Arthurdale,
West Virginia, was the first of several planned New Deal
resettlement towns designed to take impoverished laborers
and move them to newly constructed rural communities to
help them become economically self-sufficient.
The idea for such a community originated when ER learned
of a plan to relocate a group of West Virginia coal miners
to a nearby farm with the intention that they could combine
subsistence farming with simple industries to reclaim their
economic footing. The first lady was so enthusiastic about
the idea that she brought it to the attention of her husband,
who decided to federalize the project by placing it under
the direction of the Interior Department.
Construction began at the end of 1933 and from the outset
it was clear that the Arthurdale community had become
one
of ER's chief priorities. She intervened with Interior
Secretary
Harold Ickes and with others
to insure that the Arthurdale homes were properly outfitted
with all the basic necessities (including insulation and
indoor plumbing). For some time she acted in the capacity
of a micro-manager for Arthurdale, contacting people who
could help bring jobs to the community, raising money and
awareness, even monitoring the budgets with a close eye.
While ER saw Arthurdale as an exciting new chance for the
government to provide destitute citizens with the foundation
for successful, self-sufficient lives, the project soon
faltered on budgetary and political grounds. The cost of
constructing and maintaining the Arthurdale community far
exceeded what the government had anticipated and the idea
of federally planned communities had never sat well with
right-leaning conservatives. To its critics, it smacked
of socialism, but ER remained firmly committed to seeing
Arthurdale succeed. She visited the area regularly, attending
graduations, dances, and other rituals, but always closely
monitoring the progress of construction as well. When it
appeared as if the community would fail to attract industry,
ER arranged for General Electric to open an operation there.
Although GE did not stay in the community for very long
and a nervous Congress cut off funding, the citizens of
Arthurdale proved resilient and adaptable.
Nonetheless, by the late Thirties, Arthurdale had fallen
out of favor in most of Washington, and even though ER
had
become its political champion, she could not prevent the
eventual backlash in Congress and FDR's cabinet. As the
country moved increasingly towards a war economy, the Arthurdale
project grew that much more irrelevant to government budget
makers. In 1941, the government officially returned Arthurdale
to private hands by selling off all of its remaining holdings
to local residents and entrepreneurs.
Although the project had long been regarded as a failure in
government planning, ER consistently felt proud about the role
she had played in engineering the creation of a community. Most
of Arthurdale's residents were far better off than they had
been as homeless, unemployed miners and the houses the government
built afforded them a dignity that few in that section of the
country had known prior to the government's intervention. The
stability that Arthurdale offered families allowed many more
children to pursue education and many descendants of Arthurdale's
homesteaders went on to become successful professionals. The
community itself continues to exist today, with many of the
original structures still in use some seventy years later.
Sources:
Beasley, Maurine H., Holly C. Schulman and Henry R. Beasley,
eds. The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia. Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001, 30-35.
Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume Two, 1933-1938.
New York: Penguin Books, 1999, 138-152.
Lash, Joseph. Eleanor and Franklin. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 1971, 399-417.
For more information on Arthurdale, visit the following
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