he had to live on 'taters or somethin' else. Nowadays we
dress better, and live better, but some other feller allers has his
hands in our pockets."

Then it is "good-by" to the old independence that made such characters
manly. Enmeshed in obligations that they cannot meet, they struggle
vainly, brood hopelessly, and lose that dearest of all possessions,
their self-respect. Servility is literal hell to a mountaineer, and when
it is forced upon him he turns into a mean, underhanded, slinking
fellow, easily tempted into crime.

The curse of our invading civilization is that its vanguard is composed
of men who care nothing for the welfare of the people they dispossess. A
northern lumberman admitted to me, with frankness unusual in his class,
that "All we want here is to get the most we can out of this country, as
quick as we can, and then get out." This is all we can expect of those
who exploit raw materials, or of manufactures that employ only cheap
labor. Until we have industries that demand skilled workmen, and until
manual training schools are established in the mountains, we may look
for deterioration, rather than betterment, of those highlanders who
leave their farms.

All who know the mountaineers intimately have observed that the sudden
inroad of commercialism has a bad effect upon them. As President Frost
says, "Ruthless change is knocking at the door of every mountain cabin.
The jackals of civilization have already abused the confidence of many a
highland home. The lumber, coal, and mineral wealth of the mountains is
to be possessed, and the unprincipled vanguard of commercialism can
easily debauch a simple people. The question is whether the mountain
people can be enlightened and guided so that they can have a part in the
development of their own country, or whether they must give place to
foreigners and melt away like so many Indians."

It is easy to say that the fittest will survive. But the fittest for
what? Miss Miles answers: "I have heard it said that civilization, when
it touches the people of the backwoods, acts as a useful precipitant in
thus sending the dregs to the bottom. As a matter of fact, it is only
the shrewder and more determined, not the truly fit, that survive the
struggle. Among these very submerged ones, reduced to dependence on an
alien people, there are thousands who inherit the skill of their
forefathers who fashioned their own locks, musical instruments, and
guns. And these very wom