European war and its effects in the United States today threatened to reach across the sea to split the peaceful little village of Charleston, O., in two.
For, if the Government's plan to build a $10,000,000 munitions plant in Portage County becomes a reality, one-half the quiet farming village of a few hundred persons will become a gigantic munitions plant employing 10,000 men. The western limit of the 15,000 acre tract, which agents working indirectly for the War Department are optioning for construction of a shell loading factory, would cut cleanly through the center of the village, taking all homes, the village store, and the cemetery. Across the street, the school and the church would remain.
Charleston is a crossroads town perched on a hill at the junction of Ohio Routes 5 and 80, six miles east of Ravenna. Around it are rich farms plowed by thrifty, deeply religious people who are proud of their debt-free record during the depression.
In Center of Steel
Why Charleston faces so astonishing a future is this: it lies at the hub of a great steel industry. Youngstown and Warren are, roughly, 24 miles to the east. Alliance, Canton and Massillon are 20 to 30 miles to the south. Akron is 24 miles west, Cleveland 40 miles northwest. The Erie and Baltimore & Ohio railroads are the north and south boundaries of the tract, but the Pennsylvania and New York Central trains use the lines as well. The Mahoning and Hinckley River guarantee sufficient water. And yet, with all these industrial advantages, Charleston has remained a comparatively isolated farming village — just such an isolated place as is needed for the highly dangerous job of loading 75 and 155 mm shells.
Today the people of Charleston could do little more than gather in their homes or at the village store of V. G. Sly and face the reality that American defense may violently alter the peaceful paths of their lives. Those who live within the tract to be taken could only wonder where they would move. "Where can we find farms like ours?" they asked. "Where could we find any vacant farms at all worth farming?" Those who live on the west side of the road could only wonder how a munitions plant employing 10,000 men would change their lives.
Speak Jokingly
But there were no immediate answers, or else they spoke jokingly of moving into a neighbor's corncrib.
The Frances P. Bolton farm of 1490 acres is the largest unit to be taken. Hundreds of pheasants were raised there which populated the lowlands and made Charleston a hunter's paradise. Not all options have been secured. The stunning suddenness of the proposed project has been too great for the farmers to comprehend immediately. "It's our home," says W. R. Strausser. "My father and his brother bought this farm and built on it. I've been here 54 years and I don't want to sell."
Where to Move?
And there's the Springs Ridge Farm of 75-year-old Phillip N. Kropp, his son Bryan, and his grandchildren Virgil and Dale. Those in the affected area might consider Newton Falls, where the Newton Steel Co. made it a boom town during the World War. But like F. J. Moore, a retired oil driller and his family, they like the peace and quiet of Charleston, wondering uneasily what is to become of them.
