A History of Appalachia

12. "The New Appalachia," 1930-2000

12 "The Nevv Appalachia," 1930-2000 THE 1930S BROUGHT important changes to the Appalachian economy. But while the American market economy floundered, yeomanry made something of a comeback in Appalachia's rural areas as thousands retreated from the nation's cities and returned home. The Great Depression placed immense strains on the nation's commercial institutions, and at times the market system seemed on the verge of collapse. Some even suggested that the basic principles of market capitalism should be abandoned. In Appalachian Virginia, for example , the number of farmers rose by some 16 percentbetween 1930 and 1935; and according to one scholar, though agricultural conditions had been deteriorating for twenty years, farming in that state survived the Depression because it was "little changed from nineteenth -century self-sufficiency." Another scholar ofAppalachian agricultural conditions notes that "evenbefore the Great Depression, Appalachia had contained 166,000 'self-sufficient' farms-one third of the U.S. total concentrated in about 3 percent of the country's land area." Much of Appalachian agriculture, then, had retreated to its yeomanesque roots and appears to have provided a living for several hundreds of thousands ofpeople in the region. Also during the dark days of the Great Depression, chronic troubles appeared in the Appalachian mine fields of Harlan, Bell, Letcher, and neighboring counties. Eastern Kentucky mine operators in these areas were belligerently antiunion. Their brief experience with unionism during World War I had convinced these operators that they could have a significant price advantage over their northern competitors only if they could operate on a non-union basis. The union outsiders-in their view, "carpetbaggers" with prin- "The New Appalachia" 195 ciples they considered un-American-had been effectively ousted from the Southern fields in the early 1920s, and the iron hand of the operators was laid on their men through control of the companyowned stores, schools, and churches, as well as the company's paid deputies. These deputies operated under the control of the county sheriff's office, and the cost of these substantial armies was borne by the local coal companies. Their justification was the preservation of law and order and the protection of mine property. In March of 1931, the miners in Harlan and neighboring counties in eastern Kentucky went on strike-a "purely spontaneous affair" apparently brought forth out of misery and hunger. The National Miners Union, a Communist-dominated union, came to the aid of the miners when the United Mine Workers, fearful of the mine owner's power, refused to support the strike and wildcatted it. Even the American Red Cross would not give any relief to the wildcatted miners. Violence in Harlan reached its height in the Battle of Evarts in May of 1932, when a well-armed, roving party of sheriff's deputies was waylaid. At least four persons were killed. National attention was focused on the plight of the miners by several committees, one a group of prominent writers headed by the novelist Theodore Dreiser. Soon thereafter, many Harlan miners were paradedbefore audiences in Madison Square Garden in New York City by their northern, leftwingbenefactors . Much zeal, rhetoric, and indignation was expended without significantly changing conditions in Harlan or its neighboring counties. However, changes in labor's situation in eastern Kentucky , as elsewhere, had to await developments later in the 1930s. The crisis of the Depression and the New Deal programs that followed did bring changes. In agriculture, conditions had developed by the first third of the twentieth century to the point that the ten million farm units in the United States were producing so much food and fiber that under laissez-faire market conditions the quantities produced were driving prices down to disastrous levels. It was only in unusual years, when conditions in Europe and elsewhere took overseas farm areas out of production, that the massive amounts of American food and fiber could command strong prices. American farmers in general, and small farmers in particular, were producing "at a loss." By the 1920s, it was clear that the old government policies favoring American agriculture, particularly through protective tariffs , would not work. During the 1920s, farm state legislators increasingly suggested 196 Modem Appalachia that the government should intervene in the pricing mechanism of the market for the benefit of farmers in order to guarantee a base price. But President Coolidge vetoed the bill supporting this tactic, the McNary-Haugen Bill of 1927. As a consequence...