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�2
Colonialism in Modern America
Lack of adequate capital and programs to stimulate
growth result in a lagging regional economy.
There are too many people for the resources.
Lack of incentives for investment and lack of skilled
labor place the area in a poor competitive position.
These explanations lead to programs to improve transportation,
supply inducements for development, facilitate migration, provide technicians and agents who will encourage modernization
and bring in more industries.
The perspective which we select examines the process
through which dominant outside industrial interests establish
control, exploit the region, and maintain their domination and
subjugation of the region.
Appalachia is a good example of colonial domination by
outside interests. Its history also demonstrates the concerted
efforts of the exploiters to label their work "progress" and to
blame any of the obvious problems it causes on the ignorance or
deficiencies of the Appalachian people. We believe that there are
peoples all over the world who have experienced this sort of "development" and consequently live in conditions similar to those
found in the mountains. Thus, they can easily identify with the
process described in this book as the colonization of Appalachia.
Just as exploitation is not new, the attempt to understand
and explain that process as Colonialism is also not new. Richard
Drake in his comments on regional historiography (Jack and Clio
in Appalachia. Appalachian Notes, Volume 4, No. 1, 1976,
pp. 4-6) traces the use of the Colonialism interpretation to writers in the Labor Movement in the 1890's and the Populist Movement. In the 1930's in the midst of labor unrest in the region,
such writers as Theodore Dreiser and Malcolm Ross focused on
the outside ownership and exploitation of the area (Malcolm H.
Ross, Machine Age in the Hills, New York: Macmillan, 1933,
and National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners,
Harlan Miners Speak: Report on Terrorism in the Kentucky
Coal Fields, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1932). Drake saw the
colonial interpretation continued through the reform movements which arose in the 30's and crystallized in such leaders
�Introduction
3
and organizations as Don West, Myles Morton, and the Highlander Folk School.
The value of the Internal Colonialism Model lies in its
ability to bring into focus issues of decision-making and control
of everyday life that tend to be ignored in the analysis of area
problems and consequently in public policy formulation. The
other models describe many of the problems and conditions
that are the result of domination and exploitation, but they fail
to address these things as causal factors. As social scientists, we
are seeking causes rather than descriptions (or justifications).
Although we attempt to cover the Appalachian area and
show that the exploitation takes many forms—from coal mining
in West Virginia to tourism in North Carolina, from TVA development in Tennessee to educational development in Kentucky
—there is a greater emphasis on the development of coal resources in Central Appalachia. Part of this is because the picture
is so much clearer and the process more blatant in the coalfields. Partly it is due to the location of the editors. We feel
that the colonial process can be used to explain many areas and
situations throughout America where technological, industrial
society has controlled the resources and people.
We do not claim that we have presented the last word or
that further analysis is not needed. We simply feel that this
collection of articles presents a more realistic picture of Appalachia and its problems than can be garnered through the other
perspectives. Some may reject this type of analysis as producing
despair and depression since the "enemies" or causes of the
problems are seen as giant, multinational corporations in league
with irresponsible government bureaucracies which are almost
unbeatable forces. We regret this unintended result but feel it
better to know the real source of the ailment than to waste effort
treating the symptoms.
There are frustrations and limitations in the use of the
Colonialism Model. We may be guilty of stretching some of the
analogies to compare the region with colonies dominated by
another country. A very real difference is the ability of the
dominated country to eventually throw the invaders out. Even
in fantasy, if Appalachia could put up fences, take over resources, and operate them by the people of the area, one ques-
�4
Colonialism in Modern America
tions whether it is better to be dominated by homegrown enterprises than by New York or Philadelphia based corporations?
Some of the younger scholars of the area who grew up using and
documenting the Colonial Model are beginning to suggest that we
need more sophisticated means to better understand the types
of economic and political systems which place certain geographic
regions or social classes in situations of dependency and powerlessness. The conditions found in the region are seen by these
scholars as products of an advanced industrial, capitalist system.
The articles by David Walls and Tom Plaut represent this new
thrust to develop improved analytical approaches out of the
Colonial Model.
The way we define problems determines how we think
about solutions. The Colonial Model implies that solutions to
Appalachian problems lie in the radical restructuring of society
with a redistribution of resources to the poor and powerless.
But we need more research on how this can be done. How can
structural change come about to develop a just society? We
need a model which explains and examines the relation between
economic power, political power, and cultural systems, how they
change and how people's perceptions of their situation are
formed and changed. Can political power be used to control
economic power? We hope this exploration of one model can
cause the development of a more precise theory which will lead
to more understanding and solutions to the problems associated
with living in a colony.
We have divided this anthology into five sections. The first
deals with a delineation of the Colonial Model and its application
to Appalachian history and experience.
The second section explains how the great wealth of the
natural resources within the region came into the hands of "outsiders," men and corporations from places like Pittsburgh, New
York, and London. Although coal is the resource most often
used to demonstrate the process of resources theft, other profitbearing enterprises such as timber, cotton, and tourism have left
their tragic mark on the people and the land. We have sought
articles which would reflect the great breadth of the resources
extraction process.
Section III documents the ways in which outside interests
�Introduction
5
sought to establish their enterprises in the region and the lengths
to which they went to politically disarm and culturally discredit
those who opposed them. The story told is not so much one of
outright deception and swindles (although there were plenty of
them) as it is a subtle and deadly process by which a people
were convinced of their own worthlessness and thus, in many
cases, gave up efforts to defend themselves and their ways of
life.
Section IV shows how the region has become increasingly
vulnerable to the cultural and economic definitions, interests,
and developmental whims of the larger society. It covers a wide
range of activity from media, education, and music, to industrial
domination of the political process and the Federal domination
of the planning process.
The final section is devoted to extending and improving the
Colonial Model with an eye to having scholarly analysis lead to
proposals for corrective social action.
We are very grateful to the many contributors who so generously gave permission to use their articles, to the Appalachian
Consortium Press who agreed to publish the collection, to
Borden Mace who patiently encouraged us to complete the project, and to Don Anderson, Ron Eller, Tom Plaut, and staff at
Mars Hill College who assisted with the final selection and
organization. We wish to thank Ron Heise, who began the
arduous task of editing, Eve Tackett, Susie Jones, Reva Shelton,
and Wilma Coates, who provided the secretarial skills. The coeditors Don Askins and Linda Johnson completed the selecting,
editing and organizing.
Helen Matthews Lewis
The River Farm
Dungannon, Virginia
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�10
Colonialism in Modern America
it just a ease of a region or area being "behind the times"? Before attempting to analyze the causes of these conditions, we will
give a brief history and description of that portion of Appalachia
which we are considering.
Inside Central Appalachia
That part of Appalachia with which we are concerned is the
portion of the Allegheny-Cumberland mountains in which
bituminous coal mining developed. Portions of southwest Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and southern West Virginia form this
area and are referred to by the Appalachian Regional Commission as Central Appalachia.
The area was late being settled. Until the Revolution it
was an area to pass through or skirt around. The area was inaccessible and offered few advantages to the farmer in comparison with the fertile fields of the Blue Grass. It was covered by
extensive forests, the soil was poor, and there was little level
land. Those seeking good farming went into the Blue Grass, the
Tennessee valleys, or the West.
There was a period of virtual isolation (80-100 years) in
the 19th century. The early settlers and their families developed
a way of life based upon subsistence agriculture and a social
organization based upon kinship. It was a sparsely populated
area of small landowners with isolated and dispersed settlements
up and down the streams, since the bottom lands provided the
only acreage suitable for intensive use. The land was rugged, the
soil thin and unproductive, and the slope so steep as to justify
the phrase "perpendicular corn fields." The traditional mountain culture which developed in this period has been described
by John C. Campbell (1921), Horace Kephart (1913), and more
recently by Jack Weller (1965) and Leonard Roberts (1959).
Many changes occurred in the late 1800's and early 1900's
with the coming of lumbering, railroads, and coal mining to the
area. The first load of coal was shipped from southwest Virginia
in 1892 and from Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1911. There
were large and rapid population increases in the coal mining
counties. The population of Wise County, Virginia, rose from
9,400 in 1890 to 47,000 in 1920. Individuals and families
�The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case
11
migrated to the coal counties from the nearby farm counties of
Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. Some foreign born people
were recruited into the coal fields, and Negroes from the South
were contracted as laborers.
To house and serve these workers and their families, the
mining companies, lumbering interests, and railroads built "encampments" for the newcomers. These "camps" or "colliery
towns'' were complete with company owned houses, stores,
theaters, clinics, hospitals, churches, and schools. In addition
to modifying the traditional residency patterns of the local population, a new class of people came to the area with the large coal
companies. Chemists, engineers, doctors, and managers were
brought into the area as representatives of urban culture. Most
of them lived in the commercial and political centers which grew
up at rail centers, courthouses, and trading villages. All of these
changes resulted in a new system of social stratification hitherto
unknown in the traditional mountain society.
Until World War II three different social systems existed
side by side in the coal fields of the Southern Appalachians:
(1) the original rural mountain settlements, characterized by a
pattern of isolated residence and subsistence farming; (2) the coal
camps, primarily composed of homogeneous work groups which
were socially segregated and economically dependent upon a
single extractive industry; and (3) the middle class towns, which
were socially and economically tied to eastern urban centers
(Lewis 1969). After World War II, rapid and far-reaching changes
occurred in the coal fields. Mechanization of the mines reduced
the camp population to at least one-half the original. Between
1950 and 1960 there was a 62 percent drop in mining employment in the eastern Kentucky coal fields and a population loss
during the 1950's equal to 41 percent of the 1950 population
(Brown 1962). The 1960's showed a continuation of the outmigration from the area (Brown 1970). Despite the tremendous
out-migration from the area, the rapid technological changes in a
one-industry area left a large number of unemployed miners and
destitute families.
Along with mechanization the companies began either
selling the coal camps' housing to individual miners or destroying
the camps. Not only was there a decline in workers and camp
population but the ownership of automobiles also made it
�12
Colonialism in Modern America
possible for the workers to commute to work.
Despite the decline in mining employment, coal production
has remained high and has boomed in the 1970's. This, however,
has not altered some of the basic problems of poverty, unemployment, poor health, and meager education.
In order to analyze the nature of the Appalachian problems,
we will review two models which have been used to describe and
explain the social conditions of the region. In an attempt to
understand some social phenomena, social scientists often construct models of that phenomena. By constructing a model, we
are able to evaluate better the framework used by a particular
researcher and compare one model with another. Thus, after
surveying a number of competing models of some phenomena,
we may conclude that one model better explains or predicts that
in which we are interested. Or we may be able to combine one
model with another so that our understanding is increased.
Models may be constructed in a number of ways. We do
not have the space here to review strategies for model construction, but we can say something about types of models. Models
may be general or specific, working or non-working. General
models apply to a wider range of phenomena than do specific
models. For example, the model of the atom shows a general
configuration of atomic structure and does not apply to any
one atom; on the other hand, a model of a Rolls-Royce automobile applies only to that specific automobile. A working
model replicates the action of that which it represents, and it
operates on the same principles or "laws," thereby helping us to
explain or understand the process of interrelationships among
the various parts that make up the model. Like a photograph,
the non-working model "freezes" the action which it represents.
The dimensions of models can be combined so as to produce a
general working or non-working model, or a specific working
or non-working model.
If we are to evaluate the merit or effectiveness of a model,
we must look for a model that is both general (explains more
than just one thing and refers to a class of phenomena) and
working (operates in accordance with the principles ruling that
which it represents). In the remainder of this chapter we will review two models of Appalachia to determine what value they
�The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case
13
have in helping us understand the questions we posed earlier.
These models have not always been overtly formulated by
persons writing about Appalachia. We have taken the liberty
of formulating two models; The Culture of Poverty and the
Colonialism models, which are representative of dominant perspectives held by those interpreting Appalachia.
Perhaps the most widely assumed model applied to Appalachia is the Culture of Poverty model. Valentine (1968) describes this model as a "Difference" or "Deficiency" model.
This model involves describing the sub-culture of the Southern
Appalachians and comparing it with the Greater Society. The
accounts describe the customs, values, and style of life in a
socio-historical tradition. A number of studies have assumed
such a model (Weller 1965; Pearsall 1959, 1966; Stephenson
1968; Ford 1965; Ball 1968; Lewis 1968). These studies vary
in the degree to which they emphasize the traits as "positive"
or "functional" adaptations or as "pathological," disorganized,
defeating value systems (Ball 1968). Some emphasize the subcultural traits as obsolete as indicated by such terms as "Yesterday's People" (Weller 1965), "Contemporary Ancestors" (Williams 1966), or "Arrested Frontier Culture" (Cressey 1953).
Lesser (1970) finds that most sub-cultural descriptions emphasize only the dramatic and destructive traits of Appalachia
(e.g., traditionalism, fatalism) and emphasize the Appalachian
people as passive and apathetic carriers of their culture. Henighan (1970), in comparing Weller and Stephenson, finds that
Stephenson emphasizes a more "positive" view of Appalachian
values. Stephenson (1968) uses the term "contentment" as
contrasted to Weller's (1965) term "fatalism."
In an insightful essay, Roach and Gursslin (1967) evaluate
the usefulness of the Culture of Poverty model. They suggest
that much of the confusion about the culture of poverty is not
with the notion of poverty but with the idea of culture. Most
researchers begin with the assumption that such a sub-culture
exists and then proceed to fill in its description. But culture is
more than just description; culture refers to a set of normative
patterns that emerge through a group's coping with its environment. Furthermore, the content of this culture must be transmitted from one generation to another. Much of the descriptive
material about Appalachia has emphasized a somewhat stilted
�14
Colonialism in Modern America
rudimentary set of normative regulations with little concern for
the content of what is transmitted from one generation to another. The assumption is that middle-class or dominant American values are not transmitted in Appalachia.
A more pointed comment on the Culture of Poverty model
concerns the purpose served by the model. "If the purpose is
explanation, what is to be explained: group life, personality
processes, deviant behavior, the origins of poverty, or the perpetuation of poverty?'' (Roach and Gursslin 1967, 386). If we
are concerned with the causes of poverty, we must view it
differently than if we are concerned with the effects of poverty.
In the former case, we are concerned with the factors which led
to those behaviors described as belonging to those in the culture
of poverty. In the latter case, we want to know how these behaviors are transmitted from one generation to another. Description answers neither of these questions.
There is little question about poverty in Appalachia. If we
use income as a criterion, we find that the area of Appalachia
which we are dealing with has a mean income of less than onehalf that of the remainder of the United States. If we use health
as a factor, we find that only five of the 60 counties have infant
mortality rates lower than the national average; in 34 counties
the rate is 20 percent higher than the national rate. The tuberculosis rates in some parts of the area are 10 times the national
average. And in 25 percent of the counties there are fewer than
30 physicians per 100,000, as compared with 139 per 100,000
in the United States as a whole. If we use education as a criterion, we find educational attainment is significantly lower than
the remainder of the United States. Seventy percent of the adult
population have completed fewer than eight years of schooling.
If we turn our attention to housing, we find that the rate of
construction is only two-thirds that of the national average, and
only 33 percent of the housing is sound and is equipped with
plumbing. Thus, by almost any standard, the level of living in
this area is sub-standard, i.e., at the poverty level.
None of the studies using the Culture of Poverty model tell
us why these conditions prevail. And none of these studies inform us why these conditions cause certain values, norms, or
behaviors among the people. One could dismiss all of this as
nothing but academic folly if it were not for the fact that those
�The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case
15
persons and agencies concerned with relieving the above conditions often accept the Culture of Poverty model. They focus
on the values of the Appalachian and say that these must be
changed. This is almost like saying that one needs to stop the
bleeding when an artery is severed. However, the application of
a band-aid to such a wound disregards the cause of the bleeding
in very much the same way that programs designed to change
values often disregard the roots of such values.
We do not advocate discarding the Culture of Poverty
model when such models (1) make clear what it is they are
studying, (2) are concerned with both cause and perpetuation,
and (3) do not confuse description with analysis.
An alternative approach to the Culture of Poverty model is
the Colonialism model. This model has also been called the Exploitation model (Valentine 1968). Lesser (1970) and other
so-called radical critics of the Culture of Poverty model follow
this approach. Lesser states: "Essentially, their [Culture of
Poverty proponents] argument is that the under-development
of the region is a function of Appalachian character rather than
the exploitative conditions institutionalized in the region/'
With the Exploitation model, however, one describes the Appalachians as a subsociety structurally alienated and lacking resources because of processes of the total economic political
system. Those who control the resources preserve their advantages by discrimination. The people are not essentially passive; but these "subcultural" traits of fatalism, passivity, etc.
are adjustive techniques of the powerless. They are ways by
which people protect their way of life from new economic
models and the concomitant alien culture. Lewis and Knipe
(1970) emphasize certain of these values among Appalachians as
reactions to powerlessness; they describe the socio-economic
situation as "peasant-like."
There has been a growing interest in using this model to
describe the social and economic conditions of the Southern
Appalachians and to declare the region a Colonial Empire.
Harry M. Caudill, in Night Comes to the Cumberlands, calls the
Appalachians "the last unchallenged stronghold of Western
colonialism." This is not a new claim. C. Vann Woodward
(1951) characterizes the whole South as a colony suffering from
absentee ownership and economic exploitation. Woodward
�16
Colonialism in Modern America
places the Southern Appalachian colonialism in this context:
As the 19th Century drew to a close and the new century
progressed through the first decade, the penetration of
the South and the Southern Appalachians was begun by
Northeastern capital and is continuing at an accelerated
rate. The Morgans, Mellons, the Rockefellers sent their
agents to take charge of the region's railroads, mines,
coke furnaces and financial corporations. (Woodward
1951)
A systematic account of colonialism has been undertaken
by Blauner (1969). In reference to the American Negro he
makes a distinction between classical colonialism and internal
colonialism. The basic difference between these two is that in
classical colonialism the colonizer moves in from outside, whereas in internal colonialism the colonizer brings in those colonized.
He defines classical colonialism as *'domination over a geographically external political unit, most often inhabited by people of
a different race and culture; when this domination is political
and economic, the colony exists subordinate to and dependent
upon the mother country" (1968, 395). Blauner further distinguishes colonization as a process and colonialism as a system
of relationships that exist between those dominating and those
in a subordinate position. It is the process of oppression rather
than differences in political and economic structure which is
most important.
Blauner suggests four components of the colonization complex. First, colonization begins with a forced, involuntary entry.
Those in the dominant position are not invited guests. Second,
the impact on culture and social organization is greater than we
would expect through cultural contact and acculturation. There
follows, soon after the entry of the colonizer, rather rapid modifications in values, orientation, and the way of life of the colonized. Third, colonization involves a relationship by which members of the colonized group tend to be administered by representatives of the dominant group. And fourth, there exists a
condition of racism, "a principle of social domination by which
a group, seen as inferior or different in terms of alleged biological
characteristics, is exploited, controlled and oppressed socially
and psychically by a superordinate group" (1969, 396).
�The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case
17
If these relationships characterize the colonization process,
what accounts for the colonized being colonized? Blauner
suggests that the main source of domination comes from technological superiority. Those being colonized have resources,
natural or human, which are useful to the colonizer. If these
resources can be harnessed, the technological superiority of the
colonizer is further enhanced, thereby increasing the degree of
superiority. Thus the resources of the colonized perpetuate the
colonization process.
The Colonialism model shows somewhat more promise
when applied to the Appalachian situation than the Culture of
Poverty model. Blauner makes it clear what he is studying^
domination. He accounts for the cause and perpetuation of the
condition, and because he is concerned with processes he goes
beyond mere description.
The question now is what information do we have to substantiate the applicability of this model in the Appalachian case.
If the model "fits," we should be able to show how colonialism
came to the mountains, how it is perpetuated, and, finally,
what consequences it has had upon the local culture.
Colonialism and Country Folks
We have already touched upon the beginnings of coal
mining in the Southern Appalachians. When the outside colonizers came to the Appalachians in the latter part of the 19th
century, they found a society approximating an Asian or African
country in its economic foundations. The outside speculators
bought land, mineral, and timber rights from illiterate, simple
mountain farmers. One important consequence of mining was
that it did not open up the mountains. The isolation of the area
went beyond just physical isolation; it now included social
isolation. The inability of the indigenous population to cope
with those representatives of the coal industry and the many
fraudulent land deals that were made with the local people stand
as bold evidence of antagonistic relationships.1
A survival of this early relationship is found in the "broad
form" deeds that have been supported by the Kentucky courts.
These deeds included "all minerals and metallic substances and
�18
Colonialism in Modern America
all combinations of the same," and they give the unconditional
right to remove them by any method "deemed necessary or convenient." This stipulation has allowed companies to strip or surface mine land in the face of strong opposition by the land owners who had sold only the "mineral rights" many years before.
The state has used the broad form deeds to support positive legal
action against landowners who have attempted to block mining
operations. Several cases have made the news in the past few
years. Widow Combs placed her body in front of the dozers
and ended up in the Knott County jail. Conspiracy charges
were brought against Appalachia Volunteers and Southern Conference Education Fund workers who helped Jink Ray and other
local landowners successfully stop stripping operations.
Although many writers on Appalachia speak of the outside
control of the wealth, the degree and extent to which this is
true has been only slightly and sporadically documented. There
are no systematic, thorough studies of the land and mineral
ownership of the region. This "oversight" itself might be considered "evidence" of the protection which is provided colonizers. Even the Appalachian Regional Commission, after a
number of years of data collection and analysis of various aspects
of Appalachian poverty and economic potential, has only lately
turned its attention to the Central Appalachian area, first with a
study of capital resource and a proposed study of land and
mineral ownership and taxation (Appalachian Regional Commission 1969). One must go to the "radical" student or "movement" publications or to the Bureau of Mines statistics to find
any studies or documentation of such things as coal production.
Kirby (1969), in a study of the tax records of eleven major
coal producing counties in eastern Kentucky, found that 31
people and corporations owned four-fifths of east Kentucky's
coal. It is estimated that 70 to 80 percent of the southwest
Virginia minerals is owned by four or five large corporations.
And David Walls (1969, 15) lists seven firms which produce
one-third of the coal in Central Appalachia.
More interesting is the fact that many of these "independent" companies are linked in corporate structures. One study
(Barkan and Lloyd 1970) for a two-county area in southwest
Virginia found a tightly linked chain of railroad men, industrialists, and financiers who own and benefit from the timber
�The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case
19
and mineral wealth of the area. Diehl (1970) has traced some
of the interconnections of ownership in eastern Kentucky and
West Virginia. These connections extend in some cases beyond
the borders of America to such places as South Africa and to
such diversified industries as electronic equipment, chemicals,
oil, banks, and auto manufacturers.
The absorption of coal companies by fuel and energy industries reflects the major changes in dominant industries in
the United States in general. The early coal companies were
controlled by shipping and railroads; later they were dominated
by the steel and automobile manufacturers. Beginning in the
1960's and the "Energy Era," fuel and electrical powers began
their present domination.
Another indication of outside control of the area is seen
by looking at taxation and economic development. David
Brooks talks of the role of the coal industry in regional development.2 He points to the limited ability of mining to provide economic development in a region. Unlike manufacturing
or industries in which materials are fabricated or value is added
through a production process, mining processes add little value
and do little to stimulate other types of economic activities.
Since mining is immobile, fixed in space, and limited to its one
product, and since the work is arduous and dangerous, it must
develop means of attracting or controlling labor. It is advantageous for coal mining to operate in isolation without competing companies. The characteristics of mining lead to a oneindustry area with labor tied to the one industry and little
development outside the extraction of the minerals. This also
leaves no development when the minerals are gone (McKelvey
1968).
Without intervention, mining itself tends to develop certain
exploitative or colonial characteristics. Resources generated by
coal mining for the local area are meager. In other industries
surplus is used for capital investments, which creates new corporations, associations, and other businesses, and develops a
middle-stratum of technicians and specialists. This does not
happen with coal mining.
Except for wages paid to workers and local taxes paid to the
area, coal mining offers little. At one time large numbers were
�20
Colonialism in Modern America
employed in the mines of the area. In 1932 there were 705,000
miners; in 1940 there were 439,000 miners; and today there are
only 132,000 miners (Coal Data Book 1968). The mechanization of coal mining and the resulting decline in mining employment in the Southern Appalachians in the 1950's resulted in a
wholesale migration from the area and a high degree of unemployment which continues into the 1970's.
In Virginia there are still 8,862 miners in a six-county area.
Coal mining is still the main source of employment, accounting
for approximately one third of the total labor force. The coal
companies paid $56,361,577 in wages in 1968. During the same
year, the area produced 36,865,703 tons of coal which, if valued
at $4.50 a ton, would total $165,956,000 (Virginia Department
of Labor and Industry 1968). The total taxes paid to the area
are not known. But one can draw some conclusions from the
records of one company. This company in 1967 employed 448
men and mined approximately 2,500,000 tons of coal in four
mines. Wages, if all the men worked full time, would have been
approximately $3,240,000; royalties to the corporation owning
the mineral rights to the land @$.142 per ton would amount to
$360,000; and 40 cents a ton to the United Mine Workers'
Health and Welfare Fund would amount to $1,000,000. The
landholding company and the mining company paid $207,533
in county taxes in 1968. This amount represents taxes on land
under development, land not under development, buildings,
and equipment. In addition to the four mines, land was leased
for stripping, augering, and several truck mine operations. The
total outlay for wages, royalties, and taxes was $3,807,533. The
value of the coal at $4.50 per ton was $11,128,000. This leaves
a difference of $7,320,467. The amount of taxes paid, although
small in comparison to gross income, represents 13.5 percent of
the tax income for the county in which the company has its
operations. Despite their resources, the coal mining counties
generate a smaller proportion of the total revenue than the
counties in the rest of the Appalachian area.
The corporation having the mineral rights mentioned above
is probably the most profitable in America. According to its
1968 Annual Report it netted 64 percent of gross and paid
dividends of 40 cents out of each dollar received (Penn Virginia
Corporation Annual Report, 1968). Harry Caudill (1968) reports the same corporation as netting 61 percent of gross and
�The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case
21
paying 45 cents on each dollar received in 1964. He compares
it with General Motors which reported a profit of 10.2 cents
from each dollar received and paid a dividend of five cents.
Caudill claims that this corporation is characteristic of other
mineral-owning corporations in the area.
Depletion and depreciation allowances give coal companies
a very favorable position. Depletion for coal mined is based on
the cost of the mineral properties and estimated recoverable
tonnage. In some cases the depletion allowances is greater than
the taxes on the minerals and the land. Although the original
purchases of most of the mineral lands were made before 1900 at
30 cents to $1.00 an acre, the depletion is figured on the last
price paid. When lands change hands, even through a subsidiary,
the new cost is the basis for the depletion. This is figured as the
percentage of the cost of the land which is mined during the
year. Kirby (1969) points out that this is an incentive to sell.
An acre bought for 50 cents can be sold in a year of mining for
$5,000, thereby increasing the cost depletion allowance considerably.
Another concession to coal companies is the tax on mine
equipment and machinery. In Virginia they are taxed at only 10
percent of their value, while the equipment of all others, belonging either to individuals and/or businesses, is taxed at approximately one-third of its value. Here also, resale to subsidiaries can
make this even lower for coal companies. A leasing company can
sell a $100,000 machine to a mining company which it controls
for $10,000; then the mining company will pay tax on 10 percent of that or $1,000. Caudill (1966) reports a similar situation
in Kentucky. Through resale to subsidiaries, mining machinery
worth $75,000 is valued at $3,000; taxes are less than a miner
pays on the automobile which he drives to work to operate the
machine. Blizzard (1966) reports taxes low in West Virginia because of the influence of the coal industry. West Virginia has a
gross sales tax regardless of profit or loss, but coal companies do
not pay on sales made at out-of-state markets, thus excluding
most of the coal sales. Machinery and supplies used for coal
mining are also exempt from sales tax.
In line with the general tendency of colonists to be exploitive, we find that public spiritedness on the part of coal
operations is rare in the area. Coal companies in Virginia are
�22
Colonialism in Modern America
suing the counties, claiming that assessing 'land under development" at a differential rate is in fact a form of severence tax on
mined coal which is unconstitutional. Most of the remarks concerning civic responsibility made by coal company representatives sound like turn-of-the-century rugged capitalism. When
asked about decaying coal camps, burning slag heaps, or disabled
and unemployed miners, coal company executives are heard to
say that they have no responsibility to the area or the people.
Their responsibility is to mine coal as cheaply and efficiently as
possible and to make a profit for the company and the stockholders. They provide employment and housing when needed
and get food stores when necessary to hold employees; they continue these as long as they are necessary to keep workers or are
profitable to the company. Even one of the most public-spirited
executives of a large mining company said that the decision to
begin strip mining was made because it was "the logical thing,
cost wise" (Trillin 1969). This same executive has been quoted
in the Mountain Eagle and with great candor in the NET film
Rich Lands, Poor People: "If there is something wrong with
what we are doing in Eastern Kentucky, then there is something
wrong with the country."
The condition of racism associated with the Colonialism
model is well illustrated in Appalachia. Memmi (1967) points
out that it is not only the colonizers but the colonized who go
into businesses that engage in this practice. In the region one
finds that the smaller independent coal operators are even more
conservative in their political and economic ideology than the
outsiders. The Independent Coal Leader claims to represent the
small operators; its contents reflect a general negative evaluation
of the local population who are unemployed. It has also taken
rather dramatic stands against any individual or organization
attempting to question the coal industry and its practices. Most
of these small operators are dependent upon the larger companies
for leases or money for equipment or coal sales facilities. A number of local millionnaires have emerged in the area through strip
mining, the selling of equipment, and truck mining. It is interesting to observe how many of these persons make their money and
then retire to Florida. Perhaps Florida serves as the "homeland"
for the native who joins the colonists.
The natives who become colonizers of their own people
must protect themselves by giving an even more disparaging
�The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case
23
evaluation of the people than the outsider. While the outsider
may become interested in the ways of the natives—collecting
quilts, mountain folk tales, and music—and speak with appreciation about mountain culture, the native exploiter is more likely
to denigrate his own, to speak of laziness and "sorriness," or to
speak negatively of a "certain class" of people, especially those
on welfare or those who are unemployed. The native colonizers
recount stories of the untrustworthiness and unreliability of
their workers. Since these small operators often pay even less
than minimum wages, they find themselves in competition with
welfare programs.
This is not a new pattern. General John Daniel Imboden
was one of the earliest "developers" of the area. In 1880 he
bought 47,000 acres of mineral lands in Wise County, Virginia.
Later, he bought 21,000 acres for only 35 cents an acre for "certain gentlemen of large means" who were officials of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (Henson 1965). A list of property made
in May, 1880, reveals that Imboden and his son owned one-sixth
interest in over 100,000 acres in Wise County. Imboden purchased land, built the railroad into the coal fields, and later was a
lobbyist in North Carolina for the coal interests. After a stint
at the state capital in Raleigh he wrote about the elegant people
he was meeting. He said he told them about Wise County and
"how nice it was. . . and interested them so much that when
our road is built they are coming out to see for themselves.
They think it must be delightful to see and mingle with such
primitive people" (Henson, 7).
One test to determine whether colonization exists is to see
whether the colonists utilize the same services they provide for
the colonized. The colonizers generally distrust such services in
Appalachia, especially local doctors and local hospitals. Local
medical personnel are mistrusted because they provide services
for miners or country people and therefore inadequate service for
they, too, are opportunists or exploiters. A local hospital administrator resents the fact that members of the local board travel
100-300 miles eastward to see "good doctors" or obtain "good
medical services" because the "coal camp doctors" are not as
good. Other local services and professionals who stay in the area
are denigrated. The opinion is that they are no good or they
would go elsewhere. Fannon (1963), in "Dying Colonialism,"
an essay about the native's attitude toward available medical
�24
Colonialism in Modern America
services, points to the native's distrust of local medicine, and sees
it as an agent of the colonists. Perhaps the judgment is true.
The fantastically poor medical service provided in the early days
of coal camps in the Appalachians has been documented (Boone
1947). Today, coal company doctors often refuse to admit the
existence of pneumoconiosis or "black lung," and one company
doctor was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates and
succeeded in getting the disease removed from the Workman's
Compensation. Company doctors are said by many miners to
be reluctant to report injuries or to diagnose pneumoconiosis
in order to protect the company's insurance rates. But they
are likely to diagnose it when the person is seeking employment
in order to keep the company from "getting stuck" with an already disabled miner.
To continue with examples of conformity between the
realities of Appalachian life and the Colonialism model would be
pointless. It cannot be disputed that the coal interests came into
the region "uninvited," that cultural patterns changed as a result
of this intrusion, and that the area is controlled by representatives of the industry. The fact that racism exists to perpetuate
this pattern has been illustrated. Since these conditions exist, it
would appear that any recommendations for change should take
these factors into consideration. Changing the values of Appalachians will not change the system of colonialism nor will knowledge of the situation. Both Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski
suggest that we must know something about those who were to
benefit from Western colonialism (Harris 1968, 514-567). But
they are careful not to question the motives of the British colonizers. Unfortunately, much ethnography has been carried out
under colonial conditions; and, in a way, the anthropologist has
become as much a colonizer as those having economic and political interests in an area. We tend to study those who resist the
least, and colonized peoples are powerless to resist our intrusion
into their culture. While the anthropologist often becomes the
native's advocate, he may not wish to upset those conditions
which enable him to continue his research. "Moderation, compromise and civil service decorum are the ethical bases for the
aspiring 'practical anthropologist' " (Malinowski 1945, 161).
�The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case
25
Future Prospects
In looking at the two models we find differences in responses to the conditions in Appalachia. Those who follow the
deficiency or difference approach (the Culture of Poverty model)
work to help and change people. Their object is to change the
values of the poor and assimilate them into the middle class or
the "greater" culture. Various programs of social work, education, and psychiatry are designed to change attitudes, to motivate, and to assimilate. Those who follow the exploitation or
colonialism model emphasize the need to change the structure
of society. They advocate the redistribution of goods and resources to give power to the poor. If colonized peoples always
rebel, then we must wait and see what happens in Appalachia.
Blauner (1967) attributes the revolt of Blacks in America to
their colonized position, and Moore (1970) uses the same model
to explain the rebellion of Mexican-Americans.
Tom Gish, editor of the Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg,
Kentucky, talks about colonialism, outside exploitation of the
wealth, and the various government programs for amelioration.
Although outside corporations still exploit the resources, he feels
that the period of blatant colonial control and local domination
is past. The coal companies can continue to mine the minerals
through control over a few politicians, state courts and lawyers,
and they can control labor through collusion with the United
Mine Workers. In the meantime, they can ignore and leave behind the many social problems resulting from technological
change: illness, injury, powerlessness, and deprivation. These
will be handled, along with polluted streams and devastated
land, by federal government programs. The early war on poverty
programs tried to create political action; such action was frightening to the local power structure and to the corporate interests.
These programs have been co-opted or dropped. The focus is
now on economic development, assistance, and control. Regional offices of Health, Education and Welfare, of Labor, of
the U.S. Corps of Engineers, of the Office of Economic Opportunity, of the Departments of Agriculture and Interior funnel
in programs of "assistance" through regional economic planning
and development organizations. Gish finds these regional organizations developing more and more like the Office of Indian
Affairs, i.e. to control the natives. Perhaps this type of action
is a latter stage of colonialism in which those who are left-over,
�26
Colonialism in Modern America
the land and the people, are now wards of the government,
living on an Appalachian Reservation.
NOTES
^Warren Wright, Burdine, Kentucky, has researched early titles and
land transfers in parts of eastern Kentucky. He finds many cases of fraudulent and illegal leases and ownership.
^David Brooks, former chief economist, Bureau of Mines, in talks
to the Appalachian Seminar, Clinch Valley College, January 1970.
�The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case
27
REFERENCES CITED
Appalachian Regional Commission
1968 Research Report No. 8, Preliminary Analysis for Development
of Central Appalachia. Washington, D.C.
1969
Research Report No. 9, Appendix C, Capital Resources in
the Central Appalachian Region. Cheechi and Co., Washington, D.C.
Ball, Richard A.
1968 "A Poverty Case; The Analgesic Subculture of the Southern
Appalachians" American Sociological Review, 33:6 (December), 885-895
Barkam, Barry and R. Baldwin Lloyd
1970 "Picking Poverty's Pocket" Article One, 1, 2 (May), 21-29
Blauner, Robert
1969 "Internal Colonialism and Ghetto Revolt" Social Problems
(Spring), Vol. 16, No. 4, 1969, 393-408
Blizzard, William C.
1966 "West Virginia Wonderland" Appalachian South (Summer)
Boone, Joel T.
1947 A Medical Survey of the Bituminous Coal Industry Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Interior
Brown, James S.
1962 Eastern Kentucky Resource Development Project, Lexington,
University of Kentucky
1970
First Look at the 1970 Census Mountain Life and Work (JulyAugust), 4-8
�28
Colonialism in Modern America
Campbell, John C.
1921 The Southern Highlander and His Homeland New York:
Russell Sage Foundation
Caudill, Harry
1962 Night Comes to the Cumberland^ Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
1966
"Poverty and Affluence in Appalachia: How Absentee Ownership in an Extremely Rich Land Produced a Remarkable Poor
People" Appalachian South Pipestem, West Virginia (Spring)
1968
"Appalachia: The Dismal Land" In Jeremy Larner and Irving
Howe, ed., Views From the Left New York: William Morrow,
264-273
Cressey, Paul F.
1949 "Social Disorganization and Reorganization in Harlan County,
Kentucky" American Sociological Review, XIV, 3 (June),
389-394
Diehl, Richard
1970 "Appalachia Energy Elite: A Wing of Imperialism?" People's
Appalachia (March)
1970
"How International Energy Elite Rules" People's Appalachia
(April-May)
Fanon, Frantz
1967 A Dying Colonialism New York: Grove
Ford, Thomas R.
1965 "The Effects of Prevailing Values and Beliefs on the Perpetuation of Poverty in Rural Areas" Problems of Chronically Depressed Rural Areas North Carolina University: Agriculture
Policy Institute
1965
"Value Orientations of a Culture of Poverty: The Southern
Appalachian Case" Working with low-income families, American Home Economics Association, Washington, D.C.
Harris, Marvin
1968 The Rise of Anthropological Theory New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell
�The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case
29
Henigham, Richard
1970 Remarks at People's Appalachian Research Collective Conference Huntington, West Virginia
Henson, Edward L.
1965 General Imboden and the Economic Development of Wise
County 1880-81 Historical Society of Southwest Virginia
(February 6-8)
Kephart, Horace
1913 Our Southern Highlanders New York: MacMillan
Kirby, Richard
1969 "Kentucky Coal: Owners, Taxes, Profits: A Study in Representations Without Taxation" Appalachian Lookout 1,6
(October), 19-27
Knipe, Edward E. and Lewis, Helen M.
1969 "The Impact of Coal Mining on the Traditional Mountain SubCulture: A Case of Peasantry Gained and Peasantry Lost" A
paper read at the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society, New Orleans, Louisiana
Lesser, Roger
1970 "Culture: Toward Tomorrow's People" People's Appalachia,
No. 1 (March)
Lewis, Helen M.
1968 "Subcultures of the Southern Appalachians" The Virginia
Geographer 3,1 (Spring), 2-3
McKelvey, V. E.
1968 "Appalachia: Problems and Opportunities" Mineral Resources
of the Appalachian Region, Geological Survey Professional
Paper 580, Washington, D.C.
Malinowski, B.
1945 The Dynamics of Culture Chicago: An Inquiry Into Race Relations in Africa, P. Kaberry, ed., New Haven: Yale University
Press
Memmi, Albert
1965 The Colonizer and the Colonized Boston: Beacon
�30
Colonialism in Modern America
Moore, Joan W.
1970 "Colonialism: The Case of the Mexican-Americans" Social
Problems 71,4 (Spring), 463-472
National Coal Association
1968 Bituminous Coal Facts Washington, D.C.
1968 Coal Data Book Washington, D.C.
Pearsall, Marion
1959 Little Smokey Ridge
Alabama Press
1966
University of Alabama: University of
"Communicating With the Educationally Deprived" Mountain
Life and Work (Spring), 3-11
Penn Virginia Corporation
1968 Penn Virginia Corporation Annual Report
Roach, Jack L. and Gursslin, Orville R.
1967 "An Evaluation of the Concept 'Culture of Poverty5 " Social
Forces 45,3 (March), 383-392
Roberts, Leonard W.
1959 Up Cutshin and Down Greasy Lexington: University of Kentucky
Stephenson, John B.
1968 Shiloh: A Mountain Community
Kentucky
Lexington: University of
Trillin, Calvin
1969 "U.S. Journal: Kentucky, the Logical Thing, Costwise" New
Yorker (December 27), 33-36
Valentine, Charles A.
1968 Culture and Poverty Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Virginia Department of Labor and Industry
1968 Annual Report
�The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case
31
Walls, David
1968-69 Research Bulletins - issues of Appalachian Lookout Prestonsburg, Kentucky
Weller, Jack
1965 Yesterday's People Lexington: University of Kentucky
Williams, Jonathan
1966 "The Southern
(June), 47-66
Appalachians" Craft
Woodward, C. Vann
1951 Origins of the New South
University Press
Horizons, X-XVI, 3
Baton Rouge, Louisana:
State
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Colonialism in Modern America
the process of American historical growth. To the urban middleclass readers of Cosmopolitan, Harper's, and Atlantic Monthly,
the apparent persistence of pioneer-like conditions in the mountains seemed to reflect not merely the normal patterns of rural
life but "an earlier phase of American development preserved,
like a mammoth in ice."3 Because metaphor was more interesting than reality, the Appalachian present came to be linked with
the American past, and eventually the analogy was accepted as
fact. By the turn of the century, according to historian Henry
Shapiro, the idea that Appalachia was "a discrete ethnic and cultural unit within but not of America" had become a convention
of the popular mind.4 For Americans of the Progressive period
who had witnessed the passing of the western frontier, Appalachia became "the frontier we have left within," and the mountaineers were "our contemporary ancestors."5
Succeeding generations have periodically rediscovered and
reinterpreted the region in the context of their own day, but the
static image has remained the standard perception of mountain
life. In 1913, for example, Horace Kephart found "our Southern
highlanders. . .still thinking essentially the same thoughts, still
living in much the same fashion as did their ancestors in the days
of Daniel Boone. The progress of mankind from that age to
this," he claimed, "is no heritage of theirs."6 James Watt Raine
traveled the "land of saddlebags" in 1924 and again in 1942, and
a decade later North Callahan made a similar journey into what
he believed was the "happy" but "static society" of the Smoky
Mountain country.7 With the outbreak of the war on poverty
in the 1960's, the mountaineers became simply "Yesterday's
People"—part of that "other America" of which Michael Harrington wrote.8 More recently, the rise of the new ethnicity and
the counterculture movement have brought attention to the
mountain people as just plain "down home folk," and a flourishing minor industry has developed to fabricate such oddities as
dulcimers, quilts, log cabins and "Maw's Moonshine Hunie."
Of late we have also seen the introduction of courses in Appalachian studies and the proliferation of symposia aimed at
diagnosing the "unique" qualities of mountain life. But this
revival of interest has done little to alter our traditional views.
According to one well known student of the region, Appalachia
can still be seen "as a vanishing frontier and its people as frontiersmen, suspended and isolated, while the rest of the country
moves across the twentieth century. "^ Marooned on an island
�Industrialization and Social Change
37
of hills, the mountaineer has seemed shut off from the forces
which have shaped the modern world. He has lived, we are told,
in a land "Where Time Stood Still."10
Arnold Toynbee may have offered the most callous assertion of this view when he suggested that the mountain people of
the South were little better than barbarians. "They have relapsed into illiteracy and witchcraft/' he wrote. "They suffer
from poverty, squalor, and ill health. They are the American
counterparts of the latter-day white barbarians of the Old World
—Rifis, Albanians, Kurds, Pathans, and Hairy Ainus." But
whereas these latter seemed to be the belated survivals of an
ancient barbarism, "the Appalachians/' Toynbee argued, "present the melancholy spectacle of a people who have acquired
civilization and then lost it."11
Cast in the static role, mountain people have thus rarely
appeared as conscious actors on the stage of American history,
and almost never on center stage. They are acknowledged to
exist somewhere in the background, as subjects to be acted upon,
but not as people participating within the historical drama itself. As a result, our efforts to explain and deal with the social
problems of the region have focused not on economic and political realities in the area as they evolved over time, but on the
supposed inadequacies of a pathological culture which is seen to
have poorly equipped mountain people for life in the modern
industrial world. Having overlooked elements of movement and
change that have tied the mountains to the rest of the American
experience, we have blamed the mountaineers for their own distress, rather than the forces which have caused it.12
Blaming the victim, of course, is not a uniquely American
phenomenon. Rather it is a misreading that takes international
form. French intellectuals talk about the Alps, and Spanish
intellectuals talk about the Pyrenees in much the same simple
if condescending way that urban Americans talk about Appalachia.13 Indeed, all over the world the terms applied to rural
people by urban people have implied either contempt and
condescension, or—and this is the opposite of the same attitude—
a romantic admiration for the simple, hardy virtues of rural
life.14 Since the Southern mountains were among the most
rural areas of eastern America, the Appalachian people have
suffered exceedingly from this type of urban provincialism.
�38
Colonialism in Modern America
Ironically, it was during the same years that the static image
was emerging as the dominant literary view that a revolution of
dynamic proportions was shaking the very foundations of the
mountain social order. In Appalachia, as in the rest of the
country, the decades from 1880 to 1930 were years of transition and change. What had been in 1860 only the quiet backcountry of the Old South became by the turn of the century a
new frontier for expanding industrial capitalism. The coming of
railroads, the building of towns and villages, and the general
expansion of industrial employment greatly altered the traditional patterns of mountain life and called forth certain adjustments,
responses, and defenses on the part of the mountaineers. This
transformation varied in scope and speed, but by the end of
the 1920's few residents of the region were left untouched by
the industrial age.
The effects of this transition were large. For one thing,
mountain agriculture went into serious decline. While the size
of the average mountain farm was about 187 acres in the 1880's,
by 1930 the average Appalachian farm contained only 76 acres,
and in some counties the average was as low as 47 acres.15 This
decline was universal throughout the region but was most pronounced in the coal fields and other areas of intense economic
growth. Significantly, while the total number of farms increased
during these years, the total amount of land in farms actually
decreased almost twenty percent as a result of the purchase of
farm properties by timber and mining companies and for inclusion in national forests and parks.16
Farm productivity and income also changed. While farm
production had been the major (and usually the sole) source of
income in 1880, by 1930 most mountain farms had become
part-time units of production, and the major source of income
had shifted to non-agricultural employment—mining, logging,
carpentry, and other forms of public work.17 In Knott County,
Kentucky, for example, the income per farm from farming in
1930 averaged only $215, while the income per farm from
non-farm enterprises averaged over $342.18 In 1880 the mountains had been a major producer of swine in the South, but by
1930 swine production in the region had declined to only 39
percent of its former level.19 Such data suggests that the traditional image of the pre-industrial mountain farm must be altered, and that the small, marginal farm usually associated with
�Industrialization and Social Change
39
the stereotyped picture of Appalachia was in fact a product of
industrialization—that is, a more recent development not associated with the purported isolation of the region.
Along with the decline of agriculture came subtle changes
in demographic relationships as well. Whereas mountain society
in the 1880's had been characterized by a diffuse pattern of
open-country agricultural settlements located primarily in the
fertile valleys and plateaus, by the turn of the century the population had begun to shift into non-agricultural areas and to concentrate around centers of industrial growth. Between 1900 and
1930, the urban population of the region increased four-fold and
the rural non-farm population almost two-fold, while the farm
population itself increased by only five percent.20 A few of the
burgeoning urban centers were destined to be temporary communities, such as the big timber towns of Sunburst and Ravensford in the Great Smoky Mountains, but most were permanent
structures which had a lasting impact upon mountain life. It is
important to point out, moreover, that the majority of these new
industrial communities were company towns. In fact, over six
hundred company towns were constructed in the Southern
mountains during this period, and in the coal fields they outnumbered independent incorporated towns more than five to
one.21
This rising urban population provided a base for the emergence of a more modern political system in the mountains, one
increasingly dominated by corporate interests and businessminded politicians. Where the traditional political order had
relied largely on kinship, personal contacts, and a broad-based
party structure, after the turn of the century the level of citizen
participation declined, and the average farmer or laborer became
isolated from the political process. As early as the 1890's, industrialists such as Stephan B. Elkins in West Virginia and H.
Clay Evans in Tennessee had begun to gain control of the political organizations in the mountains and to turn the powers of
state and local government toward the expansion of commerce
and the exploitation of the region's natural resources.22 As a
result, there emerged in Appalachia a contracted political system
based upon an economic hierarchy—those who controlled the
jobs also controlled the political system, and those who controlled the political system used their power to exploit the
region's natural wealth for their own personal gain. This loss of
�40
Colonialism in Modern America
local political control naturally distressed many mountain
people and plunged the region into prolonged industrial violence
and social strife.*3
Behind this transition in political culture lay the integration of the region into the national economy and the subordination of local interests to those of outside corporations. Nowhere
was this process more evident than in the concentration of large
amounts of mountain land in the hands of absentee owners.
Beginning in the 1870's, Northern speculators and outside businessmen carved out huge domains in the rich timberlands and
mineral regions of Appalachia. By 1910 outlanders controlled
not only the best stands of hardwood timber and the thickest
seams of coal but a large percentage of the surface land in the
region as well. For example, in that portion of western North
Carolina which later became the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, over 75 percent of the land came under the control
of thirteen corporations, and one timber company alone owned
over a third of the total acreage.24 The situation was even worse
in the coal fields. According to the West Virginia State Board
of Agriculture in 1900, outside capitalists owned 90 percent of
the coal in Mingo County, 90 percent of the coal in Wayne
County, and 60 percent of that in Boone and McDowell Counties.25 Today, absentee corporations control more than half the
total land area in the nine southernmost counties of that state.26
The immediate effect of this concentration of land holding
was to dislodge a large part of the region's population from their
ancestral homes. A few former landowners managed to remain
on the land as sharecroppers or tenant farmers, and occasionally
a family continued to Hve temporarily on the old homeplace,
paying rent to absentee landlords.27 But a great number of the
displaced mountaineers migrated to the mill villages and mining
towns where they joined the ever-growing ranks of the new industrial working class. In the Cumberland Plateau, less than a
third of those employed in 1930 remained in agriculture. The
rest had moved to the mines or into service related jobs.28 Uprooted from their traditional way of life, some individuals were
unable to reestablish permanent community ties, and they became wanderers drifting from mill to mill, from company house
to company house, in search of higher pay or better living conditions. Most dreamed initially of returning to the land after a
few years of public work, but the rising land values which ac-
�Industrialization and Social Change
41
companied industrial development soon pushed land ownership
beyond the reach of the average miner or mill hand.
Caught up in the social complex of the new industrial
communities, many mountaineers found themselves unable to
escape their condition of powerlessness and dependency. By
coming to a coal mining town, the miner had exchanged the independence and somewhat precarious self-sufficiency of the
family farm for subordination to the coal company and dependence upon a wage income. He lived in a company house;
he worked in a company mine; and he purchased his groceries
and other commodities from the company store. He sent his
children to the company school and patronized the company
doctor and the company church. The company deducted rent,
school, medical and other fees from his monthly wage, and under
the prevailing system of scrip, he occasionally ended the month
without cash income. He had no voice in community affairs
or working conditions, and he was dependent upon the benevolence of the employer to maintain his rate of pay.
Socially, if not physically, the working class mountaineer
was more isolated in his new situation than he had been on the
family farm, for industrialization introduced rigid class distinctions into the highland culture.29 Traditional status distinctions
had always existed, but there were few economic differences
within the rural population. With the coming of the industrial
age, however, the dichotomy between employer and employed
became overt. In the company town the miners lived in small
dwellings in the hollow near the tipple, but mine superintendents
often built palatial structures high on the hillside overlooking the
town. 30 Surrounded by elegant trees and well-kept grounds,
these homes clearly defined the operator's social rank. In some
communities the railroad track literally divided the town in two,
separating the more substantial residences of the managing class
from the miners' shacks. The social gap between the classes increased, moreover, as managers and professional personnel developed life styles and formal institutions different from those of
the working class.
By 1930, therefore, most mountaineers whether they remained on the farm or migrated to the mill villages, timber
towns, or coal camps, had become socially integrated within the
new industrial system, and economically dependent upon it as
�42
Colonialism in Modern America
well. To say the least, this dependence was not on their own
terms—that is to say, it was not a product of mountain culture
but of the same political and economic forces that were shaping
the rest of the nation and the western world. The rise of industrial capitalism brought to Appalachia a period of rapid growth
and social change which those who hold to the static image have
chosen to ignore. The brief prosperity brought on by the bonanza that was capitalism broadened the mountaineer's economic
horizon. It aroused aspirations, envies, and hopes. But the industrial wonders of the age promised more than they in fact
delivered, for the profits taken from the rich natural resources
of the region flowed out of the mountains with little return to
the mountain people themselves. For a relative handful of
owners and managers the new order yielded riches unimaginable
a few decades before; for thousands of mountaineers it brought
a life of struggle, hardship, and despair. Considered from this
perspective, the persistent poverty of Appalachia has not resulted
from the lack of modernization. Rather, it has come from the
particular kind of modernization that unfolded in the years from
1880 to 1930.
Earlier in this paper I quoted at length from Arnold Toynbee. I would like to end with a quotation from a native mountaineer who found another kind of barbarism at work in the
Southern mountains. Writing in The Hills Beyond, Thomas
Wolfe lamented the tragic changes that had come over his beloved homeland in the years after Reconstruction. "The great
mountain slopes and forests of the section," he wrote, "had
been ruinously detimbered; the farm-soil on the hillsides had
eroded and washed down; high up, upon the hills, one saw the
raw scars of old mica pits, the dump heaps of deserted mines. . .
It was evident that a huge compulsive greed had been at work:
the whole region had been sucked and gutted, milked dry, denuded of its rich primeval treasures; something blind and ruthless
had been here, grasped and gone. The blind scars on the hills,
the denuded slopes, the empty mica pits were what was left. . . .
Something had come into the wilderness, and left the barren
land. "31
�Industrialization and Social Change
43
NOTES
author is indebted to the Rockefeller Foundation for research
support on this subject.
^See Henry David Shapiro, "A Strange Land and Peculiar People:
The Discovery of Appalachia, 1870-1920*' (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
Rutgers University, 1966), pp. 250 ff., and Gratis Dearl Williams, "The
Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
New York University, 1961), pp. 1605 ff.
3 Henry David Shapiro, "Introduction" to John C. Campbell, The
Southern Highlander and His Homeland (Lexington, 1969), p. xxvi.
^"Shapiro, "A Strange Land and Peculiar People," p. v;see Shapiro's
forthcoming monograph Appalachia on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870-1920 (Chapel
Hill, 1977).
^Woodrow Wilson, "Our Last Frontier," Berea Quarterly, Vol. 4,
No. 2 (May, 1899), 5; William Goodell Frost, "Our Contemporary Ancestors in the Southern Mountains, "Atlantic Mo nthly, 83 (March, 1899), 311.
^Horace Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders (New York, 1913),
p. 211.
7
Jarnes Watt Raine, The Land of Saddle-Bags (New York, 1924);
James Watt Raine, Saddlebag Folk (Evanston, 1942); North Callahan,
Smoky Mountain Country (Boston, 1952), p. 74.
°Jack E. Weller, Yesterday's People: Life in Contemporary Appalacchia (Lexington 1965).
^Gratis Dearl Williams, "Heritage of Appalachia," address to the
Southern Appalachian Regional Conference (May 13, 1974) reprinted in
The Future of Appalachia (Boone, 1975), p. 128.
�44
Colonialism in Modern America
and Nancy Roberts, Where Time Stood Still: A Portrait of
Appalachia (Boone, 1975), p. 128.
11
Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (New York, 1947), II, 312.
l^See Dwight Billings, "Culture and Poverty in Appalachia: A Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Analysis," Social Forces, 53 (December,
1974), 315-23; Stephen L. Fisher, "Folk Culture or Folk Tale: Prevailing
Assumptions About the Appalachian Personality" (unpublished paper delivered at the Appalachian Symposium in honor of Gratis D. Williams,
Appalachian State University, Boone, N.C., April, 1976); David S. Walls,
"Three Models in Search of Appalachian Development: Critique and
Synthesis" (unpublished paper, May, 1976, College of Social Professions,
University of Kentucky, Lexington).
1* Roland Barthes, Mythologies, translated by Annette Lavers (New
York, 1972), pp. 74-76.
14
Robert Redfield, Peasant Society and Culture (New York, 1960),
p. 38.
.S. Department of Interior, Census Office, The Tenth Census:
1880, Agricultural Statistics, Vol. Ill; U.S. Department of Commerce,
Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930: Agriculture-. The Southern States, Vol. 2, Part 2.
*"U.S. Department of Agriculture, Miscellaneous Publication No.
205, Economic and Social Problems and Conditions of the Southern Appalachians (Washington, D.C., 1935), p. 16; Lewis Cecil Gray, "Economic
Conditions and Tendencies in the Southern Appalachians as Indicated by
the Cooperative Survey," Mountain Life and Work, Vol. 9, No. 2 (July,
1933), 9.
*'U.S. Department of Agriculture, Publ. No. 205, Economic and
Social Conditions, pp. 3, 16.
y, "Economic Conditions in the Southern Appalachians," p.
10; see also W. D. Nicholls, "A Research Approach to the Problems of
Appalachia," Mountain Life and Work, Vol. 7, No. 10 (January, 1932),
5-8 and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Publ. No. 205, Economic and
Social Conditions, pp. 41-57.
1°U.S. Department of Interior, Census Office, The Tenth Census:
�Industrialization and Social Change
45
1880, Agricultural Statistics, Vol. Ill; U.S. Department of Commerce,
Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930: Agriculture: The Southern States, Vol. 2, Part 2.
, "Economic Conditions in the Southern Appalachians," p. 8;
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Publ. No. 205, Economic and Social Conditions, pp. 120-121.
. Congress, Senate, Report of the United States Coal Commission, Sen. Doc. 195, 68th Cong. 2d. sess., 1925, Table 14, p. 1467; U.S.
Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the
United States, 1910: Population, Vols. II and III.
2^See John Alexander Williams, "The New Dominion and the Old:
Antebellum and Statehood Politics as the Background of West Virginia's
'Bourbon Democracy/ " West Virginia History, 33 (July, 1972), 322;
Gordon Bartiett McKinney, "Mountain Republicanism, 1876-1900" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1971), p. 170.
23 See Gordon B. McKinney, "Industrialization and Violence in Appalachia in the 1800's" (unpublished paper delivered at the Appalachian
Symposium in Honor of Gratis D. Williams, Appalachian State University,
Boone, N.C., April, 1976).
"North Carolina Portion of the Great Smoky Mountains
National Park, Showing Individual Ownership," Western Carolina University, Archives, Hunter Library.
Virginia, State Board of Agriculture, Fifth Biennial Report of
the West Virginia State Board of Agriculture for the Years 1899 and 1900
(1900), p. 371.
D. Miller, "Absentees Dominate Land Ownership," in Who
Owns West Virginia? reprinted from the Herald-Advertiser and the HeraldDispatch (Huntington, 1974), pp. 1-3.
2' James Lane Allen, "Mountain Passes of the Cumberlands," Harper's
Magazine, 81 (September, 1890), 575; Herbert Francis Sherwood, "Our
Racist Drama," North American Review, 216 (October, 1922), 494; Campbell, The Southern Highlander, pp. 87, 314.
™U.S. Department of Agriculture, Publ. No. 205, Economic and
Social Conditions, p. 3.
�46
Colonialism in Modern America
Edward E. Knipe and Helen M. Lewis, "The Impact of Coal
Mining on the Traditional Mountain Subculture," in J. Kenneth Moreland,
ed., The Not So Solid South: Anthropological Studies in a Regional Subculture (Athens, Georgia, 1971), p. 28.
H. Gollenwater, "Cultural and Historical Geography of
Mining Settlements in the Pocahontas Coal Field of Southern West Virginia, 1880 to 1930" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tennessee, 1972), p. 87; R. H. Lyman, "Coal Mining at Holden, West Virginia,"
The Engineering and Mining Journal, LII (December 15, 1906), 1171.
31
Thomas Wolfe, The Hills Beyond (New York, 1941), pp. 236-237.
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�48
Colonialism in Modern America
I suspect that America has several such colonies within her
borders. Appalachia is its most prominent one.
A colony, as I understand it, is a group of people with
land and resources which are owned and/or controlled by persons
other than themselves, and whose resources and productive
capacities are used for the advantage of those who control them.
Appalachia is simply our American example of how we use
colonization powers in the economic realm all over the world.
We strip an area and its people of their wealth under the guise of
"developing" them, saying all the time of course that without
this development look where they'd be. Yet in essence, we are
robbing them of their wealth, impoverishing their people, controlling their economy, politics and people, meanwhile growing
rich and powerful in the process.
Minerals, Timber & Recreation
Appalachia is indeed such a colony—a mineral colony, if
you will—providing the energy to run the generators, steel mills,
power plants, air conditioners, and can openers for an affluent
nation while remaining poor itself. Appalachia is also a timber
colony, a recreation colony, and an oil and gas colony.
In Central Appalachia, coal is king. There are estimates that
over one trillion dollars worth of this black gold has been mined
from east Kentucky alone. But in this area, according to the
1960 census (the last one for which these figures are calculated),
6 of the 10 poorest counties in America lie.
Perry County, where I live, the fifth highest coal-producing
county in the state, can afford to pay only 14 percent of its public school bill. Letcher County, the third highest coal producer,
can afford barely over 8 percent of its costs for the education of
her children.
Based on the 1970 census, in Pike County, the highest
Kentucky mountain coal producer, the per capita income is little
more than 40 percent of the national per capita, and other mountain counties range from that high point to 18 percent of the
national per capita.
�Appalachia: America s Mineral Colony
49
And, lest we think that coal makes everybody poor, note
that Pikeville, Kentucky, a town of fewer than 5,000 people in
the heart of the coal fields, has 38 millionaires living within its
limits. Other county-seat coal towns have their share of the
wealthy also. The Cadillacs and Continentals and Imperials are
common vehicles in the mountains—along with the pickups and
the refugees from the junk piles that are the vehicles of the
common folk.
What has happened in this spiny backbone of Eastern America, that while everyone else has shared the wealth of production,
mountain people have been exiles from the American dream?
How is it possible that this rugged land and its people have been
by-passed, even though they exist within 600 miles of the giant
industrial complexes of the North and Mid-West and are so
directly connected with their productive capacities?
Reduced to Ruin
Answer: Appalachia is a colony which America has exploited. It is used, stripped of her wealth, raped and reamed and
reduced to ruin, while those who gain their wealth from her invest their profits elsewhere and live elsewhere. Let's look at
some of the factors involved.
First, Appalachia lost the resources which might have made
her rich. Before the turn of the century, giant hardwoods up to
six and eight feet in diameter covered the hillsides. Timber
agents from the cities were sent to purchase this rich resource to
feed the voracious maw of an expanding economy. At this time,
when ours was generally a money economy, the Appalachian
person still lived in a barter society. He grew what he needed; he
made what he needed; he traded for what he needed. So, when
timber agents came to buy the trees on his mountains, he was offered 25 to 50 cents a tree for them, trees which on the present
market would be worth several thousands of dollars. Perhaps he
had a whole mountain side of them—1,000 or more, worth $500
maybe—more money than he had ever seen at one time, and
more than he thought he'd ever need. He sold the trees, even
helped get them out and floated down the river.
The wealth that might have served his own economy went
�50
Colonialism in Modern America
instead to make someone else rich. Many fortunes were made
in timber in Appalachia, and several large foundations now
spread their beneficence back to the region in small amounts
for its impoverished people. Granted, our economy runs on the
basis of getting the best bargain you can. The Appalachian man
wanted a bargain, too, as did those who bought the timber. The
advantage lay with the outsider. He alone knew what the trees
were worth and what money was all about, while the mountain
man often did not.
The same thing happened with the coal. Five to seven
mineable seams of coal underlie much of Central Appalachia.
The mountain people who owned the land and minerals did not
use the coal. They did not know how much was there or how to
get it out. They did not know what it was worth. When coal and
land agents came to buy the coal, offering fifty cents to five
dollars an acre for it, again the mountain man, who was probably
poor and hurting for some ready cash, quickly sold it. Besides,
he was a farmer using the surface of the land for his living, and
when he was assured that he could keep the surface, that all he
was selling was something underneath, he made the bargain.
Again, that which might have made the people in the mountains
rich now belonged to someone else. He sold for no more than
five dollars an acre coal which was really worth a thousand dollars or more!
What is more, he also lost the control of those surface
rights. For years he paid taxes on that land surface only to find
that mineral rights take precedence over surface rights, and strip
mining 70 years after the deed was signed proved this fact. He
found, too, that oil and gas prospectors could rip up his land, or
that pipes could be laid over it. Thus, the mountaineer lost control of all his property.
Out-Of-State Control
I have some figures for Kentucky. The great majority of
Kentucky's coal, over one million acres of it, is owned by out-ofstate companies. These are land companies, oil, steel, railroads,
gas producers, utilities and other corporate giants with stockholders and commitments all over the world—Kennecott Copper,
National Steel, Bethlehem Steel, Occidental Petroleum, Con-
�Appalachia: A merica rs Mineral Colony
51
tinental Oil, Norfolk and Western Railroad. The director of the
Area Development District where I live (Hazard, Kentucky) has
often told me that no development is possible for our area until
the coal industry is willing to relinquish some of its rights and
powers in land ownership and control.
The coal companies and the industry, by its very nature,
discouraged education of its people at the very time when across
America the drive for universal education came into its own.
So, when mines shut down and those men tried to find work
elsewhere, no one would have them. Educational attainment
levels among adults in Appalachia are four years below the
national average—another toll exacted from Appalachians people.
Harry Caudill, author of Night Comes to the Cumberland,
tells of the annual contributions of the Penn-Virginia Coal
Company to a Philadelphia art museum. Philadelphians no doubt
pride themselves on having such a fine beneficent citizen-company in their midst. But why doesn't this company do something for the communities and people and area from which their
wealth came? It was this company which, according again to
Mr. Caudill, returned some 60 percent profit to its stockholders
a few years ago. Come visit the community in Kentucky sometime which bears the name and stamp of this company, and see
if you would like to live there!
Mine Unsafely
Beyond these brief remarks is the long, brutal tale of mine
unsafety: the playing with death by companies anxious for coal,
and the playing of politics with the federal laws and regulations
and inspectors. Even the United Mine Workers union has its history of betrayal and promises broken. Coal is an industry with a
black past, and everything it touches seems to be blackened.
The third factor to consider is the neglect of government in
Appalachia. It is almost as if this were a forgotten area of the
states involved, or as if these people and this land and this society
were of some lower form of life different from the rest and not
deserving of the same level of services which the rest of the states
get. It was not until the year 1956 that the state of Kentucky
assumed responsibility for the education of her children in the
�52
Colonialism in Modern America
mountains. Previous to that time, churches and other outside
groups provided the education for them.
When I moved to east Kentucky in 1965, for nearly
700,000 people living in those mountains there was not a single
psychiatrist, psychologist, or psychiatric social worker. It didn't
mean that our people had no mental illness—only that they
toughed it out. Nor was there any work with retarded children,
youth or adults, in spite of the fact that our retardation rate is
over double the national rate. Hospital beds were less available
than elsewhere.
There is one doctor across the nation for every 630 people.
In the area of Hazard seven years ago, there was one doctor for
every 10,000 people, and the administrator of the Appalachian
Hospital called it a "medical disaster area."
In terms of roads, again neglect. In this year, 1973, there
is not yet one major modern highway across Southern Appalachia, while across the Rockies, which are real mountains in
comparison, there are many.
Little Federal Help
Even the federal government shows a picture of neglect.
Fewer dollars per capita flow into Appalachia for education, welfare, construction of public facilities, and recreation than into
other areas across the nation.
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the federal agency
whose mandate it is to bring to life the valley of the Tennessee
River, has for years felt that in doing so it had the right to destroy other valleys in Appalachia in order to get coal for cheap
power to its people and industries. The worst offenders in
eastern Kentucky in terms of the wholesale destruction of the
land and people and streams have been the companies supplying
TVA power plants, companies supposedly hewing to the line
of their reclamation policies.
Just last May, Senator Fred Harris came to visit eastern
Kentucky strip mines, to meet with people, and to hold a hearing. One of the environment control and reclamation men from
�Appalachia: America's Mineral Colony
53
TVA was there. He read a fine statement of how TVA had such
high standards for land reclamation. Senator Harris exploded.
"No man has the right to do to another man what I have seen
today. But what is worse, I find that an agency of our own
government is doing it," he said.
Perhaps it is not right to say that government at all levels
has also exploited the mountains and their people. But, it is
right to say that government has allowed this exploitation, encouraged it, and approved it. And no agency of government has
lifted its voice to change it.
The record of the Corps of Engineers in the mountains is
not bright in their dealings with people needing to be relocated
because of dams. People have been offered a low sum for their
property by the Corps and then told if they think it is not
enough to take the matter to court. Most mountain families,
too poor and inexperienced to hire a lawyer and go into courts,
take the route of accepting the low offer.
The fourth factor is the worst for us: The church has exploited, too. In Appalachia, as elsewhere in the world, the
church has pretty much put its stamp of approval on the "status
quo" of exploitation. At one of our Orientation Seminars for
new pastors, Harry Caudill said: "You church people put schools
all through this area. Rich folk in Pittsburgh and New York
reached down in their pockets to make schools for our children,
yet daily these children looked out their windows and saw the
wealth which was leaving here in those coal cars, but nobody
ever asked why. And out of those schools came some of the
most reactionary and socially insensitive leaders we have in the
mountains today." Harry Caudill is caustic sometimes. Maybe
he was judging yesterday by today's sensitivities. But there is
much truth to what he says. The church and its leaders have
seldom been among those who have stood up to be counted
against exploitation. The people in the church have not been
the seers and the prophets, in spite of the Gospel in their hearts.
A leader in a southeast Kentucky housing group told a
group of Orientation pastors that she no longer attended church.
She said: "If I could ever find a people there who cared as much
for the people around them as they did for the Kings of Israel I
might go back."
�54
Colonialism in Modern America
I don't want to overdraw this. There are churchmen in the
mountains, lay and clergy, who are at the forefront of the
struggle for justice in the hills, but mostly we are a pretty quiet
and peaceable group who do not ripple the waters much.
Jim Branscome a Berea college graduate, former director of
"SOK," an anti-strip mine group, and now at Highlander Center,
says that he feels one of the worst things about the Appalachian
institutional church and its colleges is that they remove what
anger there is in the souls of those they capture.
"Our colleges and churches," he says, "are in the business
to contribute to the preservation of society without opposing it,
without training their people to place a question mark alongside
everything that society does, thus blaspheming both education
and Christ. They have contributed to one of the most fundamental dilemmas of modern civilization: It is without the preserving aspects of opposition." As the church, we must hear
what this young man is saying to us.
The charge that can be laid most at the door of the church
is cultural imperialism. We have come into Appalachia and have
tried to make its people into patterns made by the rest of the
country. For example, the Presbyterians have a series of churches across the region with a Madison Avenue architect's idea of
what a mountain church should look like—log cathedrals with
stained glass and organs that match the culture about as well as
evening dresses and high-heeled shoes. Rather than affirm the
mountain person for what he was, we looked down at him and
tried to make him something else closer to our own expectations
for ourselves.
On occasion I receive letters from people across the nation,
asking if it isn't about time now to quit these many government
programs with high expenditures in Appalachia. After all, we've
done them long enough. Since the region does not seem to respond, let's spread our American charity somewhere else.
Let's make it clear, however, that these federal dollars spent
in Appalachia are not charity! They are justice—belated justice
at that—giving back to this region a tiny portion of the wealth it
has produced for our country. And, lest we think it to be such
munificence (that word means just a whole lot), remember that
�Appalachia: America s Mineral Colony
55
the expenditures of the Appalachian Regional Commission in the
13-state area which contains over 18 million people in the first 7
years of its existence have totalled less than we spent in Viet
Nam in one month at the height of the war.
The church must keep our nation's "feet to the fire" about
Appalachia. Somehow we must cry aloud for justice, and do justice, and teach justice in our midst. Somehow we must help each
other kick off the paternalism that so easily besets the church.
Somehow we must do all we can to empower Appalachian people
themselves, so they can have a piece of the decisions about their
own destiny.
There must be a new burst of energy by the church for the
health of the Region.
Jack Weller, author of Yesterday's People: Life in Contemporary
Appalachia, is minister at large for the Presbyterian Church, Transylvania
Presbytery. He lives in Hazard, Kentucky.
�This page intentionally left blank
�THE IMPACT OF RECREATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
ON PIONEER LIFE STYLES IN
SOUTHERN APPALACHIA
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�58
Colonialism in Modern America
tion that effective preservation of the Appalachian pioneer life
style must demand a human continuance, a cultural transfer from
parent to child, automatically excluding those who would become mountaineers by purchasing second homes or retirement
homes within the Appalachian region. And though we applaud
the efforts of those who would preserve Appalachia by making
records of the ballads and the folklore, by creating craft centers
for the teaching of spinning, weaving, needlecraft, and woodwork, we must distinguish clearly between cultural repositories
and living cultures.
Who the original pioneers were in the Southern Appalachian
realm is not absolutely known, for ancient peoples had been in
the area long before the Cherokees came. But the Cherokees
likely pioneered in introducing a different and more advanced
existence. They were probably the first farmers, though they
were still highly dependent on hunting and gathering. A new
pioneer element came in the form of the European hunter and
trapper, closely followed by the permanent home-building, subsistence-seeking English farmers (along with some Scotch, Irish,
French, and Germans), who with their more extensive clearing
and cultivation of the land came in conflict with the land-use
practices of the natives who were still highly dependent on hunting for their subsistence.
There was much in the Appalachians to appeal to the European pioneers. Some alluvial bottomland was to be found in almost every valley, and the soils there were deep and fertile. The
slopes were covered with some of the world's best hardwood
forests which sheltered a variety of game and provided, in addition to the needed timber, supplies of fruits, nuts, berries, and
medicinal herbs. Sparkling clear streams fed by an abundance of
permanent springs provided excellent fishing. Small pockets of
iron ore were widespread, along with constantly available wood
for charcoal, and the multiplicity of forges and furnaces is reflected in names of communities throughout the region. (Graham's Forge and Laurel Bloomery are two nearby southwest
Virginia examples.) And the almost complete isolation from the
main paths of movement in the Mountain South demanded a
high degree of self-reliance, whether in meeting economic needs
or in maintaining effective social and political control.
The European life style established in the latter part of the
�The Impact of Recreational Development
On Pioneer Life Styles
59
18th century, like that of the Cherokee whom the Europeans replaced, represented a remarkably good adaptation to the natural
environment in which they both lived. Though there were excesses in pioneer land use, such as clearing slopes of timber which
was not effectively usable for agriculture or removing trees for
fuel which would now be worth small fortunes as cabinet woods
(they were weeds to them,for there was no existing market),
there was established an essential ecological balance between man
and the land which was maintained fairly effectively up until the
early part of the present century. And though the population
growth was constant, the high birth rates were largely offset by a
high death rate and by an outmigration which has increased
greatly in this century. Life in the Southern Appalachians remained so unchanged and unchanging up to the present century
that Cecil Sharp, an English folklorist visiting the region in 1917,
suggested that a fence should be built around the whole province
to keep outside influences from altering the culture. Mr. Sharp's
concern was timely, for already other pioneers were at work, and
this work would alter the landscape in profound ways, undermining in the process the economic framework by which the
mountain people lived. These were the corporate-based coal
mining and lumbering operations which brought the first easy
means of access to the region, the branch railroad lines, designed
to remove the rich extractive products found in abundance.
And while the overall impact of these operations has left and is
leaving this land in a deplorable state, much has already been
written about these developments; consequently, we wish to
focus our attention on what is a more present danger to mountain life and culture, a danger which has the possibility of becoming even more totally destructive.
The new pioneer in the mountains is the developer of
tourist and recreational facilities, and of the more modern invaders, he appears to have the most disturbing influence on the
traditional way of life. Like the exploiter of coal and timber,
this multifaced monster is also corporate in nature with controlling interests based largely ouside the mountain. And like the
earlier invaders, he paints a glowing picture of the economic
progress he will bring to the areas affected. The unrevealed story
is the fact that the long-range economic benefits (which may still
be substantial) go to local business interests associated more or
less directly with him. For the majority of the people the
�60
Colonialism in Modern America
economic impacts are more negative than positive. During the
major building period construction jobs become available; but
after facilities are completed, more or less permanent jobs (often
seasonal) are available as clerks, waiters and waitresses, cooks,
and maintenance personnel.1 Total employment by recreational
developments is never large and wages are low, lower generally
than in other economic activities, and lower here than in other
parts of the country. Locals not associated with the developments often seek to improve their income by selling farm produce to slightly expanded local markets; and others may start
turning out local craft items such as quilts, bedspreads, and a
variety of toys and trinkets. The primary direct economic impact is and has been to introduce a job orientation no longer
directly associated with the land and to shift the local economy
farther away from the self-sustaining pattern of the past. This
effect in itself is not bad except that it serves to undermine the
spirit of independence so long characteristic of the mountain
people and places them in a position of almost perpetual subordination to the outside dominated financial manipulators,
more firmly cementing the status of inferiority imposed upon
mountain people by the rest of the nation. The imposition of a
more complete money economy with mass produced products
available has led to the abandonment of many crafts and traditions followed in the past.2 The water-turned grist mills have
all but disappeared, and local farmers no longer try to meet basic
food needs from the farm. The wooden churn, a standard household item a generation ago (for then all farm households supplied
their own butter), is an item of value now only in the antique
shops. Most home orchards have been allowed to deteriorate or
disappear, and even the family garden is often limited to the
more basic items. The introduction of improved communications and effective advertising has created a town-centered social
focus to replace farm or hamlet oriented activities of the earlier
period. In the past each rural community regularly held barn
dances, quilting bees, corn huskings, molasses makings, and numerous other activiteis which served as strong human-based social
outlets. Now, the lure of the town with its theaters, sports activities, and overabundance of tourist traps draws locals as well as
visitors into the city limits. To suggest that all of this was caused
by the recreational developer would obviously be to stretch a
point, but the leisure-time activities which are development centered have helped shift the interests of natives away from the
home, farm, and local community. Locals who got together to
�The Impact of Recreational Development
On Pioneer Life Styles
61
pitch horeshoes now spend their weekends around the town.
Far more profound than the creation of alternative economic outlets for mountain people or Appalachian life styles has
been the alteration of the human mix caused by recreation complex developers. Tourism of the earlier period in Appalachia generally demanded little land, most of which was in the towns or
on the town margins. Those of the more recent period demand
vast acreages, incorporating second home developments into new
major recreational complexes with ski slopes, golf courses, fishing
streams, swimming pools, hiking and saddle trails, and even such
unmountaineer-like attractions as racquet clubs. Some examples
of new North Carolina developments were reported in January,
1973, by the Asheville Citizen* Included were the "un-city"
development of Connestee Falls (Realtec Incorporated) encompassing 3,900 acres, with sales to date of over 13 million
dollars; Wolf Laurel, a 6,000-acre resort featuring a central core
of authentic rebuilt native log cabins and including in addition
to homes and homesites, a rustic inn, a golf course, an excellent
restaurant, and ski slopes; and Arrowhead Hideaways on Flattop
Mountain, a 1,000-acre development just begun in 1972.
Research into the control of major tourist and recreational
complex developments tells something about where the profits
go. In the writer's home country of Watauga and Avery counties
in North Carolina, the massive Beech Mountain and Land Harbor
developments are controlled by the Carolina-Caribbean Corporation with home offices in Miami. Peter Barnes and Larry Casalino in a book entitled Who Owns the Land have found among
the major developers the names of DuPont, Continental Oil,
General Electric, IT&T, Standard Oil, Gulf Oil, CBS, Eastman
Kodak, and Firestone.4 And the number of land purchases
seems to be growing geometrically with each year. One corporation, the General Development Corporation, is reported to control more than 200,000 acres of land (slightly less than an
average-sized Virginia county). And most disturbing to a native
Appalachian is the fact that the area of most rapid takeover is
the relatively unspoiled and most culturally distinctive parts of
the mountain South.
Purchasing operations are economic
blitzkriegs. Buyers from these large corporations move into
rural mountain areas and suddenly offer prices for land which
unsuspecting natives find difficult to refuse. The prices offered
�62
Colonialism in Modern America
are in truth inflated in comparison to the value of the land in its
traditional subsistence or semi-subsistence farm use (which, for
most, form the base of their understanding of land values).
Many sell; then they find that land values overall have gone up
radically, so they either must give up their former way and become menials for the developer or, as is often the case, they leave
the community altogether. Even those who are determined to
retain their land find that its value has become so inflated that it
is no longer practical to use it for farming, so either they become
developers themselves or they sell to the developer.5 The effect
on the human population over recent years has been to replace
the natives with "new" mountaineers—mountaineers without a
real attachment to the land whose demands or expectations have
tended to be in conflict with rather than in harmony with the
mountain habitat. Their automobiles, motorcycles, and the
service vehicles required to meet their more elaborate demands
clog the mountain roads and disturb the rural quiet with the roar
of their engines. Their ski slopes have cut huge slashes in the
natural cover of the most attractive mountains, and the most
appealing trails and associated vistas suddenly become off-limits
to the people who have always lived here.
In fairness to the private recreation-residential developers,
they see their role as that of making more effective use of land
that had little economic value before, not realizing that through
their massive developments they are working to destroy most of
the characteristics of appeal in the mountain setting. Their cluttering of the landscape with broad highways, ski slopes, parking
lots, shopping centers, right-of-ways for the likes of Tweetsie,
and buildings ranging from Swiss chalets to pink fairy-tale
castles, is making the physical landscape no longer alluring.
Those elements of the mountain culture which provided the
human appeal are often retained only as museum pieces in
settlement schools or as show-place remnants such as in Cades
Cove, Tennessee. And once gone, Appalachian culture cannot be
recreated even by the most gargantuan human efforts. It might
be noted that the federal and state governments have paralleled
the private developer and often have cooperated with him in the
onslaught against the mountain man and his culture. Cooperation between the Appalachian Regional Commission and the
state of West Virginia removed several thousand acres of the most
beautiful part of West Virginia from private control and created
the multi-million dollar Pipestem recreation complex. The result
�The Impact of Recreational Development
On Pioneer Life Styles
63
is a lodge and combination of tourist cabins which the average
West Virginian, certainly one native to the Pipestem area, could
not possibly afford to use; and moreover, according to Don
West, a native of Pipestem, the concession to operate the complex did not remain in the hands of West Virginians but was
given to a Chicago firm.
In 1931, Margaret Hitch ("Life in a Blue Ridge Hollow")
noted that the development of the Shenandoah National Park
had resulted in a displacement (against their will) of the local
people, forcing them to move elsewhere! She commented that
4
'within another decade a new era will have begun and the day
of the Blue Ridge mountaineer will have passed."6 We might
note that more than a decade has passed since her prophecy was
made and the mountaineer is still around, but the forces which
are seemingly seeking the eradication of him and his culture push
relentlessly forward. The development of the Mt. Rogers National Recreational Area represents another giant stride toward
that end. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of acres involved in the original purchase, it was recently announced that
the Forest Service intends to purchase an additional 23,000 or
so acres. In physical and human terms it means the removal
from private hands of parts of three of the most attractive
mountain valleys in southwest Virginia, converting them into a
complex which would greatly exceed that of the Pipestem development noted above. And as in the case of Pipestem, no
preference will be given to local or even Virginia concerns in the
granting of concessions to operate within the area. In this
case the government goes the private developer one better in
that the land desired can be condemned at prices representing
only a fraction of its worth for recreational purposes and even
less than fair value in terms of present use.7
It is inappropriate to suggest that the land-purchasing agents
for government-owned recreational developments are intentionally being unethical or dishonest. What does appear to be the case
is that they are attempting to purchase land at what might have
been a fair price at the time the original land purchases were
made for the National Recreation Area several years ago. Prices
of all Appalachian land have increased tremendously since that
time, and if the land must be claimed, the price should reflect
the going rate at the time it is sold. Perhaps more appropriately,
�64
Colonialism in Modern America
the seller should be paid enough to assure his acquiring of living
conditions equal to those he is forced to give up. Unless this is
assured, the Forest Service or those representing it are not dealing ethically or honestly with the people.
One of the more compelling arguments which could be used
by those who would develop Appalachia as a major recreational
center for the nation is the concept that land should be used in
such a way as to provide the maximum benefit for the greatest
number of people for the longest period of time. And certainly
the displacement of a few hundred people by the recently proposed Mt. Rogers acquisition or even the displacement of the few
thousands (or perhaps ten thousands) by recreation complexes
throughout the mountain South is much overshadowed by the
growing millions who use the region for rest and relaxation.
However, there are other principles involved which have been
dear to the hearts of Americans from the beginning of the
nation: the principles encompassing the rights of the individual
to own land and to the pursuit of happiness. These individual
rights are on trial now more than at any time in American history, and in reality it is not the question of the greatest benefit
to the greatest number of people. For the recreational complexes that are now being created are luxury complexes which
only a privileged few (the 15 to 20 percent who own the bulk of
the nation's wealth) can really afford to enjoy. And if the individual rights of the masses continue to be violated for the benefit of these privileged few, then the whole principle of individual
freedom is in question.
With regard more specifically to the culture impacts of the
recreational developments in Appalachia, the more profound
tragedy is that the last and most appealing islands of pioneer
Elizabethan culture in the world have become the victims of
that most infectious of American diseases, so-called "progress."
There are still others who would suggest that the recreation
developers are in reality doing more to preserve pioneer life in
Southern Appalachia than the natives themselves by taking land
which is subject to overcrowding and poor use by the natives and
putting it to more productive use. They point out that pioneer
styles are preserved in the rustic external structure of the second
homes or vacation cabins, in the replica rail fences and water
wheels, and in the much promoted mountain music festivals. But
�The Impact of Recreational Development
On Pioneer Life Styles
65
when one goes beneath the surface, the life style of the secondhome or summer-home owner is not a life style resembling in any
way that of the mountaineer he replaces (notwithstanding the
frequent exhortations of roadside advertisers for those passing
through to become "mountaineers" by buying lots on English
Mountain). His "cabin" with the rustic exterior of the earlier
mountain home will be equipped with every appliance, including
electric heat. And though he may wear the battered hat and
overalls of the much caricatured mountain man, he would be
hard pressed to hand tool a baby crib or cut his grass with a
scythe. Nor would his wife be likely to know how to card or
spin or hand weave a piece of cloth from the homespun. And
philosophically the gap becomes broader, for generally the newcomer (outlander) is material oriented and accustomed to manipulating man and the land for profit; on the other hand, the
mountain life style, though not shiftless as many would suggest,
focuses primarily on meeting the basic human needs of food,
clothing, and shelter. The new mountaineer must constantly be
doing something, from moving the rocks in his rock garden to
replacing the natural foliage with that of his choosing (often
clashing horribly with the natural landscape), much to the
amusement of the native who without benefit of training in
meditation can spend hours on end in contemplative observation of the wonders of nature around him. It is probably true
that most mountain people are fatalistic, particularly with regard
to the natural events which affect their lives, and death is and has
been viewed simply as a natural occurrence, even the death that
he sees occurring around him.
The Appalachian mountaineer is a product of a cultural
heritage which is Elizabethan in origin but which has been modified by the human and physical environment in which he has
lived for so long. This is reflected in his speech, his folklore, his
ballads, his attitudes toward man and the land, and the harmonious relationship that exists between him and the natural setting
he occupies. To assume that he could remain an unchanged element in the mountain setting with communicative inroads penetrating the region on all fronts is not realistic, and no one native
to the mountains would want it to be that way. However, it is
of major concern and within the realm of possibility that certain
desirable Appalachian traits be retained by keeping those born
Appalachian as the dominant element within the mountain
�66
Colonialism in Modern America
region. Also, by developing and encouraging among them (or
us—for I am one of them) a pride in their heritage, something
of their rich past may be retained or even strengthened.
Though many assume, perhaps correctly, that it is too late
to protect Appalachian culture from the devastation wrought
by massive recreational developments, there is still some hope
that at least important remnants of Appalachian culture may be
preserved. However, the very nature of the native's personality
seems to work against it. It would appear that effective local and
regional land planning would be the best avenue, but the highly
independent mountain people see this as a socialistic invasion of
their individual rights, not recognizing that the basic purpose of
planning and zoning would be to protect them against those who
have exploited them in the past and will likely continue to do so
in the future.
From the perspective of the native looking at his native
land, the following are offered as possible approaches to the
problems we have noted.
(1) More extensive wilderness areas should be set aside
with the absolute exclusion of developmental enterprises while
at the same time assuring those peoples living within such areas
the right of continued occupation.
(2) Regional and local planning agencies, in establishing
zoning ordinances, should seek to assure that conditional use
permits be required for all major recreational, commercial, and
industrial developments. Public hearings for any such proposed
development should be required. (Exclusion might include
family or individually operated shops, service stations, home
businesses, etc.)
(3) Zoning regulations should be established which would
require all developments to be cleared by a responsible environmental protection agency. This is particularly needed in all
areas of massive minerals exploitation, massive industrial development, massive housing developments, and in many types of
recreation developments (such as in areas where ski slopes are
planned).
(4) Zoning regulations should be established which would
�The Impact of Recreational Development
On Pioneer Life Styles
67
protect good farmland against the economic developer seeking to
follow the path of lowest cost.
(5) Lot size limitations should be established in all areas
being developed. This action would work against the messy
clustering of business establishments in narrow valleys and along
roads which can handle only limited traffic.
(6) Rigid controls over size and placement of billboards,
glaring roadside lights, and other manifold roadside promotion
devices should be established.
(7) There should be a reappraisal of priorities for land use
in the entire Appalachian region, with serious consideration given
to development of legal devices which would provide protection
of the native population against the multiple onslaughts of corporate interests. First in order would be the provision of a publicly supported legal aid system to counter that which corporations are able to employ. Such a provision is desperately needed
now by those whose property is being condemned by the Forest
Service in the Mt. Rogers National Recreation Area, for they do
not have financial resources to fight the actions in the courts.
(8) There should be legal provisions against the replacement of scenic mountain roads with "drive through" super highways directed toward benefitting the outside visitor.
(9) Broadly, a more conscious effort should be made to
protect and preserve the rights of the individual against the desires of big business and big government whose primary aim with
regard to the Appalachians appears to have been the making of
its natural beauty and resources more effectively exploitable by
interests which come from outside, and who, by comparison
with the natives, can afford to pay well for services provided.
�68
Colonialism in Modern America
NOTES
*At a recent hearing relative to acquisition of additional land for
park development by the Forest Service, people in the Helton Creek area
adjacent to the Mt. Rogers National Recreational Area asked an official
what economic benefits would come to the local people by an expansion
of the area. After pondering the question a moment he replied, "Well, the
campers coming in are going to want quite a bit of wood for their campfires."
^There have been a number of efforts to revive the traditional crafts,
but craftsmanship gained earlier by a youngster at the foot of a craftsman
father cannot be regained just because a market develops. Crafts schools
have been established, but these are seen regionally as museums of the past
rather than as vocational institutions where young men and women can develop economically valuable skills. There are a few true craftsmen operating
in the tradition of the past, but these make up a very insignificant part of
the total Southern Appalachian population.
^ Nancy Brower, "Recreational, Residential Developments Had a Big
Year," Asheville Citizen, January 28, 1973.
^Peter Barnes and Larry Casalino, Who Owns the Land? Center for
Rural Studies, Berkeley, California, 1972.
^There are numerous examples of tourist-recreational-residential
impacts. The writer's sister bought 100 acres of land overlooking Boone,
N.C. in the 1950's for $7,000.00 and sold 80 acres of it three years later for
$10,000.00. The DuPont Corporation which now controls the 80 acres is
selling homesites for $5,000.00 and up. The 20 acres still in the former
owner's control is now valued at more than $80,000.00. Alfred McNeill,
who lives well outside the Boone-Blowing Rock focus of development, reported in the summer of 1973 that his rough mountain land had gone up in
sale value from less than $100 an acre in 1960 to a present value of more
than $1,000 an acre. Like many others he would prefer to continue to
farm but now is beginning to wonder how long he can continue in the face
�The Impact of Recreational Development
On Pioneer Life Styles
69
of increasing land values and associated increases in taxes.
"Margaret Hitch, "Life in a Blue Ridge Hollow," Journal of Geography, Vol. XXX, November 1931, 308-322.
'The largest number of people to be displaced will be in the Helton
Creek area of Smyth County. The writer recently visited the community
and talked with a number of the local residents whose land is being sought.
Some have already sold at what would appear to be less than fair market
value, and far less than what they will have to pay for comparable living
situations, and certainly only a fraction of the real value of the land in the
light of the recreational development now planned. Charles Blevins owns
8l/2 acres, much of it good bottom land, and has a good frame house on it
along with a number of other outbuildings. The small farm provides essentially all his food needs and a head or two of cattle for sale. The price
offered by the Forest Service was $7,300, which would appear to be about
one-third replacement value, discounting, of course, the esthetic worth of
the mountain setting. There is a fish pond on the place for which Mr.
Blevins had recently been offered $12,000. Mr. Blevins also reported that
he had sold one acre of hill land within the last year for $1,000.
In talking with others in the valley it would appear that the going
rate offered by the Mt. Rogers land appraisers is around $200 an acre.
There are few acres anywhere within the developing Appalachians with
land values less than $1,000 an acre.
�This page intentionally left blank
�1973
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�72
Colonialism in Modern America
The American Association, Ltd. controls about 65,000
acres—over one hundred square miles—of coal-rich land in the
Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee. This region
is famous for a sad paradox: human misery and abject poverty
atop and amidst some of the world's most abundant mineral deposits. The explanation is regrettably simple. Appalachia is a
colony. The people there do not own the wealth. Large outside
corporations like the American Association do. And the prime,
almost exclusive, concern of these corporations has been to exploit the region at the lowest possible cost to themselves.
Most of your company's holdings—about 50,000 acres—lie
in the isolated "Clear Fork Valley" in Claiborne, Campbell, and
Bell counties. Clear Fork is one of the most populated remaining
valleys in the coal areas of Central Appalachia, with about 500700 households in the communities of Fonde, Pruden, Hamblintown, Clairfield, Buffalo, and Straight Creek. Your company
owns perhaps 85 percent of the valley there.
In this remote valley, the American Association has displayed corporate profitseeking at its worst. It has permitted
wanton and destructive "strip mining''—mining by blasting and
scraping away the surface instead of tunneling into a coal deposit. Once-beautiful mountains are now scarred and gouged;
foliage is razed; streams are clogged and filled with acid and
filth; the inhabitants are endangered by landslides, floods, and
polluted water. The difference between what strip mining is
doing to the land in Appalachia and what B-52 bombers have
done to the land in Southeast Asia is one of degree, not of kind.
And while carting away over 2.2 million tons of coal per
year, leaving the region that much poorer, and in ruin, the American Association and the companies to which it leases have virtually ignored the needs of the residents there. They have avoided their fair share of the local tax burden. They have presided
over the destruction of job opportunities. They have even
blocked the efforts of the local citizens to better their own lot.
Idealism and good intentions—spiced, albeit, with a goodly
dose of empire and profits—propelled your firm into Appalachia
in the early 1890's. Backed by capital from Britain's Baring
Brothers, the American Association founded a town called
Middlesboro (after a British counterpart) in the state of Ken-
�Ralph Nader Letter
13
tucky and set out to make it the booming iron and coal capital
of the southern United States. The venture was to strike a bold
new phase in British enterprise and in Anglo-American relations.
"This is but a transfer of British business to American soil/'
proclaimed American Association founder Alexander Arthur on
November 11, 1890, to visiting dignitaries in the newly-resplendent Middlesboro Hall. He went on:
I would say that America needs this place and our
Anglo-American money, experience and push. Our mines,
ovens, furnaces and works you have seen; these comprise
our plant. We have also the sinews of body and of money
and stand ready, clean-cut, and vigorous, for a generation
of progress and success in manufacture, arts, and sciences.
Come and join hands with us in the great enterprise which
is worthy of the noblest efforts of us all, native or foreign
born though we may be. [emphasis supplied]
But misfortune, greed, and highly questionable dealings
soon shipwrecked the hoped-for "noblest efforts." The financial panic of 1893 dried up the venture's British backing; Middlesboro was sold at auction, and 80,000 acres of mountain and
valley land were mortgaged to the Central Trust Co. of New
York for $1,500,000.
Then a strange thing happened. The Central Trust filed to
recover on the mortgage in 1894, and one J. H. Bartlett was appointed Special Commissioner to conduct the sale. Mr. Bartlett
let the property go for but $25,000—about thirty cents per acre.
The buyer was, of all people, an agent of the American Association, Ltd., a newly-formed corporation with essentially the same
membership as the American Association, Inc. Shortly thereafter, Mr. J. H. Bartlett became General Manager of American
Association, Inc. The American Association, Inc. said later that
the land had been worth well over one-half million dollars at the
time of the sale.
This strange transaction did not go unnoticed. Creditors of
the American Association, Ltd. sued the new American Association, Inc. in Claiborne County for "fraud/ 1 claiming it had "paid
nothing for said property." But the records of this suit went up
in flames with the Claiborne County Courthouse. And researchers could find no trace of the suit at the Bell County Courthouse.
�74
Colonialism in Modern America
The Association had acquired its Appalachian Coal empire
through means its founder Mr. Arthur and you might not wish to
label a "transfer of British business to American soil." Most records of the era are either missing or else were burned with the
county courthouse. But the region is alive with tales of how
American Association agents tricked, threatened, or forced uneducated mountain people into giving up their valuable coal
land for fifty cents to a dollar an acre. Said one mountaineer
recently:
The American Association said the land was worthless and that they would give my daddy a dollar an acre
and we could live on the land and pay rent and they
would pay the taxes. We didn't know it but we were
standing barely 4' from a seam of coal when the American Association was talking to us.
Local residents say that when the property records burned with
the Courthouse, the American Association used the chance to
claim property that wasn't theirs.
At first, self-interest bound the American Association, and
the coal operators to which it leases, to a sort of uneasy truce
with the people of the region. The companies needed men to dig
the coal out of the large deep mines. So they had to provide
these men and their families with a pkce to live and at least a
minimal level of human services. Usually this level was indeed
minimal. The miners and their families lived often in indecent
conditions and worked in hazard-trap mines. And they were
virtual serfs to the companies that employed them and owned
everything around them^their home, their credit at the company
store, health care and recreation in the company town, even
"justice" at the company-controlled courthouse. In the 1930's
your company, along with others, tried to keep these miners
from joining a union that could stand up for their rights. Yet,
despite all this, the need for able, willing bodies to mine the coal
made the American Association and its cohorts show some concern for the region and its people.
But the cord that had kept this uneasy truce together has
broken. Mining coal no longer requires people. In fact, people
just get in the way. Your company has expressed the desire to
rid the area of residents. It will no longer repair homes, and it
�Ralph Nader Letter
75
plans to tear them down in the near future. Yet there is little
other housing or even property on which to build housing.
Depopulation has replaced paternalism as official corporate
policy.
"The people would be better off, and we would be better
off, if they would be off our land," said Mr. Alvaredo E, Funk,
the American Association's General Manager in Middlesboro,
Kentucky.
It began in the 1950's, when a coal market slump forced
many coal operators to close down. Medium-sized independent
operators, like those that lease much American Association land,
were especially affected. Employment in the region dropped
sharply. In 1952 there were 1,230 coal mining jobs in Claiborne
County; but in 1958 there were but 282. Your company made
no effort to provide other sources of employment for the men
thrown out of work.
Since the 1950's, the market for coal has revived. More
than revived. It is positively bullish. But bullish for the American Association and other coal owners and operators, not for the
people of the region where you get the coal. Automation and
strip mining have cut drastically the need for miners. At the
single large deep mine left on your property, that of Consolidation Coal, 350 men with modern machinery turn out about as
much coal as 1,500 men produced at nine mines in 1948. And
men are even more dispensable in strip mining. In Claiborne
County alone, 200 men can now blast and bulldoze out almost as
much coal as 1,500 deep-miners could dig in 1948.
Today with the need for local labor gone, a sort of undeclared warfare has broken loose. The companies to whom you
lease are making an unchecked assault upon the land, and in consequence, on its people.
Is it hyperbole to compare your company's presence in
Appalachia to a war zone? Consider the evidence.
1. Environmental Destruction
Irresponsible strip mining on your lands in Tennessee
�76
Colonialism in Modern America
harkens dismally of the laying-waste-to-the-land strategies of
bygone generals. As you know, a strip miner literally blasts away
the sides or top of a mountain. He then bulldozes the debris over
the side, and shovels out the coal. The process is fast, cheap, and
destructive in the extreme. Landslides block roads and railways,
destroy homes and farmlands, and imperil human beings. The
blasting alone has cracked the frames and foundations of homes.
Streams, choked with silt and debris, flood at the slightest rainfall, leaving harmful deposits on scarce fertile soils. Acid ancj
mineral substances pollute the water and endanger the area's
water supply.
"We are afraid to go to sleep when it rains. We just stay up
all night," says one Tennessee resident whose property these
floods have ruined. In the Clear Fork Valley, some people must
boil their water and add chlorine to it to make it safe to drink.
And the Campbell County Highway Department has had to
spend thousands of dollars clearing a single road after continual
landslides.
Is this the experience of people in peace or in war?
Your company, the American Association, currently hosts
more strip mining operations than does any other landowner in
Tennessee. On your Claiborne County property alone, strippers
laid waste to about 3,000 acres before the State passed a law in
1967 requiring that the land be restored. Since then, 1,400 more
acres on your land have been stripped, and the reclamation is
questionable at best, despite the new law.
2. Tax Evasion
While their mineral wealth is literally carted out from under
them, the people of this region pay, in measurable and immeasurable ways, for this destruction. State and local governments have
to clear the roads after landslides and both roads and bridges
after illegally overweight coal trucks have beaten them apart.
The people pay for this through taxes and through their own efforts to undo the damage to their homes and property. Yet not
only do they get little or nothing, not even jobs, in return, but
your company also avoids its duty to pay taxes to meet the costs
of local government.
�Ralph Nader Letter
77
In the United States, local governments depend mainly on
property taxes. Especially in Appalachia, where coal is the major
form of property wealth, owners like the American Association
are expected to pay their share. But it hasn't worked out that
way in Claiborne County. Your 44,000 coal-laden acres there
represent 17 percent of the county's land area and perhaps 90
percent of the county's coal reserves. Yet in 1970 your property
taxes provided only 3 percent of the county's property tax
revenue. That year your company claimed to the State Board
of Equalization—the board of appeals—that 40,000 acres of its
coal-rich land were worth but five dollars per acre. Yet in that
one year alone you garnered more in royalty payments from the
mining companies to which you lease.
Complaints by local citizens led the Tennessee Board of
Equalization to require that coal properties be assessed more
accurately. But the figures your General Manager Mr. Funk then
supplied the state were dubious at best. Local citizens charged
that Mr. Funk's suspicious figures gave your company an almost
one million dollar underassessment. The State Board seems to
have borne out these claims when it tripled values Mr. Funk reported for properties now leased to Consolidation Coal.
Still, the strip mines on your land are greatly underassessed
and undertaxed. Two companies mining your land under lease
appear to have escaped taxation altogether, while others seem to
have kept all their mining equipment off the tax rolls. As late as
1972 your coal-rich Claiborne County lands that were not being
mined were still assessed at only $25 an acre, less than the least
expensive farm land in the county.
3. Housing
As the major employer in the Clear Fork Valley, and as
owner of most of the land, the American Association once provided most of the housing as well. But now that it no longer
needs the people, it seeks to get rid of them. It is your company's declared policy to tear down its houses in the valley and
not to build new ones. The houses your company still rents, it
won't repair. Nor will it compensate tenants who make their
own repairs. And the leases it grants are usually for only thirty
days, if it grants a lease at all. And the tenant may be evicted
�78
Colonialism in Modern America
without cause or reason.
"I've seen barns in better shape. . . .Why, I've worked farms
where people wouldn't keep their animals in barns the shape of
these houses," one tenant said recently.
Meanwhile, strip mining destroys those homes and the land
on which they rest. Residents count forty-two houses that have
been stripped away in the small Rock Creek Hollow alone.
And your company has turned its back on both the immediate distress and the long-run needs of people whose homes
are thus destroyed. In 1955 on American Association property,
water broke through an old "slag" pile, surged down and destroyed the community of Valley Creek. Two children were
killed. Your company offered meager compensation. Just last
year your company did not take preventive action when a landslide from a strip mine on your land threatened homes and lives
in the community of Buffalo Hollow until local citizens hired an
attorney and Granada Television filmed the slide for broadcast
in Britain. Even the belated efforts you have taken—which have
had little success—are of small comfort to people who have had
to evacuate homes on your property before the invading army of
bulldozing strip miners. Or to residents such as Lewis Lowe, who
now faces perennial flooding along Clear Fork Creek. Or to the
people endangered or blocked in by the landslides on such places
as Duff Road.
Your manager, Mr. Funk, stated in "The Stripping of Appalachia," a Granada television documentary: "We're ploughing
back our share into the development of Appalachia." Ploughing,
indeed, there is aplenty. But apparently the only "development"
is on a minor part of your holdings in Cumberland Gap across
the giant Cumberland Mountain from Clear Fork Valley. Here
one finds a new Holiday Inn for tourists, and here a marina and
golf course are planned, as your May 19, 1971, Statement to
Shareholders puts it "to attract the wealthier citizens of Pineville and Middlesboro." What of the less wealthy residents of
your 50,000 or more acres in the isolated Clear Fork Valley?
They could move elsewhere, one might reply. After all,
your Statement to Shareholders the following year applauds your
contribution to the local housing supply. "We have continued,"
�Ralph Nader Letter
79
it says, "our policy of building houses on plots of land owned by
us. . . ." But these too are across the Cumberland Mountains.
In the isolated valley, housing is scarce because your company
owns most of the land and is tearing down its houses. There are
very few "ekewheres" for people who wish to remain on the land
where they and their parents were raised. And jobs and living
conditions in the distant cities are very uncertain.
4. Preventing Local Self-Help
To keep the area under tight control, the American Association has blocked the efforts of local citizens to help themselves,
to provide for their own jobs and housing. These people have
formed a community development organization, the Model
Valley Development Council, to better the lot of the valley and
its residents. Several years ago, when the Council approached
your company to buy land for a small factory, your company
would consent to sell or lease only a single small tract. It was
covered with slag and refuse from an old mine, and the Association would let it go only if the local people themselves cleaned
up the shameful mess. In 1972 the American Association refused
to sell or lease land for the people to build homes. Last autumn,
American Association General Manager Funk would not consider
making just one-half acre available for the community to build a
health clinic. Since then (and after wide showing of the Granada
T.V. documentary) Mr. Funk has suggested you might lease—but
not sell—some land.
But the people are still waiting. Meanwhile your company
won't even let them cut trees for wood to repair their homes.
The mere control of so much of this area's land and wealth
sets your company athwart any growth or local self help there.
The county government is reluctant to provide services like
sewers and roads because the population is sparse—sparse largely
because of American Association policy. Lack of these services
in turn keeps new builders away. And potential industries shun
the almost total dependence on your company that setting up in
the region would involve.
Your company won't help these people. And it won't let
them help themselves.
�80
Colonialism in Modern America
The American Association's seventy-year occupation of
this forgotten portion of Tennessee has resulted, then, in what?
Surveys in the valley have shown unemployment at about 30 percent. About 20 percent of the households live on less than
$1,000 per year; another 20 percent make less than $2,000.
($9,400 per year was the average family income in this country
in 1969.) Homes are being destroyed and land and water are
being ruined. Prospects for employment are grim. Prospects
generally are grim, with your company looking ahead to 25-30
more years of strip mining and then timber cutting after that.
Does this picture suggest the presence of a responsible citizen or of a greedy aggressor? And what will the picture be in
twenty-five more years?—not in the small portion of your land
north of Cumberland Mountain where you are building playspots
for the rich, but in the depressed Clear Creek Valley where most
of your holdings lie?
The bloom indeed has faded from the hopes your countrymen held for the American Association venture in Kentucky
and Tennessee. How different the response of two English
people viewing the enterprise at the outset and now. Visiting
the area of 1891, Sir James Kitson, then-President of the British
Iron and Steel Institute, could boast:
I think we all, as Englishmen, rejoiced to see a town
which was being developed with so much sagacity, so
much judgment and energy; that was being developed
under English auspices and with British capital.
Eighty years later your countrymen were holding their heads a
bit lower. After watching the Granada television documentary
on your holdings in Clear Fork Valley, a Middlesex, England,
woman felt impelled to write a small local Tennessee newspaper:
I write to tell you how ashamed I am that an
English-owned company can so indiscriminately cause so
much havoc to a small community. . . .My feelings after
watching a recent television programme on the subject
were ones of total horror.
You must realize that I am an English woman of
absolutely no importance, but nevertheless, would like
�Ralph Nader Letter
81
to use the good offices of your newspaper to apologize
for the desecration caused by an English company, on
land in a country that has always had very close ties with
my own. . . .
It is true that the American Association is just one small
part of your nearly L220m ($500,000,000) secrecy-enshrouded
corporate empire, of which Investor's Chronicle magazine said:
"What is quite unknown is how the empire is controlled, how the
various companies relate to each other." This empire spans from
Australia and Thailand to Canada and the West Indies and includes pursuits so diverse as racetracks, rubber plantations, and
equipment for hairdressing salons.
But the policies of the American Association spell the fate
of the people and culture of the Clear Fork Valley. And they are
now causing embarrassment to people of your own country.
You have shown charitable instincts in many ways. You
have served as officer or director of six hospitals. In 1953 you
were on the Executive Council of the Lord Mayor's National
Flood and Tempest Distress Fund. Until 1948 you were VicePresident of the League of Mercy.
Now you can apply this same sense of responsibility to the
corporate realm.
What can you do? Such steps as the following, which you
could set in motion at once, could begin to change your company from a hostile aggressor to a more responsible constructive
citizen.
1. First, and most important, you should personally visit
the region, for at least several days, to see firsthand what your
company's policies have done. You should meet with local
residents to hear their views and to discuss your company's past
actions and plans for the future.
2. Your company should inventory and begin to correct
the damage strip mining on its land has done. Especially urgent
is the need to correct damage to homes, farms, roads, and water
supplies.
�82
Colonialism in Modern America
3. You should require all companies to whom the American Association leases to restore carefully and completely the
property on which they mine and to repair any damage they do
to the people or the region.
4. You should also require these companies to cooperate
fully with tax officials and to provide them with the information
necessary to set fair and equitable property tax assessments.
Such information should include lease agreements, royalty rates,
and survey and estimates of coal reserves.
5. As a symbol of your desire to compensate the people
of the region for the valuable land your agents tricked or threatened their forebears into selling, you should donate some of your
50,000-odd acres for community development.
6. You should keep in good repair the housing you rent
to local people. And you should extend to them fair and adequate lease protection.
7. You should stop refusing to sell land to local groups
seeking to build industry or housing.
8. You should instruct your General Manager, Mr. Alverado E. Funk, to negotiate with local citizen groups a fair and
equitable compensation for all the property taxes which the
American Association has avoided in the past.
9. You should, in the future, consult with these citizen
groups about changes in your company's policies in the area.
Such steps will help get your company out of its social red
ink in Appalachia. But what of the many other companies you
control? Are they too laying waste forgotten corners of the
world?
There is a larger lesson to be learned from your destructive
Appalachian venture. It is simply to apply to social problems on
the corporate level the old adage "To foresee is to forestall." It
would be a signal act of corporate foresight and responsibility
for you to set up now a special committee to monitor the social
impact of all the businesses you control. This committee should
comprise both people from within your enterprises and repre-
�Ralph Nader Letter
83
sentatives of outside groups who speak for important social concerns. It should have the full authority of your office and should
report directly to you.
"Come and join hands with us in the great enterprise which
is worthy of the noblest efforts of us all" proclaimed the sanguine founder of the American Association, Alexander Arthur.
While the standard since then has fallen miserably, it is not too
late to hoist it up again. In fact, the decline, like adversity, could
be sweet. It could occasion an ascent to a truly higher standard
of corporate action and accountability.
Will you exert your "noblest efforts" to that end? Or will
your neglect be the occasion of a mobilized citizenry recovering
their future through resurgent legal and political action?
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
�This page intentionally left blank
�THE FOREST SERVICE AND APPALACHIA
by
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�Colonialism in Modern America
86
State
National Forest
Acreage
Square Miles
Tennessee
Virginia
Virginia
West
Virginia
Cherokee *
614,107
George Washington * * 1,003,874
J ef ferson * * *
621,473
Monongahela
831,329
960
1,615
971
1,299
TOTALS
8,419
5,388,598
This is an area larger than the states of Connecticut, Delaware,
and Rhode Island combined!
On the local level, the amount of national forest land in
many counties in the Southern mountains is staggering. Within
the Appalachian areas of West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee,
Kentucky, North Carolina, and Georgia, there are 37 counties
in which the Forest Service owns over 20 percent of the land.
In 14 of these counties, more than 40 percent of the land is in
national forests:
State
County
Acreage
Georgia
Georgia
Georgia
Georgia
Kentucky
North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina
Tennessee
Tennessee
Virginia
Virginia
Virginia
West Virginia
Rabun
Fannin
Union
Towns
McCreary
Macon
Graham
Clay
Polk
Unicoi
Bath
Craig
Allegheny
Pocahontas
235,520
262,160
197,760
106,240
267,520
330,880
184,960
136,320
278,400
118,400
345,600
215,040
285,440
603,520
NF Acreage
143,580
106,602
95,593
56,559
154,288
149,369
111,065
59,975
150,870
52,049
171,996
115,051
138,070
285,474
% NF
61%
42%
48%
54%
58%
45%
60%
44%
54%
44%
50%
54%
48%
47%
From the point of view of the U.S. Forest Service, its concentration of land ownership in the Southern Appalachians is
*Includes 327 acres in North Carolina.
"""Includes 100,386 acres in West Virginia.
** "Includes 961 acres in Kentucky and 18,245 in West Virginia.
�The Forest Service and Appalachia
87
highly desirable; it is, in fact, something it has been working
toward for a long time. Its basic strategy in the Southern mountains is set out in its official publication, Guide for Managing the
National Forests in the Appalachians. The guide states in part:
The concept of the Appalachian Greenbelt is possible because of the unique physiographic characteristics of the
area. It is a mountainous green oasis in the Eastern
United States from which flows a continuous supply of
renewable resources and which provides the large surrounding population with a place to recreate in a natural
setting. . . .Summer mountain temperatures are generally
10° lower than the adjacent plains. This factor makes
the mountains a highly desirable retreat for city dwellers
and other nearby residents. *
As this statement makes clear, the national forests are seen by
the Forest Service as a resource to be used primarily by the
"large surrounding population" of "city dwellers and nearby
residents." This includes, of course, the urban population of
the Eastern Seaboard. No one can argue that residents of the
Eastern cities probably need to "recreate in a natural setting"
from time to time. But it is also necessary to remember that
there are some 10 million people living in the so-called "Appalachian Greenbelt!" What about us?
Well, we're pretty much out of luck, according to the Guide
for Managing the National Forests in the Appalachians:
Population losses within the Greenbelt can be attributed
to the fact that this area can only sustain a limited number of people year-round. Many of the narrow mountain
valleys are unsuitable for industrial complexes. Plans for
economic development must recognize the limitations of
the area so that over-emphasis on the wrong type of
activities does not occur.
The Forest Service is obviously not looking after anyone's interest except its own here. To write off industrial development
for Appalachia because of its "narrow mountain valleys" is like
saying that Pittsburgh can't support industry because of its many
residential neighborhoods. In fact, Appalachia is for many reasons—raw material, electric power, access to population centers,
�88
Colonialism in Modern America
transportation, labor force—well suited for industrial growth.
By ignoring the facts, the Forest Service is actively undermining
the efforts of the ten million people who live in the mountains
for economic, political and social self-development.
But the Forest Service is not reacting to the needs of Appalachian people in its planning for Appalachia. As the Guide for
Managing the National Forests in the Appalachians makes clear,
it is motivated by a very different perspective:
Pressures on the forest resources and environment within
this mountain region come from many users. As long as
population growth continues, pressure for products and
services from the National Forest lands will grow. Unless
definite limits are set for the protection of the environment and use of the resources within the Greenbelt, population pressure will bring about their impairment and
eventual destruction. . . .This influence area for the
Greenbelt stretches far outside National Forest boundaries. Total planning must consider the overall emphasis
area.
The problem with this comment is that the population pressure
the Forest Service is talking about comes from outside the
mountains. After all, population is not growing in Appalachia;
the mountains have been losing folks steadily for years. This
attitude makes as much sense (especially since the Forest Service
is actively encouraging people to use the national forests) as saying that an Indian reservation is threatened by overcrowding because large numbers of tourists want to visit and camp there.
The emphasis of the Forest Service on the needs of people
outside the Southern mountains has, on occasion, been the root
of conflict with local Appalachians. One incident is worth noting
as an example of the extremes these conflicts sometimes reach.
As reported by the Atlanta Constitution:
Vernon McCall was "the weakest one in the community"
of Balsam Grove, a village in the heart of Pisgah National
Forest. Vernon, according to Mrs. Leonard Griffin, "is
a sick boy. He has epilepsy and he's disabled."
On February 22, men of the U.S. Forest Service broke
�The Forest Service and Appalachia
89
into Vernon's trailer house, dragged out a bed and a few
other belongings, and then dug a hole with a bulldozer,
rammed his home, his lean-to, his pig pen and his little
barn into it and buried the whole thing. Having erased
every trace of his home, they planted pine seedlings over
it. ...
The Forest Service claimed the government owned the
land, not Vernon, and they had been trying to get him
off it since 1968. But the community lawyer said no
legal action had been taken to evict Vernon, and local
authorities proceeded to charge Forest Ranger Dan W.
Hile with willful injury to personal property. . . .
Meantime Vernon, who is 40, has rented a new trailer,
and scratches out a living on welfare and what he can
make picking and selling ivy. And the seedlings the
Forest Service planted over his old trailer have died.
What makes all of this so intolerable is that the people of
Appalachia are the ones who actually pay for these national
forests. Anyone who knows the area is familiar with the irony
of high taxes on the one hand and low public services on the
other—a situation common to many Southern mountain counties. It has often been noted that in the coal counties this is
partly the result of the undertaxation of coal lands. What has
not been recognized is that in counties with national forest
lands the tax-exempt status of these lands has undermined the
tax base and increased the tax burden on local property owners.
The following report examines the effects which the national
forests in Appalachia have had on the ability of mountain counties to govern and finance themselves.
Federal Lands and County Finances
One of the direct and measurable effects of national forest
holdings in Appalachia is the loss of local property tax revenue.
At the end of 1972, Forest Service holdings totaled 5,388,598
acres in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia,
and West Virginia. Being Federal property, these lands are
exempt from state, county, and city/town taxes. While it is difficult to estimate the exact extent of the tax loss, it is probable
�90
Colonialism in Modern America
that, based on average values for land and effective tax rates in
the counties involved, the Appalachian national forests cost
local governments nearly $10 million a year in lost tax revenuesrevenues that would go to support schools, roads, health programs, welfare, and other public services.
This tax loss has not often been recognized—partly because
the Forest Service in its intensive public relations campaigns
emphasizes the financial gain to counties from national forest
lands. This type of publicity never mentions the fact that these
lands are tax exempt; or that they had previously been on county
tax digests; or the amount of revenue lost to counties when the
lands passed from private to Federal ownership. But the fact is
that in 1972 the total Forest Service payments to Appalachian
counties were only $734,641.08—less than 14 cents an acre and
well under 10 percent of what the property taxes alone would
have been if the land were still in private hands.
The small sums that are paid by the Forest Service to local
counties come from its so-called "25% Fund," authorized by the
1911 Weeks Act. This act, in effect, authorized the national
forest system by providing for the Federal government to purchase lands necessary to protect the flow of navigable streams,
including their watersheds. The 13th Section of the Weeks Act
(36 Stat. 961-963) provides:
Twenty-five per centum of all moneys received during any
fiscal year from each national forest into which lands
acquired under this Act may be divided shall be paid, at
the end of such year, by the Secretary of the Treasury
to the State in which such national forest is situated, to
be expended as the State legislature may prescribe for
the benefit of the public schools and public roads of the
counties in which such national forest is situated.^
The income from national forests comes mostly from the
sale of timber "on the stump," although a certain amount also
comes from other fees and from special permits such as those for
mining and recreational areas. Unlike the national forests of the
Western United States, which produce valuable old-growth sawtimber, the Appalachian national forests have in the past produced trees suitable only for pulpwood. As any mountain landowner will tell you, selling pulpwood on the stump is no way to
�The Forest Service and Appalachia
91
bring in money. If cut selectively, mountain land will make five
to ten cords of pulpwood per acre; if clearcut, it will make ten
to twenty cords. The going price for Forest Service pulpwood on
the stump in Appalachia is about $2.00 a cord. Selectively cut
land can be logged again in about ten years; clearcut land, in
about thirty. Thus, on an average yearly basis, the "income"
from an acre of national forest land in the Southern mountains
is between 66 cents and $2.00.
Aside from the low revenue which this gives to counties,
the problem with this system is that it makes "25% Fund" payments—on which counties must depend to help finance roads
and schools—completely dependent on an arbitrary factor:
how much wood the forest service decides to cut that year.
This produces a not-so-subtle pressure on local government to
approve the high rates of timber-cutting the forest service would
like to set and locally-hated practices such as clearcutting. For
example, during the recent struggle over proposed Forest Service
clearcutting in the Cohutta Mountains in Fannin County, Georgia
—one of the proposed areas in the Eastern Omnibus Wilderness
Bill—petitions were circulated which read:
We cannot afford the loss of revenues that are presently
being returned to our county governments by the Forest
Service from timber sales. We do not wish to retire our
forests from production when we know that the local
people will have to pick up the additional tax load;
neither do we want the added tax to discourage local
population growth, because this is already a problem
for our rural areas."
In fact, since timber-cutting revenues in any national forest are
lumped together each year before distributing to counties,
Fannin County would have received 14.4 percent (its proportionate share of Chattahoochee national forest acreage) of 25
percent (the Weeks Act formula) of whatever income clearcutting
the Cohuttas produced—3.6 cents of every dollar of timber cut!
Because the "25% Fund" payments are based on revenue
from timber cutting, payments per acre vary widely from state to
state and even among national forests within the same state. In
Georgia, the Chattahoochee National Forest, which is located
within the Appalachian area of the state, made payments to
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Colonialism in Modern America
counties of 26.7 cents per acre in 1972. Counties in Georgia's
Ocoee National Forest, however, which lies in the state's pulpwood belt, were paid $1.39 per acre—more than five times what
the Appalachian counties received.
Payments vary even more widely from state to state. In
1972, average payments were 41 cents in Georgia (this includes
the high payment received for the Ocoee National Forest); 21
cents in North Carolina; 17 cents in Kentucky; 15 cents in
Tennessee; 5 cents in Virginia; and 11 cents in West Virginia.
By comparison, the average payment per acre was $1.03 in
California; $2.16 in Louisiana; $1.40 in Mississippi, $2.12 in
Oregon; $1.01 in South Carolina; $1.23 in Texas; and $0.95 in
Washington. The average payment per acre for all national
forests in all states was 58 cents. The average payment per acre
for all Appalachian national forests was 13.5 cents, less than one
fourth the national average!
Two other ways of looking at this situation help make clear
just how discriminatory it is:
(1) If counties in Appalachia had received "25% Fund"
payments at the national average rate of 58 cents/acre,
they would have received $3,125,868 instead of
$734,641.
(2) If all the revenue produced by the National Forests
was divided among counties on the basis of their proportionate share of National Forest acreage, the Appalachian counties would have received $12,503,472 in
1972—seventeen times what they actually got.
Another way of trying to evaluate the fairness or unfairness
as well of the constitutionality of the way in which national
forest revenue is distributed is to look at it in terms of payment
per person to affected counties. After all, "25% Fund" payments were earmarked by the Weeks Act for support of roads
and schools, the two items which usually make up the bulk of a
rural county's budget. Since the national forest funds are Federal payments, it stands to reason that they should be distributed
on an equitable basis.
In the 37 Appalachian counties which have 20 percent or
�The Forest Service and Appalachia
93
more of their area in national forests, payments per person in
1972 ranged from a low of 9 cents per person (Smyth County,
Virginia) to a high of $5.01 per person (Rabun County, Georgia).
The average figure was 93 cents per person. Compare this with
payments per person made in Western counties with similar
populations. These figures ranged from a low of $101.14 per
person (Curry County, Oregon) to a high of $437.53 per person
(Skamonia County, Washington). It doesn't take much imagination to see what Federal subsidies of this size could mean to education in revenue-starved Appalachian counties.
A further problem caused by the fact that national forest
payments depend on timber-cutting revenue is that counties are
not able to predict the amount of revenue they will receive in
any year. For example, in 1969, during the period of greatest
clear-cutting in the Monongahela National Forest, counties received 25.9 cents. In Pocahontas County, West Virginia, this
meant that income from national forests in the county dropped
from $73,050 in 1969 to $33,931 in 1972, a loss of $39,119.
For a county with a population of 8,640, this is a tremendous
revenue loss. As rates per acre dropped between 1969 and 1972,
other counties experienced similar losses. Throughout the
Appalachian region, despite the fact that national forest acreage
increased 3 percent in the three years from 1969 to 1972, the
amount received from the Forest Service decreased $159,070.
Of all regions in the country, Appalachia is one of those which
can least afford this type of revenue loss.
The loss of this amount of revenue may not seem significant
to some people who are used to urban budgets. But it is important to realize that—partly because of the lack of growth due
to lack of land—the Appalachian counties in which the national
forests are concentrated are among the smallest and poorest
counties in the nation. According to 1970 census data, the
average population of the fourteen Appalachian counties with
over 40 percent national forest land is less than 9,000. Their
average rate of poverty in 1970 was 29.2 percent—more than
twice the average for the United States as a whole. Not one of
these counties had a poverty rate less than the national average.
In the thirty years prior to 1970, these counties combined lost
13.2 percent of their population, and only one of the fourteen
gained population in this period.
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Colonialism in Modern America
These counties are affected not only by revenue loss, lack
of public services, high poverty incidence and outmigration rates,
but—to add insult to injury—by local property taxes that are
significantly higher than those in counties without national
forest lands. Looking again at the fourteen counties with over
40 percent of their land held by the Forest Service, the effective
tax rate* for these counties is on the average 15 percent higher
than the average effective tax rate for the state.** This situation
is especially apparent in Tennessee and Georgia. Polk County,
Tennessee, for example, with 54 percent of its land held by the
Forest Service, has an effective tax rate of $1.38 per $100 compared to a state average rate of $0.90. Of 75 Tennessee counties
with single tax rates, Polk County has the fifth highest rate. In
Georgia, Fannin County, which is 42 percent national forest
land, has the highest tax rate of all counties in the state—higher
than the non-municipal rates of Fulton (Atlanta), Muscogee
(Columbus), Bibb (Macon), Richmond (Augusta), or Chatham
(Savannah) counties.
This situation has not gone unnoticed politically. The
Commissioner of Roads and Revenues of Fannin County has
made a summary statement of local attitudes toward the problem:
Fannin County does realize a good many benefits in ways
that encourage people to live here, but must also tolerate
some serious circumstances. . . .The U.S. Forest Service
now owns some 106,000 acres of land within Fannin
County and this deprives the county of approximately
$150,000 per year in tax revenue. A large portion of this
land has progressively been acquired from private land
owners who had formerly been paying taxes. This process
has resulted in a steady undermining of our tax base.
This example, combined with the tax rate we pay in
Fannin County, creates a constant hardship on a lot of
* "Effective tax rate" figures combine millage rates with assessment
rates to reach a figure which can be compared with others on a tax rate per
$100 of true property value basis.
**In fact, the actual tax rates for these counties exceed comparable
rates for rural counties by more than 15 percent, since the state figures
include urban and metropolitan counties.
�The Forest Service and Appalachia
95
our people who still own a fair amount of taxable property. Every time a piece of property falls into the hands
of the Forest Service, the tax revenue formerly received
from it is gone for good, and the remaining property
owners must share this loss in revenue. . . .They purchase
private land as it becomes available with our Federal tax
money, and use it, in fact, to undermine the local tax
sources where our local revenue must come from to support our local government. . . .
We can no longer ignore the seriousness of these problems.
There must be some compatible adjustment when land is
acquired and results in a revenue loss.^
Responding editorially to the above remarks, one of the local
newspapers, The Blue Ridge Summit-Post, wrote:
The increase in taxes will no doubt place a great deal of
strain on the working man's pocketbook. . . .Our tax rate
in the past has been in no way below average standards,
yet we, as a county, have profited little from the revenue
obtained from it. We see as one of the reasons for our
county's tax problem that great land speculator and wild
real estate dealer, The Forest Service.
We feel that the state and Federal governments should
find a means of returning some of the revenue on this untaxed land to the county, where it belongs. Federal
preservation of forest land is a good thing; we believe in
some land control; but taxes are taxes, and Fannin County is having to strain the wrong pay check. Our residents
work hard for their living, and carrying the load for the
Forest Service is not helping the situation. We suggest
some type of revenue return to the county on the part of
its greatest landholder, The Forest Service.8
The Politics of National Forests
The U.S. Forest Service itself has at different times taken
different positions on the effect its policies have on local counties. Its usual position is that the "25% Fund" payments are a
tremendous benefit to local governments. Their public relations
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Colonialism in Modern America
campaign to convince local, state, and national political figures
has been so effective that a preliminary draft of The Last Stand:
The Nader Study Group Report on the Forest Service stated:
They [local residents] also receive generous public service
benefits from National Forest timber cutting. To compensate counties containing National Forest land for their
small amount of taxable property, the federal government pays them 25 percent of the receipts from National
Forest timber sales within their bounds to support construction of public schools and roads.^
To term the token payments which the Forest Service makes to
local counties "generous public service benefits" is, to say the
least, not particularly accurate (the statement has been deleted
from the final report); but the example does show the tremendous extent to which Forest Service public relations has been
effective.
At other times, the Forest Service has downplayed the
"25% Fund" and emphasized other benefits from National
Forests. One Forest Service spokesperson has stated:
Without any doubt, the many other contributions to the
economic development of the Appalachian Region made
by the National Forests far outweigh the 25% return to
the counties. It is not practical to place a monetary value
on many of these contributions. I refer to such things as:
-Recreation use plus hunting and fishing. . . .In a
National Survey of Fishing and Hunting by the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1965, they
placed an economic value on a fishing man-day of
$5.60 and a hunting man-day of $6.03. It would
be higher today. So, you can see that this item
alone would exceed the value of the 25% fund
which is used only on schools and roads in the
counties having National Forest lands.
--Watershed protection benefitting local areas as
well as down stream flood protection.
-Employment of people maintaining and administering National Forests plus those employed to
harvest timber which we have grown, etc.
-Construction and maintenance of roads and
�The Forest Service and Appalachia
97
bridges which would otherwise have to be maintained by the counties or state. ®
The inaccuracies in this statement are highly misleading. The
"economic value" of fishing and hunting involves money spent at
local stores which is useful, but not to be confused with county
income from taxes which is spent on education, health, and
welfare. Clear cutting on national forest lands has destroyed
many watersheds and increased hazards of flooding. Forest
service employees are paid out of money appropriated from the
Federal budget, which comes from taxes paid by local residents.
No one is "employed" by the Forest Service to harvest timber;
the wood is sold on the stump to woodcutters and timber companies. Most of the timber on national forest lands was not
"grown" by the Forest Service; it was there when the land was
acquired from private landowners. Few of the clearcut areas
in the Appalachians have even been reforested. Nationally, the
Forest Service is 733,000 acres behind on reforesting clearcut
lands.11 As for road maintenance, this year alone the Forest
Service closed 60 miles of roads in the Chattahoochee National
Forest out of a total of 1,392. And the damage done to county
and state roads by overloaded trucks carrying timber from
the national forests is a direct cost to local government and a
hazard and inconvenience to local residents.
The fact is that other benefits do not "outweigh the 25%
return to the counties"; they do not begin to compensate for
the loss of tax revenue. In fact, the Public Land Law Review
Commission in its 1970 report to the President and Congress
concluded:
While benefits are national, the geographical distribution
of the Federal lands makes their burdens regional and
local, and, in general, Federal ownership of public lands
provides no distinguishable benefits to state and local
governments in lieu of the benefits they would receive if
the lands were privately owned.
The Forest Service has also argued on occasion that one
third of the United States is owned by the Federal government
and that it would be impossible to make payments for all these
lands. But there is a difference between many of the western
national forests which have always been public lands and the
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Colonialism in Modern America
national forests in Appalachia, which have been bought up since
the passage of the Weeks Act in 1911. Before 1911, none of the
land now in the Appalachian national forests was owned by the
Federal government; all of it was owned privately and was subject to local property taxes. The acquisition over the past 62
years of so much Appalachian land by the Forest Service has
meant an increasing destruction of local tax digests, especially
in those 37 Appalachian counties where between 20 percent
and 61 percent of the land has passed into Federal hands.
It is clear that the national forests are not contributing
nearly as much as the Forest Service claims to the economic
growth of the counties where they are located. The evidence
suggests that the opposite is true. The loss of tax revenue has
produced a scarcity of public services, including education and
health care. The control of so much land by the government has
artificially driven prices up for mountain land. Because of the
demands for summer homes, recreational development, and land
speculation, farming is no longer economically possible in many
places. These conditions have helped encourage many young
people to leave the area and have prevented many who have left
from coming back. Whatever benefits the Appalachian national
forests provide to the nation as a whole, for the residents of
mountain counties they mean higher taxes and decreased public
services. In effect, the people of Appalachia are being taxed to
provide recreation and relaxation for people from other wealthier
areas. No one can deny that there is a national need for recreation; but that does not make it right that mountain people
should have their taxes raised and their public services cut back
so that well-to-do tourists can enjoy themselves at no cost.
There are several Federal precedents which strongly suggest
that the Forest Service's way of doing business in Appalachia is
neither desirable nor necessary. A startling comparison comes
when we contrast payments made to counties by the Forest
Service with those made by the Tennessee Valley Authority
(TVA). In 1972, for example, TVA paid $252,766 to Polk
County, Tennessee, in lieu of taxes on the 3,418 acres it owns in
the county—$66.05 an acre. The Forest Service paid the county
$22,612 for 150,870 acres-15 cents an acre. To put it a little
differently, the Forest Service owns 44 times as much land in
Polk County as TVA; but TVA paid the county 11 times as
much!
�The Forest Service and Appalachia
99
TVA's responsibility to counties where it has operations,
however, is very different from the Forest Service. The Tennessee Valley Authority Act provides:
TVA's payments to the respective states shall not be less
than the higher of (1) the average of state, county, municipal and district property tax levied by them on purchased power property and on the portion of TVA land
allocated for power use for the last two years such properly was in private ownership or (2) $10,000. TVA pays
directly to counties amounts equivalent to the former
county and district taxes derived from power properties
purchased as such by TVA and from reservoir lands
allocable to power. . . .These direct payments to counties
fully replace tax losses which result from the transfer of
such properties to public ownership [ed. emphasis] .1*
The TVA Act is not the only Federal precedent for the
principle of full income replacement to counties. Public Law
81-874, commonly known as the "impacted areas" program,
provides under Section 2, "Reduction in Local Revenue by Reason of Acquisition of Real Property by the United States":
A school district may be eligible if (1) the property was
acquired by transfer and not by exchange since 1938;
(2) the assessed valuation of such property represents 10%
or more of the assessed valuation of all realty in the district at time or times of transfer; and (3) the acquisition
has imposed on the school district a substantial and continuing financial burden. Maximum entitlement is the
product of the applicant's current expense tax rate
applied to the estimated assessed valuation of the Federal
property (exclusive of improvements since transfer
date).14
In fiscal 1969, a total of 106 school districts in the United States
received Federal tax replacement payments under this provision.
The total paid to these districts was over $3Vz million.
It is obvious that it is way past time for the U.S. Government and the Forest Service to begin full compensation to
Appalachian counties for tax losses caused by national forest
holdings and perhaps to compensate these counties for their
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losses in past years as well. This has been recognized by two recent studies. The Last Stand: The Nader Study Group Report
on the U.S. Forest Service states as one of its final recommendations:
To reduce local pressure on the Forest Service and members of Congress to increase National Forest timber
cutting, Congress should abolish the practice of returning
25 percent of timber sales receipts to the counties in
which the timber is cut. It should replace these payments
with the more equitable and dependable federal aid to
impacted areas (now granted to states containing nontaxable Defense Department property) to all counties
embracing National Forest land, regardless of the amount
of timber cutting.* ^
A much stronger statement has been made by the Public
Land Law Review Commission. In its official report, One Third
of the Nation's Land, the Commission states:
The legislative history of the acts providing for the sharing
of receipts from forest products and oil and gas, as well as
other leasable minerals, clearly reflects that the payments
to the states and local governments were intended as compensation for the fact that the lands in question would no
longer be available for private ownership and property
taxation. . . .Since the ad valorem tax system has been
the foundation for the financing of programs providing
municipal services, the Commission believes that all
landowners must share in payment for these services.
This should not exclude the Federal government as landowner, except where the federally owned land is being
used for facilities, such as in the case of post offices, to
furnish services to all the people throughout the country
. . . .If the national interest dictates that lands should be
retained in Federal ownership, it is the obligation of the
United States to make certain that the burden of that
policy is spread among all the people of the United
States and is not borne only by those states and governments in whose area the land is located. Therefore, the
Federal Government should make payments to compensate state and local governments for the tax immunity of
Federal lands. . . .We find further that any attempt to tie
�The Forest Service and Appalachia
101
payments to states and local governments to receipts
generated from the sale or use of public lands or their
resources causes an undue emphasis to be given in program planning to the receipts that may be generated. "
There are a number of other Forest Service practices which
often conflict with local needs. One is the charging of fees to
use recreational areas in the national forests. These fees range
from $1.00 to $3.00 a day, or $10.00 for a "Golden Eagle"
passport which allows entry to certain areas for a year. These
fees may seem reasonable to tourists, but they are out of reach
for most poor families. As a result, local residents are often
not able to afford recreational facilities built by the Forest
Service in their own counties. One North Georgia mountaineer,
commenting on the Forest Service's plan to build campsites in
the Cohutta Wildlife Refuge, one of the few wilderness areas left
in the Eastern United States, said:
There's a lot of old mountain people beside me who
aren't going to take kindly to the idea of getting a permit
to go onto land they call home.*'
Many Southern mountain residents are also concerned by
the rate at which the Forest Service is still acquiring land. A recent example of this process occurred in 1971 in Bland County,
Virginia, in the Jefferson National Forest. One Virginia resident
and forestry student who has been in close touch with the situation wrote:
Consolidation Coal Company owned 46,000 acres of land
in the county, containing relatively small amounts of
semi-anthracite coal. Consol sold the land (finding the
coal too poor to be profitably mined), amounting to one
fifth of the county, to the U.S. Forest Service, which
has incorporated it into the Jefferson National Forest.
Combined with the county land already controlled by
the Forest Service, it will put nearly a quarter of the
county's real estate under government ownership.
Large opposition to the land sale was expressed by Bland
County residents. By the government owning one-quarter
of the county, local revenues will be severely hurt. When
Consolidation Coal owned the land last year, the com-
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Colonialism in Modern America
pany, a subsidiary of Continental Oil, paid just 14 cents
an acre in taxes, amounting to a total of $6,800.
The Forest Service pays no taxes, but will pay a small
compensation of $3,600—or just eight cents an acre. The
$3,200 loss, opponents say, could destroy the Bland
County budget, which has had severe fiscal problems for
some time.
Most of the biggest supporters of the land sale were nonresidents and outside agencies, including various sportsmen^ clubs. The Bland County Board of Supervisors
voted against the land deal twice last year. But a new
Board of Supervisors has now voted in favor of the sale,
yielding to the heavy pressure by outside groups.
So now the land is destined for tourist and recreational
development by the Forest Service. Just how this will
benefit the residencts of Bland County, only time will
tell.18
Appalachian working people are also critical of the ways in
which timber sales are conducted. These sales are carried out by
sealed bid. However, the Forest Service requires the posting of a
cash "bid bond" with each bid. On a recent sale in which the
minimum bid permitted was $2,297, the required bid bond was
$300, a hard amount for self-employed woodcutters to come by.
"Performance bonds," sometimes in the total amount of the contract price, are also required. These rules have the effect of
making it extremely difficult for the small independent woodcutter to bid successfully on Forest Service timber. The contracts thus go more often than not to the large timber corporations.
Of the Forest Service practices, none is more deeply resented than their use of condemnation proceedings to acquire
homes and farms for national forests. Because of past abuses
of its condemnation powers, the Forest Service's power to condemn land for National Forests was removed by Congress in
1964. This power is retained, however, in the case of national
recreation areas. The pending Eastern Omnibus Wilderness Act
(S.316) would restore condemnation powers to the Forest
Service in the proposed Eastern Wilderness areas. One develop-
�The Forest Service and Appalachia
103
ing national recreation area is located in the Jefferson National
Forest in Southwest Virginia. One organizer who has been
working with local residents to save their homes and farms from
condemnation has written:
The Mt, Rogers National Recreation Area, as defined by
Congress in 1966, covers 154,000 acres in five counties
of southwest Virginia. These counties are: Washington,
Smyth, Gray son, Carroll and Wythe. The National
Recreation Area (the Forest Service's equivalent to a National Park) is to be developed to accommodate, by present plans, an estimated five million tourists a year by
1990. To do this, the Forest Service has begun acquiring
lands for campgrounds, livery stables, lakes, ski slopes and
other recreation facilities. Some of the land has been
openly bought from residents who, according to the
Forest Service, are "willing sellers.'* While the Forest
Service claims that condemnation proceedings are necessary to acquire land efficiently, many residents resent
this practice and point out abuses of it.
The central issue, as many local residents see it, is not
simply whether or not there should be a National Recreation Area, but rather the fact that the people are having
no say in the plans and developments of their communities and homes. ^
This lack of local input into Forest Service planning is a
complaint heard frequently in Appalachian counties where the
national forests are found. Traditionally, the Forest Service has
carried out its plans without consulting local government or
citizens. Lately, in response to public pressure from many
sources, it has taken to holding 'listening posts" at which local
residents are asked to present their opinions. These ' 'listening
posts," however, have generally been held after the Forest
Service had already prepared written plans of action for the areas
in question.
There is also evidence that the hearings are not taken into
serious consideration. At a recent hearing in North Georgia, over
90 percent of the witnesses spoke against Forest Service proposals. These proposals would have included clear-cutting vast
areas of the Cohutta Wildlife Refuge, despite the fact that this
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Colonialism in Modern America
area has been proposed as a Wilderness Area in the Eastern
Omnibus Wilderness Bill. Yet, when a transcript of the hearing
was requested, the Forest Service replied that it did not plan
to transcribe the tape they had made of the hearing. It is difficult to see how a hearing could be a legitimate part of a public
planning process when the only record of it is a tape recording in
a Forest Service office. This type of practice led one county
official to react in a letter to the Forest Service:
After attending your meeting at Etowah on the Hiwassee
Unit, I came away with the feeling that the Forest Service
has already drawn up a tentative plan. If this is the case,
I think in the interest of saving time and effort, the
Forest Service should present their plan and then have
hearings before it is adopted. . . .The U.S. Forest Service
[has] never attempted to work with local government
on future plans for U.S. Forest Service lands within their
political subdivision.
Conclusions
It is evident that Appalachian people are bearing an unfair
share of the cost of maintaining a national forest system and are
getting very few of the benefits. If the national forests in the
Southern mountains are to benefit Appalachians as well as other
Americans, some changes in Forest Service policy must be made.
The following are recommendations which, based on the facts set
out in this study, are necessary to achieve this goal.
(1) The Forest Service should make payments in lieu of
taxes to all counties in Appalachia (and elsewhere) where national forest lands are located. These payments should be equal
to the amount of ad valorem tax these lands would produce if
privately owned.
(2) Until such a system is adopted, all income from the
national forests should be redistributed to the counties in which
these lands are located in proportion to the share which each
county has of the national total. Such a system would provide
each county in Appalachia with national forests approximately
sixteen times its current payment. It would also remedy the
gross inequalities in distribution of national forest revenues
�The Forest Service and Appalachia
105
which now exist among different national forests and states.
The present system is a gross violation of the equal protection
provisions of the U.S. Constitution and should definitely be
challenged in the courts.
(3) To avoid destruction of county economic bases, a limit
should be set on the amount of land the Forest Service is permitted to own in any given county.
(4) Admission to Forest Service recreational areas should
be free to residents of counties where these areas are located.
(5) The Forest Service should be required to hold public
hearings before closing any national forest roads and to show
cause before taking action. Procedures should be established
through which local citizens, without undue difficulty or expense, can stop such proposed Forest Service actions where they
are definitely not in the interest of the local community.
(6) Any Forest Service plans for land acquisition, recreational development, road construction, logging, subcontracting,
mining, land swaps, special use permits, and other uses of the
national forests should be subject to the prior approval of an
elected county committee.
(7) The Forest Service should be absolutely prohibited
from using condemnation proceedings to acquire any owneroccupied farms or homes in national forests, wilderness areas or
national recreation areas. Where such lands have been acquired
by condemnation, they should be returned without cost to the
previous owners.
(8) Timber tracts should be bid off in small enough lots
so that small independent woodcutters can compete. Bid bonds
should be abolished and a different system established to guarantee performance that would not discriminate against individual
woodcutters. It should be required that 50 percent of all national forest timber be sold to independent woodcutters, cooperatives, or small wood companies which are located in the
county where the boundary of timber is located. This will help
reduce abuse of the current bid system by the giant timber corporations.
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Colonialism in Modern America
(9) Where the process of removing national forest timber
damages county or state roads, the Forest Service should be required to pay for their maintenance and repair.
(10) Clearcutting, a process which destroys timber, land
and water resources, should be totally prohibited on national
forest lands.
(11) County and town governments should have the right
to acquire national forest lands through eminent domain proceedings to build public facilities such as schools and hospitals.
The situation as it now exists in the Southern mountains
violates the letter, and certainly the spirit, of equal protection
laws. It is grossly unfair that the financial burden of providing
recreation for the Eastern United States should fall so heavily
on some of the poorest citizens in the country, yet this is exactly
what is happening. It is ridiculous to spend millions for campsites in communities which lack funds for schools, hospitals,
health care, transportation, water systems, sewage disposal, and
housing; yet this is what is happening.
A number of Appalachian writers have suggested that the
Federal government sees Appalachia mainly as a support area for
the Eastern Seaboard, providing coal, minerals, electricity, timber
and recreation to people outside the mountains. It is possible
that in the minds of some economic and political planners, such
as the Forest Service officials who wrote the Guide for Managing
the National Forests in the Appalachians, the Southern mountains exist in the future as one vast Federal holding to be harvested by the coal corporations, the energy conglomerates, the timber and tourist industries. Mountain people are living on top
of some of the greatest natural resources in the United States.
History teaches that when poor and working people stand in the
way of harvesting such resources, they and their interests will
usually be moved aside.
On the other hand, the national forest lands in Appalachia
could become a real resource to mountain people by providing
jobs, land for public facilities, and the revenue for badly needed
service programs. Even more, these lands, which have been
taken from Appalachian people, could some day be returned to
them to live and work on: lands which their grandparents
�The Forest Service and Appalachia
107
settled and cleared and which their children are being forced
to leave.
�108
Colonialism in Modern America
NOTES
*Guide for Managing the National Forests in the Appalachians,
pages 7, 33.
2
Guide, page 8.
$ Guide, pages 7, 8.
^The Atlanta Constitution, May 12, 1971.
*The Principal Laws Relating to the Establishment of the National
Forests and to Other Forest Service Activities, page 45.
"Undated petition beginning "We, the undersigned are against
S.316, H.R. 1758, Wilderness Study Act H.R. 2420 and such Eastern
Wilderness bills. . . .," author's possession.
7
Blue Ridge Summit-Post, Blue Ridge, Georgia, October 11, 1972.
8
Ibid.
^The Last Stand:
Service, pages V-l 3.
The Nader Study Group Report on the Forest
* ^Letter from W. W. Huber, Chief, Division of Information and Education, Southeast Region, U.S. Forest Service, dated January 18, 1971.
ll
The Last Stand, pages III-9.
Third of the Nation's Land: A Report to the President and to
The Congress by the Public Land Law Review Commission, page 238.
13
"TVA Power: Payments in Lieu of Taxes," TVA Information
Office, Knoxville, Tennessee, November, 1972.
�The Forest Service and Appalachia
109
14
"Administration of Public Laws 81-874 and 81-815: Nineteenth
Annual Report of the Commissioner of Education," Office of Education,
U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Washington, D.C.,
June 30, 1969.
15
The Last Stand, pages VI-37.
16
One Third of the Nation's Land, pages 4, 236, 238.
l^U.S. Forest Service "Listening Post" on Cohutta Mountains Unit,
Chatsworth, Georgia, August 1, 1972.
18
Letter from Dave Tice dated January 22, 1973.
1
^Letter from Dave Tice dated February, 1973.
2®The McCaysville Citizen, McCaysville, Georgia, September 23,
1971.
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�114
Colonialism in Modern America
the two most resistant aspects of traditional mountain culture,
the family structure and religion, to see in what ways they resisted or adapted to the process or how they were used as instruments of colonial domination.
Central Appalachia—which is made up of eastern Kentucky,
southern West Virginia, southwestern Virginia and northeast
Tennessee—was the most isolated part of the Southern mountains. Except for a few outposts, the area was not settled until
after the Revolutionary War. Mrs. John C. Campbell describes
the area and its early settlement and characterizes the people
living in the mountains as descendants of colonial English,
Scotch-Irish, and German stock, "the advance guard of the
great migration to the west who were seeking land, liberty,
game."
Many settled and remained in the area from the
pure chance of a ''broken axle" but more stayed from
choice. The population spread back up among creek and
branch, wherever a little bottom land was to be found,
fresh game or new springs of clear water. Traditions
brought from lands across the sea blended with customs
and prejudices bred by the frontier existence and were
maintained during a relatively long period of isolation
following the original settlement. (Campbell 1925, 9-13)
Whether mountain culture should be properly described as a
culture transmitted unchanged from the founders or an adaptive
culture which developed in response to the isolated mountain
conditions, descriptions do convince us that there was in the area
at that time a society and culture different from the mainstream
American way of life and certainly different from that of the
outsiders who came into the mountains with industrialization.
Since the outsider noted peculiarities, emphasized differences,
and described the oddities, it is very hard to find reliable and
clear descriptions of early family structure or religion in the
mountains.
Raines (1924,X) in his book The Land of Saddlebags
states that uwhile the rest of the nation has grown far from our
revolutionary ancestors, the Mountain People have been marooned on an island of mountains, and have remained very much
the same as they were at that time."
�Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia
115
A sociologist visiting the hills of Kentucky in 1898 (Vincent
1898) describes a society based upon hunting and subsistence
agriculture and a social organization based upon kinship. There
were isolated mountain families living up coves and hollows with
strong ties of kinship built upon three or more generations of
intermarriage. Brown (1952) describes the traditional mountain family structure as a ' 'family group/' conjugal families living
in family kin groups which formed small neighborhoods. The
kin relations were extensive and complex, and neighborhoods
acted as mutual aid societies. The groups were isolated, stable,
self-sustaining, localized groups.
Although the family was described as strongly patriarchal
with a highly differentiated division of labor between men and
women, there were many family cooperative activities in work,
recreation, and visiting. Men and women had to substitute for
each other; and both needed to be strong, resourceful, and selfsufficient. Women's work was an integral part of the total operation, and although her work was hard, it was also hard for
everyone in the family. There was an equalitarian simplicity in
the terms used by husband and wife: "the woman" and "the
man"; or "my woman" and "my man."
It was a life which stressed both independence and cooperation. The family and also the individuals had to be self-sufficient and independent and must not depend on others for help;
one must be prepared to manage somehow by himself, but when
he could, he helped. To be a good neighbor on a friendly, equal
basis, "accommodating," was very important. Visitors to the
mountain home frequently remarked on the lavish hospitality,
generosity, uncompetitiveness, openness, directness, and simplicity of the mountain people. They were described as free
from self-consciousness, dignified, quiet, reticent, and courteous.
The early church was characterized by writers as separatist,
immersionist, hardshell, strongly Calvinistic, anti-missionary;
the people were literal interpreters of the Bible, rejecting infant
baptism and placing emphasis on experience. Vincent found
theological discussions popular in the family,and he felt these
satisfied the appetite for metaphysics and offered opportunity
for intellectual exercise and discipline (1898, 18).
The church or meeting house served as a gathering place;
�116
Colonialism in Modern America
the monthly or less frequent meetings were an opportunity for
sociability and a time to hear a preacher and have funerals
preached. It served more as an occasional gathering place than an
ongoing organization, although in the ' 'settlements" the church
served through monthly business meetings the function of a civil
court, sanctioning the behavior of the members and disciplining
those who fought with neighbors, abused their brothers, used
rough language, or retailed ardent spirits (Henson 1972). There
was little church machinery; and the mountain values of simplicity, equalitarianism, and democracy were reflected in the
ceremonies of footwashing and laying on of hands. The insistence on untrained ministers who were given special authority
only through the spirit also reflected an antielitest bias in mountain society. Services were informal, congregations could sing
down the preacher, people could wander in and out of services,
but every preacher was given a chance to preach. Rhythm and
eloquence and emotional ecstasy were admired and encouraged
in the preacher. This emotional extravagance has been thought
by some to be contradictory to the portrait of the stolid, impassive, dignified mountain man; but perhaps this unselfconscious ability to display emotion was in keeping with an unsophisticated, straightforward approach to life. Mrs. Condon
(1962, 88) reports that the Presbyterian church grew slowly in
Harlan County because people thought the members were distant, cool, and unfriendly.
Though the area experienced gradual alterations between
its settlement and the turn of the century, the biggest changes for
the area came about 1890 as a result of the railroad, lumbering
and coal mining, and the missionaries. Mrs. Campbell writes that
at the turn of the century "suddenly the retarded frontier was
rediscovered by two classes: those who saw the natural resources
and sought them regardless of the interests of the natural owners;
and those who with missionary zeal rushed in to educate and
reform" (1925, 9). Mrs. Campbell, herself one of the missionaries, points to the "natural" alliance of exploiters and missionaries who came together to the hills.
John Fox, Jr., a writer of romantic novels and a member of
a coal-developing family which came into the mountains at the
turn of the century, supports this natural alliance:
The railroad comes first as an element of civiliza-
�Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia
117
tion, but unless the church and the school in the ratio of
several schools to each church quickly follow, the railroad
does the mountaineer little else than great harm. Even
with the aid of these three, the standards of conduct of
the outer world are reared slowly. A painful process of
evolution has been the history of every little mountaintown that survived the remarkable mushroom growth
which, within the year of 1889-90, ran from Pennsylvania
to Alabama along both bases of the Cumberland. (1901,
209-10)
The process of colonization as it occurred in the Central
Appalachians generally followed these stages:
1.
Gaining entry: invasion and securing of the area or
resources
2.
Establishment of control: removal of opposition and
resistance to prevent expulsion of invaders
3.
Education and conversion of the natives: change the
values and social system of the colonized
4.
Maintenance of control:
tion
political and social domina-
THE FIRST STAGE: Gaining Entry
The invasion was well planned and well executed almost before the natives knew what had happened. A well-trained force
of lawyers, surveyors, geologists, and land buyers came into the
mountains and millions of acres of mineral and virgin timber
lands passed into the hands of development companies at from
30 cents to one dollar an acre. Even Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
just out of Harvard, abstracted titles and surveys in Harlan
County for his uncle, Warren Delano (Condon 1962). Vanderbilts, Fishes, and other big financiers from the Northeast visited
the mountains to help secure mineral rights and building rights
and make arrangements for the railroads. Thomas Nelson Page
of Richmond, Virginia, in a speech to the Daughters of the
American Revolution in 1910 urging them to give money for
missionaries in the mountains, describes the coming of the
�118
Colonialism in Modern America
exploiters:
When the outer world has reached them, it has
mainly been to trade upon their ignorance and rob them
of what should have been their wealth. There are lands
which were bought of them for a few dollas an acre,
which are bonded now as many thousands, and the justification for such legalized robbery at the hands of predatory wealth is that which is as old as Cyrus—that is was of
more use to the taker than to the lawful holder. It is
small wonder that they are suspicious as to the advances
of civilization where the advance couriers are the land
agent and the coal prospector—little wonder that, when
evictors come under color of ancient patents to drive
them from the lands which their fathers have held for
generations, they should break out in feuds and violences. (66-67)
In the early days there were few to criticize the methods.
In 1924 Raines describes the situation as follows:
The mountain people are suffering from the ruthless
exploitation of large financial interests. These foreign
juggernauts may have secured their coal and timber lands
for a song, but taking money from those that have no
special use for it is not a fatal damage. The deadly sin is
the thrusting of a ferocious and devouring social system
upon an unprepared and defenseless people. (236)
Others interpreted the invasion as something akin to manifest destiny: "It is a region of vast resources that has been
blocked out of the wild by a great people and held in trust, as it
were, for the modern capitalist to develop and utilize. Its people
are beginning to see the dawn of a new day" (MLW, 1-1-1925,
2-3).
In the process of entry, both the missionaries and the industrialists were amazed by what they found. They sought to understand and to categorize the mountain people and culture. Letters
were sent home, reports were sent to church boards, and newspaper articles were written about the development. Picturesque
stories appeared in magazines. Some were horrified at the
illiteracy, the lack of schools and medical facilities, and the
�Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia
119
limited diet; they were appalled by the lack of roads, the isolation, the lack of conveniences, and the hard life of the women;
they were intrigued by the songs, beautiful weaving, quaint
language, marriage and funeral customs, and unorganized church
meetings; they were admiring of their courage, honesty, directness, and lack of sophistication. But always the mountain people
were compared with "back home": the educated and professional middle-class, the urban homes and situations from which
they came.
The biography of one of the early missionaries, Rev. Murdoch of Buckhorn, relates his first trip home after seeing the
mountains (May 1946):
His heart and mind bursting with things to tell his
Brooklyn friends. They were jotted down on a folded
piece of paper. A kind of vivid moving picture of the
crowded months since he left them. There was the
mother who watched over her son to keep him from using
profanity while shoeing his horse; children chewing tobacco, other children going barefooted in the snow; the rich
veins of coal laid bare along the creeks, destitute families
in rickety cabins, burial without ministers, whole districts without schools, the silent forest at the head of
Squabble Creek, the flowers and birds along the trails,
the character sketches of some of the people he had met
in his travels.
Such terms as arrested development, retarded frontier,
remnant, a distinct relic, a peculiar people, survivals, ancestors,
backward, and limited outlook were commonly used. Mrs.
Campbell writes that a conventional world was charmed with
its picturesqueness and startled by its illiteracy and disregard for
law. "It could not understand how people could at once be a
feudist and man of integrity and responsibility in his neighborhood. How they could be illiterate, yet have a real and deep
culture. Personal experiences led to undiscriminating generalizations on the 'finest of Anglo-Saxon blood' and the 'off-shoots
of degenerate refugees and criminals/ No people have ever
played more completely the mixed role of villain and neglected
hero in the public eye" (1925).
John Fox, Jr. played a large part in stereotyping the moun-
�120
Colonialism in Modern America
tain culture for the outside world and justifying the imposition
of power and control over a native people. He, like most of the
newcomers, was both admiring and denigrating. He describes the
Southern mountaineer as truthful, honest, courageous, hospitable, peaceable, and a man of law—yet known for his moonshining, his land-thieving, and his feuds. But he goes on to blame
the Civil War, the revenue service, and the "system of land laws
that sometimes makes it necessary for the mountaineer of Kentucky and Virginia to practically steal his own home" for making
the mountaineer a "criminal" (1901, 209). The invasion brought
in the outsider and opened up the mountain culture to view,
and the mountaineer became aware of himself as different.
He began to compare himself with the newcomer and learned to
judge himself as inferior.
Jean Ritchie (1955) describes the development of the
schools and its effect on her family:
The settlement schools and the railroad began to
bring the ways of the world to us in a kind of steady
trickle. . . .The settlement schools [brought] in levelcountry people who settled among us and whose ways of
doing things, whose very speech and actions, helped us to
see that there was a different kind of life than the hard
one we knew. (pp. 225ff.)
An editorial in Mountain Life and Work (April 1925) criticizes "unauthorized characterization by professional writers and
unscientific reformers which built up among the mountaineers
what the psychologists call an inferiority complex. It has found
expression in the humble submission to outside invasion and in
the eager acceptance of small favors and paltry benevolences."
ESTABLISHMENT OF CONTROL
John Fox describes, either naively or arrogantly, the process whereby the newcomer gained control and subdued the
native population. In an article entitled "Civilizing the Cumberland" (1901,209ff.), he describes how in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, the "sternest ideals of good order and law were set up and
maintained with Winchester, pistol, policeman's billy, and whistle
through a unique experiment in civilization." A volunteer police
�Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia
121
guard, a private army, manned by the young newcomers, was
organized. Fox describes it as a police force of gentlemen:
"aristocrats and pultocrats," American and British, lawyers,
bankers, real-estate brokers, newspaper men, civil and mining
engineers, geologists, speculators and several men of leisure.
All were college graduates (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, University of Virginia) "who had come into the mountains of Virginia
to make their fortunes from iron, coal and law." They were
first organized to put down a strike of mountain workers at
a newly established brick plant in the Gap. Fox then relates that
they became precision troops who guarded jails against mobs,
cracked toughs over the head with billies, lugged them to the
calaboose, and appeared as witnesses against them in court the
next morning. They turned a mountain crossroads town where
mountain boys frolicked and fought into a quiet, respectable
outpost of high society.
Since the developers wrote most of the history, there are
few accounts of native opposition in the record. John Fox does
mention that there was considerable hostility and dislike for the
newcomers, and he mentions that fighting clans tried to make the
"furriners" leave the county. He says that the strike of mountain workers became a confrontation between the newcomers
and the mountaineers, and the opposition of the local people
was readily discouraged by the newly formed guard. He relates
how the newcomers were harassed, the guard mocked by the
mountain "toughs," and the townspeople frightened and inconvenienced by the "wild jayhawkers from old Kanetuck" who
were accustomed to coming to the Gap to sow wild oats and
fight with the boys from Wise and Lee counties. He also reports that with the organization of the guard and the establishment of town ordinances which outlawed drinking, shooting,
and yelling, all this was changed and mountain people were
practically prevented from entering town (except as "meek
sheep"). "It arrayed the town people against the country folk. . .
but with each element of disorder there was a climax of incidents
that established the recognized authority of the guard."
The hanging of a local bad man, Talton Hall, became a
ceremonial display of power, thereby showing the legal conquest
of the mountains through a confrontation with and defeat of the
family-clan system. "Never had a criminal met death at the
hands of the law in that region." The badman was a Kentucky
�122
Colonialism in Modern America
feudsman and his clan was there to rescue him from the gallows.
The guard won, and Fox points out that it showed "that a new
power had come in the little band of 'furriners,' high-spirited,
adventurous and well born, who had taken matters into their
own hands, and subdued local lawlessness" (p. 25). The guard
extended its "benign influence" throughout the area, and other
boom towns formed similar organizations. After that, the
natives, "the easy-going, tolerant good people, caught the fever
for law and order." This early show of force and organization
of political control made it possible in later years for the owneroperators to rely on the local authorities to protect their interests and maintain the needed law and order. After that,
natives did most of the policing, and not until the unionization
of the mines did the outsiders again have to take up guns to protect their interests.
The establishment of control may not have been quite as
rapid or efficient in other parts of the mountains, but the pattern
was much the same. The technological superiority of the newcomers made conquest inevitable. The shrewd manipulation of
the machinery of law made the newcomer the supporter of law
and order while the native became an outlaw. Since the newcomer wrote the history, the colonizer is "adventuresome"
while the native is "tough."
Raines was to write later: "The Mountain Man that attempts to redress the injustice of the law by using the rifle is no
more guilty in his lawlessness than is the millionaire corporation
that uses shrewd lawyers instead of rifles" (1924, 144).
EDUCATION AND CONVERSION OF THE NATIVES
The role of the missionaries and educators was an important one: to make legitimate the exploitation, to eliminate
some of the worst abuses, and to educate and change values so
that the people would accept the new ways. John Fox recounts
another incident of resistance to the newcomers and the use of
religion to win over the natives. He reports that when the first
printing press was taken to a certain mountain town in 1882, a
deputation of citizens met it three miles from town and swore
that it should go no farther. An old preacher mounted the
wagon and drove it into town.
�Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia
123
There are other reports of resistance to the missionaries,
and some ministers were run out of communities and their
churches burned. The preachers and church boards soon found
that women were more welcome, especially if they had any skills
such as teaching or nursing, for the mountain people were eager
to acquire teachers and health workers who could most effectively reach the people. A former missionary reported that women
were sent in to "pave the way" for the ministers. She rode
horseback all over eastern Kentucky without fear of any harm,
whereas the preachers would be run out. She started schools
and clinics, but she knew that she was really there to pave the
way for the preacher to save souls.
In a report in 1915 of the Conference of Southern Mountain Workers (an inquiry into their needs, and the qualifications
desired in church, educational, and social service workers in the
mountain country), one churchman writes:
I place first [in needs] academic schools rather
than Sunday schools for the reason that the former have
the stronger appeal and are less liable to sectarian objections and denominational opposition. In this kind of
school it is possible to successfully mold the character of
the young and to prepare them for more efficient lifework. Through the young, it reaches out into the home
and social environment of the parents. Next in importance, I place the Sunday school. It is a more plastic and
adaptable agency for reaching the young and adult mountaineer than church services. Its approach is more immediate and acceptable. Well organized and tactfully conducted, the Sunday school's religious and social enterprises can come in closer touch with the homelife and
social habits of children and parents, (p. 11)
Jean Ritchie relates the story of the arrival of a strange
woman into Hazard in 1895, driving a wagon and traveling ahead
of the railroad:
Folks couldn't rightly make out why she had come
all that weary way up into Perry County; she had no
people here that anyone could see. . .she was friendly,
"nice-spoken," "a little bit nosey," "visited nearly every
family," "stayed the night," "would pitch in and help,"
�124
Colonialism in Modern America
and sometimes she'd come right out and rail at them over
doing something a wrong way or a hard way and show
them a better way. Miss Pettit had such a way about her
that she got by with it.
After several years of summer visiting, Miss Pettit returned
with tents and other women and started teaching school. They
held classes on how to cook, sew, mend, darn, and take care of
sick folks. They read the Bible and talked about the evils of
drink. The Women, as they were called, developed both Hindman and Pine Mountain Settlement schools.
Jean Ritchie relates a story about her grandfather which
was told by the Women and published in books describing the
development of the settlement school. It is a story which has its
counterpart in other parts of the mountains and takes on the
nature of a legitimizing myth. It relates how a mountain man
came to support the Women and their school and to claim them
as saviours for his people. He walked long distances across the
mountain; and he said: "I growed up ignorant and mean; my
offspring was wuss; my grands is wusser, squandering their
time drinking and shooting; and what my greats will be if something hain't done to stop the meanness of their maneuvers, God
only knows. Women, I am persuaded you air the ones I have
looked for all my lifetime. Come over on Troublesome, Women,
and do for us what you air a-doin' here" (p. 227).
Another missionary, Alice Lloyd, from Boston, came to a
Presbyterian Mission, Hope Cottage, on Troublesome Creek.
Another old mountain man, Abisha Johnson, went to Hope
Cottage and begged Alice Lloyd to teach his children to live "not
liken to the hog but unliken the hog" and gave her 150 acres
for a school on Caney Creek.
Many other women made similar treks. Deaconess Binns
of the Episcopal Church came to Nora, Virginia, on the first
train that ran on the line to teach in the schools and start Sunday
schools. In 1905 an Englishwoman, Miss Toddy Collins, who became known as the Angel of Happy Hollow, walked across Big
Black Mountain from Kentucky to Roda, Virginia, a mining
camp, to begin a church and a school, preach funerals, make
coffins, and mother the sick. The Women were usually welcomed by the coal operators who provided houses and buildings
�Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia
125
for churches and schools.
An Iowa minister came to Beverly, Kentucky, which he
described as u the wildest part of the Cumberlands." Following
the gleam "to this neglected place where lawlessness and ignorance reigned," he built schools and churches and became known
as the Shepherd of Red Bird Mission (MLW, January 1929, 17).
The missionaries were sincere and dedicated to educating
mountain people, nursing the sick, caring for orphaned children,
and assisting families in many ways. They also had a profound
effect upon family life. Jean Ritchie reports that families moved
closer to the settlements to be able to send their children to the
schools. The Women made a great impression on the people
with their stylish clothes, the pretty furniture, and the nice way
they talked. Jean Ritchie and her sisters were impressed: "What
if I could grow up to be like that. . . .It was like the whole world
was opening up like a blossom" (pp. 230-231).
One story is typical of how a community sought their help:
"At the request of the community, who were asked in a public
meeting to vote on it, a church famous for its high standards was
induced to begin work there. It sent a well-trained, consecrated
woman as full-time religious worker. A congregation was organized and a school with several teachers. Every year a fresh
crop of young people go out from the community to the mission schools to train themselves for worthwhile service" (MLW,
April 1929, 13).
The missionary and settlement schools were successful in
educating a whole generation of teachers and middle-class leaders
for the mountains. In a brochure about Konnarock Training
School in Virginia, Mr. Kenneth Killinger says: "These schools
lead and train youth in Christian womanhood and manhood, developing Christian leaders who will ultimately raise the spiritual,
social, educational, cultural, and economic standards of the
mountain people." The training at some of the schools was so
successful that an educated native, an extension worker for the
University of Kentucky, could look back at his people and state
that through Junior Club work he was finding that what was
really wrong was "laziness or we may call it, lack of industry"
(MLW, July 1925).
�126
Colonialism in Modem America
The missionaries worked on two levels, which insured their
influence in the development of the education, health, and social
service systems. First, they came as direct representatives of the
church and started a denominational church school, or they
started Christian schools of no particular denomination in order
to avoid direct conflict with local preachers.
Second, the missionaries would work in the already existing
school system for no pay, as did Deaconess Binns of Nora, Virginia. Deaconess Binns worked for the school board for 35 years
for a dollar a year. Thus, her efforts to start a Sunday school
and various recreational programs for children met with community approval. It was through this method that an Episcopal
church was started and maintained until her death in 1968. All
the schools and missions offered various other services besides
the rudiments of education. People in the communities quickly
learned that they could go to these missions to receive health
care and free used clothing and to leave orphaned children, etc.
These and other services had been taken care of in the past by
the family and community. Now, missionaries with much better
facilities were able to "show-up" the meager efforts of the past.
In their eagerness to be accepted by the community, many missionaries were overgiving, which placed people in dependency
relationships, since missionary help was the only alternative to
the hard life of the past.
There was another side to the training. The mountaineer
became overwhelmed and ashamed of his culture. Fox was to
relate that as religious and educational agencies work on the
mountaineer "he is cowed by the superior numbers, superior
intelligence of the incomer and he seems to lose his sturdy selfrespect" (p. 50).
Raines reports that more than 200 schools, orphanages,
academies, and colleges brought in by church boards had been
established by 1924 (pp. 176-77). He points out that most were
boarding schools which provided greater opportunity to mold
the habits and thoughts. The schools included household and
garden chores, religious training, and constant supervision. He
describes the curriculum in what he calls the "brought-on, nonindigenous schools."
Most of the cultural people coming into the moun-
�Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia
127
tains to teach unconsciously use the same methods and
the same materials to which they were themselves accustomed. . .which are poorly adapted to the super-rural
conditions in the mountain area. They either urge the
mountain pupil away from the mountains or overwhelm
him with hopeless discouragement. In either case, they
unfit him to remain at home. (p. 181)
It was these schools which developed a dual society where
children had one relationship and identity at home and one at
school. The schools, books, and teachers represented another
world, another history, and another literature. Some of the
teachers attempted to preserve certain aspects of mountain culture such as crafts and music. Jean Ritchie reports that "if it
hadn't been for the settlement schools, many of the old mountain songs would have died out when the ways of the world came
in on us. But the Women loved our music and plays so that they
became a regular part of the life around the two schools" (Pine
Mountain and Hindman, 231).
Other teachers, however, found no singing and a complete
lack of suitable good songs in the mountains (MLW, July 1925,
3). One teacher found children singing "I've Been Working on
the Railroad/' an "obviously unchildish song," and only two out
of 23 students knew "Annie Laurie." This teacher brought in a
progressive music series and promoted such operettas as "The
Windmill of Holland" and "The Quest of the Pink Parasol."
Such denials of mountain culture made native children ashamed
of their heritage.
Churches and missionaries gave some support to certain
harmless aspects of native culture. This fact served to soften the
impact and ameliorate some of the abuses of the system, the
denigration of mountain culture, and the development of feelings of inferiority by mountain people. The churches and
schools, however, taught the values of organization, planning,
hard work, and thrift. They made the industrial process legitimate by blaming the ills of the system on the mountaineer himself. He must learn to be more "cagey" (not so gullible and
taken in by the land sharks); he must learn to be more thrifty
and hard-working, more respectful and cooperative with the mine
operators. Although some of the missionaries saw clearly the exploitation, they still had great faith in progress and the benefits
�128
Colonialism in Modern America
of industrialization.
The superintendent of mountain work of the Presbyterian
Church wrote in MLW, January 1929, of the tremendous multiplication of industries, some of them of gigantic scale and from
alien sections and nations. He saw a need for the states to provide safeguards against the exploitation of their population, for
"only as church and state move hand in hand will industrialization become an unqualified blessing."
Some were more critical. Perry Davidson, writing in 1926
in MLW, says:
Coal, the chief material wealth of the section, is
now owned by outside capital. It is doubtful if any of
the profits accruing from the exploitation of this natural
wealth will be reinvested in the welfare of the mountain
people. No great agricultural prosperity is to be hoped
for. The timber is gone. This narrows prospects, but
let's not despair.
And this is his solution. Maybe there is oil below
the coal, and if it is struck the native will not let the
"furriner" outwit him next time. (January 1926, 10)
In an industrial round table of the Conference of Southern
Mountain Workers in 1926, the group agreed that the industrializing of the mountain resources had been deadening to the constructive instincts and had inhibited the forming of habits of
thrift and a feeling for conservation. This group hoped to obtain the cooperation of the heads of companies in working out
remedial programs. The consensus was that the employers have
hearts and that they vaguely realize the evils of their industrial
system but do not know what to do about it. The feeling was
that if they were approached in the right way they would welcome counteractive influence.
Another Episcopal missionary, who earlier worked among
the Indians of Canada before coming to his mountain post,
worried about the fact that mining was not constructive and that
recklessness took the place of thrift, the miner did not learn to
save. "While the accumulation of money is neither the most
desirable thing or the only desirable thing, it is a good indication
�Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia
129
of a man's habits, and a man who tries to save a little can be depended upon to fight temptation against slackness of life and
conduct7' (MLW, January 1926, 22).
Some few missionaries thought the church should be more
vigorous in warning the mountain people of the danger of large
corporations and also in preserving parts of the native culture.
One missionary who came as early as 1876 wrote with appreciation about the mountain people:
They need the inspiration of the outside world
without its greed and corruption. . . .they are closer to an
original type of American manhood than any other section of our country. They should not be changed in their
fundamental characteristics. . .they need to be warned of
the danger of disposing of their large mountain holdings
for a song. Corporations and trusts are a constant menace
. . . .they threaten the mountaineers by transforming them
into a servile class. (An Inquiry, 20)
The missionaries saw the family and church as problems to
be resolved (Tadlock, 3). The superintendent of mountain work
of the Presbyterian church found the native church non-progressive and without any activities other than monthly preaching by
uneducated ministers with an emphasis on doctrine unrelated to
life. "But industrialism has brought its nucleus of Christian
people, pastors, evangelists, church and independent schools
which are centers of religious progress. . .with modern church
programs, efficient pastoral leadership (MLW, January 1929,
20-23).
Even those ministers who admired the primitive, simple,
real worship found the lack of organization of the churches a
drawback; services were not regular enough and preachers were
ineffective and inefficient. Here again, the outsider judged the
family and churches as needing to be better organized—or disrupted—if the native was to be fully integrated and assimilated
into modern society.
The missionaries formed themselves into an organization
called the Conference of Southern Mountain Workers which began publication of a magazine Mountain Life and Work. In the
first issue (April 1925, Vol. 1-1) a statement of philosophy, A
�130
Colonialism in Modern America
Program for the Mountains, was included. It summarizes well
their attitudes and programs:
First the program for the development of mountain
resources by mountain people: . . . .Northern and Eastern
artisans and capitalists are our friends and we invite them
among us but we must not permit them to crowd us out
and take away our heritage and birthright. There is no
insinuation that this heritage and birthright are being dishonestly taken from us. They are simply slipping from
our hands because of our inability to hold them. We can
hold them only through education, skill and efficiency.
These three acquirements must become our possession
if we would develop the mountain resources.
The program for "The perpetuation of Mountain
Home Life Along the Lines of Our Own Best Traditions"
emphasized the development of God-fearing homes where
education is encouraged and love reigns; homes wisely
planned. . . .the creation of beauty. . . .building upright
character. . . .conveniences to relieve the drudgery of wife
and mother. . .the precepts and examples of law abiding
citizens are held in reverence and everything derogatory
to peace and order and neighborly good will is discouraged.
In the program for "A Religion that Functions
Actively in the Life of the People" churches should work
at a common task and jealousies and competitions should
be forgotten. The churches should promote unselfish
devotion to the welfare of neighbors and the cause of
Christ. There was a need for a religion felt in politics and
business and to motivate the civic life of people. . . .patriotic enforcement of law by ballot box and community
backing of public officials. . . .election of God-fearing,
country-loving officers who will do their duty. Training
the youth that bravery and heroism are not expressed
by intimidation, revenge and killing, (pp. 20-21)
Throughout the program, the emphasis is on the need for
education, skills, efficiency, planning, law and order, material
conveniences, fear of God and a sense of duty, all very helpful
values for the new society.
�Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia
131
THE CHURCH AND FAMILY RESISTS
Both the family and church became defensive and reverted
inward in order to protect members from the sudden influence
which came with the development of industrialization. Some of
the characteristics and "problems" ascribed to children and
families today by psychiatrists, educators, and social workers can
possibly be traced to this process whereby the family tries to
preserve traditional mountain culture and resist or adapt to the
colonization process.
In outline one can point to the following reactions and ways
through which the family system has resisted colonization:
1.
The family and kinship group became a refuge for its
members.
2.
The family became more resistant to certain changes
and developed sabotage techniques.
3.
Used as a refuge, the family resulted in overprotection
of children.
4.
The family and family groups in neighborhoods became defenseive, exclusive, and closed.
5.
The family and family groups became the center for
"underground" mountain culture.
6.
The family and family groups encouraged biculturalism.
Each of these reactions will be discussed briefly. Some of these
conclusions can be documented from other reports and studies
of family and children in the mountains, but many of these remarks are highly impressionistic observations based on our experience growing up, being educated, teaching, living, and working in the area.
1. The family becomes a refuge. In studying the families
in the Southern Appalachians and Appalachians in the cities,
researchers have continued to find the society familistic, kinship
ties strong and viable, loyalties to kin taking precedence over
�132
Colonialism in Modern America
"civic" responsibilities, kin groups acting to ease migration
problem and to provide a home base for the returning migrant
(Brown 1971; Ford 1965; Pearsall 1959; Coles 1971).
In the coalfields, where there are few alternatives for employment, the family offers the only alternative means of support. If one "can't take it" any longer, he will be accepted back
home and cared for until he has the strength to go back into the
mines, locate a new job, or migrate to (or reenter) the city.
Rather than being destroyed by industrialization, the family
and family ties remain or perhaps in some cases become stronger
as the family requires more commitment on the part of members. The Appalachian is expected to be loyal and help members of his family whether he likes them or not.
This family loyalty can also be used against the family.
Industries soon learned to use family loyalties to minimize criticism of industrial operations. One will not endanger a relative's
job or criticize a situation in which a kinsman is involved. Mine
operators, for instance, have learned to hire through families to
find loyal workers; they also hire from a number of families to
cut down on criticism of strip mining within a community.
2. The family becomes resistant to change. Family members restrain their members from taking social action. There is
little revolt or conflict since one is afraid to disrupt the only remaining refuge. A number of persons have commented on the
permissive mountain mother, and some have suggested that she
is afraid to discipline her children for fear of a disruptive conflict. Many school social workers and nurses have commented
on mothers who say they can't make a six-year-old go to school,
eat proper food, or go to the dentist. This has a contradictory
aspect in that the child is taught to rebel against certain institutions such as health and school. The child seems to be trained
by the mother to be "willful," and the mother seems to take
pride in a child who cannot be controlled. This serves to cut
down conflict within the family and also keeps the child at home
as he rejects the institutions.
3. The mother frequently becomes overprotective. She
holds the child close and makes him feel guilty about leaving
home or developing new ideas. Memmi remarks that this is a
problem in other colonial situations. "The soft warmth of clan
�Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalacbia
133
reunions is satisfying and one is afraid to leave it." Looff (1971)
in his book Appalachians Children agrees with Memmi (p. 99)
that the "young remain glued to family which offers warmth and
tenderness and clutches and emasculates him."
4. The family and neighborhoods become more exclusive and closed. Early visitors—including industrialists, missionaries and tourists—found great hospitality, open goodwill,
as well as the beginnings of cautious suspicion. The mountain
people learned to distrust. Semple (p. 610) reports that people
were beginning to resent the coming of "furriners" among them
on the grounds that outsiders came to spy upon them and criticize and "tell-tale" as they put it. A cautiousness toward outsiders has been encouraged in the family. "Listen and don't
talk" is widely used as a protection. One can also put down an
outsider's idea, with, "You are not one of us. You don't understand." This is a form of defensive racism, and the burden of
understanding is placed not upon the Appalachian but upon the
good shepherd in wolf's clothing who desires to "help" mountain
people. This can lead to the family's becoming oversensitive to
criticism, more negative, more unchanging and traditional in approach to problems.
5. The family becomes the bulwark against the loss of
native culture. Memmi points out that what is saved may be
meagre or it may go underground since the colonial falsifies history, extinguishes memories, and devalues native culture. Since
he stresses differences, he is always compared with something
"better"; therefore, the native becomes ashamed of his heritage
and draws less and less from his past, which results in a "present
orientation" according to Pearsall, Weller and Ford. The Appalachian takes on the myth perpetuated by the industrialist that
there was nothing here until coal came in to develop it.
The main aspects of the culture which were fought for and
were the hardest to change were mainly patterns of relationships
which can be described as basically non-competitiveness. Family
members and neighbors depend on each other, but it is a dependence which also encourages independence or "let the other
fellow alone." People help each other in time of need; they share
the load; but this help is not imposed nor organized and leaves
room for independence and individuality.
�134
Colonialism in Modern America
The family also develops ways of holding down conflicts,
"talking things over," and face-saving games. Disputes must be
settled amicably; therefore, certain things are never mentioned
and certain behaviors are ignored.
Equality is maintained through treating all children the
same and providing them with equal inheritances wherever possible (Brown 1952). The only consistent exception is "baby," and
if land is passed on to only one child, it will more often be the
youngest, who in exchange stays home to care for parents.
To keep a sense of equality and non-competitiveness, a
"local success" or ambitious hillbilly almost has to leave his
family and neighborhood and live with the colonizers. In his
small neighborhood he will be sabotaged and people won't help
him. He will be put down as not neighborly and "out for himself." Perhaps this explains why the local success seems to become more exploitative than the outsider. He goes against his
rearing, he is punished, and he retaliates and must find his support from the outsiders.
Equality is still important. Mountain people resist experts,
titles, and people who put on airs or get above their raising.
6. The family encourages biculturalism. The schools
create a duality—a world different from the family environment.
Branscome speaks of the "annihilation of the hillbilly" by the institutions. Many mountain youth remember the shaming process
when they had to deny their "mother tongue," reject their music
and their religion. Memmi (p. 108) says the colonized turns
away from his music, the plastic arts, and, in effect, his entire
traditional culture^the consequence of which is ambiguity.
Smathers talks of two routes the educated mountaineer can
take: cultural schizophrenia or cultural transvestitism (biculturalism). Mountain children are taught early to act properly
in public and be hillbilly at home. Mountain people learn to deal
with medical, welfare, educational, governmental institutions and
speak their language and use their techniques. They learn to use
institutions, outsiders, etc. selectively. But the strain is great.
The mountain person is taught how to use the hillbilly stereotype
for his own protection and to confound, aggravate, harass, and
thwart the colonizer. (They leave the program planner wondering why that didn't work.) One example is the stereotype of
�Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia
135
laziness, dependency, and irresponsibility which the Appalachian
has learned to manipulate effectively in order to sabotage the
colonizer's attempts to organize the mountaineer into pseudoparticipatory democracy rituals which further splinter Appalachian solidarity.
The mountain church also went through similar reactions.
Briefly, the church also became defensive: the native minister
reacted against his characterization as ignorant and uneducated
by making lack of training and education positive values. Local
preachers attacked the incoming trained clergy for their "high
laming" and accused them of being lacking in "spirit."
The church resisted the social consciousness which was
being promoted by outside religious institutions; therefore, the
church became more fundamental and rigid in doctrine. It saw
the establishment churches as supporting a system, political
and economic, which was destroying a way of life. Its best defense was to become less worldly.
Few outsiders felt comfortable in the primitive Baptist
services; therefore, keeping their services expressive became a
good protection. The church maintained equalitarian rituals
and strict rules of behavior which set them apart. Mountain
people still do not belong to Presbyterian, Episcopal, or town
Methodist churches unless they have become middle class professionsals or successful businessmen.
Other churches (which became more popular with younger
Appalachians) developed in the area, including Free Will Baptist
and Pentecostal churches. In these churches, foot-washing is
still maintained as part of the ritual; the services are informal;
there is still shouting and expression of religious fervor; and
preachers still "preach." They now have Sunday schools, sing
more popular gospel songs, and even train and pay their preachers; but the city churches are still shunned as coal operators'
churches, too fancy and elegant for plain country folk.
But while helping to preserve certain aspects of indigenous
culture, the native church refused to become involved in politics
or to be critical of the economic exploitation of the area; this
fact has worked against change in the status quo. Memmi (pp.
99, 101) finds that in a colonized situation both religion and the
�136
Colonialism in Modern America
family serve as refugees and save the colonized from the despair
of total defeat. He feels that the native society gets in a bind;
in order to preserve or save the collective consciousness, it must
shut itself off, live isolated. In so doing, it hardens, petrifies,
and "degrades its own life in order to save it."
This appears to be only partly true in Appalachia. The
church and family still reflect and teach basic mountain values
of equality, non-competitiveness, and family-neighborhood
solidarity. These positive and viable aspects of the expressive
church and the solidary family may be powerful allies in and the
basis for a revitalization movement in Appalachia.
Mike Smathers suggests that "resistance strategies" should
be considered as positive strategies for the future saving of Appalachia. Those committed to the liberation of Appalachian people
might well study the ways in which the mountain family and
church have continued to resist the institutions in order to give
help to controlling the new "developers": federal government,
tourism, and T.V. The new missionaries, the new professional
planners, educators, and community organizers might well look
at their roles in the new development to see how they also may
be aiding and legitimizing the further destruction of Appalachia.
�Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia"
137
REFERENCES CITED
Blauner, Robert
1969 "Internal Colonialism and Ghetto Revolt/' Social Problems
(spring) Vol. 16, No. 4, 393-408.
Branscome, James
1971 Annihilating the Hillbilly, Huntington:
ment Press.
Appalachian Move-
Brown, James
1952 "The Farm Family in a Kentucky Mountain Neighborhood,"
Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 587,
Lexington, Kentucky (August).
Brown, James S.
1971 Mountain Families in Transition, Penn State.
Burlage, Rob
1971 "Developers and Colonizers" in David Walls and John Stephenson, Appalachia in the Sixties, Lexington: University of Kentucky.
Campbell, Mrs. John C.
1925 "Flame of a New Future for the Highlands," Mountain Life
and Work (April, pp. 9-13).
Caudill, Harry
1962 Night Comes to the Cumberland, Boston: Little and Brown.
Coles, Robert
1971 Migrants, Sharecroppers, Mountaineers, Children of Crisis,
Vol. 2, Boston: Little and Brown.
Condon, Mabel Green
1962 A History ofHarlan County, Nashville: Parthenon.
�138
Colonialism in Modern America
Conference of Southern Mountain Workers
1915 The Southern Highlands: An Inquiry into their needs and
qualifications, desired in church, educational and social service
workers in the mountain country.
Diehl, Richard
1970 "How International Energy Elite Rules," People's Appalachia
(April, May).
Dix, Keith
1970
"Third World Pillage," People s Appalachia (April, May).
Egerton, John
1966 "Alice Lloyd: The College That Can't Be," Louisville Courier
Journal, October 23, 1966, pp. 7-12, 26, 27.
Ford, Thomas R.
1965 Value Orientations of a Culture of Poverty: The Southern
Appalachian Case. Working with low income families, American home economics association, Washington, D.C., pp. 57-69.
Fox, John, Jr.
1901 Blue-grass and Rhododendron, New York: Scribners.
Henson, Edward L., Jr.
1972 Gladeville and the Mountain Stereotype 1856-1860, Virginia
Cavalcade (spring, 21:4, 30-35).
Lesser, Roger
1970 "Culture: Toward Tomorrow's People," People's Appalachia,
No. 1, March.
Lewis, Helen M. and Edward E. Knipe
1970 The Colonialism Model: The Appalachian Case, paper read at
American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, San
Diego, California, November 22, 1970.
Looff, David H.
1971 Appalachia's Children, Lexington:
University of Kentucky.
Mahy, Gordon G., Jr.
1946 Murdoch of Buckhorn, Nashville, Tenn.: Parthenon Press.
�Family, Religion and Colonialism in Central Appalachia
139
Memmi, Albert
1965 The Colonizer and the Colonized, Boston: Beacon.
Mountain Life and Work
1925-30
Files of back issues, Conference of Southern Mountain
Workers.
Page, Thomas Nelson
1910 The Mountaineer of the South, American Monthly, June 1910.
Pearsall, Marion
1959 Little Smokey Ridge, University of Alabama.
Raines, James Watt
1924 The Land of Saddle-bags, New York: Council of Women for
Home Missions and Missionary Education Movement of the
United States and Canada.
Ritchie, Jean
1955 Singing Family of the Cumberlands, New York: Oak Publications.
Semple, Ellen Churchill
1901 The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains:
Anthropology, Harper, VI, 588-622.
A Study in
Simon, Rich
1972 "An Historical Sketch of Migration in Appalachia," People's
Appalachia, Vol. 2, No. 3, July.
Smathers, Mike
1972 Talk at rural sociology meeting on Appalachian Research,
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, August 25.
Tadlock, E. V.
1929 Coal Camps and Character, January, 1929.
Vincent, George E.
1898 "A Retarded Frontier," American Journal of Sociology, IV,
1-20.
Weller, Jack
196 5 Yesterday's People, Lexington: University of Kentucky.
�This page intentionally left blank
�PROPERTY, COAL, AND THEFT
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�142
Colonialism in Modern America
berland Mountain and lying on the border of Kentucky and
Tennessee. Here one finds the results of corporate exploitation
at its worst. Once a booming mining area, automation and strip
mining have left 30 percent of the population unemployed.
Mountains are gouged by the relentless blade of the bulldozer
and blasts of dynamite. Streams are filled with silt and flooding; timber and wildlife are destroyed.
Not just land, but a way of life is eroding. Thousands have
had to leave to find homes and jobs in the cities of the North and
to make way for the strippers. For those who remain, houses are
poor, and incomes for over 70 percent of the population are less
than $4,000 annually.
Within that same valley in Bell County, Kentucky, and
Claiborne County, Tennessee, approximately 85 percent of the
land—50,000 acres—is owned by a single company, the American
Association, Ltd., of London, England. From its land, over 2.2
million tons of coal a year are carted away, mostly to Georgia
Power and Duke Power. And from the royalties on that coal,
thousands of dollars a year are exported to the company's London headquarters. Yet, there in the midst of England's "Wall
Street" the wealth may scarcely be noticed. The chairman of the
company's board of directors, Sir Denys Flowerdew Lowson, a
former Lord Mayor of London, controls an estimated 88 such
companies around the globe; and he personally is listed as chairman of 40. The American Association is one of the smallest of
his concerns. To the people of Clear Fork Valley, however, the
company represents tax evasion, destruction of land and jobs,
and the denial of the future; to Sir Lowson, however, the company's listed value represents a piddling one half of one per cent
of his estimated personal wealth.
It is no misnomer that one of the American Association's
parent companies should be named London Foreign and Colonial
Securities. But its English nature should not detract from its
similarities with the other absentee property owners of Appalachia. By looking at the historical development of this microcolony in Clear Fork Valley and the meaning of its colonial control in the modern day energy demanding world, we can learn
something of a situation common to much of central Appalachia.
And by understanding the micro-colonial relationship, we can
learn something not only about Clear Fork but also about the
�Property, Coal, and Theft
143
relationship of other regions to the energy conglomerates.
The Making of a Micro-Colony
It is an irony of history that many of the first settlers to
come to the mountainous areas in and around Cumberland Gap
were the rebels. In the Appalachians they found a place to escape the rapid industrialization of England and of Europe and to
establish a new way of life, free from the exploitative social relations which they had known before. As Jack Weller describes
in Yesterday s People, some of the settlers came from the Levellers movement in Britain, where they had challenged the power
of their English landlords, and they came "in rebellion against a
form of government that imposed its rule from the top."8
Yet their freedom in the frontier mountains was changed in
the late 1800's when coal and iron ore were discovered and demanded to feed the new wave of westward industrialization. In
the Cumberland Gap area it was a young Scottish-Canadian
capitalist, Alexander Arthur, who foresaw the Gap as an iron,
coal, and steel center to feed the rapidly growing South. Backed
by capital from Britain's Baring Brothers, a company was
formed, the American Association, Ltd., which in turn transformed the Yellow Creek Valley of Kentucky into the booming
coal town of Middlesborough, named after its British counterpart.
Rarely has there been such a colonial boom. Between 18881892 over 20 million dollars of British capital poured into the
area. Railroads, furnaces, industry, hotels, streets, and lavish
halls were built. Thousands of people—many from England,
others from the east, some from the south—poured into the area.
The town was quickly dubbed by its promoters and others as
"The Magic City of the South," and in 1892 its magic was valued
on the British stock exchange at over 40 million dollars. Founding Father Alexander Arthur, who came to be known as the
"Duke of the Cumberlands," proclaimed to a group of investors
on November 11, 1890, "This is but a transfer of British business
to American soil."9
And, indeed, soil they had acquired—an estimated 80,000
acres in the Yellow Creek, Clear Fork, and other valleys, all rich
�144
Colonialism in Modern America
with coal and timber. The most famous historical account of the
development of the area, Wilderness Road by Robert Kincary,
simply states that the company acquired the land within a few
months. In fact, modern day courthouse deeds show perfected
titles. But there is more to the story. Residents describe, still
with anger, how the agents tricked, threatened, or forced the
uneducated mountaineers to give up their land. Some mountaineers, not knowing or even caring about the value to the
industrial world of the wealth beneath them, "Voluntarily" sold
the land for 50 cents or one dollar an acre. An entire mountain,
from which Consolidation Coal now supplies the American
Association almost $200,000 yearly and Georgia Power over
1,000,000 tons of coal yearly, was reportedly traded to an agent
of the company for a hog rifle.
Other mountaineers were victims of legal tricks. One
method, oral history reveals, was to have someone jailed and then
offer to post bond in return for his land. Where there was resistance, force was used. Residents tell stories of how the company men would burn their fathers out if they wouldn't sell.
And though many of the courthouse records of this era have
been burned or have disappeared, it is not uncommon for a local
Appalachian to look out from the front porch of his companyowned house and remark, "See that mountain? They stole it
from my daddy."
"Property is theft," but to endure, theft has to be legitimized. In Middlesboro, as in the modern era, the tools of legitimacy were the concentration of power in the hands of a few and
an ideology of boom and progress to attract the support of the
many.
Certainly, the American Association had the power in the
boom town. It retained controlling interest in everything—banks,
industry, railroads, even the Four Seasons Hotel in which were
hosted the recreational shenanigans of the rich. One is reminded
quickly of modern plans for development of Appalachian playgrounds. Anyone who had or who wanted any part of the
economic benefit of the new society was dependent on the will
of those few who controlled it.
With the dependency on the economic controllers, though,
also came a supporting ideology of progress, civilization, and re-
�Property, Coal, and Theft
145
sponse to social need. Arthur proclaims it this way:
I would say that America needs this place and our AngloAmerican money, experience and push. . . .We have also
the sinews of body and of money and stand ready, cleancut, and vigorous, for a generation of progress and success
in manufacture, arts, and sciences. Come and join hands
with us in the great enterprise which is worthy of us all,
native or foreign born though we may be. ^
The New York Times and other publications applauded the development. For Harper's magazine it represented "a summing up
of the past and a prophecy of the future. . . .the last of the
mountaineers passing away before the breath of civilization."11
Like other traditional colonialists, the virtues of this "civilization" were unquestionably better than the past, somehow
less-than-human, ways of the "natives." The imagery from
the same Harper's article demonstrates this equation by the
colonizers of progress with economic boom, of human dignity
with the material gain:
As I stood one day in this valley, which has already begun
to put on the air of civilization with its hotel and railway
station and mills and pretty homesteads, I saw a sight
which seemed to complete the epitome of the past and
present tendencies there at work. . . .
. . . .creeping slowly past the station—so slowly that one
knows not what to compare it to unless it be the minute
hand on the dial of the clock—creeping slowly along the
Wilderness Road toward the ascent of the Cumberland
Gap came a mountain wagon, faded and old, with its
dirty, ragged canvas hanging motionless, and drawn by a
yoke of mountain oxen which seemed to be moving in
their sleep.. . .
On the seat in front . . .sat a faded, pinched and meager
mountain boy. . . .His stained white face was kindled into
an expression of passionate hunger and mental excitement. For in one dirty claw-like hand he grasped a small
paper bag, into the mouth of which he thrust the other
hand, as a miser might thrust his into a bag of gold. He
�146
Colonialism in Modern America
had just bought with a few cents he had perhaps saved no
one knows how long some sweetmeat of civilization which
he was about for the first time to taste. . . .
So it is easy to see how for the American Association the
combination of monopoly and ideology fused tq portray it not
as a colonizer or controller but as a conscientious and necessary
contributor to the social good. A Scribner's Magazine article in
1890 reflects this social view. The American Association ''leases
its mining and other properties but does not and will not sell
them. This fact is evidence of the interests which it has and will
always have in the prosperity of Middlesboro." The company
controls the coal commerce from "the raw state of the earth's
bed until the final and finished result is in the hands of the consumer. . . .To this parental character of the American Association " the article concludes, "and to the comprehensive protection with which it pursues the course of industry is largely due
the prosperity of Middlesboro. "12
For those to whom the economic dependency brought rewards, the ideology of progress brought responses of loyalty
appropriate to the "parental character." In 1891 local newspapers report that a three-hour mass meeting was held to express
appreciation to the officers of the American Association. Held at
the Opera Hall, it was the "largest and most enthusiastic meeting" ever witnessed and one at which quite a number of "the fair
sex graced the scene."13
For those mountaineers who did not accept the new ideology, such progress meant the intrusion into and colonization of
their culture. But their protests and situations were ignored,
justified as a "social cost," or pitied by those who saw them as
"left out of the mainstream." The literature of the city's development says little of its effect on the mountain people. But
one 1905 account describes the colonization of the free life of
the mountaineer in rationalities frighteningly similar to what one
might hear today:
The Association have between 200 and 300 tenants of
mountain people and are on the best of terms with them.
The Association has not always treated them fairly and
justly, but has gone out of its way to assist and to encourage; they have responded by being true friends,
�Property, Coal, and Theft
147
assisting the Association in protecting its property. It is
much regretted that these people have not yet got the
advantage of schools and churches to which they are
entitled.14
The Yellow Creek and Clear Fork valleys had been colonized.
Through the power of property the propertyless had been made
the powerless. Not only is property "theft" but it is also the
ability to legitimize itself: to make colonization acceptable.
But the glory of the Magic City of the South didn't last
long. Money from London dried up. The American financial
panic of 1893 hit the hills of central Appalachia. A 1911 issue
of the Middlesboro newspaper describes in retrospect: "It may
be doubted if ever in the history of boom towns there had been
so great a collapse." The properties in the town of Middlesboro
were auctioned off and the 80,000 acres of land were mortgaged
to the New York bank and a Mr. J. H. Bartlett was appointed
auctioneer. At that point, the American Association changed
its name from Limited to Incorporated yet retained essentially
the same shareholders. In the auction, an agent for the "new"
company bought back for $25,000 what had been mortgaged
for $1,500,000 only a few months before. Shortly thereafter,
J. H. Bartlett became general manager of the American Association, Inc.
The strange transaction did not go unnoticed. Creditors of
the American Association, Ltd. sued, claiming "fraud," rigging
of federal courts, and perjury. The outcome of the suits is
undetermined; the records went up in flames in one courthouse
and seemed to have disappeared from the dockets in another
county courthouse.
Though the company had lost its property, it hadn't lost the
power to steal it again. Middlesboro as a company town was
gone, but the company had regained 80,000 acres of surrounding coal-rich mountain land, and on that property it could
continue to control its colony.
A Modern Day Colony
It was last summer and Lewis Lowe looked out at his small
�148
Colonialism in Modem America
one-half acre of land located along the Clear Fork Creek, now
covered with strip mine silt deposited on it from the latest
flood. For the last few years, he hadn't been able to farm much
on his land. "Strip mine mud. . . .nothing will grow on it," he
said angrily. And today he was thinking of leaving, of moving
out of the mountains where he had lived the close to seven
decades of his life to an unknown town somewhere. "You'd
think we were animals or something, the way they Ve treated us
. . . .the strippers and the Association."
His life represented much of what had happened in the
eighty or so years since the Middlesboro bust. The coal mines
and company towns had come to the Clear Fork Valley. For 46
of these years, along with hundreds of others like him, Lewis had
worked "from sun up to sun down, worked in almost every mine
around, I did." Then, though, it was other companies, those that
leased from the Association, that were the "villains." They
owned the stores, ran the mines, built the houses, extracted most
of the profits, and supplied the Association handsome royalties.
These companies needed the labor of the men like Lewis; and
though exploitative in the many slave-like ways of the coal
camp era, they provided jobs and camouflaged the controlling
palm of the behind-the-scenes, landowning American Association. But in the 1950's came the coal slump. For a variety of
reasons, the deep mines closed down as they did in much of
central Appalachia.
In its relentless, ugly way came reminders of who it was
that still possessed the property upon which the companies
had operated. In 1952 there were 1,230 coal-mining jobs in the
county; by 1958 there were only 282. The American Association no longer had the need for men on its land, and, therefore,
it no longer provided the employment that had subdued the
recognition of the colonizer. Most of the men had to leave the
valley to try to find work in the cities of the North; the American Association made no attempt to provide or even to allow
alternatives.
Lewis had wanted to stay and did until the company told
him one day in the dead of winter that he, his wife, and six kids
would have to leave in three days. The strip miners were coming
in, and they used bulldozers. People got in the way. Twice
Lewis was evicted, forced to leave the land that he had tilled with
�Property, Coal, and Theft
149
his hands and labor. The home, the garden, the spring that
through his work had come to be his now were to be shoved
aside by the bulldozer. He didn't get any compensation; after
all, they said, it was the company's land. Finally, in 1960 he
had found and saved the money for the small place where he
now was and had tried again to create a peaceful home that he
could call his own. But now, the stripping had caught up with
him again, and he was thinking of giving up, of leaving for good.
Here in the life of a single miner comes a human example
of what is meant by "property is theft," for Lewis Lowe was
propertyless, and those who had the property had controlled,
manipulated, and finally defeated his will, expression, and pride
as a human being. Here also in Clear Fork Valley in a larger
sense is an example of the insidious power of absentee corporate
ownership that is the murder of Appalachia.
We have already witnessed the fundamental form of theft.
In the valley today over 2 million tons of coal a year leave to
provide over 10 per cent of Georgia Power's fuel, all from the
land of this single London based company. Much of the coal is
deep mined from a single Consolidation Coal mine, owned in
turn by Continental Oil. The rest comes from strip mining by
only a few profitable firms, mines which were originally owned
by a set of mountain elites but which have now been acquired
by the energy conglomerates. Royalties on all the mining, from
20 cents to $1 a ton, are carted away to offices off Bank Street
in the financial district of London.
We have recognized this form of inequity, and most of
America today has accepted the ideology that legitimizes it.
But there are other forms of theft in the colonial relationship
which grow from that inequity of property that inevitably means
the inequity of power. Consider several examples.
Property Tax Evasion. Traditionally (and theoretically) the
normal social mechanism for sharing or redistributing wealth is
taxation. For local governments, property taxation is the major
source of revenue, and, supposedly, property is taxed at an equal
rate so that those with large amounts of valuable property pay
more than the owners of small amounts of less valuable property.
But it hasn't worked that way in the Clear Fork Valley.
�150
Colonialism in Modern America
There the American Association owns 17 percent of the land
surface of Claiborne County and perhaps 90 percent of the
county's coal reserves. Yet in 1970 its 44,000 acres provided
only 3 percent of the local revenue. Even after citizens' challenges demanded that the law be enforced, the situation remained similar. Vast areas of untouched coal reserves were being
appraised at $25 an acre, less than the least expensive farmland
in the county.
And Claiborne County is no exception. In 1971, the nine
land companies that controlled 35 percent of the land surface
and approximately 85 percent of the coal reserves in Tennessee's
five major coal-producing counties accounted for less than 4
percent of the local revenues. In West Virginia, Kentucky, and
Virginia—despite laws to the contrary in every state—property
taxation has failed to reap the benefits of the immense property
wealth for local government.15
These are the counties that need local revenues the most yet
get the least. Consequently, the amount of money they have
available for education, health, welfare, housing, and for the
means and services of human development is far less than the
national average. The local small non-mineral holders pay an
unfair share of taxes; they pay for loss of services; and they pay
in innumerable other ways for the destruction caused to their
roads, streams, and lives as the wealth is carted away.
Property means not just poverty for the property less; it
means the power of the colonizer to avoid traditional forms of
sharing that property. Theft of revenue means more than a loss
of money; it means in Appalachia the denial of the basic services
and means for building independent local communities.
Strip Mine Theft. The American Association hosts more
strip mine operations than does any other landowner in Tennessee. Almost 5,000 acres of its land have been laid waste by the
devastation of bulldozers and dynamite. In central Appalachia
itself an estimated 600,000 acres of strip-mined land have been
left unreclaimed.16 And as in the Clear Fork Valley, it is on the
property of the absentee owners, who escape the consequences,
where most of the stripping is done.
To many outside of the mountains, stripping is viewed as an
�Property, Coal, and Theft
151
environmental issue, and indeed it is. The strip miner literally
blasts away the sides or top of a mountain; debris is bulldozed
over the side, and the exposed coal is shoveled out. While the
process is fast and highly profitable, it leaves the mountain a
gaping sore; ecological cycles are upset; timber may take several
hundred years to recover; streams are filled with silt and acid.
Reclamation, though ostensibly possible, is expensive and rarely
carried out in the mountains. It is, as some have put it, "like
putting lipstick on a corpse."
To many Appalachians, though, stripping is more than an
environmental issue. It is an economic one. Folks look back to
the days of the deep mines when there was work, and to that
deep mining many would like to return. * We've been deprived
of our livelihood," says J. W. Bradley, a former deep miner and
now a leading figure in the anti-strip-mine effort. "The strippers
came in under falsehoods and stole our jobs from us," he says.
And, in fact, the Report of the President's Council on Environmental Quality in March, 1973, observes that if stripping in the
mountains were stopped today, there would be jobs for three
times as many men in Appalachia in deep-mining and probably
at higher wages.
But for mountain folks the destruction of stripping is the
destruction of something even more basic. For people who have
always lived close to the land, who have built their lives and their
communities around the freedom and confines of the mountains
and the streams, stripping is the symbol of destruction of a way
of life, a culture. "Every time we see a bulldozer go into the
mountain, it's like someone has stabbed a knife in our heart,"
explained one mountain woman to a group of city folks. Stripping, economically presided over by the absentee property
owner, is theft of both a means and a way of life.
Theft of Alternatives. As if the theft of wealth, of taxes
and services, of a means and way of life were not enough, another most insidious theft is the denial of alternatives to the
Appalachian. The carving up of the mountains by a few owners
means that others have no choice in building their futures; they
are subject to the will of the large landowners.
In Clear Fork Valley it isn't enough to say that Lewis Lowe
can go elsewhere; there aren't any elsewheres, at least in the
�152
Colonialism in Modern America
mountains. There in the valley, Alvarado E. Funk, the General
Manager of the American Associaton, has announced a policy of
depopulation: 'The people would be better off, and we would
be better off, if they would be off of our lands," he said. And,
because of a lack of jobs or homes, or because of the destruction
wrought upon them by the land-use practices of the corporate
owners, people are forced to leave.
In the valley people are trying to hang on and to provide
alternatives. A non-profit community development council has
sought for five years to provide the alternative by building new
industry and homes. Yet for five years they have been denied
any land upon which to build. Just last year the American Association would not even consider freeing one-half acre of its
50,000 acres in the Clear Fork Valley for a clinic. Nor are many
other industries interested in coming in. Also, large blocks of
land kept unused deny smaller landowners services such as
roads and sewers and the chance of their own development.
The outmigration of thousands of people from the mountains over the last twenty years hasn't been a matter of choice
for most. They've moved to make way for the bulldozer, and
now there's talk of having more of them move again to make
way for recreation, to allow folks to escape the now overcrowded mountains.
Theft takes many forms. Here in the Clear Fork Valley it
is not only what is done but what is not done, not allowed, that
prevents possibilities of new industry, developments, futures by
and for the Appalachian people.
What then is the modern day colony? It is theft by the
property owner of the resources, of taxes and a base for community services, of a means and way of life, of the possibilities
of choice for the colonized propertyless. As was true in the
1890's it is either ignored or rationalized to the rest of the
nation by an ideology, the need for energy, or the need for the
South to grow, to "catch up." But hidden beneath the ideology
is the dependency of the propertyless on the property of others
and threat of destruction of a land and a people. In Appalachia,
the corporate property holder, like the slave owner, holds the
power to deprive "will and personality," a power of "life and
death." In Appalachia, property is theft.
�Property, Coal, and Theft
153
Energy and the Nation: The Making of a Macro-Colony?
The colonization of people by the energy conglomerate extends to others in America, outside the Appalachians. One
ought to be able to learn about the nature of social thievery and
the process of colonization from history. In the development of
the energy industrials and in the "boom" in the South today are
signs of a macro-colony, parallel to the development and boom
of Middlesboro, the micro-colony of the 1890's.
The first similarity is that the energy conglomerates or their
representatives, particularly the oil industrials, are buying up all
the land and minerals they can get in Appalachia and the West.
Jim Ridgeway's new book The Last Play gives a good account of
the recent major transactions: Consolidation Coal by Continental Oil, Island Creek Coal by Occidental Petroleum, Peabody Coal
by Kennecott Copper, etc. There have been countless others on
a smaller scale. And in some instances the form of barter is
similar to that of the 1890Js: One company offered an Indian
tribe in Montana a health clinic in return for several million
dollars worth of minerals.
Not only are these few corporations gaining vertical control,
but they are developing horizontal alliances—with the landowner,
with the fuel company, with the energy producer. Like the
American Association in the 1890's, control is being gained by a
few from the product to the final good of electricity. Other industries in the South and the nation are becoming dependent
upon the energy conglomerates for their own economic strengths
and futures.
A second similarity of the energy boom is that this dependency on the economic concentration in the hands of a few is
supported, even concealed, by a prevailing ideology: the demand
for energy for progress and growth and defense, the fuel crisis,
etc. The United States has only 6 percent of the world's population yet already uses some 46 percent of the world's energy. Yet
we have no suggestions for cutting back on the use of energy,
only the need for more and more fuel. Not only can the fear
of an "energy crisis" be invoked, but with the capacity to advertise, to create demand and to control supply in the same hands,
the ideology can be self-sustaining—and profitably so to the
sustainers.
�154
Colonialism in Modern America
Thirdly, like those riding the bandwagon of the Middlesboro
boom, the combination of dependency and ideology have
brought support of emotional loyalty from the general American
consumer. The boom has been a quick one; the sequence of
events in the last year alone has been dazzling. All the major
weeklies—Time, Newsweek, Business Week—have declared a fuel
crisis. Time magazine sponsored a conference to consider solutions to the crisis to which several dozen representatives of the
energy conglomerates, Nixon's key energy advisors, and two environmentalists were invited. Shortly thereafter, Nixon's famed
"energy speech" declared the need for more tax loopholes, for
relaxation of environmental controls, for more social thievery to
"solve" the "crisis." Generally not wanting to interrupt growth
or in the belief that their lights would grow dim, the American
public accepted the steps, or others like them, as necessary.
And, like in the Middlesboro boom, little attention is given
by the press or the public to the destruction of a land and people
back in the mountains. In cases where the plight is noticed,
the colonization and depopulation are justified as "necessary
social costs." Attempts at correction aim only at "allowing4* the
Appalachian to join the already overcrowded and mountaindirected mainstream.
The analogy of the energy boom to the boom of the Magic
City in the 1890's is not meant to say naively that energy sources
and use are not major social problems. They are. But it is meant
to show that the present ownership of energy resources and the
supporting ideology of "energy crisis" can be used to disguise
social thievery from the urban public as well as from the mountaineer. Consider the following three examples.
Labor. Georgia Power's union and race policies brought
to our attention by the "Georgia Power Project" or Shell's response to demands of its refinery workers for better working
conditions show that in the name of "energy crisis," workers
can be exploited. As in the coalfields, the demands of labor
are discounted as minor compared to the national needs for
energy supply.
The Consumer. The growing monopoly within the energy
industry means that prices can be increased for the consumer
without bringing any benefit back to the coal fields. Usually,
�Property, Coal, and Theft
155
for instance, it is the function of the Federal Power Commission
to control price increases of electricity. But hidden within their
code is a provision known as the ''fuel-release" clause. Essentially, this clause means that wherever the price of fuel (coal) increases, the consequent price of power (electricity) can be passed
on to the consumer, no questions asked. The effect is obvious:
if a large stripping operation on American Association land
raises the price of coal to Georgia Power, then Georgia Power
can raise the price of electricity to the public. The extra cost is
born by the consumer, but the profits don't go back to the
people of Clear Fork Valley or to reclaim their mountains. They
go to increase the wealth of the already wealthy few who own,
produce, and supply the coal and power.
The "Energy Crisis." Energy companies justify strip-mining
destruction by claiming the need for cheap fuel to supply the
consumer. Yet, only approximately 10 percent of Appalachia's
coal can be stripped; the rest must be deep mined if it is to be
recovered. Moreover, stripping "for the cream" damages the
mountain in ways that will make far more expensive and dangerous the deep mining required for "the rest of the milk/' While
the Appalachians are being destroyed, the consumer is being
duped. The lack of a rational fuel policy today means that he
will have to pay extra costs tomorrow. Someday, as was the case
in Middlesboro, the quick, cheap profits will be over. But while
the companies will retain their control, the consumers who
accept the credibility of their colonizers will have to pay for and
suffer the losses.
Yes, just as we could see in Middlesboro the founding of a
micro-colony out of which have grown ever more insidious forms
of thievery, we can see in the modern boom for coal, energy, and
"progress," the building of a macro-colony whose similarities to
its predecessor ought to sound a warning: property is theft and
not just in Appalachia. In the current context, it becomes chief
collaborator with other energy industrials in theft from labor,
from the consumer, from the future, and from others throughout
the nation as well.
A Bit on De-colonization
There is a difference today in the Clear Fork Valley as
�156
Colonialism in Modern America
there is in the rest of the mountains to the time of the 1890's,
however. People are resisting and a movement is building.
The movement takes many forms. In the Clear Fork Valley,
citizens have begun to challenge for the first time the American
Association and its London holders. Some gains have been won,
including the acquisition of some of the company's property
with which the local community development council can build
a fresh future growing from within rather than controlled from
without.
In the five major coal-producing counties of Tennessee,
Save Our Cumberland Mountains, a grass-roots organization of
some 200 people, has in the past two years begun to challenge
forcefully the tax evasion, strip mine destruction, and economic
and political controls exercised by the large land companies in
their areas. Led by J. W. Bradley, SOCM, like many other
groups throughout the mountains, is an attempt by the people
of Appalachia to regain control of their land and their lives.
Whether expressed through working for union reform, fighting
strip mining, developing community-controlled industry, or demanding welfare rights, people are angry. Organizations are
building.
There are those who have compared the mood in the mountains today to the pre-dawn of the civil rights movement—waiting
for a spark, a leader, or the right combination of social events
that make such movements happen. Those who learned from the
failures of the 1960's, though, know that such movements must
come from within, must be led and fought by Appalachians, and
cannot be fought from the outside.
Just as the 1960's provided for non-blacks in the South a
brutal awakening of consciousness to the meaning of the statement "slavery is murder, 7 ' perhaps from the 70's the South can
come to recognize that in Appalachia "property is theft." Just
as the murderers of the slaves aren't necessarily in Mississippi, the
colonizers of Appalachia aren't necessarily in Appalachia. Perhaps with this recognition we can see that whether we are mountaineers, workers, or consumers, urban folks or rural folks, we
face in the energy conglomerate the same thieves. And if there
can come that understanding, there can also come the hope that
a movement for decolonization of Appalachia will spark a
�Property, Coal, and Theft
157
struggle for radical change of structure and of ideology in the
rest of the South and the nation.
�158
Colonialism in Modern America
NOTES
^Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, First Memoir - Quoted in Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Stewart Edwards, ed., Elizabeth Frazer,
Trans. London: Macmillan and Co., 1969, p. 124.
2
Schmidt-Bleek, F., "Towards a More Beneficial Use of Coal,"
Appalachian Resources Project, University of Tennessee, 1972.
^Gaventa, Ormond, Thompsen, "Coal, Taxation and Tennessee
Royalists," unpublished study for the Vanderbilt Student Health Coalition,
1971.
4
Kirby, Richard, "Kentucky Coal: Owners, Taxes, Profits," a study
in Representation Without Taxation," for the Appalachian Volunteers,
March 11, 1969.
^McAteer, Davitt, "Profile of West Virginia as a Colony," unpublished study, 1971.
®Dun's Review and Modern Industry, April, 1965, p. 40.
'Capital Resources in Central Appalacbia, prepared for the Appalachian Regional Commission by Checchi and Co., Washington, 1969.
^Weller, Jack, Yesterday's People, University of Kentucky Press with
the collaboration of the Council of the Southern Mountains, Inc., Lexington, 1966, p. 11.
^Speech by Arthur, November 11, 1890, published as a pamphlet by
the American Association. The other historical material comes from cited
works or from my own research in local newspapers, courthouses, library
records, and interviews.
�Property, Coal, and Theft
159
11 Allen, James, "Mountain Passes of the Cumberland," Harper's
Magazine, copyright by Harper and Brothers, 1890, p. 8.
^"Southern Lands:
November, 1890.
Middlesborough, Ky.," Scribner's Magazine,
13Recounted in The Middlesboro Daily News, August 19, 1965, pp.
C-22.
14
Tipton, J. C., The Cumberland Coal Field and Its Creators, Pinnacle
Printery, 1905.
15por f ur ther information, see "Property Taxation of Coal in Central
Appalachia," A report for the Senate Subcommittee on Intergovernmental
Relations from Save Our Cumberland Mountains, Inc., prepared by John
Gaventa.
^Schmidt-Bleek, Appalachian Resources Project.
References are provided only for direct quotes from other printed
works.
�This page intentionally left blank
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�162
Colonialism in Modern America
to stock-raising, and later to the precious mineral rushes. The
riches of the timbered hills were by-passed, the coal strata and
other minerals were at first unknown, and few, then as now, appreciated the aesthetic qualities of the Cumberland atmosphere.
We can therefore say, with a degree of assurance, that
southeast Kentucky was settled, very thinly and for an abnormally long period, by a rather distinct social type. We may not here
take time for much observation or comment or proof, but it is
the significant and apparent fact that the Daniel Boone "type"
was of necessity the earliest settler. (Isolation carried forward
the character process; organized industrial rapacity preyed on
what it found and completed the process of southeastern Kentucky society.) It is noticeable that not even Boone tarried in
the mountains when he came leading groups in from North
Carolina, but he pressed on toward central Kentucky. The few
who came and stayed generally followed Boone's trail from
North Carolina, coming in through southwestern Virginia; lesser
numbers came from Pennsylvania and western Virginia. A few
came in directly from Europe; one of my great-grandfathers came
directly from Ireland, and a great grandmother came from
Holland. I would but make the point in regard to all these:
The mountains typed them all to a degree which it may well be
doubted is known in its singularity anywhere else in the States.
When I credit this result to the mountains, I mean to signify
the national isolation, the personal loneliness, and—if a metaphysical idea may be permitted in a sociological thesis—the
natural atmosphere of the Cumberlands.
In 1964, after a period of about four years of research in
local history, in the state judicial system, and in the region's
sociological aspects, I mapped a section of Pike and Letcher
counties, a section perhaps five miles in length and comparably
much narrower. This mapping was aimed at coal-title research
and at a history of the development of the coal empire. It was
quite interesting for me to find the first land patent ever granted
in the mountain hollow where I was born and had grown up,
interesting to attempt to fit these records of 1832 to the easier
work of the following decades. I mapped many of the patents
of the 1840's, and each decade's history grew more discernible
as I found and located the natural objects (for authenticity),
both on paper and on the ground.
�The Big Steal
163
I discovered that shortly after the Civil War a little flurry of
interest in the awareness of the mineral wealth was manifested,
unbelievably, by a trio of local people. These men established
leases or options of record on hundreds of acres near Jenkins.
These leases, of necessity, could but expire and cease to be of
legal import; railroads and capital were still far in the future.
Twenty-five years of subsequent isolation brought the history to
1890 when, for the Elkhorn Valley of Pike and Letcher Counties
and the Shelby Valley of Pike County, the speculators came in a
rush.1
R. M. Broas from New York organized the first mass-buying
venture. Whether he was buying for himself or as a direct agent
for those to whom his "titles" were transferred eleven years
later, I have not discovered. He was fairly well furnished with
money by the standards of the day. From records of Pike Circuit Court and from material in the Appellate records (Northern
Coal and Coke Co. v. C. S. Nield, et al.) it appears that he had
"about 20 corps of engineers (surveyers). . . .besides abstractors
and attorneys examining titles." His daily payroll was asserted
to be four hundred dollars, which perhaps reveals why he chose
to deal in leases rather than fee purchases or outright mineral
severance deeds. One dollar per acre was paid to consummate
the transactions by consideration, and provisions for paying two
more dollars per acre "when and as mined" were written into the
documents. Not only did this dollar per acre permit Broas to
reach twice or thrice as far in acreage grasped, the question of
taxation, either on the surface or on the dormant mineral reserve,
was left to the lessor. Although any unbiased arbiter could easily
perceive that such a lease, granted for a period of 999 years, was
an open contravention of Kentucky statutes on "perpetuities,"
the leases were upheld then in the subverted court system and
were more definitely upheld as late as the 1950Js when Pike
Circuit Judge Jean Auxier ruled that in all effect the leases were
"deeds." This occurred in the face of the mountain court record
books wherein the documents had been listed as "leases" for
sixty years.
At once the Court of Appeals upheld Auxier, and since the
substance of the perpetuity statutes had already been voided,
there was a sophistry truth in the reasoning. The law against
"perpetuities" had ruled that no instrument, in general, was
valid that did not provide consideration that could be utilized by
�164
Colonialism in Modern America
the grantor in a reasonable time, presumably his lifetime. Here
was a lease consideration wherein the lessor's grandchildren to
the point of economic infinity could not obtain consideration,
and then only as the coal was mined (i.e. perhaps ten dollars one
year for the mining of five acres and ten dollars in the next century for five more). Nor was the injustice to such grantors the
only reason for denial of such transactions; public policy was
very much at stake. A wealthy corporation could thus, at a minimal expenditure, tie up and obviate hundreds of thousands of
acres or other resources in opposition to the state's or the nation's need.
In reference, however, to the removal of public resources
and public necessities from the normal availability to the public,
the perfect illustration is supplied in the thousands of unsightly
shacks and broken men with broken families visible to those who
merely pass through southeast Kentucky while the denuded hills,
though despoiled, still hold plentiful means of subsistence and
self-respect for men who are trained for no other work. But
the Broas leases still stand, 16,500 acres of them in Pike and
Letcher counties.
By my computations, Broas' agents obtained leases for
prospecting and mining, generally on the standard form partially
described heretofore, 5,167 acres in the head of Shelby Valley
between May and August, 1890. These leases comprised part of
the area mapped, where the titles were fully or partially abstracted in my research project. Condensing all the material
upon which this report is based to the smallest amount of space,
I believe it worthwhile to indicate the outstanding facts of just
two days of the Broas activity: May 12 and May 15. The following instruments were executed in Shelby Valley (all but one) and
show on May 12:
Jacob Sanders and Mahulda (leased) 471 acres—coal only—her
signature by mark;
William Vanover and Sarah—313 acres—coal—signed by marks
of both lessors;
Wm. Vanover, Jr. and Dicy—182 acres—coal—her mark;
James and Mary Elkins—147 acres—coal—her mark.
On the 15th:
Isaac and Elizabeth Belcher—177 acres—coal—both lessors'
marks;
James and Sarah Estep—272 acres—coal—her mark;
�The Big Steal
165
Reuben and Bethena Johnson—207 acres—coal—both signatures
by marks;
Richard and Elizabeth Branham—191 acres—coal—her mark;
G. H. and Dove Belcher—70 acres—coal—her mark.
It will be noted that not one of these wives was able to affix
a handwritten signature to the Broas leases; it must not be assumed that the five husbands who apparently did were able to
either read or write. It is a pathetic fact that men then were
proud of being able to sign their names, and any facsimile was of
course a legal signature. From further research related to valid
titles, I was able to establish as fact that but three of the men
were able to read and write from among the eighteen lessors
above, but three were legally competent. And that is, I would
suggest, a fairly representative figure for the mountain society of
that date.
The instruments above were duly acknowledged by a local
notary, but the witness required for all instruments signed by
illiterate grantors was the agent of Broas, certainly not a disinterested party. Incidental to the lease executions, the agent
drew and the notary took acknowledgment of two quitclaim
deeds between certain of the parties designated, and with one
most interesting citizen whose activities are yet furnishing spice
to the odors of Pike Circuit Court. A quitclaim deed from
William and Sarah Vanover to James Estep was witnessed by
Morse, the Broas agent, and signed by the marks of both grantors. This deed gave Estep "color" upon which to base the lease
he was executing; Morse was accepting a dubious lease and helping to bolster it up by a quitclaim brazenly drawn on the same
day.
The other quitclaim was drawn to the enterprising mountaineer I mentioned above; this instrument quitclaimed a property of description too vague to be located to the benefit of
one Denny Vanover, who as his numerous remaining nephews
assured me, would "make you a deed to anything; just point out
what you wanted." I understood, and my future research indicated that I properly understood, that had Denny lived in New
York City he would have sold the Brooklyn Bridge perhaps fifty
times. Morse did not take Denny's lease that day; I doubt that
the survey, which was to enclose 3 52 acres acquired through him,
was yet completed. It was a more delicious fact, still apparent
�166
Colonialism in Modern America
after eighty years, that Denny owned but 100 acres in the center
of Three Mile Creek, and that under a "cloud" when he happily
leased Broas the entire left fork of Three Mile Creek, 352 acres.
I had the honor and pleasure of placing these facts in Pike Circuit Court for the benefit of the present owner of the so-called
surface, who, should he be able to find an attorney of integrity
in the noble old Common-wealth, may be recognized as the
owner in fee, able to purchase a quarter million dollars worth of
chewing tobacco. (I would not wager highly on his chances; the
case has lain dormant for four years, stalemated by his inability
to find counsel and the court's uneasiness about dismissing the
material I inserted in his counter claim.) (Bethlehem Minerals
Company vs. John Johnson, Civil Action 7288, Pike Circuit
Court.)
The color (i.e., color of title, which I mention above in regard to the Broas leases) is an important element in the policies
and operations of the coal companies. "Color" means no more
than suggestions of title; it may be the flimsiest of title ground
upon which to take a stand—such as a quitclaim, as above, from a
person who obviously has no right or even a claim to transfer.
If the receiver of such an instrument can make any showing of
accepting it in good faith and as having some element of value
for him, he can use it as "color of title." And there is no criminality ordinarily in giving a quitclaim deed, certainly when
rendered to a person of average intelligence and competency;
the grantor merely passes whatever right he has in any subject
matter to a grantee, without professing any right or giving any
warranty. Such a deed could give title to a fortune or might not
be worth the ink in its writing. Under Kentucky law, I can quitclaim my interest in this college for a thousand dollars, if to a
competent grantee, and no criminal charge will lie to the instrument. And what is the interest of the mining companies in such
deeds and others insufficient as to valid title? This: The illegal
mining of a tract of coal under color of title means that at worst
the operating company will be forced to pay but standard
royalty, usually around twenty-five cents per ton, which would
have been but good business for it in the beginning; it may never
be called to account, which is better yet. But without color of
title, a company would be responsible for all coal extracted and
liable at the then present market price at the pitmoutb. One of
the many interesting angles of the Bethlehem-John Johnson Case
is that the company must now mine the coal on the merits of its
�The Big Steal
167
case; its title has been challenged and color cannot avail if the
landowner successfully maintains his title in court.
Let us consider for a moment the relation of the Big Steal
(in eastern Kentucky) to lawful execution of deeds and leases.
In Corpus Juris Secundum the commentary reads:
More inadequacy of consideration is not a ground for the
cancellation of a conveyance of minerals or mineral rights,
but where a gross inadequacy of consideration is shown,
and also weakness of mind, illiteracy, and inexperience of
the grantor, and where misrepresentations have been made
by the grantee, courts of equity may grant relief by way
of cancellation. A mineral conveyance may be cancelled
where the minds of the parties failed to meet on the
amount of the purchase price. (Sec. 163, P. 350, Vol. 58)
The pertinent citation reads:
In case of fraud, overreaching or other circumstances
justifying equitable relief, court will readily cancel transactions by which speculators procure from indigent and
illiterate grantors for nominal considerations, conveyance
of ... mineral rights in farm land which has been made
subject of oil and gas leases to reputable oil companies.
(Durbinv. Bennett, D.D. 111., 31 F. Supp. 24)
Though I am somewhat doubtful of the existence of any
"reputable oil company/7 it is clear that this federal principle
would tear the Big Steal all to Hades, even at this late date. I
have demonstrated the degree of illiteracy in the Broas lessors.
How indigent were they? It is very likely that some of them
lived on dirt floors. What about the considerations? Much has
been made of the position that the rediculously low prices were
then reasonable, that a dollar then was worth ten, even twenty,
today. The essential element in the case is inadvertently given
by Appellate Judge E. C. O'Rear, serving the mineral interests
on the Frankfort appellate bench as he had served them in the
very buying of that subject matter on which he sat Not seeing
the application of all he wrote in a lengthy opinion sustaining a
Pike County Judas (who had ordered that the validity of the
Broas leases should not be SPOKEN AGAINST), O'Rear said:
�168
Colonialism in Modern America
These conditions have attracted and will doubtless for
some time continue to attract investors and speculators.
Another natural consequence is that prices for such
properties will be advanced under present improved conditions, very considerably over what was even a high price
for the same properties a few years ago [Emphasis mine].
(NCC v Nield, Pike Circuit Court)
Contrary to his own words in an earlier portion wherein
he opined that Broas had purchased with mere hope in the "future," the eminent jurist is recognizing that the speculators already know the value of a southeastern Kentucky dollar, that it
is but waiting on the completion of the rail line to climb like a
rocket, and this is what justice must compute the consideration
on. This factor alone takes us back to the Corpus Juris commentary: "A mineral conveyance may be cancelled where the
minds of the parties failed to meet on the amount of the purchase price." (Of course, none of this law nor those facts matter,
but they furnish us with a sociological study.)
One other factor remained in the list of possibilities toward
cancellation; it was the question of misrepresentation. An
earlier but near relative of that same Auxier who ruled against
Pike County in the Broas situation of the 50's prepared sworn
evidence in an early move against the Broas transactions to the
effect that part of the consideration of the leases had been
Broas' assurances that the railroad would arrive in five years and
then mining, hence payment, would forthwith begin. Misrepresentation of another type, a humorous and pathetic type, was the
lessee's solemn covenant that all gold found in the leaseholds
would remain under title of the grantors. In spite of all these
factors which alone or cumulatively warrant cancellation, we
would do the mountain people an injustice to assume that they
supinely submitted to the Broas steal once it became a matter
of public knowledge. Efforts were made to break the leases in
court, attempts were made to return the dollar-per-acre payments, and some lessors openly resold to willing grantees over
the Broas documents of record. (The leases were truly void for a
half-dozen legal considerations which are offered in the above,
but the corporations had conspired with state government as an
initial move; in the entire history of the Big Steal only one
significant ruling has been awarded the landowners: i.e., lateral
and subjacent support which I hope to discuss briefly. In that
�The Big Steal
169
time, only Governor Breathitt of the 1960's has established a
record among his predeeessers of openly standing with and for
the people and that only in the latter half of his term.)
Let us consider the prospects of a newly-arrived speculator
or buying agent, one who is in the first wave into the mountains
and is "in on the ground floor." If he is from the North or East,
as I imagine all were, he has never seen such a country, such potential, for even the steep hillsides may be propitious. (Coal
would be dumped directly into rail cars.) Only on the West
Coast could the value of the timber stands be surpassed, though
the lumber men had arrived earlier, seeking only the very best of
the best types. The black walnut and yellow poplar had been
cut heavily, and the best of the white oak is gone, but the eye
could not from any distance perceive the difference. There are
no roads worthy of the name; wagons can be used, or sleds, but
the creeks are forded, not bridged. Through the decades of
isolation only the creek bottoms are cleared and some of the
"cove" fields. The timber grows down to the creeks, hanging
over the paths and wagon trails.
The tentative earlier prospecting had quickly established
an important truth; no great care need be exercised in buying.
The coal was there, everywhere; the only difference would
be in grade, and none of it was worthless. So one could buy
freely as to site. Buy from site to adjoining site future mining
fields by accretion. But buy anywhere as opportunity offered
to make the capital reach as many fools as possible.
Here was a people who had known but six-month or sevenmonth schools as the annual custom. But this means less than we
might expect. The severe winters could cut that time to four
or five months, and distance was very much a factor in attendance. Many families did not even choose to send their children,
though others were more than willing. Short-term "writing
schools" sometimes supplemented the regular term; these might
last as little as ten days. Eighth grade students could teach, and I
suspect that in earlier days anyone who could read and write was
eligible.
The mental capacity of the people thus ranged from an
understandable illiteracy to a vicious stupidity in some cases.
�170
Colonialism in Modern America
(There were the exceptions; I have learned of men who could
plot land surveys and there were men who left the mountains and
returned as doctors and lawyers. These exceptions were probably rare indeed earlier than 1890.) But the buyers found a
general atmosphere of geniality; they were expert in breaking
down the innate suspicion. They addressed the victims by their
first names; they placed themselves inside the obligations of
hospitality, for many, even among the violent types, considered
themselves responsible for the safety and feelings of a guesteven if he was sleeping on a cornshuck mattress and being fed
cornbread and salt bacon. For these mountain people to see a
hundred dollars in cash at one time was a life experience; and in
addition to the lack of education, they were and are yet exceptionally naive. As much as they may distrust outsiders in general,
they have the strangest veneration for education (even if hidden
under hostility). At that time, it is to be doubted that a single
one knew the implications for the future in the mass selling;
many thought the coal existed in only one seam; some thought it
existed only in certain places.
I have written all this in regard to the buyer and his advantages to illustrate his one great disadvantage, that which
has been a burden on the back of the industry up to this date,
and that which would have changed the regional social system
had not the industry prepared for its potential troubles by aligning with state government and maintaining either an alliance
or a rapport unto this very day. The industry's problem was this:
There were no legal means of obtaining titles to the great coal
strata. There was comparatively little population; this was good
in a way for the region was uopen." But relative to population,
there were but few settlers per lineal mile on the creek systems;
there were even fewer claimants of property, for incredible as
it may sound, this region has always had a "renter" class, even
when land warrants and patents could be obtained for a pittance;
sympathetic county surveyors would come to the farm, survey
one line and geometrically calculate the other three, back to the
starting point, to lighten the cost of the patentee. But there
were those who had never obtained land. I have concluded that
it was seldom indeed that this class stayed on one location long
enough to perfect a title by residence. These who were later
called "renters" did not then necessarily have to rent; they were
often squatters, moving from one creek to another as the whim
or necessity moved them.
�The Big Steal
111
Furthermore, many of those who considered themselves to
be landowners were definitely not. The mountaineers honored
each others' deeds (in general), but these were often based on
original squatting or arbitrary claims, and the continuity that
would have perfected preemption or adverse possession had
often been broken to spoil the possible or pending title. Even
when absolutely valid patent titles had been obtained, men
would sometimes abandon them and others might obfuscate
the record by patenting over the same lines, unwittingly or
knowingly breaking the patent laws.
But titles, as far as corporations are concerned, must be
obtained through individuals, through title holders. So the industry knew its problem in advance, knew that only in a region
so deprived and isolated could it hope to grasp and maintain such
a tremendous chunk of the national wealth. The entire governmental system was subverted to maintaining this national swindle, and on the local level the two parties took on the aspects of
two bloated swine fighting in the swill trough, careful never to
turn it over—for who knows but what we might win next election. From the Court of Appeals down to the average police
court, the judiciary became a class of parasites whose only
necessity for a show of legal knowledge lay in the cases wherein
two non-political people had suits of private nature, and both
were evenly matched as to influence and access to money.
Returning directly to the Broas leases and other sources of
title, I sought to make the point that titles may only be obtained
where they exist, and for the massive purposes of the industry
there were no massive title sources. It was realized from the
first that continual title improvement must be a goal and remain
an integral part of operations for years. Many of the Broas
lessors were again contacted and induced to sign outright mineral
conveyances by mere payment of the two-dollar-per-acre contingent consideration. These new conveyances were the notorious forms known synonymously as the Northern Coal and Coke
form, the Mayo form, the broad form, or the long form; and the
mineral grantees at this phase also picked up all minerals on the
properties in addition to the coal and obtained the rights which
the cooperating Court of Appeals said were tantamount to outright control of the surface. (In all honesty, no other factors of
law being considered, this was essentially true.) But none of
these acquisitions affected the basic title situation which was
�172
Colonialism in Modern America
based on the ability of the original or the new grantors to give
sound titles. However, in the next two decades, many of the
instruments became valid as some of the grantors perfected their
suface titles by fifteen years of various forms of possession,
validating the mineral conveyance by the same token. Various
means were used by the industry to aid and encourage specific
landowners to improve their titles, though the companies had to
work here in privacy for fear of exciting a public or an individual
interest in the possibility that the landowner had a better mineral
title than the operators themselves did. THIS IS STILL THE
BASIC FACT OF TITLE RESEARCH IN THIS REGIONREGARDLESS OF ALL THE PURPORTED SEVERANCE OF
MINERALS FROM THE SURFACE, NO SEVERANCE IS
VALID UNLESS EXECUTED BY ONE WHO HAD A VALID
TITLE IN FEE. An invalid or false severance can be made valid
if the grantor in question later develops or obtains for himself
a good title to the property in question.
IN THE AREAS I HAVE MAPPED AND ABSTRACTED, I
WOULD ESTIMATE THAT THE MINERAL INDUSTRY HAS A
FIRM TITLE TO ABOUT SIXTY PERCENT OF THE TERRITORY IT HAS MINED OR IS MINING. And this figure would
be less had there not been a continual program of shoring up
weak spots, obtaining various statute concessions, and an increasing percentage of buying in fee. I could cite incredible instances,
however, if space permitted, where large tracts are awaiting exploitation on title grounds which can reflect nothing but that
desperation in the thirty years after 1890 to get some sort of a
document from any sort of a person to cover the accretive surveys of Broas and his successors. In the head of Shelby Valley I
found a mineral deed to a large acreage, granted by an uncle of
mine to Consolidation Coal Company; the amazement of the
present "surface owners" equalled my own, for as I had suspected and as they knew, his uncle, deceased for several years,
had never in life had the slightest claim on the property in question. And not only was he a good respected citizen, he was
certainly too sensible to have executed such a deed in the face of
his immediate neighbors. I can cite a variety of similar instances
in a radius of five miles, but I am trying to deal with trends
rather than examples. Incidentally, this acreage had already been
obtained as a Broas lease; the new or later document showed
clearly that Consolidation was foreseeing possible difficulty with
the leases.
�The Big Steal
173
So, while the Land and Property Departments at Jenkins,
under the long chain of operating names of Consolidation Coal
Company and Bethlehem Mines Corporation, schemed and drew
and redrew its maps and watched over possible future sore spots,
the industry maintained or tightened its grip on the state judiciary and the political systems. In the history of Kentucky mining,
only one circuit judge has proven his integrity and openly fought
for justice.2 This is Courtney C. Wells of Hazard, Perry County,
now in private practice. In BLUE DIAMOND COAL COMPANY
v. NEACE, Perry Circuit Court, Judge Wells, having been already
overruled by the Court of Appeals in a strip-mining case reversed
for the operator, had to instruct a jury in a second one. Facing
the fact that our honored appellate statesmen had ruled that only
such stripping as was "arbitrary, wanton, or malicious" was forbidden or compensable, Wells gravely stayed inside their logic
and told the jury:
The Court instructs the jury that the plaintiff, Blue Diamond Coal Company, had the right to the use of the surface in the prosecution of its business of mining, for any
purpose of necessity or convenience, unless this power
was exercised oppressively, arbitrarily, wantonly, or
maliciously, and if you believe from the evidence in the
case that the plaintiff in the prosecution of its business
of mining, exercised this right of power in an oppressive,
arbitrary, wanton or malicious manner, and the defendant's property was damaged thereby, then the law is for
the defendant and you should so find.
It was a foregone conclusion as to how a mountain jury
would react to these instructions, and Wells, knowing that the
Frankfort rogues would overrule him again, added a judicial
opinion to the appeal record, flatly asking the Court to reverse its
ruling and overturn the Buchanan v. Waton precedent upon
which Kentucky stripping was based. Of course, all he established was his integrity, while that eminent jurist who was once
promoted here for governor, the Right Honorable Judge Palmore,
really put the appellate position in the proper perspective: "The
mere exercise of a right to mine in a particular fashion cannot
of itself be classified as arbitrary, wanton, or malicious. It is the
manner of the mining operation, as distinguished from the fact
of its being carried on, that determines liability for damages."3
�174
Colonialism in Modern America
And to show that he was capable of more than sophistry
and that Kentucky law is what "this Court says it is—this week"
(a direct quote from one of the seven Judases), he wrote some of
the most astounding words seen in American jurisprudence:
. . . .we are obliged to point out that Buchanan v. Watson
does not upset any existing law, but applies the old
principles to a new fact situation, AND RIGHT OR
WRONG, it would be a grave matter indeed for this court
by overrulling it now to upset property interests which
have since been invested in reliance upon it. (Emphasis
mine)
It would be hard to find plainer English to say that Kentucky's Court of Appeals would not overrule the mineral industry's prize precedent for any reason, and a franker confession
that the Court is a base for the interests "relying upon it" could
not be stated.
�The Big Steal
175
NOTES
*A few notable severances had been executed earlier than 1890 by
Virginia Mining and Improvement Company, (Probably less than a halfdozen, in the late 1889's.)
^It would be well for me to note that two other judges have voiced
opposition to the mineral-political-judicial combine. John Chris Cornett of
Knott Circuit Court has twice denied the right of the operators to destroy
the surface without compensation to the surface owner. Judge Edward Hill,
formerly of Floyd County, now a Judge of the Court of Appeals, dissented
in the latest appellate case which reversed Cornett in Martin et ux V, Kentucky Oak Mining Company et al. In the dozen or so mining counties with
circuit judges having a four (six?) year term of office, these three legalists
form a tiny and significant minority during a period spanning eighty years.
^Lateral and Subjacent support is required for the surface owners
under Kentucky law. From the early days it has been illegal to remove all
the coal under any area without leaving pillars (blocks) of coal to support
the surface; the coal companies must expressly buy the right of total removal, i.e., breaking the surface.
This is from a state judiciary that later permitted the entire destruction of the surface.
�This page intentionally left blank
�THE LAND DEVELOPMENT RAG
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�178
Colonialism in Modern America
ed by gently sloped mountains to a cacaphony of strip-development/fast-food chains. The land grab has boosted land prices
so that farmers can't afford farmland and has intruded a culture
of affluence on farmers who are left to work as greens-keepers
and domestics, to commute to industry towns, or to sell and
move out.
Developers say North Carolina farmers are simply following
a national pattern of leaving the farms since World War II. But
the national decrease in farm acreage harvested was 10 percent
during the past decade, while the decrease in Avery County was
nearly 40 percent. In more developed Watauga, it was a whopping 50 percent. Farmers admit that it's been getting more difficult to stay on the farm every year because of rising prices,
but the financial blow caused by tourist resorts makes farm life
almost impossible.
The seasonal beauty of the Blue Ridge and Appalachian
chains attracted corporate developers, many of whom had already splattered the Florida coast with beachfront resorts. They
saw a quick profit to be made in an area with four tourist seasons, low tax rates, accessibility to the Appalachian Development Highways, and a 60-year history of exclusive, small resort
communities. They came, they saw, they bought.
While the turnover of land to outsiders has been sizeable,
the boom was initiated locally, in the early Sixties, by Hugh
Morton and the Robbins brothers, who recognized the profit to
be made in major land development. Morton, called a "conservationist before the word was invented" by one of his salesmen, subdivided a portion of the 7,000 acres of his family's
land to create expensive resort subdivisions. Morton's and the
Robbins' developments would have 6,000 people living on
delicate mountain land. The Robbins' Hound Ears development
charges $20,000 for a half-acre lot with covenants to build
$50,000 homes; and the Morton family's Invershiel, a Scottishdeco community, charges $50,000 for two-acre lots with architectural covenants to build Scottish manor houses. The most
exclusive and expensive development is Grandfather Mountain
Golf and County Club. Morton and Oklahoma Oilman John
Williams carved a suburban vacation complex into Grandfather
Mountain and demand $20-30,000 per acre, $6,500 for country
club membership, $600 annual dues, and $80,000 to $250,000
�The Land Development Rag
179
homes.
Corporate developers like Carolina Caribbean and Sugar
Mountain, as well as a flock of smaller subdividers, have
capitalized on Morton's cue and created a land grab to build
moderately priced resorts modeled after his exclusive mountain
retreats. The developers scalped the mountains from Avery
County to Watauga's Boone to make room for a string of resort
complexes, then pocked the roadsides with billboards which
advertise "kicks in the sticks" images for urban tourists. The
choice of a second home depends upon the size of your pocketbook. The most exclusive, like Hound Ears and Grandfather, are
self-contained units which offer everything from golf, tennis, and
skiing to restaurants and the requisite country store. Further
down the road, Beech, Sugar, and Seven Devils hawk cheaper
versions, and trapped in between are hurriedly-built places
like Adam's Apple and Mill Ridge, with poorly built houses,
some below the water flooding, and a single ski slope which runs
virtually down onto the highway. The secluded and exclusive
resort complexes appear to taunt the neighboring communities
where some residents live in substandard housing with outdoor
plumbing, no running water, and a per capita income of $1,500
for farming families.
Developers claim that their construction primed Watauga's
and Avery's economic pump. But the facts speak differently.
True, some people have profited from the spectacular land grab,
but most people are hurt by the apparent and hidden costs of
land speculation. And the buying was spectacular. Realtors
turned land over three and four times in as many months, inflating the prices according to what other speculators or vacationers would pay. One realtor bought 300 acres at the base of
Grandfather Mountain for $30,000 and sold less than of a third
of the land the following month for $156,000. Land that once
cost $250 an acre sold for $2,500 and up. Farmers couldn't resist the money and sold their land. Those who held out demanded prices they didn't dream possible and got them. "I asked
$80,000 for my back 40 acres, and some fellow from Florida
paid it," said one man who saved his farm by selling his mountain
land. Other farmers were pressured to sell or swap their land,
leaving the developers with huge tracts for subdivision. Beech
Mountain quarter-acre lots cost 820 times the original buying
price, and land prices in the rest of Avery County were boosted
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401 percent in five years. (During the same period, farmland
prices in the nation as a whole increased on the average from
$115 to $194 per acre, or 60 percent.) According to a North
Carolina Public Interest Research Group study, by 1975 outside
speculators owned 164 percent more land in Watauga County
and 47 percent more in Avery County than they did in 1970.
Land boom threaded everybody's conversation, and realtors
thought they'd never see the bottom of the money barrel.
Hard Times
But the recession hit the developers hard, and salesmen
aren't showing anybody house lots anymore. "When the economy is strong people buy luxury items like second homes—in a
recession we're the first item to go," said a developer. Most of
the less exclusive resorts face bankruptcy, and several larger developers like Beech Mountain have gone under.
The history of bankrupt Beech Mountain challenges the
assumption that the only reason for the failure of resort developments is that they've fallen victim to national recession.
Beech's and Sugar's near bankruptcy demands an examination
of the assumption that the development of recreation communities is a positive means for farming communities to sustain
themselves. In her master's thesis, Robin Gottfried judged that
"unless more and more homes are constructed in subdivisions,
scattered lots or new recreation communities—the [economic]
flow of benefits stemming from new construction will cease.
If nothing else fills this gap, [the community]. . .could face a
serious crisis."1
Beech owes $10 million more than its $25 million assets to
a string of banks which includes North Carolina National Bank,
Northwestern Bank, and Tri-South Mortgage Investors Trust of
Atlanta. Former Beech President Roger Hard said Beech could
have stayed afloat if the government had granted $8 million in
tax-payer money to correct water and sewage violations and if
bankers lent an extra $500,000 to prepare its ski slopes. But
federal dollars cannot be used to build sewage plants for private
industry, and the lenders said no.
Beech's collapse is also due to more than the recession.
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According to court-appointed trustee Ralph O. Hutchinson, an
investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
into Beech Mountain activities showed a 'Very relaxed attitude
toward cost control, poor management and a complete lack of
development and operational planning/' He also said that the
investigation uncovered some ''irregularities in the use of corporate funds." Because of its financial and management shenanigans, Carolina Caribbean, Beech's corporate father, was suspended from the exchange.
Beech, like other resorts, "ran the financial numbers game
to stay afloat," says President Hard, who was brought in by Carolina Caribbean to bail out Beech and is now attempting the same
at neighboring Sugar Mountain. Hard says the resort developers
put up tremendous amounts of front money to build ski slopes,
lodges, and restaurants to attract people to the mountains in
the first place. Then overhead costs for water, sewage, and
operating expenses were borrowed on short term notes while the
lots and houses were sold long term. "It's a cash flow problem,"
he said. "A purchaser buys a $10,000 lot but makes only a
$1,000 down payment while it costs us $7,000 to prepare it."
"The $7,000 didn't include soft costs which added to our
immediate obligations," said Hard. Nearly 75 percent of Beech's
operating expenses were for salesmen, advertising, enormous
salaries, and hefty expense accounts. "The original corporate
owners should have put land sales money into escrow to build
equity for land development; but they borrowed loans upon
loans based on nothing but paper until the business operated
only on financial device," said Hard. Banks and Real Estate Investment Trusts couldn't wait to press money into the developers' hands. They loaned 100 percent money at five and six
points above prime for paper collateral. "It just didn't work,"
said Hard, who couldn't issue a 1975 annual report because of
Beech's faulty bookkeeping.
Hard says he's a little more successful with his Sugar Mountain rescue, but he pays himself a month's salary in advance "just
in case." Sugar is delinquent in all of its normal trade accounts.
What Hard did was arrange with Sugar's lenders to defer payment
on loans of $10 million which are currently secured by corporate
real estate. The bank couldn't refuse to wink at Sugar's debts.
Hard showed the lenders that they would lose $500,000 more by
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foreclosing than by placing a moratorium on his old debts with
no principal or interest. He says if he stabilizes his credits, pays
current bills C.O.D., and borrows $2 million more, he'll make
money in five years.
"This time," says Hard, "we're going to change Sugar Mountain from a semi-private to a public resort." Hard plans to halt
land sales, push the ski lodge and convention business, and create
a weight-loss camp. Opening the doors to the public invites
criticism that local people who can afford to use the ski slopes
are caught in an economic ping-pong game. When times are bad
for the resorts, local residents are welcome. When times are
good, they're excluded. "We want to generate traffic through
the resort to sell houses," says Hard. "When the second home
business gets built out again, the slopes won't be able to handle
local people—there won't be room. So we'll have to close the
local people out."
Hard Sell
Developers say the resorts meet urban dwellers' recreational
demands. "Mountain retreats are what the people want," said a
realtor. But carnival marketing techniques of large resorts like
Beech and Sugar indicate that this particular form of recreational
demand is produced by the developers. "The whole thing is
created," admitted a former salesman for the Beech sales team.
"Developers create the value, the impression, the atmosphere—
and then sell it with emotional appeal." Professional sales teams
are trained to invent what people think owning mountain land is:
country living with suburban familiarity.
Beech's well-rehearsed dog-and-pony show tactics begin
with a deluge of telephone calls made to randomly-chosen
people in "prime target areas." When enough people agree to
participate in a free tour, chartered planes whisk the targeted
clients to a mind-boggling weekend of loose money and fast
talk which intimates that the last quarter-acre of Appalachia
might be sold before they got off the plane. The sequence of
well-controlled events leaves little room for thought. "If they
think twice about buying—they'll change their minds," said a
salesman who admitted that most people hadn't thought of
buying land before the sales team called. Free meals, free lodg-
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ings, and the developers' idea of mountain culture are part of
the package. "At Beech," said the salesman, "pretty little girls
dressed up in Indian costumes drive buyers around the golf
course and deposit them in briefing rooms where the benefits
of purchasing a lot are described." Then they're released to the
salesmen.
The salesman's job is to generate enthusiasm to sell land.
"Salesmen drive people to the top of the mountain and literally
cry about its beauty," said a man who did it. The procession
to the mountain resembled an army convoy. Jeeps carried the
buyers to pre-selected lots, the man in front and the woman in
the rear. Two-way radios connected salesmen with each other
and with general headquarters. Several jeeps would converge on
a lot at a prearranged time. Sales were flashed onto the jeep
radios. If a tourist wavered, the salesman radioed his indecision
in code to headquarters who radioed the lot number of other
jeeps. Bidders for the unclaimed lot would crowd the frequency.
"What's important is to create a sense of urgency," said the salesman.
After paying $8,000 to $10,000, what does the client get?
"Not much," according to a salesman. "The clients lose, too.
Resort facilities aren't built to last. They're simply paste-up jobs
to sell as much land as quickly as possible." Developers often
build the minimum to sell lots and then leave the property
owners to worry about maintenance and other problems like
fire protection. Purchasers find themselves having to maintain
security, water and sewage systems, golf courses, ski slopes, and
roads not built to anyone's standards except the developers.
"Nothing was built to last," repeated the salesman; "it was built
to show that it had been done. We've butchered some of the
prettiest mountains you've ever seen."
Fancy Doctors and Salty Roads
Resort developers say they're good for the county because
they spend money locally and pay taxes. But laid off resortconstruction workers are trying to revitalize their neglected
farms, and female-oriented domestic jobs are seasonal and lowpaying. "We've increased the tax base immeasurably," said the
vice-president of Grandfather Mountain Company. If this were
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the ease, then tax rates should have decreased or county services
increased. In fact, not only have land values skyrocketed with
each tax assessment, but Watauga's property rate increased by 46
percent last year. Also, high density resort communities overload
a town's services and facilities. As for county-provided services
for those increased tax dollars, local citizens say they get little
and are second priority for the services that the county does provide.
County services have not increased since the resort boom.
Road maintenance typifies an unequal provision of services.
North Carolina's roads are state maintained. Snow removal is a
primary maintenance function. Both Avery and Watauga counties are included in a "bare pavements program" which salts 165
of the 400 miles of paved roads at the first snowflake. Highway
officials salt the most trafficked roads: All ski roads get first
priority. Farm roads, often impassable in winter months, are
not priority. Several Valle Crucis farmers said the school bus
couldn't take their children to school during last winter's weeklong storm because of the bad roads. But skiers could reach the
slopes. Local maintenance workers, who once looked favorably
on ski resorts, said they use one-third of the state's entire snow
removal equipment to clear Avery and Watauga counties, but
their own roads remain blocked.
Road salting is rotting cars and polluting people. The highway department dumps 6,000 tons of sodium and calcium
chloride on the winter roads. Truck farmers say that since the
salting began they've had to buy a new pick-up every two years
because of corrosion. When the snow melts, salt percolates into
the soil and drains into water systems. A district highway
engineer said, "I daresay there's people who've got salt in their
water systems right now." The reason the highway department
uses salt instead of neutral sand is that "salt clears the roads
cleaner and faster to the ski areas. We have to use so much of it
anymore, it's cheaper."
The district engineer said he wished the state would put
more money into road maintenance instead of expanding the
highways to draw tourists, but he plans to build a $9 million expansion of the 5.3 mile tourist-used road from Boone to Blowing
Rock, Watauga's only wet city. A coverall-clad realtor wondered
why they "just don't move the liquor to Boone instead of
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building a $9 million four-lane."
Seasonally overcrowded hospitals force local people to bear
the costs of new hospital-expansion bonds. The hospital at Banner Elk serves the resorts at Beech and Sugar Mountains, Seven
Devils, and Grandfather Mountain, as well as Avery County residents. Hospital Administrator Juanita Shoemaker says, "It's
simple to understand. We've had to expand the hospitals along
with the developments." Mayor Charles Cannon agreed. "During
ski season and hang-glider days, the emergency room is full."
Shoemaker says the emergency room was a nightmare during
Beech's first ski season. "Evetyone worked weekends and nights
to set broken legs and bones." A record 11,000 people used the
emergency services that year while local residents complained
that their children's illnesses often went unattended. Hospital
administrators are unsure of the number of out-of-county patients because second home dwellers use local addresses for
hospital admittance. Even so, nearly 30 percent of the patients
at Cannon are not from Watauga or Avery Counties. When Beech
Mountain collapsed, the total number of local patients at Cannon
increased by 17 percent.
Boone's hospital is a highly specialized and expensive medical complex—a magnet which has tripled the number of its
specialists in the past five years. Last year, the hospital board
voted to purchase additional equipment and build a new wing to
house the specialists. Local people judge they would be better
served by community clinics engaged in preventive medicine
and primary medical services instead of the highly specialized
and expensive medicine available at the hospital. "We need
regular doctors, not fancy medicine," said a woman who can't
easily commute to the centralized hospital because she doesn't
have a car and there's no public transportation.
Deeds and foreclosures descended like a paperwork avalanche on the county sheriff's office. The sheriff blames the rise
in drug arrests and breaking and entering on second homes.
"Robbers thrive on second home developments and tourists
bring in drugs," he said. Some of the resorts maintain their
own security, but the deputies routinely patrol the resorts and
if there's an arrest to be made, "It's our baby." During the past
10 years, the sheriff has tripled his force and he says with the
extra seasonal work, "It's not enough."
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Volunteer fire departments suffer more than the police.
With old and minimal equipment, the volunteers must douse
fires in developments whose roads are sometimes so narrow that
the truck can't squeeze through to the burning house. Rev.
Campbell, who heads the Foscoe Fire Department, says the
problem is more than firefighting, since the "closest thing we
have to community action are the volunteers. Helping developers
out cuts into our efforts to stop them from destroying our land."
Some resorts, like Grandfather and Hound Ears, contributed
money to local fire departments for extra equipment. "They've
bought allegiance, round-the-clock protection, and lower insurance rates," said Campbell.
County officials agree that they spend proportionately more
time meeting tourist demands than attending to local residents.
"Tourists are a different class of people. They expect more
service," said one official. The problem of service is both attitudinal and financial. Summer people pay taxes but aren't
interested in specifically local issues like education. Therefore,
their tax dollars become proxy votes to ensure that their interests are honored. Also, Watauga's government has invoked
a spate of regulations to prevent future land abuse, which means
more tax dollars must be spent on enforcement.
Cutting Up the Mountains
Developers have destroyed much of the ecologically fragile
farm and mountain land. One of the worst problems is erosion
caused by steeply graded subdivision roads. At Hound Ears the
grades run as high as 20 percent—8 percent higher than the law
allows. A county planner has said that some of the Hound Ears
land as well as that of Seven Devils should never have been
touched by a bulldozer. Not one lot has been sold in some
smaller subdivisions, but hundreds of roads scrape through the
mountains. The planner estimates that 11,000 recently subdivided lots sit on Watauga's roadripped mountains. At Beech
Creek, a developer graded a zig-zag through the mountain's steep
north face. Because the winter sun doesn't hit the north slope,
the slick wet roads washed away after the first winter, leaving the
developer with a several thousand dollar loss and the mountain
with an eroded skin. The planner estimates that hundreds of
road miles like Beech Creek were abandoned without the first
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house ever being built. "There's no way to stop that road building—all we can do is require permits to keep the stone stabilized."
Road erosion scrapes the mountain clean of its protective
vegetation, causing floods and runoff. When the slope is scalped,
rain water runs off without being absorbed by the streams and
lakes. In a monograph for the Economic Development Agency,
Ray Derrick estimates that after a one-inch rainfall, 28,000
gallons run off a one-acre dirt slope. This causes sedimentation,
flooding, and the lowering of the water table. Robin Gottfried,
in her master's thesis, says that sedimentation is a major effect
of resort construction which bares the mountains of their natural
vegetation for ski slopes, access roads and second homes. And
at developments like Hound Ears, more trees than necessary are
cleared so each lot owner can have a mountain view.
Bacterial pollution in the rivers and streams has increased
dramatically because the developments do not adequately provide for disposal of refuse and human wastes. Small developers
can't afford the expensive treatment plants, while larger resorts
like Beech were placed under a federal building moratorium because their sewage facilities are not adequate. Community
Planner Tom Foxx says that even if the waste is treated properly,
the effluents—treated chemical wastes—kill fish. "What we're
going to have around here is pure dead water." At Sugar, septic
tanks are on one-half acre lots. A local joke is that when Sugar
Mountain people flush their commodes, the water table rises in
the valley.
But the people living at the base of Sugar in the Norwood
Community aren't laughing. They resent the developers who
caused them to lose their farms and peaceful valley. Most of the
30 farming families left in the hollow depended upon prized
farmland for their food and clear streams for their water. All
that has changed now. Sugar Mountain Corporation built its golf
course adjacent to their land. Access roads to the resort traverse
the natural water flow and eliminated some streams. While the
remaining streams must absorb all of the water, Norwood people
are flooded each spring. The farmers say they can no longer harvest a garden since the water floods their crops and destroys
everything in its path. One farmer tried to sell his land, but nobody wants to buy property that is flooded each spring.
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Another farmer said the streams won't hold a lizard now because they're polluted from Sugar's wastes. Every fish in the
creek died, and the water became undrinkable even for the cows.
Not only is sewage running down the stream beds, but the mountains themselves are crumbling into a mud and rock mixture
which dams the streams.
Sugar contractors laid tiling on the access roads to keep
them from washing away. The tiling reroutes storm water
directly onto Norwood gardens. "Before Sugar Mountain came
here," said one woman, "we didn't have a drop of floodwater.
Now it runs into my living room, kills the vegetables, and rises as
high as the top of the pick-up's wheel base."
But Sugar executives refuse to respond to the Norwood
people. The woman whose garden was flooded called Sugar's
executives to explain what was happening to her community as a
result of Sugar's development. The executives did not assist Norwood, but Sugar's maintenance people did throw old wood,
junk tires, and metal scraps against her fence which sits about
20 feet from the resort's golf course. "Early on," said the
woman, "they tried to buy us out—now I reckon they're going to
try and run us out."
Noise from the snowmaking machines crashes into the
valley late at night. "When they're making the snow you can't
sleep. I never heard such a racket in all my life," said one woman. The ski-doos and trail bikes add to the racket and scare the
animals. "It's not so peaceful any more." she said.
Invading the Culture
Like the problems at Norwood, the effects of tourism and
resort development cannot all be measured by cost-efficiency
analyses. Mountain living is packaged and huckstered so that
business-filtered remnants of mountain culture can be purchased
at tourist shops which capitalize on Al Capp myths of corn pone,
white lightnin', and geehaw whimmeydiddles. "The new shops
make you think hillbillies are old-withered-up people who just
sit and make those whimmeydiddles all day long," said a young
man who returned home to Watauga after completing college.
"We aren't someone's vacation fantasy. What the Florida people
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and developers don't understand or care about is that their
actions keep us from living the way we want/'
Shopkeepers who long served their communities with food,
farming equipment, and such have learned they can make more
money by catering to free-spending tourists and second home
dwellers. Richard Mast, county precinct captain and son of the
former owner of Mast's General Store, described the changes in
his family's recently sold store. "The new owners raised the
prices so that local people can't afford to shop there any more
and now what was once a community supply store and meeting
place is a curio shop which sells pottery made from organic dirt
and three-dollar baloney sandwiches which you have to make
yourself." The new owners of Mast's store, also the oldest
Exxon station in the United States, plan to build an 85-seat
delicatessen, with funds provided by Exxon, to commemorate
the Bicentennial. One burley tobacco grower wondered what
use a high-priced restaurant would be to working farmers.
Local community associations have been taken over by
second-home dwellers. In Mast's Valle Crucis community,
monthly get-togethers and pot luck dinners once provided a
forum for community discussions. Second-home people flooded
the summer meetings, elected one of their own as chairman, and
cancelled winter meetings because they wouldn't be able to
attend. Angry farmers labeled them the "Valle Crucis Cut-up,"
boycotted the meetings, and are forming a new community
group. Mast says Valle Crucis is being torn apart.
Local landmarks are also being torn apart. Dutch Creek
Falls has been a Valle Crucis playground for as long as anyone
can remember. Two years ago, the falls were bought by an
attorney who is building a house on a platform he erected
directly over the water. To make room for the house and equipment, the attorney scraped the area clean of its trees and brush.
He also hung a no trespassing sign on the land.
"The first thing those outsiders do is hang up a no trespassing sign," said a woman whose grandmother's name is carved
on the Dutch Creek Elm. "Land that was used for hunting and
shortcuts isn't ours to use anymore, and there are so many signs
you need a plat to tell where you can go," she said. "I used to
love this land, but now I'm ready to move out."
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Politics As Usual
Despite any evidence to the contrary, development agencies
like the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), which are
supposed to assist communities like Valle Crucis, actually pave
the way for the current brand of tourism and recreation development. During the past nine years, the ARC has sunk a half million dollars in studies to evaluate the economic and social benefits of tourism and resort trade in Appalachia. Most of the
studies warned the Commission to stay away from investments
in tourism. ARC's preliminary study on the impact of tourism
in Appalachia warned the ARC that the resort industry is one of
"low pay and seasonal in nature." Later, a Spindletop Research
Project confirmed the earlier conclusions and added that the
tourist business creates a "service class of an entire body of
people." The single study which supported tourism was sponsored by the Department of the Interior, whose primary concern
was to alleviate urban congestion.
The conclusions of ARC's own studies describe resort investment as a "poor financial risk and deterrent to mountain
life." In 1974, the ARC released a film documenting bulldozed
mountains sprayed with resort developments and quick-snack
shops. Its public relations director said the film was made to
"sensitize the region's people to abuses of tourism and resort development."
But the bankrupt developers found the way to their governor's ear, and ARC's sensitizer was filed with the rest of their
mountain of tourism studies. A new $100,000 study was called
a "significant document making the case for public assistance
to the troubled resort industry" by North Carolina's Secretary
of Natural and Economic Resources, James Harrington, a former
Sugar Mountain executive. The Twin Sentinel flatly disagreed
with Harrington in an editorial which called "the ARC attempt
to reinflate the resort balloon at public expense, the height of
folly."
Some critics call the problem of resort development more a
matter of structure than of judgment. One observer said, "The
ARC serves the narrow interests of specific industrialists under
the guise of community development." The ARC implements its
development programs through its development district, called
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Lead Regional Organizations (LRO). The LRO Board consists
of mayors and county commissioners—no directly elected members. In the overall economic development program for Watauga
and Avery counties, LRO Director Carl Tuttle wrote that the
"tourism industry should be the single sector of the economy to
make the largest gain." To make sure the prophecy is fulfilled,
the LRO does not court small factories which would employ
farmers during off-season because such development might
interfere with the "scenic quality" required by resort developers.
Even though Watauga's factories are generally cut-and-sew, low
wage, labor-intensive, predominantly employing women, farming
families agree that they provide a steady income which allows
them to keep their land. Tuttle's new development plans support
tourism and resort interests at farmers' expense. In his 34 recommendations for community development, Tuttle directly supported resorts while making not a single recommendation to
assist the 950 farmers who live in Watauga.
H. C. Moretz, director of the five-county community action
program (WAMY), suggests that the reason the LRO pays no
attention to farmers is that there are no farmers represented on
the multi-county planning body. "Oh, they'll tell you that
elected officials who sit on the LRO board represent all the
people but the fact is that farmers and poor people have no
direct access to it. Elected officials who sit on the Board are
either small businessmen who financially gain by tourist trade or
they're politically tied to realtors and developers."
Farming is pretty well written off by the chamber of commerce and county commissioners. When asked about the demise
of farming in Watauga County, the chamber of commerce director—who works for Tweetsie Railroad—said, "Don't get hung
up on agriculture."
But farmers and some planners are hung up on agriculture.
Tom Foxx, chief planner with the North Carolina Department of
Natural Resources & Community Development, says, "We must
scrutinize whether public taxpayer dollars should be further
used to subsidize the resort business." Foxx, paid by the state to
provide local planning and management services, is at odds with
LRO planners who ignore farmers. "The initial impact of resorts
on tax revenues was positive," said Foxx. "Now the services required to sustain the developments, higher taxes, and land prices
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are not worth the additional dollars collected." Foxx says resorts will increase their demand for services. "What we're doing
is providing an inordinate amount of services to attract skiers and
don't have money left for people who've lived here all their
lives."
Foxx has his first opportunity to stop taxpayer assistance
to resort developments in a current thrust by Sugar and Beech
Mountains to win federal-state-ARC financing of a water and
sewage treatment plant. Sugar's President Hard figures that a
government bailout is the only thing that will save the resorts
from certain bankruptcy. Hard wants an area-wide $10 million
waste treatment plant to serve Sugar, Beech, and the town of
Banner Elk. Without Banner Elk's participation, the resorts are
not eligible for federal largesse. Banner Elk's mayor says, "We
need a sanitary district to relieve developers from having to
operate their own sewer and water facilities." But the mayor
privately fears that a sanitary district consolidation might be the
first step toward resort rule.
He's right. To obtain the necessary federal money, 51 percent of the property owners must sign a petition. Two categories
of property owners live in the farming-resort communities: one
is a freeholder—property owner, and the other is a resident
freeholder—resident property owner. Since Beech and Sugar's
resort owners greatly outnumber permanent Banner Elk citizens,
freeholder voting status would plunge long-time residents into an
automatic minority.
The developers are looking down the road and want to incorporate the sanitary district into a township. Then they would
be eligible for federal funds, revenue sharing, and state aid.
"What we're planning is incorporation but it's not good to
publicize the fact; it's too political," admits Sugar's publicity
director. Since the developers want legalized liquor in dry Banner Elk, the first confrontation is likely to force a difficult
change on the community. Hard says he doesn't want to lose
control of sewage facilities or a power base. "If we create a
city and give up control, we'd be creating a monster in Banner
Elk that could kill us."
Farmers near Banner Elk say their farms are more likely to
be killed than the resort business. Valle Crucis and Matney
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residents, who live in the shadow of the resorts, approached
Foxx and his planning board to stop developers from encroaching on their communities. They asked the zoning board to prohibit resort-type developments in their townships. But Foxx
couldn't do much. "We could zone them residential—that allows
golf courses and subdivisions—or industrial." North Carolina
state law makes no provision for agricultural zoning.
Foxx says alternatives for agricultural developments do
exist, but the state never passed enabling legislation and officials
aren't interested in lobbying for farm legislation. "The destruction of farming is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Officials read statistics of declining farm land and decide that farmers don't want to
work the land any more. Then they assist developers which increases the farmers' problems, and go back and read the statistics," said Foxx. The county could provide incentives to maintain farmland as farmland and commit non-farm land to nonurban types of development. "If a 100 acre tract of land was not
used for 20 years, it doesn't have to be taxed. Five-acre conservancy zones could be designated to prevent large developers from
tearing up farmland and ecologically fragile wood-land. Nearly
50 percent of the county would fit into this type of zone,"
explained Foxx. But developers and county officials aren't
interested in land preservation because high growth development
brings in money. After the tourism boom, said Foxx, "Farmers
lost the right to decide how they will use their land."
Land Use Planning and the Small Farm
Foxx believes the county can stop unchecked growth with
the tools of land-use planning and regulatory ordinances. The
Watauga County Planning Board recently imposed regulations to
stop the developers' worst abuses: excessive subdivisions, building violations, erosion, and flooding. But regulations must be enforced to be effective, and even then they don't halt development—at best they slow it down.
Government-controlled land-use planning has its own set
of problems. Who will control land-use decisions? Will land
planning create more uncontrolled growth or will it be structured
to encourage cooperative development? Resort developers are
against government intervention and call the free enterprise
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system "its own plan." 'The value and use of land will be determined, rightfully, by the open market," said realtor Randy
Phillips, who tripled his land investments in one year. Phillips
says government control and planning raise the costs of development. County planners say strict government control will inhibit destructive growth and direct future land development so
that it will benefit all county residents. Farmers generally want
nothing to do with government control because, as one farmer
said, "The right to private property is inviolate." But the developers' easy money gives them a higher right than the farmers.
Whether government control or laissez-faire, farmers are locked
out of the decision-making process and excluded from growth
plans. "Maybe we ought to build land and market cooperatives
which would benefit our kind of people instead of those scalawags who cross state lines to destroy our land," said a Watauga
County farmer. "Maybe," he said, "we ought to ask ourselves
if this growth thing is good for us."
"Whither growth?" is a question never asked by developers
or government planners. Developers think of land as a commodity and not as a resource. The government says the land resource
should be developed for its optimum use. While the private developers and government planners appear to be at odds over
what generally amounts to environmental issues, both eliminate
farmers with their growth plans. The only real question is "how
fast the elimination." The contradiction of specialized growth is
implicit in the system of development. While the federal government does not have an overall land use and growth policy, grants
for highway construction, sewer lines, water systems, and the
like define land use. Government-paid definition is encouraged
by some developers who, like Hard at Sugar, define land's highest
use by its highest profit. Since growth agencies like the Appalachian Regional Commission only invest in projects with the
greatest dollar return, private developers and government policy
complement each other. Senator Morris Udall agrees when he
says the politics of land use has given special interests "the upper
hand."
State planning is little better than federal planning. Special
interests are acutely evident in North Carolina's defeated Mountain Area Management Act which was introduced in the 1974
N. C. Legislature. The act called for a 15-member mountain
commission to oversee a comprehensive state-local plan which
�The Land Development Rag
195
would designate specific areas of environmental concern and enforce orderly development through a system of permits. The
political nature of the bill is evident; timber and utilities are
exempted from regulation. The opposition, according to an
article by Joy Lamm in Southern Exposure, called the bill
"politically tied." "The state government is mistrusted by past
action, condemnation powers would destroy an already weak tax
base, lack of local input ensures that development would be tied
to a small group of individuals and there is no provision for class
action suits."
County-controlled zoning fares no better in the test of
planning by special interests. Zoning defines land use by the
dollar. Foxx says the LRO planners predicted that "between
1970 and 2020 agriculture will drop from the present level of
approximately 6,000 people to about 3,000 and then will stabilize at this reduced level." uWhat planners don't understand
is that implementing policies like zoning for special interests will
cause their statistics to come true/ 7 said Foxx. But many farmers don't intend to bow to statistics. "The land is our frontier,"
said a farmer, "and we're planning to get up a posse." The posse
is forming slowly and deliberately. "To survive we need a
cheaper way to buy supplies, and markets to sell our produce,"
explained a farmer whose wife took a cut-and-sew job and whose
children help cut their burley tobacco. "What we've done is
organize a Farmer's Market to sell some of our extra crops."
The market was created as an economic alternative for farmers
who don't have outlets for their vegetables. Most of the 80
farmers who sell their produce through the market own small
farms worked primarily for family consumption. Now the
market allows them to sell their excess and plant additional crops
in anticipation of a cash market. "Last year," said one market
regular, "I made $3,000 during the selling season. It certainly
helped out."
The market costs $2 to join and a flat 50 cents fee per
selling day. Food stamps are accepted by sellers who undercut
supermarket prices by ten cents per item. Quality control is
sometimes a problem since the group doesn't set standards, but
most of the vegetables are graded by the growers. "We can't
let bad quality vegetables slip in because we'll lose our customers.
We're still in the organizing stages about things like that," said
one of the planners of the market.
�196
Colonialism in Modern America
One farmer thought organizational problems stemmed from the
fact that the market was conceived and implemented by nonfarmers and picked up by the New River Resources Conservation
Development Committee. "It may never have gotten started
without outside help, but we must make decisions about the
market's future." The consensus is that farmers must have an
outlet for their crops and access to equipment.
Market members say they should be more tightly organized
and focus on one issue at a time. "The first thing we need is a
permanent facility so the vegetables won't wilt in the sun and we
can sell refrigerated cheese and meat," commented one market
organizer. "Then we should buy a truck to deliver produce
regularly to shops." Cutting production costs is high on the issue
list. Common purchases of grading or spraying machines would
reduce expenses and create greater purchasing power for the
entire community. "After that we can think about farmingsupport industry like canneries, mills, and supply stores," said a
farmer who has been nearly wiped out by the tax increases and
the rapidly increasing prices of equipment. "We've got the
problems of all small farmers in the country and the added affection of resort developers," he said.
Agricultural extension agents could be helpful, with the
organizational experience they've gained from the 20-year-old
cooperatives which sell specific items like sheep and cattle to
large eastern markets. Their wool and cattle cooperatives generally involve larger farms, but the county agent said, "If a man
has one cow and it meets our standards, he can sell it through us
for a better market price than on the open market." The cooperatives, like the Farmer's Market, return more money per
pound to the farmers than the open market while saving customers money.
Looking down the road, market organizers see several
phases of action which must occur simultaneously. The first is a
transition to high yield, not so labor-intensive specialty crops.
"The problem is that we're not competitive with mid-western
farms. Our mountain land is not suitable for mechanized farming, so we have to go with things like cabbage or burley tobacco." Second, a combination of crops would prevent farmers
from being wiped out if one crop didn't make it. Third, a
more tightly organized Farmer's Market, with capital and equip-
�The Land Development Rag
197
merit shared by the participants, would free money for other
things. Fourth, outlets must be found for the produce. "Community Development Corporations like Chicago's Fedco and the
Cooperative League in Washington, D.C. would be direct connections for our produce." Fifth, farming-support industries like
cooperative canneries, supply stores, and mills would increase
the markets, return money to the community, and allow farmers
to grow more. "If we get this underway, we wouldn't have to
work for the resorts or cut-and-sew places/' said a woman who
works as a maid for Sugar. And finally, the resort developers
must be forced through community organization and county
government to halt their farmland gobbling and ensure a more
equitable use of tax dollars. "The Farmer's Market is a way to
get a handle on all these problems, but we've a long way to go,"
said a market member.
Some tax and land plans could be implemented through the,
Farmer's Market. The "circuit breaker" system rebates taxes to
farmers if property taxes exceed a fixed percentage of income.
If no taxes are paid, a rebate is paid by the state treasury. In
Michigan, the circuit breaker is tied to state and local planning.
The Internal Revenue Code, in occasional cases, is used to
preserve farmland. Section 501(a)(3) governs the rights and responsibilities of certain non-profit corporations. Groups have
incorporated themselves, gained non-profit status from the Internal Revenue Service, and donated land or money to an incorporated land trust. The trust is committed to maintaining the
land as farmland and leases the land back to farmers. Because
of the non-profit aspects of the trust, the land is not taxed and
the donor receives tax advantages from the transaction. The
problem, of course, is giving up the land to the corporation. In
California, the Northern California Land Trust intends to use its
land base as a vehicle to help migrant farmers live and produce on
their own land—land owned by the trust but theirs to work and
pass on to their children.
Land banks are another land planning device. In British
Columbia and on Prince Edward Island, the land bank system
allows the state to purchase farm land. Instead of a retiring
farmer selling his land to a corporation, the state buys his land
and leases (or sells) it to another farmer.
�198
Colonialism in Modern America
The problems caused by corporate developers are not new
to the mountains. Company towns used to mean coal towns
which served the interests of the coal operators. Now a new
set of corporate strip miners are disturbing the land and organizing labor around their resort-oriented needs. Mountain
people are again going to be forced to fight for the right to
decide how to use theor own land. County officials say that
planned land-use regulations will block future over-development.
They have hired professional planners to carry out what they
perceive the public will to be. Who decides what that will is,
and how conflicting demands on land-use will be accommodated
in a rational land-use policy are decisions which cannot remain
in the hands of the owners of the company towns if farming is
to survive.
NOTE
^Yolande DeB. McCurdy (Robin Gottfried), "An Ecosystematic
Analysis of the Vegetation of Hanging Rock State Park, Danbury, North
Carolina," MA in Ecology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
1976.
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Colonialism in Modern America
heard, and felt, over the past four years. Tremendous changes
are coming to the mountains—whether we want those changes or
not. I hope some of you are already aware of these changes and I
hope you are determined to participate in these events so we can
all begin to influence the people who rule this country; for I
came here today to talk about taking political and economic control of our country.
Before I talk about how people might begin to take power, I
want to say a few words about Berea College and about the
changes which I feel sure all of you are experiencing as you
spend time at this place.
For those who are from Appalachia, who love it, and who
want to remain, I'm sure each trip back home is a hard one; for
the more formal education we get the more we tend to be isolated from the old ways and from our own people. Perhaps we
need to examine why this isolation takes place, for I don't believe it is an accidental thing.
If I understand Berea's aims today, you students before me
are the cream of this year's crop. You are the best-read, most
likely to succeed in the Berea Way, of those thousands who applied to come to this lonely and sometimes barren ridge. Those
of you who stay here for four years and obtain a degree can be
expected to go out and become teachers, doctors, scientists,
engineers—the people who help to keep this country prosperous.
Those of you who have successful careers and stay in the mountains can be expected to become leaders of Appalachia. I hope
not, for I believe we have too many leaders in Appalachia already. There are too many now who believe they know what is
best for the area and for the people. Most of these so-called
leaders or experts are trained as I am trained, and as you will be
trained, to think only as middle class people with middle class
values and middle class ways. Because of this, I would say that
many of Appalachia's problems result from the fact that its
leaders are middle class and formally educated. Let me explain
further.
Back home, wherever that is, and probably within sight
of this building, an older culture is dying before our eyes. The
physical changes are the most obvious; the old cabins, nestled in
a quiet cove with surrounding chicken coop and barn, are almost
�Education and Exploitation
201
gone. For the expanding middle class their way of life differs
little from that of middle America. The differences which still
exist are mental ones: nostalgic memories stirred by church
hymns or traditional music, the old friendships built before mills
and roads brought a new way of dealing with one's neighbors.
But for the working class, the unemployed, the subsistence
farmer, the people who barely get by, the old ways and values are
still a living thing; and the relationships based on an agrarian
society are not so easily discarded despite the invasion of roads
and schools and TV sets.
Our real problem in Appalachia is not whether the old culture will die—only time will decide that now—but whether mountain people can begin to find ways to deal directly with the
political and economic forces which are at work in Appalachia
and in the rest of the country. If Appalachians problems are to
be solved, it will be done because we understand our past and
because we begin to find out who really controls this country.
We need to know who really has economic and political power
in Appalachia.
America began to move away from Appalachia with the
utilization of the steam engine, the building of the railroad, the
opening of the West, and the coming of the automobile. Because the terrain was rugged and difficult to penetrate by modern
means of transportation, it was easier for businessmen and
speculators to go west, to gain their tremendous profits in the
drive toward western seashores. But Appalachia was not forgotten for long. It was too rich, too valuable, and too close to
the existing centers of industry in the Northeast.
By the late 1890's the robber barons who made their fortunes in rails, steel, textiles, and coal began to turn their attention to new areas in their search for raw materials and cheap
labor. Appalachia, in all its unspoiled splendor, was close at
hand, for the area had huge attractive reserves of coal, timber,
and water. Rail lines, which had paralleled the major ranges and
opened up the broad river valleys years before, began to penetrate the deeper regions of the mountains. In these rugged hills,
the oldest in the world, the robber barons found tremendous
riches. In eastern Kentucky alone, thirty-three billion tons of
coal would eventually be surveyed. Over the steep slopes from
New York to southern Georgia were stands of magnificent virgin
�202
Colonialism in Modern America
timber, perhaps the most luxuriant growth of hardwood timber
on the American continent. It was a land of great beauty, a
wilderness island in the midst of America's industrial push west.
And just as the early pioneers and land speculators devised ways
to steal this land from the Indians, the northern industrialists
began to devise ways to steal it from our ancestors.
The opening up of Appalachia in the quest for raw materials
and cheap labor was not unique. Across the Atlantic in their
corporate offices European businessmen began to look for more
markets for their wares. The targets they chose were Asia,
Africa, and Indochina. The race was on across the world. For as
industrial production rose to new heights, new markets were
needed to supply raw materials, cheap labor, and more profits.
The first industrial incursions into this region were tenuous
ones, but over a period of time they were successful. My family,
and yours, helped to make them that way. In the coal mines,
lumber camps, paper mills, and textile sweat shops of the Southern mountains, our ancestors helped to develop this region with
their labor and their lives. My folks worked for the paper mills
and textile plants. Your families may have worked in the mines
or mills. No matter. The results are the same. They worked for
it, but we don't own it. Today, if we look across the region, we
can see the process still going on. The names may differ from the
past—U.S. Steel, Ford Motor Company, Standard Oil, Mead
Corporation, American Enka, Eastman Kodak; the names may
differ, but the process remains the same. The people who
labored to build this country do not own it. Neither do their
descendants. We are a people with some material benefits, but
we are still at the beck and call of the rich 10 percent of our
population who still control 90 percent of the capital wealth.
And one percent of that 10 percent actually controls how all the
wealth is spent. Impossible in a democracy? Yes, it would be
impossible if we lived in a democracy. But we don't.
Much of this is probably not new to you. I didn't come
here to bore you with facts but to ask some questions which I
think you will all face very soon. My questions have to do with
what we can do to change these facts, if you think they need to
be changed.
Historically, people who wanted change in this country have
�Education and Exploitation
203
worked with the people who are most obviously oppressed:
with the union movement, with Black people, and with other
oppressed minorities around the country. But so far all of these
attempts to build a national movement have failed because
people have been bought off, leaders have been killed, or the
present system has found a way to meet the immediate needs
raised by the protestors. Let's look briefly at some of these
attempts.
In the late 1800's the labor movement in this country developed along two radically different lines. The first branch was
the traditionally-oriented trade unions or guilds, established
along authoritarian lines and interested in obtaining immediate
material benefits for their members. They wanted a larger piece
of the pie, and they were willing to live alongside the bosses if
they could get some pie. Out of this group came the American
Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
The other branch was quite different. The best known was
the Industrial Workers of the World, popularly known as the
"Wobblies." It was the most militant union industrial America
had ever seen. It called for one big union of working people and
for the workers to control and own all phases of production. It
wanted no bosses. "This land is ours," the union said. "We
built it, we should control it, lock, stock and barrel." Its tactics
were the boycott, the strike, the lock-out, and, if necessary,
industrial sabotage. "If we can't have it, it won't exist," was the
cry. And as the union chapters spread across the land, they became a threat which could not be ignored. Eventually the strikes
were defeated, the leaders jailed or killed, and the members
blacklisted from any jobs. By the early 1920's the Wobblies were
finished as an industrial power. Yet today many of their ideas
are echoed in the demands for community control of police and
schools and industry. The Wobblies failed and they were destroyed, but their ideas live on.
In the 1930's with the Great Depression, a militant mood
began to build again in the country. Big business and the federal
government were forced to take action to overhaul a collapsing
system. With the reorganization of the federal government and
the reforms pushed through by Roosevelt, the last militant drive
of the labor unions ended in defeat. The reforms were just
�204
Colonialism in Modern America
enough to satisfy people and to keep them from tearing the
whole thing down. With the National Labor Relations Act and
the right to collective bargaining given to the unions, the last
attempt to build militant unions ended. FDR's recognition of
labor's right to organize was a short-term boom for the unions;
but in the long run it meant that the unions could be controlled,
channeled, and directed by big business through the courts and
through arbitration and contracts. FDR's ploy to save the system by changing a little part of it succeeded. The American
trade unions, already rigid and authoritarian, bought a larger
piece of the pie and none of the action.
Mountain people—in Detroit, Cabin Creek, Blair Mountain,
Gastonia, Elizabethton—fought for their unions during this time.
Yet today these unions have sold them out.
In the 1950's and 1960's Black people began to build a
movement which had potential for a national coalition of poor
people. Instead of just calling for more material benefits, Black
people called for liberation from psychological oppression and
then for economic equality. Organizations such as the NAACP,
CORE, and SCLC began the fight. It was brought to a new level
by the demands of SNCC and later the Black Panthers and other
Black groups. And just as the Wobblies were attacked, so were
Black leaders. Over the past few years we have seen Black leaders
killed, jailed, or driven into political exile because of their beliefs and because they were willing to stand up for their beliefs.
In the mountains things were no different. In the early
1960's a group of poor mountain people was formed in eastern
Kentucky known as the Appalachian Committee for Full Employment. It was composed of unemployed miners who were
trying to force their union and the coal operators to pay them
full union wages. During the same time that Black people were
demanding social and economic equality, poor mountain whites
were making many of these same demands of the federal government. The methods chosen by the government to deal with both
groups were the same—the War on Poverty. For in the same way
the government bought off militant people in the 1930's, the War
on Poverty was established to keep this country's poor quiet.
The results can be seen around the country where federallyfunded projects have attempted to check, channel, and thwart
�Education and Exploitation
205
the drive of America's poor for political and economic rights.
Where the government has been unwilling or unable to step in,
the large private foundations have provided financial backing,
knowledge, and, most importantly, guidance.
But while these programs have often diverted people's
attention from some basic needs to the more easily controlled
tasks of grants, paperwork, red tape, surveys, etc., the basic
alienation of the American poor remains—along with their desire
for drastic change.
The reasons the poverty programs failed could be held to
faulty reasoning: It's not really possible to save this system by
reforming it. It might have failed because of a lack of will power
on the part of most Americans. But I would say the program
failed because of lack of trust. No government in history has
paid its own people to overthrow it. Many poor people, either
instinctively or consciously, realized this and never trusted the
motives and designs of the federal bureaucrats and politicians
who run the program. This has been especially true in the mountains where people are traditionally distrustful of any government. Part of this distrust is based on years of being on the
bottom and seeing all kinds of promises but very little action.
Poor people, because of their economic experiences, look for
action—not talk. In order to survive they must become experts
in judging people's motives and designs. They may not always
make the best decision for themselves in the long run; but they
are usually accurate in judging who has the power and who will
use the axe, if and when it falls.
What does all this mean to you people as students at Berea
College? I think it has a lot to do with you, for many of you will
probably end up being the people who will attempt to control
the lives of Appalachia's poor folks.
Earlier I talked of how the northern industrialists came into
Appalachia and began to exploit its natural wealth and cheap
labor. That trend continues, and it will continue for the foreseeable future unless there is an abrupt shift in how people act
in the mountains.
It's not enough to simply own a region if you cannot control it and then exploit it. In order to do this, you need people
�206
Colonialism in Modern America
in the middle who will do the dirty work. You need an educated
class willing to run the local businesses, set up schools and other
institutions which train people to do the job and keep their
minds and mouths shut. You need an educated class to keep
poor people in their "place."
Around the world wherever empires are built, you can see
the same process at work. An educated class is built from the
native people—a class whose loyalties are not to their own people
but to the people who own the region. These educated people,
the middle men, are paid well with material benefits, money,
status, and power. And they rule with an iron fist. Once such a
system is established, it's not necessary for the rich folks to pass
down orders to their stooges. The stooges already know what
their self interests are and they will protect them at all costs.
But where do you recruit an educated class and how do you
train them? It's my belief that Berea College and other colleges
in Appalachia have fulfilled this function since they were established.
Berea College was founded by missionaries who believed
they had a divine purpose to bring enlightenment and education
to this rugged land. But education in our society means control,
not freedom. It means a way of transferring values from one
group to another so that the first group can keep the second
under control. The missionaries, or their supporters, ended up
by controlling the people they were trying to save from eternal
damnation. This was true in India with the British, in Latin
America with the Spanish, and in Appalachia with our own missionaries. By setting up an educated class of native people who
are trained to be doctors, lawyers, teachers, and social workers,
a larger society can control a smaller one or one without political
power.
How does Berea help in all of this? I think it's fairly evident. By training the people who have functioned best in mountain schools, Berea helps to insure a steady supply of people who
will take over the reins of power when the existing local leadership dies. By teaching students a new set of values, values based
on the dominant middle-class American society, this college
insures that people can be co-opted and bought off like most
other people in this society who are formally educated and
�Education and Exploitation
207
middle class.
This system will always allow a few people to fight their
way to the top, for those few are needed to control those who
are on the bottom. Remember this fact, and remember it well,
fellow Bereans: We got where we are by climbing over the backs
and bodies of our brothers and sisters who now work in the mills,
mines, and factories, who fight in Vietnam, or who sit jobless
at home and wonder what tomorrow will bring.
I don't know what your reaction is to these thoughts. I
don't mind anger. I hope you do have some kind of reaction. I
also hope you don't feel guilty if you find some truth in what I
say. Guilt is the traditional means of escape for the American
liberal who rushes out into the cold world to help poor folks,
whether poor folks want help or not.
The problem is not with poor folks. The problem is with
the rich folks in this country who control the wealth and then
control us. And part of the problem is with the middle class
who help to perpetuate this evil, racist system which we now
have.
We have the potential as a people to build a democratic
society in this country. If we want to build a democratic society
we must begin to figure out how the present system works. Then
we must begin to build a new society which will serve people,
not exploit them.
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�212
Colonialism in Modern America
boycotts and perhaps even throw dog dung at Eva Gabor as she
emerged from her studio. They might even go a step further and
deal with that hillbilly maligning patriot, Al Capp. But with this,
as all things Appalachian, silence. America is allowed to continue laughing at this minority group, because on this America
agrees: Hillbilly ain't beautiful.
The treatment given by the media to Appalachia is only one
example of the massive failure of America's institutions for over
a century to meet the needs of the people of the region. From
government at all levels to churches, private welfare agencies,
schools, colleges, labor unions, foundations, newspapers, corporations, ad infinitum, the region has received an unequal share of
exploitation, neglect, unfulfilled promises, and misguided assistance. This is not to deny that America is interested in Appalachia. It has been interested for some time, in the peculiar American way, in Appalachia's worth to industry, of course; only
erratically has it been interested in the plight of the people.
General Howard of the Freedman's Bureau is said to have convinced Lincoln that he ought to try to do something for the poor
mountaineers after the Civil War. The New Deal brought the
then rather progressive Tennessee Valley Authority to one part
of the region, but TVA's recently developed capacity to burn
lower-grade strip-mine coal brought the hellish human and
material waste of that process to Central Appalachia. John
Kennedy and his brother Robert both professed an interest in
the hillbilly and his vote; and eventually, under Lyndon Johnson,
their interest was translated into the Appalachian Regional
Commission, a unique political and economic development
agency. But, as Harry Caudill remarked, its assignment was "one
of the most awesome tasks since Hercules cleaned the Augean
stables."
It is especially Herculean when one applies some good
American economic analysis: The agency was given about onetwentieth of the amount of money it takes to fight the Vietnam
war for one year and told to use the amount over a six-year
period to correct almost two hundred years of abuse to areas of
a thirteen-state region! Now, for the riddle: If 80 percent of
that money was spent on highway construction, how interested is
America in the nineteen million people who occupy the territory
the Commission described in 1964 as "an island of poverty in a
sea of affluence"? This is not to deny that the Commission has
�Annihilating the Hillbilly
213
had a positive influence on the region. Given the parameters
in which it had to work, it has made many investments in public
facilities and increased the accountability of state governments
to their Appalachian sections. If Congress extends the program
and significantly increases its funding for human resource programs, the Commission may be able to bring to the Appalachian
poor some of the services even ghetto residents have come to
accept as normal. There are some big ifs in this, not the least of
which is the critical question today about the relationship between institutions and people: // an institution today had unlimited funding and unlimited maneuverability, could it bring
to people the services they need without destroying the kind of
life they want to live?
If the ability of institutions to respond to people's needs
is judged on the basis of the Federal government's enforcement
of the Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, then the answer to
this question is NO! Loud and Clear. The death of 78 coal
miners in Farmington, West Virginia, in November, 1968, led to
the passage of that act, which is the strictest mine safety legislation ever to get through Congress and be signed by a President.
The public outrage over Farmington gave government one of its
few opportunities to wrestle successfully with the powerful
American coal-oil conglomerates. But something did not work:
Either there is no will or there is no desire by the bureaucracies
(the institutions) of the Federal government to go to the mat
with the conglomerates. Perhaps their interests are so inseparable
that no contest is ever possible. In any case, since the disaster
more than 700 miners have been killed in the mines, and more
than 10,000 have been crippled or injured. There has been no
public outcry to avenge the deaths of these men.
Moreover, the Social Security Administrations's own Bureau
of Disability Insurance provides some statistics to indicate how
the bureaucracy of one fundamental institution—governmentdeals with one crisis that the 1969 Act sought to meet: compensation for miners disabled by "black lung" contracted after long
years and long hours inside the mines. The national average of
claims under the black lung provisions of the act processed by
the Bureau of Disability Insurance is 43 percent. However, only
22 percent of the claims from eastern Kentucky and 24 percent
of those from West Virginia had been processed by early November, 1970. And 52 percent of the processed claims of West
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Colonialism in Modern America
Virginia miners have been denied; 71 percent of Kentucky miners
have been denied. The figure for claims denied for the rest of
the nation is only 20 percent.
If one reflects on the fact that in the past seventy years
there have been 101,000 mine deaths, a number larger than the
total of miners now working in Appalachia, and double the number of Vietnam deaths, then an inability of the government to
enforce regulations, which are mild by international comparison,
strikes one as not speaking well for the capacity of political institutions to use the very arena of action which is theirs by
democracy's mandate, or for the American public's capacity to
care for anything more than the dramatic, never the substantial.
And with the death of thirty-eight men in the Finley mines
near Hyden, Kentucky, on December 30, 1970, the nation was
once again reminded about the plight of miners in Appalachian
coal pits. The President of the United States himself announced
that he would have visited the scene of the disaster—if it had not
been for "the bad weather." (Yet no airports in the region were
closed.) The more important visits (those of inspectors from the
Bureau of Mines) had not been made on schedule some few days
before the disaster in order to check correction of violations of
the 1969 act cited on earlier visits. It was the same old refrain:
New priority guidelines for violations under the new act had just
come down from Washington to the bureau's regional office in
eastern Kentucky, necessitating a new schedule of visits; the
office itself was short-handed because some of the inspectors had
taken "Christmas leave"; the mine operators complained that
some provisions of the act were a peril to the safety of miners
and mines; no one, not even the inspectors, understood all of the
provisions of the act, etc., etc. In any event, the Finley mines
were permitted to operate up to the disaster on December 30.
They did so in large part because an inspection required under
the 1969 act was subjected to the administration of a bureaucracy which, perhaps unwittingly but in fact, vetoed the will and intention of the Congress and the President and—if representative
government is still taken seriously—the will of the people. Thirtyeight men were dead. And the litany of charges: Families of the
dead miners were exploited by funeral operators, insurance
claim men, and government officials; cover-ups and doubledealings and politics were involved in the "hearings" to inquire
into the disaster; illegal "prime-cord" and "dynamite" had (had
�Annihilating the Hillbilly
215
not) been used in the mines; an inspector "who didn't want his
name used" said a simultaneous explosion ten times the legal
limit was set off when the men were killed.
The complete failure of the American corporate structure to
accept even a charitable responsibility for the region that it has
raped so successfully is hardly arguable. Since men like General
Imboden in the late nineteenth century went before the state
legislatures to argue that "within the imperial domain of Virginia,
lie, almost unknown to the outside world and not fully appreciated by their owners, vaster fields of coal and iron than in all
England, maybe, than all Europe," the American corporate community has wrenched resources estimated at a worth of nearly
one trillion dollars from the mountains. While these companies
pay some of the highest dividends of any company in the world
to their already wealthy shareholders, the communities in Appalachia where those resources originated survive on a subsistence
economy, if "survive" is the proper verb here. Often more than
half of the money in circulation comes from state and federal
welfare coffers. This fact alone tells us something about the
American Way, if not the American Dream. Three months after
the June 30, 1970, deadline for reducing the amount of hazardous dust in the mines as required by the 1969 legislation,
2800 of the 3000 underground mine operators had not complied.
These same companies have continually opposed severance taxes
on coal and medical benefits for the more than 100,000 disabled
miners who suffer permanent lung damage from poorly maintained mines. Apparently when these corporate institutions of
American free enterprise become incredibly wealthy, they
cannot be expected to have the conscience even to allow government to pay for the damage they have caused. Somewhere that
"pursuit of selfish interest accruing benefits to all" went astray
in Appalachia.
It has always been asserted with pride that America takes
great interest in its children. "Dr. Spock" has been a best-seller
for over a decade. But his "child-dominated" society has interest
only in certain children. Of the more than 925,000 poor children under six in Appalachia, as estimated by the office of
Economic Opportunity, only about 100,000 receive cash benefits
in their homes from Aid to Dependent Children or other similar
welfare programs. The national participation rate of children in
Head Start programs decreased three percent between 1967 and
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Colonialism in Modern America
1969; the Appalachian participation decreased 15 percent. The
greatest decrease in Appalachia, significantly, was in full-year
programs, those regarded as most beneficial to poor children.
What other group in the country received the benefits from the
cutbacks in Appalachia is unimportant here; that "hillbillies"
were not on the priority list is obvious.
In the area of prenatal and infant care, the situation in
Appalachia is even more alarming. Examinations of children in
several areas of the region have shown that as many as 70 percent
have "parasitic infestation" (the euphemism for "worms"), one
of the causes contributing to Appalachians unusually large number of retarded and "slow" children. "Worms" abound in the
miserable shacks and grassless yards American free enterprise has
put aside for the hillbillies. If the Appalachian infant mortality
rate were reduced at the same rate as East Germany's in a fiveyear period (as reported by the World Health Organization), the
lives of more than 1,000 children a year could be preserved. In
certain areas of the region, as a matter of fact, the situation
worsened over a decade. In Lamar County, Alabama, for example, the infant mortality rate rose from 32.5 percent to 40.9
percent in ten years. The rate in Hancock County, Tennessee,
rose from 21.4 percent to 42.2 percent in the same time period.
While increased attention to child development at the national
and regional level promises to better the situation, for many the
help comes too late. Perhaps if it were possible to estimate the
number of mountain children who would be alive and healthy
if Appalachia had received and retained a more equitable share
of the nation's wealth, certain institutions could be persuaded
more easily to invest in saving children. Until the case is made,
however, we all labor under the curse of the prophets and the
admonitions of the poets (increasingly, it seems, the only sane
people) that the final judgement on civilizations and their institutions rests on how well they treat their children, who are—in
appeal at least—the "least of these."
The Appalachian child who makes it to school does not find
the institution America has charged with equipping youth with
basic "survival" skills any better prepared to meet his needs. The
inability and unwillingness of local government to tax the property and extractive resources of large corporations have resulted in
an educational system in Appalachia that can only be compared
with that in the so-called "underdeveloped" nations. Add to
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217
this the fundamental resistance of middle-class teachers to acknowledge the unique cultural heritage of the Appalachian youth,
and you have a laboratory for studying one of the classic historical struggles between a nation intent on erasing a minority from
its midst and a people intent on preserving their identity and lifestyle at any cost to themselves. In an Appalachian school, the
middle-class aspiring teacher is just as insistent that the student
be aggressive, obedient, and joyless—in short, everything that
his culture tells him he is not—as is the teacher in the Bureau
of Indian Affairs school on a reservation. No wonder, then, that
as many as 65 percent of the students drop out of school before
graduation, a figure 25 percent higher than the national average.
Responding to the fiscal needs of the Appalachian educational system alone is overwhelmingly beyond the capacity of
government agencies as they are presently funded. In 1967, for
example, the Office of Education estimated that the construction
needs of the thirteen Appalachian states represented over 42 percent of the total school construction needs of the entire country.
It would require the additional expenditure of $363 million
annually just to raise the per pupil expenditures of Appalachian
schools to the national average. Title I of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act, designed to increase the amount of
funds available for the teaching of disadvantaged students, will
spend more money on an equal number of students in the
schools of Westchester, New York, where the number of poor
students is about three percent of the student body, than it will
in a county in Appalachia where more than half of the student
body is poor. Talent Search, a special college recruitment and
placement program funded by Congress for high-risk students,
spends only 3.8 percent of its money in Appalachia as compared
to the 10 percent the region deserves. Simply to make the Appalachian educational system equal in educational resources to the
nation would require a political miracle at a time when no miracle workers are to be found.
While Appalachia is heavily populated with institutions of
higher learning supported by various religious denominations and
state governments, the region's students are no better served
than in the secondary institutions. Neither is the region's need
for professional and para-professional manpower. No institution
of American society, in fact, is more divorced from Appalachia
than the higher educational system residing within it.
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Colonialism in Modern America
Forced by accrediting agencies, visiting boards, and hundreds of other pressures to maintain a facade of "academic excellence" and "a sound liberal arts education," usually with Christ
thrown in somewhere, the church-supported schools spend little
time thinking about the community below their own mountainside. Their emphasis on admitting Appalachian students is so
small, their tuition so high, and pressure so intense from church
supporters outside the region to admit their sons and daughters,
that most of these colleges have an inordinately high percentage
of students from states like New Jersey. Certainly to these
colleges, "Christian" education has nothing to do with serving
the victims of Caesar's educational system.
The "open door" policies of state universities are often, in
actuality, "revolving doors" for the Appalachian student. Once
the student is admitted and the fees collected (either from him
or the state), the more aggressive and well-trained student from
another section of the state or nation, and the freshman composition teacher, can be expected to send the Appalachian student
scurrying home. In January, 1968, the National Association of
State Universities and Land Grant Colleges summed up the
record of their members in the region as follows: "To maintain
quality they raised student charges substantially, turned away
qualified students, limited enrollments, and refused urgently
needed public services."
The regional universities and colleges place little emphasis
on promoting a regional consciousness on the part of their students. In fact, there is not at present a single Appalachian studies
program in the region which could begin to rival the offerings in
Far Eastern studies or astronomy. One, Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond (which in reality is in "Blue Grass," not
"eastern," Kentucky), prides itself on its training and research in
law enforcement and police work. All this continues and intensifies a channeling process begun by the elementary teacher to
send the Appalachian student—ashamed of his background and
ill-equipped to meet the needs of his region—into middle-class
society outside the region. The sixteen-year prpcess of credentializing that the student has been subjected to, becomes
finally a ticket to the world of Dick and Jane, Support-Your
Local-Police, and the affluence of America built at Appalachian
expense. So a region that needs more than 200,000 college
graduates—a minimum of 5,000 physicians, many thousands of
�Annihilating the Hillbilly
219
nurses, teachers, businessmen, government leaders, ad infinitum—
finds no help in another of America's institutions.
The young Appalachian left behind by the higher educational system is destined to be the object of a number of complicated channeling devices. The male youth, if he can pass the
examinations, is eligible for one of the more obvious youth
channeling programs in the country, the Army. Selective Service
does not maintain records on Appalachians as a group, but the
number in the service is estimated to be higher than their percentage in the population because the armed forces represent the
only opportunity available to many young mountain men to be
assimilated into mainline America. Recent Department of
Defense figures report that West Virginia led the nation in per
capita Vietnam deaths. Twenty-five West Virginians per 100,000
population had been killed, compared to seventeen per 100,000
nationally.
For the youth who seeks opportunity and training in some
special opportunity program, such as the Job Corps, the fate may
not be a great deal more encouraging. Because of the Job Corps'
resistance to establishing a center especially for Appalachian
youth, the mountain youth are sent to camps, both within and
outside the region, where the population may be largely urban
and black. Combining his unfamiliarity with urban life and
blacks with his affinity for home and family, one can easily
understand why the Appalachian youth drops out of the program
in equal frequency with his Indian counterpart. Even if he lasts
the program out, according to Joint Action in Community
Service (the agency that contracts with the Job Corps to place
and counsel graduates), it is very difficult to find him a job or
to locate a person or agency willing to assist him in the mountains.
For the youth who has not dropped out of school by the
ninth grade and who has no prospect of attending college, vocational training represents the only channel open to him. Many
find it a wicked channel indeed. Three years ago the Education
Advisory Committee of the Appalachian Regional Commission
reported that half of all vocational training programs in the region consisted of agriculture and home economics—areas in
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Colonialism in Modern America
which there were almost no job openings. Since that report the
Commission and the states have required all 235 vocational programs which they have funded to teach job-relevant skills. While
only half of the schools are now open and no thorough evaluation has been reported, it is expected that the schools will be
better than their predecessors.
As late as 1968, however, the West Virginia Commission on
Higher Education reported that only about 18 percent of the students in that state had access to vocational training. Given the
fact that post-high school vocational training is still not available
to the majority of Appalachian youth, this major channel of supposed opportunity still has a long way to go to overcome the
serious handicaps it has represented in the past. And with improvement, vocational education's role may be to channel all
the so-called disadvantaged students into neat slots, thereby
diminishing not only the student but vocational education as
well. Additionally, so long as vocational school graduates must
leave the mountains to find jobs, the region will remain a loser.
It is already estimated that 900,000 high school graduates will
have to leave the region to find jobs in the 1970's. They will
thus become the people the cities do not want and the people
the region cannot afford to lose.
The fact that a mountain youth takes advantage of the
opportunity to finish high school and apply to college does not
guarantee that the tentacles of the system will let him go. For
instance, one of the high-risk students I taught in the Upward
Bound program at Berea College applied and was accepted in the
fall at that college. During the preceding spring he was approached by a recruiter for the FBI who gave him a hard sell on
the benefits of working for the Bureau in Washington. He
dropped the idea of college and is now a low-paid clerk at FBI
headquarters. Since this incident I have checked with school
personnel in other areas of the region and found that intensive
recruitment of high school graduates in rural areas is now carried
out by the FBI and other government agencies which are not
finding recruits for their clerk and typist posts in urban high
schools. The law, it seems, has a long arm and no qualms about
modern forms of impressment.
Most high school dropouts (except those who marry and
somehow find work or welfare payments) and unemployed high
�Annihilating the Hillbilly
221
school graduates eventually end up being forced to migrate to
find work. In West Virginia, for instance, 70 percent of the
young people leave before they reach the age of 24. Usually
referred to as "migrants" instead of more accurately as economic
refugees, these youth join the more than 3,000,000 other mountaineers who have preceded them to northern cities such as
Cincinnati, Chicago, Indianapolis, and Detroit since World War II.
If they have a skill and happen to move during a period of
relative economic prosperity or are willing to accept a job run by
the stopwatch and a minimum-wage employer, as many do, their
chances for survival are good. If, on the other hand, they have to
move in with kin in the "back home" ghetto, the situation is
different.
The unemployed and unassimilated mountain youth finds
himself in a bewildering ghetto that defies description and usually comparison with the ghetto life of other minorities. He also
finds that in the city there is one thing more unacceptable than a
black man—a hillbilly, a ridgerunner, a briarhopper. For the
first time in its history America has recognized him as a cultural
minority. If he ends up in juvenile court for stealing hubcaps, he
is offered leniency with his promise to go "back home." Judges
make this offer to youth whose families may have been in the
city for three generations and can only consider themselves
Cincinnatians or Chicagoans. If the mountain youth enters
school, studies show that its foreign nature drives him out faster
both psychologically and physically than it does his black migrant counterpart. For the mountain youth who is unable or
unwilling to assimilate into the life of the city, there is little
help from the social service agencies which understand much
more about blacks than they do about him. He is thus not only
without help, but, perhaps more appallingly, he is without an
advocate in a city that he does not understand and that does not
understand him.
One group of Appalachians who are consistently overlooked
and underserved by the institutions of the region is the blacks.
As a matter of fact, both government and the so-called "private" welfare agencies refuse to acknowledge the existence of
blacks in Appalachia. While the percentage of blacks in the
region as a whole is low, about eight percent, they make up the
entire population of many small isolated hollows and ghost coal
towns abandoned by the corporations and welfare and poverty
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Colonialism in Modern America
agencies. Because the backbreaking jobs that brought black imports into the region are gone and because of the discrimination
and competition with the majority of poor white people for
jobs and welfare funds, their existence is a poor one indeed. As
yet no agency report or journalist has documented the presence
and needs of these people, let alone described the culture of a
minority group in the midst of another cultural minority.
America's unwillingness to deal with the Appalachian as he
asks to be dealt with is probably no more baffling than America's
seeming obsession with studying and understanding his unusual
life-style and values. Even before the Russell Sage Foundation
published John Campbell's The Southern Highlander and His
Homeland in 1921, writers and sociologists were making forays
into the mountains alternately to praise, condemn, and collect
the mountain culture. The studies are still being made today
in the midst of the technological revolution that is, for all practical purposes, making "Middle Americans" all alike. The conclusions of modern studies do not differ from those made in the last
century. The Appalachian is different: He is existence oriented
and independent, has close family ties, is fatalistic, cares for his
elderly, ad nauseam. If, as Robert Coles and others have written
of late, the Appalachian has a life-style and a culture that America would do well to listen to, if not opt for, why has America
failed so miserably at times to meet his needs?
Part of the answer is obviously that Appalachia has been
in the main a colonial territory for America within her own
boundaries. The life-style of the region served well the need of
the mining and lumbering corporations for a subjugated people
willing to be peasants in their own land. Even after the bloody
struggles to unionize the mines, the capacity of America's institutions (including its labor unions) to contain the people's struggle
remained intact. What on the surface appear to be quaint people
whose character can be explained away by their isolation and
independence may, in fact, be more accurately described as the
historical reaction of the people to colonialism.
What on the surface may strike Jack Weller, author of
Yesterday's People (published jointly by the University of Kentucky and the Council of the Southern Mountains), as ignorance,
�Annihilating the Hillbilly
223
that keeps people from taking polio shots even when they are
offered free transportation, may, in fact, be better explained by
Frantz Fanon, a physician himself, who argues (in The Wretched
of the Earth) that the Algerians resisted "modern medical techniques" as long as the French were in control of them but
adopted the new practices immediately when they felt themselves to be in control I have seen parents who had refused to
have their children vaccinated at the public health clinic willingly
have them vaccinated when it was "our" medical students who
were giving the shots.
One has to understand how the medical profession in Appalachia operates to appreciate fully this phenomenon. He has to
sit with a young father in the mountains and hear the story of
how his pregnant (now deceased) wife was turned away from the
hospital because he did not have the hundred dollars that the
doctors demand as a down payment for those who do not have
medical insurance. It is these same compassionate physicians
who, rather than reform their own practices to meet the needs
of people, have turned the Medicaid program into a thriving
business. The potential earnings from the health support programs is so great that a recent government report on physician
manpower in Appalachia suggests that it is one of the most
lucrative enticements to get doctors into the region—another
colonial characteristic. A largely overlooked article in the
Louisville Courier-Journal in the spring of 1970 describes how
doctors and pharmacists have turned Medicaid recipients in
eastern Kentucky into addicts and junkies. It repeats reports
from law officers and nurses who had seen "whole families
lying around in a stupor" and "glassy-eyed teenagers and small
children wobbling or passed out along the roadside" because
they took narcotics prescribed by their physicians. One eastern
Kentucky pharmacist admitted that 65 percent of his business
came from Medicaid dues. "The poor people are substituting
pills for faith," he explained. He went on to describe why the
abuses are allowed to continue: "It would cost the pharmacist a
great deal in time away from work to keep a check on abuses.
They are just too busy."
By and large, American institutions can be said then to
have held no respect for the mountaineer other than for his use
as an object. Richard Davis notes in his recent book, The Man
Who Moved a Mountain (Fortress Press), that large metropolitan
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Colonialism in Modern America
newspapers used the notorious Allen feud of the second decade
of this century in Hillsville, Virginia, to interpret the Appalachian
to their urban readers. Said one:
The majority of mountain people are unprincipled
ruffians. They make moonshine, 500 horsepower, and
swill it down; they carry on generous and gentle feuds in
which little children are not spared, and deliberately
plan a wholesale assassination, and when captured either
assert they shot in self-defense, or with true coward
streak deny the crime. There are two remedies onlyeducation or extermination. Mountaineers, like the red
Indian, must learn this lesson.
Another editorial in a northern newspaper on the same
event went on to conclude:
The Scotch-Irish mountaineers are more ignorant
than vicious, victims of heredity and alcohol, and now
that their isolated region has been invaded, must change
or perish.
One of the often overlooked aspects of the outsiders' fetish
for Appalachia has been the premises that underlie their own
prescriptions for the people's future. One finds in Jack Weller's
influential writing, for instance, comments such as these:
There is little in the mountain child's training that
would help him develop self-control, discipline, resolution, or steadfastness. Thus the way is prepared for
future difficulties in the army or at work.
Since the culture inadequately prepares its members
to relate to "outsiders," there is a great need for "bridge"
persons, who can help the suspicious and fearful to respond more positively to persons and institutions which
will increasingly be of help and resource—doctors, psychiatrists, clinics, hospitals, government in the form of
agency officials, policemen, public health nurses, welfare
workers, and recreation leaders. The mountaineer's suspicion of these persons limits his use of them in crisis
occasions, when, in fact, their purpose is to be of assistance in many ways at other times. He needs help in
�Annihilating the Hillbilly
225
understanding that government and other institutions
cannot be run in person-oriented ways but must be conducted in great measure on an impersonal objective basis.
He needs help in seeing that a certain amount of bureaucratic organization is a necessary thing, and that a government does not exist for an individual person's benefit
(Yesterday's People, pp. 157-158).
Responding to the Appalachian culture, outsiders are
sometimes incapable of interpreting the evidence because of their
own training in research procedures. One (while, of course, repeatedly enjoining his readers that he is passing no judgment on
the culture) describes mountain music and literature as "regressive looking/1 "nostalgic and melancholy," over all, "repressive."
Thomas Merton, on the other hand, after hearing some mountain music for the first time at the Abbey of Gethsemani, gave
the correct interpretation and exclaimed, "It's apocalyptic!"
Perhaps the only fair hearing the culture of the people of Appalachia will receive is from persons like mystics and contemplatives who do not assign ultimate importance to the things that
the modern state and today's seminarians have blessed as divine.
The churchmen, educators, welfare agents, independent dogooders, journalists, and novelists, and the institutions which
pay their salaries—that is, those who have made an extraordinarily good living trying to "understand" the mountain man—have
studied the Appalachian not to learn from him but rather to
"teach" him, to "school" him, to "doctor" and "save" him by
making him into what they already are: Middle America, assimilated into the America of the television and Holiday Inn—the
America which Tocqueville and Faulkner warned was founded
by those who sought not to escape from tyranny but to establish one in their own image and likeness.
Only in Appalachia, for example, have the mainline churches come upon a "Christian" religious expression which stands
four-square against what they expect religion in America to
"do." The rejection of the Christian Century by Appalachia has
baffled and annoyed the mainline churches, their agencies,
theologians, and sociologists. And because the church in mainline America is unable to understand the church in Appalachia, it
has so far been unable to assimilate it. It has failed, in other
words, to make it over into another of the agencies of social
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Colonialism in Modern America
welfare alongside HEW, Social Security, the Council of the
Southern Mountains, the Commission of Religion in Appalachia,
the Home Mission Board, etc. The mainline churches have
tried to obliterate the Appalachian churches with demands for
expressions which are "progressive," "rational," "contemporary," and "relevant." What more haunting and, in many instances, disgusting examples of the philosopher's ambiguity of
"reason" or the theologian's "original sin" could be asked for?
The liberal churchmen, Catholic and Protestant, insist that the
snake handling of the mountain man must come to an end (as
must the "emotionalism" and "irrelevance" of the black church).
And all the while the mainline, liberal church ignores the more
dangerous "snake handling" which defines their efforts to
"save" "yesterday's people"—a phenomenon described precisely
by Thomas Merton in "Events and Pseudo-Events: Letter to a
Southern Churchman."
The answer to the question of why mountain culture must
be destroyed is to be found in the fundamental truth about the
technological society: The techniques which undergird all our
institutions are assimilating all of us into, as Jacques Ellul puts it,
"a society of objects, run by objects." Institutions in the technological society—and this means not only those of the state and
its welfare bureaus, but the do-good agencies which include
churches, schools, and colleges—can respond only by and with
the techniques of the impersonalized, bureaucratic means, procedures, and formulas. Technique cannot discriminate between
right and wrong, justice and injustice. That is why the same
technique that gives (and takes away) the health card to an
ailing miner assimilates the pious mountaineer into the fivepoint grading system and the Uniform Sunday School Lesson.
The meaning is clear. Institutions working in Appalachia
today can work for only one end: the extinction of the Appalachian people. The extent to which these institutions have so
far failed in the venture is the extent to which this people and
culture have successfully resisted the formidable pressures of the
institutions of contemporary technological society. Why institutions—political and private, church and business, industrial and
charitable—have responded and can respond to the Appalachian
the way they have tells us something very important about power
and powerlessness in the technological society.
�Annihilating the Hillbilly
227
For those of us who believe that the struggle is for the soul
of man in the technological society, the resistance of Appalachian culture against assimilation into middle America demands
earnest, indeed prayerful, attention. The struggle of the mountain man against the institutions of the technological society is
the struggle to deny his right to define any man by his relationship to Middle America. The struggle—whether one believes that
it comes out of resistance informed by left-wing Protestantism
or opposition to colonialism and genocide—has implications for
all who question not only the possibility but the quality and
character of any resistance to the totalitarianism of the technological society.
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�230
Colonialism in Modern America
And it was precisely this ideal state of things that I
found existing in the mountain communities. So closely
indeed is the practice of this particular art interwoven
with the avocations of everyday life that the singers,
unable to remember a song I had asked for, would often
make some such remarks as "Oh, if only I were driving
the cows home I could sing it at once."*
Sharp's book contains hundreds of beautiful tunes and
poetic texts, but there was more. He looked only for English
material and so passed over the vast amount of fiddle music
brought from Scotland and Ireland, the banjo learned from
Negro slaves, and the powerful Regular Baptist church singing,
which apparently originated in the mountains and may have
come from the Cherokee.
The people who made this music were, like their music, individualistic, democratic, and self-sufficient. We don't need to
be romantics to see in the mountains of 1916 a free and independent people to whom this stable culture gave the strength
and vitality to stay that way. Today, living in the ruins of that
culture with that independence only a memory, it would be good
to try to analyze what happened to it.
People's culture comes from the way they live and in turn
feeds back into that way of life. If you change one, the other
must change with it. So as Appalachia was turned into a colony—as people stopped being independent farmers and started
working for wages—the old music was cut loose from its place
and quickly began to decay. Cecil Sharp's co-worker Maud
Karpeles observed:
It is surprising and sad to find how quickly the instinctive
culture of the people will seem to disappear once they
have been brought into touch with modern civilization
. . .and the singing of traditional songs is relegated almost
immediately to that past life which has not only been
outgrown, but which has no apparent bearing on the
present existence.
What is not as obvious, though, is that our mountain culture was exploited in its own right, picked apart and ruined just
as surely as our forests and coal seams. Old time music was
�Our Own Music
231
removed from its roots and nearly destroyed. It had been freemade by many and shared by all. Now it was put in packages
and sold. It is striking how this process went hand in hand with
the opening of the coalfields.
Coal brought cash and jobs to a region that had seen little
of them before, and it also brought goods that the cash could
be spent on. Why is it that the new drives out the old? Why
did people move off the farms to the coal camps? Why did they
begin to buy clothes rather than make them? or buy phonographs instead of fiddles? I can't answer that—but these things
happen.
The modern era of folk music recording began shortly
after World War I when Ralph Peer of Okeh Records went
to Atlanta with portable equipment. A record dealer
there offered to buy 1000 copies if Peer would record the
singing circus barker "Fiddling John" Carson. "The
Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane" and "The Old Hen
Cackled and the Rooster's Going to Crow" were cut.
According to Peer, "It was so bad we didn't even put a
serial number on the record, thinking that when the local
dealer got his records that would be the end of it. We sent
him 1000 records. That night he called New York on the
phone and ordered 5000 more sent by express and 10,000
by freight. When the national sale got to 500,000 we
were so ashamed we had Fiddling John come up to New
York and do a re-recording of the numbers." (From
folklorist Harry Smith in an introduction to a collection
of early recordings)^
Soon many mountain musicians began to make records.
Commercial music was not so exclusive then as now. A company
might record and press 1000 records and sell them in the singer's
home area. Much rare and beautiful music of varied style and
good quality was recorded in this way.3 One variety in particular, the string band style, for instance, of Gid Tanner and the
Skillet Lickers,4 gained quite a following; and instrumental music
began to crowd out quiet unaccompanied singing.
As time went on, musicians began to tailor their songs to
records, and in some ways this music seemed more fitting than
that transplanted from barns and living rooms. The Carter
�232
Colonialism in Modern America
Family from Scott County, Virginia, became the first recording
"stars" in the area. Their "Wildwood Flower" is today the most
widely known instrumental piece in the Southern mountains.
Other stars followed: Mainer's Mountaineers, Charlie Poole,
eventually Jimmie Rodgers, "the Singing Brakeman." In 1925
the Grand Ole Opry went on the air, certainly the best-loved
radio show in history.5 Week after week superb entertainers
like Uncle Dave Macon and Arthur Smith came into thousands
of homes, entertaining families that ten years earlier might
have been at barn dances or telling ghost stories around the
fireplace. And aspiring musicians now had an opportunity. Ten
years earlier they had looked no further than the barn dance for
an audience.
The lives of the listeners were changing profoundly too. As
many people moved into the coal camps, country traditions like
square dances and husking bees began to wither. Working in the
mines left little leisure for fiddling. Musicians by the hundreds
quit playing and fell out of practice. A few became professionals
and worked at radio stations (still today the first step up for professional musicians). Food was bought, not made, and so was
music, and gradually the record came to define where music
was and what it was.
For the first time young musicians imitated new styles
while older ones began to feel awkward and old-fashioned. Then
came the Depression with desperate poverty and brutal oppression that smothered most of the mountain music.
Traditional culture—the wholeness of mountain life—was
gone. The old music had no context, little meaning or social
place. Traditional songs died by the thousands; record companies and promoters controlled popular taste, and hungry musicians tried desperately to please them. Mountain people's music,
like their labor, was bought and sold in the market.
II.
By the 1920's the mountains had, for better or worse, become part of the American economic system. In 1929 the system went abruptly from better to worse, and in the mountains
worse was only the beginning. FDR saw "a third of a nation
�233
Our Own Music
ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-clad"; in the mountains it was a third of a
third of a third that was not so destitute.
Social and cultural life, like economic life, went to pieces
in this crisis. In some places miners, their families, and neighbors
turned to militant labor organizations; and outside organizers
who arrived in these communities found people singing about
their situation.
Topical singing is not new in the Southern mountains. Indeed, almost all mountain folk music was "topical" in that it
related directly to everyday life. When economic or political
forces were felt, they too were reflected in songs. An early 19th
century song describes unemployment:
They've got a brand new machine
Prettiest thing you Ve ever seen
Hand me down my peg, my peg, my peg and awl
Peg a hundred shoes to my one
My shoe pegging days is done
Put up my peg, my peg, my peg and awP
The Civil War, which deeply split the mountains, produced
a large number of songs. Here is a white abolitionist song from
east Kentucky that I learned from my grandmother:
We 're Stolen Souls From Africa7
Freely
Were
sto-len
mer
in
droves,
souls from
-
Af - n
- ca,
i
Like
hogs and sheep,
-
ca.
suf - fer from the
heat,
en
trans - por - ted
-
dure
to
we're— marched_
the
cold.
�Colonialism in Modern America
234
Similarly when coal mining arrived, singers responded with a
large body of music. One of the most widespread was the following:
Dream of the Miner's Child®
A
min - er was leav - ing his home for his work, When he heard
D
J J]
G
scream;
He
went
to
D
"Dad-dy,
C
I've had
the side
such
to - day,_
of the
Dad-dy, please don't
lit-tie
girl's
bed,
a dream.
Oh,
Dad - dy don't work
A7
a-way,
For I
in
the
D
dreams have so of - ten come true,
go
She said,
Chorus
_
for
child_
G
G
G
mines
C
his lit-tie
Oh, Dad-dy, dear
nev - er could live with-out
you."
And one of many songs to come from Claiborne County,
Tennessee, in the 1890's was this one:
Way back yon-der in
Put them work - ing
Ten-nes-see,
in
the mine_
they
leased
the con-victs
a - gainst free
la - bor
out,
stout.
Free
�235
Our Own Music
Buddy Won't You Roll Down the Line9
la - bor
re-belled
while the lease was
roll down
dar - lin'
the
line,
a - gainst
in
it,
to
ef - feet they made 'em
bud dy won't you
com-ing down the
win
it
took some
rise and
roll down the
line.
time,
But
shine. Bud-dy won't you
Yon-der comes my
line. Bud-dy won't you come down the line, bud-dy won't you
j j> i J
roll down the
line,
Yon-der comes my
dar - lin'
com-ing down the
line.
My opinion is that just as coal mining subtly forced people
off their land, commercial recordings and radio forced them
away from their music. But for two generations or so, mountain
musicians commented extensively on the changing society
around them, leaving us with a lot of good music and a good
example.10
Two songs, both composed by Kentucky miners' families
in the depth of the Depression are the following:
�Colonialism in Modern America
236
Which Side Are You On
Come
all
Cm
.
Cm
Villl
dwell.
you
good
Fm
tell,
j.
of
Of
how
the
good
Chorus
VJl
\j/JVII43
Which side
work
—
are
you
- ers,
good
Cm
old
news
to
you
un - ion
has
come
in
Gm
on,
I'll
Gm
here
to
Cm
which
side
are
you
on?
The Allan Song
morn-ing,
hear the whis - tie
blow, Grab my po - ta - to can and a-way I
go.
Which Side Are You On was written by Florence Reese, a miner's
wife in Harlan County, while her husband, an organizer for the
National Miner's Union, was hiding from the gun thugs who
would have killed him if they could. The Allah Song was written
by my cousin Bill Maloney who worked in the Allais Brothers'
mines near Hazard. Mrs. Reese's song was learned by NMU
organizers who taught it to people in New York and elsewhere.
The song took on a life of its own and popped up in the deep
South in the 1960's as a freedom song. It is sung widely by
people who have no idea it originated in Kentucky.11 My
cousin's song was posted at the Allais mines (Allais would have
fired the author had he known who it was), but it has not gone
much beyond the family. I happened onto it at a family gathering near Jackson.
�237
Our Own Music
This brings up an interesting question: What was the function of topical music in this period? Were such songs sung only
in living rooms? At rallies? By men at work or on strike? On
marches and picket lines? The question needs to be studied some
more, to say the least. My own idea is that if the miners did not
sing as much as the civil rights fighters of the 60's, they still
had a musical time of it. A lot of their movement was in small
isolated fights in remote areas not visited by outsiders, and most
of the musicians were not professionals. But I think that if research were done, a large number of mining songs would be
found, many in the nature of protest.
Two more examples include The Coal Black Mining Blues,
which was written in 1932 by Nimrod Workman of Chattaroy,
West Virginia, and was more or less unknown until Nimrod issued
a record in 1972. How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and
Live was recorded in 1931 by Blind Alfred Reed of Pipestem,
West Virginia, and has become somewhat widespread through recordings by the New Lost City Ramblers. The last two stanzas
were added quite recently by Hazel Dickens and Alice Foster.
Coal Black Mining Blues
Intro
®
3
got the
I
went
blues, I
blues
to my place,
I got the blues,-Lord. Lord, coal black
I peeked in,
slate and the wat-er
got the blues, I got the blues,_Lord, Lord,
min - ing blues.
up to my chin, I
coal black _ min
got the
ing blues.
�238
Colonialism in Modern America
How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live
There once was a time when ev-ery-thing was cheap,
puts
a
man to -
sleep;
f eel _ like ma -king our will,
When
we
But now
pay_ our gro»cer-y
Tell me how can a
pri - ces near - ly
bill,
we just
poor, man stand such times and live?
How did it happen that one song was recorded and the other
not? How many more like these have been lost?
It is worth stopping at this point to look at the ways songs
are learned and spread around. Most of the well-known songs
from the coalfield struggle of the 1930*s come from one east
Kentucky family^Sarah Ogan Gunning, her sister Aunt Molly
Jackson, and their brother Jim Garland. All three were active in
the NMU and worked closely with outside organizers for that
body. And it was through these organizers that the songs were
spread to people who felt they were important. In 1937 and
1938, researchers from the Library of Congress "collected" the
family's music and from then on it has been part of our heritage.
So getting a song around is a risky business if the song happens to advocate union organizing or the abolition of strip
mining, or some other controversial matter. In the 1930's the
distribution network for such songs consisted of a few organizers
and folklorists—no music publishers, no records, no radio, magazines, or newspapers. None of these things had existed in 1890
either; but then every song stood on its own, and a piece could
travel if it was its nature to do so. But when radio came along
and excluded industrial music, a powerful form of censorship
was established.12 And it's still with us, to be broken only by
already famous singers of exceptional ability like Merle Travis
(Sixteen Tons) or Loretta Lynn (Coal Miner's Daughter).
�Our Own Music
239
I think that situation can and should be challenged. Music
is too important to be left to the businessmen.
III.
Most music heard in the Southern mountains today comes
via radio, records, and TV from commercial musicians in Nashville. It's good music. It ought to be: The best musicians in the
South have left home and gone to Music City to make it. And it
really is the people's music now, widely known and loved. Alone
among major forms of entertainment, country music is made by
working people of the mountains and the South, the same people
who listen to the music. Alone among entertainment forms, it
talks directly about people's lives, often about the singer's own
background. Dolly Parton must have been speaking for a lot of
people when she wrote:
No amount of money could buy back from me
The memories I have of then
No amount of money could pay me
To go back and live through it again
The good old days when times were
But after saying this, I want to bring up some criticisms I
have of the music industry, since they bear on the question of
people making music. Mostly, I resent its turning music into a
commodity, made in Nashville much as cars are made in Detroit.
In other words, production and distribution are controlled by a
relatively small group of people who try to make money from
it. This has bad results:
1. One style (the "Nashville sound") is made dominant
over all others, like fiddle music, old ballads, or children's game
songs. People should choose their favorite style, true, and should
have a choice. The extreme diversity of musical styles heard in
the mountains fifty years ago was a very good thing, and I wish
it hadn't been lost.
2. Only professional musicians are heard. Nashville's
musical standards are so high (and its equipment so expensive)
that most people feel like musical idiots next to them; so they
shut up and listen.
�240
Colonialism in Modern America
3. The flood of material overwhelms most institutions
that provide for face-to-face music-making. Square dances are
all but gone; only the churches have been able to shelter a large
amount of handmade music. Records and radio are where it's
at. Amateurs almost always imitate professionals; original songs
are rarely heard.
4. A few (a very few) people decide what music is going
to sound like. The producer, not the singer, decides whether to
put trombones in a love song or when to change keys. I think
some producers are tone-deaf. Only a real superstar will have
artistic control over what his/her records will sound like. It
depends, in most cases, on what the producer thinks will sell.
So while the music talks about average people, it is many steps
removed from belonging to them.
5. It perpetuates a form of control over people. There is
a kind of sameness to most C & W music, especially in subject
matter. It says that love, marriage, divorce, religion, and beer
are important; it says by implication that strip mining, black
lung, boring or dangerous work, cruddy schools and health care
are not so important. There are exceptions (see below), but
when it comes to politics, C & W is mostly pretty conservative:
endorsing the flag, the war, and women who know their place.
People's history and their past and present struggles are mostly
ignored.15 Since C & W largely dominates what people hear, it
helps define how they look at themselves and their lives. I think
it encourages them to be placid, which I think is bad.
IV.
Country music was always a stepchild of the music industry;
its writers and artists, often underpaid, were not in the trade
association (ASCAP) which controlled most material. So when
ASCAP went on strike in 1941, industry executives latched onto
country music as programming. It immediately went nationwide
and, to everyone's surprise, proved quite popular. A war story
relates that Japanese soldiers, trying to insult Americans during
battle, shouted "To hell with Roosevelt, to hell with Babe Ruth,
to hell with Roy Acuff." In the boom years following 1945,
commercial country music got to be truly bigtime.16
�Our Own Music
241
Homemade music continued to decay. It carries on among
old singers, particularly in the Blue Ridge and in eastern West
Virginia. But most often people sing material that has already
been recorded and standardized (if not written) by an established
musician. Some songs of Jimmie Rodgers or Roy Acuff, in fact,
are so widespread they are practically "folk music." For a while,
anyway, it looked as though old-time music was headed for the
museum. As late as 1964, a group called Friends of Old-Time
Music was arranging New York concerts for musicians unknown
in their own communities.
Why this decay? I wish we could figure it out. Maybe with
some study, we could. Part of the answer, I think, is in a conversation I had with two old fiddlers in Pike County who haven't
played in twenty years. The reason, they said, was "all this
fighting"—the well-known fact that you can't have a social event
in east Kentucky without twelve fights, three arrests, and considerable property damage. The mountain have always been a
rough place (my grandfather died minus two fingers afid plus
several bullets and uncounted scars), but it seems that what we
experience now is different—so disruptive and self-destructive
that a lot of social life is simply impossible. This may have something to do with our political and economic history. Frantz
Fannon, writing of black communities, detailed how oppressed
people can turn their violence on each other; it seems to me that
the mountains have experienced this. Where our own music has
survived, it has been in very private settings (living rooms) or in
very structured ones (churches, bluegrass festivals). And the
form that has most flourished, bluegrass, is very structured and
set in a strict audience-performer pattern.
In the last ten years, however, something has happened that
has led large numbers of young people into old-time music. Today you can hear thirty or forty at a time playing Old Joe Clark
or Flint Hill Special, 50,000 people come to the Old Time Fiddler's Convention in Union Grove, N.C., and even more go to
Galax in August. Bluegrass festivals (like Ralph Stanley's annual
at McClure, Va., on Memorial Day) are crowded. Magazines like
Sing Out! and Bluegrass Unlimited carry music and articles to
thousands of enthusiasts. County, Rounder, Folkways and other
record companies offer old-time music from old recordings and
present-day pickers. Guitars and banjo sales are at an all-time
high as picking and singing spreads like wildfire.
�242
Colonialism in Modern America
Just one thing. A good many of the folks now enjoying
mountain music have never even seen a cow, let alone a mountain. The "folk revival" of the 60's, plus the general frustration
of life in America, has made the music of the mountain past seem
extremely inviting to people (mostly young) from both the flatlands and hills who haven't seen much of it before.
What does this mean? A fair number of kids have decided
(not unreasonably) that the Appalachian Region is Paradise Lost;
this fact has given West Virginia a fair number of communes and
short-lived organic restaurants.17 The "revival" has meant some
income for good musicians, including former recording artists
like Clarence Ashley and Dock Boggs. And it has meant some
truly wonderful music made by people ("authentic" hillbillies
as well as outsiders) who have bothered to seek out old-timers
and learn from them. The Fuzzy Mountain String Band, for
example, started playing hoedown music in college in North
Carolina, and now they make what I call some of the best music
anywhere.
There is a good and a bad side to all this. The kind of exploitation of "quaint" mountain people that gives us Gatlinburg
can also destroy old-time music. Fiddlers' conventions aren't
meant to hold 50,000 people. It brings hero-worship and "stardom" to music that wasn't designed for it. The majority (colonialist) culture has largely absorbed and nearly destroyed our subculture ("L'il Abner" and "Beverly Hillbillies"18), and even their
dropouts can be a tidal wave. They have no culture of their own
and don't adopt mountain culture (even if they could); therefore, they offer mountain music no context or place. So they
too may be mining the mountains, taking what they want, and
leaving wreckage behind; or they may be here just in time to
keep the old music alive and growing. Or both.
So mountain people deserve to ask: Which side are you on?
How deep does (or can, or will) this revival go in the mountains?
It is hard to say. But we can see that musicians face the same
questions of insiders-outsiders or us-them, that organizers, politicians, and everyone else has to deal with. Like earlier adventurers I guess we will see some musicians who go one way, some
another, and some who try to stay in the middle.
Despite the music industry's takeover, there is one small but
�243
Our Own Music
important area where mountain people keep control of their
own music: topical music made by people who feel the need
for songs to comment on some immediate aspect of their lives.
A lot of it has been written in the last ten years or so; it goes
along with the many movements that have stirred the mountains
recently. Much has been "hidden" by being known only to a few
people near the singer. Gradually, however, an increasing number of songs are getting passed around, some even recorded. A
superb collection of them is to be published soon, edited by Guy
and Candie Carawan.
Music like this seems to do two things: comment on social
forces, struggles, and so on; and to be in some way part of the
struggle. Songs that describe or comment on things are the
easiest and most common. Composed and sung by individuals
(though they may express the feelings of thousands), they can
be extremely powerful in poetry and music. Here is Hazel
Dickens' black lung song:
Black Lung
He's had
more
1
hard
I
The mines
He's
luck
was his
lived
a
than most
first
hard
love
but
life_
men
ne - ver
and
hard
could
stand,.
his
friend. -
he'll
die,
m
Black
lung's
done
got
him,
his
time
is
nigh._
�244
Colonialism in Modern America
Songs that are directly part of a struggle are not as common
in the mountains as in, say, the civil rights movement. This is
partly because there is not much tradition of large groups singing
together except in church. Union struggles and picket lines,
however, have inspked some good singing. A popular union song
inspked by an old spkitual, with some new verses from the Pikeville, Kentucky, hospital strike of 1972-74 is the following:
We Shall Not Be Moved
fr*r
We
E r
shall not
»n r
be,
we shall not be moved, We
C
moved, Just like a
shall not
be,
G
tree that's pknt-ed by the wa - ter,
we shall not be
D
' I
We
G
shall not be
moved.
And a song by Michael Kline that has been sung at many antistripping rallies is this one:
Strip Away, Big D-9 Dozer
Strip a - way
D 7
home— I'm
J> j-
D - 9
G
j.
Do - zer,
C
a - get-tin' mad - der as you're get - tin'
G
bu-ry my
big
G
home. Well, I looked up
-r
co-min' for to
D
bu- 'ry my
G
clos - er,
Corn-in' for to
C
a spoil bank and what did
D
I
see?_
�245
Our Own Music
Com-in'
for to
bu-ry
C
my
home—
D
push-in* down
my
The
Is - land Creek Coal_ Corn-pan - y
G
trees,—
Com-in'
D^
for to
b u - r y my
G
home.
We are all so used to judging music by commercial standards
that it is worth looking briefly at what this kind of music can do
that Nashville doesn't. It can spread and popularize ideas and
information and counter propaganda. If well grounded in
people's culture (new words to an old tune, for example), it can
break through the censorship of the media and travel everywhere.
In the South the "freedom songs" became a part of many people's lives, an important source of strength for their hard fights.
I hope we can manage to call on some of the same forces. In the
past, "topical" songs contained practical instructions for resistance, as in songs that told slaves how to escape or miners to
"keep your eye upon the scale." And finally is the simple fact
that people singing is a very moving experience, a powerful
force that needs to be turned loose again.
A song that tries to do some of these things must be really
well based in people's lives. The singers of the IWW made it a
point to use only familiar tunes (since they couldn't make
records and most folks can't read music). Some modern writers
(like Hazel Dickens) are making new tunes that sound old and
familiar. A song won't travel unless it says what folks want it to
and in their own language. I think it should also remind people
of the surroundings that they associate with music, like churches
or beer joints. A song that sounds like an old gospel tune is
easier to listen to than one that sounds like an art song.
One more song, one that covers a lot of territory, including
a practical lesson in songwriting is this one:
Fountain Filled With Blood
**€P
There_
T*1
J
is
J J
|
a foun-tain
r j' J j~?l i j n nn
r*i
filled
with blood, The
blood
of our moun-tain men so
brave, Men who worked to-geth-er in the black coal pits. Men who dug each oth-er's
�246
Colonialism in Modern America
graves. Men who dug each oth-er's graves, Oh, God, men who dug each oth - er's_ graves.
Men who worked to-geth -er in the black coal pits, men who dug each oth-er's
grave.
Anyone interested in this kind of music should also consider a little about ways of spreading it. Long-play records can
cost as little as a dollar each (at least before the energy crisis);
songbooks are cheaper still. Music festivals have become established in some communities, and smaller local gatherings are
happening also. Books are appearing and a magazine is being
talked about. Local radio stations are occasionally open to local
musicians if approached personally. Cable TV is a largely unexplored area, with local programming already being made in some
areas. Who knows? If enough pressure is brought, maybe even
Nashville would open up a little.
The old traditional way of life in the mountains is gone.
What is important now is not to try to bring back an old-time
culture with old music and the old ways of doing things but to
build on the old to make new ways of doing things, ways that we
control. We need to preserve what old-time music is left so
people can go on enjoying it. We need to have our own music
which we make and control ourselves, instead of taking everything Nashville sends us. We need to encourage each other to
make music, to sing, write, and play songs. We need our own
ways of distributing music—including record companies, radio
and TV stations that respond to all kinds of local music instead
of trying to discover stars.
Old-time mountain music belongs to everyone. So should
new-time music.
�Our Own Music
247
NOTES
IA beautiful and moving picture of this sort of thing is Jean Ritchie's autobiography, Singing Family of the Cumberland* (1955).
^Anthology of American Folk Music, a six-record set issued by Folkways. It consists of an astonishing variety of traditional music originally
recorded on 78 rpm records from 1925-30, with such legendary musicians
as Dock Boggs, Mississippi John Hurt, Uncle Dave Macon, Blind Lemon
Jefferson, the Carter Family, and dozens of "unknowns." One session with
this set is worth several thousand pages of description of our musical heritage.
^Without trying to be scholarly, I can distinguish seven distinct
styles of traditional mountain music, most of them now going if not gone:
1. Fiddle tunes. Hundreds of tunes came from Scotland and
Ireland; hundreds more were made here. The fiddle was the
first and the most widespread country instrument, its music
with endless regional and personal variations. Dozens of "fiddlers' conventions" are held each year in the mountains, primarily outside the coalfield. Most of the best fiddlers, however, are old now.
2. Banjo music, which deserves an article to itself, as do banjo
players like Dock Boggs and Roscoe Holcomb (who Bob Dylan
says influenced him greatly).
3. Shape-note hymn singing, now almost extinct except in northern Alabama and western Kentucky.
4. Gospel music, both the quartet style and the "holiness" style
of congregational singing like "I'll Fly Away."
5. Regular Baptist singing in the "lining-out" manner, a powerful,
stirring music that seems to be absolutely unique to the South-
�248
Colonialism in Modern America
ern mountains.
6. Ballad singing, both accompanied and unaccompanied. Many
ballads were preserved in the mountains long after disappearing
from England and Scotland. Many more were made here.
7. "Social music"— songs and lyrics for parties, dances or whatever ("Old Joe Clark").
Not to mention stories, dances, and games, and children's songs.
^"Other string bands included such as Dr. Smith's Champion Horsehair Pullers, the Henpecked Husbands, the Moatsville String Ticklers, and
the Fruit Jar Drinkers (who still play on the Grand Ole Opry).
first performer on the Grand Ole Opry was Uncle Jimmy
Thompson, 80, who fiddled while his niece played piano. After an hour
George D. Hay (the Opry's founder) asked if Uncle Jimmy was tired.
"Why shucks," he said, "a man don't get warmed up in an hour. I just won
an eight-day fiddling contest down in Dallas, Texas, and here's my blue
ribbon to prove it." See George D. Hay, A Story of the Grand Ole Opry
(1953).
"From Hobart Smith of Saltville, Virginia, who has been called
"America's greatest folk instrumentalist."
^From Mrs. A. R. Graham of Cynthiana, Kentucky, who learned it
as a girl in Magoffin County, Kentucky.
8
Treated at length in Archie Green's book Only A Miner (1972).
9 Also discussed in Green's book. The story of the Coal Creek Rebellion is worth at least a footnote. In the 1880's Tennessee miners tried
to organize in the Knights of Labor. To block this, Tennessee allowed coal
operators to lease the labor of convicts as scabs. The miners organized, and
in 1891 fought a series of battles in which they burned stockades and
helped the prisoners (mostly black) to freedom. Tennessee sent militia and
quelled the "disturbance" but the convict labor system was soon abolished
and the miners organized the mines under the UMW.
Other songs from Coal Creek (now called Lake City) are on Hedy
West's record Old Times and Hard Times.
l^Besides Green's book, coal mining music (up to 1945) is the subject
�Our Own Music
249
of two excellent books by George Korson, Coal Dust on the Fiddle (covering the bituminous industry) and Minstrels of the Mine Patch (covering the
anthracite field). Both books were commissioned by the UMW.
1 *Mrs. Reece has lately been singing this song at the UMW strike of
Duke Power Company's mine at Brookside in Harlan County. The miners
there think it is still quite relevant.
l^In the 30's record companies did issue some records of protest
music. In those hard times no one ignored anything that would sell. The
New Lost City Ramblers have issued on LP of recorded industrial music,
called Mo dern Times.
the reason so many stars sing of being poor but happy is a
nostalgia for their own past. It takes a strong person to become a star and
stay common— not many can.
l^A country -we stern song is indeed lucky to last ten years; some old
tunes and ballads have already made it past 400.
I think a lot of young mountain musicians, feeling oppressed by the
closed, competitive aspect of C&W, turned to the relative freedom of
rock— at some cost, I suspect, of cutting away from their own roots. "Country rock," at any rate, is popular now, and Goose Creek Symphony is the
favorite band of many people I know.
15 There is only one black star in Nashville, Charley Pride, though
"country music" is shot through with things derived from black music.
DeFord Bailey, a harmonica player who may have been the first musician
ever recorded in Nashville, was the only black star of the earlier days.
16
See Bill C. Malone, Country Music USA (1968), 186-88, 206, 208-
38.
A note on terminology. When record companies started producing
music for rural audiences they didn't know what to call it. In 1925 Ralph
Peer recorded a nameless string band from the Blue Ridge who called themselves "hillbillies." He named them the "Original Hillbillies" and the music
became "hillbilly music." (Similarly, black singers were marketed on "race
records.") Later, after World War II, as commercial hillbilly became popular
and respectable, the industry looked for a more dignified name and settled
on "country music"— a little odd, since by then it was all made in the
city. The term "country and western" and the cowboy suits Porter Waggoner et al. wear onstage stem from the work of "western" singers like Tex
Ritter and Gene Autry, who sang popular "cowboy" songs in the 30's and
�250
Colonialism in Modern America
40's.
When traditional music was discovered by city musicians of the 60's,
the "hillbilly" music of the twenties received still another name and became
"folk music."
same feeling among their elders leads to long-lived developments and National Forest land grabs.
original Beverly Hillbillies were a group of "cowboy" singers
who broadcast from Hollywood from 1928-32 and were quite popular.
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�252
Colonialism in Modern America
Fox's national popularity (his books are readily available
in paperback editions while those of James Still are out of print)
and the general consensus that would agree with William Cabell
Moore call for a reappraisal of his depiction of the mountain
people to whom he is supposed to have been such a good friend.
Undoubtedly, Fox's novels and stories have influenced the
nation's view of its Appalachian minority, so we turn to his fiction to evaluate the cast of that view.
Fox's first bestselling novel, The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, is structured on a set of contrasts that characterize
his work: the Mountains vs. the Bluegrass, Melissa Turner
(mountain girl) vs. Margaret Dean (bluegrass relative), Chad in
the mountains vs. Chad in the bluegrass, and so on ad infinitum.
Without exception, the thrust of these contrasts is denigratory in
relation to mountaineers and laudatory in relation to the bluegrass aristocracy.
In The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come Fox characterizes
mountain society as pyramidal in structure and divided into three
classes. At the top he locates "the valley-aristocrat"—those
farmers of the rich river bottoms who occasionally own slaves
and are "perhaps of gentle blood" (italics mine). In the middle
are the free-settlers, "usually of Scotch-Irish descent, often
English, but sometimes German or sometimes even Huguenot,"
who dwell in "rude" log cabins along tributary creeks. At the
bottom are the poor white trash, "worthless descendants of the
servile and sometimes criminal class who might have traced their
origin back to the slums of London"; these last exist in "wretched cabins at the head of the creek or on the washed spur of the
mountain above" and function as "hand-to-mouth tenants of the
valley-aristocrats." Although the typography of the region conceivably could have resulted in some such economic stratification
as Fox indicates, one must demur at his essentially racial classifications. Surely there were some Scotch-Irish and Germans
among those "valley-aristocrats," and perhaps now and then
one could have traced his ancestry back to the London slums.
In Fox's social theorizing, however, man is a product of the
interaction of "blood" and environment-, hence, in order to account for the "semi-barbarous" condition of life he discovers in
the mountains, Fox posits an inferiority of blood-line which is
compounded by the rigors of the environment. Even those
�John Fox, Jr., A Re-Appraisal
253
"valley-aristocrats" like Joel Turner or Judd Tolliver, who had
perhaps the initial advantage of "gentle blood," are little more
than genial barbarians, notable primarily for their physical
prowess and characterized mentally and culturally as possessed
of an ignorance and child-like simplicity that reduces them to the
level of clowns. The less fortunate, in terms of blood-line, may
be either well-meaning or villainous, but they invariably lack the
mental capacity to rise above their environmental limitations.
The physical destitution in which they exist mirrors a corresponding mental, spiritual, and cultural destitution.
The children of such people, "thin, undersized, underfed,
and with weak, dispirited eyes and yellow tousled hair" or
"round-faced, round-eyed, dark, and sturdy" grow "large-waisted
and round shouldered. . .from work in the fields." They sit
uninterested and restless through the "blab schools" and quit,
their minds untouched and unenlightened, to take their place
in the generations of degeneration. Rare indeed is the mountain child who shows himself "erect, agile, spirited, intelligent."
Chad, one of these rarities who eventually takes his rightful
place among the bluegrass aristocracy, derives his superior
qualities apparently from the twin advantages of his mother's
having been "a lawful wife" and his grandfather's having worn a
"wig and peruke." Melissa, the true mountain waif of unknown
parentage, must perish because her mother was so uncircumspect
as to get herself bedded before she was wedded.
Fox's bias against mountain people is underscored when he
comes to speak of the Bluegrass as it is with his curious blend
of romantic mysticism and naturalistic determinism. Chad is
introduced to the Bluegrass by an itinerant cattle dealer and
the schoolmaster, who tell him of a "faraway, curious country"
where the land was level and there were no mountains at
all; where on one farm might be more sheep, cattle, and
slaves than Chad had seen in all his life; where the people
lived in big houses of stone and brick—what brick was
Chad could not imagine—and rode along hard, white roads
in shiny covered wagons, with two "niggers" on a high
seat in front and one little "nigger" behind to open
gates, and were proud and very high-heeled indeed; where
there were towns that had more people than a whole
county in the mountains, with rock roads running through
�254
Colonialism in Modern America
them in every direction and narrow rock paths along these
roads—like rows of hearthstones—for the people to walk
on—the land of the bluegrass—the "settlements of old
Kaintuck."
And there were churches everywhere as tall as trees
and schoolhouses a-plenty; and big schools, called colleges, to which the boys went when they were through
with the little schools.
The contrast here, although couched in language comprehensible to a child's mind, suggests the materialistic and racist
value-base on which Fox's attitudes and judgments are founded,
attitudes which preclude any sympathetic understanding of the
mountain culture he found in Jellico and Big Stone Gap. This
bias is much more explicitly stated in a chapter of The Little
Shepherd of Kingdom Come entitled "The Bluegrass.*' Fox begins the description with the epithet "God's Country!" and continues to characterize Bluegrass Kentucky as the land that seems
"to have been the pet shrine of the Great Mother herself."
She fashioned it with loving hands. She shut it in with
a mighty barrier of mighty mountains to keep the mob
out. She gave it the loving clasp of a mighty river, and
spread broad, level prairies beyond that the mob might
glide by or be tempted to the other side. . . .
In the beginning, such was her clear purpose to the
Kentuckian's eye, she filled it with flowers and grass and
trees, and fish and bird and wild beast, just as she made
Eden for Adam and Eve.. .And when the chosen peoplesuch, too served her purpose—the Mother went to the race
that obstacle but strengthens, that thrives best under an
alien effort to kill, that has ever conquered its conquerors,
and that seems bent on the task of carrying the best ideas
any age has ever known back to the Old World from
which it sprang. The Great Mother knows!. . .And how
she has followed close when this Saxon race—her youngest born—seemed likely to stray too far—gathering its sons
to her arms in virgin lands that they might suckle again
and keep the old blood fresh and strong. (My italics
throughout)
�John Fox, Jr., A Re-Appraisal
255
The aristocratic and racist elitism manifested in this passage
explains easily enough Fox's lack of sympathy for the mountaineers he wrote of. The mountaineer, it is implied here, is one
of that inferior breed which has succumbed to the mighty
barrier Mother Nature erected "to keep the mob out"; hence,
he is hardly worthy of serious consideration, for the true bearers of the living heritage are "the chosen/' whose manifest
destiny it is to "plant their kind across a continent from sea
to sea" and move on "through the opening eastern gates of the
earth."
When Fox descends from the heights of such mystic racism
to describe the state of civilization in the Bluegrass, his idealization of circumstances contrasts markedly with his comments on
mountain society:
The land was a great series of wooded parks such as one
might have found in Merry England, except that worm
fence and stone wall took the place of hedge along the
highways. It was a land of peace and of a plenty that was
close to easy luxury—for all. Poor whites were few, the
beggar was unknown, and throughout the region there was
no man, woman, or child, perhaps, who did not have
enough to eat and to wear and a roof to cover his head,
whether it was his own roof or not. If slavery had to bethen the fetters were forged light and hung loosely.
This Edenic vision reveals clearly where Fox's sympathies lie, if
not his understanding.
One can understand why Fox, imbued with such romantic
illusions about his birthplace, consistently depicted mountain
people as incapable of developing to a state of civilization. When
civilization comes to the moutains, it is imposed forcibly upon
the native populace, as was the case of the Big Stone Gap Guard,
a group of Harvard and Yale graduates self-appointed to bring
"law and order" to the rude savages in their mountain fastness;
or it is achieved by the exceptionally gifted native who leaves the
region for one of the national cultural centers, as June Tolliver
does in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. In either instance, an
outside influence provides the catalyst which the mountaineer
is unable to initiate for himself or his society.
�256
Colonialism in Modern America
The mountaineer's debility, in Fox's critical view, is attributable in part to inferior ancestral stock, and in part to the
malign effects of the mountain environment. Fox holds firmly
to the degeneration theory of mountain societal development, as
is evidenced in the history of Chad Buford. The original Buford
was a "fine old gentleman in a wig and peruke"; after three
generations of mountain isolation, the Buford line has eventuated
in Chad, a supposed "woods-colt," orphaned and at the mercy
of the viciousness or generosity of whomever he meets. Although the potential inherent in his blood-line raises him head
and shoulders above his peers, the disadvantages of his environment prevent the full realization of that potential. In comparison with his counterparts in the Bluegrass, his achievements are
inferior indeed. However, when Chad is exposed to the cultural
and material advantages of the Bluegrass, his progress is amazingly rapid, soon equalling or surpassing his counterparts in level
of attainment.
The same theme is more explicitly developed in The Trail
of the Lonesome Pine through the characters Jack Hale and June
Tolliver. Through years of exposure to the mountain environment, Hale, who comes to the mountains as the representative
and harbinger of approaching civilization, gradually loses his
civilized refinements and takes on many of the brutish qualities
of Fox's mountain inhabitants. June, the little mountain lass
who loves him, in the meantime undergoes the opposite process
of development as a result of her exposure to the civilizing influence of New York society. In Fox's view, environment is the
ultimate determinant of character, and the status quo of mountain society as he describes it precludes any progress toward
what he recognizes as civilization, i.e., the cultured societies
of New York and the Bluegrass.
In spite of much that has been written to the contrary,
John Fox, Jr., who achieved a degree of fame and fortune
through the literary exploitation of the Appalachian mountaineer, reveals in his fiction little love for either the mountain
people or the mountain milieu. His view was always that of
an outsider who was examining a quaintly curious but inferior
breed with whom he could scarcely sympathize, much less
empathize. The potential viciousness of such a view has since
become concretely demonstrable in the sacrifice of the people
and the area he so befriended to the rapacious progression of
�John Fox, Jr., A Re-Appraisal
"Saxon" civilization.
257
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�260
Colonialism in Modern America
old, most of them built before World War I. They are in varying
stages of decline. Some of them are not much more than postoffice addresses. The old frame two-family houses are settling
unevenly. Some have collapsed altogether. Others, considering
their age and the haste with which they had been built, are in
surprisingly good shape. As a general rule, if a house is freshly
painted you can assume that a working miner lives there.
The population of Buffalo Creek has fluctuated with the
times, declining when the industry declined, recovering when the
industry recovered. In 1970, coal had its best year since 1947,
and a rosy glow of optimism suffused National Coal Association
predictions for the future. Big companies opened new mines
along Buffalo Creek and stepped up production in their old ones.
When coal comes up out of the ground, the impurities that
come with it are separated out in preparation plants^tipples, as
they are more commonly called. The coal rolls away in long,
black trains; the impurities stay behind, and something has to
be done with them. They have a way of accumulating with
staggering speed: A ton of raw coal generally contains up to 25
per cent of extraneous material, and a good-sized tipple, handling
the production of several mines at once, will separate out thousands of tons of waste every day. Miners have different names
for it—"gob" or "slag" or "culm"; but whatever you call it, it
still has to be piled somewhere. In the crowded hollows of
West Virginia, finding places to pile slag is a problem of major
proportions. As a general rule, no engineer is ever called in to
consult on the best and safest locations. Instead, the company
superintendent simply hunts around for some vacant space convenient to his tipple, and the slag is dumped there, either by
trucks climbing up a mountainside and dumping down the slope,
or by an aerial tramway strung between peaks and dumping in
the middle. Whatever system is used, the slag is piled up until it
is higher than the dumping spot, and then a new pile is started.
FACING THE GOB
Since 1946 a tipple has been in operation at the head of
Buffalo Creek. The plant was built by the Lorado Coal Mining
Company, a mostly local outfit that sold out to the Buffalo
Mining Company in 1964. Buffalo Mining, in turn, sold out in
�The Pittston Mentality
261
1970 to the Pittston Company, which is headquartered in New
York and is the largest independent producer of coal in the
United States. All this time the tipple continued in operation.
And all this time it grew. Originally designed to process coal
from a single mine, it was expanded periodically as new mines
were opened nearby. By 1972 Pittston was operating a total
of eight mines in the Buffalo Creek vicinity—five of them underground, three of them stripping jobs. The coal from all eight was
processed in the single tipple. On an average, the tipple operated
six days a week, two shifts a day; it handled about 5,200 tons of
raw coal daily, and shipped out about 4,200 tons of cleaned coal
on the long Chesapeake and Ohio trains. That meant that every
day a thousand tons of gob, more or less, had to be dumped.
Three tributaries run into Buffalo Creek near the Pittston
tipple. From 1947 until about 1955, the refuse was dumped
along the hillside a few hundred yards upstream from the tipple,
but by 1955 the available space was mostly exhausted and the
tipple began dumping a little farther away, across the mouth of
a small hollow where the Middle Fork tributary meets the creek.
At first the gob pile grew slowly. It had to, because most of the
hollow behind it was occupied by miners living in company
houses. But when production at the tipple increased, the growing gob pile began to menace the houses, and the miners were
forced out. The houses were abandoned (some of them were
knocked down for the lumber), and the gob was dumped where
they had stood. The families moved away, some of them out of
West Virginia entirely, some of them only a few hundred yards
to vacant houses in the small community of Saunders, which
stood facing the gob pile at the intersection of Middle Fork and
Buffalo Creek.
SAUNDERS WAS GONE
The gob pile grew, and grew, and grew more swiftly as the
tipple kept expanding production. At first this grotesque black
mountain was only an eyesore. Later, it became a source of air
pollution and a fire hazard. Gob piles may be nothing but waste;
but much of that waste is flammable, and a combination of
compaction and oxidation can result in spontaneous combustion. Once a fire gets going deep within a gob pile, extinguishing
it is nearly impossible. The fire smoulders, sometimes bursts
�262
Colonialism in Modern America
into open flame, fouls the sky with acrid smoke, and occasionally
produces an explosion. The Federal Bureau of Mines has spent
millions of dollars in research on the problem, but the end result
is that hundreds of gob piles are smouldering in the Appalachian
coalfields right now, and nothing is being done about them.
The gob pile at Middle Fork began burning years ago and kept
on smouldering.
As the dumping continued, another problem arose. Tipples
require vast quantities of water in the cleaning-separating process,
but water can be a scarce commodity at times in West Virginia.
Partly to provide itself with a reliable year-round supply of
water, and partly to comply with new state regulations governing
stream pollution, Buffalo Mining began to build a series of
settling ponds in 1964. Previously the contaminated wash water
had simply been sluiced directly into Buffalo Creek, despite the
objections of people who liked to fish there. The ponds were
created by building retaining dams in the most immediately convenient location: on top of the huge Middle Fork gob pile. By
that time the pile had reached stupefying proportions: as high as
a 10-story office building, 600 feet across, stretching back into
the hollow more than a quarter of a mile. Sweeping down
through the pile and wandering across the top, the waters of
Middle Fork ran sluggishly to join the main stream of Buffalo
Creek. Damming the water was a relatively easy task, using the
material closest at hand: mine waste. No civil engineer in his
right mind would permit the construction of a dam from such
materials (as many a civil engineer would later confirm), but no
engineer, it now appears, was consulted.
In operation, the settling ponds not only contained runoff
water from the hills but refuse-filled water piped from the tipple.
The solid refuse would settle out and clear water could be piped
back to the tipple. The first of the ponds impounded a relatively
small volume of water, however, and it silted up within a couple
of years. A second dam was built in 1967 slightly farther upstream. When the tipple was operating full blast, it required
500,000 gallons of water a day, pumping back between 400 and
500 gallons of waste-filled water every minute. Some of the
water would seep out through the porous dam, but the waste
settling to the bottom—500 tons every day—rapidly filled the
pond, and a third dam was built in 1970. Again, no engineering
was involved—just truckloads of mine waste, a bulldozer to push
�The Pittston Mentality
263
them around, and prestol A dam grew across the hollow, built
of nothing but junk and standing on a foundation of slime and
silt and dead trees. The trees were there because nobody had
bothered to cut them down. It was simpler and faster just to
dump on top of them.
In West Virginia, February means snow and rain. February
meant it this year, as always. In Logan County, there were
heavy snows and flash floods; but they were, as the state meteorologist would later point out, "nothing uncommon/' At the
head of Buffalo Creek, the waters rose behind Pittston 's makeshift dam. Early on the morning of February 26, Pittston's
local mine boss, Steve Dasovich, sent a bulldozer operator up
the access road to the dam with instructions to cut a drainage
ditch to relieve the pressure from the swollen lake. The access
road winds around a mountainside with the dam out of sight
much of the way. When the bulldozer operator finally came
around the last bend and looked through the rain at the dam, he
saw with a sudden, terrible shock that it wasn't there.
The dam was gone, and 21 million cubic feet of water and
an immeasurable mass of mud and rock and coal wastes were
charging through the narrow valley of Buffalo Creek. From
where he sat on his suddenly useless machine, the bulldozer
operator could look down toward the little town of Saunders^a
town consisting of nothing more than a church and some two
dozen houses. Now it consisted of nothing at all. Saunders
was gone, eradicated completely. Beyond Saunders, the valley
curved away out of sight, but the air was filled with the terrifying
sound of the flood bearing down on the 15 communities in its
path.
FATHER OF STRIP-MINING
There are no slag heaps on Park Avenue, and no floods will
ever wash through the offices of Joseph P. Routh unless the
island of Manhattan sinks into the sea. Thirty-five floors up in
the Pan American building, the chairman of the Pittston Company has a commanding view. When he looks down to the street
below, he can see Brinks armored trucks moving the wealth of
America from place to place. The trucks belong to Joe Routh.
A good deal of the money does, too.
�264
Colonialism in Modern America
Routh is 79 now, and he has been making money longer
than most men have been alive. He was already a power to be
reckoned with when the Pittston Company, which then operated
a dozen anthracite mines in Pennsylvania, stumbled into bankruptcy during the Depression. A friend at Manufacturers Trust
suggested to Routh that he take over the company and lead it
out of the wilderness. The bank sweetened the offer with a
$10-million loan—essentially unsecured, since there would be no
way to recoup the loss if Pittston went under—and Routh moved
in. Anthracite, he concluded, was a dying industry. The future
lay in the vast bituminous fields of Virginia and West Virginia.
He unloaded most of Pittston's properties in Pennsylvania and
began buying up tracts of coal in central Appalachia.
At a time when coal prices fluctuated wildly, he had discovered that the best way to tear loose a chunk of coal in time to
take advantage of favorable trends was to strip it from the
mountainsides rather than go through the difficult, two-year-ormore process of engineering and constructing a deep mine. By
1950, when strip-mining was still an infant industry in Appalachia and conservationists hadn't the foggiest notion of the plague
to come, one of RouthJs companies, Compass Coal, was profitably tearing the hills of Harrison County, West Virginia, to
shreds. Since there were no state or federal reclamation requirements, no money had to be spent on binding up the wounds. It
must have been the best of all possible worlds, unless you lived
near one of Routh*s mines. He, of course, didn't.
Routh kept himself busy with other conquests, picking up
coal companies in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia, buying
up trucking companies and warehouses in New York, enlarging
his oil-distributing operations, hatching long-range plans for a
giant refinery on the Maine coast. Money flowed from Routh's
various holdings into his Manhattan office in a never-ending
stream, and Routh bought Brinks, Inc., to carry the cash in his
own armored cars.
AN ACT OF GOD
Despite abundant evidence that he was in no danger of
going soft, Routh decided in 1969 to bring in a new president.
He looked around for a man to match his own toughness and
�The Pittston Mentality
265
found one—a 53-year-old native of West Virginia named Nicholas
T. Camicia who had already made a mark in the industry as a
notable scrambler. "The coal industry is run by men who got
where they are by not being nice," says one former federal
official in a position to know, "and when Camicia smiles, you
can hear his jaws making a special effort." Routh liked him
fine.
But Camicia already had a good job when Routh approached him about taking over Pittston. Routh reportedly told
him to write his own ticket, possibly remembering his own reluctance to sign on until Manufacturers Trust gave him the $10
million to play with. Camicia did, in fact, write his own ticket,
putting his signature to a contract that has never been publicized
but makes fascinating reading in the archives of the Securities
and Exchange Commission. The contract runs until 1976 and
guarantees Camicia not only a minimum salary of $100,000
(increased now to $134,000), but it stipulates that a deferred
salary of $25,000 will be set aside each year, compounded, and
paid out to him in 120 monthly installments whenever he quits
or gets fired; if he reaches retirement age before that happens, he
also qualifies for a hefty pension. The contract also appears to
have included some highly attractive stock options; SEC records
show, for example, that Camicia picked up 7,200 shares, worth
approximately $270,000, for a price of $78,000—less than a
third of their market value. That wasn't all. Camicia was living
comfortably in an exclusive Chicago suburb when Routh signed
him up; in return for agreeing to move to New York, Camicia
got Pittston to buy his house for $90,000 and furnish him, cost
free, an equivalent home within commuting distance of Manhatten. He went to work for Joe Routh, reportedly satisfied
with the terms of his employment.
If ever there was any doubt that Routh and Camicia were a
pair of industry touchdown-twins, it was dispelled early in 1970
when Pittston signed a contract with the Japanese steel industry.
The Japanese wanted a long-term contract and were willing to
make concessions to get a reliable supply of American coking
coal. By 1970 Pittston had gained control of a third of all the
available commercial metallurgical coal in the United States, and
no one could offer more reliability than Routh and Camicia.
They would not offer it without certain stipulations, however.
The contract they signed with the Japanese called for Pittston to
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Colonialism in Modern America
deliver 140 million tons of coal over the next 10 years at a reported average of $15 per ton, which is about twice the going
rate elsewhere.
Pittston's directors were so happy last year that they
boosted dividends twice and voted themselves a three-for-one
stock split to boot. The company now has more than 50 mines
working with nine more under development, and there is no end
to the good times in sight.
Is everybody happy? No. Federal mine inspectors in Appalachia are not pleased with Pittston's safety record; they never
have been particularly pleased with it, but the past couple of
years have been especially bad. Nine miners lost their lives in
1971 in Pittston mines (two of them in the newly acquired
Buffalo Mining division), another 743 were seriously hurt, and
the company's accident frequency rate was one of the highest
in the coal industry. The record in 1970 was even worse: 18
dead. Investigators found that in a solid majority of the fatal
accidents bad management practices (rather than personal carelessness) were to blame. "The company appears to be sincere
in its desire for health and safety throughout its mines," one
inspector wrote. "This desire/* he added drily, "is not always
fulfilled." Not always. All told, some 98 men have been killed
in Pittston's mines in the past decade, and a 1963 explosion in
which 22 men died still ranks as one of the worst of recent
disasters. Three or four thousand men have been seriously injured or maimed in the company's mines since 1962, and the
U.S. Public Health Service estimates that as many as 5,000 Pittston miners may have developed pneumoconiosis during that
time. The profit margin of the new Japanese contract is a reported 24 per cent, almost three times the normal profit margin
in the coal industry; you can't help marveling at how much of
that money will be going back to the disabled derelicts living out
their lives in Appalachia after destroying themselves to help
make Joe Routh a millionaire for the third or fourth time.
Pittston's stockholders don't have to concern themselves
with such things, because they don't hear about them. The
company's handsome four-color annual reports talk about
money, not about people. There are pictures of freshly painted
oil storage tanks, spotless armored trucks, gleaming computer
banks—and aerial pictures of the long, black coal trains winding
�The Pittston Mentality
267
their way through seemingly virgin Appalachian valleys. The
pictures are taken with care: On the inside back cover of the
1971 report there is a color shot of lovely hills and hollows with
a sturdy complex of mine buildings prominent in the foreground.
"Aerial view of the Lorado Mine of newly acquired Buffalo
Mining Company," the caption reads. Beyond the mine, railroad tracks stretch away, disappearing behind a hill. If you could
see beyond that hill, you would see the massive, smouldering
gob pile that stood at the head of Buffalo Creek and on top of it
the jerry-built dams that Pittston used with its preparation plant.
But those things are not part of the picture, not part of the
annual report. As far as Pittston's stockholders are concerned,
they never existed—not until the morning of February 26, when
suddenly the dams collapsed and the burning gob pile erupted
and all hell broke loose.
Helicopters were still thrashing back and forth between
Buffalo Creek and the nearest hospitals when reporters began
calling Pittston's New York headquarters to find out what the
company had been doing to cause such a monstrous disaster.
Camicia and Routh weren't available, wouldn't answer the telephones, wouldn't return calls. Finally, Mary Walton of the
Charleston Gazette flushed out a Pittston lawyer who insisted
on remaining anonymous but was willing to give the company's
point of view. "It was an act of God," he said.
DASOVICH'S YARDSTICK
" 'Act of God' is a legal term," Robert Weedfall remarked
when he heard about Pittston's explanation of the flood. *'There
are other legal terms—terms like 'involuntary manslaughter because of stupidity' and 'criminal negligence.' " Weedfall is the
West Virginia state climatologist, the man who keeps track of
basic acts of God such as rain and snow. He was in a better position than anyone else to know whether there could be any possibility that Pittston's dam had collapsed from natural causes, and
he was convinced that it had not—could not have—not by any
stretch of the imagination. There had been heavy rainfall in
Logan County during the week of February 26 and considerable
flooding. But it was nothing uncommon for February, Weedfall
said, and he had the statistics to prove it. When reporters called
him they were impressed with his conviction. Pittston officials
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Colonialism in Modern America
had called, too, looking for ways to document their private
theory of divine intervention. Weedfall wasn't much help.
Nor were the technical specialists of the Department of the
Interior who arrived from Washington and, in the aftermath of
the disaster, poked and probed among the ruins in search of
clues. The U.S. Geological Survey sent a crew, as did the Bureau
of Mines; the Bureau of Reclamation summoned a former chief
of its Earth Dams Section from retirement. The investigators
examined the remains of the dam in microscopic detail, interviewed Pittston workers and company officials (who would not
talk to reporters), and pieced together a convincing account of
what had happened and why. None of the investigators showed
any doubt that the dams had been badly engineered. Fred
Walker, the retired Bureau of Reclamation expert, went further
and refused to use the word "dam" to describe the structures.
"Locally these barriers are called dams, but to me this is unacceptable nomenclature," he wrote. "These structures were
created by persons completely unfamiliar with dam design, construction, and materials, and by construction methods they are
completely unacceptable to engineers specializing in dam design."
West Virginia law, Walker noted, "requires permits, approval of plans, and inspection during construction for impoundments more than 10 feet deep. I was unable to find that
such requirements had ever been complied with/' Suggesting
that similar potentially disastrous situations could be found elsewhere in the coalfields, Walker commented scathingly that "fortunately most of these barriers are built in valleys that have small
watersheds above them, as apparently little if any consideration
is given to the flood hazard involved."
Pittston's consideration of the flood hazard at Buffalo
Creek seems to have begun at 4 p.m. on Feburary 24—exactly
40 hours before the so-called dam collapsed—when Jack Kent
and Steve Dasovich drove up to survey the situation. Kent was
superintendent of Pittston Js stripping operations in its Buffalo
Mining division; Dasovich was superintendent of the tipple. The
water was rising behind the newest of the three dams. A federal
mine inspector had driven past on the previous day and recalled
later that the water seemed to be about 15 feet below the top;
now it was within five or six feet. According to the Bureau of
�The Pittston Mentality
269
Mines report, Kent and Dasovich "agreed that neither the dam
nor the rising water presented danger of collapse or flooding
at that time." The report makes clear that they were concerned
only with the possibility of water overflowing the dam; they
seem to have been untroubled by the possibility that the dam
might simply give way, even though it was settling visibly in
places—and even though part of it had given way almost exactly
a year earlier during the rains of February, 1971. (It had been
under construction then, with not much water backed up behind
it, and there was little damage.) Kent stuck a measuring stick
into the sludgy surface of the dam, with the top of the stick
about a foot below the top of the dam. It was raining; Dasovich
and Kent decided to keep an eye on things.
Kent was back at the dam 24 hours later to check his measuring stick. The water was up about a foot and a half. Rain was
still falling. Kent, who lives in an imposing home a few miles
below the dam, decided to start checking the water level every
two hours. He found that it was rising about an inch an hour.
At 3:30 a.m. on February 26, peering at the stick with the aid of
a flashlight, Kent saw to his alarm that the water was rising
faster—two inches an hour, maybe more. An hour later the
level was up three inches more and the measuring stick was almost covered. Kent telephoned Dasovich and asked him to come
take a look. By the time Dasovich arrived the stick had disappeared entirely and the water was only about a foot below
the top of the dam.
According to the Bureau of Mines investigators, Dasovich
decided to cut a ditch across the dam; he had some drainage pipe
on hand and intended to use it to relieve the pressure. He called
some of Jack Kent's strip-mine bulldozer operators at home and
told them to go to the stripping operation—some three or four
miles away—and bring their machines to the dam. Kent, meanwhile, made some calls, too: "He telephoned several families
in the Lorado and Saunders area after his 4:30 a.m. examination/1 Bureau investigators reported, "and advised them of the
rising water and the possibility of the dam overflowing." Three
hours before the dam broke, in other words, the disaster had
been foreseen by someone in a position to do something about
it. A telephone call to the state police—who could have traveled
the entire length of Buffalo Creek by 7 a.m. ordering a general
evacuation—might have saved more than a hundred lives. But the
�270
Colonialism in Modern America
call was never made. And the drainage ditch was never dug, because the dam had given way before the bulldozers arrived.
WALKING IN SOUP
You can find Jack Kent at home—his house is on high
ground and survived the flood untouched—but he doesn't like to
talk to reporters. His eyes tell everything; there is no need for
words. Dasovich seems to have disappeared entirely. He was in
a nearby hospital after the flood, being treated for shock, and
nurses said later that he was hysterical and blamed himself for
the tragedy. Still later he was reported to have been admitted
to a private psychiatric clinic—still later, released. The Federal
investigators have not yet talked to him and some of them,
knowing now what they do about the dam, see no need. "He
knows what was up there," one of them said. "He'll always
know what was up there."
Other men knew, too. In the community of Saunders there
was general concern about the safety of the dam; and on the
night of February 25, most of the families who lived nearby decided, on their own, to take refuge in a schoolhouse five miles
down the creek at Lorado. The decision saved their lives; the
schoolhouse survived the flood, but when the families returned
to Saunders to look for their homes, there was nothing to be
found. No homes, not even the foundations; everything was
gone, everything except an appalling sea of slowly settling, black,
foul-smelling sludge.
Off and on during the night, in the last few hours before
the dam broke, miners went up to have a look at it. There were
rumors spreading that it was going to go, but no one really
seemed to know. Dasovich reportedly was telling people that
things were under control. About 6:30 a.m., according to the
federal reports, a miner saw ominous signs of what was coming.
"The dam was moving like a bridge moves under heavy traffic,"
he remembered later. "Water was coming through the dam. . .
not much, but it was causing the lower lake to fill up fast." By
7:30, according to another eyewitness account, "The top of the
dam was moving back and forth. . . .the dam was settling down
and shoving forward." Trying to walk anywhere in the vicinity
of the dam was "like walking in soup—it had gotten real, real
�The Pittston Mentality
271
juicy, buddy, all the way down. I got in the car and got the
hell out of there."
The top of the dam was lower on one side than on the
other, apparently from foundation settling, and now the top was
slumping still further with a momentum that could not have been
stopped by an army of bulldozers. One of the several federal
reports theorizes that the water level rose quickly during the
night, not just because rain was falling, but because the dam had
been collapsing slowly into the lake for several hours. But even
while the rain continued, the tipple went on pumping its 500
gallons a minute into the sludgy lake behind the dam.
30-FOOT FLOOD
Whatever happened in the night, it was morning now, and
there was enough light to see what was happening. Apparently
no one saw the actual moment when the dam finally gave way.
It seems to have happened very fast—the dam settling until water
was running across the top, the water cutting a cleft into the
dam, more water hurrying through, and then complete and total
collapse, and millions of gallons of water and hundreds of thousands of tons of sludge streaming across the top of the slag pile at
the beginning of catastrophe.
The water cascaded into the burning section of the slag heap
and erupted in a volcanic explosion. Men were coming off shift
at the tipple and saw what was happening; they saw a mushroom
cloud burst into the air from the explosion, saw mud and rock
thrown 300 feet into the sky, saw the windshields of their pickup trucks covered with steaming mud. They raced back up the
road and tried to use the telephone at the tipple to send out a
warning, but the line was already dead. The tipple was safe—it
was upstream, up another fork of the creek, out of the path of
the destruction—but the men were cut off from the main stream
of Buffalo Creek and there was no way they could help anyone.
They could only watch as the water and sludge crested over the
top of the exploding gob pile and burst into the valley, "boiling
up like dry flour when you pour water on it."
The flood traveled at first at a speed of at least 30 miles an
hour—in a solid wall 20 or 30 feet high. People who saw it
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Colonialism in Modern America
coming as they headed up the Buffalo Creek road barely had
time to throw their cars into reverse, turn around wherever there
was room, and head back downstream, leaning on their horns,
flashing their lights, trying to warn other people who had heard
the explosions but still did not know what was happening. There
was very little time to do anything. It takes a few seconds to
collect your wits when you see a wall of water bearing down on
you, especially when you live in a valley where there are only a
few exits—hollows running at right angles to the main valley. For
most of the people who died, it was like being in the barrel of a
gun and seeing the bullet coming. There was nowhere to go.
That so many people did escape is something of a miracle.
Nearly 5,000 people lived in the path of the flood. Probably a
thousand were caught up in it, battered, left shaken, and sometimes badly hurt, but alive. From the wreckage of 16 communities, the bodies of 118 people have been found. There are others
still missing; the final toll may be close to 150.
THE ONLY LIFE THEY KNEW
What happens after a disaster of such magnitude? There
are inquiries, of course, and inquiries are under way in West
Virginia. But in Appalachian affairs, the official response tends
to have a common theme. After the Farmington mine disaster
killed 78 miners, it was an Interior Department assistant secretary who said brightly: "We don't know why these things happen, but they do." After the 1970 mine explosion that killed 38
men in Kentucky, it was a newly installed director of the Bureau
of Mines who said: "We can almost expect one of these every
year." While the search for bodies was still continuing in Logan
County, West Virginia's Governor Arch Moore was already defending the Pittston Company: The sludge-built dam had served
a "logical and constructive" use by filtering mine wastes that
would otherwise have gone unfiltered into Buffalo Creek. It
didn't seem to matter much how the thing was built. The state
legislature chose not to investigate, instead leaving to the governor the selection of an official commission which would be
told to report back by the end of summer. "It's easy to say that
the dam shouldn't have been there," Moore said at one point.
"But it had been there for 25 years." He was technically wrong,
of course, but the inference seemed to be that if a hazard simply
�The Pittston Mentality
273
exists long enough, it has a right to be left alone. And by the
same token, the Governor made it painfully clear that he would
ask the same treatment for the problems of West Virginia. The
real tragedy, he said, a tragedy greater even than what had befallen the people of Buffalo Creek, was the unflattering coverage
of West Virginia in the national press.
In fact there had been precious little of that. The flood had
been on page one for two or three days, but it was eclipsed by
the President's tour through China (from Shanghai, where he
learned of the flood, Nixon sent an expression of regret, concluding from a distance of many thousands of miles that it was a
terrible "natural disaster" and promising speedy federal aid);
and within a week it would be forgotten, dismissed as one of
those things. Time, for example, observed that the people of
Buffalo Creek would have been well advised to live elsewhere,
but they had stayed on in the shadow of the smouldering gob
pile presumably because "that was the only life they knew."
PASSING THE BUCK TO GOD
The Interior Department, meanwhile, explained through
Assistant Secretary Hollis Dole that there was, in its opinion, no
federal responsibility in the matter, despite the fact that regulations within the 1969 Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act
specifically cover the construction and use of gob piles and retaining dams. There were no indications that the government
would move to take action against Pittston unless it was prodded
by an outraged Congress; on Capital Hill there was no outraged
Congress to be found.
There would be room for doubt, in any event, about the
kind of action that the Department of the Interior would take
even if it were forced to do something. The department is reluctant to think of itself as a regulatory agency, or as a federal
cop, and among all of the subordinate agencies within the department, the Bureau of Mines is a standout example of one
that has refused to grasp the idea of representing the public
interest. The problem might not be serious if a system of countervailing power were in operation—if, for example, the people
of Buffalo Creek could have counted on the United Mine Workers to represent them against the overwhelming resources and
�274
Colonialism in Modern America
indifference of the Pittston Company. There had been scattered
efforts along Buffalo Creek to protest the slag heaps and the
sludge dams—petitions had been circulated, attention had been
demanded. But the effort never went anywhere, and it never
went anywhere partly because no powerful organization, like
the union, chose to push it. The union hasn't pushed much
of anything in some time except perhaps the fringe benefits
available to its ranking officers. The result is that on one side
of the equation there is a powerful industry deeply dedicated to
its own interests; on the other side there is, most of the time,
nothing at all. And in the middle, where there should be an evenhanded government agency, there is instead the Bureau of Mines,
an organization so encrusted with age and bureaucracy that it
will not even support its own inspectors when they try to do
their jobs.
They had, for example, been trying to do their jobs at
Pittston's mines, trying to cut down the number of men killed
in needless accidents. Over the past year they had slapped
thousands of violation notices on the company. The idea is that
the notices will cost money; get fined often enough and hard
enough, the theory goes, and you will become safety-conscious
in the extreme. It hasn't worked that way. Thanks to a highly
complex assessment system set up in Washington by a former
lobbyist who is now in charge of the Bureau's fines-collection
operation, Pittston has been able to defer, seemingly indefinitely,
any payment for its sins. Specifically, over the past year inspectors had fined Pittston a total of $1,303,315 for safety violations. As of April 1, the company had appealed every one of
the notices it had received and had paid a grand total of $275 to
the government.
Meanwhile, on Buffalo Creek, the investigations continue,
the reports are compiled, the survivors try to plan a future; the
mines, only briefly disrupted by the raging flood, are back at
work, and the long trains roll. One month after the disaster,
Pittston set up an office to process claims—without, however,
accepting liability. The company's official view is still that God
did it—and if, by any chance, God should pass the buck back
down: "We believe that the investigations of the tragedy have
not progressed to the point where it is possible to assess responsibility." It's possible that such a point will never be reached.
Who was responsible, for example, for deciding to spend $90,000
�The Pittston Mentality
275
to buy Nicholas Camicia's house, but not to spend the $50,000
that it might have cost—according to one of the federal reports—
to build a safe dam at the head of Buffalo Creek? There are
sticky questions like that rising in the aftermath of the disaster,
questions that will be hard to answer. "There is never peace in
West Virginia because there is never justice," said Mother Jones,
the fiery hell-raiser of West Virginia's early labor wars. On Buffalo Creek these days there is a strange kind of quiet, a peacefulness of sorts, but it is not the kind that comes with justice.
This article was published by The Washington Monthly, May 1972.
Reprinted by permission.
�This page intentionally left blank
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�278
Colonialism in Modern America
Island Creek Coal Co., Director of Civic Affairs for Monsanto,
Director of West Virginia Life Insurance Company, director of
Huntington Federal Savings and Loan Associates, and President
of Cecil H. Underwood Associates, in which venture he was
joined by David Francis, president of Princess Coal Company.
By contrast, William Marland forgot whom the governor
commonly serves. During his term he made the error of recommending a severance tax on coal; he finished life as an alcoholic
cab driver in Chicago.
. . . CASE STUDY: THE BUILDING OF STATE ROUTE 99
Route 99 cuts a swath through the tops of the beautiful
high mountains which mark the southern edge of the Coal River
Watershed. The road is only 10.016 miles in length and runs
from a junction with State Route 85 in Boone County, slightly
north of Kopperston (an Eastern Gas and Fuel Company town in
Wyoming Co.), and east to Bolt in Raleigh County. At some unspecified future date there is supposed to be an extension of the
road which will turn Route 99 into a major east-west artery connecting Logan and Beckley. The road is made of six inches of
asphalt poured over 12 inches of crushed rock—extremely sturdy
construction, even for a mountain road. Both firms which built
the road obtain more of their money from strip mining than they
do from construction. They gouged a tremendous cut for the
road with explosives and heavy equipment. This left towering
high walls, often on both sides, of bleak rock. Driving over the
road, one is not surprised that it cost over $5,200,000 to build
initially. However, it is surprising to find that there is almost
no traffic on the road, since the State Department of Highways
insists that the first criterion used in the building of a road is
whether the road will pay for itself in terms of the gas tax taken
in by vehicles using the road. A quick check of the state road
map shows no sizable town on or around the road and almost no
one who will be served by the road as a through route.
Why then was this particular road built? The highway department and other officials have offered various reasons. Former Governor Smith suggested that the entire area was going to be
a scenic recreation area, but both sides of the road are lined with
some of the most devastated countryside imaginable, scarred by
�Coal Government ofAppalachia
279
the stark slashes of the 40 strip mines in the area.
The central office of the Department of Highways offered a
different and far more plausible explanation. Although unsure
who it was that made the decision, one high ranking official did
point out that the road has * "opened that area up." Acknowledging that almost no one lived in an area to use the road as a
through highway connecting any urban centers, he nonetheless
allowed as how it was important to open areas up to people to
live in and industries to develop. Just which people and which
industries the area has been opened up for becomes obvious
when the history of the road and the surrounding area is examined.
Kopperston is a model company town built near the mouths
of many large underground mines by the Koppers Company; it
is now operated by Eastern Gas and Fuel Associates, one of the
giants of the coal industry. Building such towns is expensive,
however, and no such plans were made in connection with the
development of the Harris mine, another giant underground
operation which opened near the current junction of Route 99
and Route 85 about the same time the road was built. Eastern's
new mine employs over three hundred miners, a quarter of whom
live in the eastern part of Boone County and Raleigh County.
Before Route 99 was built, the only way for these miners to get
to work was to drive far north of their homes to Seth and then
across or far south along Route 1 through Glenfork and Oceana,
then north again. The more than eighty miners who lived east of
Bolt live on a road pattern designed for access to Beckley, the
seat of Raleigh County. Near Beckley, Eastern was in the process
of closing down several worked-out deep mines. In order to keep
its miners, it had to find some way to get them to the new
mining site. Route 99 provides a perfect connection for people
in eastern Boone County and the Beckley region to get to the
Harris Mine and back. It serves almost nothing else, or nothing
else which existed before it opened that part of Boone County
up. Now it serves more than 40 strip mines which are in operation along its length and at one end of the road.
At the same time the plans were finalized for building the
road, Eastern Coal and Appalachian Power Company jointly indicated an interest in building, with Federal assistance, a rural
New Town at what is now the eastern end of Route 99 near
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Colonialism in Modern America
Bolt. As work on the plans for the new city at Fairdale advanced, it became clear that the type town Eastern had in mind
was not the type that would obtain federal approval. Initial
inquiries were discouraging enough to prevent formal application
from ever being made, and the idea of the city was put silently
to rest. The major problem was Eastern's nervousness whenever
mention was made of attracting other industries into the town.
Eastern wanted the town to be housing for its workers. Eastern
had been seeking a company town which would not cost Eastern
anything, one for which the state and the federal governments
would pay.
Officials then serving in the highway department were delighted when they first heard that a new city was under consideration for Fairdale. Their joy stemmed from the fact that the
plan to build that city (of which they had known nothing when
Route 99 was laid out) would serve as an excellent justification
for a previously unjustifiable project. They were no doubt even
more disappointed than Eastern when the plans never advanced
beyond the talking stage.
Since the owners of the land over which Route 99 was built
are large land companies which hold the land until it can be
profitably mined, it is not surprising that they were quite willing
to grant the state permission to enter their land and construct
the road—even before the price of the land was negotiated and
the land bought. As of late 1970, the land (upon which the road
lay) had still not been purchased, and the case was slated for
adjudication. Their willingness to allow the state on the land becomes understandable when maps of the area are examined.
State road maps of the region before the route was completed
show no mines along Route 99. The area, now stripped so completely, was almost inaccessible before it could be reached by
99. The highway department personnel who reported on the use
of the road always mentioned the semi-trailers carrying explosives and equipment to the strip mines' cutting face in addition
to the miners going to and from those sites and the large underground sites further to the west. Most of the land being stripped
and most of road right-of-way were owned initially by Eastern
Gas and Fuel Associates. It is now owned by Pennva, a giant
land-holding subsidiary of another giant coal producer, Pittston
Corp.
�Coal Government ofAppalachia
281
Another major beneficiary of Route 99 was stripper and
road builder Leo Vecillio of Beckley. Vecillio and Grogan, Inc.
is the construction firm which built most of Route 99. Ranger
Fuel (Leo Vecillio, President) operated 21 strip mines along the
road and also 20 mines in Pond Fork now made accessible to
them by Route 99. Ranger Fuel marketed its coal through Eastern Gas and Fuel Associates. In 1970, Ranger was also sold
to the Pittston Corporation.
Nor have expenditures stopped after 1966-1967, when the
road was cut and graded through the mountains. In 1970, another contract was awarded to Black Rock Contracting, Inc. of
Charleston to pave the road, which theretofore had not received
a permanent blacktopping. That added an additional 1.4 million
dollars to the figure of 5 million previously spent.
The original 5,000,000 dollars used to build this impressive
stretch of two-lane road came from a bond issue passed initially
to be used on the federal interstate system. If the money had
been used for that purpose, it would have been matched by
$45,000,000 in federal dollars and could have built over 30 miles
of four-lane interstate.
The use of the funds on a project which could not qualify
for any federal matching money (the Appalachian Regional Commission's money at the time would not go to roads serving only
mines) was not illegal. The legislature had provided that the
money could also be used for the public roads of the state (a
provision intended for any excess of funds after spending on
interstates), but it was at least improvident to spend it on a
solely state-financed road which in reality cost the state not 5
but 50 million dollars in lost road-building ability. Shortly after
the road was contracted for, the federal government, stung by
the cost of its military adventures in Southeast Asia, ordered a
freeze on interstate building. This freeze was based on the
amount of money which the states had previously spent on the
program. Thus the Route 99 fiasco continued to hurt the state
over the next few years.
A delegate from Wyoming County bemoaning the costly
construction of Route 99 for special interests pointed out that
the policy still continues. In his county one road was being built
from Pineville to a new Bethlehem Steel Mine five miles away.
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Colonialism in Modern America
Another road from Pineville to Baileysville was being widened to
better serve the Keppler mines. "It's certainly sad that the only
way we can get any roads in southern West Virginia is when it
benefits the coal operators," the delegate observed. "The people
can cry for roads, but the only time they ever seem to be built
is when the coal companies need them." ("Roads for Coal Firms
Only Pattern Ripped by McGraw" Sunday Gazette-Mail, 28 June
1970.)
�THE
IN
TVA
by
INTRODUCTION
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�284
Colonialism in Modern America
less federal agencies. It was, the president said, to be a near
contradiction as a federal agency: "a return to the spirit and
vision of the pioneer/' based in the region it was to serve, concerned with the complexities of national development, but also
an agency that "touches and gives life to all forms of human
concern." It was, in short, a mere first step in a national experiment where—if it succeeded—"we can march on, step by step,
in the like development of other great national territorial units
within our borders."
Even though it was favored several times by the Supreme
Court, and beat government-inspired conspiracies like DixonYates of the early 50's, even though it successfully defeated one
of the toughest onslaughts ever organized by private power
trusts, and even though it made a remarkable record of achievement imitated world-wide, the TV A idea never sprouted successfully in any other area of the country.
A. The Early Record of TVA
Few people who have had a course in modern American
history need a recitation of the good deeds by the agency in the
early days. It tamed the nation's fifth largest river, turning the
once flood-prone 650 mile giant into the world's most controlled
river. It planted eroded land and invented fertilizers and gave
them away. It turned poor farmers into skilled workers, employing at the height of World War II 40,000 people, most of
them trained by the agency. Unique even today among federal
agencies, it allowed its employees to join unions. When the
companies defeated the United Mine Workers* first large organizing drive in the southern coalfields in Fentress County, Tennessee, and then blacklisted the miners, the agency hired more
than 200 en masse in 1934. It sold its power only to cooperatives organized and controlled by the people. It did other
things, and, importantly, it won the confidence of the people.
When the private power companies built "spite lines" into TVA
territory, the farmers chopped down the poles.
In 20 years the agency built 20 dams. In 1953 the total
dam system had cost $24.5 million and averted potential flood
damage estimated at more than $51 million. In 1952 alone the
navigation system had saved barge shippers probably $10 million,
�The Federal Government in Appalachia*. TVA
285
at an expense of $3.5 million. Since 1933 it had reforested
212,000 acres of land and produced 295 million seedlings in its
nursery. Over the same period 68,000 farmers had allowed
their farms to be TVA test demonstration areas to educate them
and their neighbors about new farming techniques. Per capita
income had risen from 44% of the national average in 1929 to
60% in 1952. Manufacturing employment opportunities had increased 20% faster in the valley than in the nation.
As impressive as the statistics are, they fail to convey the
sheer magnitude of the project in a seven state area of 201
counties, the size of New England. The concrete, rock, and
earth laid in the path of the river and its tributaries were 12 times
the bulk of the Great Pyramids. The volume of water behind its
dams would cover the entire state of Illinois to a depth of eight
inches. But more important, and surprising, an agency that had a
vague mandate to "sell the surplus power not used in its operations" had by its twentieth year become the nation's largest
utility, selling power at the lowest prices to a people who in 1933
had almost no knowledge of the electric age. By 1953 the
agency's customers—one in 28 farms in the valley had power in
1933—were consuming twice as much power as their national
counterparts.
TVA's wonders were not accomplished without sacrifices,
however, and there were many less than admirable aspects to
the agency even in the early days.
To build its dams the agency forced the removal of 125,480
people. It has bought or condemned two million acres of land,
creating in the place of occasional flooding a giant permanent
flood. In the early days, board member Harcourt Morgan, a
former president of the University of Tennessee, turned the
agency's farm program into little more than mimicry of the
policies of the land grant colleges and the extension services.
The agency made its peace with the Farm Bureau, even though
that organization had advocated that instead of a TVA, the
government should sell its $90 million investment in the Wilson
Dam at Muscle Shoals to Henry Ford for $5 million. Ignoring
its reputed commitment to civil rights, the agency built separate
facilities at its dam sites for blacks and whites. (Even today,
among the top 37 staffers who meet regularly with the board,
only one is a black and one a woman. In the memory of re-
�286
Colonialism in Modern America
porters who have attended the meetings since they were forced
open in 1975 in response to press pressure, the black has never
spoken at a meeting and the woman has spoken up only once,
when the agency was moving to abolish the home economics
division of which she is a part.)
But despite the scars, most people agreed with Henry Steele
Commager in 1950 that the agency was "the greatest peacetime
achievement of twentieth century America."
B. The Turning Point
From almost the first meeting of the three board members
in 1933, the agency was torn over its direction. Arthur Morgan's
"human engineering/' his seeming willingness to compromise
with Wendell Willkie (then head of the southern power trusts),
and his undocumented charges of "evasion, intrigue, and sharp
strategy" against Lilienthal and H. A. Morgan, led to his dismissal by Roosevelt in 1938. With Morgan gone, Lilienthal,
who believed the agency would live or die by the power program, was victor. His successor as chairman, Gordon Clapp,
launched the agency in 1949-53 into building seven coal fired
plants—the largest in the world—to meet the power demands on
the system. Had it not been for the cold war and the Atomic
Energy Commission, which by 1955 was consuming a full half
of TVA's output at its Oak Ridge and Paducah uranium enrichment plants, the agency would have had the largest surplus
capacity of any utility in the world. To stave off the Eisenhower
administration's Dixon-Yates conspiracy and other efforts to
reduce its effectiveness, the agency began saluting its contribution to defense above all its other efforts. In that climate, a new
generation of leadership—far more cautious, technically oriented,
and politically conservative—moved in to make policy at TVA.
This new generation saw cheap power as the means to trump all
opposition.
By the middle 1950's TVA had set a pattern for its future
coal purchases, concentrating them in western Kentucky where
low grade, high sulfur coal fields were being developed by independent coal firms. Armed with long term contract offers,
technical equipment at its plants that would allow the burning
of low quality coal, and no hesitancy in purchasing non-union
�The Federal Government in Appalachia: TVA
287
coal, TVA's coal buyers, with direction from then General Manager Aubrey J. Wagner and Board Chairman Herbert D. Vogel,
set out to guarantee that fuel prices would remain low. Operating against a slumped coal market and a rapidly declining United
Mine Workers (UMW) union, the TVA revolutionized the steam
coal market. As the nation's largest buyer and with skillful
use and re-use of competitive bidding to lower the price of coal
proffered to the agency, TVA helped to bankrupt operators in
the southern Tennessee, east Kentucky, and other central Appalachian coal fields. Union-organized deep mines, especially
those with strong locals that deprived operators of sweetheart
contracts from the increasingly corrupt UMW, found themselves
unable to remain in business.
Not so Appalachian and western Kentucky strip mines.
Small strip mine companies like Kentucky Oak Mining of Hazard,
Kentucky, found TVA a willing accomplice in granting long term
contracts and providing technical assistance in machinery design
and mining procedures. In the early 1960's when the "Roving
Pickets" movement was shutting down the eastern Kentucky
coal fields and violence was causing concern even at the White
House, few coal miners realized that the reason for the sweetheart contracts, the withdrawal of the UMW hospital cards, and
the starvation economy was in part the steam coal policies that
TVA was pursuing quietly in Knoxville. With Kentucky Oak
Mining bringing strip mining, a process little practiced until
then, to eastern Kentucky on a vast scale, no deep mine could
possibly compete with its prices, which were frequently as low
as $3 a ton.
Meanwhile, in western Kentucky and eastern Tennessee,
TVA was building mine mouth steam plants on or near strip
mines and signing long term contracts for millions of tons of
coal. The prices for the western Kentucky coal, albeit of lower
quality, were far below what it cost Appalachian producers to
mine coal. With the long term contracts, which amounted to
loan guarantees at most financial institutions, the western Kentucky producers opened mines in thick seams, mined with
shovels that dwarfed anything ever seen before on the American
landscape, and sealed the doom of the independent Appalachian
deep mine companies. In the name of cheap fuel, the agency was
laying the groundwork for the horrors that now haunt it and its
region.
�288
Colonialism in Modern America
C. A Bitter Harvest
When President Kennedy called together his advisers in the
early days of his administration to determine how to deal with
the disturbing reports that were coming from Appalachia, especially eastern Kentucky, he found them ill-prepared to come
up with solutions or, in fact, able to comprehend that what was
happening was related in more than a small way to policies being
made by a government agency in Knoxville. At one point he sent
an aide from his office with an order to find 100 doctors before
winter to go to eastern Kentucky; the aide found none. As the
administration made other decisions related to the mountains, it
ignored the role that TVA had played in the havoc and could
play in the solution. In 1961, Kennedy named Aubrey Wagner
to the TVA board and appointed him chairman in 1962; in 1963,
he named Wagner to the President's Appalachian Regional Commission that was to study how to solve poverty in the mountains. There is no evidence that Wagner or anyone else was ever
questioned about, or did themselves question, TVA's role in
creating the coal market slump that had brought on the unemployment and the union busting in the mountain coalfields.
The UMW leadership, having failed even under Lewis's leadership
to get TVA to change its policies, had already turned to Cyrus
Eaton to get him to buy up TVA suppliers with union money.
By the early 1960's the union was as interested as the Chamber
of Commerce in trying to discredit media reports of poverty in
eastern Kentucky. TVA's bitter harvest would come home in
other ways.
By 1974 TVA was buying 37 million tons of coal a year to
fuel its 12 steam plants which were producing 80% of its power.
A full 72% of the coal was coming from Kentucky, one-half of
it strip mined. Disturbingly also, for an agency that once saw
itself as "democracy on the march," a full 83% of the coal was
now being supplied by a dozen firms, all of them owned by oil
or metal conglomerates. In that year, the giants turned on their
friendly benefactor. Prices more than doubled. Suddenly TVA's
cheap power was no longer so cheap. Giant TVA suppliers like
Island Creek, chaired by the once friendly Senator Albert Gore
and owned by Occidental Petroleum, demanded a $3 a ton profit
guarantee, with a 50-50 split of profit over $6 a ton. TVA signed.
Mapco (Mid-America Pipeline Co.), owner of Webster County
Coal Corp., raised its price from $8.50 per ton to over $30. TVA
�The Federal Government in Appalachia: TV A
289
signed.
Mr. Wagner condemned the price increases and damned
publicly the increasing energy concentration. This was taken
seriously in some quarters, but knowledgeable observers saw a
clear connection between past agency policy and the prices.
The Mountain Eagle, of Whitesburg, Kentucky, revealed that two
coal companies owned in part by Ashland Oil had defaulted on
a $25 million TVA loan guarantee made in secret by the TVA
board in 1970. In rapid fire fashion, other puzzling coal deals
by TVA came to light:
(1) it had selected Peabody Coal Co., the world's largest,
to open a new deep mine on TVA property in western Kentucky
and had agreed to equip the mine and pay Peabody a guaranteed
fee per ton, despite the fact that in 1971 Peabody had the
worst deep mine safety record in the industry;
(2) in 1974 it had signed contracts worth $58 million with
a company it was alleging in federal court had defrauded it on
past contracts;
(3) it was accepting truck loads of rock, mud, and slate
disguised as coal at its Kingston Steam Plant, taking action to
stop only after repeated exposures of the practice in the media;
(4) it had made a secret bid of $1 billion to purchase
Peabody.
These actions were only a part of a disturbing pattern that
began to emerge publicly in the early 1970s. In a June 17, 1974,
speech, Wagner told the National Coal Association that portions
of the Mine Health and Safety Act "should be eliminated" in
the interest of production. But TVA's coal purchasing practices
were bothering in other ways too.
Because of its policy of buying low heat (approximately
11,000 BTUs per pound as opposed to national utility average of
over 12,000 BTUs.) and high sulfur coal, a combination TVA
claimed was cheap, the agency was in trouble with the nation's
air cleanup program. The Environmental Protection Agency
told the agency either to find low sulfur supplies (at least lower
than the 4.5% sulfur coal it buys from some suppliers) or install
�290
Colonialism in Modern America
scrubbers. TVA refused to do either. Wagner called scrubbers
"a billion dollar pig in a poke," and launched TVA on a program
of building tall stacks at its steam plants to disperse, rather than
clean up, its sulfur dioxide emissions. EPA officials, mindful
that TVA emits 14% of all utility sulfur dioxide nationally and
52% of the poison in eight states of the South, refused in 1974
to compromise further its stand on constant controls. Aware
that failure to clean up TVA would mean a license for private
utilities also to defy the law, EPA took its stand in federal courts,
where in 1976 it got final word from the Supreme Court that
TVA's compliance program violated the clean air laws.
The end result of TVA's reliance on its traditional suppliers
and low quality coal is that it now finds itself unable to buy
enough low sulfur coal to comply with the law. In an October
1976 bid opening, the agency received no significant bid from
old suppliers for low sulfur coal and got few worthy offers from
other suppliers. Chairman Wagner now claims the reason is that
suppliers are holding coal off the market for higher prices. State
Representative Lewis McManus, the former speaker of the West
Virginia House of Representatives, and a critic of TVA for failing
to buy low sulfur coal in his state, says the reason is that the
agency will not negotiate with that state's small producers.
TVA general manager Lynn Seeber rejoins that the agency has
to buy by competitive bidding. McManus points out that the
TVA board declared an "emergency" in 1973-74 and re-negotiated most of its long term contracts at higher prices with the
conglomerate suppliers. Alone of utilities, it is now negotiating
on an "emergency basis" for low sulfur coal.
TVA's new trump is nuclear power. It has more nuclear
capacity planned than any utility in the country. In March 1975
its Brown's Ferry plant was knocked out for over a year by a
worker using a candle to check for air leaks in a cable room. In
December 1976 a fire caused by an electric heater destroyed the
building that would have been used for start-up operation in
1978 of the Sequoyah nuclear plant. Mr. Wagner says nuclear
power is safer than highway driving, cheaper than coal, and that
the agency has no intention of backing away from its present
nuclear emphasis unless coal power becomes cheaper. And while
it pursues the nuclear commitment, the agency is now testing
low sulfur coal from Montana as a possible source of supply for
its Shawnee steam plant; it is doing so despite the fact that the
�The Federal Government in Appalachia: TV A
291
coal is non-union, low BTU, and higher priced than quality low
sulfur deep mine coal being purchased by private utilities in
Appalachia.
D. Economic Status in the TV A Region
The Tennessee Valley watershed covers 40,910 square miles
of land in seven states and 125 counties. About half the counties
overlap with ARC territory in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky, and Mississippi. The TVA
power service territory covers the same states but includes 170
counties, making the total counties covered by TVA 201, with a
population over 6.7 million. The combined TVA territory
covers 80,000 square miles.
When TVA was founded in 1933, personal income in these
201 counties was 45% of the national average, or about $168 per
capita. In 1974, the figure was $4,262, or 78% of the national
level of $5,448. That compares with the southeastern U.S. level
(excluding Florida) of 84% of the U.S. level, or $4,602.!
In 1933, 62% of the region's jobs were in agriculture; in
1973, 6%. Manufacturing jobs in 1933 accounted for 12% of
the work force; in 1973, 33%. Total manufacturing jobs in the
valley increased 73% from 1960 to 1973, or 18% faster than the
national average. Much of the industrial growth occurred in resource development areas related to TVA's activities, but the
direct correlation is not possible to measure.
While federal appropriations to TVA have averaged $65
million a year since TVA was founded, the Valley's receipt of
federal expenditure ($10,822 per person) is still far below the
national average ($16,759 per person) over the period of 19341970; and only one-tenth or less of the Valley's receipts of
federal monies were for TVA. The TVA power program is
financed from current revenues and from a bond ceiling set by
Congress at $15 billion, approximately 3% of the national debt.
Since the self-financing reforms of 1959, TVA has paid back to
the Treasury all but about one-fourth of the total federal investment in the power system.
TVA's only demand on the U.S. Treasury is the approxi-
�292
Colonialism in Modern America
mately $135 million a year current budget which supports nonpower projects like the National Fertilizer Development Center
at Muscle Shoals, Alabama (the Center holds patents on threefourths of the world's fertilizer formulas), a tributary area development program, flood control, and industrial development.
The TVA region lags far behind the nation in earnings per
worker when compared with the national average on an industrygroup basis. In the region 36% of the workers earn less than
$8,000 per year; nationally 16% do. The number of TVA
region workers earning between $10-$12,000 per year is 29%,
compared with a national percentage of 44. Part of the explanation is that the region has a larger share than the nation of lowwage paying industries. For example, 27% of the valley workers
are employed in apparel and textile industries compared with 3%
nationally. A 1974 TVA economic outlook report concluded:
"The new manufacturing job holders in the TVA region have not
yet become the average consumers or owners of wealth of
either the Southeast or the nation."
One area in which the TVA region clearly outstrips the
nation is in the growth of energy-intensive industry. Industries
in the first quartile of electric energy use per employee grew at a
rate of 4% in the period 1959-64 in the region compared with a
decline of 0.3% in the nation. From 1964-74, the same industries grew at a rate of 4% in the region compared with a 0.8%
rise in the nation. The growth is unquestionably tied to the fact
that TVA rates are at an average 40% below the national average.
In the growth of wood-using industries over the past decade
the TVA region leads both the nation and the Southeast, the
nation by nearly 3 to 1.
TVA estimates that 44,000 jobs have been created in manufacturing plants located at major terminal points on the Tennessee River. The agency itself currently employs over 25,000
people, most of them in construction trades.
E. Conclusion
TVA brought many benefits to its 201 counties. Its cheap
power brought havoc to some of those counties and hell to other
�The Federal Government in Appalachia: TV A
293
parts of Appalachia. While pursuing this policy the agency has
raised the incomes in the TV A region to around 75% of the
national average, about the same figure as for all of Appalachia.
The agency now is its own chief argument against spreading
TV As across the land, and its reform is a necessary first step in
making sense of national energy problems and economic problems of the Appalachian South.
NOTE
figures used in this section were supplied by the TVA Department of Information, Regional Research Department, and the Power
Division.
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Colonialism in Modern America
ingredient has been missing, good intentions have often failed
to produce effective regional action. In many places, certainly
in Appalachia, regional mechanisms have tried to operate in a
vacuum of citizen awareness and support.
The questions raised by the spread of regionalism are as
important for the local populations involved as they are for the
ultimate success of regionalism itself. Who determines where and
how a regional body shall have authority? What is the role for
citizens in such determinations? To whom are regional board
members accountable, and how are they chosen? How are the
agency's criteria and funding priorities set? To give such questions anything less than full attention is in itself poor planning.
Appalachia has long been a programmer's guinea pig, the
testing ground for a wide array of federal and state efforts. It is
significant, therefore, that alarms are ringing in Appalachia,
where a small but apparently growing number of people perceive regionalism as a threat to their ability to control local affairs of daily importance. They say that power over such basics
as schools and garbage disposal has passed from their own hands
into the murky authority of something called a regional agency
or district.
Appalachia became a testing ground for regionalism in the
early 1960's when conditions there had become economically so
critical that President Kennedy realized something had to be
done about a situation which local and state governments appeared unwilling or unable to correct. The result was a commission charged with producing effective ideas and designing a
mechanism by which to implement them. The Appalachian
Regional Commission (ARC) was formally and fiscally delivered
by President Johnson in 1965.
From the beginning ARC billed itself as a "unique federalstate partnership," relying upon gubernatorial support and
strategy. Also from the beginning, residents of the area predicted long-range ineffectiveness for the new creature, because
it chose to ignore what many felt to be the keys to any lasting
economic and social independence for Appalachia: local control
and use of the region's vast natural resources, the rape of which
had been responsible for much of the area's plight in the first
place. The governors and such key Congressional figures as Sen.
�Hidden Traps of Regionalism
297
Jennings Randolph wanted no part of that kind of activity,
accordingly, the ARC has specialized in the political safety^ of
bricks and mortar.
At the same time, no broader example of regionalism has
been operating in the country these past eight years. Appalachian regionalism has been on both the multi-state and substate
level. As for the former, policy and spending decisions are supposed to be based on regional criteria. That is, the governors of
the thirteen Appalachian states supposedly view needs on a
multi-state, regional level first and consider their own immediate
economic or political needs second. The theory is fine, but it
hasn't worked out. "All you have is thirteen guys, some of
whom see their governors maybe twice a year, sitting around the
table trying to bring home their own slab of bacon," says one
former high ARC official who feels the experiment is lost.
At the substate level, ARC has leaned heavily on its "coordinated investment strategy" of concentrating investments in
those areas showing "the greatest potential for future growth,"
as opposed to the Economic Development Administration's
criterion of greatest need. Programs are to be assessed on the
prospect that expenditures of money and effort in a given area
will spread the results beyond the immediate application. This
has meant lumping towns and counties into "growth centers."
And growth areas have been translated into political action by
creation of the "local development district" (LDD).
These bodies are formed so that each will contain at least
one "growth center." Often that is their only unifying factor,
with some notable cases of bad grouping (foothills with mountain counties, coal with non-coal, high population with low). In
any case, it is through the LDDs that ARC follows its coordinated investment strategy. Some planners see that strategy, and
the LDDs which go with it, as a national model. But as a model
it has received scant scrutiny.
For one thing, while some ARC officials sincerely believe
that the investment strategy has worked to alleviate Appalachian
poverty, statistics from that part of the region which prompted
the Appalachian Act in the first place—the mountainous central
area—belie any claims of marked improvement. And many observers of the eight-year operation say that investments have
�298
Colonialism in Modern America
not been placed in areas of real potential growth but in those of
real potential votes for the governor and Congressmen who announce each ARC grant. Recent moves by ARC's new executive
director to reassert the role of the states in all ARC operations
will, some disgruntled ARC staffers feel, further stifle whatever
creativity and innovation there may have been by making the
motive for funding political advantage rather than real need.
Critics make the same basic assessment of the LDD approach. It is through the LDDs that most nonhighway ARC
dollars flow; it is from the LDDs that ARC professes to hear the
voice of the local people. There's the rub. People in the mountains have become sharply attuned of late to possible threats to
their way of life, and many see the LDDs as a major curb to their
influence on governmental decisions at the local level. They object to the LDDs as an intermediate layer of government standing between them and the control levels for state and federal
moneys. They know who sits on LDD boards—and who doesn't.
The contradiction is blatant: ARC views the LDD as the
indicator of local will because it includes all the major elected
officials in a development district; but some local citizens call the
LDD an impediment to local will precisely because of that makeup. They contend that it's hard enough to deal with their own
"courthouse gang"; merge six or eight or ten of them together
in a single LDD and "you simply just don't have a chance," as
one LDD observer put it recently.
If this, then, is to become a national model, some basic
problems need to be solved. Who represents whom and how and
according to what guidelines? No one has thought much about
such questions, it having been assumed that, since the need for
multi-jurisdictional cooperation was critical, getting something
started came first. Therefore the tough questions have yet to be
answered. How much constituted authority should the new
regional mechanisms be given? And from what source should
such power proceed? What matters will best be dealt with
regionally, and what is more wisely left in local hands? In short,
are these new bodies in any way more or less accountable to the
wills of the resident population than the original governments
whose function they are complementing or in some cases* replacing outright?
�Hidde n Traps of R egio nalism
299
In parts of Appalachia the matter has moved past theory.
In western North Carolina, for example, a community observer
sees the LDDs as little more than power-structure collectives,
with vested interests parading as "elected officials" and "civic
group representatives." They equate progress with profit, he
says, and the effect of it well may be far afield from what wellintentioned backers of regionalization have in mind: "If the
planners keep going, the effect will be to practically disinherit
the small farmer who might have moved here generations ago to
live out his time or escape service in the Civil War or whatever.
And that citizen will be the last person to sit on the development
district board."
The composition of board members tends to support the
fear that LDDs in Appalachia are, at best, staffed from the top
down. Even where representatives of the poor or of minority
groups do sit on the board, they are generally so outnumbered
that they fall silent. Besides, matters handled by LDD boards
are often more within the scope of the banker than of the dirt
farmer or auto worker. It is thus no surprise that the long-range
planning or other actions of such boards often reflect a bias
toward a corporate, "free enterprise" model of developmenteven where such a model is sadly inadequate or worse.
That's the most basic concern. Even though the majority
on a board may be elected officials, they were not elected to
serve on that board by that board's jurisdictional area as a whole.
A new kind of political chemistry begins to operate when officials elected from different areas come together to make collective decisions for which they cannot be held individually accountable. People in Hill County did not elect their fiscal court
judge to vote on matters involving eight other counties; and they
surely did not authorize those nine other county officers to vote
on affairs which affect Hill County.
Perhaps even worse, regional board decisions have often become legislation by the lowest common denominator of what
everyone can agree upon. Because of the establishment-affiliated
membership of most regional agencies, the criteria thus become
what is politically and economically palatable to all vested interests involved. Proponents of regionalism argue that such has
often been the case with local government, and they are right. A
key difference remains: At the local level, aroused citizens had
�300
Colonialism in Modern America
the ultimate level of the ballot box; on the regional level they
don't.
Aside from basic questions of accountability, the lack of
direct citizen involvement is not in the interests of regionalism
itself. A regional board can make unnecessary mistakes simply
because no one was there to spot an obvious blunder in the early
stages. Citizens do show up at city council or fiscal court meetings when an important matter is at hand. But regional bodies
are remote and little understood, so the interest isn't generated.
Decisions of potentially major effect may thus be developed in a
vacuum—a situation that is bad for the regional agency charged
with problem solving, and far worse for the citizens living with
the problem.
Once again, the premise that some regional cooperation can
establish or improve needed facilities was and is sound. It is
shortsighted to talk about a one-county garbage landfill when a
larger and better one could be built to serve several counties at
far less cost to the individual units. But it has proved to be
equally shortsighted and wasteful to attempt any such regional
effort without the real participation and consent of the several
constituencies involved.
Indeed, results can be downright disastrous. In one eastern
Kentucky LDD, the board unanimously and enthusiastically
backed a plan for a regional sanitary landfill. The state had
ordered the closing of all open burning dumps, so something had
to be done. But bureaucratic bungling and shortsightedness in
assessing local situations resulted in only one landfill being
opened to serve all eight counties, and that one isolated, expensive to use, and known to turn into a quagmire entrapping
even the most hardy of mountain pickups.
When the failure became obvious, local residents wanted to
know whom to get mad at. And they heard their county judge—
himself the chairman of the landfill board at the time—saying it
wasn't his jurisdiction; it was the problem of the regional garbage
authority. And who was that? That was established under the
auspices of the development district. The what? The development district. Well, could the judge get something done? Folks
are just dumping their garbage into the creeks because there's
no other place to put it. Sure, the judge promised, I'll raise the
�Hidden Traps of Regionalism
301
problem at the next district meeting; we're all concerned about
the problem, but we have to work it out together.
The garbage mess, as it became known, proved to be the tip
of the iceberg of anger. The same development district had endorsed land-use studies for each of its counties. In one of them,
residents rebelled at the suggestion in the plan that they move
out of their precious hollows and off their hillsides to areas
where such "blessings" as sewer and water could be provided.
They made it clear that they liked their hollows, had no desire
to move away from them unless it was their choice, and in short
wanted no part of any regional land-use plan.
Mass-meeting pressure forced the county fiscal court not
only to drop the land-use plan but to abolish the county planning
commission for good measure. Nonetheless, the LDD itself soon
came out with its own district wide land-use plan. People again
expressed concern, but this time they really didn't know where
to focus it.
Planners argue that no one unit of government is forced to
accept a regionally drafted plan or program. That may be true
in theory, but federal and state trends deny it in fact. There is,
for example, something called the A-95 procedure of the federal
Office of Management and Budget. The stated purpose of the
A-95 Memorandum is to foster multi-jurisdictional cooperation
in order to assure maximum benefits from an array of federal
programs included under A-95's coverage. A-95, says OMB,
simply seeks to encourage consistency based on solid planning.
Under A-95, each state which so chooses establishes "clearing houses" to review and comment upon all applications for
assistance from federal agencies included under A-95. LDDs,
for example, have become the A-95 bodies in most Appalachian
states. The application goes to the clearing house, which then
invites parties it feels appropriate to comment upon the application, and within thirty days the clearing house itself comments.
Only then is the application, with comment, passed to the federal
agency. Technically, that agency can ignore an unfavorable A-95
review, though under a new revision of A-95 it must now tell the
clearing house why it chose to do so. Under the same revision,
A-95 still remains noncompulsory; that is, states don't have to
adopt the procedure. In fact, however, the increasing trend is to
�302
Colonialism in Modern America
require the kind of regional review called for in A-95 whether
or not it has been formally adopted.
A-95 decisions are supposed to be based on grounds of consistency and soundness of planning. But again, good intentions
can be offset by realities. Many of the same questions heard in
Appalachia about LDDs are being raised there and elsewhere
about the A-95 bodies of review. Just who sits on the A-95
board, and who should? If the clearing house doesn't possess the
overall plan upon which it is supposed to peg its decisions, on
what is the review based? Vested interests of the board members? Personalities or politics of the applicants? If there is a
plan, who developed it, and with whose active advice and concurrence? Were all segments of the population included in the
planning effort? The questions comprise the list of what makes
political units responsive to needs.
A-95 raises other basic questions of civil rights. For example, a city with 600,000 people has the same voting power on
that A-95 board as a suburban member with 20,000. Aside
from one-man, one-vote, the same problems of board composition that arise with LDDs apply here. They are perhaps even
more critical with A-95 boards, since both civil rights review and
environmental impact determination are left to the auspices of
the A-95 body in key areas. Jim Draper, formerly of the Georgia
Council on Human Relations, has argued with OMB that A-95
boards "have neither staff nor philosophic inclination" to give
minority or low-income people a fair shake. "Moreover," he
said, "in many cases there is no representation of these interests
on A-95 bodies' boards of directors. Thus, inclusion of such considerations [as civil rights or environment] as criteria for review
becomes utterly meaningless—the painting over of rotting wood."
Is this, then, a hopeless quagmire, with the potential value
and real need for regionalism clouded by equally real inadequacies of accountability and responsiveness? ARC, for example,
might well have become a viable and creative institution if it had
followed the advice of many of its initial Appalachian backers
and dealt with the real problems of basic economic inequity in
Appalachia. Instead, it chose to go with the governors, with
the entrenched political systems of thirteen states. Some good
has resulted, such as ARC health programs, but had the key seg-
�Hidden Traps of Regionalism
303
ments of the Appalachian population been sought out and included both at the federal-state and the substate levels, a more
lasting and accountable mechanism might have made more than a
dent in the problems. ARCs survival might then rest on real
accomplishment rather than political muscle.
It is certainly not too late to learn lessons from the experience of ARC, its LDDs and such other manifestations of regionalism as A-95. And the need to learn is pressing, since regional
plans are likely to spread in ways and to places which will directly affect many more people. Maybe it is necessary to separate
regionalism at the urban level from efforts in rural areas where,
particularly in the South, the word is that regional government
is the government in a growing number of places. Maybe the
geographical closeness and heavy populations of urban areas
make regional efforts there more viable. Or maybe rural areas
with their much more limited financing and resources are the
places for real regional concentration. It's going on, in any case,
in both parts of America.
Some obvious steps could be taken to insure at leas; the
possibility of accountability. For a start, districts should be developed according to common realities, according to economic
and social factors which might produce a certain jurisdictional
cohesiveness. To combine units sheerly on the basis of geography (the north fork of the river) or politics (that's a Congressional district there) is shortsighted if the real goal is to use common facilities for the common solution of common problems.
Representatives to a development district should be elected
on a one-man, one-vote basis specifically to that post by the
people of each constituent unit. At present, elected officials
are automatically placed on the boards on the assumption that
they represent the will of the people. If special elections were
held to fill slots in the regional creation, not only would the
special abilities needed by said office be brought out but public
attention to and interest in the process might be developed.
Such concern does not now exist, except in the negative sense
when a district has overstepped its bounds. If regional cooperation is to become a reality, it must begin with the most basic
kind of involvement for the population^and that is the vote.
Other specific steps can be taken to assure that these new
�304
Colonialism in Modern America
bodies of government bear at least a resemblance to our traditional concept of democratic institutions. These include hearings
and public notification of review matters; A-95 does not require
such notice. Out-reach offices staffed by local residents to serve
as centers for complaints or suggestions is another obvious step.
Without such action, and others like it, any future efforts to
broaden the power and scope of multi-jurisdictional authorities
will obscure even further the role of the American citizen in the
affairs of his government.
Hearings may be held this year on a bill by Sen. Joseph
Montoya (D., N.M) uto establish a national development program
through public works in investment" (S.232). In introducing it
last year, Senator Montoya noted that "the inspiration for the
approach taken in this bill" is the ARC. He added that the bill
"builds on one of the most successful features of the Appalachian program, the strengthening of state and local governments
and making them an integral part of the decision-making process on public works investments." The bill would do that by
fostering the establishment of "area development districts"
nationwide. Public works investments would be made only in
those areas which have demonstrated a regional outlook based
on sound planning in seeking the money.
Significantly, a main witness at last year's Montoya bill
hearings (the bill died then for lack of action) was ARC States'
Regional Representative, John Whisman. Whisman's credentials
as an ardent backer of national regional development go back
well over a decade. Concepts developed by him to deal with
eastern Kentucky's late 1950s tragedies—multi-county efforts,
relying on local elected officials to reflect the people's will—
eventually translated into ARC and, Whisman has said "hopefully will go national as well." The Montoya bill may well be the
vehicle.
Testifying last year, Whisman acknowledged that ARC has
perhaps not accomplished what it was supposed to do—provide
economic opportunity for Appalachians. Indeed, he said, the
problems may well have gotten worse in the 1970's. So what
should we do? "To meet these new characteristics of our problems, we need to establish new institutional arrangements in
society." He added: "The purpose of the regional development
approach" is not primarily "to solve the problems of economic
�Hidden Traps of Regionalism
305
lag or unemployment or poverty. Rather, the basic purpose is
to solve problems of all kinds, mobilizing our know-how and our
funds at all levels of government in a partnership that can forge
new and effective solutions."
If that is the purpose, what Whisman is effectively talking
about is a basic reconfiguration of government. In acknowledging that problems of poverty remain rampant in ARC's Appalachia, he contends that what we really need are new "institutional arrangements/' which, of course, is what ARC was supposed to be in the first place. That reconfiguration is now
coming upon us, and we simply have not thought through carefully enough its ramifications upon all strata of society, particularly upon the low-income groups and minorities who themselves are already saying they see it all as a new threat.
They may be right. The burden of proof is on the backers
of regionalism to prove them wrong.
��RETHINKING THE MODEL
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�310
Colonialism in Modern America
The Japanese have been after the coal, some million and a
half tons a year, enough to load 30,000 50-ton railroad cars, or
80 such cars per day.
In school we learned that long ago when there were colonies, they shipped raw materials to their mother country and in
return provided a market for the mother country's manufactured
goods, an arrangement that worked mostly to the advantage of
the mother country. The mother country's superior technology
and resultant lower costs soon destroyed the colony's traditional
native industries.
So we ship coal to Japan and in return buy her finished
products: steel, cameras, radios, tape recorders, machinery,
ships, cars, and motorcycles—a classic colonial relationship. Of
course, we can produce some of those finished products ourselves, but they are not competitive in quality or cost.
The developing relationship between the U.S. and Japan,
I'm postulating (perhaps prematurely), is much like the old relationship between India and Britain, with the Japanese playing
their role with far more subtlety than the British.
The British ran India with a system of indirect rule, whereby native political institutions were brought into the British
structure and under its control. Natives were used to keep other
natives in line, and the natives themselves paid for their own
policing.
In Africa and Asia, the British were successful at this, and
in a number of cases were able to keep control after the nominal
independence of the countries involved. This is what is often
called neo-colonialism. It should also be pointed out that generally in India, Britain did not loot the country directly, but let
the wealthy natives keep their wealth and prestige, and did not
directly interfere with the country's social structure.
Japan's dominance of the United States began at the end of
World War II. She got the U.S. to finance the rebuilding of her
industrial plant, and, perhaps more importantly, she got the U.S.
to forbid her to rearm. This amounted to an agreement by the
U.S. to assume the role of defending Japanese interests. Not
only do the natives pay for and provide the manpower for their
�Appalachia; A Colony Within A Colony?
311
own policing, they also provide both the funds and the manpower to police the mother country's developing neo-empire. We
have a mutual security treaty with Japan. We provide the security and they provide the mutual.
Jacques Ellul in The Technological Society is of great help
in understanding why Japan has been able to neo-colonize the
U.S. Technique is more than tools and machinery to Ellul. It
encompasses everything which is done for the sake of greater
efficiency. Since there is only one best or most efficient way of
doing something, technique is totalitarian. Since maximum
efficiency is the goal, an aristocracy of technicians arises to
determine the one best way. "Planning in modern society,"
Ellul says, "is the technical method."1
The Japanese have developed an integration of government
and the corporate economy, through joint planning and coordination, which most nearly approaches ElluPs model of an advanced technological society (either corporate or socialist):
(a) take a firm hold on the economy, (b) manage it on
the basis of exact mathematical methods, (c) integrate it
into a Promethean society which excludes all chance,
(d) centralize it in the frameworks of nation and state
(the corporate economy today has no chance of success
except as a state system), (e) cause it to assume an aspect
of formal democracy to the total exclusion of real democracy, and (f) exploit all possible techniques for controlling
men.
Insofar as American leaders (corporate and government)
realize the gap between Japanese technique and their own, they
will move to centralize control and institute planning to a far
greater degree than we have yet experienced. Again, all planning
is totalitarian. To be carried out, a plan requires at least the
threat of coercion. If a person or family is allowed freedom of
decision, there is no plan.
There are still some significant obstacles in the U.S. to
technical progress. The governmental system of checks and
balances between Congress, the President, and the courts is inefficient. So is the partial freedom of state and local government
from federal control. Corrupt politicians are inefficient, as are a
�312
Colonialism in Modern America
free press, anti-trust laws, and the ability of citizens to sue government and corporations to block "progress."
Thus a small, efficient, tightly controlled, formally democratic island country can effectively exploit a larger, looser, less
efficient, more really democratic, continental country. It's the
British in India all over again, on a more sophisticated level.
Appalachia as a colony within a colony stands in relation
to the "advanced," urban areas of the U.S. as the country as a
whole stands to Japan. Government and business in the region
are less efficient. Non-economic considerations like family and
friendship often get in the way here. Short-term profit has yet
to give way to efficiency as the basic goal of the economy (or
even life), reflecting a rudimentary stage of technology. Some
human activities remain valued which are not economic (reducible to a money value), and man, in this "backward" area, remains something more than producing, consuming, economic
man.
Most strategies for change in Appalachia have been technological strategies, designed in one way or another to "develop" or "modernize" the region. All involve planning by experts. Opposition to these plans, be they for resort development,
clear-cutting, dam or road building, for education, health, welfare, or economic development, is seen by the planners as irrational meddling. The plan is rational, be it the plan of the
government agency or the plan of radical intellectuals.
The complete identity, rather than the resemblance, between corporatism and planning ought to be noted. Corporatism is adapted to a traditional, cultivated, bourgeois
mentality; planning to an innovating, proletarian, pseudoscientific mentality. But the attitude of the two is fundamentally the same. And, speaking objectively, the result,
insofar as the real structure of human society is concerned, will be identical.^
People are to be manipulated into supporting the plan.
Councils, boards, legislatures and the Congress ideally should
function as a democratic veneer, which is necessary to give
people the illusion that they have some control.
�Appalachia: A Colony Within A Colony?
313
True technique will know how to maintain the illusion of
liberty, choice, and individuality; but these will have been
carefully calculated so that they will be integrated into
the mathematical reality merely as appearances.
"Development," however, may no longer be possible in
Appalachia. The standard of living of middle-class America is
now beginning to decline. This is due in part to the new colonial
relationship with Japan (i.e., inflation resulting from our having
to pay for having fought Japan's war in Vietnam, intense pressures on raw materials markets leading to higher prices, etc.).
More fundamental is the fact that the industrial nations of
the world are beginning to realize that the natural resources of
the world are limited. Donella and Dennis Meadows in The
Limits to Growth describe a dynamic model of the world, considering population, industrial output per capita, food per capita,
natural resources, and pollution as basic factors. The model is
programmed into a computer using historical data from 1900 to
1970 and then projected until the year 2100, assuming "no
major change in the physical, economic, or social relationships
that have historically governed the development of the world
system."5 The result is what the Meadows call overshoot and
collapse: Resources are used up; food production rises until
all the land is worn out; industrial output rises rapidly and then
declines because of starvation. By 2050 industrial output per
capita and food per capita are both less than half of what they
were in 1900.
After numerous other model runs simulating all of the
popular remedies to the pollution-population-energy-etc. crisis,
the Meadows conclude that the only way to prevent the disaster
of overshoot and collapse is to immediately stabilize the world
by stabilizing population, setting capital investment equal to
capital depreciation, introducing extensive recycling of resources
and improved pollution control devices, and increasing the lifetime of all forms of capital. This equilibrium state is sustainable
far into the future with an average which is half the present
average U.S. income.6
It is thus impossible, considering population growth, arable
land, and the finite limits of the earth's resources, to extend the
levels of consumption of energy and material goods of the
�314
Colonialism in Modern America
American suburban middle class to the "poorer" sections of this
country, let alone to the majority of the world's people who live
in "under-developed" countries. The suburban middle classes
are precisely those who have been most reduced to producingconsuming, economic men, valuing themselves through money
and not likely to give it up.
The Meadows maintain that only through long-term
planning can the equilibrium model be attained and disastrous
collapse avoided. The sooner this planning begins (and the
mandatory implementation of it), the less overtly authoritarian
it can be. Since the model shows overshoot before the collapse,
it is too late to do anything once the crisis is widely perceived.
That is, you don't realize that the river is badly polluted until
the fish are dead. Then it's too late to do much about those fish.
As long as major decisions in the world are made by those
whose primary concern is that their industrial enterprises and
national economies shall continue to grow, nothing will be done
to move toward equilibrium. To return again to Ellul: "Anything and everything which technique is able to produce is produced and accepted by consumers"7; and "everything which is
technique is necessarily used as soon as it is available, without
distinction of good and evil."8
Most books about Appalachia tell us that the white settlers
of the region were drawn largely from the prisons of England and
Scotland and were rough bitter victims of the enclosure movement that was destroying medieval society in Britain. Some were
debtors, some thieves, and some may have been Luddites. Trampled on at home and then again in the coastal plains of America,
these outcasts went west to the mountains and stayed there to
escape civilized society. They wanted no part of the civilized
free market, wage labor, law, or class system. They valued most
their freedom and independence. They were more than economic men and did not have to prove themselves through wealth.
But they survived.
There are only two economic systems, according to Ellul.
The first exploits technique (efficiency, the one best way,
economic man, etc.), while the second "ascribes the chief place
to nature."9 This second orientation resembles what some
middle-class writers about Appalachia (with technologized
�Appalachia: A Colony Within A Colony?
315
minds) have called fatalism. This understanding of the limits
of man and the nature of the world, whether religious or not,
is more in touch with the reality of the world as reflected in the
Meadows' model than is "non-fatalistic" technological understanding which presumes that man can and should control
nature.
Since the Industrial Revolution, westernized man has had to
choose between freedom and wealth. Most have not understood
the choice and have thought both were possible. Many have not
perceived their loss of freedom. The first settlers knew from
bitter experience and chose a real independence.
There are many families in the mountains today who remember the old ways of surviving and are relatively free of
technological values. They are people for whom economic
activity is still a means and ihe end of life. A strategy for survival
in the Appalachia region in the face of the interrelated energyfood-population-pollution crisis would seek to support these
families and help them protect themselves from "development."
The consequence of all "development" programs is to
diminish the independence (hence the ability to survive) of the
mountain family. All, no matter how well meaning and whether
in health, education, economic development, or whatever, leave
the family more dependent on outside institutions and more at
the mercy of experts. Many of the social programs of the '60's
(welfare rights, Head Start, medicare, etc.) had the unintended
effect of luring people into an increasingly manipulative, totalitarian system and robbing them of their dignity and values.
"No matter how liberal the state, it is obliged by the mere fact
of technical advance to extend its powers in every way."10
Appalachia is a colony of technological society, first American and now also Japanese. Within the next 50-70 years, technological society will become increasingly totalitarian and
manipulative. It quite possibly will collapse. Self-sufficient
families and communities, knowing that nature (God) is greater
than man, can survive and retain their independence. Suburbanites, thinking that man can conquer nature (God), being
expert in one or two fields and unknowing and dependent in
most areas of life, unable to buy gasoline, electricity or food
with their money, may perish in great numbers.
�316
Colonialism in Modern America
Colonialism is an attack upon the land, the culture, and
the soul of a people. The three are tightly bound. Losses in one
affect the others. Families and communities can resist (passively
or actively) or give in (gradually or quickly), disintegrating into
a collection of individual consumers of mass-produced identities.
Seeing Appalachia as a colony is much more than seeing
who controls the profits from the coal mined in the region. It
is rather seeing a process of robbing people of their family,
community, land, independence, and soul^robbery by people
who mean well, and who know that they do it for your own
good.
�Appalachia: A Colony Within A Colony?
317
NOTES
1
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York, 1964), p. 184.
2
Ibid.t p. 186.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.,p. 139.
5
Ibid., p. 124.
6
Ibid.t p. 165.
7
Ibid., p. 93.
s
lbid., p. 99.
9
Ibid.,p. 186.
w
lbid., p. 235.
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�320
Colonialism in Modern America
sible grounds for a synthesis, and argue for the alternative formulation suggested above.
The Subculture of Poverty Model
The subculture of poverty model identifies the internal
deficiencies of the lower-class subculture as the cause of the
problem. Oscar Lewis is the social scientist most closely identified with this model, and the most widely read exposition of the
model applied to Appalachia is JackWeller's Yesterday's People,
which borrows an analytic framework from Herbert Cans.1 The
subculture of poverty model suggests remedial programs of education, social casework, and clinical psychology. Studies of
Appalachian culture in these terms include works by psychiatrist
David Looff, social worker Norman Polansky, and sociologist
Richard Ball.2
The work on Appalachia in the subculture of poverty tradition has a very limited validity at best because of three problems
that the authors fail to confront: deficient research methodology, a blurring of community and social class diversity in the
region, and a lack of historical perspective and specification.
The methodological approach in the works of Weller, Looff,
and Polansky, for example, imports sociological or psychiatric
categories and focuses on the pathological. They overgeneralize
from problem families to the culture of one or more social
classes. They fail to distinguish between the traditional Southern
Appalachian subculture and a contemporary subculture of
poverty. The limitations of these scientific, clinical classification systems are particularly evident in comparison to the work
of such writers as Robert Coles, John Fetterman, Tony Dunbar,
and Kathy Kahn, whose humanistic method uses their subjects'
own words to characterize Appalachian life-worlds.^
Their
descriptions of individuals and families manage to capture the
strengths as well as the shortcomings of mountaineers and the
diversity of personality types within some common subcultural
themes. These accounts of the contradictions in the lives and
outlooks of mountain people bear out Helen Lewis' suggestion
that many Appalachians are in fact bi-cultural; they take part in
the traditional subculture in family and neighborhood life, and
in the mainstream culture through employment, formal education, media entertainment, and contact with public agencies.
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
321
The subculture of poverty model in general has been subjected to devastating criticism.4 In the Appalachian case, sociologist Dwight Billings has shown the model to be of little value
in explaining the lack of economic development in the mountain
section of North Carolina and the contrasting industrialization
of the piedmont, for example. Ironically, it was just when the
distinctiveness of the Southern Appalachian traditional subculture was fading that the subculture of poverty model was
popularized and applied to the region.5 For all the controversy
generated in the debate over the subculture of poverty, this
model had less policy impact on Appalachia than one might
expect. The model did help to rationalize such national programs as Project Head Start, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and the great expansion of social services that took
place in the 1960's. But the subculture of poverty model was not
a major influence on the state and federal planners who devised
the Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965.
The Regional Development Model
Although the literature on development includes disciplines
from social psychology to social ecology, the most influential
stream derives from neoclassical economics as amended by
central place theory.6 The resulting regional development model
is concerned with providing economic and social overhead
capital, training people for skills for new industrial and service
jobs, facilitating migration, and promoting the establishment or
relocation of privately-owned industries through a growth center
strategy. A modernizing elite is seen as the agent of the developmental process. The major attempt to apply the model within
the United States is the work of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) and its associated programs. Niles Hansen is
probably the best-known academic proponent of this approach.7
The Appalachian regional development advocates have an
academic base in the Departments of Sociology, Economics and
Agricultural Economics at West Virginia University, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Tennessee, and such related applied research institutes as the Appalachian Center at
WVU, the Center for Developmental Change at UK, and the
Appalachian Resources Project at UT. More significantly, this
model has a political base in the multi-county Local Develop-
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ment Districts established under the ARC program. The LDDs
serve primarily as a mechanism for arriving at consensus among
regional elites. Through the dual federal-state structure of the
ARC, the interests of regional and national elites are reconciled.
With its emphasis on mainstream economic theory and the
technical aspects of development, the regional development
model lays claim to being a scientific, value-free, and non-controversial approach. As such, it is an effective means of providing additional resources to the region without affecting the
existing structure of resource control. Actions taken by regional
and national planners are defended as technical decisions, rather
than political choices among alternative courses of development.
The most important decisions are the "non-decisions": the questions that are never raised and the subjects that never make the
public agenda.8 Examples include public ownership of the
region's natural resources and worker or community-owned and
controlled industry.^
The Internal Colonialism Model
The issues of power and privilege in Appalachia are never
faced squarely by the subculture of poverty and regional development advocates. In reaction to this obvious shortcoming, radical
academics and activists looked for a model that emphasized
inequality and exploitation. They hit upon the internal colonialism model for reasons that had more to do with the focus of the
New Left in the late 1960's—imperialism abroad and oppression
of racial minorities at home—than the appropriateness of the
model to the Appalachian situation. As the Appalachian radicals
apply the internal colonialism model, it has been used to examine
the process by which dominant outside industrial interests established control and continue to prevent autonomous development of the subordinate internal colony. The model suggests the
need for an anti-colonial movement and a radical restructuring of
society with a redistribution of resources to the poor and powerless.
Dependency and Neocolonialism
The internal colonialism model has emerged from a back-
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
323
ground of the history and theories of colonialism and imperialism and is most directly related to the theories of neocolonialism
and dependency that have been developed in the post-World War
II period. Dependency theory has been developed primarily by
radical economists and sociologists concerned with Latin America, while the theories of neocolonialism and imperialism have
been more concerned with Asia and Africa, or the Third World
as a whole.10
A vital contribution of the dependency model is the notion
of the "Infrastructure of dependency," the structures internal
to the dependent country including industrial organization,
patterns of urbanization, and social classes. In the exposition by
Suzanne Bodenheimer, two examples of the infrastructure of
dependency are the patterns of dependent industrialization and
the formation of clientele social classes. Characteristics of dependent industrialization include foreign domination of the most
dynamic sectors of industry, increasing competitive advantage
for foreign monopolistic enterprises over local firms, and the
introduction of advanced, capital-intensive technology without
regard to resulting unemployment. Clientele classes have a "dual
position as partners of metropolitan interests, yet dominant elites
within their own societies." They may include not only the industrial bourgeoisie but also the state bureaucracy and other
sectors of the middle class when their positions are tied to foreign interests. The infrastructure of dependency is thus "the
functional equivalent of a formal colonial apparatus," but insofar as it is internalized and institutionalized "much more difficult to overcome."11
Internal Colonialism
The success of the anticolonial movements in the Third
World following World War II has undoubtedly contributed to
the popularity of referring to a variety of exploitative situations
within both developing and advanced industrial countries as internal or domestic colonialism. Through conceptual confusion
or carelessness, internal colonialism has been used to designate
situations of stratification by class, race, ethnicity, or geography,
alone or in various combinations. It is also used to describe
absentee industrial ownership, although this is a characteristic
feature of uneven and polarized capitalist development.12 In-
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Colonialism in Modern America
eluded among such internal colonies have been the U.S. South,
northern New England, the northern Great Lakes region, the
Southwest, the "Celtic periphery" of England, southern Italy,
and so on. 1 ^ One explanation may be that the vocabulary of
colonization is more comfortable than that of class conflict, and
regional or ethnic chauvinism is more acceptable than talk of
socialism.
Internal colonialism is a useful concept if defined in a
rigorous sense rather than used as an all-inclusive catchword.
Two precise definitions with varying degrees of restrictiveness are
advanced by Pablo Gonzalez-Casanova and Pierre van den Berghe.
Gonzalez-Casanova seeks to distinguish internal colonialism from
a class structure with a geographic or racial aspect:
Internal colonialism corresponds to a structure of social
relations based on domination and exploitation among
culturally heterogeneous, distinct groups. . . .It is the result of an encounter between two races, cultures, or
civilizations, whose genesis and evolution occurred without any mutual contact up to one specific moment. . . .
The colonial structure and internal colonialism are distinguished from the class structure since colonialism is
not only a relation of exploitation of the workers by the
owners of raw materials or of production and their
collaborators, but also a relation of domination and exploitation of a total population (with its distinct classes,
proprietors, workers) by another population which also
has distinct classes (proprietors and workers).^
In short, the Gonzllez-Casanova definition requires a dual class
structure: two class systems, one dominant and the other subordinate, each of which may be differentiated to a greater or
lesser degree. This appears to be a useful minimal definition of
internal colonialism, although it is broad enough to include a
variety of dominant-subordinate group relationships.
The most restrictive definition of internal colonialism is
developed by van den Berghe in a recent work. His view, in part
a reaction to the overly broad use of the term, is worth quoting
at length:
In my opinion, the concept of internal colonialism, when
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
325
so diluted, loses all of its use for purposes of social science
analysis. I shall therefore propose to treat internal colonialism as an ideal type with the following characteristics:
1)
Rule of one ethnic group (or coalition of such
groups) over other such groups living within the
continuous boundaries of a single state.
2)
Territorial separation of the subordinate ethnic
groups into "homelands," "native reserves," and the
like, with land tenure rights distinct from those
applicable to members of the dominant group.
3)
Presence of an internal government within a government especially created to rule the subject peoples,
with a special legal status ascribed to the subordinate groups. . .
4)
Relations of economic inequality in which subject
peoples are relegated to positions of dependency
and inferiority in the division of labor and the relations of production.
Such a definition of internal colonialism excludes mere
regional differences in economic development, mere class
differences in the system of production, and, a fortiori,
differences based on age, sex, slave status, caste, sexual
behavior (e.g., homosexuality), physical handicaps, and
countless others. The usefulness of the concept to understand the situation of a group is a function of that group's
approximation to the characteristics of the ideal type.
For instance, in the United States, internal colonialism
describes the position of Amerindians quite well, of
Chicanos somewhat, of blacks poorly, of Appalachian
whites hardly at all, and of women, old people, homosexuals and convicts only by the most fanciful stretch of
the academic imagination. This is not to say that some of
the groups excluded from my definition of internal
colonialism may not be as badly or worse off than the
denizens of the internal colonies. Their position is fundamentally different, however, and, hence, the internal
colonial model is a poor one to understand their predicament. Internal colonialism is but one of many ways of
getting the short end of the stick.-^
Gonzalez-Casanova's criterion of a dual class structure appears
to include points one and four of van den Berghe's ideal type.
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Colonialism in Modern America
The latter would also require territorial separation and a special
governing unit for full correspondence to the internal colonialism
model. I find it most useful to adopt a definition between
Gonzalez-Casanova and van den Berghe, thus requiring economic
exploitation, a dual class structure based on ethnic differences,
within one or more distinct geographic regions. In other words,
I would place internal colonialism as a special case within the
theory of dependent capitalist development.
Internal Colonialism
Applied to Appalachia
I can find no use of the colonialism analogy to the Appalachians prior to the early 1960's. During the unionization battles
of the 1930's, the Left press emphasized themes of exploitation
and class conflict along classic Marxian lines in their articles
about the Appalachian coalfields.16 Only after the internal
colonial model had been applied to blacks did writers on Appalachia begin to speak in terms of colonialism. In his best selling
1962 study Night Comes to the Cumberlands, Harry Caudill
makes only a passing reference to colonialism; by 1965 he begins
to use the internal colonial designation.17 The theme was
quickly picked up by activists and radical intellectuals in the
Central Appalachian area, particularly the group associated with
the Peoples' Appalachian Research Collective and its journal,
Peoples' Appalachia. Helen Lewis and her associates have attempted a detailed application to Appalachia of Blauner's model
of the process of internal colonization of black Americans.
I find the application of Blauner's model of internal colonialism, broad as it is, to Appalachia to be strained at some key
points. The parallel to "forced, involuntary entry" by the
colonizers is nowhere near as strong as the case of enslaved blacks
from Africa or the conquered Native American tribes or the
Mexican people of the Southwest. In the elaborated version of
his argument, Blauner distinguishes between "colonized and immigrant minorities" and suggests that the circumstances of entry
of white European ethnic immigrant groups is different in
character from that of blacks and possibly other people of color
in the United States. The situation of Appalachian people is
clearly a third variant if they are to be treated as a minority at
all; the mountaineers were an early settler group established for
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
327
sixty to a hundred years before the expansion of industrial
capitalism into the region. Blacks and immigrant ethnic groups
have played an important role in the development of the Southern Appalachian coal industry, particularly in West Virginia, but
the focus of the Appalachian internal colonialism theorists has
not been on such groups.18 The deception and fraud used in
Appalachia by the vanguard of land, timber, and mineral agents
do not appear to differ in kind from those techniques used generally by capitalists and their agents throughout the country in
the period of industrial expansion.
On the question of "administration by representatives of
the dominant power/' the application of Blauner's internal colonialism model to Appalachia suffers from his emphasis on "police
colonialism/' the direct application of force by members of the
dominant group. Blauner has not put enough emphasis on the
neocolonial mechanism of an indigenous stratum of officials
ruling in the interests of the dominant group. Helen Lewis suggests that the study of such local elite groups in the mountains
is of great importance,1^ but this conclusion and suggestions of
what mechanisms to look for flow more readily from the more
general dependency model than from the narrower internal
colonialism model.
The parallel to "racism as a principle of social domination"
really breaks down in the Appalachian case. There may be prejudice against "hillbillies," but it is essentially based on bias
against the lower classes, not all the people of the region.20
There is no parallel to the dual class structures required by
Gonzales-Casanova's definition of internal colonialism. Mountaineers are able to "pass" into mainstream America both
through migration and, for some, through integration into the
business elite in the mountains. 21 White Appalachians generally
have a potential for social mobility not matched by racial minorities. The traditional Appalachian subculture may be becoming
a museum piece, but this is a situation far from white Appalachians as a group being accorded the near-caste position of some
racial minorities in the United States.
Applying an additional characteristic of internal colonialism
from van den Berghe's definition, I can find no evidence of "an
internal government within a government especially created to
rule the subject peoples." The Appalachian Regional Commis-
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Colonialism in Modern America
sion is not a functional counterpart of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The people of Appalachia have no distinct legal status
distinguishing them from other residents of the United States, as
Native Americans do in some instances. Appalachia appears to
provide a very poor fit to any strict definition of internal colonialism.
Cultural Hegemony and
Capitalist Domination
Much of the attraction of the internal colonialism model,
including its application to Appalachia, derives from its powerful
analysis of the destruction of indigenous culture in the process
of establishing and maintaining domination over the colonized
group. Religion and education can play a major role in the
destruction of traditional culture. The missionary movement
in Appalachia can be seen as aiding, often inadvertently, the
process of domination, as Lewis, Kobak and Johnson have described. James Branscome and Mike Clark have brought this
analysis up to date by examining the effect of schooling on
Appalachian culture in the current period.
These arguments hit the mark, but is cultural domination a
distinctive feature of internal colonialism rather than class exploitation? A common and understandable misconception, derived in part from the stress on economic determinism in vulgar
Marxist analysis, is that culture plays an insignificant part in the
structure of class domination under capitalism. The colonial
model is seen as distinctive by Blauner for its emphasis on this
ignored area: ". . .the colonial attack on culture is more than a
matter of economic factors such as labor recruitment and special
exploitation. The colonial situation differs from the class situation of capitalism precisely in the importance of culture as an
instrument of domination."22 Orthodox Marxism has been
particularly weak in its analysis of culture, and Blauner misses
the importance of ideological hegemony in the establishment
and maintenance of capitalist domination. For the beginnings of
an adequate theory of the role of culture in capitalist societies
we must turn to the Western Marxist tradition and such writers
as Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, and the Frankfurt School
theorists. The concept of cultural hegemony derives from
Gramsci and emphasizes the obtaining of consent rather than the
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
329
use of force in the perpetuation of class structures. Gwynn
Williams provides a useful summary of Gramsci's notion of
hegemony: "an order in which a certain way of life and thought
is dominant, in which one concept of reality is diffused throughout society in all its institutional and private manifestations,
informing with its spirit all taste, morality, customs, religious and
political principles, and all social relations, particularly in their
intellectual and moral connotation."2^ xhe destruction of
indigenous culture may be more conspicuous in the colonial
situation, but a comparable process works to erode all ethnic
and working-class cultures in advanced capitalist countries, a
process which has perhaps advanced furthest in the United
States.24
A few radical economists have attempted to avoid the problems of the colonialism analogy by returning to a traditional
Marxian analysis of Appalachia in the context of capitalist exploitation and have suggested the fruitfulness of a longitudinal
study of the removal of surplus value from the region over time.
But this focus on economic relationships loses the valuable
emphasis of the internal colonialism model on the role of cultural domination and the contribution of the dependency formulation on the * Infrastructures of dependency." Perhaps the best
formulation of a research project from the perspective of radical
economics has been made by Richard Simon, who reviews the
historical development of the West Virginia economy in the context of dependency theory, suggesting relationships with the
social and political structures of that state and with the introduction of federal government programs in the 1960's.25 It is
time to synthesize the best of the models so far put forward and
develop a more accurate and comprehensive theory of poverty
and underdevelopment in Central Appalachia.
Appalachia within an Advanced Capitalist Society
It is tempting to characterize the subculture of poverty,
regional development, and internal colonialism models as, respectively, conservative, liberal, and radical models of barriers
to social change. While this would contain a substantial amount
of truth, the description would be misleading in one respect.
From a perspective that I will develop briefly here, the three
models are not, strictly speaking, mutually exclusive alternatives.
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Colonialism in Modern America
Interpreted in terms of a framework developed by Jurgen Habermas, they represent different dimensions of social existence.
A Framework for Synthesis
For Habermas, there are three fundamental conditions or
media through which social systems are maintained: interaction,
work, and power or domination. All human societies use these
means to resolve the problems of preserving life and culture.
Corresponding to each of these media are the human "interests"
in mutual understanding, technical control, and "emancipation
from seemingly 'natural' constraint."2^ A solution to the problems of Appalachian poverty and underdevelopment would have
to be concerned with each of the three modes of culture, technique, and domination. Habermas' distinction provides a basis
for viewing cultural adaptation, technical development, and redistribution of power as potentially complementary aspects of
social development. Our models, therefore, are not merely three
selected from a long list of possible models of poverty and underdevelopment. They represent fundamental dimensions of social
life and may well be exhaustive of the possible alternatives if
stated in a sufficiently general form (which none of the three
current models are).
The subculture of poverty model can thus be seen as only
one part of a broader framework of explanations rooted in the
tradition of cultural idealism. Affirmative cultural approaches
toward Southern Appalachia, exemplified by William G. Frost
and John C. and Olive D. Campbell, are the obverse side of the
coin from the pejorative tradition. Although they come to opposite conclusions about the virtue of the traditional mountain
subculture, they are contending on the same turf. The regional
development model, from this synthetic perspective, is seen as
resting within the contemporary technocratic image and ideology
of science. As John Friedmann points out, the regionalism movement of the 1930's, as personified by Howard Odum and others,
was rooted in cultural idealism. The new regionalism of the
1960's, embodied in the ARC, discarded this grounding in favor
of the technical reason of neoclassical economic theory.27 The
internal colonialism model is, similarly, one component of a
broad range of theories that contribute to a critique of power
and domination.
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
331
This synthetic view helps explain why writers widely considered to be champions of a certain model of Appalachian
underdevelopment also draw on other models. Caudill, for
example, is best known for his description of the Cumberland
Plateau as an example of colonialism, but in Night Comes to the
Cumberland^ he also paints a pejorative picture of the subculture
of the eastern Kentucky poor. In one essay Caudill appears to
embrace many aspects of the developmental model, while in his
most recent work he has re-emphasized a genetic explanation.
From the other side, Weller is best known for his subculture of
poverty characterization in Yesterday's People, yet he has recently described Appalachia as "America's mineral colony."28
Such examples can be viewed as cases of inconsistency, confusion, or conversion. They can also be seen, at least in part, as
attempts to grapple with the complexity of analyzing the problem of Appalachian development. To suggest that a dialectic of
mutual interaction takes place among the modes of culture,
technique, and power is, of course, not to argue that each of our
three models of Appalachian underdevelopment is to be taken
with equal seriousness.
I have suggested that the history of the Appalachian region
is best understood in the context of industrial capitalist development. The internal colonialism model raises important questions
about wealth, power, and domination without offering a satisfactory characterization of the situation of Central Appalachia.
My synthesis of the three models leads to the conclusion that
Appalachian poverty and underdevelopment need to be placed
within a broader critique of domination. From this perspective,
Central Appalachia must be analyzed in the context of advanced
capitalism in the United States. In some instances (analyzing the
role of the Japanese steel industry in providing capital for opening new coal mines in the region, for example), we may have to
expand our horizon to the framework of the world capitalist
system.
In a recent work Habermas formulates a model of advanced
capitalism, which he characterizes by two features: the "process
of economic concentration"—the growth of national and multinational corporations—and the "supplementation and partial replacement of the market mechanism by state intervention."2^
Habermas goes on to analyze advanced capitalist societies in
terms of their economic, administrative (state), and legitimation
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Colonialism in Modern America
systems and the resulting class structures. Applying a similar
analysis will contribute to a deeper understanding of the position
of Central Appalachia.
The Economy
There is growing agreement among economists critical of
neoclassical theory that a three-sector model is necessary to
characterize the advanced capitalist economy in the United
States. John Kenneth Galbraith delineates the market system,
the planning system, and the state. As a rough demarcation,
Galbraith's planning system consists of the largest "one thousand
manufacturing, merchandising, transportation, power and financial corporations producing approximately half of all the goods
and services not provided by the state/' Making up the market
system are the remaining twelve million firms which produce the
other half of the non-state output of goods and services.30 The
market system includes farmers, small retail and service establishments, construction and small manufacturing firms, and the arts.
Whereas the workings of the market system bear some resemblance to the model of competition embodied in classical economics, the planning system is oligopolistic and its stability depends on the intervention of the state.
James O'Connor has developed a similar model with a much
deeper analysis of governmental activity. O'Connor also divides
private capital into two sectors: a competitive sector (roughly
parallel to Galbraith's market system) and a monopoly sector
(somewhat smaller than Galbraith's planning system). O'Connor's
state sector includes two categories: "production of goods and
services organized by the state itself and production organized
by industries under contract with the state."31 Approximately
one-third of the labor force in the United States is employed
in each of these three sectors. The monopoly and state-contract
sectors tend to be capital-intensive industries, while the competitive and state service sectors tend to be labor intensive. As a
consequence, wages tend to be high in the monopoly and state
sectors and low in the competitive sector. Unions tend to be
strong in the monopoly and state sectors and weak in the competitive sector. Both product and labor markets tend to be unstable and irregular in the competitive sector, a circumstance
which has fostered the development of segmented labor mar-
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
333
kets.32
State sector expenditures, in O'Connor's model, are divided
into two categories, social capital and social expenses, with social
capital being of two kinds, social investment and social consumption. This distinction between social investment and social consumption roughly parallels Niles Hansen's distinction between
economic and social overhead capital. Social investment, in
O'Connor's terms, "consists of projects and services that increase
the productivity of a given amount of labor-power and, other
factors being equal, increase the rate of profit." Examples include government-subsidized roads, railroads, and industrial
parks. Social consumption "consists of projects and services that
lower the reproduction costs of labor and, other factors being
equal, increase the rate of profit." Social consumption expenditures fall into two categories: goods and services consumed
collectively and social insurance. Examples of the first include
school, recreation and medical facilities, and the second, Social
Security, workman's compensation, unemployment insurance,
and health insurance. Most of the programs developed through
the Appalachian Regional Commission are thus in the areas of
social investment and the first, or collective, category of social
consumption. Finally, social expenditures "consist of projects
and services which are required to maintain social harmony—to
fulfill the state's legitimization' function. They are not even
indirectly productive." O'Connor includes welfare and military
programs in this category.3 3
This model of the advanced capitalist economy in the
United States has some obvious implications for an analysis of
the Central Appalachian region, particularly in regard to the
coal industry. The coal industry is unusual, though not unique,
in having both substantial monopolistic and competitive sectors.
Manufacturing and mining industries are generally concentrated
in the monopolistic sector, while the competitive sector is primarily composed of small factories and services. The coal industry thus offers an opportunity for a comparative study of
these two sectors within a single industry. Topics for investigation include relative rates between the two sectors of capital investment, wage levels, productivity, technological innovation,
unionization, and influence on the legislative, administrative,
and judicial institutions of the state that affect the coal industry.
Contrasting business ideologies between the two sectors need to
�3 34
Colonialism in Modern America
be explored. Since Central Appalachia contains the largest concentration of firms in the competitive sector of the coal industry,
it is a particularly appropriate location for a study of the two
sectors.
The Role of the State
The institutions that compose the state, to take Ralph
Miliband's definition, are the executive, the legislative, the administrative (civil service bureaucracy), the military and police,
the judiciary, and the subcentral governmental units. This system is part of a broader political system, which includes political
parties, pressure groups, and a variety of other institutions not
defined as political, such as corporations, churches, and mass
media. A crucial question is the relationship between the state
(and state elite) and the dominant economic class. Miliband recalls that "it is obviously true that the capitalist class, as a class,
does not actually 'govern.' One must go back to isolated instances of the early history of capitalism, such as the commercial
patriciates of cities like Venice and Lubeck, to discover direct
and sovereign rule by businessmen."34
Contemporary analysts of the role of the state in advanced
capitalism, including Miliband, O'Connor, and Nicos Poulantzas, 35 emphasize the relative autonomy of the state system.
From their viewpoint, the familiar statement of Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels that "the modern State is but a committee
for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie" has
been vulgarized. As Miliband comments, "The notion of common affairs assumes the existence of particular ones; and the
notion of the whole bourgeoisie implies the existence of separate
elements which make up that whole. This being the case, there
is an obvious need for an institution of the kind they refer to,
namely the state; and the state cannot meet this need without
enjoying a certain degree of autonomy."^ But the summary
statement of Marx and Engels is still too abbreviated; the state
reflects not simply the common interests of the whole bourgeoisie but a compromise between those interests and the interests of subordinate classes. The balance of the compromise
depends in part on the level and extent of political struggle by
the subordinate classes.
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
335
In a recent work that draws on Miliband, Poulantazas, and
O'Connor, Ian Gough develops the role of state expenditures as
concessions to working class struggles. The expansion of social
services and social insurance since the Depression of the 1930's
has meant that an increasing amount of the compensation of
the labor force has come in the form of social wages. Indeed,
"the strength of working-class pressure/* he writes, "can roughly
be gauged by the comprehensiveness and the level of the social
benefits." Although such programs are tailored and modified to
accommodate the interests of the dominant class, Gough notes:
It is essential to distinguish their concrete historical
origins from the ongoing function they play within that
particular social formation. Social policies originally the
product of class struggle will, in the absence of further
struggle, he absorbed and adapted to benefit the interests of the dominant classes. On the other hand,
whatever their particular function for capital at any time,
the fact that social services are also an integral part of
the real wage level of the working class means that they
are fought for in much the same way as money wages, in
economic and political class struggle.^
In a similar fashion, the class distribution of the burden of taxation also affects the real wages of the working class.
This recognition of the importance of social services, income transfer programs, and tax policy helps us understand and
situate such social movements in the Central Appalachian region
as the Black Lung Associations and their fights for workmen's
compensation, clinical treatment programs, expanded benefits
from the UMWA Health and Retirement Funds, and the severance tax on coal. It also illuminates the role of the federal
bureaucracy and judicial system in the reform of the UMWA
and its Health and Retirement Funds, the struggle for mine
safety and health, and the expansion of a variety of benefits
from social security to food stamps to community mental health
services.
The Legitimation System
Habermas argues that formal democratic institutions which
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Colonialism in Modern America
allow universal adult voting in elections may obtain sufficient
"diffuse mass loyalty" in the absence of substantive participation
in public policy formulation if two conditions are present: "civic
privatism" and an ideology that justifies elite rule. Civic privatism involves a withdrawal from the public realm into "career,
leisure, and consumption." Both the "theory of democratic
elitism" favored by mainstream American political science and
the mystique of technical expertise promoted by theorists of
public administration serve to legitimate the absence of public
participation in political decision making.^ 8
Among the working class in Central Appalachia, legitimation of the political system appears to be weak at the level of
specific institutions yet remains strong at a diffuse level
("patriotism"). Cynicism about public officials abounds, with
ample justification. The retreat to privatism is possibly facilitated by the extended family systems, which may provide
sources for satisfaction even in the absence of substantial material comforts. Yet agencies of government frequently seek
legitimation through a rhetoric of democratic participation. For
example, TVA's claims of "grass roots democracy" disguised a
policy of conceding the farm and related rural development programs to the local agricultural elites in exchange for a free hand
for federal planners in public electrical power generation.^ 9 xhe
ARC uses the Local Development Districts as the "local building
blocks" of a program of federal-state cooperation. In Central
Appalachia, such claims have seldom received an affirmative
embrace from the working class, but they have met with acquiescence more often than active opposition.
The Class Structure
A common rhetorical excess is the description of the class
structure of Central Appalachia as polarized into the wealthy and
the poor. For Harry Caudill, there are "two Appalachias. . .side
by side and yet strangers to each other. One, the Appalachia of
Power and Wealth,. . .headquartered in New York and Philadelphia, is allied to mighty banks and insurance companies.
. . .The second Appalachia is a land devastated. . . .Its people
are the old, the young who are planning to leave and the legions
of crippled and sick."40 The reality, of course, is far more
complicated. The question is not merely one of polemical
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
3 37
license. Any strategy for social change must make a thorough
assessment of the potential interest in change of the various class
groupings in the region.
It is generally agreed that advanced capitalism has led to a
proliferation of class and occupational groupings between the
classic proletariat (the industrial working class) and the bourgeoisie of monopoly capital. The expansion of service industries
with its accompanied increase in grey-collar and white-collar
employment has been one aspect of this increase. The development of what Galbraith calls the "educational and scientific
estate" is another. Despite the increased level of average per
capita income, the distribution of shares of income and wealth
has changed little in the past forty years. The "myth of the
middle class" has been dispelled by careful analysis of confusing
census occupational categories, and the continuing existence of
a "working-class majority" has been established.41
In Central Appalachia, the expansion of state expenditures
has helped create sizable intermediate class groupings of public
workers (in education, local government, and public services)
and workers in industries heavily subsidized by public funds
(health services particularly). Unionization efforts have been
made recently among municipal and hospital workers. These
elements of the "new working-class" have taken their places
alongside such long-established groups as coal miners, workers in
small factories, small farmers, country merchants, county-seat
retailers, bankers, professionals, independent coal operators, and
managers for the nationally-based coal companies in the monopolistic sector, in addition to household workers, the welfare
poor, and others outside the standard labor force. The class
structure is obviously complex, and its changes need to be
analyzed over time, particularly in relation to changes in the coal
industry and the growth of state expenditures. Radicals must
learn to paint portraits of the region in which a variety of working people can recognize themselves.
The Internal Periphery
In a market economy, certain regions within a country will
experience economic rise or decline in response to such circumstances as demographic changes, technological advances, and the
�338
Colonialism in Modern America
depletion of resources. On this the theorists of regional growth,
urban hierarchies, and uneven capitalist development are agreed.
As the core-periphery distinction is presently used by several
schools of economic thought, it seems reasonable to me to apply
the term peripheral to such regions within advanced capitalist
countries as Appalachia which share many of the characteristics
of underdevelopment, poverty, and dependency found in the
peripheral countries of the Third World. Certainly the term is a
more appropriate analogy than internal colony, which, as I have
illustrated, should be restricted to a special case.
Immanuel Wallerstein has recently begun developing a more
rigorous theory of the relationship of core and peripheral countries in the capitalist world economy and has elaborated an important intermediate case, that of the semi-peripheral countries
(a distinction that corresponds in part to the levels of development within the Third World countries).42 In Wallerstein's
view, the semi-peripheral countries perform two important functions for the capitalist world system, one political and one
political and economic. The political function is to avoid a sharp
polarization into rich and poor countries that would foster an
alliance among the poor nations. The intermedite sector develops a third set of interests based on its aim of making it into
the core. The political-economic function of the semi-periphery
is to provide an outlet for capital investment from core countries
in low-wage industrial production.
The analogy between peripheral countries in the world system and peripheral regions within core countries obviously
should not be pushed too far. As John Friedman points out,
there are important differences between regions and countries,
and between poor countries and poor regions in rich countries.4 ^
The most important difference is that countries have a relatively
greater degree of closure in their boundaries. Through the use
of tariff barriers, control over investments, and other means,
countries can achieve a relative degree of insulation from the
world economy. Constitutional and political limitations on the
restraint of commerce prevent any state within the United States
(much less multi-state regions without separate political authority) from following similar policies of restricting trade, investment, or population movements.
These qualifications noted, Wallerstein*s three-tiered system
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
339
may find an analogue within advanced capitalist countries.
Regionalization and regionalism, the economic and ideological
manifestations of peripheral status, may well join the racial,
ethnic, and sexual aspects of the division of labor as functional
barriers to class polarization of conflict over inequality.44 The
possibility of attaining semi-peripheral status may preclude a
strong alliance of one region with another worse off. We see
evidence of this in the successful move of the Northern and
Southern Appalachian regions to standard semi-peripheral status
within the United States while Central Appalachia remains behind. Given the general "fiscal crisis of the state," the federal
government seems reluctant to commit resources to the elimination of regional inequality—the elevation to semi-peripheral
status of all internal peripheral regions. The executive branch has
resisted attempts of the Congress to expand the Title V regional
commissions in the manner of the ARC. Peripheral regions
remain functional for the system of advanced capitalism in the
United States much in the way that poverty in general has positive functions. 45
Conclusion
Analogies are valuable in social analysis insofar as they summarize and illuminate certain features of the subject under investigation. In this sense the analogy between the situation of
Central Appalachia and that of colonized countries has been
stimulating and fruitful. It has focused attention on the acquisition of the raw materials of the region by outside corporate interests and on the exploitation of the local work force and community at large resulting from the removal of the region's natural
resources for the benefit of absentee owners. But analogies,
while providing insights into some aspects of reality, can obscure
or distort others. A loose analogy is no substitute, in the long
run, for a precise theory that can lead to more detailed investigations. In this sense the internal colonialism model applied to
Central Appalachia needs to be superceded by a model of peripheral regions within an advanced capitalist society.
The question is more than academic. At issue are the goals
and strategy of a movement for social change. Writers using the
internal colonialism model have been ambiguous about what
solution is appropriate for Appalachian problems. Taking the
�340
Colonialism in Modern America
term "colony" in its strongest sense, that of a suppressed nation,
would prescribe an Appalachian nationalism aiming at secession
and an independent nation-state. No one has proposed such a
solution, although a weaker version—a state of Appalachia—has
been mentioned.46 Nor have many seriously suggested that the
region would be better off if all the coal companies were owned
by the local elite of "hillbilly millionaires"—a sort of bourgeois
decolonization—instead of the national and international energy
corporations, although an exclusive focus on absentee ownership might lead to that conclusion. If the heart of the problem is
defined as private ownership of the coal industry, then the possibility of public ownership, perhaps even limited to a regional
basis, is suggested.47 If the problem is defined as capitalist
relations of production generally, then the alternative—some
form of socialism—takes on a dimension that goes far beyond the
nationalization or Appalachianization of the coal industry
alone. It is this challenge of defining socialist goals and strategies
that is presented by the model of peripheral regions within an
advanced capitalist society.
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
341
NOTES
^Oscar Lewis, The Children of Sanchez (New York: Random House,
1961), pp. xxiv-xxvii; Jack E. Weller, Yesterday's People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1965); and Herbert J. Cans, The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of ItalianAmericans (New York: Free Press, 1962).
H. Looff, Appalachians Children: The Challenge of Mental
Health (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1971); Norman A. Polansky,
Robert D. Borgman, and Christine DeSaix, Roots of Futility (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1972); Richard A. Ball, "New Premises for Planning in
Appalachia," Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 2 (Fall 1974), 92101.
^See Robert Coles, Migrants, Sharecroppers, Mountaineers, especially Chs. 5, 6, 9 and 12, and The South Goes North, Ch. 6 (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1972); John Fetterman, Stinking Creek (New York: Dutton, 1967);
Tony Dunbar, Our Land Too (New York: Random House, 1969), Part II;
Kathy Kahn, Hillbilly Women (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972). A
good contrast of the two approaches is Mike Maloney and Ben Huelsman,
"Humanism, Scientism, and Southern Mountaineers," People's Appalachia,
2 (July 1972), 24-27. The methodological basis of the humanistic approach
is sketched in John R. Staude, "The Theoretical Foundations of Humanistic
Sociology," in Humanistic Society: Today's Challenge to Sociology, ed.
John F. Glass and John R. Staude (Pacific Palisades, CA: Goodyear, 1972),
pp. 262-270.
^"In addition to Charles Valentine's Culture and Poverty, see Jack L.
Roach and Orville R. Gursslin, "An Evaluation of the Concept 'Culture of
Poverty,' " Social Forces, 45 (March 1967), 383-392; the comments on
Valentine in Current Anthropology, 10 (April-June 1969), 181-201; and the
essays in The Culture of Poverty. A Critique, ed. Eleanor Burke Leacock
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971).
^Dwight Billings, "Culture and Poverty in Appalachia: A Theoretical
�342
Colonialism in Modern America
Discussion and Empirical Analysis," Social Forces, 53 (December 1974),
315-323; and Thomas R. Ford, "The Passing of Provincialism," Ch. 2 in
The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey, ed. Ford (Lexington: Univ.
of Kentucky Press, 1962), pp. 9-34.
*>On regional development theory, see Harvey S. Perloff et al, Regions, Resources, and Economic Growth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press,
I960); E. A. J. Johnson, The Organization of Space in Developing Countries
(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1970); and Harry W. Richardson, Regional Growth Theory (New York: Halstead, 1973). An Appalachian application is Mary Jean Bowman and W. Warren Haynes, Resources and People
in East Kentucky (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963). See also H.
Dudley Plunkett and Mary Jean Bowman, Elites and Change in the Kentucky Mountains (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1 973).
7
On the ARC, see Donald Rothblatt, Regional Planning; The Appalachian Experience (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1971); and Monroe Newman,
The Political Economy of Appalachia (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1972).
Niles M. Hansen's works include Rural Poverty and the Urban Crisis (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1970); Intermediate-Size Cities as Growth
Centers (New York: Praeger, 1971); an edited volume, Growth Centers in
Regional Economic Development (New York: Free Press, 1972); and Location Preferences, Migration and Regional Growth (New York: Praeger,
1973).
idea of "nondecisions" is developed in Peter Bachrach and
Morton S. Baratz, Power and Poverty: Theory and Practice (New York:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1970), Ch. 3, pp. 39-51. See also Matthew Crenson,
The Politics of Air Pollution: A Study of Non-Decisionmaking in the Cities
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971); and Roger W. Cobb and Charles
D. Elder, Participation in American Politics: The Dynamics of Agenda
Building (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1972).
^For an example of an alternative approach see John G. Gurley,
Capitalist and Maoist Economic Development," in America's Asia: Dissenting Essays on Asian-American Relations (New York: Vintage, 1971),
pp. 324-356. Some proposals for a socialist regional development strategy
for Appalachia are outlined by Richard Simon and Roger Lesser, "A Working Community Commonwealth," Peoples' Appalachia, 3 (Spring 1973),
9-15. On the community development corporation and its potential for
Appalachia, see Brady J. Deaton, "CDCs: A Development Alternative for
Rural America," Growth and Change, 6 (January 1975), 31-37.
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
343
l^See the articles in Readings in U.S. Imperialism, ed. K. T. Farm and
Donald C. Hodges (Boston.- Porter Sargent, 1971); in Dependence and
Under development, ed. James D. Cockcroft, et al. (New York: Doubleday
Anchor, 1972); in Structures of Dependency, ed. Frank Bonilla and Robert
Girling (Palo Alto: Stanford Univ. Institute for Political Studies, 1973);
and in the special issue on dependency theory of Latin American Perspectives, 1 (Spring 1974). A good review essay is the editors' introduction to
Latin America: The Struggle with Dependency and Beyond, ed. Ronald
H. Chilcote and Joel C. Edelstein (New York: Schenkman, 1974), pp. 1-87.
l^Susanne Bodenheimer [Jonas], "Dependency and Imperialism:
The Roots of Latin American Underdevelopment," in Readings in U.S.
Imperialism, ed. Fann and Hodges, pp. 62-64.
-^Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in
Recent Times (1923; Boston: Beacon, 1967).
*^See, for example, Joe Persky, "The South: A Colony at Home,"
Southern Exposure, 1 (Summer/Fall 1973), 14-22; Andre Gorz, "Colonialism at Home and Abroad," and Lee Webb, "Colonialism and Underdevelopment in Vermont," both in Liberation, 16 (November 1971), 22-29 and 2933 respectively; Geoffrey Faux, "Colonial New England," The New Republic (28 November 1972), pp. 16-19; Dale L. Johnson, "On Oppressed
Classes," in Dependence and Underdevelopment, ed. Cockcroft, et al., p.
277; and Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in
British National Development, 1536-1966 (Berkeley: Univ. of California
Press, 1975).
Gonzalez-Casanova, "Internal Colonialism and National Development," in Studies in Comparative International Development, 1
(1965), 27-37; rpt. in Latin American Radicalism, ed. Irving Louis Horowitz, et al, (New York: Random House, 1969), quote from pp. 130-132.
* ^Pierre van den Berghe, "Education, Class and Ethnicity in Southern
Peru: Revolutionary Colonialism," in Education and Colonialism-. Comparative Perspectives, ed. Philip G. Altbach and Gail P. Kelly (New York:
McKay, forthcoming). Van den Berghe traces the origin of the term internal
colonialism to a pamphlet by Leo Marquard, South Africa's Colonial Policy
(Johannesburg: Institute of Race Relations, 1957).
, for example, three excellent collections of articles in pamphlet
form: The West Virginia Miners Union, 1931: As Reported at the Time in
"Labor Age"; Harlan and Bell, Kentucky, 1931-2, The National Miners
�344
Colonialism in Modern America
Union: As Reported at the Time in the "Labor Defender"; and War in the
Coal Fields, The Northern Fields, 1931: As Reported at the Time in the
"Labor Defender" and "Labor v4^"(Huntington, WV: Appalachian Movement Press, 1972).
l, Night Comes to the Cumberlands (Boston: Little, Brown,
1963), p. 325; "Misdeal in Appalachia," The Atlantic Monthly (June 1965),
p. 44; see also his "Appalachia: The Dismal Land," Dissent, 14 (NovemberDecember 1967), 718-719.
Kenneth R. Bailey, "A Judicious Mixture: Negroes and Immigrants in the West Virginia Mines, 1880-1917," West Virginia History, 34
(January 1973), 141-161; and Paul Nyden, Black Coal Miners in the United
States (New York: American Institute for Marxist Studies, 1974).
her review of Plunkett and Bowman, Elites and Change, in
Social Forces, 53 (September 1974), 139-140.
2^A classic example of such bias is Albert N. Votaw, "The Hillbillies
Invade Chicago," Harper's Magazine (February 1958), pp. 64-67. An excellent study of the hillbilly stereotype is Clyde B. McCoy, "Stereotypes of
Appalachians in Urban Areas: Myths, Facts, and Questions," a paper presented at the Conference on Appalachians in Urban Areas," sponsored by
the Academy for Contemporary Problems, Columbus, Ohio, 28 March
1974.
^Success through migration is class biased, however; see Harry K.
Schwarzweller, et al., Mountain Families in Transition (Univ. Park: Pennsylvania Univ. Press, 1971), Chs. 6-9, pp. 121-205.
Blauner, Racial Oppression in America (New York: Harper
& Row, 1972), p. 67; a revised version of his article "Internal Colonialism
and Ghetto Revolt" appears as Ch. 2. For an application of the model to
the Chicano population, see Joan Moore, "Colonialism: The Case of the
Mexican-American," Social Problems, 17 (Spring 1970), 463-472. Another
valuable discussion is Jeffrey Prager, "White Racial Privilege and Social
Change: An Examination of Theories of Racism," Berkeley Journal of
Sociology, 17 (1972-73), 117-150. For a critical view of the model, see
Donald J. Harris, "The Black Ghetto as Colony: A Theoretical Critique and
Alternative Formulation," The Review of Black Political Economy, 2
(1972), 3-33. An interesting change of viewpoint is evident in Robert Allen,
who in Black Awakening in Capitalist America (New York: Doubleday,
1969) made extensive use of the internal colony model; see his review
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
345
"Racism and the Black Nation Thesis," Socialist Revolution, No. 27 (January-March 1976), pp. 145-150. Another view that emphasizes class over
colony is Gilbert G. Gonzalez, "A Critique of the Internal Colony Model,"
Latin American Perspectives, 1 (Spring 1974), 154-161.
Williams, "The Concept of 'Egemonia' in the Thought of
Antonio Gramsci: Some Notes on Interpretation," Journal of the History
of Ideas, 20 (October-December 1960), 587. For some of Gramsci's writings, see The Modern Prince and Other Writings, trans, and ed. Louis Marks
(New York: International Publishers, 1957); or Selections from the Prison
Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quinton Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New
York: International Publishers, 1971). LukacY classic is History and Class
Consciousness, trans. Rodney Livingstone (1921; Boston: MIT Press,
1972). On the Frankfurt School, see Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973); and his "Some Recent
Developments in Critical Theory," Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 18 (197374)? 27-44.
2^On the role of the schools in maintaining capitalist hegemony, see
Joel H. Spring, Education and the Rise of the Corporate State (Boston:
Beacon, 1972); Martin Carnoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism (New
York: McKay, 1974), especially Chs. 5-8, pp. 233-370 on the United States
(although I would speak of education as cultural hegemony rather than
internal colonialism, as Carnoy does); and Samuel Bowles and Herbert
Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York: Basic Books, 1976). On the
derogation of working-class culture, see Richard Sennett and Jonathan
Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York: Random House, 1972).
Keith Dix, "The West Virginia Economy: Notes fora Radical
Base Study," Peoples' Appalachia, 1 (April-May 1970), 3-7; Emil Malizia,
"Economic Imperialism: An Interpretation of Appalachian Underdevelopment," Appalachian Journal, 1 (Spring 1973), 130-137; Richard Simon,
"The Development of Underdevelopment in West Virginia," an outline of a
dissertation in progress dated 12 April 1973, also distributed as "Land
History: Development of Underdevelopment in West Virginia," a Peoples
Development Working Paper of the Regional Economic Development Commission of the Council of the Southern Mountains, Summer 1973.
2
%ee particularly his Frankfurt inaugural address of June 1965,
published as "Knowledge and Human Interests: A General Perspective," in
the appendix to Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans.
�346
Colonialism in Modern America
Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), pp. 301-317, quoted
phrase from p. 311; and the brief explication of Habermas in the epilogue
to Joachim Israel, Alienation: From Marx to Modern Sociology (1968;
Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1971), pp. 343-347. See also his essay "Technology and Science as 'Ideology,' " in Toward a Rational Society (Boston:
Beacon, 1970), pp. 81-122; and Trent Shroyer, "Toward a Critical Theory
for Advanced Industrial Society," in Recent Sociology No. 2: Patterns of
Communicative Behavior, ed. Hans Peter Dreitzel (New York: Macmillan,
1970), pp. 210-234.
Friedmann, "Poor Regions and Poor Nations: Perspectives
on the Problem of Appalachia," Southern Economic Journal, 32 (April
1966), 465-467.
"Jaded Old Land of Bright New Promise," in Mountain
Life & Work, 46 (March 1970), 5-8, rpt. in Appalachia in the Sixties, ed.
David S. Walls and John B. Stephenson (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1972), pp. 240-246. His genetic and subculture of poverty arguments are apparent in Night Comes to the Cumberlands, pp. 1-31 and 273301, but are strongly emphasized in his latest work, A Darkness at Dawn:
Appalachian Kentucky and the Future (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1976). Jack Weller, "Appalachia: America's Mineral Colony," in
Vantage Point, No. 2 (1973), a now discontinued tabloid issued by the
Commission on Religion in Appalachia in Knoxville.
^"Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans, Thomas McCarthy (1973;
Boston: Beacon, 1975), pp. 33-41; quote from p. 33.
^Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose (1973; New York:
Signet, 1975), pp. 42-43; quote from p. 42.
O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St.
Martin's, 1973), especially Ch. 1, "An Anatomy of American State Capitalism," pp. 13-39; quote from p. 17.
Labor Market Segmentation, ed. Richard C. Edwards, et al.
(Lexington, MA: Heath, 1975).
^O'Connor, Fiscal Crisis of the State, pp. 6-7, and Chs. 4-6, pp. 97169.
Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society; The Analysis of
the Western System of Power (London: Quartet, 1973), Ch. 3, "The State
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
347
System and the State Elite," pp. 46-62; quote from p. 61.
* *]sjicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes, trans. Timothy
O'Hagan (1968; London: New Left Books, 1973). Poulantzas draws heavily on the neo-orthodox structural Marxism of Louis Althusser. For the
dispute between Poulantzas and Miliband, see Miliband, "Poulantzas and the
Capitalist State," New Left Review, No. 82 (November-December 1973),
pp. 83-92; and Poulantzas, "The Capitalist State: A Reply to Miliband and
Laclau," New Left Review, No. 95 (January-February 1976), pp. 63-83.
See also Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (London: New
Left Books, 1975).
^Miliband, "Poulantzas and the Capitalist State," p. 85n; the statement by Marx and Engels is from The Manifesto of the Communist Party,
Part I.
3^Ian Gough, "State Expenditure in Advanced Capitalism," New Left
Review, No. 92 (July-August 1975), pp. 53-92, quotes from pp. 75, 76.
^"Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, pp. 36-37; and his "The Scientization of Politics and Public Opinion," in Toward a Rational Society, pp. 6280. See also Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: A Critique
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).
3 ^Philip Selznick, TV A and the Grass Roots: A Study in the Sociology of Formal Organization (1949; New York: Harper Torch books,
1966).
40
Caudill, "O, Appalachia!" Intellectual Digest (April 1973); rpt. in
Voices from the Hills, ed. Robert J. Higgs and Ambrose N. Manning (New
York: Ungar, 1975), pp. 524-525. See a similar collapsing of a complex
stratification system to a dichotomy in Roman B. Aquizap and Ernest A.
Vargas, "Technology, Power, and Socialization in Appalachia," Social
Casework, 51 (March 1970), 131-139.
41
See Richard Parker, The Myth of the Middle Class: Notes on Affluence and Equality (1972; New York: Harper Colophon, 1974), for a
division into poor, lower middle, upper middle and rich classes; Parker
waffles and helps perpetuate the myth he attacks by not terming his "lower
middle class" the working class. A more thorough analysis is done by
Andrew Levison, The Working Class Majority (1974; New York: Penguin,
1975). A good collection of articles is The Worker in "Post-Industrial"
Capitalism: Liberal and Radical Responses, ed. Bertram Silverman and
�348
Colonialism in Modern America
Murray Yanowitch (New York: Free Press, 1974). For a thoughtful exploration from an orthodox Marxist perspective, see Judah Hill, Class
Analysis: United States in the 1970s (Emeryville, CA: privately printed,
1975). An excellent analysis is presented in Erik Olin Wright, "Class Boundaries in Advanced Capitalist Societies," New Left Review, No. 98 (JulyAugust 1976), pp. 3-41; also available as reprint 219 from the Institute for
Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin at Madison.
^"^Immanuel Wallerstein, "Dependence in an Interdependent World:
The Limited Possibilities of Transformation within the Capitalist World
Economy, "African Studies Review, 17 (April 1974), 1-26.
^Friedmann, "Poor Regions and Poor Nations," pp. 467-470.
"For a view of race, ethnicity and other such status-groups as
"blurred collective representations of classes" in the world system, see
Wallerstein, "Social Conflict in Post-Independence Black Africa: The Concepts of Race and Status-Group Reconsidered," in Racial Tensions and
National Identity, ed. Ernest Q. Campbell (Nashville: Vanderbilt Univ.
Press, 1972), pp. 207-226; see also his "Class-Formation in the Capitalist
World-Economy," Politics and Society, 6 (1975), 367-375; and "The Rise
and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16 (September
1974), 387-415.
^Herbert j. Cans, "The Positive Functions of Poverty," The American Journal of Sociology, 78 (September 1972), 275-289. On the Title V
Commissions, see Ch. 5 in Martha Derthick, Between State and Nation:
Regional Organizations of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution, 1974), pp. 108-133.
first proposal for something resembling a special legislature for
the Southern Appalachians is made by George S. Mitchell, "Let's Unite the
Pie!" Mountain Life & Work, 27 (Spring 1951), 19-20; he suggests an
"annual representative meeting and a permanent staff. . . .Such a representative body ought to be. . .an annual assembly of all the mountain members
of the state legislatures. Possibly the Members of Congress from the Mountains might be a sort of Upper House." D wight Macdonald proposes a state
of Appalachia in "The Constitution of the United States Needs to be
Fixed," Esquire, 70 (October 1968), 246; but it would be formed by lumping together the present states of West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee
as part of an overall consolidation of states for the purpose of obtaining
larger administrative jurisdictions. The proposal has no relation to a policy
�Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?
349
of overcoming the exploitation of the mountain region. Nor does the reorganization scheme of geographer G. Etzel Pearcy, which would form a
state of Appalachia more appropriately from sections of southern West
Virginia, southwestern Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and southeastern Ohio;
see the article by Lee Harris from The Los Angeles Times rpt. as "A Plan
to Reshape, Rename and Reduce U.S. States to 38," The Courier-Journal &
Times (Louisville), 2 September 1973, p. E5.
47
Gordon K. Ebersole brought the idea of the Public Utility Districts
from the Northwest to the Appalachians; see his "Appalachia: Potential. . .
With a View," Mountain Life & Work, 42 (Winter 1966), 10-12. Harry
Caudill picked up the idea and gave it wide publicity; see his "A New Plan
for a Southern Mountain Authority," Appalachian Review, 1 (Summer
1966), 6-11. Ebersole and Caudill were key leaders in the Congress for
Appalachian Development. An issue of The Appalachian South, 2 (Spring
and Summer 1967) is largely devoted to articles on CAD. On the history
of CAD, see David Whisnant, "The Congress for Appalachian Development," Peoples' Appalachia, 3 (Spring 1973), 16-22.
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�352
Colonialism in Modern America
These three examples, all current, can be matched by other
vignettes from people all over Appalachia. They are representative of the process of social change that has been in evidence in
the mountains since the mass cutting of timber began almost a
century ago. They are part of a process which has cost much of
the region its ability to provide a decent life for its people and
which has been documented by previous selections in this volume.
The fact that by 1930 Appalachia had become an area
where many people could not lead a life comparable in economic
terms with the middle class American norm has resulted in social
scientists and others seeking causes and models of causes for the
"poverty" of the region. These models have been presented and
criticized in the previous article by David Walls. In brief, a "deficiency model" blamed the mountaineers and their allegedly
homespun "yesterday's people" culture for the announced
"problems" of the region. Repeated incidents like the ones reported above and consequent outrage, together with a genuine
love and respect for the people around us, led to the development of the colonial model as a dialectical response to the deficiency model. This model places the blame not on the people
but on the external profit seekers who removed the region's
vast wealth to Pittsburgh, New York, and Philadelphia, leaving
an impoverished region behind them.
Walls also mentions the "development model," used especially by government agencies (and attendant state university
research centers) who are in the development business and who
find the region to be a good target for their efforts. I would
extend this model beyond the government to include other
groups and people who have an agenda to act out and find the
mountains a good arena for the performance. William Goodell
Frost, president of Berea College at the turn of the century,
found the mountaineers to be underdeveloped in education and
thus set out to develop them in this area. His example was followed by the establishment of scores of "settlement schools"
throughout the region. Presbyterians, Methodists, and other
denominations found the mountaineers suffering from an underdeveloped faith and thus labelled the region fertile ground for
their missionary movement.1
Walls points out the strengths and limitations of each model
�Extending the Internal Periphery Model:
The Impact of Culture and Consequent Strategy
353
and then combines them into his synthesis, which is a model of
the region as an "internal periphery of an advanced capitalist
system." The internal periphery model draws on the works of
Galbraith, James O'Connor, and Jurgens Habermas to describe
the region as essentially a resources preserve, complete with
"native" leadership that serves the needs of the advanced industrial, resources, and recreation-hungry society that surrounds
it. It is a helpful model in that it accounts for the external
manipulations and the steady removal of wealth from the region
as well as the internal quiescence and cooperation of a "dependency infrastructure" that facilitates the process. Thus it
takes into account a wide range of cultural and socio-political
phenomena.
Yet, the internal periphery model, as I now understand it,
does not do what Walls would like it to do: help us arrive at
"the goals and strategy of a movement for social change."
I would extend the internal periphery model by emphasizing that it posits, at least implicitly, the existence of two cultures: that of the "exploited" area and that of the "advanced
capitalist" system that surrounds it. By culture I mean what Sir
Edward Tylor defined as "that complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a member of society," and their
world view or Weltanschauung.2
As Walls, Helen Lewis, Roger Lesser, Stephen Fisher, and
others have pointed out, there is a great deal of literature on the
culture of Appalachia, whether defined as a "culture of poverty"
or as the "folk culture" of "Yesterday's People." But what
about the culture of the other side: the "advanced capitalist
region"? This has not been discussed, quite probably because
it is part of what Alfred Schutz calls the "world-taken-forgranted" of the academics—even those outraged by the rape of
the Appalachian region. We too have been socialized by the
institutions of the advanced capitalist system. We accept the
value system of a rationalist, achievement-oriented, "scientific"
culture and are well conditioned members of the social system
that inflicts so much pain and disorder in both internal and external peripheral regions. Culturally, we turn out to be the very
people we've been warning each other about. We have been
�3 54
Colonialism in Modern America
blind to our own folkways and thus have been unable to define
them and assess their impact on social change.
Thus, we, and the rest of the world along with us, are inheritors of a change in cultural orientation so well described
by Max Weber many years ago that it ought to be quoted at
length here:
Until about the middle of the past century the life of a
putter-out was, at least in many of the branches of the
Continental textile industry, what we should to-day consider very comfortable. We may imagine its routing
somewhat as follows: The peasants came with their cloth,
often (in the case of linen) principally or entirely made
from raw material which the peasant himself had produced, to the town in which the putter-out lived, and after a careful, often official appraisal of the quality, received the customary price for it. The putter-out's customers, for markets any appreciable distance away, were
middlemen, who also came to him, generally not yet following samples, but seeking traditional qualities, and
bought from his warehouse, or, long before delivery,
placed orders which were probably in turn passed on to
the peasants. Personal canvassing of customers took place,
if at all, only at long intervals. Otherwise correspondence
sufficed, though the sending of samples slowly gained
ground. The number of business hours was very moderate, perhaps five to six a day, sometimes considerably
less; in the rush season, where there was one, more.
Earnings were moderate; enough to lead a respectable life
and in good times to put away a little. On the whole,
relations among competitors were relatively good, with a
large degree of agreement on the fundamentals of business. A long daily visit to the tavern, with often plenty to
drink, and a congenial circle of friends, made life comfortable and leisurely.
The form of organization was in every respect capitalistic;
the entrepreneur's activity was of a purely business
character; the use of capital, turned over in the business,
was indispensable; and finally, the objective aspect of the
economic process, the book-keeping, was rational. But it
was traditionalistic business, if one considers the spirit
�Extending the Internal Periphery Model:
The Impact of Culture and Consequent Strategy
which animated the entrepreneur: the traditional manner
of life, the traditional rate of profit, the traditional
amount of work, the traditional manner of regulating the
relationships with labour, and the essentially traditional
circle of customers and the manner of attracting new
ones. All these dominated the conduct of the business,
were at the basis, one may say, of the ethos of this group
of business men.
Now at some time this leisureliness was suddenly destroyed, and often entirely without any essential change
in the form of organization, such as the transition to a
unified factory, to mechanical weaving, etc. What happened was, on the contrary, often no more than this:
some young man from one of the putting-out families
went out into the country, carefully chose weavers for
his employ, greatly increased the rigour of his supervision of their work, and thus turned them from peasants
into labourers. On the other hand, he would begin to
change his marketing methods by so far as possible going
directly to the final consumer, would take the details
into his own hands, would personally solicit customers,
visiting them every year, and above all would adapt the
quality of the product directly to their needs and wishes.
At the same time he began to introduce the principle
of low prices and large turnover. There was repeated
what everywhere and always is the result of such a process
of rationalization: those who would not follow suit
had to go out of business. The idyllic state collapsed
under the pressure of a bitter competitive struggle, respectable fortunes were made, and not lent out at interest, but always reinvested in the business. The old
leisurely and comfortable attitude toward life gave way to
a hard frugality in which some participated and came to
the top, because they did not wish to consume but to
earn, while others who wished to keep on with the old
ways were forced to curtail their consumption.
And, what is most important in this connection, it was
not generally in such cases a stream of new money invested in the industry which brought about this revolution—in several cases known to me the whole revolu-
355
�356
Colonialism in Modern America
tionary process was set in motion with a few thousands of
capital borrowed from relations—but the new spirit, the
spirit of modern capitalism, had set to work.-*
Weber elsewhere documented the rise of the "spirit of
capitalism" in the rationally oriented bureaucracy in which the
human element was bent to the needs of the stated directions
and goals of the agency.4 Other social theorists have noted
other aspects of this process: Tonnies saw the move from
Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft (from intimate, small community
to impersonal, complex society) accompanied by a shift in
the ways people viewed and treated each other. The shift is
from Wesenwille, which can be described as a spontaneous,
emotional and committed base for interpersonal relations in
which a humanistic communal will encompasses rational
thought, to Kurwille, where rational thought and calculation
regulate social dialogue according to the use-value each party perceives in the other.5 Durkheim noted the disintegration of
"moral" community and the consequent anomie, social disorder,
and increase in suicide rates.^ Mid-century sociology had showed
the individual outcome of this trend in Mills' "Cheerful Robots,"
Reisman's "Other Directed Man" and Marcuse's One Dimensional
Man:
With the technical progress as its instrument, unfreedom—
in the sense of Man's subjection to his productive apparatus—is perpetuated and intensified in the form of many
liberties and comforts. The novel feature is the overwhelming rationality in this irrational enterprise, and the
depth of the preconditions which shapes the instinctual
drives and the aspirations of the individuals and obscures
the difference between false and true consciousness. For,
in reality, neither the utilization of administrative rather
than physical controls (hunger, personal dependence,
force), nor the change in the character of heavy work
. . .compensate for the fact that the decisions over life and
death, over personal and national security at places over
which individuals have no control. The slaves of industrial civilization are sublimated slaves, but they are
slaves, for slavery is determined by. . .the pure form of
servitude: to exist as an instrument, as a thing. ^
The reality of the historical rationalist trend in what is now
�Extending the Internal Periphery Model:
The Impact of Culture and Consequent Strategy
3 57
the culture of advanced capitalism is attested to by the rampant
efforts to escape it or to discover human essence within it
through movements such as youth culture, TM, EST, the Moonies, and Eslin.
Fritz Pappenheim and Philip Slater join Mills, Marcuse,
Fromm, and Reisman in the assertion that in the advanced
capitalist system, human beings are held captive as employees of
large impersonal bureaucratic organizations that thunder about
the countryside in pursuit of what Karl Mannheim has termed
their own "functionally rational" goals:8
The U.S. Forest Service exists to enlarge and maintain a
complex forest system.
The U.S. Park Service exists to create and maintain recreation facilities.
AMAX exists to extract coal in what its executives feel is
the most efficient manner possible with existing technology.
What could be more "American" or more in line with a
technology-intoxicated Protestant Ethic? What could be more
devastating to the Appalachian Region? But it is also devastating
the managerial technocrats in charge of the devastation, who
define themselves in terms of their bureaucratic place and assigned position and mission within a bureaucratic hierarchy.
Douglas Heath's longitudinal studies of "highly successful"
American males indicate an inverse relationship between high
intelligence scores (on the culture-bound tests of the rationalist,
advanced capitalist culture), and the ability to be outgoing,
supportive, and "mature" in personal interactions. Wives of
some of these men called them "robots." One interviewee said
"I've been married to him ten years now and still don't know
what he really feels."9
One of the products of Western industrial culture has been
the complex organization which in turn creates its own values,
quasi-community, and its own kind of man. Recent essays by
Richard Couto, John Gaventa, and Stephen Fisher, et a/.,10 draw
upon the work of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann to suggest
that the inability of Appalachians to make their interests and
�358
Colonialism in Modern America
needs known in the larger policy arena is in some measure due
to the fact that their social reality is determined by the defining
institutions and mechanisms of the larger, dominating, advanced
capitalist society.11 According to this argument, the media,
educational systems, and government agencies define the Appalachians to themselves and to others as LiP Abners and Snuffy
Smiths—people incapable of responding to the complex issues
of the "modern" world. In being socialized to accept this
definition of reality, Appalachians' ability to respond to issues
and struggle for their interests is limited; they become quiescent
even when they "seemingly have every reason to rebel."12
But Appalachian history is full of rebellions and rebels: of
men and women who demand, in Camus' terms, that their
existence be recognized. From mine wars to roving pickets,
Mother Jones to Widow Combs, Black Lung and Brown Lung
movements, Appalachians have fought domination to a degree
which has required the dominating culture to foster the sort of
violent stereotype of the mountaineer depicted in the film
Deliverance.
So the people whose reality is defined by the mechanisms
of the dominant culture may well not be the residents of the
"internal periphery" but of the dominant culture itself—people
who, rather than defining and experiencing themselves as people,
see and struggle to be "planners," "sound businessmen," "GS13s" or other reifications of human endeavor which abnegate
a sense of common humanity. This is the process that creates
monsters. Adolph Eichmann was an expert only in rail transport
and Robert McNamara was a systems specialist. They were both
organization men and good examples of Modern Man in the
twentieth century: They killed people with tact, efficiency,
and, most astoundingly, with some measure of well meaning.
Part of the problem Appalachia faces then lies not in its
own culture but in the Weltanschauung that accompanies the
advanced industrial social system of large complex organizations
in both the public and private spheres.
As perhaps is true of the everyday view of the world in most
predominantly rural parts of the world, the way Appalachians
construct and live in the world around them makes them vulnerable to the outside predator. My own field observation in a coal
�Extending the Internal Periphery Model:
The Impact of Culture and Consequent Strategy
3 59
fringe area in West Virginia and an agricultural area in Western
North Carolina has found people busy and relatively content in
lifestyles they find to be meaningful. The focus of their everyday life rests upon a network of people and problems physically
and socially close to them. Lengthy daily discussions with one
farmer in Madison County, North Carolina, over a period of five
weeks revealed continual concern with family matters and his
tobacco crop. He knew that a neighboring farm had been sold to
Florida real estate speculators and subdivided and already sold to
people mostly from New Jersey. He was not aware that in the
past ten years 25 percent of the land in the county had been purchased by out-of-state people for second homes and that the
Federal government held another 23 percent. He knew "land has
gone high as a cat's back" but did not give any indication that he
saw the implications of this increase on the future of farming
or out-migration patterns in the area. This man's world view
and orientation (whether it be a function of class or regional
location or a combination of these variables) made him as insensitive to the implications of real estate speculation as VISTA
volunteers were to the social structure and strengths of the communities they came to "help."
Supporters of the colonial model have tended to shy away
from discussion of any possible limitations of mountain culture
because advocates of the deficiency approach have made such
devastating use of "culture of poverty" models in their efforts
to "blame the victim."13 But it is fair to say, I think, that
although the ways of life in rural Appalachia are rich and meaningful, they have been no match for the rationalist's, efficiencyoriented culture of advanced capitalism that has come into
their territory. This sort of cross-cultural clash has not been
limited to Appalachia; it has been a global phenomena recorded
in the ruins of Mayan libraries and observatories, the beylik
lands of Algeria, and the temples of Indo-China. Rationalism
with its attendant social structure has levelled, bleached, and
bled out a rich variety of human ways of being that have stood
in its path.
Mike Clark, in trying to explain this phenomenon to students in Ohio last summer, turned to a speech by Chief Seattle,
a leader of the Sequamish Indians, given in 1954 to mark the
transfer of ancestral lands to the Federal government:
�360
Colonialism in Modern America
"How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the
land? The idea is strange to us. . .
We know that the white man does not understand our
ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the
next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes
from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his
brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it he
moves on. He leaves his father's graves behind; he does
not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children. He
treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as
things to he bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright
beads. [Emphasis mine.] He will devour the earth and
leave behind only a desert.
I do not know. Our ways are different from your ways.
The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man.
But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and
does not understand. . . ."^
"Some savage/' commented Clark. But if Chief Seattle
could have compared notes with Marcuse, he might have better
understood that when social institutions reduce men to commodities, men live only in the world of commodities—of things
to be bought, sold, and used like sheep or beads or farmland.
They have been deprived of the very qualities which would have
enabled them to hear and understand the chief's concerns and
world.
In summary, the internal periphery synthesis can be extended to incorporate the concept of two cultural traditions in
conflict, with the historical record indicating that the social
systems of complex organizations and attendant Weltanschauung
ultimately prevail It is our profound wish that it will not continue to do so, that some sense of humanistic balance and purpose can be introduced into the process of social change that
inundates us.
Walls concludes his paper with the assertion that the internal periphery of advanced capitalism model leads us to "socialist goals and strategies" for a presumably humanistic "movement for social change." But in adding the dimension of cultural
orientation to his model, the posited struggle appears not to be
�Extending the Internal Periphery Model:
The Impact of Culture and Consequent Strategy
361
between the "isms" as much as between community and increasingly centralizing, mass bureaucratic definitions of reality,
control of life, and planning. The wide range of application of
socialist concepts—from Sweden to Stalin, China, Cuba, Algeria,
and Tanzania to Cambodia—indicate that socialism can come
down on either side of this dichotomy. Of course with capitalism there is no question; centralization historically has proved to
be one of its major dynamics. But the history of socialism requires us to be more specific; the diversity of its historical
record indicates we cannot accept it on the basis of its stated
humanist objectives alone.
The addition of the cultural orientation perspective to the
internal periphery model requires us to begin to articulate some
goals in terms of quality of life and the strategies for achieving
those goals. At the same time, we can attempt to block or substantially modify proposals for the development authored by
the impersonal bureaucratic structures of the advanced capitalist
system that would continue the process of degradation and disintegration of Appalachian life and culture, the process that
reifies human beings and human relations into things or commodities.
There is a growing history of successful opposition to development schemes of both public and private agencies. In the
late sixties, for example, the Upper French Broad Defense
Association rallied the citizens of Western North Carolina to
block a TVA project which would have flooded 11,225 acres and
dislocated 600 families. In another case, articulate opposition
in public hearings in Tennessee resulted in the blockage of an
AMAX Coal Company plan to strip mine 10,000 acres on the
Cumberland Plateau.15
These victories were won by people who changed formerly
legitimizing "public hearing" rituals into real forums where some
collective evaluation of proposed projects and their social costs
and benefits could take place. (There have also been defeats.
I am reminded of a young surveyor who literally was run out of
Randolph County, West Virginia, for speaking out in a public
hearing in opposition to the construction of a coal washing
facility on the Cheat River.) But the point is that we have the
basis of a strategy here—to force participation in policy making
�362
Colonialism in Modern America
into what previously have been legitimizing rituals or democratic
pretense for private, elitist, and closed planning systems.
Secondly, we have to see "officialdom" as people who are
judged and judge themselves in terms of the functional goals of
the bureaucratic structures for which they work. Their sense of
self worth, their income levels, status and life chances are in good
measure tied to whether their agencies get that land, build that
dam, or strip that coal. We thus cannot appeal to their "better
natures," because to do so implies that they commit a sort of
sociological suicide and resign from their perceived organizational communities. They are in good measure beyond reach;
they are Heath's robots in action. At best we can try to redefine
their interests for them; more likely we will have to oppose
them.
Third, we should get on with the difficult process of defining the kind of life that is meaningful in the most profound
sense of the term. (There is enough of the anthropologist in me
to feel that we're dabbling here in a matter that extends well beyond our mental capabilities. Men like Levi-Strauss, Paul Radin
and Stanley Diamond who delve into such things begin to sound
like "primitive" shamans after a while—somewhat akin to Chief
Seattle). But minimally and from a frankly humanistic and
decentralist perspective, we can say that people should have a
right to create and see the products of their creation, that they
should not be separated from one another by overspecialization
of task or great differentiation in wealth or status and that they
should have community, a place of belonging and membership,
where in collective association they can determine their future.
Elements for such a Utopian vision can be found still in
some "traditional" rural mountain communities, as George
Hicks discovered in his study of Celo, N.C.16 Celo stands almost
at the foot of Mt. Mitchell where today one finds NO PARK
PLEASE bumper stickers thick as galax.
�Extending the Internal Periphery Model:
The Impact of Culture and Consequent Strategy
363
NOTES
^David Walls, "On the Naming of Appalachia," a paper submitted
to the Appalachian Symposium honoring Gratis D. Williams, April, 1976.
^Edward Tylor, Primitive Culture (New York:
1958), I, 1.
Harper and Row,
^Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), pp. 66-68.
4
H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 196-240.
^Ferdinand Tonnies, Fundamental Concepts of Sociology (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft), trans. Charles P. Loomis, American Sociology
Series, Kimball Young, ed. (New York: American Book Company, 1940),
pp. 194-195. An excellent discussion of these concepts can be found in
Fritz Pappenheim, The Alienation of Modern Man (New York: Modern
Reader Paperbacks, 1959), pp. 69-77.
^Emile Durkheim, Suicide (New York: The Free Press, 1951), note
especially pp. 256-259.
^C. W. Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York, Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 171. David Reisman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel
Denny, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950).
Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968),
pp. 32-33.
"Karl Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948).
"From correspondence and conversations with Douglas Heath. His
findings have recently been published in D. H. Heath, Maturity and Competence: A Transcultural View (New York: Gardner Press, 1977), pp. 177-
�364
Colonialism in Modern America
178.
Gaventa and Richard Couto, "Appalachia and the Third
Face of Power," a paper presented at the 1976 annual meeting of the
American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, September, 1976.
Jim Foster and Steve Robinson and Steve Fisher, "Class Consciousness and
Destructive Power: A Strategy for Change in Appalachia," a paper presented at the 1977 annual meeting of the APSA, Washington, D.C., September, 1977.
L. Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality
(New York: Anchor Books, 1967).
* ^Robinson, Foster and Fisher, p. 1.
*^See William Ryan, Blaming the Victim (New York: Vintage Books,
1972).
14
"Mike Clark, "How Can You Buy or Sell The Sky," as reprinted in
The Mountain Eagle, Whitesburg, Kentucky, June 23, 1977.
15
Dave Whisnant, "The TVA Story: How Green is Your Valley."
Elements. Also, see "Fact Sheet: AMAX in Tennessee, 1976," a mimeographed pamphlet jointly produced by Save Our Cumberland Mountains
(SOCM) and Concerned Citizens of Piney, Spencer, Tennessee.
^George L. Hicks, Appalachian Valley (New York: Holt, Rinehart
& Winston, 1976).
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�366
Colonialism in Modern America
Some of the classic works on neo-colonialism which remain
important statements on the nature of colonialism and its effects
on those who are colonized are suggested below. These have
been very influential in the development of the research included in this reader.
Frantz Fanon, Dying Colonialism, New York, Grove Press,
1967.
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, New York,
Monthly Review Press, 1967.
Harry Magdoff, The Age of Imperialism, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1969.
Dominique O. Mannoni, Prospero and Calabani, The Psychology of Colonization, New York, Praeger, 1956.
Albert Memmi, Colonizer and the Colonized, Grossman,
1965.
Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism:
Imperialism, London: Nelson, 1965.
The Last Stages of
Pierre Jalee, The Pillage of the Third World, New York,
Monthly Review Press, 1968.
Vladimir Lenin L, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of
Capitalism, International Publishing Company, 1965.
Those interested in more reading on the Appalachian case
are referred to the notes and bibliographies included with each
of the articles in the reader.
In addition to the application to Appalachia, the colonialism model has been applied to other regions on sub-groups in
the United States. Some of these are:
Joe Persky, "The South: A Colony at Home," Southern
Exposure, I, Summer/Fall, 1973, 14-22.
Andre Gorz, "Colonialism at Home and Abroad/1 and Lee
Webb, "Colonialism and Underdevelopment in Vermont,"
�Suggestions for Further Reading and Research
367
both in Liberation, 16, November, 1971, 22-29 and 29-33 respectively.
Geoffrey Faux, "Colonial New England," The New Republic, 28, November, 1972, 16-19.
Robert Blauner, * "Internal Colonialism and Ghetto Revolt/' Social Problems, 16, Spring, 1969.
A similar application to a sub-region of Great Britain is
Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in
British National Development, 1936-1966, Berkeley, University
of California Press, 1975.
More recent analyses and reinterpretations of historical
materials have relied heavily on the neo-colonial perspective.
Important examples of these are:
Eugene D. Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll:
Slaves Made, New York, Pantheon, 1974.
The World the
Edwards Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America, Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, Monthly Review Press, 1973.
Basil Davidson, Africa in History, Macmillan, 1974.
William Appleman Williams, The Roots of the Modern
American Empire, Random House, 1969.
Further research and continued rethinking of the model
are important to provide tools for analysis of the process which
affects and changes our lives. Without a clear analysis of the
dynamics of the social changes which are reshaping and, in many
cases, destroying peoples and cultures throughout the world,
we are helpless to direct or actually participate in these changes.
��369
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CATALOG
��ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Often referred to as the leader of inspiration in Appalachian studies,
HELEN MATTHEWS LEWIS linked scholarship with activism and
encouraged deeper analysis of the region. Lewis shaped the field of
Appalachian studies by emphasizing community participation and
challenging traditional perceptions of the region and its people. She
has served as the director of the Berea College Appalachian Center,
Appalshop's Appalachian History Film Project; and the Highlander
Research and Education Center. She is co-author of Mountain Sisters:
From Convent to Community in Appalachia. She has retired to Abingdon,
Virginia.
DONALD ASKINS, an Alabama native, taught at Clinch Valley College
in Wise, Virginia, before becoming the first Executive Director for the
Appalachian Coalition, whose main focus was the elimination of strip
mining. He is responsible for taking the aerial photographs of the mining
operations in this collection in 1977 through 1979 as documentation of
the effects of strip mining. Later, he pursued a criminal law
and
was elected Commonwealth attorney in 1991 until 2000. He retired to
Clintwood, Virginia in 2000. He passed away at his home in Clintwood
on March 30, 2015.
LINDA JOHNSON was the co-coordinator of the Grace House Learning/
Training Center in St. Paul, Virginia. She passed away in 2002.
��
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Appalachian Consortium Press Publications
Description
An account of the resource
This collection contains digitized monographs and collections from the Appalachian Consortium Press.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Appalachian Consortium Press
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Appalachian Consortium Press
Date Issued
Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource.
June 1, 2017
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
<a title="Digital Scholarship and Initiatives" href="http://library.appstate.edu/services/digital-scholarship-and-initiatives" target="_blank">Digital Scholarship and Initiatives</a>
Publication
Digital Publisher
Digital Republication
Appalachian State University
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case
Description
An account of the resource
<em>Colonialism in Modern America</em><span> is a series of essays exploring the economic and social problems of the region within the context of colonialism. It is a relatively simple task to document the social ills and the environmental ravage that beset the people and land of Appalachia. However, it is far more difficult and problematic to uncover the causes of these tragic conditions.</span><br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CYRVyt8r0G3pKKBsO57lff_fyaCHuviq" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469642048/colonialism-in-modern-america" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UNC Press Print on Demand</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Appalachian Region--Economic conditions
Appalachian Region--Social conditions
Colonies--Case studies
Social systems
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Lewis, Helen
Johnson, Linda
Askins, Donald
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Appalachian Consortium Press
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1978
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
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PDF
Essays
E-books
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a>
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
https://www.geonames.org/12212302/appalachia.html
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a>
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a>
Appalachia
colonialism
economic
economics
history
social
Social Systems