Proceedings of The National Conference
On Undergraduate Research (NCUR) 2010
University of Montana, Missoula
April 15-17, 2010
A Philosophical and Practical Evaluation of the Arthurdale Business Model
Jaclyn Smith
History Department
Nebraska Wesleyan University
5000 St. Paul Avenue
Lincoln, NE 68504 USA
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Meghan Winchell
Abstract
The New Deal era is known for the presidential administration’s many efforts to improve the quality of life for
everyday Americans through the promotion of Progressive goals. One of the pet projects of Franklin D. Roosevelt
and his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, was to promote rural living in a setting that would maintain employment and
relieve the crowding of the cities. During the 1930s, the best example of this idea in practice was the Arthurdale
model homestead experiment in West Virginia. This community drew on ideas the First Lady had already realized in
a similar enterprise in Hyde Park, New York: the Val-Kill Industries. Neither this business nor the one modeled after
it in Arthurdale experienced much profit. This factor, combined with the government’s failed micromanagement of
the community’s economic interests, administrative inefficiency, and unsuccessful transition to private industrial
investment led to the demise of the experiment. The First Lady received much criticism for these economic failures,
yet more important than an evaluation of these economic indicators of success is the question of whether the
homestead resettlement project met the New Deal’s goals of increasing morale and standard of living. Secondary
materials and primary documentation obtained at the FDR Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York prove that
the Arthurdale experiment fulfilled these “human goals.” Therefore, regardless of the government’s inability to
maintain an isolated, stable economy, the significance of the project at the model community of Arthurdale was its
general fulfillment of the progressive ideals of the New Deal era: the raising of the morale, wages, and standard of
living of a group of rural Americans.
Keywords: Eleanor Roosevelt, New Deal, Arthurdale
1. Body of Paper
The New Deal brought to this country a wide variety of reforms meant to enact idealistic, Progressive goals to
improve the quality of life for Americans. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor especially hoped to
relieve the pressures of the Great Depression on some of the hardest to reach citizens, those of rural America. Even
before FDR won the office of President in 1932 and began the New Deal reform era, he and Mrs. Roosevelt
dreamed of improving rural living standards in order to encourage people to stay out of the cramped cities; there
they would have a better chance at health, happiness and, hopefully, employment. To that end, Eleanor and a group
of friends built a furniture factory called the Val-Kill Industries in Hyde Park, New York in 1925. Mrs. Roosevelt’s
pet project of the New Deal, the homestead experiment at Arthurdale, West Virginia, had similar Progressive goals.1
More important than the hoped-for economic outcome of this resettlement project was the desire to raise the morale
of the populace. This was the case with other New Deal projects, as well, but critics often ignored this purpose of the
program. Eleanor Roosevelt and the administration bore the brunt of much censure for her experiment at Arthurdale
because the project ultimately did not profit while under government administration. The First Lady, for her part,
argued that investments with “human goals” were just as worthy as industrial ones. Indeed, it seems harsh to fault
her for failing to meet the economic expectations for an experimental project when one half of the goals, perhaps the
more essential ones, did mostly come to fruition. Regardless of the government’s inability to maintain an isolated,
stable economy, the significance of the project at the model community of Arthurdale was its general fulfillment of
the progressive ideals of the New Deal era: the raising of the morale, wages, and standards of living of a formerly
downtrodden group of Americans.
In creating the model homestead community of Arthurdale, the government intended to create a higher standard of
living for 200 stranded miners by providing them homes in the countryside and jobs to supplement farm work. As a
result of increasing the living standard, the government would raise the morale of the homesteaders. The idea of
building communities for self-sufficiency was rooted in a “back-to-the-land” ideal.2 This movement had a long
tradition in the United States, from the Jeffersonian vision of the yeoman farmer, to the Homestead Act, to the
Republican goal of land ownership for all in the Reconstruction era. It became increasingly more popular during and
after the 1920s, when urban populations grew at steadily high rates.3 From this history came Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
conviction that “the concentration of the national population in huge cities would be a disaster for America” and his
conclusion that “the Republic’s good health in the twentieth century required an approximately fifty-fifty mixture of
city and country, industry and agriculture.”4 The goals to improve the community’s standard of living through
higher income and better housing, in the countryside and under government instigation, thus, fit well with several
American philosophical traditions: Republican land ownership, the Progressivism that dominated the agendas of
social reformers since the turn of the twentieth century, and the New Deal government’s emphasis on providing jobs
at livable wages in whatever capacity.
At the outset of the project, the stranded mining families of West Virginia seemed ideally suited for the type of
“back-to-the-land” experiment that balanced agriculture, handicrafts, and other industries. West Virginia’s
population had a significant need for relief of some kind. A 1934 map of relief figures for the counties of West
Virginia demonstrated that as many as 84 percent of families in some counties needed relief. Preston County, the
site of Arthurdale, had a relief rate of 38 percent that year.5 Eleanor Roosevelt realized the terrible conditions of the
mining communities in West Virginia. She promoted “the theory of trying to put people to work to help
themselves.”6 Beyond the prospect of improving people’s economic independence, she thought that teaching men
skills other than mining “bolstered their hope.”7 The First Lady and fellow visionaries had good intentions in
founding this social and economic experiment at Arthurdale and reasonable expectations for its success. Bushrod
Grimes, a representative of the University of West Virginia, which helped found the project, claimed that the land
could provide a good living of “one hundred to five hundred dollars per acre” for the homesteaders even without any
factories to provide work and income.8 While the economic realities did not fulfill some of these hopes on the long
term, the experiment did right away begin to raise the community’s standard of living and morale.
Part of this morale boost was an immediate improvement in living arrangements. The First Lady, in particular,
paid great attention to the finer details of creating a model homestead experiment, and this served to increase
homesteaders’ feelings of connectedness with their community. She refused “to subordinate human values to cost
consciousness,” insisting on top-of-the-line materials, refrigerators, indoor plumbing, and other amenities in all the
homes.9 These state-of-the-art homes were not popular with some of the project’s administrators or the general
public, however. With costs of more than $10,000 each, the homesteads received much ridicule, and so did their
planner.10 Roosevelt responded to the criticism by arguing that if the government did not give the homesteaders the
proper means to support a better life, they could not learn to help themselves.11 At any rate, most community
members seemed pleased with the lovely homes the administration provided. Even if they did have to pay more
money to keep up with the pressure of being the government’s “model community,” including rent on their pictureperfect homes and nice clothes to present a good image to many government visitors, they still seemed happy. One
anonymous homesteader wrote, “We had a large crowd of visitors today. They come in cars bearing the license
plates of nearly every state. They ask to see our houses, We are proud to show them.”12 No matter the failings of the
project as a whole experiment, Roosevelt had a boundlessly positive influence on the homesteaders.
Despite these immediately apparent upswings in morale, the visionaries faced debilitating internal and external
criticism. The most significant points of criticism attacked the economic aspects of the experiment. Some
congressmen and taxpayers considered that, contrary to Mrs. Roosevelt’s aims, the project did not help the
homesteaders to help themselves because the community continually relied on government relief work. In fact, the
government tried to place some of the responsibility on private industry, but most of the community’s industrial
attempts in the Depression conditions failed and the government continued to employ most of the residents. One
journalist cast further aspersions on the wisdom of establishing industry in a troubled economy, among
inexperienced former miners. He preemptively declared the project a failure and demanded an accounting of the
costs “not merely to the homesteaders who lent themselves as laboratory subjects but to the general populace who
put up the money.”13 This criticism typified the standard complaints about Progressive reform based on
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governmental relief, but simply focused too much on the project’s economic success rather than its fulfillment of
other ideals.
It is important to realize the reasons why Arthurdale failed to achieve its economic purpose, nonetheless. The first
of a variety of reasons is that administrators could not replicate the project’s model, a small-scale and short-term
business venture, under government control. This model was the Val-Kill Industries, a business that Franklin and
Eleanor Roosevelt—along with her friends Nancy Cook, Marion Dickerman, and Caroline O’Day—had founded in
hopes that giving local farmers additional income through a learned trade would encourage them to stay in rural
communities. The Roosevelts’ hometown of Hyde Park, New York had fairly high unemployment rates, so the ValKill furniture business would give a good idea of how high wages and decent shop conditions might influence
farmers and their sons to stay in rural areas.14 The experimental and idealistic nature of this project mirrored the
future experiment at Arthurdale.
Emily L. Wright detailed the operations of the Val-Kill Industries in a 1978 master’s thesis, but there has been
little further investigation into this topic. Equally, no comparison of this business with the Arthurdale industries
seems to exist. Still, the similar characteristics of the Val-Kill furniture business and Arthurdale’s most successful
industry, the Mountaineer Craftsman’s Cooperative Association, suggest that the failings of the Val-Kill project may
have translated to the one at the model homestead. The first indicator of a struggle at Val-Kill was that the shop
received limited or no profit for its high-end reproduction furniture, even during its best days before the Depression.
Unfortunately, true antiquarians knew the pieces to be inaccurate designs, and were unwilling to pay the relatively
high price for non-period furniture. The primary factor contributing to these high prices were the higher-thanaverage wages the business paid its workers. While paying good wages fulfilled Progressive demands, it raised
prices considerably—to uncompetitive levels—and made the business dependent on owner investment for survival.
While Mrs. Roosevelt provided the funds to sustain the Val-Kill business for awhile, conservative Congressmen
would be less likely to fund unprofitable industries at Arthurdale.
Profit aside, the real question that one should ask is whether the Val-Kill Industries met its goal to raise the
standard of living for local farmers. If the business did not meet this essential aspect on such a small scale, it was
unlikely to work on a much larger one. The shop actually hired mostly foreigners as craftsmen.15 Local young men
obtained jobs that required less expertise, such as finishing. Only around 12-15 local men went through the finishing
shop during its operation.16 Wright reported that the business owners “hoped to develop an apprentice program for
local youth. But in the successful years, they were too busy; and in the later years, there was not enough money to
afford to pay apprentices.”17 Unfortunately, the business was unable to support fully even its regular workers after
the Depression hit. According to local worker Otto Berge,
In 1927 a cabinetmaker, like myself, we were paid fifty dollars a week for forty-four hours. Then when
the Depression got us, one time we were cut down to eight dollars a day, and at one time we were cut
down to three days a week and we made twenty-four dollars a week. But there was no place else to look
for a day’s work. So we were lucky to make twenty-four dollars a week, even if it didn’t meet all our
requirements.18
Even on such a small scale, the handicrafts business proved unprofitable and only partially fulfilled the goal of
employment of local workers and improvement of their standard of living. These problems would also plague the
experiment at Arthurdale, which relied heavily on a handicraft industry like the one at Val-Kill.
Basing the Arthurdale experiment on the goals of the Val-Kill Industries, thus, partly explains the homestead’s
failure as an experiment. Several other factors, relating to both politics and economics, did contribute to
Arthurdale’s problems, however. Many major reviews of the New Deal neglect the issues involved in the
management of individual businesses within the resettlement projects in favor of evaluating the significance of
policy on a grander scale.19 On the other hand, documents and correspondence relating to the First Lady’s
participation in the development of industries at Arthurdale point to several other reasons why the community
struggled. Besides mistakenly trying to translate a small-scale and private venture to the government-managed
arena, the proponents of the Arthurdale experiment tried unsuccessfully to implement wage standards in a micromanaged community when such regulations did not yet prevail throughout the nation. Idealistically, of course,
raising wages was a good idea. Progressive platforms rested on principles of increasing pay and reducing work
hours. In depression conditions, workers often worked fewer days voluntarily, in order to allow others to share the
hours. This cutback of hours was healthy, but the reduction of wages that accompanied it was not. Roosevelt argued
the injustice of this response: “There is absolutely no use in producing anything if you gradually reduce the number
of people able to buy even the cheapest products. The only way to preserve our markets is to pay an adequate
wage.”20 In the minds of ideologues, these arguments in favor of wage standards seemed valid. Unfortunately,
507
businesses willing to invest in Arthurdale would not set higher-than-prevailing wages unless mandated to do so.
Roosevelt’s friend, fellow Arthurdale supporter and financier Bernard Baruch, expressed the now common principle
that a mature economy cannot rely on businesses to set proper wage rates and working hours.21 This responsibility
stayed in the hands of industry, though, after the Supreme Court threw out the National Recovery Administration
and its wage and hour regulations in 1935.
At first, the government tried to raise wage standards in its own contracts, but this caused a false sense of wage
security among the homesteaders and created problems for private industry when it became necessary for it to
overtake the government as chief income provider for the community. From the first, the government employed
homesteaders in the construction of the community and paid high wages in these projects.22 The Arthurdale Works
Progress Administration (WPA) rates were in fact ten cents higher per hour than the area average.23 Administrator
J.O. Walker admonished that “if the Government pays, on force account, a rate in excess of the going rate, the
homesteaders will not accept these other jobs, even in their own cooperatives.”24 This criticism was consistent with
typical condemnations of government-provided work relief. During the New Deal, critics attacked the WPA, for
example, because they “believed that it provided make-work jobs, that it enticed some people to become dependent
on public jobs rather than seeking [sic] employment in the private sector, and that it competed with the private
sector.”25 The dependence on government-provided jobs caused a dilemma in that most of the government work was
only temporary. Given the unreliability of the government’s high wages, the homesteaders would find it difficult to
maintain their high housing costs and other aspects of the high-profile lifestyles the project imposed upon them.
The government eventually had to share the employer role with private industry as its relief programs faced
significant funding cuts. A 1937 Saturday Evening Post article reported that private industry would have to provide
59 percent of the homesteaders’ minimum income, but this did not happen.26 The actual earnings of the families
often did not reach the minimum standard. Furthermore, employment made few gains even with the advent of a new
shirt factory and other businesses.27 The necessary bottom line was that the homesteaders successfully hold jobs and
maintain at least a minimum wage standard, but the community failed to reach these objectives over the long term.
The only way the government could attract business to the community was to offer subsidies, but this propensity
to subsidize lessened those businesses’ sense of investment in and responsibility to the community. One example of
the amount of money the government typically spent on an industry is the $200,000 worth of stock it purchased and
$125,000 it provided for construction costs of the American Cooperatives, Inc. tractor company.28 J.O. Walker
astutely pointed out the reason why the administration found it difficult to recruit new industries: “We have run
across no one who is willing to go [into business] under their ‘own steam,’ and it appears probabl[e] that, in order to
get someone, we may have to do some partial financing.”29 When federal funding for relief projects tightened up as
the country prepared for war, this financing became impossible. As with the wage standards the government had
tried to set, its early precedent of heavily financing investments spoiled the later probability of private companies’
willingness to maintain those high standards on their own.
Despite years of effort to build up private industry in the community, industries failed to relocate in Arthurdale
due to the unfeasible costs of moving to a rural area, administrative red tape that made the process of selecting
industries unnecessarily difficult, and disbelief in the unproved theory of industrial decentralization. Most of the
industries the administrators hoped to attract never materialized.30 Some businesses just did not clear the tough
process through which they had to gain approval, being treated as “bad security risks.”31 Others were put off by the
idea of relocating to a rural area. Even a few prominent New Dealers thought the idea illogical. Rexford Tugwell,
the administrator of the Resettlement Administration, did not fully believe in this premise of the back-to-the-land
movement. He thought that “people go to employment, not employment to people.”32 At the time, the government
did not provide enough incentive for businesses to relocate. According to historian Joseph P. Lash, “It would take
the war (WWII) to show that the government was able, when the will was there, to direct industry to move to where
people were.”33 Without incentive to move industry to rural areas, the Progressive-oriented administration could not
count on outside businesses to uphold the community.
A few other factors explained why the businesses lured to the community did not make money and therefore could
not adequately pay their workers. Economic conditions elsewhere put pressure on the companies to turn better
profits, so they withdrew their operations at Arthurdale to pursue business in more profitable locations. Industries
that did endure, such as the Mountaineer Craftsmen’s Cooperative Association, faced management, marketing, and
efficiency problems throughout their lifetimes due to administrative incompetence. Jeanne S. Rymer noted that the
business “never realized a profit. Numerous attempts from 1935 to 1941 failed to get the operation on a financially
sound basis or to improve efficiency.” Between 1937 and 1940, the crafts shop lost between $19,000 and $25,000
per year, despite gaining a brand new factory building, new equipment, some equipment donated from the Val-Kill
shop, and a new marketing plan. Rymer blamed the fact that this business, like the Val-Kill Industries, did most of
the operation by hand; this increased prices and limited production.34 Community leaders, for their part, considered
508
administration matters to be the most significant reasons for the Craftsmen’s Cooperative struggles. Raymond
Kenny remarked in October 1938, for instance, that the troubled business had to benefit from good administrative
decisions soon or it would probably fail.35 A year later, Kenny was still concerned about poor leadership within the
Farm Security Administration; some of these leaders did not have enough time to devote to the project or just did
not seem to care about it.36 In this case, the government should have left the individual company to private
management in order to avoid inefficiency.
In addition to mismanaging private industries, the government tended to fumble the direction of the Resettlement
Division housed under the Farm Security Administration. Initially, the administrative battle began as an ideological
conflict between Harold Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, and M.L. Wilson, the head of the Subsistence
Homestead Division. Ickes believed in central control, which he thought would produce “less graft and waste.”
Wilson, on the other hand, “believed that central control was un-Democratic.” The Arthurdale project initially
followed the Wilson ideal, but uncontrolled expenditures led to a change to centralized control with local
corporations only serving as “advisory bodies.”37 Even with that change, the administration of the homestead
community was too complex. The organizational structure of the Resettlement Division included local, regional, and
national levels, and this hindered the community’s development because community leaders could not make even
simple decisions in short order.38 In 1937, the government finally reorganized the Resettlement Administration to
clear up problems with communication between Arthurdale and Washington.39 Even after the shift to national
control, however, advisory board members complained of mismanagement.40 The will to succeed could not make up
for poor administration, and this turned out to be one of the major deterrents to the prosperity of Arthurdale.
In helping to create model communities at Arthurdale and elsewhere during the New Deal, Eleanor Roosevelt
attempted to improve the morale and standard of living of a group of former miners by providing them homes in the
countryside and jobs to supplement farm work. She largely succeeded on this front. As Blanche Wiesen Cook
pointed out, “For the people, Arthurdale was marvelous, and they called it ‘utopia’…everything about it worked: the
school and sense of community endured, the residents flourished, and they continued to believe their own
experiences might be, should be, put to future use.”41 Still, in the economic sense the project failed. It relied too
heavily on the unsuccessful Val-Kill model, fell short of maintaining wage standards due to a lack of nationwide
regulation, depended on an administration with often confused roles, and did not attract businesses under their own
investment. Nonetheless, the Arthurdale experiment showed that while a cooperative community could not provide
an economic solution to troubled economic times, it could, rather, give a temporary solution to raise the spirits of an
impoverished group of people. In this respect, it served as a fulfillment of the overall aims of the New Deal.
2. Acknowledgments
The author wishes to express appreciation to the Student/Faculty Collaborative Research Fund at Nebraska
Wesleyan University for its grant to collect primary documentary research for the basis of this project. This research
was performed at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, with the help of the archivists there.
The History Department faculty of Nebraska Wesleyan University helped the author to prepare this piece, in
particular Dr. Meghan K. Winchell, who provided initial assistance with the writing and Dr. Patrick Hayden-Roy,
who advised during the revision process.
3. Endnotes
1. Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume Two: 1933-1938 (New York: Viking, the Penguin Group,
1999), 133-34.
2. Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume II, 133-34.
3. Brian J.L. Berry, America’s Utopian Experiments: Communal Havens from Long-Wave Crises (Hanover, NH:
University Press of New England, 1992), 181-82.
4. Cited in Davis, Kenneth S., Invincible Summer: An Intimate Portrait of the Roosevelts, Based on the
Recollections of Marion Dickerman (New York: Atheneum, 1974), 119.
5. Map included in report by Clarence Pickett, 1934, ER Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Museum and
Library, Hyde Park, New York. Subsequent notes will refer to this document collection as the “ER Papers.”
6. Davis, 127.
509
7. Ibid.
8. Bushrod Grimes to Rexford G. Tugwell, September 20, 1935, ER Papers.
9. Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt’s Private
Papers (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1971), 403-04.
10. ER to J.O. Walker, May 28, 1939, ER Papers.
11. Lash, 401.
12. “Homesteader’s Wife,” July 14, 1935, ER Papers.
13. Gerald Griffin, “Sale of Arthurdale Plots to Homesteaders Aim of FSA,” The Baltimore Sun, August 4, 1939,
ER Papers. Raymond Kenny, who sent the article to Mrs. Roosevelt, added the emphasis.
14. Molly Goodwin’s “Report of a Survey Made of the Unemployment Situation in Hyde Park Township in
Dutchess County, New York State,” discusses Hyde Park’s employment statistics in detail and concludes, “There is
a vital need for the establishment of some permanent institution within the Township which will afford a regular
income.” See the Marion Dickerman Papers, FDR Library, Hyde Park, New York.
15. Mrs. Daniel O’Day, “Copying Old Furniture,” Women’s City Club of New York Quarterly, October 1928,
Marion Dickerman Papers, FDR Library, Hyde Park, New York, 17.
16. Emily L. Wright, “Eleanor Roosevelt and Val-Kill Industries: 1925-1938,” October 1978, TMs, Special
Collection, FDR Library, Hyde Park, New York, 12.
17. Ibid.
18. Thomas F. Soapes, “Interview with Mr. Otto Berge,” September 19, 1977, Eleanor Roosevelt Oral History
Project, FDR Library, Hyde Park, New York, 21-22.
19. An example of this is David M. Kennedy’s monumental history Freedom from Fear: The American People in
Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Kennedy focuses in large part on the
President’s economic policies and how they affected major programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority, Works
Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the National Recovery Administration. The political
activities of the First Lady play a minor role in this work; however, biographies by Blanche Wiesen Cook and
Joseph P. Lash, as well as Roosevelt’s autobiography, devote significantly more discussion to these topics. The
latter works served, particularly, to establish the philosophies driving the creation of the resettlement program within
the Depression-era nation.
20. Eleanor Roosevelt, “The State’s Responsibility for Fair Working Conditions,” Scribner’s Magazine 93 (March
1933): 140, in What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt, ed. Allida M. Black
(Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publications, 1995), 57.
21. Bernard Baruch, Speech before the Special Senate Committee on Unemployment, February 28, 1938, ER
Papers, 7.
22. Jeanne S. Rymer, “Arthurdale, A Social Experiment in the 1930s,” in The Colonial Revival in America, ed.
Alan Axelrod (New York: Norton, 1985), 325.
23. Clarence Pickett to ER, September 22, 1939, ER Papers.
24. J.O. Walker to ER, October 1938, ER Papers. J.O. Walker continued to discuss the wage situation as gradually
the government paid lower wages. In 1940, he wrote that “the amount of funds appropriated to the Farm Security
Administration by Congress for relief is considerably less than the amount appropriated last year.” Therefore, wages
probably would decrease. See J.O. Walker to A.O. Goldstrom, August 17, 1940, ER Papers.
25. Bruce S. Jansson, The Reluctant Welfare State: American Social Welfare Policies—Past, Present, and Future
(Belmont, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2005), 205.
26. “Hush!” The Saturday Evening Post, April 3, 1937, ER Papers.
27. Agenda, Arthurdale Advisory Committee Meeting, November 23, 1937, ER Papers. The shirt factory gained
employees slowly; in November of the year it opened, only 14 Arthurdale residents worked there. Meanwhile, the
first community factory, a vacuum cleaner plant, had closed indefinitely, so that the total number employed in the
community was 166 (of these, 74 worked for the government). At the time, however, the Advisory Board expressed
hope of employing more heads of families in the expanded woodworking shop. See Minutes, Arthurdale Advisory
Board, November 24, 1937, ER Papers.
28. “Tractor Firm Will Locate in Arthurdale”; and Raymond Kenny to ER, August 5, 1938, both in ER Papers.
29. J.O. Walker to ER, October 1938, ER Papers.
30. Some examples of businesses the Arthurdale visionaries hoped to attract were U.S. Steel, a soap factory, a
printing plant, a hosiery factory, a glass plant, a radio manufacturing business, a canning business, a ski shop, and
ultimately the air defense industry. The most successful of all the proposed developments was the Phillips-Jones
shirt-making factory, but this company also struggled after initially boasting of great employment success. See
510
Clarence Pickett to ER, December 31, 1934; Bushrod Grimes to ER, February 19, 1937; L. Wade Coberly to Major
John O. Walker, May 9, 1939; Malvina T. Scheider to Major Walker, July 19, 1938; ER to Major Walker, October
15, 1938; Raymond Kenny to ER, July 2, 1940; Raymond Kenny to Lawrence D. Bell, June 8, 1940; Raymond
Kenny to Harry V. Robinson, April 24, 1940; Clarence Pickett to ER, May 16, 1941; J.O. Walker to A.O.
Goldstrom, August 17, 1940; Press Release, “A Second Industry Moves to Arthurdale,” April 24, 1937; and ER to
Bernard M. Baruch, April 28, 1937, all in the ER Papers.
31. Cook, 149.
32. Lash, 409.
33. Lash, 412-13.
34. Rymer, 335-37. The First Lady also noted that the new factory location did little to improve the business’s
prospects, because the move from the old to the new factory took longer than it should have due to poor
management. See ER to Major Walker, July 5, 1938, ER Papers.
35. Raymond Kenny to ER, October 11, 1938; and Raymond Kenny to ER, October 25, 1938, both in ER Papers.
36. Raymond Kenny to ER, November 27, 1939, ER Papers.
37. Berry, America’s Utopian Experiments, 185.
38. Memorandum on Arthurdale, 1937, ER Papers. This document went so far as to say that while “the
Government should continue to exercise a limited control,” it should not micromanage the Arthurdale Association’s
affairs. The memo stated: “Unless Government does release its detailed control, the Arthurdale Association cannot
possibly succeed,” because the government red tape cost Arthurdale its own money, borrowed at interest from the
government.
39. Raymond Kenny to ER, June 29, 1937, ER Papers. By 1938, Kenny had left his position to work for the Social
Security Administration, but continued to serve on the Arthurdale Advisory Board until 1941.
40. Almost a year after the shift, Raymond Kenny wrote a letter to Mrs. Roosevelt criticizing the lack of action
about moving the woodworking business to an already built new facility, delays in paperwork, a mix-up in financial
statements for the new Arthurdale Inn, and the continued interference of the regional division that discouraged the
homesteaders. See Raymond Kenny to ER, July 1, 1938, ER Papers.
41. Cook, 151-52.
4. Bibliography
1. Berry, Brian J.L. America’s Utopian Experiments: Communal Havens from Long-Wave Crises. Hanover, NH:
University Press of New England, 1992.
2. Boris, Eileen. “Crafts Shop or Sweatshop? The Uses and Abuses of Craftsmanship in Twentieth Century
America.” Journal of Design History 2, no. 2/3 (1989): 175-192. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1315807 (accessed
October 3, 2008).
3. Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume Two: 1933-1938. New York: Viking (the Penguin Group),
1999.
4. Davis, Kenneth S. Invincible Summer: An Intimate Portrait of the Roosevelts, Based on the Recollections of
Marion Dickerman. New York: Atheneum, 1974.
5. Dickerman, Marion, Papers. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York.
6. Jansson, Bruce S. The Reluctant Welfare State: American Social Welfare Policies—Past, Present, and Future.
Belmont, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2005.
7. Kennedy, David M. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999.
8. Lash, Joseph P. Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt’s Private
Papers. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1971.
9. Roosevelt, Eleanor. The Autobiography. London: Hutchinson, 1962.
10. Roosevelt, Eleanor, Papers. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York.
11. Roosevelt, Eleanor. What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt. Edited by
Allida M. Black. Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publications, 1995.
12. Rymer, Jeanne S. “Arthurdale, A Social Experiment in the 1930s.” In The Colonial Revival in America, edited
by Alan Axelrod, 320-340. New York: Norton, 1985.
511
13. Soapes, Thomas F. “Interview with Mr. Otto Berge.” September 19, 1977. Eleanor Roosevelt Oral History
Project. FDR Library, Hyde Park, New York.
14. Wright, Emily L. “Eleanor Roosevelt and Val-Kill Industries: 1925-1938.” October 1978. TMs.
Special Collection, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York.
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