Down Mountains of Georgia. There
is another letter too. "Johnny's captain writ this one." She knows them
apart even though she does not know A from B. "Johnny's captain has writ
moughty pretty about our boy." So well does the old mother know the
content of the letters she is ready to prompt if the visitor omits so
much as a single word in the reading. And when Johnny came home, after
his first months of service were ended, he was hailed as a conquering
hero by family and neighbors alike. The mother was proudest of all.
"Look at this-here contrapshun." From the well-ordered case in the boy's
trunk she brought out a toothbrush. "He's larnt to scrub his teeth with
this-here bresh and"--she added with unconcealed satisfaction--"he don't
dip no more. 'Pon my honor he's about wheedled me into the notion of
givin' up snuff. But when a body's old and drinlin' like I'm getting to
be dipping is a powerful comforting pastime."

The mountain boy's older brothers and father too have come to understand
co-operation. They can work with others. They know the meaning of WPA
folklore. When the boss calls out jovially, "Come and grab it, boys!"
they, who have never heretofore worked by the clock, know dinner time is
up and they must start back to work. When the head of the work crew
calls out "Hold! Hold! Hold!" they know a fuse of dynamite is about to
be lighted to blast the rock from the mountain side and they hurry to
safety. "Dynamite is powerful destructuous!" one tells the other, and
they remain at safe distance until again the boss of the crew calls out
"All right!" and they are back with pick and shovel.

The mountaineer has become a good steel worker, a dairyman in the
foothills, a good mill hand.

The old folk, however, still cling to the old order of things. Once
there was an old schoolmaster in the southern mountains who refused to
give up teaching from the McGuffey Readers despite the fact that
legislation had ruled out the old familiar classics. So persistent was
he in his decision it eventually brought on a heart attack which caused
his death.

Men of the hills have been quite baffled by CIO and other union cards.
Young men first joining the CIO were heard to boast, "We can have
anything we want. The CIO is going to buy me and my woman and the kids a
nice, fine, pretty home. Pay all our bills if we get sick."

Only a few short years ago in a coal camp in West Virginia a mountain
man, who was then working at public wor