This is the true story of Arthurdale, West Virginia, a town created as a "pet project" of the Roosevelts. Designed to be (in the words of Eleanor Roosevelt) "a human experiment station", she was to create a "New American" citizen who would embrace a collectivist form of life. This book tells the story of what happened to the people resettled in Arthurdale and how the policies implemented there shaped America as we know it. Arthurdale was the foundation upon which modern America was built.
Many books have examined the larger picture. But somehow, looking at the details of this smaller picture paints an even more devastating picture for the status of the New Deal. Arthurdale shows the massive financial disaster that government created and how it ended in destroyed lives and ruined economic prospects for an entire region. You wonder what went wrong in West Virginia? Here is the untold story.
C.J. Maloney has more than a quarter century of experience in the financial industry. The opinions expressed here are those of the author alone and not any of his employers, future, past nor present. He is the author of Back to the Land: Arthurdale, FDR’s New Deal and the Costs of Economic Planning (Wiley, 2011) and is currently working on a book regarding the origins of the Federal Reserve System. He may be reached at cjmaloney69@gmail.com
