Arthurdale’s New Deal experiment, and the debate over socialism

ARTHURDALE, W.Va. — The road into this quiet Preston County community gives little warning that it was once the setting for one of the New Deal’s most ambitious — and most debated — experiments.

Ninety-three years ago, Arthurdale became the first experimental community established under the federal subsistence-homesteads program, an effort to help impoverished families […]