The New Deal: Women Utopia Builders

1
The New Deal: Women Builders of Utopia

By Jesse A. Lowe
The Great Depression came to the coalfields of West Virginia earlier than it did
for the rest of the country. The great demand for coal caused by World War I would
dramatically decrease in the late 1920’s, replacing the boom with a dizzying and sudden
bust, and wreaking untold social and economic havoc. One of the hardest hit of the West
Virginia coal mining regions was Scotts Run. Located just outside of Morgantown stood
a community, only scant miles away but worlds apart in essence from the idyllic campus
of West Virginia University and the tidy homes of its urban dwellers. After the drop in
demand for coal the camps in the “Run” began to see sky-rocketing unemployment, real
deprivation and poverty. These conditions essentially made the five-mile hollow a
“stranded” community; an island of abject human misery. These conditions were seen as
an irremediable task for some, and a call to action to others. Called were hardworking,
progressive minded women of this time who rolled up their sleeves to effect concrete
attempts to remedy suffering, hunger, illiteracy, dejection and sickness that existed in
Scotts Run.
Mary Behner Christopher, Elsie Ripley Clapp and Eleanor Roosevelt would have
their passion and their work come to a synchronous point during the depths of the Great
Depression. Mary would spend this time in the “The Shack”, the main Presbyterian
Settlement House in “The Run”, to truly reach out through a variety of efforts to the
forsaken miners and their families; attempting to strengthen bodies, minds and souls.
Elsie would bring to the region a Progressive School that was shaped around the student
and worked in tandem with that community to teach through experience. In the end all of
these women’s work would be gathered in and brought to fruition under the auspices of
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Through her influence and motivated by her altruism the
first intentional community of the New Deal would be built just 25 miles away from
Morgantown. In Arthurdale the highest and loftiest of these women’s dreams was placed
in the laboratory crucible, and then applied to the refining fires of the Great Depression.
Arthurdale was more than just an attempt to solve real human problems caused by the
Depression, it was an expression of hope for a better world, and be it deemed a failure or
a success…Arthurdale would not have been possible without the work of these women.
Scotts Run in 1928 was a scene of human wreckage. Mary Behener saw this
firsthand when she walked arrived in November of 1928. During World War I coal was
in high demand, and none more than the soft bituminous coal found in the Pittsburgh and
Sewickley seams running through the “run”, termed “The most valuable mineral deposit
in the world”1. After the war the boom faltered, the coalfields were plagued by labor
conflicts and a faltering demand for coal itself. Natural gas, oil and more efficient steam
plants saw the nation’s consumption of coal drop dramatically and wreaking immense
unemployment. Between 1923-1932 200,000 miners lost their jobs and 500,000 miners
1
Ross, Phil. "The Scotts Run Coalfield from the Great War to the Great Depression: A Study in
Overdevelopment." West Virginia History 53, no. (1994): 22.
2
were only working two days a week2 A scene described by an investigator for the Federal
Council of Churches in 1931 is what probably greeted Mary as she got off the bus that
first day, he described Scotts Run as: “A deserted village with still living people. They
stood idly bout or sat on porches of the company houses. There was no place to go-no
work to be obtained anywhere. The steep hillsides rose above the narrow valley hemmed
them in….there was a general atmosphere of silence-like a funeral”3
A stranded community; like those of Osage and Crown Hill and Pursglove in the
“Run”, is like a desert island of economic woe surrounded by a sea of affluence. Though
this was the Depression and Morgantown felt the effects of it too, its residents were not
making their clothing from flour sacks or as Mary herself observed in her journal of a
particular family, selling their stove for shoes for their children.4 Mary went further in
an article she wrote for Social Progress Magazine detailing what she saw in this forsaken
community: “inadequate schools, illiteracy, high-priced company stores, filthy creeks and
unsanitary toilets, beer gardens, common-law marriages, lack of morals and family love,
and many other things that discolored and disorganized this highly publicized mining
community.”5 Who were truly stranded though were the residents of the community.
During the boom years miners were earning as high as twenty-five dollars a day, a very
decent wage for that time, and saving little to nothing.6 With little or no pay coming in
and no savings, many mining families were truly stuck in “The Run”, stranded with
nowhere to go, since many of them had left farms to earn high wages in the mines…the
farms themselves either sold or abandoned.
Before the concerted efforts of organized relief seen with many New Deal
Programs; religious organizations, private organizations, The VFW, county governments
and The American Red Cross all tried to help stem the tide of suffering wrought by the
Great Depression. In Monongahela County the Council of Social Agencies formed to
coordinate relief efforts, and as part of this interdependent web of organizations operated
the Settlement Houses. Mary operated in the context of the Settlement House and the
Bible School Movement. The Bible School movement mobilized many educated and
inspired women to go into areas of poverty and perceived spiritual need to help conduct
Sunday Schools for the residents of these desperate areas and coordinate relief. The
Settlement House Movement went a step further to “Americanize” many of the
immigrant laborers. In the case of Scotts Run there were many miners’ families from
many European locales like Poland, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Romania and more. Mary
was a foot soldier in these movements. These Settlement Houses would conduct Sunday
School, but also instructed participants in hygiene, literacy, social skills, citizenship,
nutrition and conducted well-baby clinics.
2
Cowan,Holly. Arthurdale. New York: Columbia University, 1968. Pg. 16
3
IBID Pg. 16
4
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection 1928-1932. Reel 1. West Virginia and Regional
History Collection. West Virginia University. Morgantown, West Virginia
5
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection . Reel 5. Article entitled “It Works Both Ways” . West
Virginia and Regional History Collection. West Virginia University. Morgantown, West Virginia
6
A&M 1291 Arthurdale Homestead Project. Clippings. Rice, Millard Millburn. Harpers Magazine.
“Footnote on Arthurdale” October 1, 1940. Pg. 165 West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West
Virginia University. Morgantown, West Virginia
3
Mary was educated at Wooster College and daughter of a Michigan Presbyterian

pastor. She had contemplated foreign mission work but embraced doing the work in West
Virginia through the Board of National Missions of the Presbyterian Church. So she left
Milwaukee where she was working in a Settlement House there and departed for
Morgantown to be a home missionary, being paid a salary of one hundred dollars a
month.7 Educated women of her time really only had one career path open to them, and
that was as a teacher. The opportunity at Scott’s Run presented Mary a leadership
opportunity that was incredibly unique. Her supervisor in Morgantown, Dr. William E
Brooks was a local Presbyterian pastor and a member of the County Relief
Administration was mostly an absent presence. This gave Mary latitude and reason to
create her own programs and formulate her own solutions. This was incredibly unique
for the times, and would allow for he reputation to grown nationally as an expert in relief
administration.
Mary’s outreach began that winter of 1928 by occupying an unused class room of
the Pursglove school house. With just two posters, some Sunday school papers, a tap bell
and an old reed organ that was more frequently used as the home for mice than for
playing hymns she began without a map or a real plan.8 Mary started her work by
reaching out to the children first. She found that by organizing recreation for the kids on
recesses and having her class room she could reach miners and their families through the
children. In her first month alone she made 396 contacts through the Sunday School.9
Her Sunday School was such a success that at Christmas of 1928 the little room packed in
168 people to watch the children’s Christmas program.10 Even more telling was that she
was already reaching out to Morgantown and West Virginia University to bring in others
into here work. Early on she was bringing in community members, First Presbyterian
parishioners from Morgantown, students and University staff to volunteer and do the
work needed; like conduct bible study, coordinate plays, direct music and community
sings and whatever else Mary could get assistance with.
Mary looked for different and creative ways to enter into the lives of the children
and their families. She started a library club, loaning out books to children who paid five
cents for the privilege and followed the rules like washing their hands before handling a
book, paying fines for any damages to books in their care and returning the book in five
days. Here we see a hallmark of Progressive Social work in a microcosm, the belief that
the individual getting the benefits should be held accountable and empowered to make
constructive choices. Also that betterment not only comes from nourishment, good
hygiene and stable homes but from exposure to “culture”…like music, art, literature and
drama. Mary’s library club had both of these aspects, access to literature that would have
7
Kreiser, Christine M.. "’I wonder whom God will hold responsible’: Mary Behner and the Presbyterian
Mission on Scott’s Run.." West Virginia History 53, no. (1994): 61.
8
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection 1928-1932. Reel 5. article entitled “Pursglove Center at
‘Scott’s Run’”from the Presbyterian Promoter. West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West
9
IBID
10
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been hard to come by in the hardscrabble mining community and the ownership that
comes from paying your own nickel and following the rules.
As her work expanded Mary soon added more programs to her work. She would
start a charm school in 1929. Why a charm school in the midst of a squalid mining
camp? Again we see another belief that colors much of the Progressive social work of
the Great Depression that middle-class values and lifestyles were to be aspired to as a
way to get out of poverty. Often you will see this thread running through the outreach
and rehabilitation programs of that time, rooted in a belief that through hard work and
decent living, one can improve themselves. Mary is typical of the women working as
missionaries and social workers. They were upper middle-class women, educated and
accustomed to a way of life that rewarded decorous behavior. Mary states in her journal
dated February 2, 1929 “The idea of the [charm] school is to learn how to become
charming women.”11 Her classes began with twenty-three girls and seven teachers and
touched on subjects like posture, exercise, diet, sleep, cleanliness of self and
surroundings, speech, manners, friends, sex, spirit, intellect and social interactions.
Through this curriculum you can see Mary’s hand at work, her true goal being to instill a
sense of pride and self-confidence in the women. Learning to be a “charming woman”
fits into the desire to direct these women towards skills to lift them out of the squalor of
the camps.
By 1932 Mary would go from her modest beginnings of opening a Sunday School
with an initial enrollment of 100 and “no money to work with, and the result is that the
school has to be run on absolutely nothing”12 to moving operations to “The Shack”. With
humble beginnings as an old stable formerly used to house horses that worked in the
mines, the building had been converted to a company store but as “The Shack” it would
become the central headquarters for all Mary’s work. From there Mary oversaw the boys
and men of the community constructing benches out of old shelves from the store and
converting the old cold storage area into a communal area where residents could take
“shower-baths” for a penny.13 In the West Virginia Regional Historical Collection of
photos on-line there is a photo taken of Mary and George Lay (the custodian) on the roof,
painting boldly and in large lettering “The Shack”.14 The photo evokes Mary’s hands-on
nature to her work. She does not grouse at not having perfect facilities for her work. She
states in a document she wrote titled The Philosophies of My Work that the use of The
Shack “has been a practical lesson as to what can be done with material at hand.”15
11
Mission on Scott’s Run.." West Virginia History 53, no. (1994): 64.
12
IBID Pg. 69
13
A&M 5096 DeLancy, Anna Santore. Student Scrapbook Regarding West Virginia University. Fifth
Anniversary of “The Shack” booklet box 1 of 1. West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West
14
http://images.lib.wvu.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?page=index;c=wvcp. West Virginia History Onview
“Painting of the Name 'The Shack' by Mary Behner and George Lay, Custodian (003787)” West Virginia
and Regional History Collection. West Virginia University. Morgantown, West Virginia
15
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection . Reel 5. document entitled “Philosophies of My
Work” West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West Virginia University. Morgantown, West
Virginia
5
Mary’s preliminary work would be constrained by the mission focus of the

Presbyterian Church’s Board of National Missions, it was becoming apparent that just
Bible Study and a Charm School would not essentially solve the needs of the people of
the “Run”. Malnutrition and poor health were acute and persistent. The American
Friends Service Committee would use “The Shack” to run their child feeding program.
Initially brought to Scotts Run by the Hoover administration, the Quaker missionary
group used an initial investment of $225,000 from A World War Era fund set-up for the
feeding of children during wartime for their work in Scotts Run.16 Soon “The Shack”
would become a community focal point, which later on we shall see is also a hallmark of
Elsie Ripley Clapp’s work in Arthurdale. “The Shack” would be host community forums
on topics like The US involvement in nascent WWII, dental clinics and Community
Nurse visits for inoculations and screenings. In cooperation with the WVU psychology
department Mary was also able to open a nursery school, having student volunteers doing
the work and observing their lesson material in action with the children. “The Shack”
would be used by college students from all over the Atlantic seaboard who participated in
the Student Christian Movement’s Scotts Run Industrial Inquiry to work in a stranded
community to participate in relief work and prepare for service careers in private and
religious life.
In a promotional flyer entitled “The Shack Idea” the purpose of her work is
summarized as providing “A center which is inspired by, and holds the purposes of, the
Christian Religion as applied to the problems of personal and communal life. A center
where democracy may function with freedom of speech and action—regardless of race
and creed.” 17 In this flyer we can see the breadth and scope of what was happening at
“The Shack”. Community education like Adult Education (canning classes, garden clubs,
cooking classes, well-baby clinics), Religious Education (Sunday Schools, Vacation Bible
School, Christian Endeavor classes), “Wholesome Recreation” (Athletics, dances, parties,
plays and movies, book clubs and Boy’s and Girl’s Club), Community Activity (P.T.A.
meetings, Miner Union meetings, political groups, holiday programs, nationality
organizations), Community Service (children’s meals program, relief activities, clinics,
shower baths, credit unions), Activities (drama, music, handicrafts), “Friendliness and
Cooperation” (Community Council, Planning Associations) and WVU Extension services
(Student Service Project, volunteers from assorted departments, teachers-in-training)18
Showing that Mary knew if you could build the roof, then you could gather under it an
assortment of people and services that would energize deliverers of relief services and
enable the participants in the programs to be empowered to have a voice and a place to
help themselves.
Mary’s philosophy of relief work is informed by her times. She advocates a

community based approach. “The object is to coordinate the efforts of the community-
and to more adequately prepare to meet the many constant needs as a community. It is
about time that we in our social and religious attempts quit using the ‘dole system’.”19
She saw that real relief comes from people helping people. She felt the appeal of her
16
Cowan,Holly. Arthurdale. New York: Columbia University, 1968. Pg. 17
17
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection . Reel 5. document entitled “The SHACK IDEA”
West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West Virginia University. Morgantown, West Virginia
18
IBID
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work was more satisfying than foreign missionary work, because she could serve as a
bridge between Morgantown and Scotts Run. She wrote “the supporting consistency is
but a few miles from the mission field-“20. This can be seen in the college students who
worked with her to teach classes, direct plays, play piano for worship and teach children
in the Nursery School. She observed “the thing that concerned me most was the fact that
but five miles separated an underprivileged community of close to 10,000 residents and a
State University Center, with nothing being done about it.”21 Mary would model this
philosophy of relief work by action. She did many speaking engagements with different
local organizations from the Lion’s Club to religious societies to radio appearances, with
her musical saw in tow. Many published accounts of her appearances made mention of
her playing a song like “Love’s Old Sweet Song” or “How Do I Love Thee?”
Mary’s most surprising point on relief work is “I stressed the importance of

friendship thru [sic] personal contacts and actually meeting them out there on their own
grounds-“22 She also states in a letter to her parents dated January 26,1933 that when she
met with the Llewellyn Guild (women’s group of First Presbyterian in Morgantown) that
the REAL need she saw at Scotts Run was not donations of food or clothes, but
friendship. Here Mary captures one of the essential needs to assist a stranded community.
Food and clothing is important, but in order to bring that community off the shoals of
economic isolation, involvement from outside of the “Run” was needed. Mary saw this
as the heart of relief work. She facilitated exchange as often as possible. She would take
residents from the “Run” to university plays, concerts and other events. Members of
“The Shack” and its performance groups would even have performances at The Warner
theater in downtown Morgantown, drawing acclaim.23
Mary’s work was tempered by her background. Two very central aspects of her
outlook would be her spirituality and her middle-class upbringing. She expresses in a
letter to her parents that she feels that Scotts Run marriages are based on “lust & physical
passion, and naturally because there is no spiritual love, there is no tolerance-but
suspicion”.24 She also noted in a letter to her parents dated April 13, 1934 that she felt the
miners never saved or planned for their financial future and hadn’t learned from the Great
Depression. She even notes that when there is an upturn in employment that she worried
19
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection . Reel 4. Letter to Reverend and Mrs. Behner from
Mary Behner Christopher. May 22, 1934. West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West Virginia
University. Morgantown, West Virginia
20
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection . Reel 5. document entitled “Philosophies of My
Work”. West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West Virginia University. Morgantown, West
Virginia
21
IBID
22
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection . Reel 4. Letter to Reverend and Mrs. Behner from Mary
Behner Christopher. April, 20 1934. West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West Virginia
23
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection . Reel 3. Letter to Reverend and Mrs. Behner from Mary
Behner Christopher. March 10, 1933. West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West Virginia
24
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection. Reel 2. Letter to Reverend and Mrs. Behner from
Mary Behner Christopher. April 1929. West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West Virginia
7
the new wages and work would mean “there will be more drinking and loose living.”25
She also despaired that the miners would not get involved in the community. She tried to
get them organized to get a playground built on a hill but in her letters she bemoans that
she was finding it very slow in trying to get them motivated. In all of these instances we
see Mary applying a view that by adherence to certain moral codes, being thrifty and
upholding your community responsibilities that she felt an individual can improve
themselves. By living LIKE you’re middle-class she implies that you can maybe
BECOME middle-class.
Her Protestantism also very much was a powerful part of her life. She expressed
frustration in her letters that she felt that the Catholic Church in the area was deliberately
replicating programs “The Shack” was running to be competitive and using coercion.
She also expressed frustration the Catholics chose not to send a representative to “The
Shack” for a P.T.A. meeting.26 Also in her letters she remarks on the death of a local
resident who had a Catholic background but had been receiving missionary work from
“The Shack” and expresses dismay that there would the possibility of a priest at the
funeral saying “I think the protestant religion has brought the real joy into that home.”27
One of the realities of delivering relief work in Scotts Run was that many denominations
and faiths operated there (African American churches and even a Romanian church)
sometimes running similar programs. For example the Methodists had a settlement house
in Osage, operating along the same lines as “The Shack”.
A testament to Mary’s inner strength was how she dealt with adversity and
challenging situations. In her work parents would show her their kids to see if she felt
they had small pox. She conducted home visits to squalid shacks with shoeless children.
She once counseled a woman who had found herself pregnant and who had taken
quinine, kerosene, iodine and anything else she could try to cause a miscarriage. The
woman disclosed to Mary that she was going to have an abortion. The woman was
married at thirteen and had four children, in her misery she expressed to Mary she
couldn’t stand the thought of having another child and the pain it brought her. Mary
counseled her of course to keep the child, motivated by her spiritual beliefs…but we see
that her concern is also motivated by the pure struggle to preserve life. She states in a
letter to her parents that she “I also said that perhaps that unborn child might be some
genius someday, or might do something wonderful in this old world, if allowed to live”28
But she knew that the woman’s home life was incredibly burdensome; the poor young
and small girl basically being brutalized by here larger and older husband, demanding his
“rights” when ever he desired and beating her when she refused.29 Though Mary
25
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection . Reel 3. Letter to Reverend and Mrs. Behner from
Mary Behner Christopher. May 1933. West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West Virginia
26
Mission on Scott’s Run.." West Virginia History 53, no. (1994): Pg. 84
27
Mary Behner Christopher. May 1929. West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West Virginia
28
Mission on Scott’s Run.." West Virginia History 53, no. (1994):Pg. 73
29
IBID Pg. 73
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sometimes may have looked at her missionary subjects with strained empathy when
frustrated with their lack of progress, she did not crumple or buckle under adversity. On
her first day she encountered a drunken man at the bus stop who leeringly offered
“C’mere let me educate you.” Other women may have never returned to the “Run” from
the sheer cheek, but her response was “You can’t educate me,”30 Maybe not, but Mary
certainly educated those around her in strength, resourcefulness and inspiration.
But what could be done about Scotts Run? The Red Cross distributed flour to
impoverished residents and ran a sewing room in Morgantown to help provide clothing to
the residents of the hollow. Clarence E. Pickett oversaw the relief efforts of the American
Friends Service Committee and their child feeding program. But none of it was enough.
The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt would bring dramatic changes to Scotts Run, West
Virginia and the nation. Mary herself wrote “If ever a president had the opportunity to
lead a people it is Roosevelt of the U.S. With people tired of depression-grasping for any
possible ray of hope-a change of personnel at the helm of national affairs, and a man with
rigorous ambitions, self confidence and courage-….there is reason for ‘HOPE’. Why
should Roosevelt not turn the tide?”31 She echoes the sentiment of the nation, tired of
Herbert Hoover’s perceived uneven leadership in the Depression Mary’s writing reflects a
nation yearning for a better day.
That better day would begin with FDR’s inaugural speech where he stated that in
order to fight the Depression he needed “broad executive powers to wage a war against
the emergency, as great as the powers that would be given to me if we were in fact
invaded by a foreign foe”.32 This would be the nativity of the New Deal, the broad social
and relief programs to be implemented to address the Great Depression, and a very
personalized version of The New Deal would come to West Virginia. It would begin with
Lorena Hickok. Ms. Hickok was a former A.P. reporter and a close friend of Eleanor
Roosevelt. She had a position with the White House to be in essence the “eyes and ears”
for the administration, traveling the country to investigate communities that needed
attention. One of her first trips was to Scotts Run. Here is what she saw: “A gutter along
a village street filled with stagnant, filthy water used for drinking, cooking, washing, and
everything else imaginable by the inhabitants of ramshackle cabins that most Americans
would not have considered fit for pigs. Within these shacks, every night children went to
sleep hungry, on piles of bug-infested rags spread on the floor”33
Her report would motivate the most influential person in the history of Scotts
Run/Arthurdale to enter the scene. August 13, 1933 Eleanor Roosevelt would drive her
own car to Morgantown and then on to the “Run” in the company of Alice Davis,
administrator of the County Relief Agency and formerly of the American Friends Service
Committee. The First lady had not been extensively photographed yet so she was able to
30
IBID Pg. 62
31
Mary Behner Christopher . January 1933. West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West Virginia
32
Hoffman,Nancy. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Arthurdale Experiment. North Haven, CT: The Shoe String
Press, Inc. 2001. Pg. 16
33
IBIDPg.10
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travel incognito amongst the miner families, thought to be just a friend of the social
workers. The First Lady had been depicted as to talking with miners wives, with babies
on her lap, listening earnestly to their struggles.34 In her book This I Remember she
observed “I noticed a bowl on the table filled with scraps, the kind you and I or might
give a dog. And I saw children, evidently looking for a noon-day meal. Take a handful
out of the bowl and go out munching. That was all they had to eat.”35 With her own eyes
the First Lady witnessed what happens where the absentee owners if the coal mines had
basically left the residents to fend for themselves. She would note further in This I
Remember “The coal mines of West Virginia are owned largely by people not living in
the state. The money goes out and does not come back, leaving the state poorer in cash
and in personal interest than before.”36 She was convinced that these people should not
be abandoned.
This visit impacted her greatly. She had two motivations that would drive her to
take dramatic action on behalf of the stranded mining families. One was political and the
other was personal. She observed “The conditions I saw convinced me that with a little
leadership there could develop in the mining areas, if not a people’s revolution, at least a
people’s party patterned after some of the previous parties born out of bad conditions.”37
The Roosevelt administration seemed to be concerned there could be the possibility of
the rise of a communist presence in Scotts Run and other economically stranded
communities. The National Miners Union, a proxy for the Communist Party, was in fact
operating in the Scotts Run coalfields; especially in the short void when the United Mine
Workers of America was not active in “The Run”. At one point the NMU were sending
workers posing as WVU students with petitions that were actually paperwork to sign up
new members for the Communist Party. It is ironic though that the perceived threat of a
communist revolution faced the same problem relief agencies in the area had. Alice Davis
had observed to Mrs. Roosevelt that the communists had the same up-hill battle the social
workers had getting miners to get fully involved in self improvement programs, saying
there were “just too tired to respond to revolutionary propaganda.”38
Her personal motivation is seen with her near nine year relationship that she
forged with the mining families and Arthurdale. Through out the entire span of the
Roosevelt administration she was the one constant. As the community would experience
the scrutiny of the press, unfavorable public opinion and a revolving door of federal staff;
the First Lady would be there from beginning to the end when the official federal
mandate was withdrawn. The First Lady had realized early on her political life that
government had the ability and the responsibility to lift up not just the greatest of
Americans, but most of all the least. She felt if America was to rise from the Great
34
Scharf,Lois. A New Deal for America: Proceedings from a National Conference on New Deal
Communities. A New Deal For America. “First Lady/First Homestead”. Bryan E. Ward. Arthurdale, WV:
Arhturdale Heritage, Inc., 1995. Pg. 105
35
Roosevelt, Eleanor. This I Remember. New York, NY: Harper, 1949. Pgs. 126-127
36
IBID Pg. 129
37
IBID Pg.126
38
Arhturdale Heritage, Inc., 1995. Pg.15
10
Depression that the American worker needed the ability to stand on their own, care for
their families so they could go to work and reinvigorate industry.
Arthurdale’s existence may be owed to the actions of the First Lady, but she built
on a foundation of philosophies and politics. Through out U.S. history land ownership
and farming was seen as a mythical touchstone to a Jeffersonian democracy. Central to
this vision was the yeoman farmer-citizen who fed their family from the fruit of the land,
sold the excess products in the marketplace and actively participated in citizenship
because of their interest in civic affairs as property owners. Land itself became a
currency of American reinvention and independence. As early as the Revolutionary War
the government had rewarded veterans with land to settle and farm, and after most every
war in U.S. history up to World War I this policy was usual. This policy of using land for
new beginnings would be coupled with a very powerful philosophy of the early twentieth
century. The Back-To-The-Land Movement came into being in response to the urban
and industrial explosion of the 1920’s and the resulting Depression. Politicians saw the
Back-To-The-Land Movement as way to take a segment of unemployed populace from
the over-burdened cities and to the land where subsistence farming could support
impoverished families. Philosophers from schools of thought like the Southern Agrarians
and the Distributists felt that the urban way of life was detrimental where competition and
self interest were seen as destructive to the individual worker and dependence on a way
of life solely reliant on the wage of an occupation undermined citizens living
cooperatively and more naturally. Distributist John Crow Ransom wrote in his book I’ll
Take My Stand “the culture of the soil is the best and most sensitive of vocations, and
that, therefore, it should be the economic preference…”39 Even industrialist Henry Ford
advocated workers being able to live on small farmsteads near rurally located small
factories, and proffered such ideas in his work co-authored with Samuel Crowther in
1926 called “Today and Tomorrow”.
Arthurdale would find inspiration in the Back-To-The-Land Movement and find

legal justification in the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 where Senator
Bankhead of Alabama would see a provision placed in the bill that appropriated 25
million dollars to provide for subsistence homesteads applied to residents of stranded
rural and industrial communities.40 This fund was placed at the discretion of the
President himself to be used as he saw fit. When Eleanor returned to Washington D.C.
from her trip to West Virginia FDR and his personal advisor Louis Howe saw the
subsistence farming provision of the Bankhead law as the method to best deliver aid for
the mining families of Scotts Run. This also was in concert with a plan that the American
Friends Service Committee was trying to get off the ground with the assistance of West
Virginia University’s School of Agriculture Extension to start Gardens and help mining
families relocate to parcels of farmsteads where food could be grown to supplement and
support families while mining work was still uneven.41
39
Johnstone, Paul H. Lord, Russell. A Place On Earth: A Critical Appraisal of Subsistence Homesteads.
Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, 1942. Pg.16
40
Rymer, Jeanne S. "Arthurdale, A Social Experiment in the 1930’s: Foundations, Fantasies, Furniture and
Failures." West Virginia History 46, no. (1989): Pg. 91
41
Cowan,Holly. Arthurdale. New York, NY.: Columbia University, 1968. Pg. 17
11
Under the auspices of the Department of the Interior, headed by Secretary Harold
L. Ickes, the Division of Subsistence Homesteads was created and placed under the
supervision of former Montana governor M.L. Wilson. Wilson was an extremely
practical advocate of the Back-To-The-Land Movement. He believed that economic
stability and security were possible in an agricultural setting because of modern transport
and use of electricity, making decentralized industry doable, making factories among the
fields. FDR himself had looked into using some sort of subsistence farming programs to
help the unemployed of New York State when he was governor before his election as
president. Mrs. Roosevelt had commented that subsistence farmsteads were “…a plan he
has talked about ever since I can remember.” in regards to her Presidential husband’s
interest in the project. 42 The inclusion of Clarence Pickett in the Division of Subsistence
Homesteads as one of the administrators completed the legal framework to launch the
First Lady’s dream of rescuing the mining families she had visited from the ramshackle
company shacks and the hopelessness of the smoking gob piles and coal dust encrusted
misery of Scotts Run.
The New Deal implemented programs quickly. It had to. The Great Depression
was an unprecedented crisis of untold proportions. In Monongahela County the amount
of people on relief in the coal camps was 63.6% in 1933. This would mean 5,000
families were dependent on some form of relief. The county itself only could muster a
collection of 70 percent of the taxes for the year of 1931, basically tasking the county to
provide relief services.43 Mary Behner herself wrote in a letter to her parents “1000
children die each year in W.Va from ignorance. This death rate has doubled in the last 5
years.”44 Between 1931 and 1932 the American Friends Service Committee fed up to
40,000 children a day. 45 Haste was needed. As of June 1933 400 miners had registered
for approximately 49 tracts of land the University had allocated in conjunction with the
Friends for a nascent subsistence program, but real funding was lacking.46 Scant three
months later in October 12, 1933 Secretary Ickes announced the purchase of land for a
“demonstration project”47 The administration bought the Arthur Farm, an estate of land
that the University was using for experimental purposes. Former owner Richard Arthur, a
wealthy owner of Pittsburgh hotels, was behind in his taxes. Louis Howe moved quickly
on this property, ordering the Army Air Corps to conduct an aerial survey of the 1,200
acres of land. The haste was unprecedented, with Howe and the First Lady shredding
through red tape the Roosevelt administration was hoping to establish a model to point to
as an early success in transitioning unemployed industrial workers. They needed a good
first start to support the plans for the 181 other planned subsistence projects in the works
and inspire private industry to take up the call and sponsor similar projects too. Mrs.
42
Press, Inc. 2001. Pg.17
43
Haid,Stephen Edward. Arthurdale: An Experiment In Community Planning, 1933-1947. Morgantown,
WV: West Virginia University, 1975. Pg. 4
44
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection. Reel 3. Letter to Reverend Behner and Mrs. Behner
from Mary Behner. May 8,1932. West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West Virginia University.
Morgantown, West Virginia
45
46
IBID Pg. 67
47
IBID Pg. 74
12
Roosevelt wanted to provide real and tangible new beginnings for the miners who had so
moved her from her August visit. Arthurdale was born.
“When we get together, together, together

We’ll sing this refrain-
No matter what the weather-fair weather
Foul weather-its all the same.
Critics need not fear us-draw near or hear us.
A message for you. Its Arthurdale-we’ll never fail-
We will ever be true-
Hail-hail Arthurdale
Land of beginning again-
We’re strong for Arthurdale, looking to
Our watchward never fail-
We’ll never fail you Arthurdale
We will keep our trust in you-
We’ll work-we’ll win-we’ll always stick together.
Dear Arthurdale-we’re all for you.”
---The Arhurdale Song48
Outside of Reedsville the West Virginia hills begin to roll gently. Arthurdale is
just located outside of this little town, 30 miles away from Scotts Run, but seemingly a
different planet. Here on Decker’s Creek and among the buckwheat fields of Preston
County the Administration felt they had found an idyllic location for people to start over.
Termed the Reedsville Experimental Station, the community would become known as
Arthurdale as it began to develop and grow. With great speed responsibilities were
divvied up; with Howe purchasing the housing for the Homesteaders, Ickes securing the
land and Mrs. Roosevelt in charge of getting the families into their new homes and
outfitting them. Bushrod Grimes, formerly of the West Virginia University’s College of
Agriculture Extension service went from spearheading the Garden Clubs in the stranded
communities to being the local supervisor of the project. This left the selection of the
Homesteaders to be done.
Mrs. Roosevelt had a great interest in the community being as egalitarian as

possible. She saw this as “an experiment in ordinary life and an ordinary community
contains people of every type of ability and character.”49 Well known for her efforts to
promote more racial equality the First Lady desired that Arthurdale should also include
the families of African American miners and applicants from a broad spectrum of the
mining camps. Unfortunately as early as the selection process the inherent
disorganization of leadership that would plague the project throughout its federal mandate
would mar the First Ladies best intentions. Too busy to be hands-on in the Homesteader
48
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection. Reel 5. excerpted from “The Arthurdale Fifty Year
Celebration” booklet. West Virginia and Regional History Collection. West Virginia University.
Morgantown, West Virginia
49
13
applicant process she appointed Alice Davis, local head of the Monongahela County
relief organization to help in selecting the Homesteaders.
Social workers from the Quaker relief agency and WVU were dispatched the
summer of 1933 with elaborate questionnaires in hand to Scotts Run. Clarence Pickett
expressed that “It was not the idea that Arthurdale should be a community of saints…but
neither did the university committee feel justified in offering the opportunity to persons
whose lack of moral character was likely to jeopardize their ability to contribute to the
venture…”50 Translated the powers that were wanted a community that would be a
guaranteed success since Arthurdale was the first of its kind. Screeners looked into
everything about potential applicants from their ethnic backgrounds, hobbies, political
beliefs, the wife’s housekeeping skills, moral character and if they had an aptitude in
farming. Bushrod Grimes felt he had to take matters into his own hands because he
perceived there was not much movement. He and Alice Davis were in disagreement over
who were appropriate, but ultimately he would have the final say and selected miners
who he had known from his Garden Club program. Consequently these first fifty
Homesteading families would be all white and from West Virginia families that had been
in the state for several generations. Scotts Run itself was actually very diverse, with large
amounts of African American miners and immigrant miners from all over Europe.
Arthurdale, despite the First Lady’s best intentions would not live up to her hopes of
inclusiveness.
The NAACP lodged a protest with Roosevelt Administration, citing bias in the
make-up of Arthurdale. Though Roosevelt, Howe and Ickes were all in favor of
integration, they came face-to-face with Jim Crow laws and prejudice. For the second
round of Settler selection Mrs. Roosevelt posed the question of integration to the
Homesteader Club of the new community to decide for them selves. This is a key part
Progressive social work, where it was felt that it was incredibly important for local
recipients of aid to have much of the ability to make decisions, but the other part of this
move to have the homesteaders decide on this issue was political. So then the touchy
subject of real integration could be the possible responsibility or rejection of the
Homesteaders themselves, and not the federal government. The Homesteaders rejected
integration based on these arguments: they did not want to “risk the loss of respect we
have gained in the community by admitting Negroes.”, the difficulty of maintaining
segregated schools as mandated by Jim Crow and prejudice on the premise that many of
the non-white applicants “are of mixed blood and far inferior to the real Negroes who
refuse to mix with the white race.”51 So despite Eleanor Roosevelt’s best efforts she was
defeated by the lack of the political will to challenge this impediment to achieve her
stated purpose of “an ordinary community”.
Construction got underway by early November 1933. The husbands of the first
50 families were staying in the Arthur Mansion and began the work of clearing the land
for fields, digging ditches, building roads and excavating basements. Central to the
50
51
14
project was the philosophy of the recipients having a hand in the work of building
Arthurdale. This echoes Mary Behner’s philosophy of relief that is not “dole” based, but
rather participatory. This also resonates with Eleanor Roosevelt’s concept of helping
people help themselves. FDR had given her some acreage in the Hudson Valley called
Val-Kill. On that estate Eleanor and her friends Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman
built a hand-made furniture factory on the grounds to help farmers of that region have an
industry to make money to supplement their meager incomes. At Arthurdale the whole
philosophy of “teaching a man how to fish” instead of giving relief wholesale and
without investment of the homesteader would color the project. One homesteader wrote
that the prospect of building their own homes and their own communities that “they used
their picks and shovels with more energy than was ever used by them in loading coal in
the mine.”52
Arthurdale’s mission was lofty. This mission included no less the rescuing
impoverished miners, building a shining example in intentional community planning and
turning whole lives around by giving security in training for new careers. The basic
premise of the project though lied in the actual homesteads. Each family was to have 2.5
acres of land, a house and a barn, “Just going into it, the house was all white, there was
the green grass all around it, everything was new, and it smelled new. It was really
exciting, you just knew you were starting on a new adventure,” Lova McNair, who was a
girl when her family moved to Arthurdale from Scotts Run recounted what it was like on
that first day when her family moved into their new home.53 Originally Mrs. Roosevelt
wanted to have the homes built on the higher ground of the plateau and closer together
with farmlands and a communal garden, but Howe would discourage this, feeling it was
too close to communism, a word that would constantly stalk the community and be on the
lips of detractors and critics throughout the federal involvement.54 Each resident received
a cow and poultry and in the early stages of the community the breadwinners of the
family were on the government payroll, earning a wage for the building of the
community.
Arhurdale would be plagued with difficulties as big as the hopes that brought it
into being. The first setback was the houses themselves. Caught up in the haste to
deliver a whole community Howe ordered pre-fabricated E.F. Hodgson houses from a
catalog that sold Cape Cod vacation homes meant to be set up by four men in a day.
When the first fifty houses arrived in December the foundations were too big, with brick
fireplaces as much as eight feet away from the exterior of the houses themselves .55
Construction halted while architect Eric Gugler altered the houses with additions to fit the
foundations and the houses themselves were retrofitted to withstand Preston County
winters, since the houses were meant to be vacation homes and lacked insulation and
52
53
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection. Reel 5. excerpt from an untitled article. West Virginia
and Regional History Collection. West Virginia University. Morgantown, West Virginia
54
Rymer, Jeanne S. "Arthurdale, A Social Experiment in the 1930’s: Foundations, Fantasies, Furniture and
Failures." West Virginia History 46, no. (1989): Pg. 92
55
15
only had a small $15 stove for heat. This was just the beginning of Arthurdale’s
difficulties. Move-in dates were pushed back after the Hodgson house debacle with press
releases being issued pushing occupancy of the project from Thanksgiving of 1933 to
Christmas of 1933 when finally in June of 1934 the first fifty families moved into the
homesteads. In early 1934 the press was invited to see a model home and criticism arose
when reports that the grapevines trained over the trellises and the rhododendrons were
brought from a Tucker county planted and then dug back up and shipped out.56 Even
among the Administration over-seers there was conflict, with Secretary Ickes at odds with
Mrs. Roosevelt regarding the provision of modern conveniences like refrigerators, Ickes
felt that homesteaders should provide or bring their own when Mrs. Roosevelt knew full
well that next to none of the families could afford a convenience like that. She felt it was
imperative to encouraging a better quality of life for the homesteaders and her point of
view would win the day, but signaling more conflicts to come between her and the
Secretary of the Interior. 57 In her “My Day” syndicated column, Mrs. Roosevelt would
update readers with optimistic progress reports on the community; yet underneath these
reports lay a tangle of snarled bureaucratic leadership failures and a grand dream that
lacked a concrete plan of execution.
One of the most successful parts of Arthurdale would be the Community School.
Eleanor Roosevelt felt that a Progressive school should be central to the community,
binding it together. Just as “The Shack” had served that same purpose and providing
inspiration for such a set-up at Arthurdale. Speaking of Mary and “the Shack” “Her
project in the large mining camp has become so well known that it has been visited by
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the President of the United States, a number of times, to
aid in her planning of Arthurdale.”58 Mrs. Roosevelt would see a kindred spirit who
valued community in Elsie Ripley Clapp. Elsie was an educator in the forefront of
Progressive Education, a philosophy Elsie herself described as having children “learn
activity in doing and making and re-living the experiences of the people they are
studying”59. Progressive education had come into its own in the 1930’s as a form of
learning that abandoned the traditional pedagogy of rote memorization and recitation of
traditional subject driven instruction. Progressive education advocated curriculum that
centered around the students and the process of learning through hands-on techniques. In
Elsie’s class rooms her students learned about the Middle Ages by growing flax and
making linen, experienced Roman history by writing plays about Julius Caesar,
discovered mathematics by measuring and calculating the dimensions for school building
and grounds additions…all of this done as collaboratively as possible, underpinning the
other highly important aspect of Progressive learning which stressed that only by
participation in community can a student learn how to solve real world problems and
become a better member of a democracy. Mrs. Roosevelt would write in Liberty
Magazine in 1933 “…community life which would be of real social value was practically
56
Stout, Wesley. "The New Homesteaders." Saturday Evening Post, August 4, 1941, 7.
57
Gladwin, Lee A.. Arthurdale: Adventure in Utopia 28, no. July (1967): 311
58
A&M 3131 Mary Behner Christopher Collection. Reel 4. A clipping in her papers from an unidentified
newspaper announcing in 1937 her engagement to David A. Christopher. West Virginia and Regional
History Collection. West Virginia University. Morgantown, West Virginia
59
Stack,Sam JR.. Elsie Ripley Clapp (1879-1965) Her Life and the Community School. New York, NY:
Peter Lang. 2004. 177.
16
impossible in our present rural social conditions. Under this head I put the nursery
school, recreational facilities, the connection between school and community centers,
handicraft work and certain adult education plans which might lead to more satisfactory
living.”60
Elsie’s background seems contradictory to the woman she became. Though

moderate in her politics, she contradicts much of her late Victorian upbringing. She was
born into an affluent family in Brooklyn Heights, New York in 1870. Her father William
Clapp was a stockbroker and her mother Sarah Louise Ripley Clapp was a socialite.
Elsie grew up in the comfortable but codified world of a wealthy New York family. She
summered in the Hamptons, rode horse side saddle, and went to fine parties with other
highly placed families…yet she was constrained. The role of women, especially wealthy
women, was to be relegated to that of a faithful, witty, charming wife. The “Cult of
Domesticity” celebrated qualities in women such as being erudite conversationalists, but
discouraged “unseemly” intelligence. The woman was to have fine taste, keep a beautiful
home and find her success in the achievements of her husband. Having a career was
considered verboten. Education would be the key to Elsie’s breaking out of the
traditionally defined role she would have been expected to inhabit. Besides her highly
educated background giving her an edge, Elsie found leadership roles in the
circumstances of the Great Depression itself.
The New Deal allowed for unique opportunities for women to take leadership
roles and participate in projects that allowed them greater engagement in addressing the
challenges of the Great Depression. This is a uniting factor with all three women. Mary
Behner and other women in the Settlement House and Bible School movement were able
to work hands-on in the world…organizing, leading, administrating. Mrs. Roosevelt
redefined the role of the First Lady. She broke recast the position entirely…actually
earning an income almost comparable to her husband’s through her speaking
engagements, writing and radio appearances. Eleanor Roosevelt got her hands dirty,
going out into communities like Scotts Run rather than just hosting State dinners. Elsie,
like her peers, found that during the Great Depression the problems were so vast that all
hands were needed on deck, men and women. She saw learning as the key to personal
betterment. Having an extensive education these women found they could use their
skills and their motivations for social change to exploit an “engendered” loop hole.
While men planned, the women did the work…caring for children, feeding hungry men,
arranging for blankets, coordinating education and tending to the sick. These “care-
giving” roles allowed for these women to have careers and do tangible work. A
community organizer, a school administrator and a First Lady….The New Deal
empowered them all and brought them together.
Elsie’s role in Arhurdale was formed by her unique educational background. She
began at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights. Girls of her time were
expected to learn the classics, Latin, art appreciation and literature; subjects to make her
into a decorous wife. But Packer was pushing the envelope in young ladies education.
Part of the curriculum at Packer was geology, zoology and physiology and they were not
60
IBID Pg. 188
17
typical subjects for girls to study. Elsie would develop a love of learning from her high
school experiences at Packer which would continue to the period in which she attended
Vassar, between 1899-1903. There she would be first exposed to the works of her life-
long mentor John Dewey, when she was exposed in her studies at Vassar to the “new
psychology” which Dewey was advocating, based more in science than theology..
Dewey himself was a leading philosopher of education. He advocated connecting
thought and experience for the total engagement of the student in the subject matter of
their study. This would combine the scholastic and the aesthetic in total learning.
Elsie would receive a unique experience when unable to finish with a degree at
Vassar because of ill-heath she was able to continue her studies at Barnard College at
Columbia University. At Columbia she would finish a degree in English Literature with
goal of being a teacher. There she was able to take seminars and classes with Dewey and
even became an assistant in his teaching. Her education in philosophy continued while
she worked as a secretary at the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific
Methods. There she would be exposed to the works of some of the most innovative of
philosophers who contributed to the journal: John Broadus Watson, George Herbert
Mead, Boyd Bode, Bertrand Russell, Horace Kallen, Earnest Hocking and others. She
herself contributed published reviews. Her association with Dewey also allowed her to
meet some of these prominent thinkers. She would wholly absorb Dewey’s concepts of
total and experiential education in a community setting, but take them past the pages of
theoretical journals and implement them in real classroom settings. From her humble
beginnings at Jersey City High School in New Jersey as an English instructor to her
renowned work as the principal of the private and Progressive Rosemary Junior High
School, education as an activity was the main focus of her approach.
Elsie’s true achievements were in bringing Dewey’s unique educational

philosophies and Progressive Education to the rural public school setting. The rural
public school in 1930’s was typically under-funded, housed in a less than optimal school
building and effectively isolated from the community of academics and support of urban
culture that rural school teachers forwent to teach in these settings. Elsie was asked to
become the principal of the Ballard School outside of Louisville Kentucky in 1929. She
felt it was time for as new academic challenge and was encouraged by John Dewey to
bring Progressive Education to a rural public school. Progressive Education was
becoming a buzz-word in the 1930’s for the newest innovations in education and many
schools felt that implementing Progressive techniques would improve their schools and
placate parents who wanted their children to receive the most cutting-edge and “envogue”
educational programs. The search committee from Louisville had such motivations.
Elsie took the position as head of Ballard and began to implement practices that would
serve her well at Arthurdale. She began a hot lunch program, health services for
students, and pushed for a higher budget to fund furnishing like light worktables and
chairs crafted to encourage good posture; but most of all she saw the rural setting as a
veritable laboratory for learning and a place to forge a tangible link between school and
community.
18
When Eleanor Roosevelt approached Elsie to be the head of Arthurdale’s

community school and director of Community Life, Elsie saw a unique opportunity to
create a community school from the ground up. She took most of her well trained faculty
from Ballard so she would have a motivated and experienced staff and headed for West
Virginia in 1934. Progressive Education required teachers who were motivated and
tireless. A community school also required teachers to be neighbors, living and
participating in the life of the community. “A community school foregoes its
separateness. It is influential because it because it belongs to its people. They share its
ideas and ideals in its work. It takes from them as it gives to them.” Elsie wrote this in a
1933 article in Progressive Education entitled “A Rural Community School in
Kentucky”.61 Elsie saw the school in Arthurdale as the lynchpin in forging this newly
forged community, a way to bring the individual miners together through a shared focus.
Elsie spent the summer of 1934 going to Scotts Run on several occasions. Elsie and her
teachers knew they had to be familiar with the residents of the new community and their
children. They also made a study of West Virginia to incorporate its history and
environment into the lessons. Elsie drew from the Appalachian tradition of
“neighborliness”, she saw “neighborliness are an educational asset”; further cementing
relations between the school and the community.
As the school year of 1934 approached the school building was not ready. Elsie
was determined though. The mansion itself was used for elementary and junior high
classes, the assembly hall housed the nursery school and two sheds accommodated the
senior high school classes. There were no supplies; only a handful of pencils and pads
and hardly any text books and walls with brown paper tacked up for a blackboard. Elsie
entered that first year undaunted. With haphazard accommodations and few supplies
Elsie looked to the community itself for all that she required for teaching. “Community
activities will constitute the laboratory through which the children will get their educative
experiences.”62 She had written in her work Community Schools In Action. Students
would watch fields being plowed by their parents, tying lessons from the classroom to
actual and real components of their lives. Other experiences included watching
buckwheat flour being made, making detailed maps of the community and analyzing soil
for assessing the best crops to grow.
As the school developed Elsie positioned it at the center of community life.

“Where does school end and life outside begin? There is no distinction between them. A
Community School is a used place, a place used freely and informally for all the needs of
living and learning. It is in effect, that place where learning and living converge.”63 She
drew in the mothers of the students to assist in the school lunch program; preparing,
serving, canning. The fathers she involved in helping tend the school gardens to provide
produce for the use in the lunch program. She established a community library at the
school that was open to use for everyone. Also most importantly she saw that the health
needs of the community as a priority, especially since the children and their parents had
just recently come from the coalfields where health issues were acute and dire. The
61
IBID Pg. 184
62
Clapp,Elsie Ripley. Community Schools In Action. New York, NY: Viking Press, 1939. Pg. 74
63
IBID Pg. 89
19
school had a doctor and a nurse, a clinic and even surgical facilities that were available
for students and their parents. The gymnasium was used for basketball games and plays.
The teachers from the school would also facilitate different adult education courses to
help unemployed young people who were too old for school and also unemployed. They
were instructed in topics like accounting, current events, child care, metal work and
carpentry. Elsie as director of community activities oversaw Saturday square dances.
She saw the dances as a way to draw the community in and express some of the heritage
from the miner’s background.
The school buildings themselves were very unique. From the very beginning
Elsie poured over the architectural plans with architect Stewart Wagner. The largest
structure in the school complex was the recreational building with a basketball court,
showers and a stage for performances. There were separate buildings for the elementary
and intermediate school and an administration building for the cafeteria, community
canning kitchen and home economic rooms. The Nursery School was considered the
center of the school complex and the heart of the community by Elsie, as she described it
as “…the very spring and heart of the community education.”64 It was headed by the
famous educator Jessie Stanton. The school itself had open and airy rooms that let out to
the nearby playgrounds. It was also the most transformative of the educational settings.
It took children from the “Run” who were “aged, wizened, wan and lifeless…”65 and with
time, fresh air and good food these littlest victims of the deprivation of Scotts Run
became a testament to what Elsie was trying to achieve by holistically looking at and
addressing the needs of the child.
Often parents would come and visit the staff and their children at the Nursery
School, many times helping with the care for the children. Older girls not in school, but
not working, would take turns volunteering in the Nursery School for adult educational
experiences in child care and teaching. Here Elsie saw the best way to translate much of
the mission of Progressive Education’s philosophies of healthy children making better
students and tying the community well-being to the instruction of its children. The
Nursery school held well-baby clinics, staff visited homes of parents to help instruct
mothers in nutritional menus and lessons cleanliness and healthy rest followed the little
ones at home and changed the pattern of life for many of the parents. The play of the
children reflected life around them…block play to build farms and the school bus, games
showing how daddy lighted the fire or how mommy washed the clothes fit Elsie’s
pedagogy of a child using play and imagination to understand how the world around them
worked.66
The educational experience Elsie offered was unique. Her curriculum was
perfected in Kentucky and brought to its most effective in West Virginia. “-reading,
writing, spelling, arithmetic ect-are taught here , but are so arranged that they are
interwoven with the everyday experiences. We are supplementing book learning with
64
Ibid Pg. 172
65
Peter Lang. 2004. Pg. 191
66
Clapp,Elsie Ripley. Community Schools In Action. New York, NY: Viking Press, 1939. Pg. 200
20
real learning.”67 The students used the old and historic plantation cabin, dating from the
founding of the plantation by Colonel John Fairfax from 1789, to explore hands-on
Colonial life by recreating historical conditions and performing a play centered on the
cabin. They collected corn and learned to grind it between stones. They gathered clay
from the creek to use for pottery. The students also use their studies to in helping solve
the community’s most pressing need, finding some capital venture to produce stable jobs
and incomes for the families. The school children studied local flora and fauna, looking
for profitable resources in the vicinity. They studied chemistry in order to understand the
making and blowing of glass goods. They explored the mountain art traditions of ballad
singing and fiddle playing to help add to musical ventures to help give the community an
income.
But it wasn’t cheap. Progressive Educational methods required lots of funds for
equipment, facilities and motivated staff. The cost alone was the usual stumbling block
for most public schools when courting the idea of implementing a body of Progressive
study. Arthurdale’s school was built by federal funds. It was a unique school inside of
the Preston County school district; ostensibly a public school, but with its own unique
curricula. The county provided three teachers and the rest of the teachers’ salaries were
supported by Eleanor Roosevelt, funded by her speaking tours and radio appearances.
Also Mrs. Roosevelt’s close friend and wealthy philanthropist Bernard Baruch donated
$33,518 alone in the first year to support the school’s operation.68 Unfortunately as
Arthurdale continued to fail to provide stable jobs the financial future of the community
began to look dubious. This would mean the community would not be able to sustain the
level of financial commitment that a full fledged Community School required. By 1936
Baruch was unwilling to continue to support the schools and there was a failure to secure
any other private boosters.69 This would essentially signal the end of the most successful
part of the whole project. The school would continue and be fully assimilated into the
Preston County school, but would abandon its Progressive teaching methods. Elsie
herself would leave Arthurdale in 1936, concerned that the economic welfare of the
community would not be able to support the Community School.
Elsie would have her own difficulties in pursuing her work. Often it was the
homesteaders themselves which posed the greatest challenge to her. In her role as
Community Life director she helped form clubs like The Men’s Club, The Eleanor
Roosevelt Farm Women’s Association and other committees to tackle things like school
gardens, fire fighting, dances and athletics/recreation. Here is another example of Elsie’s
philosophies at work; that all the miners and their families should participate fully in the
life of the community. To Elsie community life was essential for acting as a form of real
world education, for the young and the old. She felt that the miners needed gentle
supervision in forming true collaborative organizations for self-governance. Here we see
that aspect of New Deal social work that also was present in Mary Behner’s efforts, a
paternalism from those directing the relief towards those receiving it. An example would
be when the Men’s Club requested permission to have a beer and oyster dinner to
67
IBID Pg. 164
68
69
IBID Pg. 294
21
celebrate their one year anniversary. Elsie denied their request because she felt that there
would be members who might get out of hand or rowdy. The men went to a bar in
Reedsville to have their own celebration though an almost brawl at the bar might have
justified Elsie’s decisions.70 Elsie’s presence was so necessary to keeping the community
united and in order that the Saturday night square dances would not happen if she was out
of town and unable to be there to supervise them.71
Elsie often found herself in an uncomfortable position between the homesteaders

and the federal authorities and having to make many small and trivial decisions.
Karthryn Ash who was a teacher in Arthurdale told her father Charles in a letter from
December 3, 1935 “Too many things go through the sole authority of Miss Clapp even
down to the final okay on which color we shall paint the bus or in what form the Men’s
Club ballot shall be set up” . In that same letter Kathryn saw one of the key difficulties
Elsie would face in attempting to get the adults of Arthurdale to take more responsibility
was that the community and its clubs had fallen into petty rivalries and factions.
Resentments were flaring up as Residents eyed neighbors and thought that some had
received unearned largess from their federal minders. Elsie found in the miners an
acculturated reluctance to take the reins of their own destiny; too used to depending on
the coal companies for homes, a store and medical care through the company doctor.
This dependency bourn of the heavy-handed labor practices used in Scotts Run made it
difficult for Elsie’s vision of a fully interactive and participatory democracy in Arthurdale
to come to life.
Arthurdale grew as more homes were built. The second and third phases of
homes were more practical two story homes and houses built of native stone. The
community now had 165 houses and their compliment families. At first most incomes of
the residents came from work done in the Homestead itself. Problematically after this
work was completed by 1935 the Administration was still scrambling to find a stable
occupant of the factory built on the grounds meant to provide the yeoman farmers
industrial labor to supplement their subsistence farming. The farming itself was a great
success. Under the guidance of WVU Agricultural Extension workers the homesteaders
were supplying the food needs for their families and communities, even selling surpluses.
But the single most factor of uncertainty would be the promise of jobs. Originally as the
community was being built federal planners were attempting to get a factory established
that would make wooden post office boxes and other post office furniture. This would be
defeated by congress, who opposed the government operating an enterprise supposedly
competing with private concerns making the same product. All of the opposition was
political grandstanding by senators attempting to look protectionist of local industries
during the Great Depression’s high tide of unemployment, to look like they were indeed
looking after the jobs of their constituents.
70
Cowan,Holly. Arthurdale. New York, NY.: Columbia University, 1968. Pg. 40-41
71
A&M 3649. Harry E. and Kathryn Ash Carlson Collection of Arthurdale Photographs and Other
Material. Box 2. Folder 4. letter from Kathryn Ash Carlson to her father Charles F. Ash, dentist in NYC
December 03, 1935
22
The next attempted industry to occupy the factories would be the Electric Vacuum
Company. They took a lease on the factory from 1936-1937 to build metal components
for vacuum cleaners. It employed an upwards of fifty men, but would only see a year’s
worth of work when work shut down for a new model re-fit and did not reopen. The next
occupant would last only a little while, the Van Heusen shirt company from 1937-1938.
Near the end of the 1930’s a small tractor factory co-operative employed five but also did
not last more than a year. There were many proposals submitted to the Administration
that ranged from aluminum awnings, hat makers, corrective shoes, carrot juice, cod fish
oil pills and air conditioned suits.72 These proposals were looking for government
funding and contracts for their interests. There was not an under abundance of ideas and
attempts. The Arthur Mansion was torn down and a stone inn was built to accommodate
the multitude of curious sightseers and government officials. But the inn too would falter
from under patronage. Co-Operatives were the last ditch effort. They were seen as ways
to provide some sort of income to homesteaders. Co-op’s attempted were a dairy, a
poultry farm, service station, grist mill, an agriculture co-op and a store; but they would
all falter and fail from the homesteaders not having the skill set to manage them and
make them work. The poultry co-op and the dairy farm would become a point of
contention, being run by a very small group of families and causing petty factionalism.73
The only Co-Operative that would survive to this day would be the cemetery.74
The only steady industry besides paid government work working on building the
community itself would be the Mountaineer Craftsmen’s Co-Operative Association’s
workshop. It was started by the Quakers back in Scotts Run when the Crown Hill mines
had been shut down. The Friends goal was to set up an industry that the miners could use
to supplement their income during times of low employment, making handcrafted
furniture patterned after early American pieces. A work shop, a forge and a showroom
were located in and near the community building. Many homesteaders learned to
produce decorative pieces of pewter, pottery, mirrors, woven rugs, chest of drawers and
the Godlove chair…a specialty piece passed on to the Co-Operative by a master
craftsman who had to that point kept the inseparable jointed chair with it’s simple woven
seat a family secret. The furniture Co-Operative appealed greatly to the First Lady
because of her involvement with her Val-Kill endeavor, but despite the vested interest of
Mrs. Roosevelt the Craftsman Co-Operative would struggle also. Due to the amount of
labor put into the furniture produced by the MCCA, their products would be out of the
price range of most Americans during the Great Depression.
And this would be one of the single most prevalent factors that would hamper the
implementation of an industry to Arthurdale…the Great Depression itself. Consumer
markets had shrunken significantly and demand was next to nothing for many products.
The other factor behind the struggle to provide good jobs for the new community would
be one of the key concepts behind the whole project, the decentralization of industry.
Henry Ford to The Friends to Mrs. Roosevelt herself advocated bringing industry from
the urban centers to rural settings to provide employment to the unemployed in stranded
72
73
IBID Pg. 233
74
IBID Pg. 259
23
communities, but the major impediment was that very few companies wanted to relocate
away from urban centers and transportation hubs. No other factor would undermine the
confidence of the homesteaders than the lack of jobs, perceived to be promised by the
administrators of the community. Eleanor Roosevelt herself would take this difficulty to
heart, she expressed in a letter to Oscar Chapman of the U.S. Department of the Interior
in November of 1934 after the vacuum factory closed its door “I get panicky every now
and then about these people having work.”75 This just goes further to demonstrate the
great personal investment she had in the community, but also the pressing need for good
jobs for its families.
Arthurdale was an incredibly unique project to meet the incredibly unique

demands of the times. It was formed out the hope that with enough funds, support,
infrastructure and guidance that these West Virginia coal miners could point the way to a
whole new way of delivering relief; by getting unemployed workers back on their feet
again and starting a revolutionary way of life based on Jeffersonian principals of
subsistence farmers working in de-centralized industry and living in highly cooperative
communities. The project would face an immense amount of scrutiny and critique.
Criticism of Arthurdale would come in the following forms: It was a waste of money, it
was untried and too experimental, it was conceived and built too rapidly, executed
without a master plan and it was possibly “communist”. Mrs. Roosevelt’s involvement
would be a boon in a way, helping grease the wheels of bureaucracy and eliminating red
tape. Her involvement would also be a detriment, causing a spotlight to be trained on
Arthurdale. This would mean every set-back, every wrinkle and complication that
occurred on the project would be reported to the public and used by as political
ammunition by Republican detractors of the FDR administration.
In those early days of the New Deal funds were allocated and spent quickly in the
attempt to find successes to get the nation’s economy back on track. In the case of
Arthurdale, from the very beginning, resentment in the press was palpable that the
government had chosen 165 families to outfit in brand new houses and provide a totally
new community for, when many other Americans were struggling to survive joblessness,
poverty and hunger. Every instance of perceived waste was pointed out when ever an
unfriendly press had the opportunity. The failure of the phase one Hodgeson Cape Cod
pre-fabricated Houses would forever haunt the project and the adjustments made by
project architects to make them work only added to the expense, pushing costs to an
upwards of $10,000 per house and causing immense budget overages.76 The Saturday
Evening Post pointed out in one particular article that eight wells had been dug the
summarily capped and abandoned on the project, a barn foundation was built but then
deemed to close to the home and was covered up and that much of the labor on the
project came from other New Deal agencies like the FERA (Federal Economic Recovery
Administration), the CWA (Civil Works Administration) and the CCC (Civilian
Conservation Corps), implying a perceived double-dipping into federal coffers.77
75
76
WV: West Virginia University, 1975. Pgs. 116-117
77
Stout, Wesley. "The New Homesteaders." Saturday Evening Post, August 4, 1941. Pgs. 5-6
24
As desperate as the times were and as inspired a solution as Arthurdale seemed,

the very nature of the Project made many Americans uncomfortable. The stalking horse
of commentary for the project was that it was too experimental, perhaps even communist!
Here is an excerpt from an article published in Harper’s Magazine in 1940. “This is not
the American way…Most Americans look askance at individuals or communities whose
way of life departs from the normal.”78 Though individuals like Eleanor Roosevelt, Elsie
Ripley Clapp, M.L. Wilson and the President himself saw the transformative value in
forming an intentional community based on the betterment of these unemployed miners;
too many outsiders felt it was too similar to Soviet collective farms. In spring of 1934
Superintendent William Wirt of the Gary, Indiana schools had publicized that he felt that
Rexford Tugwell in his role with the Resettlement Administration was as a revolutionary
bent on overthrowing the government. He also made comments comparing the FDR
administration to Soviet leaders.79 Mrs. Roosevelt herself would respond with a press
conference, addressing women news reporters she stated “Never in this country to my
knowledge has it been considered communistic for an opportunity to be given to people
to earn their own living and buy their own homes.”80 The fear of that which is different
or that which seems to be untried and unknowable, provoked these critiques. Especially
in the face of bureaucratic blunders and financial mistakes being reported in the press,
and as the 1930’s wore on that the project did not seem like a shining example, or a clear
success.
The criticism that is probably closer to the truth was the lack of a plan when it
came to making Arthurdale a reality. There was plenty of vision, but what was lacking
was a clear blueprint on how to execute the details. The haste in which Arthurdale was
built did not allow for a deliberative approach. Ground was being broken for the first
homes in November of 1934, a scant four months after Mrs. Roosevelt’s visit to Scotts
Run. Something that was very telling was the conflict between Secretary Ickes and
Eleanor Roosevelt. When the Resettlement Administration was placed under the prevue
of the Department of the Interior Ickes approached the project in his manner, which was
to be thorough and thrifty. Mrs. Roosevelt and Louis Howe however felt that the only
way to solve the problems of the homesteaders was to spend large amounts of funds to
secure the necessary components for security (modern homes with modern conveniences,
community buildings, a cutting edge school) and enable success. Ickes saw this as
throwing money at the problem, he had been quoted as saying that the First Lady and
Howe were “spending money like drunken sailors”.81 Ickes and the First Lady disagreed
if the houses should have conveniences like refrigerators and even to the extent at how
comfortable the homes should be. Ickes became increasingly frustrated as he was left to
78
A&M 129. Arthurdale Homestead Project. Clippings. Rice, Millard Milburn. October 1, 1940. Harper’s
Magazine. Pg. 166
79
Peter Lang. 2004. Pg. 205
80
81
Beezer, Bruce G.. "Arthurdale: An Experiment in Community Education." West Virginia History 36,
October (1974): 28.
25
defend any blunders or missteps on the project.82 Muddling the picture further was the
Mrs. Roosevelt herself seemed to have no official capacity. Though Arthurdale had been
referred to many times as “Eleanor’s Baby” she herself had no title or real purview, just a
vested interest. For Ickes and other federal administrators on the project they did not
know how to handle her, for she was the wife of their boss…the president! Even
Clarence Pickett, who had helped conceive of the idea originally with the Friends, felt
that there were way too many people involved and too many ideas attached to the Project.
To some it was a relief program, to others a federally subsidized housing project and to
others a bold experiment in a new way of life. Pickett felt that there was too little
research and too little time spent in the planning stage, leading to confusion.83
The project itself was a hot potato in many ways, passed from agency to agency
and seemingly singeing which ever department or administrator’s hands it rested in. The
Resettlement Administration would be transferred to the Department of Agriculture and
placed under the umbrella of the Farm Security Administration in 1936. FDR himself
wanted to see all authority centralized, closing regional offices of the Resettlement
Administration. This was seen as a way to try and streamline the decision making
process.84 This move towards centralization in effect side-stepped locals further,
rendering Executive Committees on the homestead itself as organizations that merely
planned dances and Fourth of July Picnics. It is indicative of one of the most pervasive
factors in New Deal relief efforts and a major point of critique for the project,
paternalism. Originally the project was meant to give the homesteaders “the fishing
pole” instead of “the fish”, but the planners and visionaries went a step further and gave
them the pond, stocked it with fish and threw pellets in the water whenever the line was
cast. An editorial from the New York Times commented on the homesteaders as” 200
decent, self respecting American families-hand-picked, intelligent and morally spotless
families-reduced to the status of Federal sheep in a prophylactic pen, eating Federal
fodder from a porcelain trough.”85 Critics drew an unflattering conclusion that the
Homesteaders were reduced, in effect, to serfdom. They were reliant on a confusing and
ever changing array of federal administrators to get permission on the smallest thing, like
the removal a tree to construct the Inn.86 Even though Elsie’s philosophies were for
community based decision making and Mary Behner’s goals were to get away from
“dole” based relief and towards empowerment, while Mrs. Roosevelt’s hope was to make
a safe and nurturing place that would allow the best in people to come to the fore; they
could not shake this pervasive element of paternalism.
1938 would see a change in the nation’s outlook towards New Deal projects like
Arthurdale. A greater amount of Republican law makers were elected to congress that
year, setting the stage for cuts in Arthurdale’s appropriations and mandate. By 1942
82
Cowan,Holly. Arthurdale. New York, NY.: Columbia University, 1968. Pg. 27
83
IBID Pg. 26
84
85
A&M 129. Arthurdale Homestead Project. Clippings. New York Times, clipping with an unattributed
date or author
86
26
congress forbade federal funds to be used for collective farming and land purchases.
1935 saw an anti-outsider sentiment settle over West Virginia in the views of politicians
and this kindled a resentment of outsiders delivering aid and relief.87 Governor Herman
G. Kump himself expressed this point of view in 1935 to Harry Hopkins, advisor to FDR
“There is no occasion to have outside people in West Virginia to arbitrarily administer
relief. We have honest, competent devoted citizens of the state who can adequately and
effectively perform these duties.”88 As Arthurdale struggled to point to any tangible
success the nation was weary of relief and disheartening news. In 1946 all but 55 of the
homesteads has been sold to their owners and by 1947 the last of the houses were
dispatched. The Inn, Community Building and two of the school buildings were sold to
outside interests.
Arthurdale had many things in its favor; a large amount of federal funding, trained
overseers, inspired interest and vested political patronage. Arthurdale was an endeavor to
combat the undertow of the Great Depression. Most importantly it allowed for a unique
“perfect storm” for the convergence of the talents and leadership of three unique women.
Lois Scharf would write in her essay “First Lady/First Homestead” of Eleanor Roosevelt
that “She brought a gendered perspective to the homestead experiment”89 and this
statement could plausibly be made towards the other two women too. Their presence
brought an intense interest in solving social problems and making real and concrete
changes, drawing from their unique backgrounds and education. They found opportunity
in the traditional roles of “care-giving” and were able to take them a step further, to be
true leaders and policy makers. Mary Behner built from scratch a true community center
that provided a place for real assistance to take place. Elsie Ripley Clapp took John
Dewey’s concepts of community and collaborative education and made them work in real
world settings. Eleanor Roosevelt stepped out from the shadow of her husband and dared
to put her reputation on the line to rescue people from the dire conditions of Scotts Run.
“No business can be fundamentally sound where the human beings connected
with it and who actually are the basis of whatever that business may produce, do not
receive in return for their labor, at least a minimum of security and happiness in life.”
Wrote Eleanor Roosevelt in a syndicated newspaper article from 193390 Coupled with
the sentiments of “The Arthurdale Song” there is a sense of determination and hope
coming into the project. Arthurdale was not a success in many ways. Beautiful and
modern homes were built, a whole new town was constructed and the might of the federal
government was placed behind the project…yet the community failed to produce a truly
collaborative setting where a rural based democracy could take root. Jobs and industry
did not come. The success is more basic. The results of the women’s efforts can be seen
in the simple fact that 165 families were placed in homes and given a new life.
87
Thomas,Jerry Bruce. An Appalachian New Deal: West Virginia in the Great Depression. Lexington, KY:
University of Kentucky, 1998. Pg. 133
88
IBID Pg. 134
89
90
A&M 1291 Arthurdale Homestead Project. Clippings. Article from an unidentified source and not dated.
27
Homesteader Glenna Williams remembers that Arthurdale “…was like dying and going
to heaven.”91 Heaven was conceived and built by these women.
“Nothing we learn in this world is ever wasted and I have come to the conclusion
that practically nothing we ever do stands by itself. If it is good, it will serve some good
purpose in the future…”92 Eleanor Roosevelt wrote. Good for the future…where the
good should be measured by the healthy and well fed children who played in the yards of
clean and neat little homesteads, going to school and receiving the best education for the
times. It was a good that could not be measured in a spreadsheet or quantified in a report.
It was human lives rescued, and these rescues had the signature of these women on it.
Maligned, critiqued and debated…Arthurdale may go down in history as a failure of
planning, wasted funds, snarled federal management and the worst of New Deal
paternalism, but there is good and good that is owed to the efforts to these three women.
Mary Behner Christopher, Elsie Ripley Clapp and Eleanor Roosevelt may have not built
a utopia, but they did manage to build heaven. Their nation called, its people were
suffering and these women took a hold of unique opportunities and roles to change lives.
91
92
Roosevelt, Eleanor. This I Remember. New York, NY: Harper, 1949. Pg. 132

The New Deal: Women Utopia Builders

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The New Deal: Women Builders of Utopia

Mary was educated at Wooster College and daughter of a Michigan Presbyterian

Mary’s preliminary work would be constrained by the mission focus of the

Mary’s philosophy of relief work is informed by her times. She advocates a

Mary’s most surprising point on relief work is “I stressed the importance of

Arthurdale would find inspiration in the Back-To-The-Land Movement and find

“When we get together, together, together

Mrs. Roosevelt had a great interest in the community being as egalitarian as

Elsie’s background seems contradictory to the woman she became. Though

Elsie’s true achievements were in bringing Dewey’s unique educational

When Eleanor Roosevelt approached Elsie to be the head of Arthurdale’s

As the school developed Elsie positioned it at the center of community life.

Elsie often found herself in an uncomfortable position between the homesteaders

Arthurdale was an incredibly unique project to meet the incredibly unique

As desperate as the times were and as inspired a solution as Arthurdale seemed,

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