Prior to this, local agencies such as the Council of Social Agencies and the County Welfare Board strived for many years to improve the condition of life in Scott’s Run. It was a heavy burden for the county because there was little money to share. Two Christian groups, The Bible School Movement and the Settlement House movement, used trained lay workers and volunteers to teach “Christianity to the ‘religiously needy’, but gave primary attention to the children. Most of the workers were young women who followed this avenue to leadership roles unavailable to them within the conventional structure of the church.” The Scott’s Run Settlement house was established by the Woman’s Home Missionary Society of Wesley Methodist Church. In 1922, this group began a Bible
school for the children of the area and a Sunday school. Gradually, the Settlement house began to offer courses in cooking, motherhood and life skills. In 1927, the permanent building was erected and continues to this day to offer the community services such as a food pantry and community programs. In the word of Lena Brookover Barker, in the autumn of 1938 she writes: The story of Scott’s Run Settlement House is like a romance of high adventure to those of us who worked at it from its beginning until its dedication. . . .I will now speak a few words about Scott’s Run. From around 1916 to 1922 the population of that coal field was estimated from six to nine thousand persons with very little religious instruction of any kind. In this article, I am only dealing with our own work. After the close of the World War many of the miners were out of work. There was much sickness, poverty and wickedness. Many important people from over the United States had visited it, as had also correspondents from the large daily newspapers and had written articles concerning the condition existing there until Scott’s Run was known all over the United States for its wickedness and lawlessness. I do not feel I am competent to judge whether they were right or wrong, but do know that they failed to mention the many good people that were there. Also included in the population were many of own people and people from nearly every country in Europe. Also, Mexicans and quite a large Negro population. But the Women’s Home Missionary Society felt the need was great and were determined to start some kind of missionary work. Mr. Ronald Lewis supports Ms. Barker’s description of the people living in Scott’s Run in his description of the area. “The 1920 manuscript census identified the following foreign-born nationalities among the adult (voting age) residents of Scott’s Run: Austrian, Bohemian, Canadian, Croatian, English, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Irish, Lithuanian, Polish, Rumanian, Russian, Scottish, Serbian, Slovak, Ukrainian and Welsh. Ninety-three percent of these immigrants were from Southern to Eastern Europe, and approximately 60 percent of Scott’s Run’s population was foreign born, with native whites and blacks divided about equally for the remaining 40 percent.” My family was Greek and was part of this group that Mr. Lewis speaks about. My grandparents owned and operated a pool hall and tobacco store. My grandfather was a union organizer and was very active in the attempt to improve the lives of out of work coal miners in Scott’s Run, as can be seen in the following photographs. My grandfathwer changed his Greek name to Morris while fighting in World War I. My father was one of eight children and you can see four of his older siblings in these photos. Mr. Ronald Lewis in his article about Scott’s Run summarized the decline of the area in this statement:
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by Toni Morris Coal companies and speculators began to accumulate mineral rights on Scott’s Run in the late nineteenth century, but the transition from agricultural to industrial economy did not make any significant headway until World War I stimulated the demand for coal to fuel the national war machine. Monongalia County produced a mere 57,000 tons of coal in 1899 and only 400,000 tons in 1914, but by 1921, tonnage soared to nearly 4.4 million. Most of this expansion is attributable to the development of Scott’s Run where, during the peak in the mid-1920’s, coal companies owned seventyfive percent of the taxable acres, and between thirty-six and forty-two mines were shipping coal. The coal boom beginning during World War I and continuing into the early 1920’s, was the first and last high mark for the industry on Scott’s Run. Amanda Penix, of Arthurdale Heritage, Inc. writes, “The economic downfall of the 1930’s caused many of the coal mines in Scott’s Run, and throughout Appalachia, to close or to operate sporadically. Coal miners, like the millions of unemployed Americans during the Great Depression, struggled to provide food and shelter for their families. It was at this time in Scott’s Run history that it became the poster child of American poverty.” A writer for the Atlantic Monthly declared that Scott’s Run was “the damndest cesspool of human misery I have ever seen in America.” According to writer Ronald Lewis, “Scott’s Run received so much attention because it was far more accessible to the outside photographers, reporters, social workers and government officials who aimed the media spotlight into this particular corner of the coalfields.” Amanda Griffith Penix from The Arthurdale Heritage, Inc, states that Lorena Hickok, an Associated Press reporter, wrote that Scott’s Run was the worst place she had ever seen with housing “most Americans would not have considered fit for pigs.” In 1933, there were tours that came to north central West Virginia to tour and inspect the effects of the Depression on the Appalachian coalfields. Hickok was a good friend to First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt traveled with Ms. Hickok, social worker Alice Davis and Clarence Pickett, the executive secretary of the American Friends Service Committee. This group, a Quaker organization had been in Scott’s Run since 1931 to provide food, clothing and work skills to miners and their families.