Hope in Hard Times: Norvelt and the Struggle for Community during the Great Depression eds. by Timothy Kelly, Margaret Power, and Michael Cary (review)

The tension between an ethos of individual responsibility and the obligation of community to assist those with limited resources through government-sponsored programs is at the center of the history of Norvelt as presented by Timothy Kelly, Margaret Power, and Michael Cary. Norvelt, located in southwestern Pennsylvania's coal mining region, is one of thirty-four communities founded by the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, a New Deal program established in 1933 to improve housing and living conditions while demonstrating a model of community building that combined part-time wage work with part-time farming.

Hope in Hard Times provides excellent context for the founding of Norvelt. The description of the labor and living conditions in the coal mining camps paints a vivid picture of the economic, social, and physical forces that limited miners' individual ability to succeed. Chapters on New Deal policy generally, the subsistence homestead program specifically, and the founding years of Norvelt provide insight into national and local support for and opposition to the program. Detractors believed miners had "no capacity or inclination" (56) for self-help and worried that federal involvement in community building treaded too close to communism. In contrast, Eleanor Roosevelt and supporters insisted on providing all modern conveniences in the housing in order to "put the residents' dignity and well-being at the center" (74).

The authors employ both archival sources and oral history to reveal the perspective of the residents of Norvelt. They uncover the ways that residents influenced the evolution of the community, arriving at what the authors term a "middle way" between individualism and cooperative approaches. Shifts in federal politics and program oversight combined with the economic circumstances of the Depression meant the residents of Norvelt never saw full implementation of combined wage and farm work, as the program's creators had envisioned. While contemporary critics and some historians have categorized this as a failure of the subsistence homestead program, Kelly, Power, and Cary disagree. They argue that Norvelt was a success because significantly improved living conditions, combined with programs that empowered residents, enabled them to work not to merely survive but to join the middle class.

Because none of the original residents of Norvelt left written accounts of their experience, the authors turned to oral history collected from the descendants of Norvelt's founders to learn more about life in the community. The authors critically interrogate this collective memory, noting where it deviates from the archival record. The interviewees, a number of whom still live in Norvelt, agree that the community was a success. They give most of the credit for that success, however, to their parents' and grandparents' individual hard work. Interviewees appreciated government intervention but saw it as necessary only due to the Great Depression. The authors conclude that a collective memory that venerates a "deserving poor"—combined with the racial history of the region and the virtual exclusion of non-whites from Norvelt—created the current attitude pervasive in the region that today's poor, stereotyped by the "welfare queen" image, are undeserving of government assistance. This viewpoint is similar to those who opposed the subsistence homestead program in the 1930s and "blame[s] today's victims of poverty for their condition" (190).

Hope in Hard Times includes excellent photos and illustrations throughout, as well as a chapter that aptly describes how the physical planning and residential architecture of Norvelt also reflect the tension between the goals of community and individualism. This book is an excellent example of how a study of local history can reveal broader historical themes and demonstrate how collective memory of past experience influences current thinking.