Industrialization and Appalachia

Industrialization and Appalachia

The Industrial revolution did not “skip over” Appalachia but the native mountain people did not benefit from the effects of industrialization and were left in a worse situation. The stereotype of the Appalachian people that was formed prior to the industrialization era was that mountain people were noble, savage, independent, proud, rugged, dirty and uneducated. The industrialists to promote economic development and industrialization of Appalachia used this backward image of the Appalachian people. They believed that the native Appalachian people were incapable of developing the Appalachian Mountains natural resources on their own. However in trying to keep up with the modern world during the industrial revolution the people of Appalachia were doomed to their pre-industrial image. Until the era of industrialization Appalachia was a region of small, open-country communities, concentrated in valleys, coves and hollows. Each community of farms was self-sufficient socially and economically. The focus of a self-sufficient farmer was that of survival by working in their own crops and hunting or raising livestock for food. They tended to have large families to help with all the demands of the farm. After the Civil War northerners came into the southern Appalachian Mountains, and many were surprised by what they found. They found a multitude of mineral and timber wealth as well as a romantic beauty of the mountain landscape. Capitalists responded to this discovery and began to industrialize the Appalachian Mountains for their own profit. Capitalists believed that the Appalachian people were too backward to know that they were sitting on an abundance of resources so they manipulated the mountaineers into selling large amounts of land for basically nothing. As Eller wrote in his book Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers, “some sold entire mountains for a mule, horse or rifle”. Industrialization depended first upon the building