have lived in the plateau from the beginning. My grandfather's
grandfather, James Caudill, was the first white man to call what is
now Letcher County his home. He built his cabin in 1792. Another
of my forebears was scalped by an Indian raiding party when he
was two years old. The redskins killed his parents, brothers and sis-
ters and left him for dead in the corner of a rail fence a few yards
from their burned cabin. A hunter found him, nursed him back to
health, reared him with his own children and gave him his name.
My grandfather, Henry Caudill, served four years as a lieutenant in
the Confederate Army, was wounded and totally pauperized in the
process. My mother's grandfather fought on the other side, a fact
which caused me to be indoctrinated from both directions. In more
recent times, my father lost an arm in a mining accident. Still later
my only brother was seriously disabled in a similar mishap. Since
1948 I have practiced law in mountain courthouses. Three times I
have been elected to represent my county in the Kentucky Legis-
lature. This personal background is mentioned, pardonably I hope,
as evidence that my narrative is not founded on hasty first impres-
sions.

In the 1960 preferential primary, Senator -- now President --
John F. Kennedy campaigned across West Virginia and saw at first
hand the conditions existing in the coalfields of that state. The spec-
tacle of mass misery and of mass surrender to it appears to have
deeply impressed him, because in the general election campaign he
repeatedly referred to the hunger and depression he had seen there.
West Virginia is not far from the great population centers of the east-
ern seaboard where Mr. Kennedy grew up, and it may be cause for
wonder that this inquisitive and well-educated young man could
have been unaware of the deplorable situation in which the West
Virginia highlander finds himself in the seventh decade of the twen-
tieth century. However, the fact is that a million Americans in the
Southern Appalachians live today in conditions of squalor, ignorance
and ill health which could scarcely be equaled in Europe or Japan or,
perhaps, in parts of mainland Asia. For example, the 1960 census dis-
closed that 19 per cent of the adult population of the Southern
mountain region can neither read nor write. Bell County, Kentucky,
with a total population of 35,336, was found to contain 17,213 citi-

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