The Americanization of West Virginia: Creating a Modern Industrial State, 1916-1925 - Hardcover

by John C. Hennen (Author)

" Hennen explores West Virginia's integration into America's corporate political economy during and after World War I. Far from being isolated during America's transformation into a world power, West Virginia was squarely in the mainstream. The state's people and natural resources served crucial functions as producers and fuel for the postwar economy. Hennen examines a formative period in West Virginia's modern history that has been largely neglected beyond the traditional focus in the coal indu

Back Jacket

Hennen's interdisciplinary work examines a formative period in West Virginia's modern history that has been largely neglected beyond the traditional focus on the coal industry. Hennen looks at education, reform, and industrial relations in the state in the context of war mobilization, postwar instability, and national economic expansion. The First World War, he says, consolidated the dominant positions of professionals, business people, and political capitalists as arbiters of national values. These leaders emerged from the war determined to make free-market business principles synonymous with patriotic citizenship. Americanization, therefore, refers less to the assimilation of immigrants into the national mainstream than to the attempt to encode values that would guarantee a literate, loyal, and obedient producing class. Far from being isolated during America's transformation into a world power, West Virginia was squarely in the mainstream. The state's people and natural resources were manipulated into serving crucial functions as producers and fuel for the postwar economy. Hennen's study, therefore, is less a study of the power or force of ideas than of the importance of access to the means to transmit ideas.

Author Biography

John C. Hennen earned his doctorate at West Virginia University and is currently a visiting instructor of history at the University of Kentucky.