Folklorist of the Coal Fields: George Korson's Life and Work

A biography starting with Korson's three years as a reporter on the Wilkes-Barre Record after his graduation from high school in that city, his two years with the Jewish Legion in Palestine and Egypt during World War I, and his single year at Columbia University. Then come his studies of mining folklore —both in the eastern Pennsylvania anthracite fields and in the bituminous fields of the South and Midwest—while he worked as a reporter in Pottsville and Allentown, PA., in New Jersey, and as chief editor of Red Cross publications. Korson's intellectual outlook is shown as two-sided: on one hand, an understanding that folklore is best presented in the holistic context of a community's way of life; on the other, a conviction that reform is more congruent with American social ideals than revolution.