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Introduction Some years ago when a colleague who usually teaches the West Virginia and Appalachia history course went on leave, I was drafted to stand in for him. In preparing for the assignment, I was struck by the lack of information about the Depression in West Virginia. Despite the crucial nature of that era for the state, almost nothing had been written about it beyond the brief summaries in the standard textbooks.1 In teaching the part of the course about the Depression era, I confess that I relied heavily on notes, practically primary sources themselves, taken during the early sixties, when I sat as an undergraduate in Festus Paul Summers's class at West Virginia University. Though Dr. Summers's lectures were quite thorough and thoughtful, much historiographical water had gone over the dam since those days. A whole genre of national, state, local, and regional New Deal histories had been written. Moreover, scholars had raised many interesting questions about Appalachia, although at that point, there had been but slight consideration of Appalachia in the Depression.2 As a native West Virginian whose parents grew to maturity in the state during the Depression, I had a great curiosity about their generation's difficult time, and because the state has suffered continuing economic difficulties, I wondered about the connection between the Depression and New Deal era and more recent problems. With the intention of gathering a few materials and writing a brief narrative synthesis, perhaps of article length, I set out on a scholarly journey that soon eclipsed its original goal and after several years led to this book. Now, if my colleague goes on leave, I will have something more than notes of Professor Summers's lectures to share with students, and I hope what I have produced may interest anyone who is curious about the impact of the Depression and New Deal era on the people and government of West Virginia. Because West Virginia lies wholly or almost wholly within Appalachia , this study may also contribute to an emerging literature about 2 An Appalachian New Deal the Depression and New Deal in Appalachia, although I do not suggest that conclusions about West Virginia necessarily apply to other parts of Appalachia. Recent scholarly literature has properly been at some pains to decry past claims of Appalachian exceptionalism and to note the variety of experiences and conditions within Appalachia. The term Appalachia is itself somewhat ambiguous as scholars continue to disagree as to the precise borders and whether all of West Virginia should be included in southern Appalachia. It is certain that West Virginia is the one state most completely within Appalachia.3 An important pioneering work on the depression era in Appalachia is Paul Salstrom's Appalachia's Path to Dependency. Relying on a blend of neo-Marxist and neo-classical theory, Salstrom asks important questions and offers many stimulating ideas in covering the broad sweep of Appalachian economic history from 1730 to 1940. My concern , of course, is with questions he raises in considering the impact of the Depression and New Deal legislation. He maintains that New Deal programs such as the National Recovery Administration, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the Works Progress Administration "harmed" the region by undermining the competitive position of its industries, especially coal (by driving wages and prices upward) and by turning subsistence farmers away from their traditional noncash systems toward cash (by making available to them "high" relief payments). Arguing post hoc ergo propter hoc, Salstrom traces many of the problems of Appalachia to Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Dealers, who, he charges, followed policies that were "not only economically unsound, but inhumane."4 My study of West Virginia leads me to somewhat different and more charitable conclusions about the New Deal. The advance of industrial capitalism and destructive agricultural practices wrecked subsistence agriculture well before the Great Depression. New Deal relief payments in West Virginia, often less than half the national average, generally were desperately needed by the recipients, whether farmers trying to coax a living from eroded mountain lands or industrial workers left abandoned by closed mines and mills. The National Industrial Recovery Act, though a failure as macroeconomic policy, brought recovery and needed reforms to the state's coal fields, leading to substantial reemployment of miners. The Agricultural Adjustment Act provided little help to West Virginia's small farmers, but other New Deal legislation tried to help low-income farmers save their farms.s Although the New Deal failed...

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