Word: hazleton
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...ever gets serious, Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty might be waged all around Hazleton, Pa. (pop. 32,500), which is perched amid deserted coal mines high on Spring Mountain in the heart of depressed and desolate Appalachia. But Hazleton has already fought a valiant anti-poverty war of its own. Moreover, it has done so with a minimum of federal help...
...years, the town lived respectably if not richly from coal mines and textile plants in the area. But after World War II, Hazleton found itself on the skids. One after another, the mines shut down. Between 1946 and 1958, coalmine employment plunged from 14,000 to 1,750; young people began leaving town at the rate of a thousand a year. In Hazleton it became the rule rather than the exception for wives to plod off to work at sewing machines in the textile and garment plants while listless, jobless husbands stayed home to keep house...
Expensive Experience. Desperately, the Hazleton Chamber of Commerce worked to keep the community alive. When a local silk plant announced that it would move to cheaper labor markets in Mississippi, 70 Hazleton businessmen signed mortgages totaling $50,000 to keep the factory in town. Within three years the plant moved South anyway-putting 2,000 people out of work. Refusing to give up, the chamber formed the Hazleton Industrial Development Corporation, raised $650,000 in bonds and contributions its first year, offered to donate $500,000 as a no-strings down payment on a $1,600,000 plant built...
...Hurricane Diane crashed through-flooding and wrecking the few coal mines that remained. It was almost the death blow. Most of the mines never reopened, and 16% of Hazleton's working force was unemployed. But the next year proved to be Hazleton's turning point-for the better...
Goal of the first CAN DO drive was $500,000-a part to be acquired by selling 15-year 3% debenture bonds, the rest from donations. Dessen's group put on heavy pressure, had every single contributor listed daily in the Hazleton Standard-Speaker, and classified the lists so that all lawyers or all employees of one factory were together-making for easy (and occasionally embarrassing) comparisons. To keep the pressure up, Dessen went on the radio every noon to read the names and amounts contributed. Within three weeks CAN DO was well over its quota, with...