Putting Them In Their Places: Industrial Housing in Southern Appalachia, 1900-1930

Abstract

Putting Them In Their Places INDUSTRIAL HOUSING IN SOUTHERN APPALACHIA, 1900-1930 by Dr. Margaret Ripley Wolfe From the turn of the twentieth century well into the 1920s, Southern Appalachia experienced its second "discovery" when capitalists began tapping its vast natural resources. The general conditions awaiting these industrial pioneers included heavily timbered wilderness, towering mountains, and unbridged creeks and rivers; a sparse native population of scattered white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants with strong ties to the soil, not initially enthusiastic about becoming an industrial labor supply; and an absence of public transportation and suitable roads except for the railroads being financed by the capitalists themselves. Obstacles of this magnitude did not diminish the enthusiasm of these investors, many from the North, because the tremendous mineral wealth waiting to be exploited dispelled doubts. Their acquisition of thousands of acres proceeded uneventfully as unsophisticated natives disposed of potentially valuable land for low prices. Their power went unchallenged because of weak local political systems. As capitalists attempted to impose the modern industrial system on a primitive base, they were forced to assume principal responsibility for employee housing. Small towns did exist in Southern Appalachia, but minerals seemed to have a way of being discovered in the most remote areas. Even if work sites were fairly close to a village, the absence of public transportation, before the popular advent of the automobile , made it imperative the laborers be within walking distance of their jobs. Furthermore, there was no surplus housing to cope with the influx and concentration of laborers, both foreign and domestic. The predominant pattern was singlefamily dwellings constructed to meet immediate rather than long-range needs. Although several generations of a particular family might reside under one roof in relative domestic tranquility, no strong predisposition existed for taking in boarders, especially not outsiders. Unlike the first frontier process in Southern Appalachia, which was decidedly rural, the second then was urban, advancing "civilization" via towns and housing projects. Some of the development in Southern Appalachia coincided with the Progressive Era and its emphasis on housing reform and modern town planning. Enlightened coal operators and industrialists, those who had strong financial backing, were familiar with the innovative thinking of that generation of experts and gave it practical application. Others engaged in fly-by-night operations and temporary projects were less concerned with the improvement of living conditions and moral uplift. The Progressive housing reformers generally rejected public housing as socialistic and model tenements as paternalisitc and therefore favored restrictive legislation as a method of social control. * The social, economic, and political realities of Southern Appalachia, however, were not conducive to public housing or restrictive legislation. Conse27 quently, capitalists had little choice at the outset except to adopt a paternalistic role. Given this posture, they exerted control and determined the quality of housing by virtue of land ownership. Financiers in Southern Appalachia had a definite advantage over northern urban reformers of the time. Whereas the big-city experts concerned themselves with remaking slum areas, these capitalists started with an unmarred landscape. They were also spared the evils of the tenement and did not impose them on the region, probably because land was readily available and inexpensive . In Southern Appalachia, capitalists attempted to meet a wide range of housing needs presented by temporary laborers, unmarried females and males, married men with families, widows and their children—the transient as well as the settled, the managerial, the skilled, and the unskilled. The structures that they provided included tents and shacks, spartan boarding houses and working class hotels, apartments , two-and three-bedroom, single-family dwellings, and even genteel accommodations . Not only did these industrial landlords have to allow for class distinctions reflected in modest accommodations for laborers and commodious quarters for their superiors but also for ethnic and racial differences as well. In the coal camps and the industrial towns of that era, the inherently unequal concept of "separate but equal" prevailed. Such marginal housing as tents and tar-paper shacks appeared in Southern Appalachia generallysto meet the exigency of temporary laborers or the sudden convergence of hundreds of workers on a new town. Less than altruistic employers in some coal camps made the shack a more lasting...

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