PUBLICATIONS RELATED 1940 Albert G. Weidler Economics of Berea College and Territory

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 18: PUBLICATIONS RELATED – Studies
Series 09: BIOGRAPHY – Visitors
Albert G. Weidler (c. 1882- ?), Berea College Faculty
“Economics of Berea College and Territory 1940”

ALBERT G. WEIDLER Economics of Berea College and Territory 1940

VII 63 Life Work Maintenance, Farm, Grounds. [VII_63_life_work_001-99.jpg]

TAGS: Albert G. Weidler, economics of Berea College, Berea territory, Dean of Labor, taxable base, agricultural income, manufacturing income, coal mining income, unemployment, relief conditions, plane-of-living index, ownership status, economic status of Berea students, increase of rural population, recommendations

ALBERT G. WEIDLER Economics of Berea College and Territory 1940

Weidler appeared first in the 1918-1919 catalog of Berea College as a Latin teacher. In the1919-1920 catalog of Berea College he is shown as teaching Latin and Chemistry. By 1920-21, William J. Hutchins first year as President of the College, Weidler is listed as the Dean of Labor and Professor of Sociology and Latin. In 1924-25 Weidler’s designation changed again, He is listed as the singular instructor of of “Economics.” In 1932 he reflected in his departmental report that there was only one individual teaching nine courses in economics and he was also Dean of Labor (Weidler)!

The courses were staggered on an annual basis but the load was large for the talented faculty and the “Dean of Labor”. By 1931-32 Weidler was even more challenged as the “Economics” courses grew and the department was merged with the department of Business.

While the department was growing, by 1935-36, Weidler was apparently also growing his skill and reputation base. He is listed as holding the following degrees and recognitions: A. B., Westminster; A.M. and Ph.D., Pittsburgh; Th.B., Pittsburgh Theological Seminary; B.D., S.T.M., Western Theological Seminary; and A.M., Harvard .

Weidler continued his service to the college until the end of 1948 when the Economics department had a full staff including Weidler, William Newbolt, Robert Menefee, Dr. Rockwood Chin, and Miss Hazel Lincoln. He appears to have retired at the end of 1948.*

*See: ” A History of the Department of Economics and Business at Berea College 1867-2016″ https://legacy.berea.edu/eco/history-department-economics-business-berea-college-1867-2007/

RESOURCES

See: Faculty and Staff Records at Berea College

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Folder 1: Weidler, A.G., 1919-1961
Folder 2: Weidler, Albert G., 1918-1940
Folder 3: Weidler, A.G., 1940
Folder 4: Weidler, Albert G.
Folder 5: Weidler, Albert G.
Folder 6: Weidler, Josephine Mary

TRANSCRIPTION

[NOTE: The text has been lightly edited for clarity.]

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Presented to General Faculty
November 29, 1940

Albert G. Weidler

BEREA’S PROGRAM IN THE LIGHT OF BASIC ECONOMIC TRENDS AND
NEEDS OF THE BEREA TERRITORY

In a study of Berea’s program in the light of the basic trends and needs of our territory, we might well take as our texts the terse injunctions laid on us by the founders of this great institution.

“Preach the gospel of impartial love.” …………………………………………………………John G. Fee

“Berea can never be rich as long as any one in the mountains is poor.” William G. Frost

“Keep open the path from the cabin to the college”………………………….William J. Hutchins

These give us our purpose, our problem and our program. Fee came to the mountains because only there could he find asylum to preach this gospel of impartial love. Here he found a free land, a free people and a free soil. Until Frost came, Berea was only in the mountains. Though the mountain people had stood, protectors to the Berea of Fee and his early associates, so that she was free to live and flourish and preach her doctrines, until Frost came, Berea was only in the mountains; but Frost made Berea of the mountains by surveying and defining the section, and by organizing an extension program through which he made the mountain people aware of Berea and its availability and brought thousands of them as students to the institution. Berea became part and parcel of the mountains by sharing the deprivations, hardships and isolation which a mountain environment brings to those who stay in its fastnesses. Berea was definitely accepted by the mountain people as a part of them. I was told recently by a class-mate of the author of the Day Law that Day went to the Law School of the University of Kentucky with the avowed intention of later being able to frame a law that would exclude the Negroes and preserve Berea as an institution exclusively for the mountain people. It was interesting to learn that the law which resulted in the abolition of co-education of the races in Kentucky was the product of a consuming purpose of a mountain man who had no particular race prejudice, but who hungered for a chance for his own people. Because Berea was not only in the mountains but of them, it was able to out-live most of the schools founded at the same time or later in this area. None of its buildings were dynamited or burned by the mountain people as were others of its contemporaries. (The only destruction of property it suffered was that which occurred during the ravages of the war between the states at the time when violent mobs from outside the mountains had forced its founders into exile.) Berea so closely identified itself with this section that it has rightly become nationally and internationally known as the Mountain College.

A further policy was undertaken by Frost and carried forward by Hutchins: Berea was to be more completely and definitely organized to serve the men and women of the mountains. It was to be exclusively for the mountains, as well as in and of them: In support of this above-mentioned policy, President William J. Hutchins faithfully carried out the pledge made at his inauguration “to keep the path open from the cabin to the college.” Out-of-territory students were put on a definitely limited quota and were welcomed in proportion to the worthwhile contribution they could make.

It is important that we realize that our territory is southern as well as mountain. Many mistakenly believe Berea to be a Northern institution. Its founder, a southerner, a native-born Kentuckian, came back from a

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northern college to serve his own people. He made two attempts outside the mountains but was driven out, his work appeared a failure, until he made the third and successful attempt under the protection of the Berea “men of standing.” By force of circumstances, he established a southern college in the most needy part of the most poverty-stricken section of his country. Both before and after the Civil War, the South has been treated as a colonial dependency during the periods when the United States was developing into the richest nation in the world. The United States did not need to conquer colonial peoples outside its territory for it had at hand, in the South, one of the richest regions in the world with a subjected (sic) race to perform the arduous labor of providing the great raw material for an expanding industrial civilization. At the close of the Civil War, Fee and his associates, who had fought slavery and had helped to educate the sons and daughters of slaves, thought that the free soil of northern college to serve his own people. He made two attempts outside the mountains but was driven out, his work appeared a failure, until he made the third and successful attempt under the protection of the Berea on of standing.” By force of circumstances, he established a southern college in the most needy part of the most poverty-stricken section of his country. Both before and after the Civil War, the South has been treated as a colonial dependency during the periods when the United States was developing into the richest nation in the world. The United States did not need to conquer colonial peoples outside its territory for it had at hand, in the South, one of the richest regions in the world with a subjected race to perform the arduous labor of providing the great raw material for an expanding industrial civilization. At the close of the Civil War, Fee and his associates, who had fought slavery and had helped to educate the sons and daughters of slaves, thought that the free soil of Berea had encompassed the South. Frost and his generation realized that the mountain area and its people had in turn been economically chained to an economy which judged all labor by the standards of slave labor.

In the early nineties, the free lands of the West had been preempted by the people of the northeastern mountains who were forced out of their homes by poverty. They had a frontier at hand to settle. The southern mountaineer was left stranded in his poverty, for by the time most of the coal and timber land had been bought up by northern capital for a pittance, the free lands of the West had been taken. As the industrial North developed, the southern people, and with them the southern mountains, became poorer and poorer until in 1938 the President of the United States was so concerned about the future of this region and its effect upon the nation as a whole that, in an open letter to the people, he called the South the nation’s Number One Economic Problem. His report calls attention to this section of “immense wealth” whose people as a whole are the poorest in the country. Every citizen should be cognizant of the challenging facts brought out in the “Report on the Economic Conditions of the South” which was made to President Roosevelt and the conclusions of which he endorsed.

This epoch-making report is valuable for our study in that it gives the setting of our particular problem. It summarizes the important studies of Odum, Goodrich, Woofter and others. The difficulty these studies present for us is that they cover the whole South or smaller portion which do not coincide with our particular area. If I had realized the dearth of available information on this section, I would not have undertaken this study in so short a time. In the time at my disposal I have attempted, where possible, to tabulate the pertinent information for each of the 230 mountain counties which we have selected as our Berea territory. This research necessarily has had to be incomplete so that I might be free to summarize a few findings for this evening’s discussion. I have not had time to make proper foot-notes and references which further time might make possible. The tabulations are complete with reference to population, farm incomes, manufacturing wages, and unemployment. There is partial information for planes-of-living index, relief, ownership status, and the tax basis.

Taxable Base

In 1935 the assessed value of taxable property in the South averaged only $463 per person while in the North and East it was $1,370, almost three times as much. In 1928, in the 84 counties of the Southwest and the Southeast Cumberland Plateaux, including the mountain counties in West Virginia,

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Kentucky and Tennessee, the average number of income tax returns per 1,000 population was only 10, whereas it was 33 for the United States as a whole. In 1930, the average value of farm dwellings was $562 with $1,126 for the United States as a whole and $2,212 for Iowa. In every southern state except Kentucky 59% of all revenue has to be raised by sales taxes, the incidence of which falls most heavily on the poor, in and out of our territory. In the brief period in which Kentucky had a sales tax, I estimated that the poorer families paid yearly on the necessities of life an extra amount sufficient to provide a quart of milk daily for one child per family. I am proud that Kentucky was the last state in the Union to put on a sales tax and the first to repeal it. Efforts to increase revenue by spreading the tax burden more fairly have been impeded by vigorous opposition of outside financial interests which control the capital of our region. I do not have available tax assessments for our counties by which it would be possible to compare them with each other. The tax base of most of those, especially those in Kentucky, is too meager to enable the counties to collect enough taxes to support the ordinary functions of government, to say nothing of the support of schools. In Kentucky there is a very ugly term not used, to my knowledge, elsewhere to designate a county which has to accept help from the rest of the state to support those necessary functions. That term is “pauper” county.

It has been my privilege to make a first-hand survey of one of the so-called “pauper” counties, the one having the smallest amount of taxable property in Kentucky. Nothing in my experience has ever illustrated better the truth of the Biblical proverb, “The destruction of the poor is their poverty.” Outside capital has drained off the natural resources of our region to enrich more favored individuals and sections, paying no taxes on timber cut, coal or clay mined, or crude oil pumped out. A sample of two Kentucky mountain counties, Magoffin and Morgan, by Dodson in 1935, showed that the taxable wealth of those counties, because of the exhaustion of coal, gas, and oil, was only one-fifth as much as it had been fifteen years earlier, in 1920.

Agricultural Income

Our territory comprises what has been called the “super-rural” section of the Southern Appalachians. Of the 730 counties in the eight southeastern states which include the mountain area, Berea has chosen the 230 most needy, which predominate both in population and amount of land area involved. While there has been an increase in manufacturing since 1920, the problem is still essentially a rural one. The vast majority of the 6,020,495 people of this area must depend upon the soil for subsistence. From the 1930 census reports, which give us the gross annual income and the number of rural inhabitants for each county, we can get the gross annual income per farm inhabitant. For 1929, the most “prosperous” year for the United States as a whole, this was $528, and for the South $186. 182 of our 230 counties had less then this average for the South and 141 (over 60%) had incomes less than $150, while in the whole United States there were only 380 counties with incomes less than $150; 373 of these 330 were in the South, and only 7 were outside the Southern area. 49 had less than $100, as contrasted with 64 in the South and 52 in the entire Southern Appalachian region. 10 had incomes less than $80 and one (McCreary, Kentucky) had only $62, the lowest in the United States. The other nine in ascending order are Martin, (Ky.), White (Ga.), Lumpkin (Ga.), Letcher (Ky.), Breathitt (Ky.), Lee (Ky.), Bell (Ky.), Dickenson (Va.), and Buchanan (Va.). It is significant that all of the

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counties having coal mines had an agricultural income less than $300. In only ten counties were these incomes over $300, one in Kentucky (Bath, only a portion of which is in our territory), 8 in Virginia and one in West Virginia (Jefferson). Only one (Loudoun, Virginia, $535) exceeds the average for the United States. As I was pondering on this in my office, between interviews with students, trying to decide whether or not to recommend the exclusion of this county from our territory because of its relatively “high” (?) income from agriculture, who should be ushered in but the only student who has come from that county in the last ten years! He is a Foundation School student 29 years of age who entered the seventh grade last year on the half-day plan and was asking advice as to how he could continue this year as a whole-day student.

All of the studies agree that large portions of our area do not offer a sufficiently large agricultural basis for even a subsistence standard of living. An unpublished study by Woofter of the University of North Carolina lists 212 of what he terms “submarginal” counties in the Southeast, comprising almost one-third of the total acreage of the region. The value margin he selected was $22.50 per acre of land with buildings in 1930. The use margin was 30 per cent of the total area of the county in farms. Examination of this list shows 42 counties in the Berea territory, Alabama 4, Georgia 8, North Carolina 4, Kentucky 16, and Tennessee 10. All but one of these (Fayette, Alabama, $153) had an average income of less than $150. 22 had less than $100. I quote briefly from Dr. Woofter’s comment on the entire number of 212 counties: “The land, including about 30 percent of the total acreage in the South, is too vast a tract to retire by government purchase. A picture of the extent of those poor counties is given by the fact that the total land area includes over 75 million acres, of which over 33 million were in farms and 12 million in crops.”

Manufacturing Income

All but two counties (Rabun, Georgia and Elliott, Kentucky) are listed as having manufacturing establishments in 1929. The average wages are computed on the average number of annual wage earners and in general must be considered a family income rather than the individual inhabitant income as in the preceding study of the agricultural workers. To make a fair comparison we should divide this average by at least five to include wife and three children for each worker. 113 counties (almost one-half) averaged less than $750 as compared with 141 counties (60%) with less than $150 gross agricultural income.

14 counties had less than $500 as compared with:
49 counties with less than $100 agricultural income.

4 counties had less than $400 manufacturing income compared with:
10 counties with less than $80 agricultural income.

The lowest average was 142 for Walker, Alabama, an equivalent of $28.40 to contrast with the lowest agricultural income of $62 for McCreary, Kentucky, the lowest in the United States. The other three counties having the lowest manufacturing income in ascending order are: Floyd, Kentucky; Lumpkin, Georgia; and Grainger, Tennessee; all three listed by Woofter as sub-marginal. The only duplicate county in the four lowest manufacturing and the ten lowest agricultural counties is Lumpkin, Georgia, ranking fourth lowest in agricultural and third lowest in industrial with an agricultural

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average income of $69 and an industrial average family income of $324 or an equivalent of $65 individual income. 142 of these counties have an average lower than $865.41 which is the average industrial income of the entire South.

Later we plan to make a study of the value added by manufacturing compared with the average wages paid in each county in order to ascertain the degree of exploitation of the wage earners.

Coal Mining Income

A United States government study released only recently gives us the information concerning wages of coal miners by counties in the depression year of 1935. Sixty-one of our Berea territory counties are listed in this study. The computed annual income per miner ranged from $198 (equivalent of $39.50 per member of family) in Morgan, Tennessee, with 760 miners, to $1,061 (equivalent of $212.20) in Webster, West Virginia, with 1,547 miners.

33 counties (over half) had average incomes less than $750.
6 counties had average incomes less than $500.

In ascending order these are: Morgan, Tennessee $198; Boyd, Kentucky $381; Breathitt, Kentucky $426; Jackson, Kentucky $480; Marion, Alabama $497; and Walker, Alabama $499. Three of these, Morgan, Jackson and Marion, are sub-marginal agricultural counties. We have another duplication in poverty in Breathitt, which ranks third lowest in mining and sixth in agriculture, although it ranks relatively high in manufacturing (#227) having $1,615. Here again, a study of these counties is planned to determine the degree of exploitation based upon percentage of wages on total value of coal mined.

Unemployment

The voluntary census of unemployment in 1937 enables us to compare our territory as a whole with the rest of the United States and to compare county with county in the territory. The percentages as we have calculated them are based on the population census of 1930. Out of a population of 6,020,495 people, in our territory, 546,772 adults volunteered the information that they were wholly or partly unemployed. This was $9.08% as compared with 8.17% for the whole United States. For the first time in our history, unemployment in rural areas exceeded that in urban areas. In our particular Berea territory, unemployment was 11% higher than in the rest of the country. Sample surveys by government officials show that this voluntary census included 72% of the total number of wholly unemployed and 57% of the partly employed who needed full-time work. We can rest assured that a sample study made in our territory would show that this voluntary census represented a still smaller proportion of unemployed because of the extreme independence of our people and their reluctance to give information or to be known as “in want.” Those minimum figures range from 2.2% in Frederick, Virginia, to 26.6% in Leslie, Kentucky. 138 counties have averages higher than the national average. Eight counties have 20% or more unemployed: Leslie, 26.6%; Owsley, 24.7%; Breathitt, 22.5%; Magoffin, 22.1%; Jackson, 22%; Menifee, 21%; (these all in Kentucky) and Cumberland, Tennessee, 20%; and Lee, Kentucky, 20%. Six of these are sub-marginal agricultural counties. (Exceptions, Breathitt and Magoffin.) Only three of the 42 Berea area sub-marginal counties had averages lower than the national average of unemployment.

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Relief Conditions

In the limited time at my disposal, my work in the Berea, University of Kentucky, and Cincinnati libraries netted me relief statistics of only 48 (or about 20%) of our counties. Since these have been gathered from three different sample studies, and represent agricultural, industrial and mining areas, I consider them fairly representative of relief conditions. With the exception of those on C.W.A. [Civil Works Administration] work projects, the percentages represent relief cases for the two full years of 1933 and 1934 based on the population of the 1930 census. The records of the Emergency Relief Administration show 229,110 on relief rolls in our 230 counties at the close of 1934, about one-fourth of all the relief cases in the 3,071 counties of the United States. The records show that our area had 21.8% of its population on relief as compared with 11.6% for the whole United States. Six of the 48 counties of our study had over half of the population on relief; Wayne, West Virginia 59%; Jackson, Kentucky 54.2%; Lincoln, West Virginia 53.4%; Martin, Kentucky 52.8%; Leslie, Kentucky 51.6%; and Magoffin, Kentucky 51.5%. Only three other counties with as high averages were found in the whole United States. Of the 29 counties in the United States that had more than 36% of their population on relief in 1933 and 1934, 13 counties are in our area. The seven counties additional to those just mentioned are Clay 48.7%; Breathitt 45.1%; Wolf 39.3%; Owsley 37.6%; Morgan 36.9%; Whitley 36.2%; all of Kentucky, and Randolph 36.0% in West Virginia. 16 of the 48, or one-third, had over one third of the population on relief. The three additional counties are Grundy, Tennessee 35.7%; Floyd, Kentucky 33.8%; and Johnson, Kentucky 33.4%. Eleven of these sixteen counties are sub-marginal.

Plane-of-Living Index

One of the most valuable indices is the plane-of-living index, made up of a composite of federal income returns, number of telephones and number of radios during the prosperous year of 1929. At present we have this index for 46 of our counties.

30 counties are below 25
28 counties are below 20
23 counties are below 15
11 counties are below 10
5 counties are below 5

Of these five lowest, Leslie 2, Martin 2, Jackson 3, Clay 4, and Wolf 4, all are in Kentucky and all are sub-marginal. The six additional, making the eleven below ten, are: Breathitt, Kentucky 6; Magoffin, Kentucky 7; Owsley Kentucky 7; Dickenson, Virginia 7; Morgan, Kentucky 8; and Lee, Virginia, 9. In a recent study (1940) of 187 Appalachian counties of our territory, A. R. Mangus finds an average plane-of-living index of only thirty. We agree with the comment of Goodrich, “It is in the worst agricultural regions that the measure of distress during depression most often picks out precisely the same counties as the measures of living levels during prosperity. Here, then, there is the strongest presumption that the analysis points to areas marked either for ‘permanent poverty’ or for a drastic reduction of population.”

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Ownership Status

In a sample survey of ownership of property in 1930 in “Six Rural Problem Areas of the United States with High Relief Rates” in 1934 by Beck and Foster, nine of our Berea counties are included; three in Kentucky, Jackson, Knox, and Pike; two in North Carolina, Avery and Jackson; one in Virginia, Russell; two in West Virginia, Webster and Wyoming. We have made a comparison of these with our own records of students coming to Berea. For farm owners, the percentages are, for the South as a whole, 38.1%; families on relief in 1934, 26.4%; the whole mountain area, 35.3% Berea students in 1930, 64.39% and in 1940, 50.22%.

Farm tenants 12.1% and farm croppers 3.3% or 15.4% for all renters in the South. 1934 relief families farm tenants 9.7% and farm croppers 23.3% or 33% of all renters; for whole mountain area farm tenants 10.4% and farm croppers 3.5% and all renters 13.9%. For Berea students in 1930, 11.48% and in 1940, 17.98%. All non-farm for South, 46.5%, 1934 relief families, 40.6%, whole mountain area 40.2%, Berea students, 24.3%, in 1930, and 31.80% in 1940.

These show quite definitely that Berea has continued to serve its people in that, in this ten year period of depression and relief, we have served a decreasing percentage of farm-owner families and an ever increasing proportion of farm-renter families, as also an increased proportion of non-farm people.

Economic Status of Berea Students

During this ten year period when the lower economic status of the homes of our students has changed from a low poverty to a still lower one, Berea was able to find opportunities for the means of self-support for an ever increasing number. The number of self-supporting students has increased steadily from 1930 to 1940. At the beginning of the period our whole student body earned 65% of the total school expenses, while in the years in which the depression was at its worst, the percentage earned increased to 74%, 87%, 91% (peak in 1937), 88% in 1838 and 85% in 1939 and 1940. These percentages include the payments for N Y.A. [National Youth Administration] work.

Then, too, a study of the average family income of the N.Y.A. students during this period also shows that we are serving students from extremely low income groups. The College N.Y.A. parent annual income of entire families shows medians as follows:

1937-38…………………………$451 – $500 (13 out of 84)
1938-39…………………………..451 – 500 (14 out of 122)
1939-40…………………………..451 – 500 (10 out of 107)
(To Date) 1940-41……………451 – 500 (2 out of 87)

The Secondary N.Y.A. was still lower:

Median
1938-39…………..$151 – $200 (5 out of 57)
1939-40…………… 201 – 250 (4 out of 60)
1940-41…………… 201 – 250 (7 out of 37)

Mode
1938-39………….$ 51 – $100 (23 out of 57)
1939-40…………….151 – 200 (7 out of 60)
1940-41……………..201 – 250 (7 out of 37) (To date)

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In order to see whether or not we have been drawing students from the poorest counties, we have selected sixty with the poorest indices and compared the attendance from these counties for the past eleven years. The criteria for this selection were Plane-of-Living index 26 or below; Unemployment in 1937, 25% or more; and Relief in 1933-34 of 12.5% or more. All of those sixty counties were in one or more of these categories. Seventeen qualified in all three criteria, twelve being in Kentucky. The total is made up of Alabama 6, Georgia 1, Kentucky 29, North Carolina 5, Tennessee 9, Virginia 4, West Virginia 6. Those sixty include 25 sub-marginal counties. Our study showed that, with few exceptions, we have been getting students from those low income counties.

Increase of Rural Population, the Most Significant Trend

Preliminary census returns for 1940 summarize very dramatically a most significant trend in our history and one which affects our territory vitally. Though the farm population had continued to decline in the twenty years preceding 1930, it has increased by two million since then. The Department of Agriculture points out that this reversal of trend means “a growing pressure of population on agricultural income,” that “normal requirements in farm production for both domestic and foreign outlets can now be met by about three and one-half million fewer farm people than there are today.” All the studios of our area seem to indicate that a large proportion of this increase has been in our area. The study of the 187 counties of the Appalachian area by Mangus showed an increase of population of 18% from 1930-1935, the nation as a whole increasing only 4.5% in the same period. While the population of the country as a whole increased 7% during the last ten years, the southern states of our area increased as follows: North Carolina 12.4%, Tennessee 11.3%, Virginia 10%, West Virginia 9.9%, South Carolina 9.6%, Kentucky 8.6%, Georgia 7.3%, Alabama 7.0%. All but the last are above the national increase. It is estimated that at least one and a half million of this increase is in the rural non-farm group. Although the rate of increase has decreased somewhat, the migration to the cities has practically stopped, and the unemployed of the city have returned to the poorest farm areas seeking a form of subsistence farming. The large increase has come in our area because it is the poorest land available, since poor land is the cheapest place where stranded people can live. Even with a still lower rate of increase in the next fifteen years, a conservative estimate predicts the coming into the labor market of nine million new workers who are babes today. In fifteen years this will practically double the number of unemployed. Since the majority of those babes are growing up in farm and village homes, it is futile to expect any great relief for the city unemployed through a back-to-the-farm movement. If there is to be any relief for the present over-population of the rural sections, there must be the opposite trend, which seems quite unlikely. This presents a threatening problem which must be faced within the next ten yours, when most of the increase will come. There seems little hope for the increase of rural industries. The trend is decidedly the other way. Even in the prosperous period of ten years before 1929, the number of bituminous coal mines decreased from 8,300 to 5,600 in spite of an increase in total production. In the same period, wage earners in industry decreased by almost 100,000. There is a similar trend in iron, lead, zinc, and copper mining as well as in oil. It is unlikely that even a business recovery, should it come, would alleviate the situation for any large proportion of the population of our area.

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Recommendations

We have seen how well Berea has succeeded during the ten years which this study covers in keeping open “the path from the cabin to the college.” How long can we continue to keep it open?

Within the next ten or fifteen years, we shall be faced with a grave population problem which, it seems, will be impossible for us to solve, alone. We must train many of our people in the principles and the experience of economic independence based on self-help, since, whether they desire to do so or not, the majority will be forced to stay in this region. The mountain problem can be solved only by the mountain people. Berea must not only be in, of, and for the mountains, but it must be fostered by the mountains.

To this end, I believe that we must strive to educate more of our mountain people that they may nurture the institution which the founders coveted for them. The following suggestions are made with that in mind.

Continue cooperative survey studies of cur territory, especially during the next few years, by the teaching departments, each in its own field.
Reduce the cut-of-territory quota for college students at least to 5%, one per cent each year beginning with the school year of 1941-42.
Delimit our territory by dropping the more prosperous counties, as our surveys indicate, and concentrate on the fewer and more needy ones.
Concentrate on the improvement of our present curriculum without adding additional professional or vocational departments.
Study possible increase of the student body without further unbalancing the budget, by more efficient use of teaching force and curriculum.
Do a reasonable amount of true extension work to find the future leaders now in the more needy sections as indicated by our co-operative studies.

I believe we must continue this year’s study indefinitely if we are to make our contribution to the solution of a pressing problem the like of which no previous generation in our country has faced.