Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 11, 1993 TAG: 9304110226
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: C5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DAVID WILKISON ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: ARTHURDALE, W.VA. LENGTH: Long
W.VA. TOWN SURVIVES WHERE GOVERNMENT FAILED AP
Where others see failure, Glenna Williams today looks out her living room window onto rolling farmland that gave hope to several dozen struggling coal miners' families 60 years ago.Congress saw little success there, but Williams, now 75, sees dreams that were pushed ahead by the grand New Deal experiment of Arthurdale and poor miners' children who became doctors, lawyers and teachers.
"Their dreams were not really fulfilled," she said. "But those of us who lived here, we feel good about what's happened. We feel very successful."
Arthurdale was the first of nearly 100 planned rural communities created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration in 1933 to help ease the impact of the Depression.
The idea was of a self-sustaining community of farms, food and factories where people depended on each other, shielded from the ravaged economy outside.
"It was part of the social experimentation of the day, kind of a back-to-the-land movement," said Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who has written several books on Roosevelt's administration.
"Our dream was different from the dreams they had," said Williams, a retired schoolteacher. "We wanted a place where a family could live without being afraid of being thrown out, where they could raise a garden and have something."
Planning and financial setbacks, and dwindling political support, forced the federal government to pull out in 1947, but Arthurdale's 165 original homes still stand, many occupied by children and grandchildren of the Depression homesteaders.
"It brought new life to 165 families and that proceeded through to other generations," said Marilee Hall, who publishes a newsletter about the town.
"In our community, we have doctors and lawyers produced from these poor coal mining families that didn't even have enough food to eat. It gave them a new lease on life. The government might have said they were wasting money, but look at the citizens they got out of it. That's America," she said.
In 1933, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited nearby Morgantown, about 75 miles south of Pittsburgh, and saw the poverty and despair of coal miners fighting for unionization and against the economic conditions of the time.
"Many people living along the [Scott's] Run . . . worked no more than two or three days a week. Some of the children were subnormal, and I often wondered how any of them grew up," Roosevelt wrote in her autobiography.
Within months, 1,000 acres once owned by Col. John Fairfax, an aide to George Washington during the Revolutionary War, was purchased for $35,000. Unemployed workers began work immediately, clearing land and building roads.
Plans called for 200 three- and four-bedroom homes to be built by settlers on 2 1/2 acres to 5 acres. The settlers would work either in a community factory or on cooperatives. Plans also included a health clinic, dairy, filling station, grocery store and post office.
But Arthurdale received swift criticism, particularly from Congress and the media, and problems of its own.
The first 50 houses, ordered sight unseen, were poorly insulated summer cottages and foundations did not fit the prefabricated structures.
In August 1934, The Saturday Evening Post magazine featured a story on the construction problems complete with photos of brick chimneys and fireplaces 8 feet from the outside walls of the houses.
Congress also quickly rejected plans for a community furniture factory to supply the U.S. Postal Office Department.
"They didn't want the government going into competition with private industry and they turned it down flat," Williams said.
Other businesses, including shirt and vacuum cleaner factories, also failed because of high costs and inefficiency.
An average homesteader plot included an acre of wheat, several types of fruit trees, a grape arbor and forage crops for livestock. Officials had hoped residents could grow all they needed and then sell the excess.
In the end, most residents turned to work outside the community.
Still, people had a place to call their own and found a pride that rarely existed in the mining camps. Children who previously received just an elementary education went to high school and college.
"The chance is real good I wouldn't have gotten to go to high school," said Maynard Weaver, 67, the town's postmaster for 27 years.
Weaver said Arthurdale offered hope and life.
"The community was real close-knit," he said. "There were lots of community activities because that's all the people had. The people didn't get in a car and go somewhere else. Most of them didn't even own a car. All your recreation, everything was right here."
For Williams and her family, their future looked as bleak as their Scott's Run coal camp before they joined the first group of people to move to Arthurdale in June 1934.
A three-room home whose cracks allowed snow to blow through was replaced by a new four-bedroom frame house with electricity, indoor plumbing and a bathroom. Rent, based on what a family could afford, was about $20 a month.
Residents also were taught about weaving, pottery and pewter. The handcrafted items, rarely affordable to the residents, were sold in upscale New York shops.
But, by 1937, failures pulled down successes and the government stopped building homes. A $25 million revolving fund established for the communities failed and the government began selling the houses to residents in the early 1940s.
"Did it become a model that could be applied universally? No, it didn't," Haid said. "But it sure taught a lot of valuable lessons and I think it adequately demonstrated that people respond to opportunity."