditional thou-shall-nots—various scriptural admonitions, particularly the Ten Commandments; and the certainties of heaven and hell—streets of gold and hell fire and damnation. According to most of these sermons the task of distinguishing between the godly act and the ungodly one is a fairly simple dialectic process: Is the act just (the do-unto-others-as-you-wouldhave-them-do-unto-you principle), and is the act in accordance with scriptural commandments? There is little patience for more sophisticated views on social morality. One you should take the Bible literally, and "Brother, you'd better know where you stand," Brother Arvel Hardy of Doe Ridge, North Carolina, told his radio audience: Because there's so many doctrines— (gasp) so many corruptible things in this world— (gasp) so many people changing the world of God (gasp) and saying, "It's all right, Brother, to do this." (gasp) But, Brother, sin's sin. (gasp) Black's black and white's white, (gasp) I don't care how you look at it, or what you make of it. (gasp) Brother, you can rub it down (gasp) and smooth it out, (gasp) but still underneath it's still black sin, (gasp) and corruptible sin, (gasp) sending men and women to a devil's hell, (gasp) Brothers, that's the way it is, (gasp) and the only way it's gonna be. (gasp) One aspect of this "only way it's gonna be" relates to traditional gender roles, and here mountain preachers tend to maintain positions that would infuriate supporters of the feminist movement. The author's favorite passage in illustration of this point comes not from a radio sermon but from an October 8, 1975, revival sermon preached by Brother Vance Triplet!. That night Brother Triplet! was addressing the congregation of Bethany Baptist Church in the Matney community of Watauga County, North Carolina, and spoke on the theme "When Men Do Down." Taking as his scriptural base a passage in the first chapter of Ruth which states simply that Elimelech "went down" into Moab, Triplet! delivered a disjointed account of several examples of how men "go down." For the most part these were homey stories illustrating the violation of basic TenCommandment virtues. The account he gave of the man who went to work for TRW serves as an illustration of the point being made here. Prior to his "going down" this man had been a solid mountain citizen, attentive to his wife and children and to his occupation of being a farmer and part-time carpenter. His ruination, however, 128 �began when he left that farm and went to work for TRW, a manufacturer of electronic components, with a plant in Boone, North Carolina: They put this friend, Amen, (gasp) in charge of a bunch of women, Amen, (gasp) there at that TRW plant, (gasp) I want you to know, Amen, (gasp) when men give in to the flesh (gasp) they go down. Amen/ (gasp) They go down/ (with rising inflection) That plant manager put him in charge, Amen, (gasp) of this bunch of women, (gasp) And he saw them every day. (gasp) And he walked among them every day. (gasp) And he smiled at them every day. (gasp) And they smiled at him every day. (gasp) And he went down, (gasp) and under, (gasp) and beneath, (gasp) and below, (gasp) and down/ (gasp) 'Til he forgot the spirit (gasp) and gave in to the flesh, (falling inflection) It should be noted immediately that the writer saw in Triplett's demeanor no evidence of a conscious use of this passage for sexual titillation. He did not smile, and his audience certainly did not respond with knowing chuckles. The "down, and under, and beneath, and below" ending seemed to have been nothing more than a stylistic flourish. But the main point is that Brother Triplet! made it clear that the real problem in this situation was caused not by the man, but by the women: they were out of their proper element—the home. He communicated this position clearly when, after he finished the story, he leaned across the pulpit and said, "Now, Mothers, you know we love you. Amen? You know we love you. But you've got your place in this world. Amen, you've got your place." Women, therefore, should first of all be mothers. Their place is in the home, and when they move out of the house in any great number society is thrown out of kilter. Under such circumstances both men and women have to be on their guard against social disintegration. The Outspoken Directness of the Messages Mountain preachers are frequently very explicit when naming sins and sinners, even over the radio. An excellent example of this occurred on November 18, 1973, when Brother Albert Tester of Sugar Grove, North Carolina, was making some announcements at the beginning of his "Gospel Time" broadcast over the Mountain City station. "We received a letter this week," announced Brother Tester, that on November 4th Sister Morefield was called to be with the Lord....I'd like to pass on a prayer request to you people. The Mrs. Morefield whom God called home—her husband, Robert Morefield, is unsaved, up in years, and unprepared to meet God. Robert, if you're listening to me today—which I understand you do listen to me—God loves you, and God wants to save you. And all these years that has passed, you still have an opportunity today. Robert, will you give that heart and life to God today and let Him save you? Because then you can pass on over yonder to be with your wife in the presence of God. But if you refuse and go out to meet God unprepared you'll never see her again, because you'll have to go down to that awful lake of fire and brimstone. 129 �Tester did not stop here. He went on for another two minutes with this message—voiced over a very public medium—directed specifically and very personally at Brother Robert Morefield. The episode is recounted here to illustrate the basic assumption to which many mountain preachers ascribe—that they have a right, given by God, to reprimand any and all of the spiritually errant. So Brother Albert Tester does not hesitate to tell Mr. Robert Morefield that he is headed straight for perdition. He is, after all, only acting as that instrument of God. He simply points his people toward "known" truths. Futhermore, with God on his side he does not have to issue the reprimand or warning in a personal way—at least not personal in the sense that it is solely Albert Tester issuing the rebuke. Instead it is God using Albert Tester as His medium for the message. Thus the preacher is able to maintain his own humanness—perhaps even his own sinfulness—while leveling some rather harsh charges at his listening congregation. 130 �One-room School Life in Appalachian Kentucky James M. Gifford, Ph.D. Introduction The following paper is an oral history dialogue on one-room school life in early twentieth century Appalachian Kentucky. The two speakers are representative figures. The narrator (N) is a person of the 1980s whose questions and observations reflect the advantages of synthesis and hindsight. The teacher (T) is a composite of dozens of former one-room school teachers who were interviewed for this project. The teacher's response is either one former teacher's representative observations or it is a blend of several speakers whose remembrances combine to provide sufficient detail. The result is a two-person drama that, while purposely anachronistic at times, provides a former teacher's perspective—in his/her own words—on one-room school life. Most of these former teachers are still living; many are still active in the community where they once taught, and a few are still teaching. For that reason, all personal name references have been removed from the text. The following selection is the first stage in what I hope will eventually emerge as a book-length study. Like most scholars, I have accumulated numerous debts of assistance, and I want to acknowledge the bountiful aid and encouragement of many people. Many Morehead State University graduate students who are also full-time public school teachers in Eastern Kentucky conducted one major interview that is incorporated into the 500- page transcript from which the following article is excerpted. These interviewers include Lu Ann S. Asbury, Henry Boone, Connie Clayton, Carolyn S. Cogswell, Danny Cummins, Betty Dorsey, Gary Griffith, Betty Hamilton, Randy Harrison, Judy Hawkins, Cheryl Herrin, Katie Hunt, Carol Klaber, Willa Meadows, Edith Curry Newdigate, Carol Norris, Donna K. Phillips, Jimmie Staton, and Kay Strode. I also wish to thank three Graduate Assistants who provided significant help at various stages of transcription, compilation, and analysis: Vicky Riddle Horton, Kirstina Shepherd Campbell, and Claudette Pennington Green. Mrs. Eleanor Kersey, Jesse Stuart Foundation consultant, participated in several public presentations of this project. I especially wish to thank Philip W. Conn, Morehead State University Vice President for University and Regional Services, for his support of this and all projects related to MSU's Appalachian Studies Program. The most delightful source of local information was Mrs. S.D. Foster of Ashland, a former one-room school teacher and Moonlight School Teacher, who devoted many days over the last several years providing information and inspiration for this project. Finally, in deep appreciation for her love and sacrificies, I dedicate this work to my late grandmother, Clara M. Clark, a former one-room school teacher who set standards of personal and professional conduct that guide my life. Whatever I have done thus far that is of value and whatever good I may yet accomplish is a monument to her. Oftentimes, scholars study change efforts in Appalachia by examining major institutions of American life, like the Church, or complex social engineering projects, like the New Deal or The 131 �Appalachian Regional Commission. Indeed, a general tendency in studying change is to examine "large-scale efforts." However, one of the greatest engines for change efforts in Appalachia was one of the mountain's smallest institutions—the one-room school In the nineteenth century, these early schools were located within walking distance of a few families who could pay the teacher. By the early twentieth century nothing had changed except that the teacher was paid by the county. During the 1918-19 school year, Kentucky had its largest number of one-room schools in operation—7,076. By 1968-69, the number had dwindled to 146. All were in Eastern Kentucky. Today (1983) there are still three one-room schools operating in isolated hamlets of Appalachian Kentucky. An examination of one-room school life in Appalachian Kentucky during the period 1900-1940 reveals that these tiny schools that dotted the hills and hollows were, collectively, a salvation to a region that was still suffering the tragic effects of the Civil War. What these schools lacked (measured by today's standards) in modern conveniences, they overcame with students who were willing to endure hardships in order to learn and improve themselves and teachers who were dedicated champions of progress and learning. Who were these forgotten heroes and heroines that Jesse Stuart termed "immortal teachers"? Most of them did not give poverty a chance to impede their love of learning. We were a poor family; my parents had a hard time making a living. My father was sick. He had asthma and died at age 56. I was only twelve years old. I always loved school. I was always afraid I would have to miss. My mother used to say I would worry her every morning about giving out my spelling words. I would hear the school bell ring and jump up and down saying, "Hurry, Mom; give out my spelling. I'm going to be late for school"—which was only a short distance. I just liked school. From the time I grew up I played school and wanted to be a teacher. At that time teaching was the best opportunity for a woman. The one-room school teachers all shared a desire to help individuals and promote the best interests of their community. I decided to be a teacher after I talked to this man who couldn't read or write. Every Saturday afternoon, Pop would bring him into the room to pay him, and he would sit down. And if there was a magazine, or book, or anything anyways near, he'd pick that up and go thumbing through it and look at it, and he'd say, "My, how I wish I could read." And he'd say, "Now what is this? What does this say?" And then I would read it for him, you know. So I made up my mind, then and there: if I was a secretary I would be just helping one person, and if I taught school I could help lots of people. Some young people became certified teachers by taking a qualifying examinations that was developed annually by the State Department of Education and carefully administered by the County Superintendent. A retired teacher from Mason County remembers: That's the way I got my first teaching certificate, by examination taken at the superintendent's office. The questions were sent out by the state, and you spent the bigger part of two days in an essay-type test. And then they were sent to the state department to be graded. And if you made a passing grade, they issued you a certificate. Others received teacher certification from college training. One left home to attend Berea College and, like many youngsters away from home for the first time, became quite homesick. Oh yes; I cried. When I went to chapel on Sunday night they'd play "Home Sweet Home." And I was sitting close to a boy that was from my home and I didn't know him at that time. I cried 132 �and he'd call me "Cry baby." I'd say, "Shut your mouth/" And then he'd call me "Cry baby" again. After completing the eighth grade in a one-room school, another went to Morehead Normal School. The normal schools were for training teachers. I started there in 1923 and graduated in 1925—didn't graduate, we received a teaching certificate for two years' work. Many became teachers because economic and social conditions blocked other professional opportunities. Although my grandmother said many of us became teachers because we liked to "be boss", I don't think I chose to be a teacher. Economic conditions really made me become a teacher. The great depression was four years old—there was no money anyplace. I had wanted to be a lawyer or an interpreter in the Diplomatic Corps. The duties of teaching in a one-room school were broad-ranging. One former teacher remembers: "Having to do the floors with oil. See, we came right off a muddy creek place and the floor was usually muddy, and about three times a year we'd have to oil, see, so that the dust just wouldn't suffocate us." The one-room school teacher was also nurse, counselor, janitor, playground director, and lunchroom supervisor. In spite of the hard work and long hours, the pay was very low. From 1845 to 1934 trustees were responsible for appointing teachers and maintaining schools. A trustee often considered more than teaching credentials when making an appointment. I wanted to go back to teaching, but that was in the '30s, during the Depression. It was hard for a woman teacher who was married and had a husband who had a job to get a job, when there were some men that needed work. I had to go to Happy Hollow to teach that year. I had to take what was left. They were thinking about the men. Nepotism was another factor which influenced hiring decisions. Each school district had a trustee at that time empowered to hire a teacher for his school—but not from his family. This was circumvented by hiring some other district trustee's family member and then, with the blessing of the five-member county Board of Education, "swapping" schools. My dad was trustee. Not surprisingly, some of the trustees were bribed from time to time. Much to the discredit of some of the people who served as trustees, it was said that some of them in some localities sold the position to the highest bidder. Students and teachers looked forward to "recess periods." Sometimes neighbors and family members would come and play with the children: "It was a cordial, amicable sort of situation." Students entertained themselves playing baseball, Annie Over, Drop the Handkerchief, and many other schoolyard games. They generally always made up their own games and, you know, of course I always played with them. From twelve noon to one was dinner time. Those who lived near went home to eat; the others ate quickly—in nice weather, outside—and headed to the play yard. The older girls would sprinkle the floor with water and sweep out the accumulated dirt. Fresh water was drawn—if a bug was in the pail it was dipped out. If a lizard or snake was around the well box, it necessitated the big boys to come kill it. The four windows and door were open. Fat flies, wasps, bumblebees and butterflies wafted in and out. Occasionally, we had a bird pay a visit. 133 �Students and teachers looked forward to "recess periods." Sometimes neighbors and family members would come and play with the children: "It was a cordial, amicable sort of situation." Students entertained themselves playing baseball, Annie Over, Drop the Handkerchief, and many other schoolyard games. They generally always made up their own games and, you know, of course I always played with them. From twelve noon to one was dinner time. Those who lived near went home to eat; the others ate quickly—in nice weather, outside—and headed to the play yard. The older girls would sprinkle the floor with water and sweep out the accumulated dirt. Fresh water was drawn—if a bug was in the pail it was dipped out. If a lizard or snake was around the well box, it necessitated the big boys to come kill it. The four windows and door were open. Fat flies, wasps, bumblebees and butterflies wafted in and out. Occasionally, we had a bird pay a visit. Most children had sufficient food for lunch, but nothing fancy. Snacks or anything store-bought was out. There just wasn't any money to buy. They had meat and biscuits. Canned fruit that had been preserved during the summer or apples that were kept in the root cellar was often found in the lunchboxes. Usually something sweet in the way of cookies or cake was found. Occasionally someone had money to buy peanut butter, which was ideal for the lunch. This was often mixed with cream, probably to stretch the peanut butter and make the choking less. Few one-room school teachers faced dramatic and frightening confrontations like the bloody fight that Jesse Stuart had with Guy Hawkins in Lonesome Valley. You did not have any discipline problems then. As far as discipline was concerned, we didn't have too much trouble in those times. They knew what "no" meant, but they don't today do they? If I had serious discipline problems, the memory has faded. Corporal punishment was the order of the day for infractions. I was hardly five feet tall and weighed barely 100 pounds, but I was tough and mean. I could not allow any breech in my authority. If some problem did arise over fighting, truancy, or failure to get assignments, a note to the parent would suffice. My grandfather, father, and four aunts had taught in that building before me and the community judged I knew what I was doing. What kind of discipline did you use? A paddle. In must schools, a teacher had to maintain his/her credibility as a disciplinarian. If students knew they were going to be punished, they rarely misbehaved. And if parents knew their children were fairly punished, they were almost always supportive of the teacher. Disciplinary measures usually produced desired results. There was a little boy that would ride to school with me and he was just a little thing; he was about five years old. And one day we were eating dinner and he wouldn't eat his dinner. He was just playing. The older children were running over his dinner bucket and I told him: "Get your bucket, honey, and if you're not going to eat your dinner, put your lid on your bucket and take it in the house." And he said, "Well I'm not gonna do it!" And I said, "Oh yes you will," and I picked up a little stick and started towards him. And he just got that bucket in the house as fast as he could go. He never did tell me he wasn't gonna do anything anymore. Infrequently, however, disciplinary situations emerged that tested a teacher's commitment and courage. On one occasion, a young scholar was kept after school because she had not completed her spelling lesson. Eventually, her father, an irate giant of a man, arrived on the scene. 134 �And he said, "Moll, get your books and come on home. That little old teacher ain't going to tell you what to do or not let you have your dinner. You just get your books and come on home." Well, I was petrified. He just scared the heart and soul out of me. I tell you I was really frightened, and I thought, I have to say something, and I said, "Now, you know that you was the very first person that came to me and congratulated me when I got this school. And you said you knew I'd be a good teacher, and you wanted me to help your children get a good education." And, "Now look what you're doing. If we don't have discipline in this school, we can't have any school." And, "If I can't have discipline, I'm gonna quit; If this child gets by with this, then all the rest of them's going to try the same." He said, "I don't care. You ain't telling my kid what to do. And that ain't half: before the day is over, my wife is coming up with a butcher knife and cut your head off!" Not surprisingly, the teacher posted one student to watch the road and another to have her pony saddled and ready for a rapid getaway at the end of the day. On the way home she encountered the angry parents, who were on their way for a "parent-teacher conference". After much discussion, however, the parents became sympathetic to the teacher's viewpoint and even invited her to dinner. Needless to say, I thought of a million excuses, 'cause I certainly wasn't going down there with the man and woman both. I knew they could do a good job of cutting my head off if I ever got down to the house. So I never did go to their home. But after that they was just the best friends I had. On another occasion, a schoolyard fight between members of feuding families resulted in "reinforcements" from one family arriving at school the next day. Several had been in trouble before and one had killed a man. After school started, these bully boys remained in the schoolyard playing ball and waiting. After several interruptions, the teacher decided to confront them. "Boys, we're trying to have school in here, and the law is on our side, so I think you boys better leave.'' To my surprise, and much to my relief, each one of them had a bat or ball or something, and they turned around and laid their balls and bats on the ground and went over the hill. The routine of school life was occasionally shattered by special social activities. Generally speaking, these socials fell into two categories: day-time events for the students that centered around either holidays or scholastic competitions; or evening activities, like pie suppers, which were community socials that also provided operating funds for the school. I remember that on one Christmas we had a tree and a Santa Claus. The father who was the Santa Claus walked up to his small son and spoke to him, but the child was so frightened he jumped under the first seat in a row and crawled under the seats to the back of the room. He didn't know it was his father then, did he? No, he didn't know it was his father. But most of the older ones did and the people visiting did, so that brought a big laugh out of all the people. On another occasion, when we were having our Christmas entertainment, I had a large boy who was playing the part of Santa Claus—and the quarters, naturally, were small—and he was dressing behind a curtain in very crowded conditions and probably became frustrated with hurrying, and he got the top part of him dressed and he stepped out to perform without getting his pants on. Needless to say, this just about broke up the entertainment that day. Frequently on Friday afternoons after a hectic week we'd have a spelling bee or an arithmetic match. It was surprising sometimes how long those third and fourth graders could stand and spell. And some of those kids were almost human computers in arithmetic. 135 �We had no PTA or other organization to help, but the parents were always willing to help. At least once a year we'd have a pie supper to raise some revenue for school supplies. Transportation to and from school, measured by today's standards, ranked somewhere between inconvenient and impossible. Everyone—students and teachers—usually walked. It was not uncommon for children to face a three-mile walk each way. Sometimes teachers rode a horse or pony. Other came in a horse-drawn buggy. By the 1930s, some were driving to school. The automobile, however, did not greatly facilitate travel because of bad roads and isolated schools. I walked through the fields in the winter. I think, sometimes, how could I do that every morning and night, in all kinds of weather. There were no "snow days" in the one-room schools. The teacher and the students "bundled up" and walked through the snow. Many wrapped newspapers around their legs before walking through the snow to school. For the most part, transportational "difficulties" were accepted as part of the rugged, no-frills way of life in early twentieth century Appalachian Kentucky. Today, parents would worry and children would complain about a six-mile round trip to attend school. At the time, however, this walk often provided an exciting time of unsupervised recreation for young people who experienced real (or imagined) adventures that soon became an exciting part of the history and folklore of one-room school life. The school day began at 8:00 a.m. At five minutes of, I pulled the bell rope. The students lined up, boys on one side, girls on the other of the porch. They marched in to their seats. Then we had roll call and a ten-minute devotional service—it might be a section from the Bible, a recitation, or the Ten Commandments, or each child might recite a Bible verse. We'd say the Lord's Prayer, give the Pledge of Allegiance, all with the same reverence. God first, though, then Country; we knew our priorities. 4:00 p.m. was dismissal time. (I'm exhausted right now from thinking about it.) You can understand that on this treadmill every night I carried home pounds of papers to grade and duly inscribe so that I could fill out grade cards at the end of the month. The school was of frame construction. It normally had a front door that faced the road or path, three windows on each side of the building, and a painted blackboard across the back. Two long recitation benches faced the teacher's desk and blackboard. Rows of desks or benches, a water bucket, and a warm morning stove concluded the list of basic equipment. Building a fire every morning in the old pot-bellied stove wasn't exactly something I loved. The school board furnished coal but no kindling. After a few days I gave a boy who lived nearby a key and for five cents a day he'd have a roaring fire each morning and he furnished his kindling. This job had to be rotated because others wanted that nickel a day. In most schools, there was also an American Flag, a picture of George Washington and/or Abraham Lincoln, a globe, a dictionary, and a Bible. All teachers of the county met in mid-July at the county seat for two days of orientation and to gather their supplies. I really don't remember much about what went on at the meetings except I was given an attendance book and the names, ages, and grades of my students, plus a book of standards the state department expected. Late the second day I went to a room in the courthouse where an official issued my supplies: text books with teacher's manuals, a wooden box of chalk, six felt erasers, a water bucket with a long handled dipper, cursive alphabet chart, and a broom. I had also subscribed to the magazine The Instructor which was a great help. Sometimes a rope to a bell hung from the ceiling. In the corner, nails were driven into two wide boards attached to the walls for students to hang their coats and heavy clothes. 136 �At one end of the lot and playground was the girls' toilet—raw oak, full of splinters—sitting over a creek. In the right front was the boys'. There was no toilet paper. Fortunately, Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward issued thick catalogues. The teachers creatively devised learning materials for their students because, almost without exception, neither the state nor the county supplied books or any other teaching materials. For first graders, I would cut big magazine pictures into pieces and they would put them together, or maybe I'd take a calendar and put the numbers in an envelope, and they'd sit there until they could put the numbers in order. Sometimes local merchants donated supplies. When the candy came with layers of cardboard between the layers of candy, the merchant would save the cardboard for us and that way we could make number cards and flash cards, word cards for the children to use. And it took a lot more work on the part of the teacher because we didn't have the supplies. In many instances, the teachers spent a great deal of their meager earnings on their school and students. And, of course, by the time I got through dressing these children and buying my material I never had anything left. I just might as well have been staying at home. All I was getting was experience. Almost without exception, former one-room school teachers have happy memories about their teaching days and positive thoughts about their accomplishments. Although teaching eight different grades each day was hard on the teacher, the teachers did not feel that the students learned less. Many still take great pride in the accomplishments of students who sat before them fifty years ago. I wouldn't want to trade what we have for the one-room school, but I must say that I'm convinced that some good things have been lost in the transition from the one-room school to our consolidated schools. Some of the "old timers" even felt that the old ways were preferable. A teacher should be able to do much better. The schools are really under fire from every corner now, aren't they? People are sick of supporting a system whose products can't read a newspaper, write a coherent sentence, add up a grocery list, or spell correctly the names of their hometowns. Everybody is calling for the "back to basics." It seems to me that a competency test for teachers has to be derived by somebody. But who is to do it? Certainly not the Colleges of Education. What did you learn there to make you a better teacher? That's what the one-room school was—a great emphasis on basics. One-room school education produced students with a special creativity, a mature self-reliance, and an intensified level of independence. Gradually the thousands who attained these qualities began to elevate the quality of life in their mountain homeland. By the end of World War II, they had restored much of the quiet, survival-oriented rhythms of life on the land that had been shattered almost a century before by the sound of distant drums in Charleston Harbor. In retrospect, it is obvious that today's Appalachian society owes much of its present state of advancement to the thousands and thousands who "learned their basics, and learned them right" in the one-room schools. 137 �Beyond the Quaint and Curious: Folklore Research in Appalachia Elizabeth C. Fine, Assistant Professor Jean Haskell Speer, Associate Professor In the popular mind, folklore and Appalachia are associated with survivals from the past: quilting bees, archaic language, quaint folktales and folksongs, and old handicrafts. Craft fairs and folk festivals throughout Appalachia perpetuate the popular view. Unfortunately, many folklore studies of Appalachia also reinforce this stereotype. As W.K. McNeil points out in his review of Appalachian folklore research, most of it has been devoted to recording "memory culture," or traditions and stories that live only in the minds of older persons. 1 Since most folklorists have simply collected texts or described traditions but have failed to analyze their functions in the culture, they have done little to dispel the notion that folklore is vestigial and quaint, and hardly germane to social studies of the region. Thus, it is no surprise to see contemporary social scientists such as Allan Batteau lodge strong criticisms against the impact of folklore studies on Appalachia. Batteau writes, "The assignment of folk identity to a population permits the treatment of that population as irrelevant. By definition, 'folk' is that which is nonrational, pre-modern, marginal to the modern industrial system." 2 If Batteau's criticism is correct, then folklore may be contributing to exploitation of the region. Batteau's assessment, however, is based more on folklore studies from the past than on contemporary, professional folklore research. Today, most academic folklorists include literate, modern, and even urban peoples within their study. Indeed, current definitions of folklore focus more on the type and quality of "lore" transmitted than on any preconceived definitions of who constitutes the "folk." Thus, Dan Ben-Amos defines folklore as artistic communication in small groups, and Richard Bauman defines folklore as verbal art performance, or an "assumption of accountability to an audience for the way in which communication is carried out...." 3 Like many other contemporary folklorists, Ben-Amos and Bauman view folklore as a dynamic process which reflects and responds to the continuities and changes of life. It is from this contemporary, dynamic performance approach to folklore that we would like to offer a blueprint for folklore studies in Appalachia. We offer these ideas not simply from a theoretical perspective, but from our experience putting these ideas into practice in a two-year oral history and folklore project in Patrick County, Virginia. In designing and implementing the NEH funded project, "Continuity and Change in a Rural Community," we conducted oral history interviews with 100 residents, of all age groups, races, and walks of life. Rather than focusing only on elderly people and memories of the 19th century, we centered our questions on the social history of the twentieth century. The project went beyond simple collection to include a variety of public programs aimed at interpreting and presenting the findings of the oral history and folklore research to the community. In the following pages, we will first outline the design of the Patrick County Project, and then illustrate this dynamic and functional approach to folklore with examples from the folklore of two families. 138 �Project Design The Patrick County Project was designed to explore human experience in a rural, AppalachianAmerican community. Through oral histories, we documented the major changes and the changeagents in the county and the continuities or traditions that have helped county residents cope with or resist change. We hoped county residencts would become more aware of change and tradition and their interworkings in the lives of individuals and the whole community. From taped oral history interviews, transcriptions, and our fieldwork in the county, we developed a series of public programs for presentation to county residents. The public programs synthesized the recorded experiences of county residents and provided a forum for public reflection and comment on change, values, cultural traditions, and some uncomfortable realities of human experience. We used various formats for public programming, including slide-tape presentations, nine thematic folklife programs, and a documentary film about the community. Following the approach of anthropologist Clifford Geertz and others, we used an emic perspective for cultural interpretation in the project. 4 An emic perspective represents the native point of view, focusing on what is recognized and treated as meaningful by members of a particular cultural group. To aid in this process we established a project advisory board of local people, trained local residents as oral history interviewers, and featured local persons in all public programming. The emic perspective kept us mindful throughout the project that while there are verifiable historical "facts" in the life of any community, we all operate from our own perception of those realities. We construct, individually and in concert with members of our communities, a view of the past and present from which we make sense of the world. Even in such a small, rural county as the subject of our project, there are multiple, often competing, sometimes unpleasant views of the reality of local life. To avoid distorting the picture of county experience, we chose interview subjects from all categories in the local spectrum. Although the project featured oral histories and folklife, the project staff and county participants learned more about life in the county today, confirming our belief that the past, including folk traditions, is always about the present. Our work with two county families particularly demostrated the vitality of folk tradition. The Shelor Family In Patrick County, the Shelors are known as a strong, extended family prominent for their musical heritage and community leadership. The patriarch and matriarch of the family, Jesse and Clarice Shelor, come from and have spawned a long line of traditional musicians. Jesse, now in his eighties, learned to play the fiddle at ten years old, and his brother was a mountain singing-school teacher. Clarice, who plays a rollicking piano style, is part of the musically famous Blackard family. Her father, Joseph Blackard, taught singing-schools in the early days of the county, and the community credits him with bringing the first store-bought banjo into the area. Cecil Sharp, the noted English folksong collector, visited Pa Blackard to document his rich musical resources. In the early days of their marriage, Jesse and Clarice journeyed to Bristol, Tennessee, to sing for Ralph Peer of Victor Records, but traveling from Patrick County to Bristol was so difficult, they never returned to join the ranks of Jimmy Rodgers and the Carter family who were recorded at the same time. The Shelors are featured, however, on two record albums. Although most of the Shelor clan still live in Patrick County and all make music together, some family members are particularly accomplished. Bill Shelor, Jesse's cousin, owns fourteen fiddles and teaches shape-note singing in the tradition of his father. Another family cousin, Buddy Pendleton, is widely known in the region as a champion fiddler. In the family of Jim Shelor, one of Jesse and 139 �Clarice's sons, all family members play and sing together, and fourteen-year-old Clay carries on the long tradition of Jesse, Bill, and Buddy: he is an accomplished fiddler, playing his grandfather's handed-down fiddle. The Shelor family demonstrates time and time again the "presentness" of tradition and the ways in which traditions provide continuity for coping with life changes. Jim Shelor, a bank vice president in the county, serves as an interesting case study. He has faced a number of major changes in his life, and he has used family and local traditions to help resolve or manage the tensions such changes produce. Jim grew up "on the mountain" in Patrick County, spending his youth in a rural, insular lifestyle. Of his childhood days, Jim recalls the county sharply divided into isolated communities, each with its own school, distinctive speech patterns, community rivalries, and small, rural churches where creek baptizing was the norm. He remembers his youth as a time of rootedness to the land, family, and community, a time and place in which music was a major expression of family, community, and religious values as well as the major form of entertainment. At eighteen, Jim Shelor was forced to leave his home county, facing the prospect of the draft and no job opportunities. He moved to Roanoke, Virginia, the largest city in the region, where he became a banker and began to rear his own family. But the pull of home was strong, especially his belief that the county was a better place for his children, so in 1972 he returned. Jim explains his odyssey this way: I have always wanted to come back to Patrick County; I never wanted to leave to start with. Every evening [in Roanoke], I would go out and look towards the Meadows of Dan and dream of coming back home; finally, I had a chance to come back to Patrick County. I'm sure there's other places as good—I haven't found one yet. I don't know, it's just home. I love the mountains, the isolation, and I like the people here. I don't know, you'd have to be from Patrick County to understand what it's like, I guess. When he returned home, Jim realized he had changed and so had the county. As a banker, he found it necessary to live in the county's only large town rather than in his home community; he was something of a outsider, having lived away from the county for many years and being a native from "on the mountain" now living in town. He discovered differences in attitudes between himself and his family who had remained living in the county. His membership in the town's large Baptist church marked a shift from the rural religious practices of his youth. The county, so sharply sectionalized in his school days, now boasted consolidated schools, county-wide social services, and widespread influences of mass culture such as more uniform speech and less socializing among community neighbors. In addition to these changes, as bank vice president, Jim felt keenly the county's problems with increasing unemployment and crime, out-migration of the county's young people in search of jobs, lack of industrial development, and racial and class divisions in the county. Jim has turned to a number of folk traditions and traditional values to cope with these tensions, to re-negotiate his position in the community and to re-establish communal bonds with his family and friends. For example, although Jim and his family must now live in town, he is building a log cabin "on the mountain" on land passed down to him from his grandfather, land on which his father and brothers still live. He is using 100-year-old logs and riving shingles for the cabin, finding modern practicality and durability in these old methods. Although Jim realizes the cabin will be a weekend retreat and is a mark of present-day affluence, it still symbolizes for him a return to land and family and a place for his own children to find such rootedness when they become mobile. In this same vein, Jim has his children work on a cabbage farm in the summers, so they will always know the value of hard work and joy in working the land. 140 �Since musical traditions constitute the most powerful body of tradition among the Shelors, Jim has naturally turned to music as a strategy for mediation. He gathers with his family again every Sunday, as he did as a youth, to make traditional music—old-time and gospel music predominate. Although Jim finds he disagrees with his brothers on many issues since his return, they find common ground in the old tunes they love to play and sing. Traditional music also provides Jim a vehicle for coping with some contemporary problems that plague us all—the pervasive influence of mass culture, particularly through television, and social strife, both economic and racial. Believing that television was eroding family and cultural life, Jim and his family decided to relegate the television set to the garage and spend more time as a family making music, talking, and socializing with friends, frequently at musical gatherings. Not only has traditional music strengthened the bonds of family, but it has formed a bridge across racial barriers which sometimes divide the community. Jim Shelor, a white bank vice president, and Turner Foddrell, a black store-owner, developed a friendship stemming from their shared interests in traditional music. Although they hoped to learn from one another's distinctive musical heritages, they discovered their musical traditions often overlapped. In the process of exploring the commonalities and differences in their musical traditions, Jim and Turner rejected traditional black-white interaction patterns and found a new, more productive relationship. Tradition and change intertwine in their lives. The Foddrell Family Folklore is far from dead in the Foddrell family. Marvin and Turner Foddrell are brothers who play black gospel, blues, and secular songs. They learned to play traditional music from their father, Posey Foddrell. Despite the acclaim which Marvin and Turner have received for the music from outside the County, they have to deal with tensions about their music within their own family and community. In confronting these disagreements, Marvin and Turner use a type of folklore called gnomic expressions—clever, pithy, and often humorous sayings which simultaneously encapsulate the conflict and mediate the tension. The source of the Foddrell's problems with the music they play stems from their religious background. When their father Posey joined the Hardshell Baptist church, Hylton's Thessolonian, he had to give up playing instrumental music, of which the Church does not approve. Several years ago, Posey, now in his eighties, played a guitar on a television talk show. When church members saw this, they excommunicated him for awhile. The Church also frowns on the blues. Turner says that when they were children, "Mama wouldn't let us play no blues on Sunday...we had to play gospel." In summing up this story, Turner uses a gnomic expression and says, "But one thing about the blues and gospel. The blues says 'Oh Baby' and the gospel says 'Oh Lord', but they really got the same chords sometimes." With this saying, Turner uses humor to point to an underlying similarity between the blues and gospel. In another instance, both Turner and Marvin perform a gnomic expression together. When an interviewer ignorant of the church's position on instrumental music asks if he can listen to them play music at the church during the family reunion, the Foddrells reply: M: Those hardshell don't hardly go along with that picking and grinning. T: They do a lot of picking, but no grinning. This expression also uses humor, but takes a dig at the Hardshells as well. Both expressions allow the Foddrells to relieve a recurring source of tension in a socially accepted way. 141 �Conclusion Our argument in this presentation reflects a view of folklore theory and practice which has continued from the work of Bronislaw Malinowski fifty years ago to the present day. This view has been recently re-articulated by folklorists Roger Abrahams and Richard Bauman. Abrahams writes: "Recent workers [in folklore] have become less focused on the historic past and more on the processes, social and cultural, of the present. In such a case, folklore is employed as a term for the accumulated wisdom and practice of a social group, one in which there is a close relationship between the producers and the consumers: the makers and users in the case of material culture; the performer and audience with regard to expressive culture."5 While Albrahams identifies the shift in folklore studies from preservation of the past to processual study of folklore in the present, Bauman provides a rationale for field study of folklore in context. He argues: If we are to understand what folklore is, we must go beyond a conception of it as disembodied superorganic stuff and view it contextually, in terms of the individual, social and cultural factors that give it shape, meaning, existence. This reorientation in turn requires us to broaden the scope of our fieldwork; a contextual perspective on folklore makes the enterprise of folklore fieldwork much more ramified and complex than the simple butterfly-collecting approach—the collecting of anachronistic antiquities—that often passes for fieldwork in folklore.6 Bauman goes on to identify six salient foci around which to organize field data to comprehend its contextual interrelationships: (a) context of meaning (what does it mean?); (b) institutional context (where does it fit within the culture?); (c) context of communicative system (how does it relate to other kinds of folklore?); (d) social base (what kind of people does it belong to?); (e) individual context (how does it fit into a person's life?); and (f) context of situation (how is it useful in social situations?). 7 Much of Appalachian folklore collecting and study has been precisely the variety Bauman decries—the collecting of anachronistic antiquities. But there are hopeful signs in the work of trained folklorists now in the region. The Blue Ridge Parkway study undertaken by the American Folklife Center a few years ago, the work of Brett Sutton in Appalachian religious music, the careful attention to details of material culture in Roddy Moore's work, and the keen analysis by David Whisnant of issues involved in understanding folklore as culture are symptomatic of the rising fever to take Appalachian folklore scholarship beyond the quaint and curious to the center of social and cultural life in the region. ENDNOTES 'W.K. McNeil, "Appalachian Folklore Scholarship," Appalachian Journal, 5 (Autumn 1977), 55-64. 2 Allan Batteau, "An Agenda for Irrelevance: Malcolm Chapman's The Gaelic Vision Scottish Culture A Review Essay," Appalachian Journal, 8 (Spring 1981), 214. 'Richard Bauman, Verbal Art as Performance (Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House, 1977), 11. 'Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973). 5 Roger Abrahams, "Interpreting Folklore Ethnographically and Sociologically," Handbook of American Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), p. 345. 'Richard Bauman, "The Field Study of Folklore in Context," Handbook of American Folklore, p. 362. 'Bauman, "Field Study," p. 367. 142 �Black Appalachians in Social History 143 �This page intentionally left blank �The Black Appalachian Church: An Agent for Change or System Maintenance? Stanley Taylor Arthur}. Cox Traditionally, Appalachians have been viewed as solving their problems primarily through individual and family-oriented approaches rather than acting through more formal social structures such as the church or local government (Cabbell 1980). Black Appalachians have been no exception, having been historically unorganized in attempting to solve their problems. With the recent influx of Blacks into Appalachia has come a move toward community organizing as a problem-solving method. The church has been identified as one of the primary community organizations through which these efforts have occurred (Cox 1981). This reported utilization of the church as a community organization spearheading change represents an exception to the traditional manner of relying primarily on more individualistic means of problem-solving. There is question as to whether the church is actually an exception in this regard due to research findings which revealed that the church in Appalachia tends to be conservative and resistant to change (Cox 1981). The purpose of this study is to determine if Black college students who are church members in Appalachia regard the church as an agent for change or system maintenance. This will serve as a pilot study for a later investigation into the role of the Black church in Appalachia. Orginally, we intended to administer a questionnaire to members of local Black Appalachian churches, but there was too much opposition from local ministers. The results of this study will offer those in the helping profession ideas about how students regard what the church may or may not do in assisting Black Appalachians in resolving their everyday social problems. A more accurate understanding of the role of the church would provide community organizers better insight in determining to what degree and in what manner students' perceptions of the church can be utilized in planning social action programs. Additionally, since Black Appalachian institutions have been rather neglected in the literature this information will help in the development of a better data base upon which to base further studies. Literature Review A search of the literature indicates that there is a scarcity of material regarding the Black church in Appalachia. In fact, little is written about any institutions primarily serving Black Appalachians. The material which was most readily available and relevant concerned the Appalachian church in 145 �general, the Black church in America, and the identification of social problems faced by Blacks in Appalachia. A recent research piece by Cox indicates that although Blacks suffer discrimination from the Criminal Justice system; have lower incomes and poorer housing than their white counterparts; complains of biased newspaper reporting, token intergration, unfair discipline in schools, and a lack of Black-oriented social life, they tend not to participate in change-oriented community organization activities. Cox's study reveals that there has been an increase in the number of Blacks moving into Appalachia since 1970 and that these Blacks brought with them knowledge about organizing to solve problems within the Black community. He concludes that among those Blacks considered active, the church is identified as one of the primary agents for community change. In a study on health care of Afro-Americans, Cox identifies a trend of self-destructive behavior in young Blacks (Cox 1980). Cox sees changes in the structure and role of the Black church occurring over recent years as one of the primary causes of this self-destructive behavior. In the absence of the Black church, young Blacks have no system on which to rely for support and feel a lack of control and no sense of belonging (Comer 1979). Cabell comments on how little research has been conducted on Black Appalachians and how few Black Appalachians were knowledgeable about their potential for organization (Cabell 1979). He further notes that collective community problem-solving is new to the mountains and that those organizations which have existed in the past, such as Affirmative Action Programs, Labor Unions, and Local Government, have been of little help to Blacks. Since the discontinuation of the Appalachian Regional Commission, there "has been no organization powerful enough to bring the Black leaders of Appalachia together" (Cabell 1979). According to traditional Appalachian belief, social and political issues have no place in the church (Humphrey 1980). Humphrey also advocates the notion that Appalachians tend to find it difficult to form long-range goals (1980). Essin's collection of edited papers reports: "The Appalachian church is rather conservative in contrast to churches in other areas of the nation and that one of its primary functions is that of socializing people properly into the preferred American type of citizen. Church attendance may be a poor measure of religiousity in Appalachia because the more conservative segment of the population is probably the majority of the church members regular attendies. The church in Appalachia also fulfills certain psychological needs, especially for the powerless and those suffering from psychic deprivations" (Essin 1975) On the other hand, Hill argues that the Black church is the most organized force in their community and remarks that most of what is accomplished by Blacks is done through the church (Hill 1974). E. Franklin Frzier, notes that due to the exclusion of Negroes from American political processes, the Negro church became the medium through which the need for power and the struggle to attain it were dealt with (Frazier 1960). In a national survey conducted by Lewis Harris, over 60% of Blacks involved felt that the Black church and ministers were helping the Blacks cause either greatly or at least somewhat; 17% felt that the Black church was only a marginal influence or was no help at all, and the remaining 23% were uncertain. The rejection of the church is most apparent among young Blacks and as a consequence many grass-roots organizations are assuming the roles formerly performed by the Black church. From the foregoing the following questions were formulated: 1. To what extent do college-age students who are members of a Black Appalachian church see it as an agent for change or system maintenance? 146 �2. To what extent do college-age students who attend church regularly see the Black Appalachian church as an agent for change or system maintenance? To answer the questions two hypotheses were formulated: 1) College-age students who are members of a Black Appalachian church when compared with students who are not members will regard the church more frequently as an agent for system maintenance; 2) College-age students who attend church regularly are more likely to view the Black church as an agent for system maintenance than those students who attend irregularly. Definition of Terms The term "Members" refers to those who held enrolled membership for at least one year in a Black Appalachian church. Appalachia, for the purposes of this study, will encompass Upper East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and Western North Carolina with the intention of forming a general base representing the larger Appalachian region. The term "System Maintenance" means social forces which attempt to maintain social stability and meet the needs of Black Appalachians in a manner which is in accordance with prevailing social values and institutions. "System Change," on the other hand, means forces involved in directly changing significant elements of the social structure. "System Change Activities" suggests challenging such things as the status quo, distribution of resources and wealth, existing social boundaries. When pertaining to this study, the concept of regular attendance in church will refer to attendance of services at least 50% of the time that services were scheduled. College-age students will be used in reference to students enrolled at East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, who are between the ages of 18 and 25. Methodology Target Population and Sample Selection This study focused on Black college students from Appalachia attending East Tennessee State University. A list of the Black students attending the university and residing on the campus at the time of the study was secured from the university Admissions Office. From this list, the names of those students whose home addresses were located in Appalachia were separated from those students who lived outside of Appalachia. This meant a potential pool of 115 students. A nonrandom sample of 50 was selected from this pool for actual survey administration. Description of Instrument The survey questionnaire consisted of fourteen closed ended questions, but due to difficulties in the application of the survey, one question was deleted. The survey was designed to identify the age and sex of the respondents, to determine whether or not respondents were members of Black churches and whether or not respondents attended church on a regular basis, and finally to determine whether or not respondents were active in programs aimed at effecting change or maintaining the status quo in the community. Procedures The students randomly selected for the study were visited in their dormitories after appointments were made. The questionnaire was given and completed by them while the researchers 147 �waited. Upon completion, the questionnaires were placed in a common folder before examination to insure that confidentiality was maintained. Findings There was no significant difference between the attitudes of members and non-members concerning the role of the church in the community (see Table 1 & 2). Members were almost evenly divided in their views of the church as an agent for change and for maintenance of status quo. It was further noted that when the attitudes of those who participated in church activities which were aimed at community change were compared with those who did not participate in such activities, the difference was also insignificant (see Table 3). Again, members and non-members were almost evenly divided in their assessment of the church's role in system change and maintenance activities. However, the opinions regarding the adequacy of the church's work in the community did differ significantly at the P = .05 level between college-age students who claim to have been with a church less than a year or feel they are not a member of a church (see Tables 4,5, & 6). One explanation for this is such a small sample of participants who were either not affiliated with a church or had not attended a church for a year. It could be that these persons were not familiar with the churches' activities. On the other hand, it could very well be that their familiarity with the church caused them to feel this way. Even with this explanation more members who have attended a church more than a year felt that the church's work in the community was inadequate in solving social problems as can be seen in Tables 4, 5, & 6. Conclusions The only difference found was between members and non-members regarding the adequacy of the church's work in the community. As shown in Table 4, eighteen members felt that enough work is being done in the community and twenty-one felt that this was not so. No non-members felt that the church's work in the community was adequate, while six non-members felt that it was inadequate. As indicated here, there is dissatisfaction with the performance of the church in the community. These results seem contrary to the informal information gathered by previous authors in that before most of the opinions regarding the church were rather positive, while here, there is displeasure expressed. Evaluation of Effort Originally, the researchers intended to administer the questionnaire in a church setting, but there was too much opposition from local ministers. As a result, several weaknesses developed. These are: 1) the necessity of using a non-random sample selection due to a smaller sample population than anticipated, 2) the use of a questionnaire in its original form due to lack of time to modify it, 3) the questionnaire content was subject to misinterpretation and this was not discovered until after application, 4) the questionnaire did not elicit meaning of an adequate level of activity to resolve social problems faced by Blacks. There are several strengths in this study: 1) the study is a beginning data base on the Black Appalachian church and its role; 2) the study provides professional helpers a beginning understanding of the capacity of the church as a community organization to engage in change activities and; 3) it suggests the level of investment the Black Appalachian church has in the status quo. The most important implication for social work professionals is the need for further research dealing with Black Appalachians in relation to the church and with Black Appalachian in general. A lack of knowledge in this area cannot help hindering attempts to assist the Black Appalachian. 148 �RESULTS Table 1* Differences in attitudes toward the role of the church in the community between members and non-members as they are defined by this study: "Do you feel the church is working to:" Those who have been members more than 1 year Those who have been members less than 1 year Total improve problems faced by Blacks in the community? 17 2 19 maintain standards in the community? 14 4 18 1 3 1 4 34 7 41 not get involved at all i n t h e comm Total: X2 - 1.4157 *5 responses of "don't know" were omitted 4 responses were deleted due to the checking of multiple answers Table 2* Difference in attitudes toward the role of the church in the community between those who attend services on a regular basis and those who attend irregularly: Those who attend regularly Those who attend irregularly Total improve problems faced by Blacks in the community? 15 4 19 maintain standards in the community? 15 3 18 not get involved at all in the community? 2 2 4 32 9 41 "Do you feel the church is working to:" Total X2 = 1.9457 *5 responses of "don't know" were omitted 4 responses were deleted due to the checking of multiple answers 149 �Table 3* Differences in attitudes toward the role of the church in the community between those participating in church activities aimed at community change and those not participating in such activities: "Do you feel that the church is working to:" Those who participate in Those who do not church activities aimed at participate in such activities community change Total improve problems faced by Blacks in the community? 11 8 19 maintain standards in the community? 11 7 18 not get involved at all in the community? 1 3 4 23 18 41 Total X2 = 2.0218 *5 responses of "don't know" were omitted 4 responses were deleted due to the checking of multiple answers Table 4* Differences in attitudes concerning the adequacy of the church's work in the community between members and non-members as they are defined in this study: "Do you feel that the church's work in the community is:" Those who have been members more than 1 year Those who have been members less than 1 year Total enough 18 0 18 not enough 21 6 27 Total 39 6 45 X2 = 5.6 *5 responses of "don't know" were omitted 150 �Table 5* Differences in attitudes concerning the adequacy of the church's work in the community between those who attend services on a regular basis and those who attend irregularly: "Do you feel that the church's work in the community is:" Those who attend regularly Those who attend irregularly Total enough 16 2 18 not enough 18 9 27 Total 34 11 45 X2 = 1.8 *5 responses of "don't know" were omitted Table 6* Difference in attitudes concerning the adequacy of the church's work in the community between those who participate in church activities aimed at community change and those who do not participate in such activities: "Do you feel the church's work in the community is:" Those who participate in church activities aimed at change in the community Those who do not participate in such activities Total enough 10 8 18 not enough 14 13 27 Total 24 21 45 X2 = .0037 *5 responses of "don't know" were omitted References 'Edward J. Cabbell, "Black Invisibility and Racism in Appalachia: an Informal Survey," Appalachian Journal, Autumn 1980, p. 50. 2 Arthur J. Cox, "Black Appalachians: Perspectives on Social Change," Forthcoming in Dignity, Diversity, anil Opportunity in Changing Rural Community, University of South Carolina Press, 1982. �'Ibid. 'Ibid. " 5 Arthur J. Cox, "The Afro-American Family and the American Health Care System," in Family Health and Human Relations, ed. Robert D. Patton, (Lexington, Massachusetts: Ginn Custom Publishing, 1980), p. 154. 'Cabbell, p. 48-52. 'Richard A. Humphrey, "Religion in Appalachia: Implications for Social Work Practice," in East Tennessee Slate University Journal ofHumania, ed. Eugene D. Anderson 0ohnson City, Tennessee: East Tennessee State University Department of Social Work, 1980), pp. 12 and 15. •Emmett M. Essin, ed., Appalachia: Family Tradition in Transition (Johnson City, Tennessee: East Tennessee State University Research Advisory Council, 1975), pp. 4, 45-47. 'Robert B. Hill, The Strengths of Black Families (New York: Everson Hall Publishers, Inc., 1972), pp. 33 and 34. 10 Alphonso Pinkney. "Franklin E. Frazier, The Negro Church in America, (New York; Schocken Books, 1969), p. 43. Sample Questionnaire INSTRUCTIONS: You are being asked to help Stanley Taylor and Schary Cade in their research efforts to gain an understanding of the church role in the communities of Appalachia. Through this research we hope to gain information to help us and others eradicate some of the social problems in the community now and in the future. Everything will be in complete confidentiality. Results will be made available for anyone who is interested in them. It is completely on a volunteer basis. Thanks for your cooperation. 1. Age 2. Sex Male 3. Have you attended a church... More than 1 year Female Less than 1 year 4. Do you consider yourself a member of this church? YES 5. If not, are you a member of another church in the area? NO YES NO 6. How many pastoral sermons does your church have a week? 7. How many pastoral sermons do you usually attend a week? 8. If you do not attend on a weekly basis, how many pastoral sermons do you usually attend a month? 9. Do you think that changes are needed to improve the opportunities and/or problems of Blacks in the community? YES NO 10. Which of the following do you consider a problem in the community? Racism Employment Medical Needs All of these 11. Do you feel that the church is working to: Improve problems faced by Blacks in the community. Maintain standards in the community. Not getting involved at all with community problems. Don't know. 12. Do you feel that the church work in the community is Enough Not Enough No problems. Don't know. 13. Do you participate in activities from the church that are concerned with solving community problems? YES NO 14. If no, is it only because the church... interested in them. Does not have such activities 152 Have the activities but not �Race Relations in Asheville, North Carolina: Three Incidents, 1868-1906 EricJ. Olson (The mountaineer) had acquired a hatred and contempt for the Negro even more violent than that of the common white of the lowlands, a dislike so rabid that it was a black man's life to venture into many mountain sections. 1 Appalachians have not been saddled with the same prejudices about black people that people of the deep South have. 2 There are other quotations that might have been chosen to illustrate the differences of opinion on the relations between the southern mountaineers and their black neighbors. These differences of opinion continue to be sustained, in part, by a lack of basic informatin and research on black Appalachians. As Edward Cabbell has noted, "Black people in Appalachia are a neglected minority...(their) invisibility also supports the myth that Appalachia is land of 'poor white hillbillies' beset solely with 'white problems' and not the color problems that plague the rest of America." 3 An examination of the published histories dealing with Asheville and western North Carolina reveals an almost complete absence of attention to the black portion of the population, which for Asheville has accounted for between one-third and one-fourth of the total. 4 This paper presents some of the results of a survey of the local and regional newspapers for materials dealing with black mountaineers. The newspapers were sampled in order to discover the extent to which blacks were mentioned at all, and to try to categorize the occasions and context in which they appear. Underlying the survey were questions to which the newspaper accounts might provide an answer. Based on newspaper coverage, were blacks important in the mountains? Did the style and content of the newspaper accounts suggest racial harmony? Did the black experience in the mountains appear to differ substantially from that of blacks in the lowlands? The next three sections present accounts of three brief episodes in the history of Asheville and Buncombe County. All three incidents had racial aspects and all three were violent. It seems likely that the racial feelings of the community would be revealed during periods of racial tension. These events are presented in the words of the current accounts. Eighteen-Sixty-Eight: Mob Violence The North fought the Civil War to defeat secession and ended by abolishing slavery. Accepting the emancipation of 1865 as the price of defeat, the southern states enacted Black Codes in 1865 and 1866 to effectively retain the Negro in peonage and, in particular, deny the Negro the right to vote. Foster A. Sondley, Buncombe County's historian stated, 153 �Legally, if ever legally, negro emancipation occurred on December 18, 1865 with the proclamation of the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United (sic.) States. The practical abolition of negro slavery, whenever it took place, produced an immense change in Buncombe affairs. The Republican Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866 which incorporated the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 into the Constitution. This Act had included Negroes as United States citizens, extended to them the right of property and the judicial system, and provided for them equal protection under the law. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 provided that new governments would be organized in the insurrectionary states under military supervision, required mandatory Negro suffrage, and disenfranchised some of the former rebels.6 Among other actions, the Radical Republican governments raised taxes to repair the war-damaged South, to pay off some of their war debts, and to establish public schools to educate, among others, the freedmen. Thus, "land owners who had previously governed the South in their own interest, now found themselves bearing the major tax burden while the benefits went in large measure to businessmen and Negroes." 7 The Union League, a northern patriotic society imported into the South during reconstruction, was a secret society composed of blacks and white Republicans, serving both as a fraternal organization and an arm of the Republican party. The Ku Klux Klan was organized in 1866 at Pulaski in Giles County, Tennessee. Democrats, when they acknowledged its existence, ascribed the Klan movement to high taxes, corrupt Republican officials, and the need to deter and punish Negro crime. However, as Trelease concludes, "The Klan became in effect a terrorist arm of the Democratic party." 8 The Klan first appeared in North Carolina in the spring of 1868. The Klan seems to have first prospered in the foothill regions surrounding the southern mountains—Giles and Maury Counties in Tennessee; York County, South Carolina; Cleveland and Rutherford Counties in North Carolina; the counties from Fayette southward to the Tennessee line in Kentucky. 9 These were counties with rather small black populations, but with substantial unionist, white republican elements who were usually small farmers located on the less promising lands of the county. Thus, partisan political hatreds were compounded by race conflict and aristocrat/poor white antipathy. Political violence continued the strife and hatred bred between neighbors by the war. The individuality and self-reliance required by the relative isolation of nineteenth-century rural life combined with military training and a decay in the enforcement of law and order fostered vigilante action and summary justice. This continued the troubles that began after the 1862 Conscription law when the foothills and mountains were populated with deserters and outliers, often temporarily organized as provisional military outfits, other times as mobs to punish their former friends and neighbors who supported the opposition. Sondley's History describes troubles during the 1868 election in Asheville: In 1868 turbulent negroes in Asheville attempted to force upon other blacks subservience to the spirit of hatred toward their former owners. This hatred was inculcated by visiting whites who became negro-leaders and disseminated their baneful teachings through secret political societies composed chiefly of rowdy exslaves and known as 'Red-Strings' and 'Union Leagues.'10 Sondley then goes on to describe a riot between whites and blacks on election day that resulted in the death of one black and the wounding of several blacks and whites. The incident was reported in the Raleigh Weekly North Carolina Standard, a Republican paper, as follows: At Asheville a colored man went to the polls to vote. According to the Constitution he could do so, but the election clerk told him that he could not, because he had been whipped at the post. Words passed and the 154 �colored man was knocked down. It seems that the fracas was stopped, but out of it grew the subsequent disturbance, in which one negro was killed and five or six others wounded (Nov. 11, 1868, p. 3). Three years later, in 1871, Nicolas Woodfin, a wealthy Asheville lawyer and former slave holder described the incident in his testimony before the Joint Select Committee of the United States to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States: There was one negro killed who had behaved himself very badly....He and two or three other colored men, and this white man and another white man, were quarreling, and each had clubs and were walking up and down the streets menacing the others during the day of the difficulty. They started a fight early in the day, which was supressed by the sheriff. That quarrel kept up during the forenoon, and until, I suppose, maybe 2 o'clock in the afternoon, or later when it culminated in a pretty general fight, firing and throwing of stones, which lasted a minute or two only. I understood that it originated in this white man challenging the vote of a colored man inside; it was objected that he had no right in there to challenge, and he attempted to fight with one colored man in the yard afterward—During the evening one colored man voted the democratic ticket, and some of them threatened to whip him, and others to kill him, for that. They surrounded him, some of the young men, to protect him with their pistols. This negro man that was killed was one who had been in difficulty in the morning; he was foremost in making a threat against the negro that had voted the democratic ticket...I was counsel for the white man who was imprisoned for the shooting, and the other white men who were indicted for rioting. Silas, the negro man they sought to attack, was surrounded by some white men for protection. This troublesome man, Ledford—he is a troublesome and bad man, proved to be so since—was knocked down by this negro man that was slain, as it was supposed—It never was ascertained by whom the shot was fired. There was a general firing; the firing was very rapid; there were eighteen colored men wounded; no white man was badly wounded; I believe one or two were touched a little in the leg, maybe...the negroes were all running away, and I met them as I was going there. A few persons pursued them a short distance and then stopped. Two or three troublesome men of each color originated that difficulty, and prosecuted the quarrel all through the day, and seemed to be determined to get up a general disturbance." The results of a coroner's inquest were reported in a piece in the Asheville Pioneer which was reprinted the next week in the Salisbury Old North State: James Smith came to his death while engaged in a riot at Asheville, N.C. on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 3, 1868 from a pistol shot in the right side of the face Said shot was probably fired by Milton Ledford, although shots were fired about the same time, and in the direction from pistols in the hands of Jesse Crook, Gaston McDowell, William A. Blair, and William Grubs. The jury also finds that shots were fired about the same time and in the direction of the white crowd from a pistol in the hands of an unknown colored man and a pistol in the hands of Simon Henry, colored. The jury further finds that the first stone or missile thrown came from the hands of the said James Smith, deceased (Nov. 14, 1868, p. 2). The jury also concluded that the civil officers of the town had neglected to take proper precautions to guard against the occurrences of this riot. In the fall term of the Superior Court of Buncombe County, Milton Ledford was committed and a true bill for murder found against him. Woodfin, who represented Ledford, recalled the following events: The case was removed to the Henderson court, and upon full examination, upon habeas corpus, before Judge Henry 12 he thought the evidence did not justify the prosecution going further, and the case went off...it was difficult to ascertain who fired the fatal shot...and they allowed a verdict of not guilty to be rendered. Since that time Ledford has behaved very badly. He left the state, but after a while came back, and has been cutting up in the same way." The others involved in the incident were indicted by the same Grand Jury for riot and affray. In addition to the names mentioned above, the accused included several from prominent families such as Blair, Alexander, Merrimon, and Patton14 The court minutes that reported the results of the 155 �Grand Jury's deliberations also provide an interesting sidelight on the feelings of blacks coming before the bar. In State vs. Sandy Gardner, colored, who was being tried on charges of murder, "the council for the prisoner moved the court to instruct the sheriff to summon on said panel such men of color as are competent, but the Court declined to give such instruction, allowing the Sheriff to exercise his own desc(r)ession in summon('ng) said panel."15 Woodfin, who was also attorney for the whites involved in the riot, reported the result of the trial: All the young men indicted for rioting were let off at the insistance of the council for both sides. I appealed to the Judge to stop the case with the view of allowing quiet to prevail; to let bygones be forgotten as much as possible; to permit the solicitor to enter a nolle pros; to take a confession of submission, and to submit to a nominal fine for a riot....It was approved by all members of the bar present....They said to the court that it was the best thing, for prosecuting it would only keep up bad temper, and imprisoning them would perhaps lead to further prejudice." Woodfin then commented on the state of public affairs in the years between 1868 and 1871: Since that time we have had no disturbance there on any public occasion at all. Well there is more disposition to conciliate the colored vote now by both parties. Since it was found that their right to vote is fixed, that it is unalterable, as they suppose, I think both parties are now seeking for their votes I think these causes are pretty well done away with us." Sondley, from a different perspective summed up the period: For years this condition (turbulence and hatred) existed....The negro political gatherings were held in a negro school house where Poplar Street now is. Later white men regained control of town government. 18 Eighteen-Ninty-Seven; Lynching "The two decades beginning in 1890 brought the rights and privileges of American Negroes to their lowest ebb."19 If the blacks were not congenitally inferior, at least they were lower on the evolutionary ladder; full equality was something to be realized only in the dim future, if ever. This attitude could also be seen in the country's overseas adventures and in the suggestion that the United States had a civilizing mission among our "little brown brothers" in the Philippines and elsewhere. Blacks were disenfranchised by a series of legal tricks circumventing the Fifteenth Amendment and the enactment of Jim Crow laws which evaded the Fourteenth. In North Carolina the Democrats fostered the Suffrage Amendment to the state consitution which required a voter to pay a poll tax and to be able to read and write any section of the constitution. Voters who had been registered to vote before January 1, 1867, or their lineal descendants, were exempted from this requirement. Thus, "the Democrats, tired of repressing the Negro vote by intimidation, election manipulation, and fraud, determined to secure the permanent legal elimination of the Negro from North Carolina politics."20 The campaign for national, state, and local offices in 1896 was unusually bitter and recriminatory. On national issues the Democrats and the Populists fused in support of William Jennings Bryan. The state and local offices were carried by a fusion of the Republicans and the Populists. Republican Daniel L. Russell was elected governor mainly by the large black vote in the eastern counties. The Democrats seized upon the increased black political activity and "depicted Negro domination as threatening North Carolina civilization with anarchy, violence and 156 �collapse."21 Furnifold Simmons, State Chairman of the Democratic Party, appealed to the voters of North Carolina to crush the party of Negro domination that favored WHITE WOMEN...arrested...by negro constables...NEGROES in charge of white schools...NEGROES holding inquests over white dead...NEGRO MAGISTRATES trying white women. 22 The newspapers of the late summer of 1897 were full of news of racial troubles, riots, and lynchings. In Madisonville, Ephraim Brinkley was lynched for general bad character.23 In Wadesboro, "Brogan, the negro who outraged Mrs. Brunner, hung from a sycamore tree near the courthouse, his body riddled with bullets." 24 After a lynching in Salisbury in August of 1897 an Asheville paper reported that "the women of this section are thoroughly aroused and many approve of the lynching. One prominent lady...cut off the ear of one of the victims."25 Asheville appears to have avoided most of the racial tension and conflict that surrounded it. When blacks were mentioned at all in the local news, it was generally to observe some local black peculation involving cards, liquor, or women. Or it was a humorous observation similar to the following from The Citizen: From the Louisville Times. That North Carolina doctor who asserts that eating a watermelon does a negro no good must be both blind and deaf—blind to the expression and deaf to the grunts of satisfaction with which Sambo demonstrates the fact that watermellon is the satisfyingst truck the sons of Ham have found in all the journeyings through this vale of tears and sweat (August 4, 1897), p. 2). Therefore, the following headline, while perhaps not unexpected, must have been especially shocking amidst the sporting news of the "Asheville Moonshiners" and the report of the proceedings of the annual reunion of the Rough and Ready Guards who had been addressed on Sunday, August 9, 1897, by Col. T.F. Davidson and Major J.M. Gudger. A FIENDISH SUNDAY CRIME COMMITTED BY NEGRO BRUTE NEAR WEAVERVILLE THE PEOPLE ARE AROUSED VIGOROUS SEARCH IS BEING MADE FOR THE MAN MISS KITTIE HENDERSON ASSAULTED WHILE ON HER WAY HOME FROM SUNDAY SCHOOL One of the darkest crimes in the pages of Buncombe's history startled the people of the Weaverville section of the county yesterday. The perpetrator is a young negro and his victim, Miss Kittie Henderson, a pretty girl and daughter of John Henderson, who lives about a mile and a half from Weaverville, near Coleman homestead. Yesterday Miss Henderson went to Sunday school at Alexander Chapel and about 11:30 was on her way home. When at the crossroads not far from her home she was startled by the sight of a negro who appeared to be stealing upon her. A moment later the negro sprang upon her, caught her about the throat and bore her to the ground. Miss Henderson is a partial cripple as a result of an attack of meningitis some years ago and was unable to resist successfully the strength of the black brute who dragged her a short distance into the woods...There he choked her almost into insensibility, consumated the assault and made off. Miss Henderson begged and prayed of her assailant...the news spread through the community rapidly and soon searchers were out...she described the negro as being heavily built and about 23 or 24 years old and said she could recognize him if she were to see him again Miss Henderson is about 22 years old and of a family that has respect of the people of the community. 26 The paper was pleased to report in its next evening's edition that "the law is supreme," that 157 �the assailant had been captured and that the friends and neighbors of the young girl had allowed the officers of the law to take the young man to the jail in Asheville. The reporter noted that such a submission under the fearful provocation - the greatest that can be known - shows the most admirable self restraint, and will be imitated here in Asheville by ready acquiesence in the regular forms of law, under which this brute will be speedily tried and by which he will come, we doubt not to his deserved end. Let the law be supreme.27 The Citizen described the capture and subsequent events as follows: Bob Brackett, the negro who has been hunted since Sunday last as the fiend who so fearfully assaulted Miss Kitty Henderson on that day was captured at 4 o'clock this morning by Goodson Ramsey in the cabin of Sandy Ray, a negro preacher living on Whittmore Branch near the Madison County line...Deputy Joe J. Chambers, who was in the searching party that captured Brackett, told The Citizen that the whole of the distance on the road from the time of the capture until the deputies from Asheville arrived, was devoted by the cooler heads in quelling the spirit that was rife for a quick hanging...Deputy Reynolds said to them that he was sent by Sheriff Worley and Commissioner Brown to say that a special term of court would be called at once, if they were sure of their man, and that justice would certainly be done (August 10, 1897, p. 1) Brackett was taken into the presence of Miss Henderson where she identified him as the assailant despite his denials. In the meanwhile a crowd had gathered outside the house with cries from the mob that "God knows he ought to be hung!"28 The report continued that Miss Henderson then appeared on the steps and exclaimed, "I prayed in my helplessness that God would spare my life and send friends to avenge me, and now they have come to help me (August 10, 1897, p. 1)". At this point Deputy Reynolds intervened into the din with, "Men, if you hang him, you are all known, and will be tried for murder." Deputy Reynolds was seconded by Walter Vandiver of Weaverville rose in his stirrups and with a few ringing words to the men to save the fair name of the county from what would be a dastardly crime, the calmer ones, who had all along been moving through the crowd as peacemakers succeeded in making themselves heard—a man, as the party left: 'There he goes to the chain gang for a few months, where they'll make a trusty of him.' While riding behind W.B. Brown on the way in, the negro confessed his guilt. He told Mr. Brown he had been in Asheville for about a week, and was on his way back to Big Ivy (August 10, 1897, p. 1). Brackett told the Citizen reporter that he was 23 years old, had come from Caswell County to Buncombe County about a year and a half ago, and that he had worked on farms in Madison Coun- ty- While the law had reigned supreme on Tuesday morning in Weaverville, it was not so fortunate in the evening. As the Citizen reported: For several hours last night a portion of Asheville was in the hands of a howling and tipsy mob, not a cool and determined body of sober men....On court square men talked openly of becoming members of a lynching party.2' A mob of about 200 men, "principally from the country," had gathered near court square to discuss the situation. Adjourning shortly after eight o'clock, they started in a body for the jail reminding the observer of the Common of Paris. A large number of boys under 20 years of age fell into line....In a surprisingly short time the main crowd was there, and had filled the street in front of the jail yard and many of the vacant lots in the vicinity. In fact everybody was there—except the police. They were near—some of them—but did nothing (August 11, 1897, p. 1). The Chief of Police was there but did nothing. Sheriff Worley attempted to deputize every other man in the crowd but found the men unsympathetic: 158 �The sheriff was brushed aside and the weak struggle for law and order ended ignominousley (sir). As the battering ram improvised by the use of a heavy piece of timber pounded effectually against the not too heavy door, the lovers of order could only stand aside...the leaders soon burst the door down Then for several hours the work of destruction went uninterruptedly on (August 11, 1897, p. 1). Fortunately, deputies had removed the prisoner from the jail earlier in the evening in a carriage bound over Beaumont Gap for Swannanoa, where they hoped to catch the early train for Raleigh. However, when the mob tired of wrecking the jail they boarded the vertibule train at Biltmore: They had no tickets but were well supplied with axes, guns and pistols, and were quite a surprise to the train crew. When approached by Capt. Mauney, who told them they would have to pay fare, the men only showed their weapons and whistled...at Terrell's, the siding near the west end of the Swannanoa tunnel...an unknown mob of 75 strong gathered there awaiting no. 16...Brackett was taken by the mob. The officers escaped (August 11, 1897, p. 1). The Governor of the state responded in two ways—first, by ordering out the Asheville Light Infantry to assist the Sheriff to preserve law and order. He later sent a telegram to V.S. Lusk, Solicitor for Buncombe, which stated that if Brackett were not lynched and the jury convicted him, the Governor would guarantee that the Negro would be hanged within two weeks; to no avail, however, as the Charlotte Observer's headlines announced: THE CAPTURE BY THE MOB THE LAWLESS ELEMENT OF THE MOUNTAINS FULL OF MOONSHINE LIQUOR, TAKEN BRACKETT FROM THE OFFICERS THEY HEAR HIS CONFESSION WITH LEWD CURIOSITY THEY WERE NOT AVENGERS OF BLOOD, BUT SIMPLY ON A LAWLESS LARK30 While the mob was escorting Brackett fromthe Swannanoa Tunnel back to Weaverville, the authorities were organizing at the Asheville Armory. The Infantry left in carriages at about 12:30, but the military company reached the scene of the lynching 20 minutes too late. Probably half a hundred men and several women were present when the act was committed....Brackett met his fate calmly. Kittie Henderson, the young woman outraged by Brackett was there, and to her the negro again confessed his guilt...After the rope was in position, Brackett was lifted up, the ropes was fastened to a limb, and then the negro dropped. He died easily. One of the strange sights of the scene of the lynching was to see a number of women walking about wearing small twigs taken from the tree on which Brackett was hanged.31 The Charlotte Observer noted that Sheriff Worley had reported to Governor Russell that some of the lynchers were known and that it had been reported that "Smith and Ramsey of Weaverville, realtives of the outraged girl, led the mob." (August 14, 1897, p. 1) An inquest was held the next day. The Chief of Police recognized a few of the men who went into the jail, but "most of them were strangers."32 One that he recognized was Milt Ledford and noted that Ledford was violent." None of those who testified admitted to know any of the persons involved in the lynching. Where there was any elaboration on the lack of knowledge of the lynchers, it was speculated that they were from the country or were from out of town. "Ex-Patrolman R.K. Stephenson...knew none of the men....A spare built man with a moustache had a good deal to do with it."34 W.T. Herritage testified that: It was 10 minutes past three when the men lifted the negro on their shoulders as the rope was pulled up and tied, and at five minutes of four the sheriff came. There were no masks on the men's faces. There were 15 men who brought the negro up and about 100 spectators. The man who tied the rope to the limb slid down the rope, stamped on the negro's head and then kicked him in the face....The 15 men who hung him were the ones who had brought him from Terrell's (August 13, 1897, p. 1). 159 �The coroner's jury concluded that On the llth day of August, 1897, at about 2:30 o'clock in the p.m. near Hemphill's school house, Buncombe County, the deceased, Robert Brackett, was hanged by the neck until dead by about 15 men whose names are to us unknown (August 13, 1897, p. 1). In the same issue of the Citizen as the report of the inquest was the following editorial: While no one regrets the death of Brackett for the worst crime known to civilization, the circumstances surrounding his taking off will long be remembered as a blot on the fair name of the county Had the neighbors and friends of the victim of his brutality taken him away quietly after identification and returned without him, the general sentiment of the community would have acquiesed in the justice of the act, even if there should be a passing regret at the informality of it....Lynching is always wrong, but it is because it is not the greatest wrong and because it is, after all, a rough form of justice, as well also as because of the delays and uncertainties of legal procedure, that it can be tolerated by public sentiment in an otherwise law abiding community Neither can it be said that prominent citizens took part in the lynchings. The affair at the jail was participated in wholly by persons from out of town—We can only regret that the lynching that closed the dark chapter yesterday in the history of the county should not have occurred two days earlier than it did, or failing that, that the law was not allowed to take its course, once it was called into the case at all." A week later the Citizen noted matter of factly that Harvey Deberry, colored, was hanged in the yard of the Shelby County Jail....This is the first legal hanging for attempted rape that has ever taken place in Tennessee." Nineteen-Hundred-Six: Negro Desperado In May of 1873 the Asheville North Carolina Citizen, edited by Klan leader Randolph Shotwell, commented with disgust on black involvement in the town elections: We are sorry to state that the two later names on the ticket were American gentlemen of African 'scent' thicklipped, kinkey-headed, and complexion of tar-can-hue (May 8, 1873, p. 3). By the summer of 1906 blacks had been pretty well excluded from the political life of North Carolina. Citizens of Asheville were interested in blacks only insofar as their involvement in petty crime and their potential for giving offense to white women were concerned. The newspapers that summer and fall were full of reports of racial unrest and violence in the larger South. The headlines of the Asheville Citizen for September 28th are representative: FIERCE RACE WAR MAKES NIGHT HIDEOUS IN CITY OF ATLANTA NEGROES ARE CLUBBED TO DEATH ON STREETS WHEREVER SEEN INFURIATED CITIZENS OF GEORGIA RUTHLESSLY KILL MANY NEGROES IN THE OPEN STREETS OF ATLANTA EVERYTHING IN READINESS FOR QUICK ACTION NEGRO LASHED BEFORE GAZE OF MULTITUDE Assaults on white women within past two days throw Atlantans to high state of excitement. 15 negroes known to have been killed. Fifteen hundred U.S. marines and sailors preparing to land in Cuba. Pays the penalty for brutal assault on two women at whipping post. 2,000 persons claim to see execution (September 28, 1906, p. 1) In the next month the Citizen reported that two Negro undertakers who had shot white policemen were lynched in Mobile, Alabama.37 Three days later it reported that a "twelve year old negro, accused of attempted assault on a four-year-old white girl escapes lynching."38 Also in Oct160 �ober a black man had been shot to death in Hendersonville, North Carolina, over dog stealing and threatening an officer with a stick.39 In the same issue of the Citizen it was reported that Negroes in Nashville were reported as forming their own "White Caps" organization to protect themselves from white mobs and Ku Klux activity. Later in the month, "Cliff Fowler and Frank Strout (black) were accused of killing Sidney York (white) on Mountain Street after York made an improper proposal to women in their company."40 As the newspaper characterized it, the series of events which commenced late in the evening of Tuesday, November l a , 1906, found "Asheville stirred to its depths" and caused "the most exciting day in its history." What little satisfaction could be taken from the events was that "reason and sober judgment (held) sway under trying circumstances."41 A black man calling himself Will Harris had an argument with another black man in an apartment on Valley Street, one of the main thoroughfares of the black section near downtown Asheville. After Harris threatened him with a rifle that he had bought that morning, Toney Johnson ran to the police station to summon assistance to his girlfriend's house. Captain Page and Patrolman Blackstock of the Asheville City Policy hurried to his assistance: As Page reached the corner of the house and Blackstock reached the door, the negro threw open the door and shot the patrolman through the breast, he falling with a groan in his tracks, never moving again. Page turned, but before he could draw a pistol, Harris fired, disabling his right arm. The negro fled, promiscuously shooting as he ran. Before he reached the square by way of Eagle Street, he had killed one of his own, wounded two and shot another through the trousers. 42 In truth, on his way from Valley Street, first east on Eagle Street, then north on South Main Street, Harris killed three blacks, Benajamin F. Addison, Walter Corperning, and Tom Neil. The Citizen account continued: On went the murderer, dealing death from his deadly savage. He turned up South Main Street towards the square firing at everyone in sight. He passed the Laurel Valley saloon just as Geo. W. Jackson, the colored bar tender came out. Jackson was made a target, the bullet cutting through his trousers and underwear without breaking the skin or drawing blood (November 14, 1906, p. 1). A white witness described Harris' progress up South Main toward Pack Square: I was in the British-American Club when the shooting started, talking to Spears Reynolds. On hearing the shots the black attendant rushed to the door and when he returned his face was white and he shouted, "There's a nigger down stairs shooting up the town.' Reynolds jumped to his feet, pulled his pistol and started down stairs with Calvert Rosenfield of Baltimore and myself following. In the street was the black man with a repeating rifle over his arm. On seeing the flash of Reynolds' pistol he turned and fired, the bullet striking the house and glancing off, barely missing Reynolds (Nov. 14, 1906, p. 1). On reaching the Square, Harris met Patrolman James W. Bailey who had been sent down North Main Street to alarm and gather together as many of his comrades as possible. After stopping at the Sheriff's Cafe to deputize some assistants, Bailey stepped into the Square, where He and the desperado exchanged shots till the brave patrolman was killed. Bailey shot three times partly protected as he thought by the post. A bullet from the powerful Savage passed through the side of the post into Bailey's mouth, burying itself in his brain. His heart beat faintly for about one minute, but he was never conscious (November 14, 1906, p. 1). After shooting Patrolman Bailey, Harris fled south on Main Street toward the direction of Biltmore. The citizens of Asheville were summoned to action by the ringing of the general fire alarm; several posses were formed; and the Chief of Police wired to Tryon for bloodhounds to be sent on the next Southern Railway train. 161 �Harris disappeared into the snow early Wednesday morning and as the Citizen's headline put it, "Day starts with trail of bloodhounds—animals believed to have scent of murdered but they lose it at water's edge—many conflicting reports." 43 A posse had been sent to Olivette toward Marshall where the desperado had been sighted. At about the same time there were also posses heading towards Bailey, four miles west of Alexander, and another heading south toward Biltmore, while yet another searched over Beaumont Gap. In the meantime O.H. Allen, Judge of the Superior Count, had "outlawed" Harris in Buncombe County, which meant that he could be shot on sight by any citizen of the County. By mistake, Lemuel Morrow, a black coachman, was shot on his way to work as he passed over Pearson's Bridge. When he was stopped by a citizen patrol, Morrow thought he was being held up; and when he reached for his pistol, the patrol took him for Harris. Fortunately, the wound was not fatal. Attempting to prevent a recurrence of the lynching of nine years before, and to protect the citizens whose city had armed men in every street, the mayor of Asheville closed all the saloons. In addition the grand jury met on Wednesday morning and presented a true bill of indictment against Harris so that, "If Harris is caught and brought to Asheville he will be tried immediately in superior court and sentenced to be hung in short order."44 The Citizen described the city on Wednesday as, a sober city. There were no threats, far less cursing than usual, the quiet of a Sunday almost save for the many determined people on the streets. The snow fell thick and fast and none noted it (November 15, 1906, p. 1). For the black population the most disquieting event was the search of their section of the city for the missing Harris: Men with rifles were coming in from vain hunts and others were coming to take up the search in the city. It was felt that the colored people would uncover the desperado if possible, but it was considered possible that he might be hidden by some through fear of his threats or by dissolute people and so a search was made of all houses in the vicinity of Valley and Eagle Streets and also in all the purlieus. It was a search made dispassionately, only officers entering, while the armed men guarded the outside (November 15, 1906, p. 1). It was not until noon of the next day that the "bullets of avengers end(ed) (the) negro desperado's career." After being spotted near Buena Vista, Harris was tracked through Skyland and Arden until he was cornered near Fletcher, and "a chase of two nights and a day ended with the cheers of avenging citizens which rang through the silent woods as the desperado fell in his tracks." 45 The body, filled with bullets and with its head partially shot off, was returned to Asheville in the afternoon where it was placed on display in the window of the undertaking firm of Hare, Bard, & Co. The following day, after hearing testimony on the events of the previous several days, in particular whether the desperado was the notorious escaped convict, Will Harris, James Harvey of Forest City, Virginia, or Rufe Lindsey of York, South Carolina, the coroner's jury delivered the following verdict: First, Will Harris, alias Rufe Lindsey, on account of unprecedented murders and crimes had been duly according to law declared an outlaw....Second, said Will Harris, alias Rufe Lindsey, came to his death at the hands of public spirited citizens who at the time were in the fearless and unselfish discharge of a public duty that the law might be vindicated and justice delivered Third, that the citizens above referred to, constituting the posse aforesiad, as well as others who participated in the search and spontaneous efforts to bring to justice this incarnate fiend and desperado are entitled to the commendation and thanks of the entire community (November 15, 1906, p. 1). 162 �The previous evening most of the black community had met to hold funeral services for two of the men slain by Harris. The funeral oration by E.L. Matteson, pastor of the Zion Methodist Church, had included a request urging the listeners that while endeavoring to lead the vicious to a right way of living they should independantly and in cooperation with the whites supress so far as they had power, all tendancy to evil doing, discountenance crime and repudiate all who persistently pursued their evil ways (November 15, 1906, p. 1). Also on Friday evening there was a mass meeting of black citizens which among other things resolved the following: We the colored people of Asheville contemplate with horror the crimes of this alledged Will Harris, and that we utterly repudiate the man as a member of our race. His name and memory bring to us a foul stench....We heartily endorse the styles taken by our good white fellow citizens to rid this community and the world of the presence of this notorious character who had proven at such awful cost to others his utter unworthiness of human life....We heartily commend our white fellow citizens for the absence of any and everything that could suggest in the least degree feelings against us as a race....We as citizens of Asheville are on the side of law and order and we are unalterably opposed to those members of our race who violate these, such persons shall not receive either sympathy or shelter (November 15, 1906, p. 1). If the citizens of Asheville could take comfort at the conclusion of these events, it would be that an extraordinary series of events which involved both blacks and whites did not produce a general race conflagration like that in Atlanta a few months earlier. The races were able to cooperate, and the prosecution of justice was kept within the bounds of law and order. Finally, the citizens of Asheville seemed to derive some satisfaction and comfort from the fact that, whoever he was, the fiendish desperado was from out of town and not one of Asheville's law-abiding blacks. There are any number of difficulties in drawing even narrow conclusions from the reports of three such brief and isolated events. Perhaps the most troublesome problem is the lack of a broad spectrum of newspaper points of view. This paper is based largely on accounts appearing in the Asheville Citizen which represented the view of the Democratic Party from its founding by Randolph Shotwell in 1870. Unfortunately, very few issues of newspapers representing the Republican Party, such as the Asheville Pioneer, or those published by blacks, such as the Asheville Mountain Cleaner have survived. In a community which was about one-half Republican and about onequarter black this represents a large omission. In reference to the three questions that were mentioned in the beginning of the paper, the following conclusions are presented. The doings of Asheville's black population were hardly mentioned unless they fell into one of two categories. If a black were involved in some criminal activity, or if there was some humorous aspect to the story, it might be printed. This is not particularly surprising as the Democratic Party and its publishing allies constantly emphasized the black membership of the Republican Party and delighted in holding them up to ridicule and presenting them in their worst light. The very small sample of Republican papers suggests that they tried to avoid mention of blacks. The extent to which the mountain region differed from the rest of the South in racial matters is one of degree. There appears to have been less violence and brutality, although this generalization might not hold up in per capita terms. It also appears that isolated incidents were less likely to spread into generalized race violence, which may also reflect the relatively small size of the black population. What is perhaps most interesting is the suggestion that the foothill areas, between the mountains and the piedmont,were the most volatile areas of racial unrest. In the low country the conservative Democrats generally had control, while in the mountains many areas were controlled by Republicans. It was in those areas where control was less definite or more shifting that unrest developed into overt hostilities. It was in these counties where the Klan first appeared. 163 �At least in terms of the sentiments expressed in the newspapers, there seems little to differentiate Asheville from Savannah. The opinion of lynching expressed in the editorial of the Citizen appears congruent with that of the Georgia lady and the crowd to which she spoke. However, it is with respect to this question that the lack of Republican and black papers is the most troublesome. Lacking such evidence it does not seem unreasonable to conclude that abolitionist or Unionist sentiment was not necessarily equivalent to pro-black sentiment. Insofar as the people in the mountain areas were more tolerant of blacks, the lack of racial conflicts may simply reflect the smaller proportion of blacks in the population. One aspect of the news reporting that a current reader finds most jarring is the quirky sort of frontier humor that pervades these otherwise horrific stories. Whether this reflects the journalistic style of the period, the southern attitude toward blacks, or an attempt to lighten a dreary situation, it gives an odd quality to the reading. It would be useful to compare the style of these reports with the news of other contemporary violence, such at that in the factories or coal fields, to see if they also contain a leavening of humor. Footnotes •W.J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Knopf, 1941), p. 219. 2 Loyal Jones, "Appalachian Values," in Voices from the Hills: Selected Readings of Southern Appalachia, ed. Robert J. Higgs and Ambrose Manning (New York: Ungar, 1975), p. 512. 'Edward J. Cabbell, "Black Invisibility and Racism in Appalachia," Appalachian Journal, 8 (Autumn, 1980), p. 48. 'John Preston Arthur, History of Western North Carolina (Asheville: Daughters of the American Revolution, 1914); Foster A. Sondley, A History of Buncombe County, North Carolina (Asheville: Advocate Printing Co., 1930); Douglas Swain, Cabins and Custles: the History and Architecture of Buncombe County, North Carolina (Asheville: Historic Resources Commission of Asheville and Buncombe County, 1981). 'Sondley, p. 698. 'Black enfranchisement was incorporated into the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870. 7Alan W. Trelease, White Terror: the Klu Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. xxxiii. "Trelease, p. xlvii. 'Trelease, pp. 28, 71, 125, 338. '"Sondley, p. 699. "Testimony, taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrestionary States, Volume 2, North Carolina (Washington, D.C., 1872, reprinted, New York: AMS Press, 1968), p. 239. 12 Judge James L. Henry, a Republican. "Testimony, p. 240. "Buncombe County, Superior Court, Minutes, Book A, p. 432, December 6, 1868. "Buncombe County, p. 411, December 4, 1868. The minutes report (p. 469) that Gardner was found "not guilty" on July 1, 1869. "Testimony, p. 240. The judge was again James L. Henry, the solicitor, Virgil L. Lusk, both Republicans. The defendants, including Simon L. Henry, were fined one cent and costs. "Testimony, p. 240. "Sondley, p. 698. "Trelease, p. 420. 20 Hugh Talmadege Lefler, North Carolina: the History of a Southern State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954), p. 522. "Lefler, p. 520. 164 �z2 Lefler, p. 521. "Salisbury Carolina Watchman, July 29, 1897, p. 1. "Asheville Daily Advance, July 7, 1897, p. 1. K Asheville Daily Citizen, August 4, 1897, p. 1. ^Citizen, August 9, 1897, p. 1. "Citizen, August 10, 1897, p. 1. ^Citizen, August 10, 1897, p. 1. "Citizen, August 11, 1897, p. 1. 30 August 12, 1897, p. 1. In the same issue there is an article on Mrs. Rebecca Felton, Georgia's "best known woman writer and suffragist," who spoke endorsing lynching. "She declared that as long as the men of the state should find sufficient rope, they would defend their wives and daughters." Her audience assured her that she had voiced their views and those of the people that they represented. "Citizen, August 12, 1897, p. 1. "Citizen, August 14, 1897, p. 1. M Milt Ledford was also the name of the man who was acquitted of the murder of James Smith in 1862. "Citizen, August 13, 1897, p. 1. ^Citizen, August 13, 1897, p. 1. Emphasis added. "•Citizen, August 19, 1897, p. 1. "Citizen, October 9, 1906, p. 1. 3> Asheville Semi-Weekly Citizen, October 12, 1906, p. 2. "Citizen, October 2, 1906, p. 1. "Citizen, October 26, 1906, p. 1. "Citizen, November 15, 1906, p. 1. In addition to a brief account in Arthur, p. 345-6, fictionalized accounts can be found in Thomas Wolfe, The Web and the Rock (New York: Harper, 1939), p. 132-56; and Bob Terrell, Grandpa's Town (Asheville, 1978). "Citizen, November 14, 1906, p. 1. "Citizen, November 15, 1906, p. 1. "Citizen, November 15, 1906, p. 1. "Citizen, November 16, 1906, p. 1. 165 �This page intentionally left blank �Culture, Mental Health and Personality 167 �168 �The Folk Banjo and Clawhammer Performance Practice in the Upper South: A Study of Origins William Tallmadge This presentation is primarily concerned with achieving answers to the following two questions: (1) who transmitted the banjo and the clawhammer manner of playing it to musicians living in upper southern states, particularly in mountain areas of Kentucky, North Carolina, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee and in the piedmont areas of North Carolina and Virginia? and (2) when was this transmission accomplished? In addressing these two questions, it was also necessary to come to grips with a third question concerning the role played by Joel Walker Sweeney in the development of the American banjo. The banjo is a variant of a long-necked, skin-head lute "common in West Africa, the Middle East and Asia" (Odell 1980: 118). Both the name and the instrument itself came to the West Indies and the North American mainland from West Africa, though both aspects of this statement need to be qualified somewhat. Names for a similar instrument in Africa vary with different tribes; however, two banjo prototypes that are quite well known are the molo, a three-string instrument made of a gourd with a skin head, and the halam, a five-string instrument, also made of a gourd and having a skin head. Three of the strings of the halam are drones, whereas only the fifth, highest string of the present-day banjo is a drone string. , Sibyl Marcuse noted that "the Senegalese still have a lute named bania" (1975: 435); also, Bruno Nettl suggests the bania as the ancestor of the banjo (1976: 93). To date, however, I have not found the bania described by African scholars, nor have I found any discs of West African music that provide musical examples of such an instrument. Perhaps it is significant in this regard that Dena Epstein in her documentary history of the folk banjo (1975) did not list the bania as a possible source for the name of the American banjo. An African instrument called the bangelo was described by a ,li ^ dealer in the mid-18th century (Epstein 1975: 351). In the Caribbean area banza was a common name for a banjo-like instrument (Ibid., 359-360). Another writer surmises that "the name of the instrument probably derives from the Portuguese or Spanish bandore" (Odell 1980: 118). Apparently, the exact source of the name of our banjo will never be clearly established.1 TH^ugh the banjo came from West Africa, there is no evidence that it was brought here in its corporeal form; rather the way of making it was carried here in the minds of slaves who had made similar instruments before they were captured. Gourd banjos, though usually known by different but somewhat similar names, have been described in the western hemisphere as early as 1678. They appeared first in the English and French col -lies of the Caribbean Islands, but by 1774 they were being mentioned on the mainland (Epstein 1V/9: 359-360). Apparently, the banjo did not find a permanent home in Portuguese and Spanish colonies; the popularity of guitar-type instruments in those areas may have channeled the interest of slaves vard those instruments instead of the banjo. During the period from 1694 through 1851 a number of descriptions of banjos in the West Indies and on the mainland were cited by Dena Epstein (1975), and they clearly establish that slaves 169 �made and played a four-string instrument. Only one of two 1851 citations described the making of a five-string instrument, but by that time black-face minstrels had already made the switch from a four-string to a five-string instrument. Since a drone (chanterelle) string (or strings) exists on some banjo prototypes in West Africia, it is reasonable to suppose that a drone string was one of the four strings of the plantation banjo; but unfortunately, 17th and 18th century banjos were described in all but few instances by nonmusicians who could not recognize a drone tone if they heard it or understand the purpose and function of the thumb-string if they saw it. Be that as it may, we can be certain that by the end of the 18th century, slaves in South Carolina (and very likely elsewhere) were playing a four-string banjo with the high fourth string used as a drone. The tuning peg for the drone string was placed halfway down the neck next to the lowest string just as on later five-string banjos. Such a banjo is pictured in a watercolor painting, "The Old Plantation." This painting was done between 1777 and 1800 and is in the possession of The Abby Rockefeller Folk Art Center at Colonial William sburg. Joel Walker Sweeney The painting mentioned above is the missing link which enables one to properly assess the contribution of Joel Walker Sweeney (1813-1860) to the development of the American five-string banjo. Sweeney was raised in a rural area in Buckingham County, Virginia, not far from Appomatox Court House. Judge R.B. Pore of Appomatox Court House recalled that Sweeney was raised "in the midst" of slaves (Arthur Woodward 1949: 8). Arthur Woodward continues the description. Though he does not list his sources, his account has the ring of truth, and, but for the remark about the addition of the fifth or thumb-string, has been generally accepted by scholars: By the time he was thirteen, Joel was intensely interested in music, and according to family tradition he could play quite well not only upon the four-stringed gourd shell Negro instrument, a favorite with the slaves of the early 19th century, but upon the violin as well— As Joel grew older he became dissatisfied with the gourd shell, and made an instrument of wood with a skin head instead of the more fragile gourd. About the year 1831 he added a fifth or thumb-string to this new invention, thus producing the first of a long line of banjos. Joel's musical career was launched when he was twenty-one. He attended the County Courts in Buckingham and adjacent counties, where, on court days, there was a certain amount of festivity in the towns.... His fame spread, and his part-time avocation became a full-time career.... About 1840 Joel was on his way to being a professional. He joined a small circus and for several years traveled through Virginia and North Carolina....Then...he moved north and gave banjo concerts in the Eastern states....His success in Yankee land encouraged him to cross the ocean and tour England 1949: 7-8i. Woodward's description appears to be a fairly conservative account of Sweeny. For example, when Robert C. Toll writes that "by the late 1820s, blackfaced white American performers like...J.W. Sweeney...toured the nation"...(1974: 27), one is inclined to doubt such an early date. On the other hand, the following observation by Hans Nathan is quite credible: "It is said that in 1838, when traveling as a Negro singer with a circus company through the South, he William M. Whitlocki met Joe Sweeney, the famous banjoist, and received a few lessons from him" (brackets and emphasis added) (1962: 115). If it be doubted that Sweeney could be regarded as famous in 1838, it should be pointed out that no white banjoist other than Sweeney is mentioned prior to the year 1838 by Wittke (1930), Nathan (1962), or Toll (1974). Nathan, in fact, cites the "late thirties and early forties" as the period when solo banjoists began to develop (1962: 59). Perhaps Sweeney was not the first white banjo player in America (his contemporaries never claimed that honor for him), 170 �but certainly he was the first white banjo player (and very likely the first player, black or white) to play a five-string banjo. This, in itself, was sufficient to have carried his name north even before he arrived in person. After being taught by slaves how to make and play a four-string gourd banjo, the fourth string of which was a drone thumb-string, Sweeney, sometime between 1831 and 1835,2 constructed a banjo with a wood frame to which he added a fifth string. The drone string, as the strings are presently numbered, then became the fifth string instead of the fourth. When one understands what Sweeney really did, it is easy to see how the judgment of those who have debated Sweeney's accomplishments has been beclouded by a confusion in terminology. When it has been claimed that Sweeney added (or invented) the fifth string to the banjo, it has been automatically assumed by scholars that the drone thumb-string was the string in question. Poor old Sweeney; if he were alive today, it would be difficult for him to describe what he did: Question: I see you have a five-string banjo there. Were you the first to add the fifth string to the banjo? Sweeney: Yes, I was the first to add it. Banjos only had four strings before I put the fifth string on it. Question: So you were the first to put a thumb-string on a banjo? Sweeney: No, I wasn't the first one to do that. Question: Well, isn't the fifth string on a banjo the thumb-string? Sweeney: Yes it is. Question: But you just said you were the first one to put a fifth string on a banjo. Sweeney: That's right. Question: Let's try another question. Did you put a thumb-string on your five-string banjo? Sweeney: Yes, I put a thumb-string on it. Question: You seem to contradict yourself. You said you were the first to put a fifth string on the banjo; you have agreed that the fifth string on a banjo is the thumb-string, but you also said you weren't the first person to put a thumb-string on the banjo. You are confused. Sweeney: I am now. The confusion of scholars regarding Sweeney was abetted by 19th century writers, mostly from the North, who until the drone string appeared on the banjo, had no idea of its purpose or function. The first thumb-string that they knew of was the one on Sweeney's banjo. Little wonder, then, that they thought he invented it. Woodward quotes banjoist Fred Mather, who wrote in 1897: I knew "Old Joe Sweeney" about 1846 or '48 when I was a boy of thirteen to fifteen. He came North with a circus twice in different years. He taught me how to bring down my thumb and play "Grape Vine Twist."...! believe there is no doubt that he was the first to put the thumb string on the banjo, the "chaunter" or "chanter" we called it then, but I've not heard the word in years [1949: 9] . In the light of what we now know about Sweeney's accomplishments, how is one to evaluate statements made by scholars such as Foster Damon (1936: annotations to "Old Tare River") or Alan Lomax (1947: 78)? Both assert that Sweeney added the fifth string, but neither writer stipulates that it was the thumb-string that was added. Without making unwarranted assumptions about what they had in mind, their statements must be regarded as correct. Therefore, when Jay Bailey accused John Lomax (sic) of repeating the Sweeney story "with unusual naivete" (1972: 59), it is Bailey who may have been naive; and careless at that, since he drew upon Gene Bluestein (1964: 243) for the Lomax quotation, and Bluestein quoted Alan (not John) Lomax. It is easy to understand why the great majority of minstrel banjoists, most of whom were from the North, continued to play a four-string instrument (with no thumb-string) "until the late 1840s" (Nathan 1962: 153). It took them that long to learn from the playing of Sweeney, from the playing of those who had studied with Sweeney, or possibly from the playing of slaves, what the purpose and function of a thumb-string was and the technique of using it effectively. 171 �Playing Styles The playing style of plantation slaves is believed to have consisted of a brushless clawhammer technique. That is , it was a melodic, non-chordal style played in a percussive manner.3 The terms rapping or knocking have been used to describe such a performance practice, and both terms (together with clawhammer) are appropriate descriptions of the manner of playing as it still exists as played by some Blacks and Whites in the southern mountains and in the piedmont areas of North Carolina and Virginia. The evidence that supports the clawhammer practice among slaves is circumstantial but strong when it is considered cumulatively. Descriptions of the playing style are rare, but two citations are significant. A French monk, Jean Baptiste Lebat, writing of his experience in Martinique in 1694, described a four-string instrument. Dena Epstein summarizes his description as follows: "They had a kind of guitar, made from half a calabash covered with a piece of skin and with a long neck. Four strings were raised on a bridge about the skin. This instrument was played by plucking and striking the strings" (emphasis added) (1979: 30). Fanny Kemble described a slave on a Georgian plantation, who in 1838-39 "seemed...to thump his instrument with every part of his body at once." (1863: 97). Another indication supporting a belief that the plantation playing technique consisted of a clawhammer tradition is that several of the pioneer minstrel banjoists, including Joe Sweeney, Ned Christy, and Billy Whitlock are said to have learned how to play their instruments directly from slaves (Tool 1974: 45-47). Since it has been clearly established by Hans Nathan and particularly by Robert B. Winans that the early minstrel banjoists employed a brushless clawhammer technique, it can be assumed that the minstrel tradition came directly from slaves (Nathan 1962: 126-127; Winans 1976: 412-416). Winan's comment regarding Sweeney is appropriate in this context: "Sweeney's relationship to minstrel playing is analogous to Earl Scruggs' relationship to bluegrass banjo. His influence was so great that the fact that he learned from blacks is nearly enough in itself to tie the whole tradition of minstrel banjo to contemporary folk black playing" (1976: 417-418). Perhaps the most telling evidence that plantation slaves played in a frailing, clawhammer manner is that a number of black banjo players in the southern mountains and in piedmont areas continue to do so.4 These are elderly men who, for the most part, learned from individuals whose lives go back well into the 19th century. Unless it is proven otherwise, we may assume that this black performance practice represents a direct continuation of the black antebellum tradition. Perhaps it is significant in this regard that Robert Winans, who maintains the hypothesis that it was the minstrels that introduced the clawhammer tradition to mountain Whites (to be discussed later), wisely remained silent regarding the possibility that they introduced the style to piedmont and mountain Blacks. Banjos were fretless until about 1880 (Heaton 1971: 64), and some performers prefer fretless, homemade banjos at the present time. Until he died in 1965, Frank Proffitt of Watauga County, North Carolina, made, played, and sold them. And Winans mentions that Wade Ward, Hobart Smith, Glen Smith, and Fred Cockerham play fretless banjos (1976: 416). Christopher Lornell states that the Negro performer John Snipes of the piedmont section of North Carolina also plays a fretless banjo (1975: 28). The addition of frets to the banjo simplifies the playing of chords and makes it easier to play pitches in tune. On the other hand, the presence of frets tends to inhibit the use of neutral pitches (quarter-tones), which have been employed by folk musicians the world over (Buchanan 1940: 81). 172 �Such neutral pitches appear in some of the early modal songs and banjo and fiddle duets, and the fretless banjo played in a non-chordal, brushless clawhammer style is able to match the neutral pitches of the voice and fiddle. This aspect of banjo playing is implied by a remark of Eric Davidson, who, in commenting on the introduction of the guitar into the mountains at the end of the 19th century, notes that "only very skillful guitar players can fit their instruments to traditional Grayson and Carroll Counties banjo and fiddle music. It was simpler to adapt the older music to the attractive, easy-to-learn new instrument" (1962: 4). Writers have not agreed upon answers to the two questions posed in the introduction to this essay. Gene Bluestein considers them, and his comments are appropriate: As Alan Lomax pointed out, the banjo became the characteristic instrument of the southern mountaineer. The manner of transmission is not clear, although there have always been small numbers of Negroes in the mountain areas. Mr. Archie Green has suggested to me that the early penetration of the mountain areas by railroads using mainly Negro labor was a major source of contact....It is from the playing of southern Appalachian white banjoists that we have learned most about the style of the instrument. And since their manner of playing is no! closely related to the minstrel tradition, it may be that it represents a closer approximation of earlier Negro styles (emphasis added) (1964: 246). Archie Green's statement will be considered later, but Bluestein's final sentence above is somewhat paradoxical in that he agrees with, and cites, Hans Nathan's remark, quoted above, concerning the similarity of slave and minstrel styles. Another remark of Nathan's, not cited by Bluestein, emphasizes the clawhammer (percussive) relationship to an even greater extent. In describing Billy Whitlock's performance practice, Nathan observes that "Whitlock played his banjo with complete abandon, roughly striking the strings with the nail of his forefinger." Nathan then draws a direct parallel with Negro practice: "That this was the genuine Negro style becomes clear from a description of a colored banjoist in Kemble,"—He then cites the Fanny Kemble passage that was previously quoted (1962: 126). The next writer to treat the questions posed in the introduction was Jay Bailey. He notes the resemblance of the playing styles of slaves and early minstrels and observes that the early minstrel style closely resembled "what is now called 'frailing' or 'beating' the banjo." He does not consider the question of its transmission to mountain Whites, but mentions the dates "1880 to 1930" as the period when white mountain musicians "took over and adapted the instrument for playing AngloAmerican folk music" (1972: 61-62). That this date is too late will be established later; but Bailey is not alone in ascribing such a late time-frame to the introduction of the banjo to mountain Whites. Charles Wolfe has observed that ' 'by the turn of the century the banjo had made its way into the mountains" (1977: 20). Wolfe did not think it necessary to stipulate the particular century, but it is clear from the context that he means the turn of the 20th century. Here it is maintained that the same statement might be applied to the turn of the 19th century. A significant contribution to the two questions posed in this essay is made by Robert B. Winans. He cites the directions for playing the banjo found in Thomas F. Briggs's Banjo Instructor of 1855 and in Phillip Rice's banjo method book of 1858 and concludes: Any reader who is familiar with old-time southern mountain banjo playing styles will recognize the style described above. It is frailing, or more specifically since there are no chords, it is a combination of what have been called 'brushless frailing' and 'drop-thumb frailing' (which is also known as the 'clawhammer' style)....It is generally acknowledged that frailing is the earliest mountain banjo style. But not so generally known is the fact that non-chordal, or brushless, frailing is earlier than frailing which employs 'brushed' chords (1976: 412-415). Winans then cites Eric Davidson in support of this point. 173 �It is clear, on the basis of information obtained from old people, that the clawhammer banjo style [by which he means brushless, drop-thumb frailing] is the earliest remembered style. For example, Wade Ward's mother-in-law, Granny Porter, was asked if Wade's style clawhammer is different from that current at the time of her childhood. Granny is now [1962] 85, and in full possession of her very considerable faculties. Her first husband was a very fine banjo player....She replied that Wade's banjo style is the same as that her first husband used and the same that he learned when he was a boy [Eric Davidson, notes to the disc Traditional Music from Grayson and Carroll Counties cited by Winans (1976: 416); brackets and elesions in original], Transmission to Mountain Areas Winans next presents the hypothesis that since "the earliest mountain folk style of banjo playing...is essentially identical to the early minstrel style,...mountain banjo playing is a direct descendant of minstrel playing" (1976: 416). This is the hypothesis which Winans supports and one to which this essay takes exception. But going on, Winans, in subsequent explication, considerably strengthens Nathan's original thesis that early minstrel banjoists relied directly upon the Negro slaves for their musical style and performance practice. He then questions whether Negroes could have transmitted the style directly to mountain Whites, and cited Archie Green's suggestion made to Gene Bluestein (see above)that the Negro workers on the railroads may have been a major source of contact. To that point Winans replies what is read between the lines, "This suggestion acknowledges that there were few blacks in the mountains; one must find evidence that they were brought in, for one reason or another, to be able to establish much contact between blacks and mountain whites." He then concludes that "exploring the possibilities for transmission from minstrel show to mountain whites is a more logical and fruitful approach" (1976: 419). Subsequently, Winans establishes that during the mid-1850s traveling minstrel shows, particularly those on showboats on the Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee, and Big Sandy Rivers could have been the means whereby the banjo and the frailing method of playing it were transmitted to mountain areas. He also mentions traveling medicine shows, circuses, the Civil War, and the travels of mountain people to urban areas as ways they could have come in contact with white minstrel music. He discounts the idea of any direct transmission between Blacks and Whites in mountain areas; yet he cites evidence that would seem to support, at least indirectly, such transmission, and he misses or ignores available evidence suggesting a direct transmission from Blacks to Whites. Winans quotes from an 1874 source cited by Hans Nathan in which a white banjo player from "Western Virginia" by the name of Ferguson was described as having so impressed Dan Emmett, who was in the area in 1840 with the Cincinnati Circus Company, that Emmett persuaded the manager to hire Ferguson, who procceeded to teach Emmett how to play the banjo (1976: 420-426, passim). Winans thinks that the Ferguson incident was atypical and observes that "while this seems to show some very early penetration of the banjo into the mountains, I do not think the establishment of the tradition can be dated from this early period" (Ibid., 426). Winans erred, I think, in not according that incident the importance that it deserved. Social historians.and other writers have concerned themselves with the "common" people as a class, but names of such individuals were seldom mentioned during the 19th century (or any other century for that matter). Therefore, when an individual such as Ferguson does appear in print it is most significant, and it may be assumed that other white mountain banjo players existed in the same area. Folklorists, in particular, ought to grant this premise because they know that the materials of their profession have usually been around for a long time before being identified in print. Furthermore, they know that the appearance in print of a certain item—for example, a ballad—is usually an indication that that particular ballad had achieved a degree of currency by the time of its appearance. 174 �Ferguson was not the only mountain banjoist to be described in print before 1850. A citation in Nathan mentions a book of 1833 that described a frontier frolic in Tennessee in which a black banjoists played for white dancers (1962: 190). It is not clear whether the frontier area in question was in the mountains; so perhaps that was the reason that Winans did not mention this reference. Certainly, however, he ought to have mentioned Eileen Southern's reference to Thomas Ashe, who in 1806 visited a ball in what is now Wheeling, West Virginia. There he saw and heard two black banjo players who were playing for the dance (1971: 144). In my opinion these three references do indicate that Blacks and Whites had established a banjo tradition in the mountains and that they had done so before the minstrels arrived. There is little doubt but that the banjo was omnipresent among Negroes of the southern United States by the end of the 18th century. A number of citations have established that point (Epstein 1975: 347-360, passim), but Thomas Jefferson's 1781 comment is perhaps best known: "The instrument proper to them is the Banjar, which they brought hither from Africa" (Chase 1966: 67). It seems most unlikely that the Scotch-Irish, German, and English settlers who passed through the Shenandoah Valley and the piedmont areas of Virginia and North Carolina on their way into and across the Blue Ridge Mountains during the last half of the 18th century (some bringing along their Negro slaves) would have been unaware of the banjo. In any event, the present existence of a black clawhammer performance practice in piedmont areas seriously weakens Winan's hypothesis that it was the minstrels who introduced the banjo to mountain areas during and after the 1850s. Winans takes cognizance of the existing piedmont tradition and cites a conversation with Alan Jabbour, who proposed that the existence of it "provides a basis for arguing that there was, some time in the nineteenth century, a direct transmission of the banjo and the clawhammer style of playing it from blacks to whites in the piedmont, and that whites thereafter carried the style into the mountains" (1976: 436). Winans does not discuss this possibility, but concludes his essay with the observation that "this knowledge does not cause me to alter the basic thesis presented here" (Ibid., 437). The Black Presence The remainder of this essay is written in support of Jabbour's arguement. In addition, it is proposed that recent population studies indicate that considerably more Negroes were present in the mountains during the first decades of the 19th century than was formerly believed, and that the salt industry in both the Kanawah region of what is now West Virginia and in eastern Kentucky provided sufficient contact between slaves and mountain Whites during the first two decades of the 19th century to have established the transfer of the banjo and the clawhammer style of playing it. The advent of the minstrels along the waterways of the mountain areas shortly after the mid-19th century would have served to strengthen an existing practice and to have popularized it. Writing of the salt industry in western Virginia, John Edward Stealey, III, observes that "in 1808, the salt industry developed on the Great Kanawha River and Kanawha Salines rapidly became the largest production area for the basic necessity in the ante-bellum United States" (Stealey 1974: 107). Negro slaves did the heavy work in the salt mines. The mountain people had to have salt, so they either traveled to where it was produced or got it from traveling peddlers. In any event, contact with slaves did occur at the salt mines, if not elsewhere. Robert Winans cites Gene Bluestein and Archie Green in order to make the point that the number of Negroes in the mountains were too few to have transmitted the banjo and a style of playing it to mountain Whites. Recent studies of the black population in the southern mountains 175 �suggest otherwise. Stealey, in discussing the West Virginia salt industry, notes that "in the period 1810-1820, the number of slaves in the county [Kanawha] more than tripled from 352 to 1,073....In 1850 the slave population count reached its highest figure—3,140 slaves" (brackets added) (1974: 108). Production of salt in the Kentucky mountain counties was not as extensive as that at Kanawha, but the industry in Clay County and Greenup County (later divided to include Carter County) was significant. "In 1810 about one-half of the State production (323,388 bushels) was produced in the mountain counties (160,388 bushels). Of this, 43 percent was from Clay County and 53 percent from Greenup County, which then included the works on the Little Sandy near what is now Grayson, [in] Carter County" (brackets added) (Morgan 1976: 140). The number of slaves listed in Clay County increased from 53 in 1810 to 160 in 1820 (Ibid.). The slave population of Greenup County for those dates was not mentioned, but since the production of salt in that area was greater than that in Clay County by ten percent, it may be presumed that more slaves were employed there. A history of Carter County does mention that "by 1800, salt had been discovered, and the Grayson Salt Works were established" (Bicentennial Committee 1976: 3). Also it was stated that "at the outbreak of the war in 1861, there were approximately 320 slaves owned by Carter County families" (Ibid., 50). The black population was spread unevenly throughout antebellum Appalachia. James B. Murphy, writing specifically about mountain areas, cites the following figures: In 1860, Appalachian Kentucky had 5,349 blacks, slave and free; the next smallest black population was 6,868 in Appalachian Alabama. For other areas the figures were more than twice as large. The 1860 census reported 14,395 Negroes in the North Carolina mountains, and 25,527 blacks in Appalachian Georgia. Tennessee and Virginia led Appalachia in Negro population, with 31,660 and 69,334 persons respectively. The entire Appalachian region was home to 153,133 blacks on the eve of the Civil War. To state the black population as a part of the total black and white population in 1860 is another way of making the state-by-state comparison. Blacks comprised 3.9 percent of Kentucky's mountain population. In Appalachian Virginia the figure was 12.6 percent. In North Carolina and Tennessee, slaves and free black formed 11.5 percent and 10.2 percent of the population. In Georgia and Alabama, Negroes were 19 percent and 13.4 percent of the total Appalachian population. For the six-state region the figure was 11.5 percent [1982: 153-154]. While it is true that Murphy's figures do not indicate the population for the Appalachian mountains during what I consider to be the critical period—1790-1830—when the banjo and its playing style was transferred from mountain Blacks to mountain Whites, elsewhere he does indicate that the greatest slave growth momentum for the six-state Appalachian region occurred prior to 1830 (Ibid., 156). These population figures seem to indicate that the number of Negroes living in the mountains was adequate for the transmission of the banjo and a playing style to mountain Whites between 1790 and 1830. Actually, there only needs to be one black banjo player in an area in order to initiate the transmission process. The character and extent of the contact made between Blacks and Whites does not seem to depend as much upon a population count as it does upon matters of social custom and what elements of culture are being transmitted. One is confident that wherever slaves were present, the banjo was also present. The banjos were homemade, and it does not stretch the imagination to think that an interested man from the mountains, having arrived to pick up salt, might pass some time listening to an off-duty slave strumming a banjo. Nor does it violate the natural order of things to imagine that a subsequent event would consist in a swap of some items the slave wanted 176 �for his banjo. After all, he could easily make another. In fact, when it became known that something could be had for an old banjo, banjos for trade would soon appear like gourds on the vine. "What will you take for that there belly-whacker?" might have been the opening gambit. In conclusion, three methods and three time-frames have been suggested for the transmission of the banjo to mountain Whites. First, Bluestein supports Archie Green's idea that it was the black railroad workers' "early [?] penetration of the mountain areas" that was the means of transmission. I have questioned the term early in that quotation because the time-frame is actually rather late for the Negro to have introduced the banjo. Railroads came into the mountains to carry coal out; but "until the late 1890s the Southern Appalachian coal fields were relatively unexploited" (Barnum 1970: 17). By 1890-1910, when railroads came into most mountain areas, Negroes, with few exceptions, were no longer playing banjos; they were playing guitars. If they introduced any instrument to the mountains at that time, that instrument would have been the guitar. Second, Robert B. Winans introduces the banjo and the frailing style into the mountains mainly by means of the white minstrels and concludes that "the mountain tradition was established between 1865 and 1880" (1976: 435). I find it difficult to believe that the mountaineers could have been unaware of the banjo and the Negro way of playing it, which by 1865 had been present in America for about 100 years. Also, the two Negro banjo players of 1806 in Wheeling, the Negro player of 1833 in Tennessee, and the white banjoists, Ferguson, who taught Dan Emmett, must be accounted for. Winans, in order to support his hypothesis, is forced to deny any significance to Ferguson and to ignore entirely the black presence in the mountains. In addition to the points above, the current presence of elderly Negroes in the piedmont areas ought to have been treated by Winans. It is most doubtful, for example, that the black practitioners who preceded these performers adopted the clawhammer technique from the minstrels; though they, along with Negroes everywhere, including the singers of spirituals and secular songs, did derive tunes and texts from white minstrel sources. Last, the present essay supports the hypothesis suggested to Robert Winans by Alan Jabbour, that Whites had already been introduced to the banjo by Blacks before either group came into the mountains; if not, mountain Whites could have received the banjo from mountain Blacks shortly after their arrival. Population figures indicate that there were enough slaves in Appalachia by 1790-1830 to have transmitted elements of their culture to any interested white settlers, and the salt industry supplied a direct means of contact. Notes I would like to thank Francis S. Hutchins, former president of Berea College, for suggesting the salt industry in West Virginia and Kentucky as an early source of contact between slaves and mountain Whites. This paper was presented, and copies of it were distributed, at The Sixth Annual Appalachian Studies Conference held at Pipestem, West Virginia, March 18-20, 1983. 'Sweeney's original banjo is housed in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. After investigating the probable date of it, Jay Bailey concludes that "possibly the Sweeney banjo dates from as early as claimed, around 1831-1833" (1972: 61). Since the earliest name for a banjo-like instrument found in the western hemisphere is the banza, this is very likely the direct source for the name banjo. A 16th-century report, apparently unknown to Dena Epstein (1975), seems to suggest that the name banza derives from the name of the village of Mbanza (now Mbanza-Ngungu in Zaire). Gerard Behague noted that "Duarte Lopes had already described similar unfretted instruments popular at the Congo court in Mbanza (1568-87)" (1980: 525). 2 For a complete description of minstrel and mountain brushless clawhammer techniques, see Winans (1976: 408-416). 177 �Winans also cites Art Rosenbaum's Old-Time Mountain Banjo (New York: Oak, 1968), pp. 43-46, as an additional source for a description of clawhammer styles. 'See Lornell (1975: 26-32); Bastin (1979: 3-19); and Conway and Thompson (1974: 63-66) for discussions of black banjo players in the piedmont and in the mountains. Also, selections played by Irving Cook and John Galloway on the disc Virginia Traditions: Non-Blues Secular Black Music (BRI-001) illustrate the non-chordal clawhammer styles of black performers in the piedmont. A black, chordal clawhammer mountain practice can be heard on the disc Blues Roots: Music From West Virginia (John Henry Records-001). References Cited Bailey, Jay 1972 Historical Origins and Stylistic Developments of the Five-String Banjo. Journal of American Folklore 85 0anuaryMarch): 58-69. Barnum, Darold T. 1970 The Negro in the Bituminous Coal Mining Industry. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bastin, Bruce 1979 Black Music in North Carolina. North Carolina Folklore Journal 27 (May): 3-19. Behague Gerard 1980 Latin America. In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, No. 10. Bicentennial Committee, Rogers et al 1976 Carter County [Kentucky] History 1838-1976. Grayson, Kentucky. "Blues Roots: Pre-Blues Music From West Virginia with Uncle Homer Walker and Clarence Tross." 1978 John Henry Records 001. Jacket notes by Ed Cabbell and Joan Fenton. Bluestein, Gene 1964 America's Folk Instrument: Notes on the Five-String Banjo. Western Folklore 23: 241-248. Buchanan, Annabel Morris 1940 A Neutral Mode in Anglo-American Folk Music. Southern Folklore Quarterly 4: 77-92. Conway, Cecelia and Thompson, Tommy 1974 Talking Banjo. Southern Exposure 2: 1, 63-66. Damon, Foster 1936 Series of Old American Songs. Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University Library. Davidson, Eric 1962 Brochure notes to "Traditional Music From Grayson and Carroll Counties." Folkways FS 3811. Epstein, Dena 1975 The Folk Banjo: A Documentary History. Ethnomusicology 19 (September): 347-371. 1979 Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Heaton, Cherrill P. 1971 The Five-String Banjo in North Carolina. Southern Folklore Quarterly 35 (March): 62-82. Kemble, Frances Anne 1838-39 Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839. New York: Harper & Brothers. 178 �Lomax, Alan, ed. 1947 Folk Song U.S.A. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce. Lornell, Christopher 1975 Pre-Blues Black Music in Piedmont North Carolina. North Carolina Folklore Journal 23: 26-32. Marcuse, Sibyl 1975 A Survey of Musical Instruments. New York: Harper & Row. Morgan, Mr. and Mrs. Kelley 1976 History of Clay County, Kentucky 1767-1976. Manchester, Kentucky: Morgan Book Company. Murphy, James B. 1982 Slavery and Freedom in Appalachia: Kentucky as a Demographic Case Study. The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 80 (Spring): 151-169. Nathan, Hans 1962 Dan Emmetl and the Rise of Early Minstrelsy. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. Nettl, Bruno 1976 Folk Music in the United States: An Introduction, rev. 3rd ed. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Odell, Jay Scott 1980 Banjo. In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, No. 2. Southern, Eileen 1971 The Music of Black Americans: A History. New York: W.W. Norton. Stealey, John Edmund, III. 1974 Slavery and the Western Virginia Salt Industry. The Journal of Negro History 59 (April): 105-131. Toll, Robert C. 1973 Backing Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press. "Virginia Traditions: Non-Blues Secular Black Music" 1977 BRI Records 001. Brochure notes by Kip Lornell. Winans, Robert B. 1976 The Folk, The Stage, and the Five-String Banjo in the Nineteenth Century. Journal of American Folklore 89 (October-December): 408-416. Whittke, Carl 1930 Tambo and Bones: A History of the American Minstrel Stage. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. Wolfe, Charles 1977 Tennessee Strings: The Story of Country Music in Tennessee. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press. Woodward, Arthur 1949 Joel Walker Sweeney and the First Banjo. Los Angeles County Museum Quarterly 7 (Spring): 7-11. 179 �Mental Health Problems of Rural Appalachians with Pulmonary Diseases: An Exploration of the Relevant Issues Marria F. Barren, A.C.S.IV. John G. McNutt, A.C.S.W. I. Introduction This paper discusses mental health aspects of pulmonary disease among residents of rural areas in Southern Appalachia. Pulmonary disease threatens one of our most basic needs—the need to breathe. Because it threatens our breathing, it also threatens our lives. Pulmonary disease, however, is more than just a physical problem. These diseases also threaten our social and psychological health. Victims of chronic disease, such as some of the pulmonary diseases, must often make major alterations to their lifestyles and expectations (Strauss, 1973; Mailick, 1979; Bracht, 1979). How diseases affect the person is dependent on many factors, not all of the physiological. In this paper, some of those non-physiological variables will be discussed. The course of a pulmonary condition is shaped by social, cultural, intrapsychic and environmental variables, as well as the interaction between the disease and the person's physiology. These non-physiological considerations can facilitate the patient's ability to deal with the disease. On the other hand, some of these variables can retard the person's recovery or adjustment. II. The Physical Diseases: There are a number of conditions that fall under the general category of "Pulmonary Disease." Many of these diseases are acute, or short term in nature. Common examples of acute pulmonary diseases include influenza, acute bronchitis, pneumonia, and the common cold. While these diseases are usually transient in nature, they can lead to lung damage and more chronic conditions. Serious acute pulmonary conditions can result in death. Other pulmonary conditions are more chronic in nature. Included in this category are such ailments as tuberculosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic librosis, lung cancer and Asthma. These diseases can last for years and have a significant impact on the person's life. While all illnesses can be said to have a psychosocial effect, the problems of the chronic patient seem to have the greatest relevance for our discussion. It should be made clear, however, that much of what is said about chronic pulmonary conditions is also true for acute pulmonary conditions. In the discussion below, the major physical manifestations of selected pulmonary diseases will be presented. The purpose of this section is to provide the reader with some background for subsequent discussion of the non-physiological factors. Obviously, the literature on these diseases is extensive, and this discussion represents a very shallow treatment. With this disclaimer in mind, several diseases are discussed below: A. Pulmonary Tuberculosis: Once referred to as "consumption" or "The White Plague", tuberculosis was once a major cause of death in the United States (Felton and Lewis, 1966; Nor180 �throp, 1978). While pulmonary tuberculosis afflicts the lungs, tuberculosis is not strictly a lung disease (Felton and Lewis, 1966). Tuberculosis is caused by the introduction of the tubercle bacteria into the person's body and is spread from person to person (Felton and Lewis, 1966). Treatment for this disease is usually through the use of antibiotic drugs and hospitalization (Northrop, 1978). B. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Ostrow (1978: 530) s t a t e s : Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) encompasses several related disorders that share a common functional defect, the inability to expire air completely and rapidly from the lungs. He goes on to say: The major types of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease include emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and chronic bronchial asthma (Ostrow, 1978: 530) Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is, then, a collection of related diseases. These diseases will be discussed in turn. 1. Emphysema: According to Ostrow (1978: 530): Emphysema is defined as an anatomic alteration of the lung, characterized by an abnormal enlargement of the air spaces (alveoli) beyond the smallest conducting lung airways (terminal non-respiratory bronchioles) accompanied by destructive changes of the air space (alveolar) walls. Obley (1970: 15) indicates that the emphysemic's lungs are always, at least partially, inflated. He goes on to say that "The predominant symptom of emphysema is shortness of breath... usually he (the patient) also has a cough, which frequently he has had for some time" (Obley, 1970: 23). Serious cases of emphysema can lead to disability or even death. Ostrow (1978: 532) notes that "in 1967, of 310,947 workers granted Social Security Disability allowances, 19, 227 were considered disabled with emphysema." 2. Chronic Bronchitis: Ostrow (1978: 530) defines chronic bronchitis as: A clinical disorder characterized by excessive mucous secretions in the bronchial tree and manifested by chronic or recurrent productive cough, presented on most days for a minimum of three months in each year for at least two successive years. The disease occurs when the airways become enlarged, causing restriction of the air intake. Ostrow (1978: 530) points out that: The patient with chronic bronchitis may look deceptively healthy, except for a tendency to purplish or bluish discoloration of the lips and fingernails (cyanosis) and a daily hacking cough, resulting in constant spitting up of phlegm...this person...may appear quite healthy until a cold or flulike illness develops resulting in rapidly worsening breathlessness, blue lips and nail beds, and a tendency to collect excessive amounts of fluid in the body (edema). 3. Asthmatic Bronchitis (Asthma): Ostrow (1978: 48) defines this disorder as: A disease characterized by increased responsiveness of the major airways (Trachia and Bronchi), to various stimuli and is manifested by widespread narrowing of the airways that varies in severity, either spontaneously or as the result of treatment. The asthma usually occurs when the patient is exposed to a substance or infection that he or she is sensitive to (Ostrow, 1978: 531, Felton and Lewis, 1966). The result is spasms of the bronchial tubes (Felton and Lewis, 1966: 89). Treatment for COPD, according to Ostrow (1978: 535): Utilizes a comprehensive approach aimed at educating the patient as to the nature of the disease, lessening 181 �the degree of airway obstruction, and ceasing cigarette smoking; treating intercurrent respiratory infections; improving general body conditioning, combatting depression; and providing the severely affected individual with certain home devices such as supplimental oxygen and Positive Pressure Breathing (I.P.P.B.) machines. Hospitalization is needed, from time to time, for the treatment of acute episodes and infections. In some cases, the sufferer may be confined to the home. C. Pneumoconiosis: According to Selby (1973): "Pneumoconiosis is a term referring to all chronic diseases caused in the lungs as a result of prolonged inhaling of injurious dusts." Perhaps the best known variant of this condition is black lung. Dust coats the lung tissue and interferes with the function of the lung in exchanging air with the environment. Selby (1973: 178) points out that "the most common symptom...is shortness of breath". D. Cystic Fibrosis: Cystic Fibrosis is a genetically transmitted disease that affects a number of organs (Oppenheimer and Ruckers, 1980). Anderson (1978: 345) notes that: Gastrointestinal symptoms include persistantly bulky bowel movements and a failure to grow or gain weight despite a large appetite. The signs of pulmonary involvement include repeated episodes of wheezing, persistant cough with excessive amounts of mucus, and recurrent respiratory infections. She goes on to say that "there is no cure for cystic fibrosis" but suggests that the disease can be managed medically (Anderson, 1978: 345). E. Lung Cancer: Lung cancer, or bronchiolar carcinoma, is a serious, generally chronic lung disease. Lung cancer is usually hard to detect in the early stages (Selby, 1973). Selby (1973: 1180) states that "Some of the symptoms that are considered warning signs in lung cancer include chronic dry cough, chest pain, weight loss, blood spitting, and shortness of breath." Balchum (1974: 121) notes that "Practically all subjects with lung cancer are smokers." As in many cancers, treatment can include surgery, chemotherapy, and nuclear medicine. III. Commonalities and Ramifications of the Conditions: The diseases that have been discussed have a number of common characteristics. All are life threatening. The life of a chronic respiratory patient is often a constant state of illness, punctuated by acute episodes. During these acute episodes, death is often a possibility. These diseases, like other chronic diseases, are expensive to treat (Bracht, 1979). Hospital stays, constant medical attention, high priced medications, and other health-related expenses are costly. Treatments are often disruptive to the life situation of the patient. Strauss (1973: 33)states: "Each chronic condition brings with it multiple problems in living." He points to the chronic patient's need to normalize his or her situation (Strauss, 1973). Much of what we have learned about chronic diseases in general (Bracht, 1979; Mailich, 1979; Strauss, 1973) is applicable. In brief, chronic illness creates a multitude of barriers to maintaining the usual lifestyle of the patient (Strauss, 1973). Adaptation to the social situation requires a complex interplay of cultural, social, psychological, and physiological considerations (Strauss, 1973; Mailich, 1979). Several researchers have identified anxiety (Knapstein, 1973), social isolation (McGeough, et, al, 1980), and depression (Knapstein, 1973: 193; Ostrow, 1978: 536), as well as other psychological problems as associated with chronic pulmonary disease. Vocational problems have been noted by Ostrow (1978), Knapstein (1973), and others. 182 �Adaptation to a chronic pulmonary disease is a serious problem for the patient and his immediate social circle. A model of this process, as it is experienced by resident of rural Appalachia, is presented in the next section. IV. A Model for Interpreting Adaptation to Chronic Pulmonary Diseases by Rural Appalachian Patients: This section presents a conceptual model for examining the process by which the Appalachian pulmonary patient is drawn into a complex web of forces that often have a deciding effect on the balance of his/her life. The model is presented graphically in figure 1. The major components of this model are the sick role, learned helplessness, cultural factors, social conditions, and the disease itself. Each component will be presented individually, and then in interaction with other components. V. The Sick Role: The concept of the sick role was formulated by Parsons (Bracht, D., 1979). While his original concept has come under criticism (Levine and Lozloff, 1978), his work has great importance in medical sociology. The sick role is a type of social role. Like other social roles, the sick role has responsibilities and benefits that accrue to the person who occupies the role (Light and Keller, 1982). The expectations of the sick role include the assumption of a dependent position and the acceptance of help from a medical practitioner (Bracht, D., 1979; Solomon, 1982). As a quid pro quo, the person is relieved of his normal duties and cared for by others (Bracht, D., 1979). The person is not considered responsible for his status (Bracht, D. 1979). Solomon (1982: 284) notes: "The sick person becomes a passive, dependent and weak individual who is at the mercy of the medical skills and expertise of the healer." In acute conditions, the sick role can be a transitory phenomenon. In chronic diseases, the sick role can continue indefinitely. Figure 1. Mental Health Aspects of Pulmonary Diseases in Rural Appalachia: A Conceptual Model. 183 �VI. Learned Helplessness: Learned helplessness is a product of the research of psychologist Marvin Seligman. It has been applied to a number of social situations and social problems, including spouse abuse (Walker, 1979) and the interaction between health care providers and chronic patients. The basic idea behind the concept of learned helplessness is that the person does not receive an appropriate positive response when he manipulates the environment in the proper manner. This leads to depression and a feeling of helplessness as the person "learns" that whatever action he takes is of no avail. The chronic pulmonary patient who religiously follows medical advice and is rehospitalized for an unavoidable infection or acute episode is a prime candidate for learned helplessness. Eventually, he will learn that he is helpless and not in control of his fate and his future existence. When the nature of the disease is combined with the social conditions and cultural situation that will be discussed below, the chances of a patient acquiring a sense of learned helplessness are excellent. Since the interaction between the sick role and learned helplessness is obvious (eg: helplessness and dependency), these two concepts should be considered mutually supporting of each other. An illustration can be found in Solomon (1982: 282). VII. Social Conditions in Rural Appalachia: The rural Appalachian community presents a harsh environment for the pulmonary patient. Four elements of this environment (Worklife, Poverty, Health Care, and Geographic Distances) are especially taxing. A. Worklife: As Carlson, et, al (1981)notes. rural economic systems are largely based on extractive industries. In Southern Appalachia, this generally means farming, mining or timbering. These industries offer, for the most part, manual labor requiring a great deal of physical endurance. Pulmonary diseases reduce the worker's ability to engage in physically demanding work (Ostrow, 1978). This effectively closes the door to available positions in the rural community. In addition, many pulmonary patients find it advisable to avoid settings where large amounts of dust are present (Ostrow, 1978). This may mean that the worker must leave his usual occupation. In an area with a wider range of occupations, the proper approach would be to find the worker a position in less demanding office work. In rural areas, however, office jobs are not as easily found, and generally do not pay as well as many manual jobs. Even when office work is available, the patient may be unqualified to accept it. The problems of the Appalachian educational system are adequately documented (Caudill, 1963: 1976). A person without an adequate education (including good basic skills) cannot do some types of office work. As Harry Caudill (1976) notes: To a man with a virtually forgotten fifth grade education, a sad shyness nurtured by an obvious lack of social graces, living in a society with a diminishing supply of simple jobs for which employers would pay wages, there were no prospects (Caudill, 1976: 143). In addition to structural barriers, many Appalachian male workers have been socialized to consider non-physical labor as "women's work." They may reject this option (office work) in defense of their already damaged self esteem. Discrimination against the handicapped is also a problem. Even in the face of legal protections, it is quite likely that many employers continue to discriminate against the handicapped. Legal protections have been established for the handicapped (Hull, 1979), most notably the Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Public Law 91-111). 184 �B. Poverty: It has become somewhat of a cliche to say that Appalachia is a rich land whose people live in poverty. For the pulmonary patient and his family, the problem of income is compounded by the expense of treating the disease and the employment problems mentioned above. The lifestyle that poor people are forced to adopt provides a fertile ground for disease to take hold and thrive (Light and Keller, 1982). Poverty can affect many aspects of the person's life as they relate to pulmonary disease. Some government benefits are available to the poor of rural Appalachia, but they are generally inadequate (Caudill, 1976). Current political developments almost assure that these benefit programs will be reduced, eliminated or maintained at current low levels. C. Health Care: Obtaining adequate health care is a problem for many rural residents, including those in Southern Appalachia (Carlson, et, at, 1981). This situation can be more serious for the person with a pulmonary disease, who, in some cases, may need ready access to a health care delivery system. Health care professionals are in short supply in many rural areas (Carlson, et, al, 1981: 116). Many communities lack nearby hospitals. Access to a physician with a specialty in pulmonary medicine can be more of a problem. Another aspect of medical care is patient self care. The pulmonary patient often requires a treatment regime based on diet, drugs, equipment such as home oxygen and an I.P.P.B. machine, exercise, posteral drainage, etc. Environmental conditions may have to be modified. For instance, the pulmonary patient may have to move to a location where dust is less of a problem (Obley, 1970). Some types of self care presume a level of education, that, because of the education system and other factors, may not be present among some rural patients. While home health care is an obvious problem solving method, it is not always available. Even in urban areas, with theoretically higher literacy and access to resources, Avey, et, al (1980: 168) found adequate self care a problem for some asthmatics. D. Geographic Distances: Distance is a significant issue in the lives of many rural Appalachians. They must travel to work, health care and other services. Mass transportation is not generally available (Carlson, et, al, 1981) in many rural areas. The pulmonary patient who does not have the use of a car may find himself unable to secure the goods and services he requires to control his disease. Distance is also a factor for the delivery of home bound services. Shelley and Evans (1980) identify distance as a factor in the management of disease among Appalachian people. VIII. The Cultural Dimension: Culture affects many aspects of the way that people, including pulmonary patients, manage their lives (Light and Keller, 1982). In Appalachia, the patient may find himself responding to more than one cultural influence structure. Plaut (1979: 250) notes that "Appalachia is viewed as a region where competing cultural systems clash." He goes on to say that "rural Appalachia and the industrial world that surrounds it are two distinct cultural systems" (Plaut, 1979: 251). While the application of medical care to pulmonary patients is not specifically dealt with in Plaut's (1979) paper, it is reasonable to assume that the way traditional rural culture deals with disease will be different from the management of disease by industrial society. Shelley and Evans (1980: 209) provide an examination of health care in traditional Appalachian society. They state: "...Traditional health care concepts and folk medicine practices are still a 185 �significant part of the lives of some Appalachian peoples" (Shelly and Evans, 1980: 215). They go on to say: "Appalachian people usually attempt to choose between modern and traditional health care systems, or sometimes both, on the basis of personal and cultural factors"(Shelly and Evans, 1980: 215). They also discuss the role of religion, distance, and work schedule on health care selection (Shelley and Evans, 1980: 215). The traditional Appalachian culture also supports an extended kinship systems model of the family (Brown and Schwarzweller, 1970). Properly used, these family models can be the basis for a powerful social support system for the pulmonary patient. The utility of informal support systems is well documented in the literature of the helping professions (Collins and Pancoast, 1976; Gottlieb, 1981). The traditional social system owes much to its frontier heritage (Erikson, 1976; Jones, 1972). The Appalachian values of individualism, self reliance, and pride (Jones, 1972: 110) have great relevance here. The worker who has deeply ingrained values of self reliance and individuality may experience considerable anxiety when faced with the prospect of dependent lifestyle. Workers who are obviously very ill may continue to work, to salvage their self-image as independent, self-reliant persons. Of course, another reason for this would be economic. Many workers know that the benefits available are not adequate to maintain their lifestyle. Appalachian culture is, then, a two-edged sword. Traditional culture can interfere with the delivery of modern medical care by encouraging traditional healing. On the other hand, the strong family ties and support systems can provide the patient with resources to better manags to establish that one of the diseases we have been discussing is present. The disease then becomes a social, as well as a medical fact. IX. Interaction of the Components: The disease is the initial factor in the model. Most of the chronic pulmonary diseases are established by diagnosis. The physical signs of the disease are not defined as a disease until a practitioner diagnoses them as such. Most laypersons would be able to identify a broken limb or serious bleeding situation, in most cases. These signs are easily identified. Many of the pulmonary diseases have few abnormalities in the early stage. Cough is a frequent symptom, but is also presented by most of the general population from time to time. A trained person must assemble the clues to establish that one of the diseases we have been discussing is present. The disease then becomes a social, as well as a medical fact. In the usual process for acute diseases, the person adopts the sick role and proceeds to have the disease cured. The sick role is then dropped (Bracht, D., 1979). In chronic pulmonary disease this does not happen. The sick role is not dispensed with. For reasons that were explored earlier, the sick role and learned helplessness can be said to be interacting variables.. Both the cultural situation and the community setting have elements that can reinforce the sense of helplessness. The expectation of results from a person's attempts to reach culturally prescribed goals can be blocked by both community and cultural factors. When the person learns that he cannot reach his goals or influence his environment, a sense of helplessness is inevitable. Frustration can be expected in such a situation, which can lead to anxiety and stress. This can lead to further damage to the patient's psyche. The interaction of the major parts of the model can be important assessment tools in dealing with the mental health problems of pulmonary patients. The anxiety, stress, and depression observ186 �ed in pulmonary patients (Ostrow, 1978; Knapstein, 1973) become a form of adaptation to a hostile environment that promises to snuff out his life. X. Implications: There are a number of implications to this model. The most obvious need is for culturally relevant psychosocial services as a adjunct to medical care. This will include modification of the environment as well as psychotheraputic approaches. Early intervention may prevent some of the psychosocial effects from occuring. In order to fulfill the needs of this patient group, mental health workers will need an understanding of the physical diseases. They will also need a working appreciation of Appalachian communities and Appalachian culture. They must learn to intervene with mezzo and macro systems, as well as micro systems. There is a need for more research. The interaction between pulmonary disease and traditional culture is an area that needs further study. Another fruitful area would be an analysis of Appalachian patient careers. Pulmonary disease is a frightening situation for the person and his family. The mental health professional, working with the physician, can help to make the world of the pulmonary patient a little less frightening. References Anderson, R. (1978) "Cystic Fibrosis" in Goldenson, R. Disability and Rehabilitation Handbook. New York: McGraw Hill. Avey, C.H., March, J., and Brook, R. (1980) "An Assessment of the Adequacy of Self-Care by Adult Asthmatics" in Journal of Community Health. Vol. 5, No. 3, Spring. Balchum, O.J. (1974) "The Aging Respiratory System" in Chinn, A. ed. Working with Older People: Clinical Aspects of Aging. Washington, D.C.: U.S.G.P.O. Best, I. (1972) Appalachians Speak Up. Berea, KY. Brack, D. (1979) "Assessing Psychosocial Effects of Illness" in Bracht, N. Social Work in Health Care. New York: Haworth Press. Bracht, N. (1979) "The Social Nature of Chronic Disease and Disability" in Social Work in Health Care. Vol. 5, No. 2. Brown, J. and Schwarzweller, H. (1970) "The Appalachian Family" in Photiadis, J.D. and Schwarzweller, H. Change in Rural Appalachia. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania. Carlson, R., Lassey, R. and Lassey, D. (1981) Rural Society and Environment in America. New York: McGraw Hill. Caudill, H. (1963) Night Comes to the Cumberland!. Boston: Little-Brown. (1976) Watches of the Nigh'. Boston: Little-Brown. Cobb, A.B. (1973). Medical and Psychological Aspects of Disability. Springfield, IL: Thomas. Collins, E. and Pancoast, D. (1976) Natural Helping Network. Washington, D.C.: N.A.S.W. Erikson, Kai. (1976) Everything in it's Path. New York: Simon and Schuster. 187 �Felton, J. and Lewis, M. (1966) A Survey of Medical Practice and Medicine for the Rehabilitation Counselor. Washington, D.C.: U.S.G.P.O. Gottlieb, B. ed. (1981) Social Networks and Social Support. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Hull, K. (1979) The Rights of Physically Handicapped People. New York: Avon Jones, Loyal. (1972) "Appalachian Values" in Best, I. Appalachians Speak Out. Berea, KY. Knapstein, J. (1973) "Respiratory Disorders and the Rehabilitation Process" in Cobb, A.B. Medical and Psychological Aspects of Disability. Springfield, IL: Thomas. Leving, S. and Kozloff, M. (1979) "The Sick Role: Assessment and Overview" in The Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 4. Light, T. and Keller, S. (1982) Sociology. New York: Knopf. Mailick, M. (1979) "The Impact of Severe Illness on the Individual and His Family: An Overview." in Social Work in Health Care. Vol. 5, No. 2. McGeough, A. Edwards, J., Chamberlain, R. and Nogeire, C. (1980) "Social Isolation in Lung Cancer Patients" in Social Work in Health Care. Vol. 5, No. 4. Northrop, C. (1978) "Tuberculosis" in Goldenson, R.M. Disability and Rehabilitation Handbook. New York: McGrawHill. Obley, F.A. (1970). Emphysema. Boston: Beacon Press. Oppenheimer, J. and Rucker, R.W. (1980) "The Effects of Parental Relationships on the Management of Cystic Fibrosis and Guidelines for Social Work Intervention" in Social Work in Health Care. Vol. 5., No. 4. Ostrow, J.H. (1978) "Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease" in Goldenson, R. Disability and Rehabilitation Handbook. New York: McGraw Hill. Plaut, T. (1979) "Appalachia and Social Change: A Cultural Systems Approach" in Appalachian Journal. Summer. Selby, J.H. (1973) "Respiratory Diseases" in Cobb, A.B. Medical and Psychological Aspects of Disability. Springfield, IL: Thomas. Shelley, K. and Evans, R. (1980) "Women Folk Healers of Appalachia" in Sommerville, W. ed. Appalachia/America. Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press. Solomon, K. (1982) "Social Antecedents of Learned Helplessness in the Health Care Setting" in The Gerontologist. Vol. 22, No. 3. Sommerville; W. (1980) Appalachia/America. Boone, N.C. Appalachian Consortium Press. Strauss, A. (1973) "Chronic Illness" in Society, Vol. 10, No. 6. Walker, L. (1979) "The Battered Woman," New York: Harper and Row. 188 �Economic Development in Appalachia: New Perspectives 189 �This page intentionally left blank �The ARC—Some Questions Relative to its Past and Possible Future Edgar Bingham Heralded in the late 60's and early 70's as the prototype for regional development, the Appalachian Regional Commission and the planning program it was designed to develop and administer will likely go by the boards before the first term of the Reagan administration is over. But before we don the black of mourning perhaps we should take stock of what it has really accomplished. The program was created out of the stuff that dreams are made of. It was part of the Kennedy dream given reality by the Johnson administration. It was the advance column of the war on poverty, attacking not just the symptoms but the root causes, and structured to involve all levels of government with the basic planning at the grassroots level, the Local Development District. In particular, it was not to become a local relief program, but rather a process by which physcial and human resources would be put to work to create a self-sustaining economy, fully integrated for the first time into that of the rest of the nation. The apparent soundness of the approached to be followed is indicated by the effective integration of public officials and professional planners, with the former largely concerned with policy and the latter with the details of implementation. Professional staffs at the local development district level were to assist county and municipal governments in establishing their own planning bodies and developing their individual plans as a part of the regional effort. Assuming that those named at the local levels were truly representative of the people, then the paper organization for planning seemed to cover all areas of concern. The primary policy-making body was composed of representatives of all Appalachian states and a representative of the federal government. The federal member and one elected from among the representatives of the member states were to serve as co-chairmen. Recommendations for consideration were to originate in the states, with options for local input available at the local planning district levels. And the regional program was given strong federal financial support to supplement state and local sources in creating the basic infrastructure needed to attract industry and provide a healthy life support system for the people. It should have had a tremendous impact on the lives of everyone in Appalachia. But remarkably, its impact on the lives of Appalachia's poor, the people it was really supposed to serve, will have been little more than a ripple in the stream of Appalachian life. Apart from the highway development, funds for the basic public facilities were too limited to overcome the massive deficiencies of the region. And typical of most federal programs, the areas with the most severe needs were the ones most often by-passed in that most grants had a matching clause that the more poverty stricken communities could not meet, plus the fact that the guidelines laid down by the Appalachian Regional Development Act directed the ARC to channel federal funds into designated growth centers. 191 �Perhaps the most visible local remnant that will be left will be the various local planning commissions and the comprehensive plans they helped to create. Unfortunately, the legacy of their work will show little alteration of the local landscape, in that local planning is only as good as the planning body that does the work and the local government that acts on the recommendations that are submitted. And in most jurisdictions life has tended to go on pretty much as before, with commercial strips extending unimpeded and unguided outward from the towns, housing developments taking over good agricultural land, and with local planning commissions spending all their time debating requests for zoning changes and variances, rather than trying to come up with creative plans for community improvement. At the broader regional level, many would question the general assumption around which the regional development program was built, and the primary approaches for dealing with Appalachia's problems. The primary concern behind all efforts was supposed to be regional poverty, and the general assumption was that it was chiefly due to isolation from the mainstream of American economic life. Assuming this is a correct assumption (and there are many of us who have questioned this from the beginning), the framers of the Regional Development Act put as the first priority the development of a regional highway system to interconnect with the federal interstate system. Critics point out that the system that evolved seemed more concerned with providing interconnections for outside interests than with using them for internal development (see Gautier, Howard, "The Appalachian Development Highway System: Development for Whom?", Economic Geography, April 1973, and Munro, John M., "Planning the Appalachian Development Highway System: Some Critical Question," Land Economics, May 1969). Their primary focus tended toward already established centers, with little concern for providing the real pockets of poverty with accessways that might lead to their development. Niles M. Hansen questions the validity of the assumption that a well developed highway system will attract enough firms to the area to assure self-sustained growth, pointing out that most private firms are attracted to already developed areas because of the variety and importance of external economies found in such areas. He notes that in addition to transportation and natural resources, these include proximity to supplies and markets, skilled, labor, social and cultural amenities, auxilliary business services, and relatively well developed education and health facilities (and we might also add a docile, non-unionized labor situation). (Hansen, Niles, M., "Some Neglected Factors in American Regional Development Policy: The Case of Appalachia." Land Economics, Feb. 1966.) Munro (op.cit.) supports Hansen's view that highway development does not really attack the basic reasons for Appalachia's lag, which has been identified as (1) a regional industry mix made up of too many declining and stationary industries, (2) unattractive amenities—notably the squalid physical appearance of many inhabited areas and the general neglect of education, (3) an unplanned and wasteful use of land resources, especially coal, timber and water, (4) a largely unskilled and poorly educated labor force, (5) a general shortage of social overhead capital, (6) the resistance of the region's inhabitants to migration, and (7) a traditional society generally unreceptive to new ideas and economic change. While we do not agree with all reasons listed, we agree fully with Munro as he notes that the system was poorly planned, with the costs of the program essentially unknown until a very late stage in the planning, benefits never carefully specified, and with the highways located in an economically irrational manner...which does not conform to the original objectives of the development highway system which was to "stimulate the flow of goods to and through remote areas which have developmental potential." The original study report by Litton Industries (Preliminary Analysis for 192 �Economic Development Plan for the Appalachian Region, Report to the Appalachian Regional Commission, U.S. Department of Commerce, Nov. 1965, Washington, B.C.) showed few parts of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky with even fair growth potential. However, Munro notes that 851 miles of development highways were scheduled to be built in these two areas (Munro, op.cit.). Tied into the highway development scheme and the recipients of most of the social and economic overhead expenditures were the "Appalachian Growth Centers," urban areas considered to have the greatest potential for development. Apart from serious questions about the growth center concept itself, serious questions have been raised about the appropriateness of the concept as applied to the Appalachian region. Malcolm J. Moseley (Growth Centers in Spatial Planning, Pergamon Press, New York, 1974) suggests that a growth center should be a fairly large city capable of attracting and supporting a reasonably diversified industrial sector with well established links to the national economy. It should offer major wholesale and retail services and a high level of tertiary functions, and should be supported by growth promoting forces—large scale firms, technically advanced, innovating and dominating, which exert a strong influence on the surrounding environment, and are capable of generating sustained growth over a long period of time. And according to Berry (Berry, B.J.L., "A Summary, Spatial Organization and Levels of Welfare: Degree of Metropolitan Labor Market Participation as a Variable in Economic Development," EDA Research Review, June 1968, pp. 1-6), the greatest payoff for growth centers would be in cities of 250,000 with few of less than 50,000 having any influence of importance on surrounding areas. This conclusion agrees with findings of E.G.A. Robinson (in Robinson, E.G.A., ed., Backward Areas in Advanced Countries, St. Martins Press, New York, 1969) who states that the minimum size of growth points that experience has shown to be successful as "nearer to a population of 100,000 than to one of 10,000 and that the 100,000 was likely to be an underestimate than an overestimate." Apart from Charleston, West Virginia there are no growth centers in hard core Appalachia that fit the above size definitions, and within the entire area defined by the ARC, essentially all urban areas large enough to be effective are either in the Great Valley or are on the periphery of the region. In many respects, the more logical growth centers serving Appalachia are outside the area designated, and therefore not eligible for ARC assistance. Perhaps more basic than the questions raised about the limited number of Appalachian centers large enough to function as growth centers, are the questions raised relative to the concept itself. The concept assumes that as centers develop there will be economic spin-off that will spread to surrounding areas. However, in order for the spread effect to really work, there has to be an interconnection of some consequence between the center and the area surrounding it—products of the area that are used in the center or a means of combining products of the center with surrounding raw materials and labor to produce another good. While there has been some minimal spread effect associated with the larger cities within and peripheral to Appalachia, the strategy has better served as a tool for distributing funds allocated for Appalachian development and for interception potential migrants who would otherwise have left the region. In many cases rather than having a beneficial effect, the developing growth center has caused the market for retailers in the hinterland to dry up, so that rather than stimulating the economy away from the center it has depressed it, and communities that may have in the past had a self-sustaining quality become bedroom towns for the growing center. Stavros Xiarchos ("Empirical Works on the Growth Center Concept," Review of Regional Studies, Spring 1978) found that the sum total of the studies he examined supports the conclusion 193 �that "growth centers and their peripheral areas do not have linkage mechanisms of sufficient strength and number to justify general use of growth center policy in the United States." Among the studies cited to reach this conclusion are those of William G. Lewis and James R. Prescott ("Urban-Regional Development and Growth Centers: An Economic Study, "Journal of Regional Science, Vol. 12, no. 1, 1972) who state.'Though the growth center strategy is designed to promote development at the regional level, our analysis indicated that growth patterns within the FEA (the Department of Commerce's Functional Economic Areas) are not highly complimentary with this investment strategy. The strength of spatial spending patterns from the smallest rural town to the central cities of FEA suggest that policies promoting centralized urban growth alone will have severe impacts on commercial sales in peripheral communities." And Stewart and Benson, in their analysis of growth center-peripheral area relations by means of correlation, regression analysis, and analysis of migration data, concluded that "the findings cast doubt on the entire growth center strategy, insofar, at least, as smaller metropolitan areas are concerned" (Stewart, Charles T. and Virginia G. Benson, Linkages Between Smaller Metropolital Areas and Hinterlands, With Implications for Regional Development Policies, paper prepared under EDA, Washington, The George Washington University, 1972). Increasingly, people of Appalachia are objecting to growth center strategies on ideological grounds that are closely related to concerns that have surfaced in underdeveloped areas of the world. Appalachia, long isolated from mainstream America, has most of the characteristics associated with the underdeveloped world. Income levels are low; educational and health facilities are more limited and of lower quality than in the rest of the country; primary economic activities are relatively more important, focusing here on exploitation of coal and timber largely under control of giant externally owned corporations; and the manufacturing industries that are here tend toward the low skill, low income generating types—all in all an economic colony of metropolitan based financial interests. And the whole Appalachian Development program from the beginning tended toward strengthening the hold of external interests over the region, assuming that economic benefits would trickle down as corporate America expanded its scale of operations here. The growth center concept with its transportation development corollary has served in particular to strengthen the role of the giants, giving them better access to raw materials and cheap labor, and providing for cheap shipment of finished goods over publicly created and maintained transportation facilities. Michael E. Conroy ("Rejection of Growth Center Strategy in Latin American Regional Planning," Land Economics, Nov. 1973, pp. 371-380) notes that the primary arguments presented by Jose Luis Coraggio against growth center theory at the United Nations Vina del Mar Seminar were (1) aligning one's national economy with a pattern of dominant and subdominant poles of development (which in contemporary terms means submission to the dominance of the economics of the United States, Japan, and Western Europe), (or for Appalachia, the dominance of externally based multi-national corporations); (2) artifically inducing internal growth consistent with the world system of dominant poles (as distinct from regional organization consistent with presumably more beneficial autonomous national growth); and (3) encouraging further foreign investment as the only feasible means of obtaining the requisite large scale, dynamic oligarchic, high technology propulsive industries described as the core of any polarized scheme of development. 194 �Another set of specific objections noted by Conroy that have a parallel in Appalachia were voiced by Warwick Armstrong and Raimundo Santos "Critica de la Teoria de Polos de Desarrolo," Documento de Trabajo no. 51, Centre de DeSarrollo Urbano y Regional (CIDU), Universidad Catolica de Chile, June 1972) who suggest that the form of "concentrated decentralization" to which growth center strategy logically leads is a solution dictated by an apparently unchangable private concentration of economic activity in mammoth corporations and by the absence of government policy instruments to effect anything other than the location of these increasingly concentrated units. Growth pole theory in their view, is being forced upon the less developed countries to rationalize the inevitability of Western dominated capitalistic expansion. They suggest that it is a new form—though more refined than earlier—of persuading the less developed of the capitalist world to open their doors and establish a satisfactory climate for implanting branch companies by the giant multi-corporations. At the time the ARC was formed, the proposal that appeared to offer the best hope for internal development of Appalachia was one suggesting the creation of public development corporations (similar to those formed in England in its New Town program) which would use federal funds to develop local resources to produce energy and process regional raw materials using regional labor. Possibilities included development of public power facilities, small industries (especialy those using timber), and tourism. The private utility loggy, led by Appalachian based American Electric Corporation, killed all possibilities for public power development. And in combination with other corporation interests destroyed the possibility of developing locally controlled small industries. Tourism was about the only local developoment possibility left, and the federal program that eventually emerged in this economic area did little to enhance the local employment situation. Reflecting the political clout of corporate America, the ARC subsequently stated that it would take no action that would infringe in any way on existing business operations within the region— meaning that the region continues in the same situation as before, an economic colony of the large corporations with continuing exploitation of natural and human resources for the benefit of nonAppalachian owners and stockholders. This early decision assured business as usual for big coal, big recreation, and outside industrial interests, with federal dollars used to assure them of easier access via the Appalachian corridor system. At the time of its founding liberals in Appalachia saw the Regional Commission as a possible means of countering the dominance of external control, but every suggestion to move in that direction was turned down. This was not really surprising in that few Appalachian governors would dare oppose the interests of corporations operating within their jurisdictions, and the most powerful figure in the Commission during its early development was the elected state's representative, John Whisman. Throughout his career, Whisman has had a record of playing hand in glove with business interests. As Executive Director of the Eastern Kentucky Development District, his Board of Directors were composed of one M.D., one minister, one college president, one newspaper editor, two coal company executives, two oil company executives, and a realty developer-owner. His selection as the state's representative on the ARC in 1965 assured the corporations that their interests would be in good hands. In the overall organization of the ARC the one place that it appeared that the voice of the people might be heard would be at the Local Development District level. And in the public meetings of the District Planning Commissions, individuals can appear and state their concerns. However, the membership of these commissions and the special advisory committees named to work with them 195 �tends to be as dominated by special vested interests as is the Regional Commission. Representatives are named by the elected bodies of the various counties and municipalities, and any radical voice is quickly stilled (in 1972 the author of this paper was asked by the Executive Director of the Mt. Rogers Planning District Commission to serve on the Economic Advisory Committee of the District. However, on recommendation by the Board of Directors, his name was removed). The District Commission is able to exert tremendous pressure on local governments by means of purse strings, in that it serves as the A-95 review board for all agencies seeking public funds. To give credit where credit is due, we should add that the professional planners at the Local Development District level have in most cases done acceptable jobs under very trying circumstances. They have been fairly effective in educating elected bodies and the general public about the benefits of planning, and in creating a consciousness about land use and the long-term need to control abusive use. Theirs is a frustrating role, and in most cases they have done a good job in spite of the limitations imposed by the ARC, the state, and their own boards. There is one final question we should raise. Should the people of Appalachia press for a continuation of the Regional Commission and the funding program needed to support it? In terms of what it has meant to most of the people of Appalachia, I would say no, in that a lot of money has been spent not really to alleviate the problem of poverty here, but rather for the benefit of the business concerns milking the region's human and physical resources. The highway development-growth center-trickle down approach has done little to create a healthy, self-sustaining economy, and certainly has strengthened the hold of external ownership on the region. Considering what it has cost, the limited benefits gained by people do not appear worth it. However, there is a parallel question we should raise. Will there be anything in a more positive way to replace it when it has gone? We are faced with a dilemma. In a region that most desperately needs the benefits of good planning, we have gotten poor, limited purpose planning, designed more than anything else to benefit the people only as a spin-off from the real beneficiaries. The irony of it all is that nowhere is good planning more needed than in Appalachia. Economic planning is still needed here to deal with unemployment that is higher than in the rest of the nation, and where earned income still falls considerably below the national average; educational planning is needed to bring the quality of education up to national standards; health planning programs are needed to improve the quality of medical services and facilities and to deal with occupational health problems such as black lung and respiratory disease. Despite heavy concentration of ARC funds on transportation development, a high percentage of Appalachian people remain isolated for lack of any public transport facilities. Creative planning is needed here. Imaginative planning is needed if we are to preserve the natural landscape in the face of the exploitative economy which tends to prevail here. The quality of the area's air and water is still being degraded by pollution from mining and industry, and slopes are still being denuded by recreation and second home developments. In spite of all the recognized shortcomings of government efforts in the past, many feel that the best hope for the future is in keeping the structure that we have, seeking to gain the power of decision-making through effective political organization. Those favoring this see two avenues by which this might be done. At the national level, the right president, committed to improving the lot of America's poor, could conceivably alter the situation at the top by naming a strong federal representative, who with his veto power, could possibly counter the corporate focus at the top. For those who would seek to work within the existing structure, perhaps the best possibility for effective involvement and effective action is at the district commission level where the most fundamental 196 �decisions are made. They would seek to organize successful political efforts at the county and municipal levels, with ultimate control gained through the voting booths. In seeking to accomplish what is needed in Appalachia, it is difficult to imagine that there will be any drastic departure from past approaches as long as we operate within the present political structure. Planners will continue to operate as before—seeking to bring about an improvement in the human condition within the terms of the present society. If this situation is to be changed it will not be by or through the existing system. For as Lakachman has noted, "Planning by conservatives in a conservative country is not likely to promote radical objectives." (Robert Lackachman, "Planning: By Whom? For What?", Journal of Current Society Issues, Spring 1976.) J.A. Palmer has suggested that "if the poor are to bring about the necessary changes in the institutions and structures which implicitly or explicitly block opportunities for advancement and self-determination, they can only do this collectively, not as individuals." (In Introduction to the British edition of Robert Goodman's After the Planners, Pelican 1972, p. 49.) In the final analysis, the essence of planning is control, and the only way that the process of planning can bring about a redistribution of resources or social benefits within a society is through assumption of power over planning. Consequently, the alternative which many in Appalachia would favor would be to let the ARC die a natural death and start all over, either with or without the standard structure of government. Ideally, this would involve a breaking of existing bonds between government and industry and the establishment of a socialistic system with the primary control over regional resources and industry resting with the people. Unfortunately, at the moment the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way. Bureaucratic conservative control seems to be increasing, facilitated by local arms of the ARC. Perhaps it is through this unusual extension of power that the system is vulnerable to attack. For increasingly, this interlocking system of politicians, industrialists, and resource exploiters are becoming identified as the primary source of Appalachia's problems. As Goodman notes, there is a growing distance between those who work and the unions and management who make decisions on their behalf; between the claims of politicians and businessmen that people have never had it so good and the actuality for people who have really never had it in the material sense of the word (Goodman, After the Planners). It should be emphasized that any proposed reform of the present system will not achieve any real shift in control. To be accepted, reforms are made to fit the status quo, with the result that they can never work as effective mechanisms for change. Power to make the key decisions in planning cannot be given, it has to be assumed. Understanding the reality of the situation as it now exists, perhaps a better possibility for the immediate future would be through developing a political power bloc within Appalachia, with primary efforts directed toward maximizing benefits to localities that are derived from Appalachian resources and labor. Such a power bloc might attack a number of issues such as the reclaiming of land rights lost by the use of the broad form deeds; bringing wage rates in Appalachia up to the national average; use of federal funds to improve education and health standards within the region; and the use of more realistic severance taxes on resources removed from Appalachia with benefits to be used in diversifying local economics and improving essential services in Appalachian counties. A trap that those who would assume control over their lives should avoid is the concept of advocacy planning by professionals. Generally, it proves very rewarding to the planners, while the same time precluding direct involvement of the people themselves. Rather than having someone from within the system effect changes, Goodman suggests that if real change is to occur, the in197 �tervention must come from outside the system. And it must be planned intervention with the motivation behind it coming from the people now excluded from government and power (Goodman, After the Planners). Fisher and Foster (Steve Fisher and Jim Foster, "Models for Furthering Revolutionary Praxis in Appalachia," App. Journ., Spring 1979) suggest that if a coordinated effort against the existing bureaucratic system can work anywhere it should work in Apaplachia. For in no other region are the political, social, and economic issues so clear cut; nowhere in America is there a stronger tradition of rebellion; and nowhere else are there so many already established local groups geared for action. The real task is in the development of an effective means of organizing all the groups into an effective revolutionary coalition, with the capability of moving with a common purpose. As a postscript, it might be noted that during the July 1982 meeting of the Applachian governors, proposals were made for "finish-up" projects, including completing the highest priority 530 miles of the Appalachian Highway System and a limited number of development programs. Of major concern to the people of Appalachia is the creation by the governors of an Appalachian Development Foundation proposed to being in 1983 with funding by corporations doing business in Appalachia. Early evidence suggests that the foundation will be dominated by the existing power structure with little citizen input or participation; will be poorly funded; and will be directed toward job creation and education—hardly a realistic agenda to deal with the many problems that still exist in Appalachia. Of real concern to the various groups and private agencies which have in the past been supported by private foundations is the apparent intention of the new foundation to seek funds from these endowed foundations. 198 �Appalachia as an 'Enterprise Zone': Some Speculations on the Future Direction of Federal Policy toward the Region Thomas R. Shannon The world system of capitalism is changing in ways which are having an increasing impact upon both the domestic economy and the problems and policy options facing the national political leadership. The changes appear to be fundamental and far-reaching. As a consequence, past strategies of state managers to enhance national economic power, maintain domestic social stability, and assure their own legitimacy are proving to be unworkable under the new conditions. The era of the liberal "welfare-warfare" state appears to be drawing to a close. The current discussion is a frankly speculative attempt to suggest what the implications of these economic and political trends may be for conditions in Appalachia. We will first sketch the broad outlines of some of the basic economic trends in the world capitalist system which are creating problems for the domestic economy and challenging past public policy approaches. We will then examine what appears to be the emerging policy response of state managers—both in the United States and many other countries. Finally, we will address the issue of what this policy response may mean for conditions in Appalachia. World Economic Trends Current trends in the world capitalist system can be summarized in two phrases: "the internationalization of capital" and "the intensification of international economic competition." The operations of the massive conglomerate corporations which dominate the economics of the advanced capitalist countries have become global in scope. It has become relatively easy for these corporations to transfer technology and industrial operations to different locations around the world. Modern transportation systems make it possible to produce sub-assemblies at widely separate locations and produce products for a global market. Rapid jet transport and almost instantaneous communication allow the movement of money, information, and managers with a speed and ease which makes possible the control and coordination of far-flung manufacturing operations from a distant central headquarters. Changes in the technology of production allow the organization of production using very low-skilled workers (in relatively small numbers, given trends in automation) with little prior industrial experience. Consequently, multi-national corporations are in a position to shift capital to those locations and kinds of activities which offer the lowest costs, most congenial operating environments, and the greatest potential for profit. The immense size of the multinationals (an outgrowth of a decades-long process of corporate concentration) gives them the resources to shift operations, and the diversity of their operations means that they are not wedded to any particular product or activity based in a particular locality.1 The result, as one observer has put it, is an international economy in which: ...global corporations manufacture at multiple sites for export to world markets. They also import Third World labor to the metropolitan countries. Hence, we purchase underwear and transistor radios made in Kuala Lumpur, Volkswagens made in Germany by Turks, and beans harvested by Mexicans in the United States.2 199 �At the same time (and partly as a result of the above trends), there has been an intensification of international economic competition which has increased the incentive for multinationals to seek the lowest cost locations for their operations. American corporations no longer operate in the comfortable environment of an insulated domestic market in which oligopolistic pricing practices allowed them to pass on the inefficiencies of low productivity and high wage costs to consumers. The period in which the United States enjoyed technological and financial hegemony in the world economy is gone. Foreign-based corporations, with resources and technological expertise equal to or greater than the U.S. conglomerates, are successfully challenging them, both in the domestic and world market. In the very recent past, the competition has become even more intense as a result of slow world economic growth and the concommitant development of massive excess capacity in many industries (e.g. steel, autos, electronics, textiles).' The long-term consequence of these trends has come to be known as the process of "deindustrialization"—both of certain regions of the country and the country as a whole. Multinational corporations, seeking to maintain their rate of profit, are shifting the location of manufacturing operations in the attempt to find environments which allow them to maximize what the economist David M. Gordon has called "quantitative efficiency" (low productions costs) and "qualitative efficiency" (control over work rules and the conditions of employment). Domestically, what this search has meant is that there has been rapid "disinvestment" in and the eventual closure of aging plants in the high-wage, unionized industrial regions of the North and the shift of capital investment (in both old and new industries) to the "Sunbelt" (including parts of Appalachia) and, more importantly now, overseas.4 In addition, over the slightly longer-term American multinationals are shifting their resources out of the highly competitive, low-return, heavy manufacturing sector (e.g. steel) into other activities: "high-tech" products, resource extraction, financial speculation, and the delivery of managerial, technical, and financial services.5 Policy Responses The problems deindustrialization creates for American (and Western European) political leaders are manifold and, by now, relatively well-known. Declining investment in the domestic economy translates into slow growth or economic stagnation and a concommitant stagnation in state revenues. Balance of payments deficits associated with the decline of domestic production and the increase in imports of manufactured goods create domestic problems and limit state power in the international arena. At the same time, there is an increasing demand for state expenditures to deal with the problems of unemployment and the economic decline of the old industrial regions. The fiscal problem is further complicated by the desire of the political leadership to respond to the loss of U.S. political and military hegemony in the world system by increasing military expenditures. In short, economic trends are intensifying the problem O'Connor has called the "fiscal crisis of the state."6 The basic response of state managers in the United States and other advanced capitalist societies has been roughly the same. National governments are engaging in a frantic competitive scramble to create conditions which will attract or hold multinational investment. To do so, they are attempting to eliminate the conditions which they perceive as the causes of capital flight and the weakening of domestic industries. Increasingly, the "successful" model which has attracted the attention of the leaders of many of the advanced capitalist countries (especially the conservative leaderships of Great Britain and the United States) are the "import-export" or "free production" zones which were established in the 200 �Third World in the 1970's and similar country-wide policies in such countries as Brazil and South Korea. Although there has been considerable country-to-country variation in these policies, an ideal-typical characterization of the policy approach would include such things as: (1) reduction or elimination of duties on the importation of manufacturing machinery, the importation of production inputs, and the export of finished products, (2) little or no taxation of corporate income and no restrictions on the repatriation of profits, (3) no foreign exchange restrictions, (4) the provision of subsidized financing, transportation facilities, production facilities, and production support services, (5) minimal health, safety, and pollution regulations, (6) low or no minimum wage laws, (7) severe restrictions on union activity, and (8) government police and legal activities to assure industrial discipline of the workforce.7 As adapted by the state managers of advanced capitalist countries to the conditions in their societies, the attempt to emulate the Third World has taken two general forms. One is a societywide set of policies designed essentially to reverse the three-decades-long development of the liberal welfare state. This approach involves—especially in Great Britain and the United States—such things as: (1) subsidies to corporate investment and operations through changes in the tax system, (2) major reductions in welfare services—both to reduce the corporate tax burden and make low-wage work attractive, (3) regulatory "relief" for corporations in such areas as health, safety, environment, consumer protection, and financial transactions (e.g. mergers), (4) weakening the power of labor unions through changes in labor laws or labor law administration, (5) more reliance on repression to contain discontent among the very poor, and (6) tolerance of high unemployment rates to depress wage rates and dampen union militance.8 The second approach, a direct adaptation of Third World "production zones," has been the proposal to create "free enterprize zones" in the depressed inner city neighborhoods of the large cities. Touted as a means of dealing with high unemployment and declining tax bases by reversing industrial flight, the policies which have been suggested to create such zones include: (1) income tax waivers for corporate operations located in the zones, (2) investment tax credits for those corporations which locate in the zones, (3) substantial easing of health, safety, and pollution regulations in the zones, (4) local government subsidies of corporations operating in the zones by means of such things as subsidized construction bonds, reduced or postponed property taxes, use of local condemnation powers to clear land, etc., and (5) elimination of minimum wage laws—especially for teenagers.' In short, the strategy which is emerging is to create conditions of corporate subsidy, low-wage rates, and industrial discipline similar to those which exist in the Third World countries which have been attracting multinational industrial investment. Implications for Appalachia What does all this have to do with Appalachia? It appears likely that the general, society-wide policies designed to encourage multinational investment in the domestic economy will have a specific impact on Appalachia. That impact will result in Appalachia more closely approximating a regional 201 �version of an "enterprize zone" than most other regions in the country. This special regional outcome of general national policy will be the result of the very particular social, economic, and political heritage of the region which will mediate the impact of national policies. To put it simply, current economic trends and the likely direction of federal policy will tend to reinforce existing conditions and problems in the region which already give it a special role in the regional economic division of labor in the United States. Appalachia, besides its more traditional role in resource extraction, is already serving as one of the areas in the United States for the location of generally low-wage industrial work—including, in the recent past, "runaway" plants from the North. In addition to the prevailing low-wage level, Appalachia is attractive for the location of such plants because of the low level of unionization, a relatively docile labor force (the Mineworkers not withstanding), and a system of local political elites willing to use their power to protect corporate interests (e.g. through such things as maintaining a low level of local taxation, minimizing land use controls, and providing a low level of social and welfare services to both keep taxes low and encourage industrial disciplines).10 What the current direction of national policy appears likely to do is to reinforce this economic role of the region. The reduction in programs which serves the working poor, such as Food Stamps (a particular target of recent budget slashing), is likely to have a disporportionate impact on Appalachia given the prevalence of extremely low-wage industrial workers in the region. At the same time, the reduction of services and the tightening of eligibility requirements for the dependent poor will make even this unsupplemented low-wage work more "attractive" to Appalachian workers. In addition, if the attempt to return a number of social service programs to the states and localities succeeds, the extent of service reduction is likely to be particularly great in Appalachia because of the traditional reluctance of local elites to raise taxes to provide such services. (It may also augment the ability of local elites to exercise control over workers in favor of employers—an important traditional technique for discouraging political and work-related activism.)11 The fact that much of the traditional industrial work in the region is in industries such as furniture and textiles, which are in direct competition with plants in the Third World, may have a further depressing effect on wages. In other words, the direction of change may be to reduce prevailing average living standards—making Appalachia even more of a low-wage "island" in the national economy.* Other policies should further contribute to making Appalachia the regional equivalent of a "free enterprize zone." Lax enforcement or administrative modification of labor laws should have the most impact on those regions which already have poorly organized labor forces and lack a strong industrial union tradition—such as Appalachia. The increasing devolution of certain kinds** of regulatory enforcement upon states and localities is likely to encourage all states and localities to compete with one another to reduce regulation and to attract industry. However, again because of the traditional pattern of local policies in the region, Appalachia seems likely to have particularly lax local enforcement policies. Should the ARC survive, it may do so by becoming, even more than it is now, a program primarily devoted to subsidizing industrial relocation—both directly though site preparation and indirectly through infrastructure development for a few urban "growth centers."12 Attempts to further open the National Forest System to resource extraction would probably mean that Appalachia, with large areas of National Forest land which contain exploitable minerals and fuel, would become even more dependent on extractive industry. Coal for export may become more important if certain current corporate and government initiatives succeed: the weakening of environmental, health, and safety regulations in the coal industry, the increasingly successful at202 �tempt by the large coal companies to cripple the Mineworkers Union, and state and federal programs to encourage coal for export through subsidies of coal transportation facilities (e.g. port facilities and coal slurry pipelines). The doubly disturbing thing about these policy trends is that they are likely to create problems for the people in the region whether they succeed or fail in their stated objective of attracting multinational investment. A reasonable argument can be made that these policies will fail. It does not seem likely that domestic wage rates in any region of the United States can be driven down to point anywhere near to being competitive to those rates which prevail in the Third World. Similarly, the other conditions which would have to be created to make any domestic region fully and permanently competitive with the Third World for the location of low-wage, low-skill manufacturing operations would imply almost incredible deterioration of environmental conditions, health and worker safety standards, worker rights, and the like.13 Politically, that would seem to entail a willingness and an ability on the part of national political leaders to engage in sustained mass repression. One can be enough of an optimist to suppose that the attempt to even partially replicate Third World conditions would provoke sufficient political counter pressures to frustrate the attempt. If so, the outcome of the current direction of public policy may be only the worsening of conditions in Appalachia without provoking the intended investment response on the part of multinationals. Whatever industrial relocation did occur would be temporary, and Appalachia could expect to eventually participate in the continuing general national trend toward deindustrialization in the traditional manufacturing sector—with all the attendant social, economic, and human costs. On the other hand, current policy could "succeed," but it would be a curious kind of "success." As some of the more successfully industrializing Third World countries are discovering, the conditions necessary to attract investment must be maintained or capital will simply flee to a more congenial investment climate. That means sustained low wages, corporate subsidies, minimal regulation, repression of workers, and the like. Thus, industrialization of Appalachia in the current era may not have the same outcome (however temporary it is now providing to be) as it did in the North earlier in the century in terms of relatively high wage rates and good working conditions. Rather, it would be industrialization more of the sort found in the high- and low-tech sweatshops of Singapore, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines In short, the prospect in either case seems likely to be a deterioration of conditions—whatever the limited short-term benefits which might temporarily accrue to currently unemployed workers from industrial relocation to Appalachia. Conclusion This discussion has been an attempt to tentatively explore the possible implications for Appalachia if present trends in the international economy and national policy responses to those trends, continue. It has been argued that the consequences of the apparent current direction of federal policy would be primarily negative for Appalachia: it would intensify the existing tendency for Appalachia to function in the domestic division of labor as a center of low-wage labor and resource extraction. Whether current policies "succeed" or fail in achieving their intended results, they appear likely to have a negative impact on the social, economic, and environmental conditions of the region. 203 �Assuming that such a conclusion is a reasonable extrapolation of current trends, the issue which needs to be addressed is what would be an effective strategy for the people of Appalachia to employ in order to respond to these trends? What sorts of short- and long-range demands should they seek to make of the local and national political leadership? How should they make those demands? There do not seem to be any simple and obvious answers to these questions. What does seem to be certain is that we are entering a difficult and perhaps dangerous period in which both the preservation of past modest gains and the hope for further improvement in conditions are in doubt. Footnotes 'Barry Bluestone, "An Interview with Bennet Harrison and Barry Bluestone," Working Papers X (January/February, 1983), pp. 43-44. 'William W. Goldsmith, "Bringing the Third World Home," Working Papers IX (March/April, 1982), p. 26. 'Bluestone, op. tit., p. 44. 'David M. Gordon, "Class Struggle and Stages of American Urban Development," in David C. Perry and Alfred J. Watkins (eds.), The Rise of the Sunbelt Cities (Beverly Hills, Ca.: Sage Publications, 1977). 'Barry Bluestone and Bennet Harrison, "Why Corporations Close Profitable Plants," Working Papers VII (May/June, 1980), pp. 15-23. 'James O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the Slate (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973). 'Goldsmith, op.tit., pp. 29-30. •Andre Gunder Frank, Crisis: In the World Economy (New York: Homes & Meier, 1980), pp. 102-146. 'Goldsmith, op.tit., pp. 29-30; Edward Humberger, "The Enterprise Zone Fallacy," Journal of Community Action I (September/October, 1981). 10 On the economic role local political elites and their relationship to the working class see: John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley (Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 1980). "Ibid. 12 David E. Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer (Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1978), pp. 153-174. "Goldsmith, op.tit., pp. 31-32. "Ibid. *It certainly is not the only such "island" in the domestic economy, but it is one of the most distinctly regional ones. **The emerging regulatory trend under the current administration seems to be one in which those regulatory functions which localities are likely to use to restrict corporate behavior are being retained and augmented at the federal level, while those which localities are likely to be lax in enforcing are being moved to the state and local level. Thus, the federal is moving to restrict state and local attempts (e.g. in California) to impose environmental laws stricter than those at the federal level (e.g. controls on nuclear power plants and hazardous dump sites). 204 �Housing Aspirations of Central Appalachian Coal Miners Rosemary Canned Goss Housing has long been recognized as a major problem of the Central Appalachian region (Hayes and Kimbrough, 1977; Lewis, 1978, Spence, 1979; U.S. Coal Commission, 1925; U.S. Department of the Interior, 1947; and the President's Commission on Coal, 1980). However, as noted in the 1970 and 1980 Census, housing conditions have improved. For example, homes without plumbing in West Virginia decreased from 18% in 1970 to 6.8% in 1980 and from 21% to 7.6% in Kentucky during that same period, (USBC, 1972; USBC, 1982), with much of this improvement coming in the Central Appalachian areas of these states. But, meeting minimum standards such as indoor plumbing does not necessarily mean that the housing conditions meet the culture's or family's norms for housing. The National Council on Urban Problems (1968: 274) stated, "A house can meet the legal standards set in a local code, pass a housing code inspection, and still be unfit for human habitation by the personal standards of most middle-class Americans." Within the economic framework of the Appalachian region, miners often have incomes which allow them to live in some of the best housing in the community. However, "in some areas of Appalachia, even the increased salary levels of miners do not enable them to obtain the same quality of housing available to coal miners in other regions or industrial workers in metropolitan areas." (President's Commission on Coal, 1980: 26). Many of the constraints to quality housing in this region are somewhat unique. The boom and bust economy of Appalachia often discourages miners from taking on long-term loans for housing. For example, the renewed emphasis on coal as a source of energy after the 1973 Arab oil embargo led to a very strong economy in the late 1970s, but today unemployment has surpassed 15% in many part of the coal fields. Moreover, it is extremely difficult to find land that is both suitable and available since much of the land is mountainous and/or owned by out-of-state corporations. Other constraints include the lack of a housing delivery system, conservative financing and very high development costs. Government and mining officials, as well as grassroot organizations, have recognized the need for improved housing conditions for miners. While popular literature has emphasized the fact that miners fear that housing developed with federal or state assistance will fail to meet miners' needs, no empirical data is available. Improved and/or additional housing is needed in the Appalachian coal fields; many government attempts to house the Appalachian people have often been met with extreme criticism; and there is a 205 �lack of empirical information about the miners' housing aspirations. Therefore, the purposes of this paper are to describe the housing aspirations of the Central Appalachian coal miner, to analyze the relationships of housing aspirations to various demographic data, and to examine whether or not miners desire and are willing to pay for new housing. Previous Research Popular media coverage of the Appalachian lifestyle such as "Little Abner" and the "Beverly Hillbillies" has presented the mountaineer as an uneducated, barefooted moonshiner. Even Weller (1966), a noted writer on the region, has described the mountaineer as a person of fierce independence and traditionalism with a sense of fatalism which gives the mountaineer a different outlook on life from that of other rural societies. But a comprehensive study of the Southern Appalachians (Ford, 1962) which was conducted in the late 1950s revealed a substantial change in the aspirations and values of the Appalachian people even in the late 1950s. Ford found that the peoples' outlook of passive resignation was rapidly disappearing. Like other Americans, the people of the Region want the material comforts and social services that only an advanced economy can support. If they cannot get them in the Region, they will seek them elsewhere, but increasingly efforts are being made to secure such benefits in the Southern Appalachians. (Vance, 1962, p. 290) Similar findings were reported by Schwarzweller, Brown and Mangalam (1971) in a more recent study of a mountain community in Kentucky. Those who wanted to improve their economic and social lifestyle moved to industrialized, urban towns in Ohio. Those who remained behind were exposed to a more urban lifestyle through visits and correspondence with those who had moved away. This interaction has remained constant through the years because of the very strong sense of familism on the part of the residents and those who had moved away. Hansen (1970) viewed the aspirations and values of the Appalachian people as similar to those of contemporary America. He, too, reported that many were willing to migrate, or at least have their children migrate, in order to attain a better quality of life. The suggestion that exposure to more urban lifestyles was a result of contact with family and friends who moved away (Schwarzweller et a., 1971) could help explain the movement of the aspirations of mountain people toward the American norm (Hansen, 1970; Montgomery and McCabe, 1973). Although housing aspirations of various groups have been studied over the years (Rainwater, 1966; Paynter, 1975; McKown, 1975; McCray, 1975; and Montgomery and McCabe, 1973), only Montgomery and McCabe have examined the housing values and aspirations of Appalachian families. Montgomery and McCabe used a weighted scale to determine the degree to which national housing images are reflected Southern Appalachia. They concluded that housing aspirations of Appalachian people were quite similar to the American norm. They reported that only one-fifth of those surveyed were oriented toward a mountain traditional house. The higher the income, the more likely a family was to have a surburban housing image. Housing aspirations of Southern rural people have also been found similar to the American norm. In a study of differential aspirations for housing between Blacks and Whites in rural Georgia, Belcher (1970) reported that various social and economic factors were the important variable in aspirations; race, per se, was largely irrelevant. McCray (1975) found that low-income 206 �rural Florida residents and urban Tallahassee public housing tenants had similar housing aspirations; however, the urban group reported higher expectations for achieving its aspirations. Similar to findings reported by Montgomery and McCabe (1973), McCray and Day (1977: 249) found that both urban and rural respondents "desired a modern brick home with characteristics typical of the middle-class surburban single-family house." Based on findings of previous rural and Appalachian research it is hypothesized that Central Appalachian miners desire housing similar to the American Methodology The sample was selected from the rank-and-file coal miners employed at mines located in McDowell County, West Virginia. The miners were classified by number of employees (small, medium and large) and by location (six magisterial districts) within the county. A table of random numbers was used to select one mine from each category within a strata. An interview was arranged with the appropriate person at each mine to explain the study. In each case the contact person agreed to participate by providing a mailing list of the company's employees. From this list a proportionate sample was drawn using a table of random numbers. A questionnaire was developed, pilot tested, revised and mailed to 687 miner families. The female head of household was instructed to complete the first four sections of the questionnaire (condition, satisfaction, aspirations and demographics) and the male head of the household was asked to answer items in the final section (purchasing a new dwelling). The assumption was made that since the miner was usually the sole and primary wage earner, he would have more influence than the female co-head or spouse in a decision to purchase a new dwelling. Measurement scales for conditions, satisfactions, and aspirations were modified from scales used by Birch, 1973 and Frieden and Solomon, 1977; Morris, 1976; and McCray, 1975 respectively. The Total Design Method (Dillman, 1978) for data collection was followed. A total of 438 usable questionnaires (63%) were returned. Data from the survey was coded, transferred to IBM cards, verified for accuracy and analyzed descriptively and statistically using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Analysis of Data Frequency distributions and percentages were used for the descriptive analysis of the data. Student's Mests and chi-square tests were used for the statistical testing of the hypotheses. Hypotheses were tested at an alpha of .05. In addition, the magnitude of the relationship or substantive significance (Gold, 1969; Kish, 1959) was also considered. Results and Discussion Housing aspirations were assessed through a number of questions related to desired characteristics of a dwelling unit. The respondent was asked to describe the home he/she would like to have. A series of forced-choice questions followed to determine specific features of the desired dwelling. The features considered most desirable and the percentage of respondents desiring each feature are presented in Table 1. The five most desirable characteristics chosen by over 75% of the respondents were; a laundry room, family room, dining room, garage and brick exterior. The number of respondents desiring specific characteristics in some categories (i.e., number of bedrooms or baths) was lower than expected. One possible reason for this finding is that many miners were approaching retirement and their children had left home; therefore, a small house was desirable. Another possible reason is the 207 �fact that some respondents may have responded as to what they thought was realistic in terms of affordability or availability as opposed to "the dream house." Table 1 Housing Features Considered Most Desirable by Respondents « Adjusted Percent Laundry room 366 94.1 Family room 354 90.1 Dining room 328 83.5 Garage 313 77.7 Brick exterior 307 76.9 More space than is currently available 283 69.7 Deck or patio 262 64.5 Two or more baths 181 44.7 Four or more bedrooms 159 39.3 Feature Housing Aspiration Index A housing aspiration index (Table 2) for use as a measure of the respondents' expressed housing aspirations was patterned after one developed by McCray (1975). All housing characteristics related to housing aspirations were weighted between 1 and 2. A score of 2 was assigned to features considered indicative of higher aspirations, and a 1 was assigned to the feature considered indicative of lower aspirations. The total possible score for each respondent ranged from 12 to 24, and actual scores ranged from 16.7 to 23. Weighted totals of the desired characteristics were grouped into three levels of aspirations: low (16.7-19.9), moderate (20-22.9) and high (23-24). Respondents were distributed as follows: low, 8.0%; moderate, 60.0%; and high, 32.0%. Table 2 Percentage of Responses to Items on Aspiration Index (Weightings in parentheses) Characteristic Think about (2.0) Yes, (1.7) Yes, (1.4) Yes, (1.0) No n 232 112 40 36 kind of home desired for family often sometimes but not very often 208 Adjusted Percent 55.2 26.7 9.5 8.6 �Desired exerior finish (2.0) Brick (1.5) Alumium siding (1.0) Frame 307 60 17 76.9 15.8 4.3 Desired cooling system (2.0) Central air conditioning (1.7) A room air conditioner (1.4) Attic fan (1.0) None 273 68 25 30 67.6 16.8 6.2 7.4 Desired rooms Dining room (2.0) Yes (1.0) No 328 65 83.5 16.5 Dining area in kitchen only (2.0) No (1.0 Yes 291 96 75.2 24.8 Family room (2.0) Yes (1.0) No 354 39 90.1 9.9 Laundry room (2.0) Yes (1.0) No 366 23 94.1 5.9 159 220 26 0 39.3 54.3 6.4 0.0 181 190 34 44.7 46.9 8.4 262 136 4 4 64.5 33.5 1.0 1.0 313 82 8 77.7 20.3 2.0 Desired (2.0) (1.7) (1.4) (1.0) number of bedrooms Four or more Three Two One Desired number of baths (2.0) Two or more (1.5) One and a half (1.0) One Desired (2.0) (1.5) (1.0) type of outdoor space Deck or patio Porch None Other Desired car storage (2.0) Garage (1.5) Carport (1.0) None 209 �Desired (2.0) (1.5) (1.0) amount of space More than is present now About the same Less than is present now 283 110 13 69.7 27.1 3.2 The correlation between housing aspirations and length of time in dwelling, age of household head, family income, housing deprivation and housing satisfaction was calculated by use of the Pearson product-moment correlation. The point-biserial correlation was used to measure the strength of the relationship between housing aspirations and form of tenure, location of dwelling and race. The null hypotheses that the population correlation coefficient was equal to zero versus two-tail alternatives were tested with the f-test. The degree of nonlinear association between education of household head and housing aspirations was examined through the use of the eta coefficient. The null hypothesis was tested against the nondirectional alternative hypothesis using the F-ratio. Only one significant relationship was found between housing aspirations and any of the variables mentioned below (Table 3). Although the relationship of family income to aspirations was statistically significant, the r value was low and indicated little, if any, correlation. Table 3 Relationship of Housing Aspirations and Housing and Family Characteristics Correlation Coefficient Calculated p Value Length of time in dwelling -.055 .317 Form of tenure -.001 .982 Location of dwelling -.008 .882 Age of household head -.096 .083 Family income .111 .048* Education of household head .160 .522 Race .041 .435 Housing deprivation .052 .378 Housing satisfaction .032 .982 Variable Miners desired a brick home with central air conditioning,a dining room, family room, laundry room, three bedrooms, one-and-half baths, a deck or patio and a garage. Similar findings were reported by Montgomery and McCabe (1973) and McCray and Day (1977). Findings of the survey of miners' aspirations, and observation of the researcher indicate that the desires of the Appalachian miner closely fit Rainwater's (1966)descriptionof the housing aspirations of the traditional working class: "a pleasant, cozy home" with major conveniences and relatively little concern about adding aesthetic features in furnishings. One factor that might explain the contrast in the desire for a "pleasant and cozy home" and one that represents all-American affluence is that housing in the Appalachian region is often viewed 210 �more as shelter than as an investment. In many cases, automobiles, not housing, serve as the status symbol in the area. Over 80% of the respondents owned at least one automobile, 66% owned one or more trucks, and 15% owned a camper. The automobiles and trucks were relatively new with over 60% and 55% respectively being four years of age or less. The mean age of the automobiles in the study was 4.9 years, compared to a national mean of 6.6 years in 1980 (Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association, 1982). Although income was statistically related to aspirations, the magnitude of the relationship was weak. Had this relationship been of greater magnitude, findings of this study would have paralleled those of Montgomery and McCabe (1973) and Belcher (1970). These researchers failed to find other demographic and housing variables that were associated with housing aspirations. The Desire to Alter One's Dwelling or to Move Propensity to move was determined by asking if the respondent was satisfied with the present dwelling, would like to make changes in the present dwelling or would like to move to a different dwelling. Approximately 13% of the respondents reported that their dwelling was just as they wanted it. Of those who wanted to make some changes, 56.3% said they would like to make changes in their present dwellings, and 43.7% reported they would like to move to a different dwelling. An open-ended question provided an opportunity for respondents to share information about present housing or future housing plans. Comments about present housing or future housing plans were recorded for 103 respondents (23.5%). Their comments can be divided into six major areas: future housing plans (25), financing and affordability (22), problems with community services (20), lack of land and/or dwellings (16), general comments about current housing (15), and problems with dwelling structures (5). The eta coefficient was used to measure the strength of the relationship between the desire to remain in the present dwelling as it is, alter one's present dwelling or move, and housing aspirations. The null hypothesis was tested against the non-directional alternative hypothesis using theF-ratio. No significant relationships were found. Locational Differences Although all miners in the sample worked in McDowell County, West Virginia, only 51% of the miners lived there. A f-test (two-tailed) revealed there was no difference in housing aspiration scores between miners living within McDowell County and those living outside the county.1 As with the miners' study, McCray and Day (1977) reported no differences between housing aspirations of rural and urban Florida residences. Acquiring a New Dwelling: The Male Respondents' View One expressed purpose of this study was to determine if miners were interested in new housing units and how much they would be willing to pay to rent or purchase them. If homes were being built within driving distances of their jobs, 48% of the respondents reported they would be interested in buying a new home (Table 4). However, only 5.6% would be interested in renting a new apartment near their work. The amount respondents would be willing to pay for new homes or apartments has a number of implications for housing in the Appalachian coal fields. Most respondents wished to pay relatively low prices for housing: approximately 50% were not willing to pay more than $30,000 and only 211 �6.5% were willing to pay more than $50,000 and 2.0%, $60,000 or above. Based on these findings, most of those willing to buy a new home would pay less than $40,000 and thus, housing choices would be limited primarily to mobile or modular housing. A reluctance to pay for shelter was also seen in rental figures. Most (58.6%) respondents wanted to pay less than $150, and no one was willing to pay more than $250 per month for rent. Table 4 Desire to Purchase or Rent n Adjusted Percent Would not be interested in purchasing a new home 211 51.6 Would be interested in purchasing a new home 198 48.4 40 63 53 32 9 4 19.9 31.3 26.4 15.9 4.5 2.0 372 94.4 29 7.5 17 10 2 58.6 34.5 6.9 Correlation Coefficient Calculated p Value -.021 .701 -.098 .072 Variable If interested in a new home, purchaser would be willing to pay under $20,000 between $20,000 and $29,999 between $30,000 and $39,999 between $40,000 and $49,999 between $50,000 and $59,999 $60,000 and above Would not be interested in renting a new apartment Would be interested in renting a new apartment Would be willing to pay a monthly rent for a new apartment under $150 between $151 and $200 between $201 and $250 Housing deprivation and desire for New home New apartment 212 �This reluctance to pay as much as the cost of a median priced new home can be explained in many ways. One possible reason has been mentioned before. Miners in the Appalachian region often view housing as shelter and not as an investment. Also, miners have not had to pay as high a mortgage or rent payment as many Americans. Historically, rental rates for company houses have been low. After World War II, many dwellings located in the "coal camps" were sold by the companies at very low prices. Furthermore, miners fear the "boom and bust" cycle of the coal fields and are reluctant to take on long-term mortgages. For example, in 1980 when this study was conducted, respondents had incomes averaging over $20,000 per year. Today many of these respondents are unemployed and would have difficulty meeting even minimum mortgage payments. The chi-square test was used to test for differences between the amount miners living in McDowell County and those living outside McDowell County would be willing to pay for new housing. A statistically significant difference was found; of the miners indicating a desire for a new home, those living outside McDowell County (Mercer County, West Virginia and Tazewell County, Virginia) were willing to pay more for a home. Perhaps housing in the Mercer and Tazewell County areas is somewhat more expensive than in McDowell County since there is more new housing, more housing choices and very few houses that were once part of "coal camps." In some parts of Mercer and Tazewell counties, Savings and Loan Associations offer loans with lower down payments required. Thus, miners living outside McDowell County are willing to pay more for housing, have easier financing available, and may be accustomed to paying more for housing. Implications Findings of this study support the conclusion that Appalachian miners desire a brick home with central air conditioning, a dining room, family room, laundry room, three bedrooms, one-and-ahalf baths, a deck or patio and a garage. These aspirations closely approximate American cultural norms for housing. In addition, miners who are interested in buying a new home are unwilling to pay the median prices for new homes; therefore, housing choices are often limited to mobile or modular housing. A strong preference for owned single family homes was apparent. Multifamily structures such as townhouses and apartments would rarely be successful. Results of this study can be used by educators, industry, policy-makers and researchers when housing needs and programs for the region are being considered. For example, findings of this study indicate that mobile and modular housing will be one way to meet the housing demands of this region. Extension personnel could provide additional information to assist consumers to improve their living environment. For example, step-by-step, do-it-yourself plans for adding skirting, decking, or patios or expanding mobile or modular homes could be useful. Also, a two or threeyear landscaping plan to improve climate control, appearance and livability could be developed for both mobile and modular homes. A plan such as this would require the use of common trees and shrubs, since there are not many large nurseries in the region. Mobile home parks could establish stricter park standards for maintenance and appearance. As the need for housing in the Appalachian coal fields increases, the housing industry will be called upon to help solve these housing shortages. The first step on the part of the manufactured housing industry should be to staff local sales offices with competent, well-trained sales personnel who can provide technical assistance to help miners choose houses suitable to their needs. Consumers wanting to build a home could save money by purchasing building materials at large building supply stores in neighboring counties. Previous research (Lewis, 1978) has shown that 213 �building supplies are much more expensive in the coal fields than in towns like Bristol, Virginia. Some large chain stores provide packages of building materials for an entire house, including a variety of styles and price ranges. Perhaps a more aggressive marketing plan could benefit both the building supply stores and the consumer. Because the region lacks a strong housing delivery system, finding a builder to follow the pre-selected plans for which all materials would be delivered to the site would be an easier, and perhaps less expensive, plan for the consumer. Policymakers at the state and local level should actively support and promote housing programs and policies that will benefit the region. State housing finance agencies and state offices of housing could assist states in meeting their housing goals. States need to do whatever possible (e.g., taxing land at its market value or even using the power of eminent domain) to encourage large landholding companies to sell some of their land for housing. In addition, several respondents expressed apprehension regarding long-term housing loans for fear of strikes and layoffs in the future. Miners and local lenders need additional safeguards against the previous history of the boom and bust cycles of mining. Special insured mortgages could encourage lenders to make more loans and consumers to purchase housing if there were an assurance of assistance during a prolonged work stoppage. Because housing problems in the Appalachian region still exist and because this region has some unique constraints, additional research, especially in the area of manufactured housing, is recommended. References Belcher, John C. 1970. "Differential Aspirations for Housing Between Blacks and Whites in Rural Georgia." Phylon 31: 231-243. Birch, D., 1973. American's Housing Needs: 1970 to 1980. Cambridge, MA: Joint Center for Urban Studies. Dillman, Don A., 1978. Mail and Telephone Surveys: The Total Design Method. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Ford, Thomas R., editor, 1962. The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Frieden, BJ. and A.R. Solomon. 1977. The Nations Housing: 1915 to 1985. Cambridge, MA: Joint Center for Urban Studies. Gold, David. 1969. "Statistical Tests and Substantive Significance." The American Sociologist. 14: 42-46. Goss, Rosemary Carucci. 1982. "Housing of the Appalachian Coal Miner: Conditions, Satisfactions and Aspirations." Ph.D. Dissertation, Florida State University. Hansen, Niles M. 1979. Rural Poverty and the Urban Crisis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hayes, D. and J. Kimbrough. 1977. "Decent Housing: The Unmet Agenda." Appalachia 11 (1), 1-8. Lewis, Helen and Associates. 1978. Coal Productivity and Community: The Impact of the National Energy Plan in the Eastern Coalfield. Prepared by the U.S. Energy Department, Washington, DC. Kish, Leslie. 1959. "Some Statistical Problems in Research Design." American Sociological Review 2 (3), 328-338. McCray, Jacquelyn W. 1975. "A Comparison of Housing, Values, Aspirations, and Satisfaction of Low-Income Rural Florida Residents and Urban Tallahassee Public Housing Tenants." Ph.D. Dissertation, Florida State University. McCray, Jacquelyn W. and Savannah S. Day. 1977. "Housing Values, Aspirations and Satisfactions as Indicators of Housing Needs." Home Economics Research Journal 5 (4): 244-254. McKown, Cora, 1975. "Social Factors Related to Housing Selection." Homing Educators Journal 2 (1): 11-15. 214 �Montgomery, James E. and Gracia McCabe. 1973. "Housing Aspirations of Southern Appalachian Families." Home Economics Research Journal 2 (I): 2-11. Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association. 1982. Motor Vehicle Facts and Figures. Detroit, Michigan: MVMA. Paynter, Mary Ann. 1975. "An Exploratory Study of Family Commitment to Housing Goals." Ph.D. Dissertation. The Pennsylvania State University. NCUP, National Commission of Urban Problems. 1968. Building the American City. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Pickard, Jerome. 1979. "Appalachian Population Growing, Income Catching Up." Appalachia 12 (5): 41-45. The President's Commission on Coal. 1980. The American Coal Miner. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Rainwater, Lee. 1966. "Fear and the House-as-Haven in the Lower Class." The Journal of the American Institute of Planners 32 (1): 23-31. Schwarzweller, Harry K., James S. Brown and J.J. Mangalam. 1971. Mountain Families in Transition. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Spence, B. 1979. "More Than a Shortage—A National Disgrace." Mountain Life and Work. 55 (1): 4-9. USBC, U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1972. Census of Housing: 1970. Vol. 1: Housing Characteristics for States, Cities and Counties. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. USBC, U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1982. General Housing Characteristics. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. U.S. Coal Commission, 1925. Report of the U.S. Coal Commission. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. U.S. Department of the Interior. 1947. A Medical Survey of the Bituminious Coal Industry. Report of the Coal Mines Administration, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Vance, Rupert B. 1962. "The Region's Future: A National Challenge. In T.R. Ford (Ed.) The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Weller, Jack E. 1966. Yesterday's People. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Footnotes 'Although there was no significant difference in housing aspiration scores between McDowell County residents and nonresidents, significant differences were found between residents and non-residents in terms of housing deprivation and housing satisfaction (Goss, 1982). 215 �This page intentionally left blank �The Humanities in Appalachia: Progress Reports 217 �This page intentionally left blank �Missing Chapters: West Virginia Women in History Barbara Matz While change permeates American society today, perhaps the most fundamental change is in the role of women. Change is the most evident for many in the consideration of work, for women are experiencing the need to support themselves and their families. Fifty-one percent of all women in the country of working age, i.e., between the ages of sixteen and sixty-four, are in the labor force. That number is expected to grow to about sixty-seven percent by 1990. The average work life expectancy of a woman is presently 33.9 years.1 In West Virginia, where the employment rate for women is 36.6%, lowest in the nation, 2 the participation of women in the work force has increased from 236,200 in 1978 to 248,600 for the following year.3 Women enter the labor force because they need the money. They are single, widowed, divorced, separated or have husbands who earn less than $10,000 per year.4 For the single woman it is a matter of finding some method to support herself when she finds her living situation is out of step with her expectations of lifelong wedded bliss. The widow, on the other hand, thought that her husband would support her, only to find upon her husband's death that social security, welfare, pension or other financial aid was not available until she was sixty-five or unless she had dependent children. The divorced or separated mothers are the victims of the hard statistics about child support failure. Only fourteen percent of those awarded child support receive the payments after the first year. Meanwhile, the incidence of divorce continues to increase. In West Virginia, in 1981, there were 16,721 marriages and 10,748 divorces.5 The need to work and the probability of being single is but one aspect of women's rapidly changing lives, but it is a significant one. It is a change which women find traumatic and one for which they are usually unprepared. Coping with change can be very difficult, particularly for a woman in Appalachia. As members of a culture that has been based on constancy and tradition, a culture where time stands still or at least seems that way, the hard realities of coping with change for which they are unprepared brings great apprehension. Because altered circumstances must be addressed, however, Appalachian women need to be able to view themselves in other than traditional roles. This paper will first identify the reasons why change is so difficult for women in Appalachia, then consider what factors encourage maintenance of the status quo, and thirdly, examine what methods have been used to facilitate the change process. Finally, we will note how biography about Appalachian women presented to local groups may be used to assist in changing attitudes and encouraging women to consider wider options. Historically, the people who came to settle the mountains were fiercely independent. They came to make a life for themselves unhampered by the expectations or demands of others and intended to depend on their own ingenuity to conquer the hard life in the hills.6 The experience of living in 219 �isolation reinforced individualism so that the mountain people came to evaluate all of life in relationship to themselves and life events were viewed as hampering or enhancing the meeting of individual needs. This resulted in commitment to kin and little need to join the few community groups outside the family. Having little experience with people outside the known kinship circle, they became suspicious of outsiders and their ideas. Life was always hard in the hills and, as the coal mining industry developed, it brought a boom or bust economy. The possibilities of getting ahead economically were very restricted and depended on the decisions of people who were from outside the region. The fluctuations and uncertainty of demand for coal coupled with the mountaineers' lack of control of the market fostered a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. The mountaineer reaction is stoic and fatalistic, developing an attitude that one must survive, must maintain existence.7 Anything more is too much to hope for. If the only thing on the horizon was more and continual unemployment, it was unrealistic to plan ahead, so the mountaineer became focused on the here and now rather than the future, on being rather than doing. Planning becomes unimportant; there is no need for disciplined action, meeting a schedule or viewing time as significant. In this kind of life, anything that looked exciting or diversionary was met with enthusiasm. A serendipitous invitation to go squirrel hunting with a friend becomes infinitely more enticing than any routine activity.8 The land, the mountains, were very important and a family's portion of that land takes on a personal identity.9 This was demonstrated by the names given to hollows like Cooper's Creek and Haney's Branch. The locale itself is family oriented with various arms of the clan extending up and down the hollow. Within the family orientation the reference group is the most compelling social tie. According to Weller, the reference group "is composed of persons of the same sex and status and of approximately the same age." For adults, the reference group tends to be family-based, including members of the extended family. "So strong is the reference group structure of the society that even husbands and wives tend to pull away from each other toward their respective reference groups."10 Dependent upon the reference group for self-image, the mountaineer tends to reject anything which would cause her to pull away from her reference group. Education, travel, affluence, or any other element which might make her differ from the group is thus unattractive. The mountain family is a closely knit one, not because of the shared activities which are usually done with the reference group, but because of emotionaldependence^Emotional dependence comes partly from the fact that people are evaluated by who they are, i.e., what family they belong to, rather than in terms of what they can do. The individual is constantly reminded of the origins and the achievements and shortcomings of the family.12 There is strong and ongoing involvement with the comings and goings and even the physical health of all of the extended family.13 The addition of a new child is an event looked forward to with great anticipation. Children are always welcome. In the past it was assumed that the more children one has, the more hands available to do the work. Young children are attended to with great care, receive much attention, holding and cuddling.14 Children are communicated with in very warm terms through their early years. As children gain greater independence they are viewed as the responsibility of the whole clan.15 When the child begins to be self directed the adults tend to reduce their direct focus on the youngster, and the child is permitted to gravitate to his peer group.1' In the mores and values of the peer group it is not proper to question what someone else says or to initiate conflict in any way. One does not embarrass another or diminish another's stature in the eyes of the group. This is true even if it means suppress220 �ing one's own opinions or the group avoiding decisions so that people will not have to take sides. It becomes all important to be seen as one of the group and thereby maintain acceptance.17 It becomes very difficult to choose any role which is not a familiar and traditional one. As young boys grow up they can follow their fathers and brothers into the mines or work on cars or take up a trade. They often join the armed services to escape the hopelessness of Appalachian life, and they are assured of an income.18 In the Korean War, West Virginia sent more young men (as a percentage of total male population) to the armed services than any other state; in Vietnam, it was second. Women, however, do not have these options. Many times they do not even know that roles, other than thetraditionalones of wife, mother and maybe teacher, exist. The schools do very little tohelp them look at the broader alternatives for themselves. The people of Appalachia do not view education as having much significance. The school Systems do not measure up to national standards as indicated by the student scores on national examinations.19 The teachers are indigenous to the region. They often attend the nearest college in the region and return to their home areas to teach.20,21 Even if vocational education is offered, the training is apt to bear little relationship to the opportunities for local employment so that students and their parents come to believe that "book learnin" " doesn't do you much good.22 This is exemplified in the statistics for students dropping out of school. In 1981-82, 21.9% of West Virginia students had left school prior to graduation. This was the lowest dropout rate recorded in the decade and was attributed to the current abnormally high unemployment rate. As women grow they do not view education as meeting their perceived needs and tend to not finish school. They have few options for gainful employment and they do not feel the need to have marketable skills. Their peer group applies pressure for them to be like everyone else and they follow the traditional expectation that they will pair with a young man, get married and have babies. The statistics bear out the pressure to follow this pattern at a very young age. A B W.Va. 1981 Vital Statistics Table 39 W.Va. 1981 Vital Statistics Table 9 (amended) Age of bride Age of mother at birth of first child 10-14 15-19 20-24 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 49 5195 5547 - 1 - 9 - 65 - 230 - 635 -1054 -1429 -1888 (Illegitimacy is not considered problematic in the hills.)23 Whether by choice or perhaps by default, most Appalachian women are living traditional roles. It is difficult for women to see viable alternatives, to view themselves in circumstances other than traditional ones. Very few women they know have chosen differently. There are often no role 221 �models. They are not accustomed to thinking about what they want to be. Alexis Herman, when she was director of the Women's Bureau, said "No one ever became what she has never heard of." In many respects the Appalachian woman has "never heard of" other roles. Or at least "never heard of" them before the intrusion of television into the mountains. There is hardly a cabin in the remotest hollow today which does not support a TV aerial. Dr. Dorothy Johnson says in her work on the influence of television that the people of Appalachia do not see television as an educational tool but rather view it as entertainment, as a diversion. It is available as an avenue to widen perceptions of options. Appalachians are avid viewers and will go to great lengths to receive multiple channels as demonstrated by the purchase of satellite discs which have proliferated across the mountains. Television, however, portrays a very different kind of life than they are used to living. On television Appalachians are exposed to ideas, value systems and lifestyles different from their own. This perpetuates a feeling of "different from" but television itself, over a period of time, becomes familiar and acceptable. Dr. Johnson indicates that Appalachians have greater confidence in television's credibility than other viewers.24 Dr. Johnson further states"...the evidence tends to support the proposition that television exposure (is) related to modification of traditional perceptions."25 On television, women in Appalachia are able to view women in nontraditional roles such as police officer, detective, lawyer as well as those of waitress and teacher with which they are more familiar. While television can portray different roles, it does have limitations. These images are on the television; they are not "real life." They are not something that the women can relate to oneto-one within their community, or more specifically, within their familial ties or kinship system. Stories told about women who have lived and worked in their locale, doing work that was different from their usual role expectations, have the potential for greater impact. Biography, particularly orally presented biography, given in the local area of the biographee has the possibility for providing useful, acceptable, supportive role models for women. When Susan Dew Hoff's great grandniece hears that her aunt is being honored as a significant contributor to West Virginia history, it has much more impact on the potential for her own life than if she saw a woman doctor in an urban neighborhood portrayed in a television drama. The West Virginia Women's Commission had not perceived this aspect of its project when planning and implementing Missing Chapters. The original intent of Missing Chapters was to research and document the contributions and achievements of West Virginia women. West Virginia history textbooks recount fewer than a half-dozen noteworthy women in the state's history and there is a dearth of information about the contributions of women to the state. Jim Comstock's appendix on women to the West Virginia Encyclopedia is the only easily available source about West Virginia women. The Women's Commission learned about the unavailability of information about West Virginia women in history when the project Missing Chapters was under consideration. In preparing the proposal further research uncovered almost no additional sources and highlighted the need for the project. Partially funded by the Humanities Foundation of West Virginia, the project began in October, 1981 with a call for papers on women who had made outstanding contributions to the community in which they lived or to the state. These papers were to document women's place in West Virginia history, to be presented to civic and social organiztions around the state, and to be published in a book. The initial call for papers generated some fifty inquiries and twenty-nine papers, of which nine will be published. The series of public presentations have been presented to 222 �nineteen groups in the last six months and aired three times on public radio. Arrangements are under discussion for an appearance on public television. The women being presented in this project include a journalist, a midwife, a physician, a photographer, a teacher, a suffragette, two social workers, and a musician. They provide potent role models for women in Appalachia. The Missing Chapters staff was unprepared for the response the presentations received. Audiences listened with rapt attention and discussed not only the life of the biographee but also the mechanics of how she could have managed such a full and productive life. Often the audience included relatives and acquaintances of the subject and occasionally these women added to what was known about the subject by offering an anecdote or personal experience they had had with the subject. Sometimes they identified with the particular kind of work the subject had done and, occasionally, the audience debated how the subject could have managed to be so non-traditional and yet operate within the confines of traditional society. They discussed how the subject had to overcome her own timidity or a physical problem in order to do the work she set out to do. They always identified other women in their locale whose lives should be researched and documented. In one instance a student in training for a medical job shared her consideration of an occupational change, describing a plan to obtain training to be a writer. In another, a professional writer who has considerable research skills told staff that she was choosing to write about the grandmother of a friend despite the materials easily available in the archives on women from other areas of the state. She felt the need to document the life of this woman who had contributed so much to the settling of the local area while there were many living relatives to share their remembrances. The impact of the presentation is greatest when delivered to groups organized for purposes not related at all to history. Local women's groups in Appalachia often assume an importance beyond that of similar groups in less isolated areas. Churches and homemaker groups are among the very few social events in the life of women who are traditionally not joiners. When a program about a local woman is presented to such a group, the presenter and the material can be incorporated as meaningful and related to the familiar and acceptable. This serves to broaden horizons of those women. The project has identified a significant interest in and enthusiasm about women's history and as the project moves to its second call for papers, the response has highlighted a need to investigate the effect of learning about non-traditional women's lives in their part of Appalachia on the women's views of possibilities for themselves. An in-depth inquiry into the implications and ramifications of this project would be useful. Does learning about the possibility of other alternatives foster the expectation of opportunity to use skill and knowledge in a local area? The women of Appalachian often feel helpless, hopeless, and without expectation of any kind. When reality is very depressing, depression quickly leads to immobilization. Dr. John Corcella, a psychiatrist with whom I have worked, prescribes medication for depressed patients in doses designed to alleviate the depression just enough to free energy to work on problems. In some respects, the consideration of alternatives and the concomitant surge of enthusiasm of discovery about women's past has the effect of freeing up energy to work on a problem. Writer after writer has stated that change will come to Appalachia only at the instigation of Appalachians. Biography, an appreciation of women's past contributions to Appalachia, is one step in active commitment to self and to the region to address its problems. 223 �Footnotes 'Pacing the Future: Education and Equity for Females and Males. Dialogues from CCSSO/NASB Regional Seminars on Educational Policy and Sex Equity held in the Fall of 1980, ed. Martha Matthews (New York: National Association of State Boards of Education, 1980), p. 9. 2 United Press International dispatch, The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette, August 8, 1982. 3 W.Va., Department of Employment Security, Labor and Economic Research Section, West Virginia Women in the Labor Force: A Labor Market Information Report, (Charleston, W.Va.: n.p., 1978) p. 31. *U.S., Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, Twenty Facts on Women Workers, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1982), p. 1. s W.Va., Department of Health, West Virginia 1981 Vital Statistics, (Charleston, W.Va.: State of West Virginia Graphic Arts, 1982), p. 95. 6 Today's Girls, Tomorrow's Women, Proceedings of a National Seminar Held at the Wingspread Conference Center, Racine, Wisconsin, June 13-15, 1978, n. ed. (New York: Girls Clubs of America, 1978), p. 12. 'Jack E. Weller, Yesterday's People (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1965), p. 37. 'Ibid., pp. 40-41. 'John Fetterman, Stinking Creek (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1979), p. 31. '"Weller, p. 58. "Ibid., p. 59. "Frank Riddel, Appalachia: Its People, Heritage, and Problems (Dubuque, la.: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 1974), p. 69. "Ibid., p. 48. "Weller, p. 61. "Riddell, p. 66. "Weller, pp. 64-65. "Ibid. pp. 79-80. 18 Dorothy R. Johnson, "The Influence of Television Viewing Upon Perceptions of Various Concepts Among Appalachians and Non-Appalachians" (unpublished Doctor's dissertation, Ohio State University, 1972), p. 30. "DavidS. Walls andJ.B. Stephenson, Appalachia in the Sixties (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1972), p. 225. 20 Riddell, p. 171. "Walls and Stephenson, pp. 221-223. 22 Weller, p. 108. "Ibid., p. 23. 24 Johnson, p. 204. "Ibid., p. 260. Bibliography Campbell, John C. The Southern Highlander and his Homeland. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1969. Caudill, Harry M. Night Comes to the Cumberland;. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1962. Dixon, Ruth B. "Measuring Equality Between the Sexes," The Journal of Social Issues, XXXII, 3 (1976), 19-30. Dreitzel, Hans Peter (ed.). Childhood and Socialization, Vol. V. Recent Sociology. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1973. Elkin, Frederick and Gerald Handel. The Child and Society: The Process of Socialization. New York: Random House, 1972. Facing the Future: Education and Equity for Females and Males. Dialogue from CCSSO/NCSB Regional Seminars on Educational Policy and Sex Equity held in the Fall of 1980, ed. Martha Matthews. New York: National Association of State Boards of Education, 1980. Fetterman, John. Stinking Creek: The Portrait of a Small Mountain Community in Appalachia. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1970. 224 �Gornick, Vivian and Barbara K. Moran (eds.). Woman in Sexisl Society: Studies in Power and Poiverlessness. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1971. Hunter, Jean E. "Images of Woman," The Journal of Social Issues, XXXII, 3, (1976), 7-17. Johnson, Dorothy Rench. "The Influence of Television Viewing Upon Perceptions of Various Concepts Among Appalachians and Non-Appalachians." Unpublished Doctor's dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1972. Johnson, H. Wayne, (ed.). Rural Human Services: A Book of Readings. Itasca, 111.: R.E. Peacock Publishers, Inc., 1980. Looff, David H. Appalachian's Children: The Challenge of Menial Health. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1969. Riddel, Frank S. Appalachia: Its People, Heritage, and Problems. Dubuque, la.: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1974. Today's Girls, Tomorrow's Women. Proceedings of a National Seminar Held at the Wingspread Conference Center, Racine, Wisconsin, June 13-15, 1978, n. ed. New York: Girls Clubs of America, 1978. U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau. Twenty Facts on Women Workers, n.a. (Washington): Government Printing Office, 1982. Walls, David S. and John B. Stephenson (eds.) Appalachia in the Sixties: Decade oj Reawakening. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1972. Weller, Jack E. Yesterday's People: Lije in Contemporary Appalachia. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1965. W.Va. Department of Employment Security. West Virginia Women in the Labor Force, n.a. Charleston, W.Va.: State of West Virginia Graphia Arts, 1978. W.Va. Department of Health. West Virginia 1981 Vital Statistics, n.a. Charleston, W.Va.: State of West Virginia Graphic Arts, 1982. 225 �A Case for a Humanities Curriculum Incorporating Sciences and Local Studies Myra Jones Macon County, in Western North Carolina, shares many of the characteristics of the rest of Appalachia. We are a mountainous region with relatively low income and relatively sparse population. Much of our land—and half—is owned by the federal government. Traditionally the area has been isolated so that the small communities have been homogenous, close knit and have changed slowly over the years. Many jobs have been in agriculture or related to textiles—small cut and sew operations. The mountains hold some mineral wealth, such as mica, coruncum, or olivene, which has been mined in the past. Now there may be oil, and explorations are under way. More recently, Macon County has begun to change more rapidly, largely due to the development of tourism. Population diversity and growth has increased: total growth during the last census period was about 27%, compared to the state increase of 17%. Folks want to vacation in Macon County, they build summer homes there, and they retire there. Macon County also has one of the largest retired populations in the state—nearly one third. Most recently, the county has seen a large influx of younger people who want to get their children out of cities and city schools. Often they move in without jobs or job prospects. In consequence, the county has suffered a number of stresses: culture shock between natives and in-migrants and between younger and older generations, and competition for scarce jobs and for ownership of land and other dwindling resources. Exacerbating this situation are the stresses besettling the nation as a whole: the knowledge/technology explosion and the resulting upheavals, such as unemployment, that we seem unable to cope with; and the country's worsening political and economicposition worldwide. In Macon County, some teachers became concerned because they realized that traditional education simply did not prepare students to cope with the complexities of modern life. Students learned separate bodies of fact in various classes, but they did not learn what the facts meant or how to use them. Teachers wanted to develop a more useful type of learning. And they decided to begin with what the students already knew—their own communities. They could use the communities as classrooms and laboratories, to begin showing students how to make connections between the types of knowledge learned in various classes. They could help students develop concepts and reasoning skills—developing minds that were flexible and adaptable, so the young people could meet future situations and solve future problems that cannot at present even be predicted. Two informal teacher teams got together for discussion, one from our local high school and one from the middle school. Beginning with what they had already tried in class that they felt was useful, interesting, or relevant, they began to work out an overall framework, a way to incorporate their ideas into an organized curriculum. They began a search for more ideas and materials. At this point an administrator and a college profesor got into the act and wrote a grant proposal. The team was awarded a grant from the National Humanities Faculty—one of 15 nationwide—to help 226 �develop the project. The NHF grant has provided services (but no cash), in the form of a Faculty Advisor, scholarships to a summer institute for five team members, and visiting scholars to work with teachers and students. The project team received a great deal of help from Western Carolina, who agreed to collaborate on the project. Additionally, the team has received two other small grants: stipends for two high school members to attend a workshop on using community resources in class, and a Kodak grant for the middle school to pay for some of the photographic supplies for the project. But most of the work has been done without any financial aid, after or before school, or in the summer, by the teachers themselves—long hours of work on their own time. After they completed a tentative course outline, the high school team received permission to teach an experimental Humanities course for seniors in the Fall of 1983. To do so, they agreed to give up their planning periods. The situation at the middle school is more flexible, so that teachers will be able to work together and incorporate the new activities into the existing curriculum. Curriculum At the Middle School, the classwork will concentrate on local studies content. Students will study such topics as: Mountain Chemistry: Soapmaking, whiskey distilling, using native plants as dyes and medicines, and food preservation techniques. Mountain Ecology: How the natural environment influences the human environment, as shown in such activities as farming practices, location and construction methods of buildings, and in daily customs such as recreation, courting customs, recreation, and so forth. The above list is not conclusive. While students are studying the local course content, they will be developing many skills and concepts in English, social studies, and science. The high school course will bridge the gap between local studies and Western Intellectual Development. Teachers have constructed a seven or eight unit course, with each unit being four weeks long. The units center around pivotal thinkers such as Aristotle and Einstein, who have changed the course of history. The theme of the course will be CHANGE. Concepts to be taught, related to Change, are: —Human society advances by change —Change in society has good and bad consequences —When change occurs in one area of human endeavor, it affects others as well —The certainty of change coexists with the uncertainty of the future —Change is caused and regulated by power: natural, political, social, artistic, & technological. —Man is susceptible to change by forces beyond his control. —Change occurs in time and space; the rate of change in one function of technology. Students will study how events, in one field affect developments in all fields: science and nature, philosophy and religion, politics and society, and literature and the Arts. They will examine how the Appalachian people fit into Western Historical patterns, and wherever possible they will examine parallels between global and local developments. Some examples of activities are: —to contrast attitudes of pioneers and native Americans toward land ownership and nature —to relate the Reformation to regional religions —to relate British music and dancing to Mountain music and dancing —to investigate how British culture and language in the 17th and 18th centuries adapted to the mountains 227 �—to show present land ownership patterns in Appalachia, examining how they reveal power structure and attitudes toward economic and ecological matters; to compare patterns here with those in Third World Countries. —To compare a mountain ecosystem to a coastal ecosystem, showing how human development is regulated by natural, economic, and political considerations. —to show how the principles learned in Civics class actually operate in the local political system. What are national and global parallels? Who controls power and resources? How can students get involved in the local decision-making process? (How are decisions made?) —How do social customs reflect the role of women? Men? Children? How is this shown in science? Literature? Religion? The Arts? How do different times and places settle these roles? The high school team will try to cram all of the above into one course next year. They hope that the one experimental class will evolve into four courses, each one building on the one before, that can act to help students synthesize their knowledge and begin to use it, while they learn creative reasoning and problem solving skills. The scheme would be compatible with state Scope and Sequence guidelines: 9th grade: Philosophical inquiry. Practical civics: how the government operates at the local level. Physical science with a philosophical approach. 10th grade: Humanities, the subject matter traditionally associated with this course, but with emphasis on regional literature, music, and so forth. llth grade: American History/American Literature. Concentration on American course content but showing how other developments and ideas are reflected in literature. 12th grade: Capstone Course—the History of Western Thought through English literature and the arts. These courses would be taught by teacher teams, for credit in lieu of regular English, Science or Social Studies courses. They would perhaps be taught in two or three hour blocs, with teams of teachers, to allow flexibility of planning or student activity such as field work and research. The above is an ideal plan, which would solve some very real problems with traditional education. However, it depends on action by policy makers, not just teachers, so it is doubtful if the plan will ever materialize fully. Problems in implementing the team's ideas will be more fully discussed below. Benefits None of our project ideas are new, unique, or revolutionary. In fact, most of our plan seems like such an obvious thing to do that we wonder why it hasn't been done as a matter of course. The benefits are legion; the drawbacks are practically nil. By moving the classroom into the community the following things happen: —Students already are interested in the subject matter —Students can test textbook knowledge against reality; they can begin to put together knowledge learned in various classes. —Teachers can enrich classes by drawing on community experts, resources, and facilities. —Students perform real tasks that can be of real benefit to the community. They can recognize busywork when they see it, and they resent it. —Student self esteem goes up: they are doing something real; and they begin to realize that their 228 �own families and experiences are valuable and constitute part of education. There are also many benefits from a situation that allows teachers to work together: —There can be division of labor. No one person has to become an expert on everything. —Time is used more efficiently, flexibly, and creatively —Teachers can enjoy peer interaction and can exchange ideas. This helps both the curriculum and teacher morale. It is obvious that the traditional education is not doing the job. One recent study showed that schools even promote juvenile delinquency because they separate students from the adult community and do not let them develop "meaningful social roles." ("Schools Can Create Delinquency," Educational R &D Report, Winter, 1982—3) Another study, in the same journal, revealed that experiential education is the most valuable element of an alternate curriculum for "marginal students." For every marginal student who drops out of school, there are surely dozens of more docile students who suffer in silence. This is an extravagant waste of teacher and student time which we can no longer afford. Eliot Wigginton, in the Introduction to Foxfire Six, makes an eloquent case for experiential education and for giving students real responsibilities both in the community, as part of their classwork, and within the schools. Our NHF project team is working toward this goal. Problems The Macon County team has run into plenty of problems. Many of them could be summarized as parts of one basic problem: the educational bureaucracy is sometimes so rigid and inflexible that it has difficulty responding to any innovation—particularly one from the grass roots level-teachers. Moreover, the hierarchy becomes so involved in keeping the system going that people forget what the primary task of the whole construction is—the education of students. For example, if something is difficult to schedule, the teachers and students must bend to fit the schedule. It should be the other way around—the schedule should be made to fit the needs of the students and teachers. Below are listed some general problems that we have noted. Like our curriculum, they are not new, either. But they should be noted and commented upon because one needs to be clear about the fact that no good idea is going to be successful unless the problems at the top are solved. • Educational needs should be kept in context. All too often, some new problem is noted and the policy makers get together some patchwork program to attack the symptom. They need to look at the system as a whole. • Policy makers should stop blaming the victim. Like a rape victim who finds that she is the one on trial, teachers often find themselves being blamed for a system that they have no control over. If teacher preparation is poor--who is responsible? The "experts" note some deficiency, like poor teaching of composition, and they immediately set up a workshop to teach the teachers. In many cases, the problem is not that the teacher doesn't know what to do, but that the classroom situation is so impossible that the necessary instruction cannot take place. No one can inspire a classroom full of Hemingways if there are 150 papers to grade every day. • Planners should consult the real experts when they are developing new programs. Teachers are the ones who know what is actually going on in the classroom: they know what is possible or not, what is useful or not. Some policy makers have not been in classrooms in years—if ever. How can they develop viable programs without input from teachers? 229 �• Teachers need time for planning and working together. One of their most pervasive complaints is that they work in isolation without time during the day for interaction with their peers. Too often good ideas never get around because the teacher has no way to communicate them to others. Educators should consider a technique which has proven fruitful in Japanese industry: quality circles, in which production workers have time built into their work day to get together and discuss ways to work and to improve their performance. Then they work as a team on the job. Essentially, we feel that educators at all levels must work together. Our project team has committed itself—has already given a lot of time and effort—to improve the quality of education that they can offer. But a successful effort needs support from all levels. Our project does show that educators at different levels can work together. We have been helped a great deal by our collaboration with Western Carolina University, who has provided us with guidance and resources that we could not otherwise had access to. The National Humanities Faculty is another effort, on the National Level, to get university people and public school teachers together. These efforts show how much can be accomplished, even when things do not always work perfectly. MEMBERS OF THE HUMANITIES PROJECT TEAM Franklin High School Sharon Johnson, team leader Frank D. Jones JoAnn Jones Mary Layne Macon Middle School Jerry Arnold Joann Clark Charles Yonce Project Coordinator Myra Jones University contact person Dr. Richard Berne, Western Carolina University NHF Advisor Dr. James Peacock, University-Chapel Hill For further information about the Macon County project, contact: Myra Jones, Macon County Schools, PO Box 1029, Franklin, NC 28734. (704)524-4414, or Dr. Richard Berne, Center for Environmental Education, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 28723 (704) 227-7476. 230 �Library Outreach in Eastern Kentucky Outreach to me is a two-way street. Professors don't mind being paid to teach the sons and daughters of mountain parents but often are fairly aghast at the idea that their academic institutions might have something to learn from the mountain parents of their students. I'm not at all uncomfortable with the idea of a university or a library having a community outreach program and hope that ofter this presentation we'll have time to discuss specific outreach programs and problems on the part of public, college, university and school libraries. Kentucky may be known for its beautiful women, fast horses, and bourbon whiskey; but to the library world we are known for our bookmobile program, reputed to be one of the most extensive and best in the country. Berea College put the first bookmobile on the road as early as 1916. It was a shelved delivery wagon with two horses and a student driver. The library staff member along distributed reading materials of all kinds—magazines and newspapers as gifts and books on loan and free Bibles to those requesting them. It was the dream of Miss Euphemia Corwin, Berea's librarian from 1903-1933 and the first professionally trained librarian in Kentucky. She and her staff in the library actually raised the money for the first three years; later the wagon was replaced by a truck and continued until 1943. In some counties in 1937 packhorses were used to tote the books up the hollows. Eventually hearses, ambulances and jeeps were carriers of books and librarians. In 1982 Kentucky had 123 modern commercial bookmobiles. They were practically custom-made and the problem was those bright, shining commercial bookmobiles cost $36,000 apiece. Ellen Hellard, Director of Kentucky's public library outreach, which is called Field Services Division, took one look at that $36,000 price tag and another look at bread vans. By converting bread vans into bookmobiles, Ellen has saved Kentucky taxpayers over $156,000 annually. By using prison labor to construct shelving, Ellen's "home-made" vans costs about $20,000. So the issue today is not so much the initial cost, but the maintenance cost and the philosophical questions: are bookmobiles still needed? Are they widely used by mountain people? According to the January 1982 Statistical Report of Kentucky Public Libraries and Archives, 75% of state-wide circulation comes from libraries and only 25% from bookmobiles. To compare the state-wide circulation average with use in Eastern Kentucky I looked at county percentages in the five Eastern Kentucky library regions: Buffalo Trace, Kentucky River, Cumberland Valley, Big Sandy, and FIVCO. I found that out of the 33 countries, only 6 had percentages matching or above the state-wide 75/25% average, so about 82% of the county libraries in these five regions do not conform to the state-wide statistics. In Leslie County, the library circulated 26,000 books, and Mason Collett, the bookmobile librarian, circulated 109,000 books. That's a 20% circulation for the library and an 80% circulation for the bookmobile. Several other counties also had high circulation figures for bookmobiles. One librarian I talked with was a little miffed at the way the state compiled its statistics. She claimed that people in her county didn't check out many library books from the bookmobile when it was in the garage or "tore up completely" and yet the state "averaged in" circulation figures from inoperable bookmobiles with those on the road. That seemed a little strange to lump circulation of broken and operating bookmobiles together, so I asked Frankfort for a definition of "bookmobile' and found she was right: three categories of bookmobiles are listed—operable, inoperable, and stationary—but all three categories are lumped together for statistical purposes. Well, let's assume that the bookmobile is "operable" and on the road in an Eastern Kentucky county. Where does it stop? Whom does it reach? I told you that the Leslie County bookmobile 231 �driver checked out 109,000 books. Considering that there are only about 14,000 people in Leslie County, his circulation averages about seven books per person. In neighboring Knott County, which has about 4,000 more people than Leslie County, the bookmobile driver checked out only 5,000 books. How come? And how could an outreach program in Appalachian Kentucky make more stops and reach more people? I think if I were a bookmobile driver I'd make scheduled stops at laundromats. That may seem odd, but I've never been in one in Eastern Kentucky that didn't contain a group of mothers and children. You think any of those busy mothers would mind if on a hot summer day the librarian took her children inside the air-conditioned bookmobile and presented a storyhour or puppet show? Do you think while she is waiting for her clothes to dry she herself would ignore a ten or fifteen minute program if it touched on one of her interests? People tell me that Appalachian women won't bring their children to a storyhour or library program. Well, I wouldn't drive my girls sixty miles round-trip for a twenty minute storyhour either; but if I were at the Health Department waiting several hours for my five year-old to get her shots for first grade I could be persuaded to let her step into the bookmobile for an interesting activity. One of the more successful bookmobile stops I know about occurred at a large factory during the lunch hour and during the fifteen minute morning and afternoon breaks, when the bookmobile driver set up a display in the cafeteria. One librarian told me: "Teenagers are the hardest group to reach; they never come to library programs." O.K., how about planning a program with a local beautician or hair stylist. Ask her to give a prize or a free haircut, and have a library program inside the shop: maybe on makeup or grooming, displaying related library books; hopefully eventually following up with some kind of discussion: how does how you look affect how you feel about yourself? Does where you live or your family background affect your self-image? Bookmobiles don't have to stop just at private homes; they can stop at garages, nursing homes, clinics, grocery stores, or day care centers. Do they? The Rural Child Care Program (RCCP), an East Kentucky Head Start program, reaches almost 1,000 children and their parents in 13 Eastern Kentucky counties. Pat Carroll, state-wide RCCP Educational Director, did a preliminary county-by-county survey, and found most bookmobiles do not even stop regularly at Rural Child Care Centers. Only one in the 13 county area presented storyhour programs for the preschool children or provided any programs for the parents who met regularly in the center. Pat is not pointing a finger at anybody, but she and I are going to go beyond the academic pondering of the situation and make a concerted effort to involve bookmobile librarians and RCCP preschool children in an experimental program. At this point I can only say that we intend to work with some very dedicated regional and county librarians to try to obtain a circulating preschool library for a five or six county area. I think it is possible that we can get statewide, regional and local support and cooperation for such a project. If it works, Pat may be here next year to tell you how we did it; if it doesn't work, we may be back anyway reporting the problems and asking for your advice. Speaking of advice, right before the conference I had to call Ellen Hellard with another puzzling question. I had figures to how some counties do very little outreach programming: Menifee County, for instance, gave a total of two library programs in 1981 and reported that they had reached an audience of 32 people during the year. Breathitt County, on the other hand, reported 128 programs and an audience of 17,340 people. Do you know how many people live in Breathitt County? There are 17,004. Now I'm from Eastern Kentucky and I've heard of dead people voting, but do dead 232 �people in Breathitt County also read books and attend library programs? Ellen had the answer: part of the problem has to do with a nonuniform system librarians use in reporting "library audience," but the interesting thing is the Breathitt County librarian doesn't consider the library to be just a place for books—she apparently thinks the library building is a sort of community center for any group or organization that wants to hold a public meeting or present a program for the community. In Breathitt's case both the bookmobile and the building function in a kind of "open door" outreach manner. Suppose you are interested in working in a library that has this kind of community center approach. Let's say you've been teaching in Jefferson County making $17,000 a year; but you want to come home to the mountains and work with books and people of various ages. Since you have just a bachelor's degree, you'll have to go back to graduate school: the minimum requirement of library director is a master's degree or a college degree with 21 hours in library science. So you invest a year of your time and all your savings to go to library school. Suppose you are especially bright, work extra hard, graduate with honors, and get the job of Library Director of Robertson County. In 1981, the director of that library was paid $5,141. That's pretty austere: besides, Robertson County only has 2,270 people. So you move on to a larger county (5,117 people) and a higher salary—$89 more a year, or a grand total of $5,230. If you wanted to move to a bigger place you could go to Wolfe County, but you'd have to supervise more people—and take a $406 cut in salary! $4,824 is what the boss makes in Wolfe County. Where could you go in Eastern Kentucky, with your Master's degree and your commitment, and make your Louisville public school salary? If you take all the salaries of all the library directors in those five library regions in Eastern Kentucky and eliminate the two highest and the two lowest salaries, the average is less than half of what you were making as a public school teacher with less education and fewer supervisory duties. There are only three counties in Eastern Kentucky where you could make $17,000 or more and I hate to tell you, but those jobs are taken. The people in Frankfort know they are not going to get people with Master's degrees to work for minimum wage, so they did what the school people did when Eastern Kentucky schools couldn't meet accreditation standards—they lowered the standards. For any county with a population of 15,000 or less, the library director doesn't have to have a Master's degree; the director doesn't even have to have a college degree; you can substitute eight years of library experience and fifteen hours of library science. Actually the state has no way of enforcing these or any other qualifications for staff. The local library board can hire anyone it chooses for any salary that person is willing to accept. Frankfort recognizes the problem and has some pretty novel ways to encourage library boards to hire qualified people and pay them more, but some of the most dedicated librarians I know work for five, six and seven thousand dollars a year. They must love their work. The state and counties may not be able to provide adequate financing for public libraries, but they have come up with two new exciting programs: CATCH 'EM IN THE CRADLE and READ TO YOUR CHILD FOR THE FUN OF IT. If you've ever had a baby or visited a friend in the maternity ward, you may have noticed that some companies offer a welcome wagon kind of package to new mothers: a free box of Pampers from Procter & Gamble, baby oil from Johnson and Johnson, a sample copy of Parents magazine. Your friendly library is now offering a freebie: a promotional kit of materials designed to encourage the new parents to talk and read to their your children and to visit and use the resources provided by the local library. Kentucky officials maintain that 50% of the intellectual development of a child takes place between the child's birth and four 233 �years of age and that parents are important teachers. READ TO YOUR CHILD FOR THE FUN OF IT is a state-wide campaign. Some county librarians are offering these parents, non-library users, a pamphlet promoting reading which they hand out. Other county librarians are enthusiastic about this year-old campaign and are doing some very interesting promotions. There are problems, no question about that. I noticed as I was interviewing for this presentation that one particular librarian was entirely unimpressed by my own enthusiasm for the role bookmobiles could play in the Read to Your Child effort. She said: "Nobody believes in bookmobiles anymore." I said: "Ellen Hellard believes in bookmobiles; she and some of the Frankfort staff I interviewed seemed committed to rural outreach. They think bookmobiles are needed and they can demonstrate the program is cost-effective." The librarian looked me in the eye and said: "Neither you nor Ellen Hellard have ever driven my bookmobile one mile on the roads in this county. Don't either of you talk to me about the value of bookmobiles in Eastern Kentucky until you've spent a week behind the wheel and under the hood. As soon as I can I'm going to get rid of my bookmobile. It's more trouble than it's worth." More than one Appalachian librarian has shared her frustration with maintenance problems on older vehicles and some Kentucky librarians are petitioning the state office to let their county eliminate bookmobile service. Some of the people most opposed to bookmobile service are bookmobile librarians; their problems are very real, but I hope there will be people here at the conference who will want to address the present needs and the future of bookmobile outreach in the mountains. Several decades ago, Berea had a kind of human bookmobile for over 40 years in the form of Henrietta Child, who carried books and told stories on her walks to one-room schools up the hollows. Today the Berea College Librarian has appointed an Outreach Committee to investigate ways the library might serve the townspeople—young and old as well as students. I wondered if any other colleges in Eastern Kentucky were involved in a similar evaluation or already had outreach extension programs. Did any college follow up on Jim Wayne Miller's assertion that colleges should work with local high schools to help them enhance or even start regional collections? Are there children's literature professors who do storyhour programs in Day Care or Head Start Centers? How may librarians do book review columns for local newspapers or make it a point to tell high school teachers aobut recent publications? I sent a survey to twenty colleges in Eastern Kentucky and got a wide range of responses. Some schools are quite clear that their resources, their libraries are reserved for the student body only. Eastern Kentucky University, which is 19 miles from the nearest public library, does not allow any child or adult in the county to check out a children's book from E.K.U.'s extensive children's collection. Most colleges, however, take the position that it is true that their resources are primarily for students and professors, but that the school is part of the community and has a commitment to be of service to the region. As long as community use does not interfere with student use, most libraries will allow both adults and children to check out books, visit exhibits, attend programs, view films, etc. Cumberland College is rather exceptional: they've never had KEEP OUT! signs on campus; administrators were not worried that too many community people would try to use the library—they were concerned that not enough people were using it! The college sent out 1000 survey forms to find out what they could do, followed up with requested programs in genealogy and oral history, instituted workshops and announced that the year-long Outreach Campaign resulted in the issuance of over 375 non-student new library cards. 234 �I've wondered if some elementary and high schools have few Appalachian books in their libraries because they didn't have enough information about what was available. A very generous man in Berea and a neat lady have supplied a new resource. The generous man is Al Perrin and the lady is me, and the resource is CHOOSING BOOKS FOR APPALACHIAN CHILDREN, a 300-page spiral-bound annotated bibliography of over 500 in-print children and young adult books with Appalachian settings, characters, themes, or authors. Most of the reviewers (Booklist, Appalachian Journal, Appalachian Notes) have found the second section particularly interesting: it contains curriculum suggestions and related activities for teachers, parents, and librarians. There are only three places in the world where you or a school or an Appalachian Studies Program can get a copy: directly from me (Route 2, Box 328, Berea, KY 40403), from George Brosi, or from the Council of the Southern Mountains bookstore, both in Berea. Al and I saw a need for this bibliography and now we are involved in a related project: compiling an Appalachian Children's Traveling Library. As we sell CHOOSING BOOKS FOR APPALACHIAN CHILDREN, the money is being used to purchase the books in the bibliography and make them available to school, public and academic libraries and other interested groups on a loan basis. In a sense buying the bibliography ($12.00 plus $1.50 for postage) will also buy children's books for a junior high teacher doing a social studies unit on coal because she can borrow a whole shelf of books (fiction and non-fiction) that deal with coal mining in the mountains. A preschool teacher can try out a series of loaned picture books before she spends her limited funds; a county librarian can offer an interested patron a book she might not buy for the library. A children's literature professor or Appalachian Studies teacher may want to borrow books for a week for a special discussion on Appalachian children's literature. If you are interested or know of a teacher or organization that would be, let me know. If you need a resource person or someone to make a presentation along with the books, ask me. Any expertise I have I am willing to share. Judy Martin A Report on the East Kentucky Grass Roots Poetry Project Grassroots began with Gurney and me sitting on the grass last summer in front of the Administration Building. We were trying to figure how to get money for words. The 1980 Appalachian Poetry Project, officially over at the end of that year, had continued to encourage writers in the region through volunteer efforts and the support of the Appalachian Center. But we felt a need to move beyond the campus and our mailing list. We wanted to promote a more direct recognition and celebration of Appalachian voices. The original project had done 18 workshops in 5 states, but funding was easier to come by then. Perhaps we could do something just in Kentucky. And how about not only writing but reading workshops, teaching workshops? Not for a selfselecting group of already-interested writers but for public school teachers and students. Why not? We could put the work in their hands. That's how it got started. So when John Stephenson asked if I'd like to work on a grant proposal to fund the Appalachian Component of theWomenWritersConferencefor 1983, I said yes, not knowing that these two projects were going to collide or embrace or at least get tangled together. As I began working on the proposal, I found that the Kentucky Humanities Council wanted to fund public school projects, expecially ones based in Eastern Kentucky. Thus it made sense to have the Women Writers Con235 �ference participation in the spring be the culminating event of a larger effort to let mountain voices be heard. With this in mind, I came up with the following plan: The fall would consist of 5 district-wide workshops with teachers aimed at providing an introduction to poetry from the region along with some demonstrations of ways to teach it. For these workshops, I would prepare a unit of poetry selected for classroom use, suggestions for teaching, writing exercises, a bibliography, and a list of regional periodicals. Each teacher attending the workshops would get in-service credit along with one of the teaching units. Two weeks later I would come back to each county and do a shorter writing workshop with interested students. To set this up I worked through the Department of Education in Frankfort. Once they okay'd the workshops as in-service, I began calling instructional supervisors to find districts which would participate. I had to contact 14 counties to get 5 committed to the project, though it cost the schools nothing but in-kind donations of space and supervisors' time. During each phone call, I stressed that I myself was from Harlan Co. and that the main goal of the project was to increase students' enjoyment of and skill with language by introducing them to poetry from their own place. According to the original schedule, all these workshops would be finished by Thanksgiving and the project would lie dormant till March, when each district would have a writer from the region available to meet classes for one day. Then in April, these writers, along with 3 others, would come to the Women Writers Conference, present a panel on writers in the schools, and give a reading which would be videotaped for distribution to the 5 districts. That way, though Grassroots would formally close down at the end of May, the schools in Laurel, Leslie, Clay, Owsley, and Harlan counties would have a tape of 6 readings along with the teaching unit to build on the next year. Well, almost all of this but the Writers Conference has come to pass. Jo Carson, Lee Howard, and I have gone into the schools; Maggie Anderson, Betsy Sholl, and Jane Wilson Joyce will join us for the panel and reading at the conference, where Jo will also be a featured reader. Certainly the fall portion of Grassroots is ripe for evaluation. I find myself still too close to the work to do that more than superficially, however. I know that I learned a lot. To begin with, I found out that grant proposals can be funded and so the writer should not promise more than funds and human energy can cover. Ten workshops in 5 counties turned out to be a great many, especially since I had to coordinate as well as run them, all the while holding other jobs. The work was at least 3/4 time and should have been funded as such. In trying to be realistic about funding possibilities I was unrealistic about many other things. Second, I encountered three areas of resistance in the teaching workshops: some people were offended at the politics of some poets; others were offended at poems that did not rhyme; many felt caught in a double bind being asked to teach poetry which used "bad" grammar or "strong" language. All these people raised basic issues about the nature and purpose of poetry. I addressed the issue as best I could according to the size and disposition of the group. Looking back I wish I had been a bit bolder. As it was I tried to keep as many doors open as possible. Third, I discovered that I should have limited the number of workshop participants, stressing that only those really interested in teaching poetry and in writing take part. The necessity for this did not occur to me, but crowds of 48 teachers and 125 students, some of whom were bored into rudeness, made it clear. 236 �Finally, it would have been more effective to make a greater difference in the teacher and student workshops because many of the teachers attended both. Interested in writing themselves, they came back for more, only to find some exercises and illustrations repeated. All in all, I think Grassroots has been worthwhile. Some students who had never liked writing apparently wrote with eagerness. Some teachers were enthusiastic about teaching poetry from the region. Teachers and students alike responded to tapes of writers reading their own work—Jo Carson, Lee Howard, Gurney Norman, Jim Wayne Miller, Jane Joyce—their live words said more about voice than all my generalizations and they testified to the nourishing power of what Stevens called "the bread of faithful speech." George Ella Lynn Developing an Appalachian Literature Anthology We are developing an anthology of Southern Appalachian Mountain literature suitable for secondary use. The need for such a textbook has been expressed by many secondary teachers who have an interest in regional cultural resources and have been trained in area teachers colleges and universities in this content area. Since the rediscovery of Appalachia in the 1960's, Appalachians have taken a close look at their culture. Courses focusing on Appalachia have flourished within the region. Along with this renewed interest in Appalachia have come an avalanche of books and articles and countless symposia, workshops, and professional organizations. Almost all the colleges and universities within the region have some type of Appalachian studies program. This is not an academic fad nor a local color movement. On the contrary, courses and research activities now have become a regular part of the curricula of higher education with some schools now offering a major or minor in Appalachian studies. Additionally, the American Bicentennial caused Americans, both academic and the general public, to examine and value their regional history and culture. As Flannery O'Conner writes in Mystery and Manners, "A descent into one's self will be a descent into one's region." This study of values and traditions of the region makes people think of where they have been and examine it in light of where they are going. This search for and prizing of regional values becomes even more important with increasing cultural standardization. The culture of Appalachia does not belong only to those now living there. Frederick Jackson Turner points out that the American character is shaped by the frontier—frontier values which still persist here in Appalachia which was once the American frontier. These are the values and traditions carried with the westward movement. These are the values and traditions also found today in the industrial cities of Dayton and Detroit and Akron and Cleveland to which over two million Appalachians have migrated since 1940. These are basic values and traditions. Elliott Wigginton with his phenomenal Foxfire success underscores a latent interest in Appalachia awakened to its potential. Foxfire illustrates the oral tradition which grew out of the old Southwest Territory that is part of Appalachia today. Wigginton's work has focused on the "how to's" of Appalachia; however, he has also uncovered the Appalachian's proclivity to make a story for every point he wishes to illustrate. This is a land of storytelling. 237 �Public and private secondary school teachers schooled in Appalachian colleges and universities and aware of public interest in regional culture earnestly want to include native material in their curricula. Such material, if available, would have use in the 4,500 secondary schools of Appalachia. This material could be used in social studies classes; however, its greatest use would be in language arts. Every high school requires American literature for graduation. Because Appalachian literature is a sub-genre of American literature, it could augment that required course. Also many secondary schools have elective programs with semester courses designed thematically or according to genre. For eight years we have taught Appalachian studies to high school students. We find the subject matter of these classes exciting even to students who are otherwise apathetic. The student participation and passing ratio is the highest of all classes we teach. Though these classes continue to be a part of the curriculum, there is no textbook available for use. Rather, we have xeroxed and dittoed as copyrights permit at great expense and trouble. Other teachers "make do" as we have. We are assembling a textbook composed of Appalachian literary material: poems, short stories, excerpts from novels, articles and essays written by both known and unknown Appalachian writers. We are also including material from traditional sources such as ballads, anecdotes, legends and proverbs. There is a section on dialect. The text is thematically arranged around the following dominant topics: our heritage (culture and traditions); our legacy and loss (natural wealth and technological exploitation); our legends and lore (heroes, heroines, and legendary stories); our independence and self reliance (frontier character of mountaineers); family ties and kindred strengths (family unity and reliance upon kin). We envision this text to be approximately 350 pages which is a suitable length for use during one semester. It will be illustrated with works of Appalachian visual artists. There will be chapter introductions, headnotes on the literary sections, media suggestions, and follow-up activities. Because of the traditional content of the literature which we include, this text will dovetail with the current emphasis on education in the basics. Yet it will rise above provincialism to show these themes as universal. We feel that this text has tremendous possibilities because there is no textbook which deals with the roots of America's past in this fashion. Nellie McNeil 238 �Abstracts 239 �This page intentionally left blank �Involving Youth in Appalachian Studies: Collaborative Effort between University and High School Faculties Grace Toney Edwards & Joyce L. Graham Realizing that the study of Appalachia is important to all age groups within the region, we began a project last spring. Ultimately, it will involve university faculty, high school faculty, high school students, and experts in the field of Appalachian Studies. The collaborative efforts involved in this project will provide participants with a wide range of opportunities for interaction with people genuinely interested in regional affairs. A program on this project would include a look at "Awareness of Appalachian Heritage: History, Oral Tradition, Music, Crafts, and Literature," a grant funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The project originated with the thought that Appalachian youth (ages 13—18) need the opportunity to focus on their own cultural heritages without the structure found in an academic setting. Funded from January - December, 1983, the grant will involve thirty youth from Montgomery County, Virginia, in a three-month educational program, a living/learning experience, and ongoing individual projects that will be presented to local audiences (i.e. churches, 4-H clubs, etc.). During the program, information concerning all facets of the project will be discussed. Initially, the audience will be informed about the NEH grant application process. Materials concerning the solicitation of applications and screening of applicants will be distributed. Finally, the educational experiences available to the grant participants will be presented. Throughout the program, an emphasis will be placed on the importance of, and procedures used in, educational programs for all age groups. Suggestions will be made on ways to facilitate a program of cultural significance. It is our belief that educating young people about their cultural heritage will enhance their social and intellectual development. As Jim Wayne Miller stressed in the May, 1982, edition of Appalink, this is a crucial time to involve secondary school students in studies of Appalachia. This program's main focus will be to suggest specific ways in which high school students can participate in cultural enrichment programs. 241 �Black Hillbilly Music: Black Influence in Non-Blues, Secular Music in the Southern Mountains Edward J. Cabbell It was not until hillbilly music, or country music as it is called today, became nationally popular that a large segment of the American population began to take a second look at the music of the Southern mountains. And for those music scholars and enthusiasts wondering where the music of this region, with its undertones of sorrow and its sweet but harsh melodies came from, they can find the answer in the music of black Appalachians and its relationship to their struggles in the hills and valleys of the Appalachian South and nearby Piedmont. The meeting of the African banjo and the European fiddle introduced the rhythm necessary for what we call mountain music and the clogging or flat foot dance that usually goes along with it. Although few black musicians today are exemplars of this unique non-blues, secular music tradition their influence remains very strong among most white musicians in the Appalachian South. Moreover, since non-blues black musicians traditionally have not been recorded unless they were involved with gospel or jazz it is extremely difficult to do any major documentation of these unique black musicians. This paper will provide a general overview of available information on black hillbilly musicians and their influence on the music of the Southern mountains. Lily May Ledford and the Coon Creek Girls: Radio's First All-Girl String Band Ellesa Clay High This presentation would discuss Lily May Ledford, an old-time musician born in 1917 in the Red River Gorge area of Kentucky, and who was the lead performer of the Coon Creek Girls, a group generally regarded as the first all-girl string band on radio. In 1936, when she was just nineteen years old, Lily May joined the popular "National Barn Dance" at WLS Radio in Chicago. Later, she and the Coon Creek Girls spent eighteen years performing for both live and radio audiences at Renfro Valley, Kentucky. Soon after the band was organized, it played for the Roosevelts and the King and Queen of England at the White House. In recent years, Lily May has come out of retirement and now performs as a solo act at folk and old-time music festivals and concerts. Though she plays a variety of instruments, including the fiddle, guitar, and bass, she is best known for her hard-driving, old-time mountain style of banjo picking. This presentation would center around taped excerpts from two radio documentaries concerning Lily May Ledford and the Coon Creek Girls, which were written, researched and narrated by Ellesa 242 �Clay High. These documentaries, which include early original recordings of the group and other more recent music performed by Lily May, were prepared for National Public Radio and aired over the national network during 1982. In addition to these excerpts and other commentary by Ellesa High, the presentation also would be highlighted by photographs of Lily May, the Coon Creek Girls, and the Red River Gorge. Oral Histories of Appalachian Women—By Women Joy Hunt "While the term oral history is of recent coinage, the fact is that oral history is as old as history itself—it was the first type of history." (Ellesa Migh, "Oral History...," unpublished paper, p. 5.) As a distinct research method, however, oral history took a big step forward in the 1960's, with the appearance of such tools as inexpensive cassette recorders. "Oral history is particularly effective for recording the way of life of those who have relied on spoken rather than written traditions and have felt alienated from the dominant culture." (Ibid., p. 3.) Not surprisingly therefore, oral history looms disapportionately large in studies of two oppressed groups: women and Appalachians. And it is not surprising that some of the most empathetic and effective oral histories are being done by members of the groups, i. e., studies of women by women; studies of Appalachians by Appalachians (e.g., Our Appalachia); and studies of Appalachian women by women who are either native born or who are living in Appalachia, sharing the lives of the women they interview. (An example would be Kathy Kahn's Hillbilly Women, although it contains contemporary interviews as well as history.) Because recollections of interviewers are acts of imagination as well as sheer reportage, oral history tends to combine fact and reflections on those facts. This does not render oral accounts less accurate than written histories. But it does mean that some oral historians are consciously combining it with fiction, biography, autobiography, etc. An example might be Harriet Arnow's The Dollmaker. Last, one of the effects of doing oral history with members of oppressed groups is that interviewees begin to explore their roots, to express themselves easily, and to draw the historian into an appreciation of their world. They enhance their capacity to celebrate themselves, as individuals and as a group. My colleagues and I are proposing a panel that would celebrate Appalachian women with oral her/stories done by women who are living in central and northern Appalachia. In addition to introductory and bibliographic material about oral history in general, we would share our worksin-progress with residents of the Red River Gorge, with Black Appalachian women in Ohio, with older Appalachian women in southeastern Ohio, and with women in Appalachia-based intentional communities for personal/social change. The focus is on oral her/story and the major research method is taped oral interviews. But some of the panelists are also working with other genre: fiction, journals, and library research. 243 �It would be exciting to expand this celebration of Appalachian women by including other presenters and other media, e.g., Joyce Hancock's celluloid contribution, Kizzie's Garden, which was presented first at the ASA 1981 annual meeting. If it is not possible to include the entire panel in the 1983 meeting, I would be interested in presenting a single paper as part of another panel. Some of the other panelists may be similarly interested. Women's Work, Women's Lives: Factory Labor and Its Impact On Women in Western North Carolina Mary Anglin My research on women in Western North Carolin is posed against conventional descriptions which typify Appalachian women as a homogeneous group whose lives center around their functions as farmers' wives and members of extended kins networks. Rather than assume that Appalachian society, and women's experiences within that setting, have been and are based on static social patterns, I argue that Appalachia has been experiencing different forms of economic development since its initial settlement and that it is thus impossible to speak of social patterns as if they were invariant over time or even across the region. To understand the meaning of Appalachian women's lives, it is necessary to locate our studies within the context of a historical analysis. Moreover, it is vital that such an analysis include an examination of Appalachian women's class positions, since what it means to be a woman, in Appalachia as elsewhere, is dependent upon the existing class structure. My research on women in a rural county in Western North Carolina is an attempt to develop this perspective, by studying the wage labor women have performed since the early 1900's—focusing in particular upon their work in textile industries—and by relating women's work involvement to other aspects of their lives. In particular, I have been concerned with the relation of the waged labor that women perform to the changing (i.e., narrowing) nature of women's domestic labor. While women in the area I am studying are still involved in farm work and other subsistence activities, it is evident that the extent of their involvement has been undermined by their commitment to their jobs. It is not simply a question of having less time or energy for farm work. Women's productive roles have increasingly become defined as the work they perform for a wage, and their wages are used to purchase the goods and services they once performed for their families. With these changes in women's productive roles come other changes—in the value placed on women's work, in the roles they perform as members of their families, and in women's conceptions of their lives. My research is equally concerned with these latter issues, which, taken together, speak to the reorienting of women's lives in relation to their position as members of the working class in a rural area where class relations are becoming more sharply defined. 244 �"We're Looking to Work:" The Future of the Workplace in Appalachia Dick Futrell Many dreams have been dreamed about Appalachia, its resources, its people and its availability as a stage for social action. Outsiders with visions of riches to be taken, and resolutions to be fought; and insiders with visions of fortunes to be made, and enemies to be vanquished, have found the region a fertile ground for their ideas and intentions. All in all, anyone who is interested in the Appalachian region for whatever reasons, will fall somewhere along continuums such as these. The region has a unique mystic quality which continually evokes the interest of all sorts of entrepreneurs—economic, moral, political, historical and social. This session locates its interests in economic realms of action. Specifically, we will consider the topic of the workplace in Appalachia. We will host three panels, each taking a different perspective on work and the contexts within which it is done. The first panel will focus on selected "private sector" attempts at economic development. The core of this panel will consist of entrepreneurs of the "classical" small business mold who have developed industry in the mountains. These folks will present and discuss lessons and insights they have gained through their promotion of small scale industry and its models of the workplace. The second panel will shift the focus of attention from private enterprise to the strategies and experience of the rural industrial cooperative effort and it's models of the workplace. The core of this panel will also consist of people who have been involved in actual attempts at applying this mode of organizing economic production and the workplace. The third panel will again refocus the interest by shifting the emphasis to the household as a productive economic enterprise. This panel will also consist of people with practical experience. All panels will include at least one member whose interests are primarily theoretical. The purpose of this is to provide an opportunity for beginning a synthesis of theoretical and practical perspectives on defining, once again, the problems of economic organization in the mountains. A basic assumption of the entire session is that alternative networks of economic activity can be formed out of private enterprise, community-based producer cooperatives, and productive households. The intent of the panels is to explore the opportunities for cooperatively linking these three modes of organizing production through mechanisms such as regional barter systems, cooperative marketing ventures, and mutual benefit exchange networks. The session will conclude by beginning a dialogue among practitioners and theorists of the different economic modes of action represented on the panels. We will be looking to alternative strategies to follow in future entrepreneurship and workplace development in the Appalachian mountains. The emphasis will be on utilizing practical experience to define the problem faced when developing production in the mountains. 245 �The sessions can be of various lengths. We can plan a "long" version with each panel taking 45 minutes to 1 hour and the entire session taking 3 to 4 hours. Alternatively, we can plan a short version with each perspective represented on a single panel or discussion group and limit the time to about 1 and 1/2 hours. The longer session with three panels is preferable and would allow an as yet unspecified mixture of presentation modes. These may include visual (such as video tape, movies and slides); performing arts (such as music, folk tales, readings); and any other creative methods of presenting ideas and stimulating thought we can come up with. Highlander in the Center of Black Southern Politics: The Problems and Prospects of Interracial Cooperation in Social Change William H. Turner, Ph.D. The general public and students of the Civil Rights Movement are led to study the gloss "great man/woman and highly-visible organizations' of that period. As well, much of the well-known scholarly work on the era, the personalities, events, and the issues of the Movement tend to focus on persons, ideas, and events after the fact of their familiarity has become apparent to the public. This paper traces the 'adult educational services' made available to grass roots organizations, emergent community leaders, and political organizers by the Highlander Center...including the developments in Lowndes County, Mississippi which led to the basis for independent black political parties in that state (the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party), the training had there by Septima Clark of John's Island, South Carolina, Rosa Parks of Birmingham, Alabama, and Dr. Martin Luther King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Overall, the paper examines the Center for its role in catalyzing the black civil rights movement in the South during the 1950s and 1960s as well as the benefit to it of working the blacks—the classical experiment in theory and practice of organizing desperate communities: black and white organizers. The Class Experience of Appalachian Coal Miners Michael Yarrow In this paper I will explore the class experience of Appalachian coal miners. In the first part of the paper I will aim to distill the fundamental factors which shape that experience both in the ways it is shared by workers other than coal miners and in the ways it is distinctive to Appalachian coal miners. I will consider briefly the domains of property relations, work, community and culture. 246 �After this brief consideration of the objective factors shaping the class experience of Appalachian miners, I will scrutinize how miners perceive and understand their class experience. I will address the question of how miners see the class dynamics in their lives by combing through the 75 transcribed interviews with 50 miners I have conducted in central Appalachia between 1978 and 1982. The resulting montage, I will argue, suggests a number of characteristic class analyses making different interpretations of the data. These class analyses imply different class stances vis-a-vis class peers and bosses. Which of these available analyses miners adopt depends to a considerable degree on their estimation of the consequences of taking the various class stances. The consequences of taking a given class stance vary with changes in the political economy of the nation in general, the coal industry in particular and the condition of the miners union. On the micro level of the work group and the community the consequences are also affected by how the class stances are labeled and the treatment accorded them by class peers and bosses. Staying Alive, Chemical Hazards in Maintenance Work Paul Becker Many building and construction trades workers spend much of their working lives carrying out manufacturing and reconstruction in chemical and maintenance plants. Compared to their fellow workers inside these plants, their exposures to toxic chemicals are difficult to characterize, and these workers lack basic information on the risks they face from these chemicals. Because these workers often move from site to site, and because the channel of information on toxic chemicals much go from plant personnel to contractor to building trades union, little precautions are taken to prevent chemical exposure. However, these exposurs can be quite serious. Chemical hazards in welding, exposure to asbestos and solvents, as well as chemicals manufactured or used in chemical processes may result in higher exposures while doing maintenance work than when operating the plant. The Institute for Labor Studies has received requests for training in the nature and prevention of exposure to toxic chemicals under these circumstances. In response a seven part slide/tape training program has been developed to aid building trades workers recognize chemical hazards on the job. The program consists of the following seven segments: Welding Confined Spaces Hazards Lockout and Tagout Solvent Exposures Chemical Hazards in Demolition Work Protection Against Chemical Exposure Union Strategies for Preventing Workplace Chemical Exposures Each segment includes narratives by West Virginia workers highlighting hazardous conditions they have experienced. These experiences are followed by generalized descriptions of the hazard at issue and ways in which the hazard can be abated. 247 �Reclaiming Our Health: Grass Roots Epidemiology Along Yellow Creek, Kentucky Sabrina Cherry The Appalachian region has been plagued by numerous incidences of improper handling, treatment, and storage of toxic substances. Yellow Creek, Kentucky, which has been polluted for at least fourteen years by industrially tainted treatment plant effluent including carcinogenic heavy metals, is one example. For the last two years, the Yellow Creek Concerned Citizens have organized to clean-up the creek, provide safe drinking water, enforce environmental legislation, and protect their health. In the summer of 1981, the Yellow Creek Concerned Citizens formed a Health Survey Committee to document health problems related to pollution and asked the Center for Health Services to assist their effort. Using the help of regional epidemiologists and toxicologists, students from the Center and the Survey Committee designed a survey which could document the health status of the population along Yellow Creek, the nature of their exposure to the pollution, and the rates of disease incidence when compared to county, state, and national data. In the summer of 1982, the Survey Committee and students from the Center conducted surveys on 1000 creek residents. The response rate was excellent. Less than twenty people refused to take survey. Citizens group members conducted the interviews in pairs, spending much time away from family and work to do so. The surveys are currently being coded and will then be analyzed, hopefully making results available at this conference. The health survey will serve as baseline health information on residents along the Creek and lend clues as to what health effects are developing from the long standing pollution problem. Our goal is that the survey will generate additional evidence to encourage the appropriate governmental agencies to enforce the environmental regulations on the City and the tannery (the industry generating the waste), and to take action to alleviate the threat to local residents' health and well-being. The survey has been a unique action taken by a citizens group consuming many hours of volunteer time, involving the teaching and mastering of very technical skills, and reflecting the tenuine concern and commitment of the Yellow Creek Concerned Citizens. This survey, in its design and implementation, can serve as model for community based epidemiology. Our presentation will focus on the process of designing a study, combining citizen, student, and professional resources, and particular strategies used in implementation. We will provide information and encouragement to other citizens groups interested in duplicating similar efforts in their own community. 248 �Appalachian Environmental Education for Elementary Teachers: The Pine Mountain Journals, 1980-83 Walter P. Oldendorf This 30 minute slide/tape presentation explores the experiences of elementary science education teacher candidates at Pine Mountain Settlement School's Environment Education Center, Harlan County, Kentucky. Selections from student journals are matched with scenes of the beauty of Pine Mountain contrasted with the destruction of the strip mines. Under the leadership of Mary Rogers, Pine Mountain teacher since 1942, students reflect on the relationship between people and their physical environment in Appalachia. Students also discuss the progressive educational heritage of Pine Mountain Settlement School and its implications for their classrooms. Curriculum guides and textbooks may "mandate'' what a teacher does in the classroom, but the ultimate curriculum is a reflection of the teacher's values as much as formal direction. If teachers do not feel that environmental education is important, it will not be taught in any significant way. The Pine Mountain experience offers an excellent example of how teachers can acquire environmental values crucial to the Appalachian region, and learn ways of teaching those values that are uniquely effective. A High School Festival Can Work Shirley Underwood In a Knox County, Tennessee school with almost 1,000 students in grades 9-12 a major threeday celebration of our Appalachian heritage brought high praise and great joy to all persons involved. Although not an outgrowth of an Appalachian Studies class (none existed in the school at the time), the festivities involved all students, most of the staff, and many area citizens as both spectators and active participants. During the celebration one full day was designated oral traditional day (story-telling and music), the second day was community involvement day (emphasis on crafts and oral history presented by local citizenry), and the final day was author day with six regional writers presenting their works to the entire Powell High School student body through English classes. The presentation will feature a report of the activities, slides and/or videotapes of various phases of the event and an actual step-by-step plan for planning such a festival. Emphasis will be centered on utilizing resources within the school and the community. 249 �Old Men and New Schools in the Mountains: A Gallery of Legendary Uncles David E. Whisnant Many of the mission and settlement schools established in the mountains after the mid-1890s tied their local and larger public images to a legendary "old man of the mountains," in response to whose call the school was supposedly established and through whose warrant it achieved part of its legitimacy and stature both within and beyond the community. Uncle Sol Everidge of Hindman Settlement School and Uncle William Creech of Pine Mountain Settlement School were the best known, but there were others such as Uncle Luce Scroggs of the John C. Campbell Folk School, Abisha Johnson of Alice Lloyd College, and lesser known ones. My paper will sketch the existence of this gaggle of uncles and explore the pattern of assumptions, values, intentions, and effects implicit in it. I will consider especiallly the cultural and political dimensions of the legends that were constructed around the old men, and their possible implications for achieving a better historical understanding of the educational and cultural enterprises with which they were associated. Where the Old New River Flows: Contemporary Folk Music in Summers County, West Virginia Deborah], Thompson Discussions concerning the question "What is Appalachian folk music?" have arisen within and without the region ever since Cecil Sharpe, John C. Campbell, and other early collectors first captured the music with pen or recorder. When Randi Silnutzer and I came to Summers County (in which Pipestem Park is located), our intention was to interview and tape musicians in the county and let them define their own music. Through a slide/tape show and discussion of our findings, we would like to communicate a sense of the area and its musical culture. Special attention will be paid to the range of musical adaptations we found within a continuous tradition, in our attempt to determine which changes intrude upon and which are in harmony with the folk culture. 250 �Mountain Masters: Slaveholding in Western North Carolina John C. Inscoe An examination of slaveholders and their black property in the mountain counties of North Carolina refutes the common assumption that slavery played little part in antebellum life in the Southern Appalachians. Despite the relatively small number of slaves in the region, the social and economic impact of the "peculiar institution" was considerable. The demands of mountain farming alone could never have justified the labor force of even the few slaves in the area, nor was the output of those farms sufficient to support, much less profit by, those slaves. Yet slavery not only proved profitable to most western North Carolinian slaveholders; in contrast to other parts of the upper South, both the number and value of mountain slaves were increasing on the eve of the Civil War. Mountain slaveholders differed most from their counterparts elsewhere in the South in the diversity of their economic activity. With few exceptions, the largest slaveholders had sources of income derived from non-agricultural enterprises. They were doctors, lawyers, merchants, hotel-owners, and real estate investors. Through many of them were farmers as well, there is no correlation between the size of their slaveholdings and that of their cultivated lands. Rather mountain masters found other means of utilizing and profiting from their black labor forces, either in their own business ventures or by hiring them out, which proved particularly profitable during the region's mining boom in the early 1830s and railroad construction in the late 1850s. The successful application of slave labor to the mountain economy demonstrates that it was flexible and adaptable to situations other than large-scale agricultural production. Because these mountain masters also provided the initiative, the entreneurial spirit and the leadership that led to considerable economic development and growth in western North Carolina during the antebellum era, they and their ownership of slaves proved far more influential to the social and economic character of the Southern Appalachians than has generally been recognized. 251 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publications Description An account of the resource This collection contains digitized monographs and collections from the Appalachian Consortium Press. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Date Issued Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource. June 1, 2017 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource <a title="Digital Scholarship and Initiatives" href="http://library.appstate.edu/services/digital-scholarship-and-initiatives" target="_blank">Digital Scholarship and Initiatives</a> Publication URL https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636719/the-appalachian-experience/ Digital Publisher Digital Republication Appalachian State University Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Appalachian Experience Description An account of the resource The <em>Proceedings of the 6th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference</em> contains papers on a variety of academic disciplines and contemporary issues, reflecting interest in Appalachia from both scholarly and activist viewpoints. Topics addressed include ethnic diversity, literature, politics and government, culture, and economic development. <br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TZtiRFQeJteaueWpRpBnkBsbJB_UUyMx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636719/the-appalachian-experience/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UNC Press Print on Demand</a> Subject The topic of the resource Appalachian Region--Congresses Appalachian Region--Social Conditions Appalachian Region--Economic conditions Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Proceedings of the 6th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Buxton, Barry M. Crutchfield, Malinda L. Lightfoot, William E. Stewart, Jacqueline P. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Conference proceedings Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/12212302/appalachia.html Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a> Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1980s Multidisciplinary/ Appalachian Studies https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/a97c6fff404342ff3cee7afe4d0dd10e.pdf 47658cf6f0c42c252db43b59c8c197a0 PDF Text Text ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publications Description An account of the resource This collection contains digitized monographs and collections from the Appalachian Consortium Press. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Date Issued Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource. June 1, 2017 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource <a title="Digital Scholarship and Initiatives" href="http://library.appstate.edu/services/digital-scholarship-and-initiatives" target="_blank">Digital Scholarship and Initiatives</a> Publication Digital Publisher Digital Republication Appalachian State University Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Consortium News: Preserving, Protecting, and Promoting Southern Appalachia Description An account of the resource This is a partial collection of the Consortium Press News, 1982-1987, a publication of the Appalachian Consortium. As stated in the newsletter, the periodical was published twice annually to serve as a medium of communication between the consortium members and the people of their service region. Appalachian State University was the place of publication.<br /><br /><a title="Epub" href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HDg0CcRwp0pKTihYrYxlYwmA0-rzvRlP/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download EPub</a> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-1987 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Subject The topic of the resource Appalachian Consortium Press--Records and correspondence Appalachian Region, Southern--Social conditions--20th century Appalachian Region, Southern--Environmental conditions--20th century Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Consortium News: Regional Cooperation in Southern Appalachia Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Newsletters Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/4456703/boone.html https://www.geonames.org/12212302/appalachia.html Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a> Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1980s Multidisciplinary/ Appalachian Studies Periodical