The best antidote for politicized nostalgia that hails an imagined idyllic yesteryear full of abundant blue-collar jobs? Taking a good, hard look at how those workers actually lived.
"Power & Light," a temporary exhibit at the National Archives Museum in Washington, D.C., displays dozens of pictures taken in 1946, when the federal government dispatched photographer Russell Lee to document living conditions in coal mining towns across Appalachia. What he captured is not glamorous or desirable. One family documented by Lee's photos paid $7 per month ($124 in today's money) for a home with no running water. They shared an outhouse with "four or five" other families.
