Uneven Ground (11 page)

Democratic governors at the Annapolis meeting favored special legislation to assist the self-help programs being developed within the Appalachian states, but Republican governor Cecil Underwood of West Virginia defended the president's veto of the depressed areas bill. “The President was 1,000 percent right to veto this bill,” he argued, “on the grounds that it sets up another federal agency. We already have enough departments in the federal government.” Adding that the “magic” of depressed areas legislation was “not the answer,” he complained that politicians and journalists who had publicized the plight of West Virginia during the recent primary had not given a balanced picture: “It is true that 20 per cent of our workforce has been displaced. But we still have a strong, vigorous economy. We are not as bad off as Michigan. We have not had to borrow for unemployment compensation as Pennsylvania has. We are still teetering on the brink of solvency.”
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Despite his opposition to the depressed areas bill, Underwood supported the idea of interstate cooperation, and the group agreed to hold a second Conference of Appalachian Governors to be hosted by Governor
Combs the following fall. Meeting in Lexington, Kentucky, on October 17–18, 1960, the governors of five states and the representatives of six others discussed mutual problems facing their Appalachian areas, especially the challenges of highway construction and water control. Present were Governors Luther Hodges of North Carolina, Buford Ellington of Tennessee, and Lindsey Almond of Virginia, as well as Combs of Kentucky and Tawes of Maryland. Also attending were representatives of several federal agencies; Willis Weatherford of Berea College, who outlined the goals of the Appalachian regional survey then underway; and Perley Ayer, director of the CSM, who pledged the support of his organization.

Again Governor Combs called for the passage of federal area redevelopment legislation that would help address the “acute problem of unemployment in the region,” and he appointed a committee chaired by Governor Tawes to draft a “statement of principles” that might serve as a framework for cooperation and “might be able to get the interest—and possibly some commitments—from both the presidential candidates [Richard Nixon and Kennedy] and from candidates for Congress.”
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Notwithstanding the reluctance of representatives from Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and Virginia “to yield even a portion of state sovereignty” to any new federal program,
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the governors approved the “Declaration for Action Regarding the Appalachian Region.” The resolution pledged to form and continue a “voluntary association of the states” to advance “a special regional program of development,” and it called for candidates for national office to support “appropriate federal participation” in the solutions to the region's problems.
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The conference and the declaration for action bore the distinct mark of John Whisman. Serving as aide to Governor Combs, Whisman had helped to organize the Annapolis meeting and had coordinated planning for the Lexington conference. The Lexington resolution drew extensively on Program 60 for both its language and its strategies for action. The resolution, for example, avoided the phrase “depressed area” that was popularly associated with urban redevelopment efforts and instead pointed to the “chronic condition of underdevelopment and severe unemployment” that existed in the region. “As a result [of underdevelopment],” the declaration read, “many people [of
Appalachia] are denied reasonable economic and cultural opportunities through no fault of their own. In addition, the productive force in both physical and human resources is severely limited in its contribution to the nation, while the costs of essential welfare services are steadily increasing.”
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By characterizing Appalachia as an underdeveloped region rather than a depressed area, the governors hoped to draw attention to Appalachia's special problems and to distinguish the needs of the mountains from those of urban areas that had achieved development but were now suffering from temporary economic decline. “By underdevelopment, we mean that basic handicaps to development of adequate facilities involving transportation and water resources have in turn hindered the local ability to support necessary public services and private enterprise activity. Because of such basic deficiencies, the success of local development activity in all areas of life is severely handicapped.” What Appalachia needed, the document suggested, was temporary public work and job training programs similar to those being proposed for the rest of the country and the creation of modern economic infrastructure such as key roads and major water control facilities. Planning for this basic infrastructure should be connected to a “comprehensive state and regional development program . . . in appropriate fields of activity, including forestry, agriculture, mineral resources and tourist travel, industrial and community development, education, health and welfare.”
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The declaration attempted to move policy discussions beyond relief programs and toward the use of federal resources for the comprehensive development of the region. Effectively, the Lexington resolution outlined the issues that would shape efforts to create a special Appalachian development program over the next five years. The conference also adopted a resolution endorsing an Appalachian development highway system and elected Governor Combs as chair. Whisman was designated to head a permanent staff committee to plan future meetings and actions.

The recommendations of the governors' conference in Lexington took on additional significance three weeks later, when John F. Kennedy was elected to the presidency of the United States. To prepare his domestic agenda, the president-elect immediately asked his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, to put together a series of twenty-nine teams that
would meet to draft a legislative program for the new administration.
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Fulfilling Kennedy's pledge to the people of West Virginia, one of the first teams created was the Task Force on Area Redevelopment, appointed to formulate specific recommendations to assist people in economically depressed areas. Generally the Kennedy task forces comprised academics, business leaders, congressional staff, and members of the Kennedy team, but the ten members appointed to the Task Force on Area Redevelopment included seven labor and industrial leaders from West Virginia, the secretary of labor and industry from Pennsylvania, and the assistant to the president of the UMWA in Washington. Kennedy asked Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, who had led congressional efforts to enact depressed areas legislation throughout the 1950s, to serve as chair of the committee and, after a last-minute request from Governor Combs, added Whisman to the team.
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The West Virginia task force, as the Kennedy people called it, met initially in Charleston, West Virginia, on December 9, 1960, and within two weeks it issued a report recommending both a short-term package of immediate relief for those unemployed as a result of the recession and a broader strategy of area development to provide long-term job opportunities. The report called for the passage of area redevelopment legislation similar to that which had failed during the Eisenhower years, including the creation of an area redevelopment administration and programs in human resource development, natural resource development, and public works. Most of these proposals were designed to address unemployment problems in declining urban areas such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chicago, but the final recommendation of the report—reflecting Whisman's influence—urged the establishment of a system of regional development commissions across the nation that would attack the special problems of distressed regions and carry out comprehensive development programs. As an immediate step, the committee recommended that the president appoint an Appalachian regional commission, based on the initiative of the Appalachian governors, that might serve as a pilot for similar efforts in other regions.
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The core recommendations of the task force became Senate bill 1 when the new Congress convened in January 1961, but the proposals for a national system of development commissions and a pilot Appalachian
regional commission failed to make the final draft of the legislation. A parade of Appalachian members of Congress testified in favor of the bill during House and Senate hearings. Jennings Randolph and Robert Byrd of West Virginia, John Sherman Cooper and Carl Perkins of Kentucky, Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, and Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania described the critical economic conditions in their mountain counties that had led to official unemployment rates of 12 to 25 percent. Governors Tawes of Maryland, Ellington of Tennessee, and Combs of Kentucky all praised the bill but added that other measures were also needed, including a highway program, funds for natural resource development, and increased aid to education. Opponents of the Area Redevelopment Act complained that the legislation was not needed and objected to the federal government's interfering in the economic affairs of local areas, but Congress passed the legislation in late March 1961.
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The Area Redevelopment Act authorized the creation of the Area Redevelopment Administration (ARA) in the Department of Commerce and the expenditure of $394 million over a four-year period. Most of the funds were to provide low-interest industrial loans, grants to local governments for public facilities needed to attract businesses, and subsistence for worker training programs. Even ARA officials acknowledged that the act “essentially followed a ‘trickle down' approach to poverty and unemployment, with most of the direct benefits going to businesses and not to unemployed people,” but Appalachian political leaders hoped that the legislation would lead to broader efforts to assist the region.
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The act became law on May 1, 1961, and a week later the Conference of Appalachian Governors met in Washington with President Kennedy and the director of the new ARA to coordinate regional development strategies with the agency. In response to the governors' proposal to create an Appalachian commission, the president asked the ARA to establish a liaison with the governors to coordinate state and federal development strategies. The governors appointed a staff committee, chaired by Whisman, to work with the ARA liaison to channel recommendations to the agency. Later this informal arrangement became the federal interagency committee on the Appalachian
region, but there were no special funds set aside for Appalachia, and the responsibility for drafting a comprehensive development plan for the region remained with the governors.
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Over the next two years, the Conference of Appalachian Governors (now called the Council of Appalachian Governors) continued to meet on a regular basis and to formulate proposals for an Appalachian highway program, water resource and forestry development, and education and job training programs, but the president proved unresponsive to the call for a state-federal Appalachian regional commission. Frustration also grew with the ARA and with the slow distribution of federal aid to distressed mountain communities. Not only was the ARA severely underfunded for its task, but fully one-third of the counties in the nation qualified for ARA benefits. Seventy-six percent of Appalachian counties qualified for the program, but the bulk of ARA resources flowed to private businesses located primarily in urban centers outside the region. Rural areas, like most of Appalachia, lacked the existing businesses and business prospects to make them eligible for assistance, and they lacked the professional staff necessary to prepare the overall economic development plans necessary for funding. Furthermore, ARA and other federal programs continued to require local matching funds that seriously depressed rural communities were unable to supply. ARA also provided no funds for education, health care, or other human resource development needs.
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Only West Virginia benefited significantly from ARA resources, and these were utilized primarily in the development of tourism projects. Over half of the ARA funds expended in Appalachia ($79 million) during its four-year existence went to the Mountain State, and much of that was allocated to the massive New River Gorge project designed to create a series of tourism attractions in Fayette and Raleigh counties. The bulk of business loans and grants were funneled to a handful of heavily industrialized valley counties in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Appalachian portions of three states (Maryland, North Carolina, and Ohio) received no public facilities dollars at all, while four other states (Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia) received less than 7 percent of the funds. ARA job training programs were slow to get started, and the few training programs funded in Appalachia were not linked to specific business expansions.
Many of the trainees had to be shipped out of the region to find jobs.
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By 1962 disappointment with the ARA was widespread in the mountains. Harry Caudill wrote that the ARA had been launched with “the most laudable intentions” but had “accomplished little beyond a few small loans for minor business enterprises.”
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The
Louisville Courier-Journal
complained that the agency's efforts in eastern Kentucky were “as useless as oars on an airplane.”
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The annual report of the Eastern Kentucky Regional Planning Commission noted that ARA loans, grants, and training programs were “useful tools” but that these were “far less important” than the agency's “potential function—inadequately used to date—in providing technical assistance and in coordinating federal programs.”
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The Appalachian governors and the CSM continued to lobby the president to create a separate Appalachian regional commission that could coordinate federal programs with the states and could administer supplemental and special federal benefits for regional development. Although the president's attention turned to other domestic and foreign policy concerns in 1962, intellectual and political currents were converging rapidly on a mainstream assault on poverty as part of a new national agenda. Events in the mountains would place Appalachia at the center of that effort.