Interview about Appalachian Power Company's attempt to create a dam on the New River, near Grayson County, Virginia and the community's battle to keep them out.

Perry Hicks talks about working in a cotton mill in western North Carolina in the early twentieth century. He was born in 1899 and began working at a young age because he dropped out of the six-month school he was attending. He explains the influence the unions had: "naturally, I have, all my life, been opposed to the unions." He says that the unions caused inflation, so the poor people didn't come out ahead anyway. He eventually left the cotton mill because he couldn't support his family.