Eleanor Roosevelt and the Arthurdale Experiment

In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the social programs of the New Deal to the people of America. Laboring under the economic collapse known as the Great Depression, people needed jobs, many were homeless, and more lived in dire poverty. This was graphically true in rural areas. One such was Scotts Run, a stretch of coal mining land in West Virginia that caught the attention of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. She determined to help the people there by creating for them a new, self-sufficient community called Arthurdale.

Eleanor Roosevelt had grown up in wealth and privilege, but her life had been full of personal hardships. Energetic and determined as a first lady, she was a lightning rod for critics who thought that her "pet project" couldn't work - but she held fast and proved them wrong. To the refugees from the mines, Arthurdale was the answer to their dreams. Here were tidy homes with furniture and indoor plumbing; a place for planting gardens, sending children to school, learning new trades in new industries, and working together for the good of the community. Arthurdale, nestled in the green hills of West Virginia, changed the lives of its first families forever.

This is the story of the unlikely relationship between a president's wife, the poorest of the poor, and the dream they shared. It is told in part by those who were once children in Arthurdale, and will give young readers an unusual slant on Depression-era history.

A Linnet Book. Grades 5-8, xvi, 110 p., illus., notes, bibliog. Library binding, 0-208-02504-9, $22.50.