dragging behind the rest of America, it -- and the rest of the South-
ern Appalachians -- must be rescued while there is yet time.

In the spring of 1960 I was invited to serve as commencement
speaker at an eighth-grade graduation in a coal camp school. The
seven graduates received their diplomas in the dilapidated two-room
building which had sheltered two generations of their forebears. A
shower sent a little torrent of water through the ancient roof onto
one of the scarred desks. The worn windows rattled in their frames
and the paper decorations which had been prepared by the seventh-
graders fluttered in drafts admitted by the long-unpainted walls. Out-
side, the grassless playground lay in the shadow of an immense slate
dump and was fringed by a cluster of ramshackle houses. One of the
graduates had been orphaned by a mining accident, and the father of
another wheezed and gasped with silicosis. The fathers of three
others were jobless.

The little ceremony was opened with the singing of " America the
Beautiful," our most stirring patriotic hymn. The irony of the words,
sung so lustily in such a setting, inspired the writing of this book. Per-
haps it may help a little to bring the sad reality and the splendid
dream a little closer together, for my friends, my kinsmen, my fel-
low mountaineers.

-xiii-