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During the Great Depression (about 1929 to 1941), West Virginia suffered economically more than most states. In some counties, more than 80% of people were out of work. Every part of the economy was hurt, and the struggles people faced during this time had a lasting effect on West Virginia's lives, jobs, and views of government assistance.
West Virginia’s main industry, coal, went through a major economic downturn that began in the 1920s, before the nation's Great Depression. Many coal companies shut down, jobs were lost, and mining towns became quiet. During the 1930s, new laws hel...
Desperate for jobs, men from all over the South rushed to Fayette County when they heard about construction of the Hawks Nest Tunnel. It was built between 1930 and 1932 to create hydroelectric power for Union Carbide’s plant in Alloy. Drilled thro...
Bank deposits had dropped from $183 million to $96 million by 1933, and many banks and businesses had closed. Thousands of people had lost their jobs, and 35 of the state’s 55 counties were in debt.To help people keep their homes and farms, West V...
At the start of the Great Depression, more West Virginians started taking up farming again. But by the mid-1930s, many had given up their mountain farms for good because it was too hard to make a living. They moved in droves to towns, cities, and ...
In 1933, West Virginia Democrats, inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt (pictured) and his “New Deal,” took control of the state for the first time in 36 years. Governors H. Guy Kump and later Homer Holt didn’t always agree with Washington, but New De...
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was one of the first New Deal programs created by President Roosevelt. It gave young men jobs working on conservation projects like planting trees, fighting forest fires, and building trails and parks.In West ...
In 1935, President Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to create more jobs. The WPA paid people to work on public projects such as building roads, schools, sewer systems, and parks.Although there were political disagreeme...
New Deal programs also created special communities across the country to help families work their way out of poverty. The first was at Arthurdale (Preston County), a pet project of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Other cooperative communities were b...
West Virginia politics shifted as Democrats took control from Republicans in 1933. Governor William Conley, a Republican, had tried to help suffering families, but state funds were running out.Voters strongly supported Democrats Roosevelt for pres...
During the Great Depression, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) struggled and faced competition from rival unions. Just a dozen years after the Mine Wars had ended, things changed with the New Deal, which gave workers more rights, banned an...
Federal programs during the Great Depression led West Virginia to change how it helped people in need. In 1932, the state created the Department of Public Welfare, and county poor farms began closing after Social Security was introduced in 1936.Th...
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States ramped up industrial production, which soon brought the economic woes of the Great Depression to an end. During the war, West Virginians still made sacrifices but did so now ...