Restoring Shakertown: The Struggle to Save the Historic Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill

VIII. The Deal—I [Contains Image Plates]

75 The Deal—I CHAPTER VIII The Deal—I I n 1960 national advertising and marketing magazines buzzed with talk of the “soaring sixties,” an alliterative new decade of national abundance and consequent rising profits for businesses of all kinds. But not only could these forecasters have no inkling of the shape the coming years would actually assume (nor could anyone else), they would soon be discomfited by the decade’s failure not only to get off to the hoped-for soaring start but even to leave the ground. Indeed, when the Kennedy administration took office in January 1961, the U.S. economy had slid into recession. (In Mercer County, Kentucky, in May 1960, 7.1 percent of the workers covered by unemployment insurance were seeking jobs; in February 1961 the figure had risen to 8.2 percent, and farm workers were not included in these statistics.) In response, President Kennedy gave high priority to a proposed “depressed areas” bill, which represented his attempt to carry out a major promise he had made when campaigning in West Virginia and other economically suffering states. Kennedy got off to a slow start with his legislative agenda, but the passage of the depressed areas act in the spring represented an important victory, one of his first; he signed the act on May 1, 1961, noting that there was “no piece of legislation which has been passed which gives me greater pleasure to sign.” With an intended appropriation of $394 million over four years, the Area Redevelopment Administration (ARA) began operation a few weeks later; its checkbook held $200 million for commercial 75
76 RESTORING SHAKERTOWN and industrial loans, $100 million for other loans, $75 million for grants for public facilities, $4.5 million for technical assistance, $10 million to support job trainees, and $4.5 million for their training. The focus was on plants and other facilities in urban and low-income agricultural areas, with provision for loans to construct such infrastructure facilities as water systems . Clearly, the sponsors saw this chiefly as a smokestack act, to put new industrial jobs within the reach of people needing them, and they spoke of “gearing retraining to local job needs.” The aim, said one writer, was “to treat chronic unemployment with easy money and advice from Washington.” But the money quickly proved anything but easy. Cautiously administered by William L. Batt, a veteran of federal and state government with much experience in dealing with employment problems, the program, intended to create new permanent jobs, drew heavy fire from opposed sides—from those who saw it moving too slowly and from those who believed it should not move at all because it did not represent sound national economic policy. Among its major lessphilosophical problems was the complexity of procedures with which Congress had saddled it; it had to clear its projects with eight other departments and agencies, including an entrenched rival for control of job turf, the Small Business Administration (SBA), where some bureaucrats saw it as their duty to stifle this presumptuous newcomer. After having operated for some two years, the ARA received a generally poor review from a Ford Foundation study, which concluded uncharitably that, whatever its other achievements, the agency had solved the unemployment problem for dozens of economists, financial technicians, and technical research experts. The preparation of an application for a grant or a loan involved a lengthy and complicated process, and after it reached Washington it entered what the study director called “a maze of administrative complexity.” Depending on its nature and purpose, it might be referred for recommendation to any number of other agencies; the SBA got its oar in by having the responsibility for checking the financing and engineering aspects of the proposed project. The entire borrowing process, a reporter noted, could take months—not in itself an astounding fact, except that delays had led to the approval of a loan as much as a year after a community had ceased to be eligible because its economic statistics had improved. 77 The Deal—I Politically harassed and philosophically embattled, and of doubtful tenure , the agency had not proved to be what Kennedy might have had in mind, but for some few communities in 1962 and 1963 it represented the best hope they knew for economic betterment. Near the end of 1962, the Pleasant Hill picture presented four significant features: 1. The Trustees’ Office had been bought for...