Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 10/J.H.Reynolds

Overview
J.H Reynolds was a textile worker who worked in the factories around the time of the Great Depression. He was born in Charlotte, North Carolina where he lived near the Lowe/Louise Mills. He was interviewed as a part of the Federal Writers Project on August 4th, 1939.

Early Life
Reynolds was born around 1908 in Charlotte, North Carolina. From a young age he learned to work in the industrialized factories, specifically the textile mills. Reynolds began working in the mills when he was eleven and started out with a salary of ten cents a day. He worked at Louise/Lowe mills when he was fifteen and stayed there for thirty-eight years, including the time that he was interviewed by the Federal Writer's Project. .

Adult Life and Career
Reynolds' adult life was centralized around his work in the textile mills because he had no extended education. During his time working in the mills there were many changes and alterations to the industry and factories as well as his own family life. Reynolds married his first wife young, but she unfortunately died soon after their child, Geraldine was born. Knowing he would need a caretaker for his daughter, Reynolds quickly married again. Later he would have four more children with his new wife, including Helen and Norma. Through the Great Depression Reynolds experienced major changes in the textile business including pay drops ,machine additions, as well as industrialization. When Reynolds began working as an adult he made $13.20 a week working in the "Card Room"(a room with seven to eight machines). This changed later on as the industries required more output and put in place new machines for the growing demand. One of the largest issues Reynolds discusses in his interview, is the inability to quit his job during the economic decline. Industrialization created new automatic “Spoolers” that were taking textile workers out of jobs. The high demand caused Reynolds to stay in his position where he worked from six in the morning to two in the afternoon, only to go home and feel exhausted until having to go to work the next morning. Reynolds was now working  on  around twenty-five machines for $12.80 a week. This was double the hours, but less pay.This drop in pay worried Reynolds saying in his interview, “that if his children still lived with him that he does not know "how in the name of God [he] could feed them". His original living cost of eighty cents a week increased to ninety-five cents which became more difficult to pay with a drop of forty-cents a week in his salary simultaneously. .

Life for Families in the Great Depression
Life during the Great Depression was full of economic hardships for all wealths, even the better off families struggled making it obvious that the less fortunate were worse off. Due to the economic turmoil in the United States prices rose due to demand but employment remained high with lower salaries. The unemployment rate reached its height in the 1930s, “reaching its historical maximum of 22.9% in the U.S. in 1932. It subsequently declined between 1933 and 1937, only to increase once again to 12.5% in 1938.” This meant that many families were living off of little to no income due to some of the country’s highest unemployment rates. Before FDR’s New Deal came into effect, another correlation with the Great Depression aftermath was life expectancy. Due to the heightened cost of life insurance and medical care, many people continued to die prematurely causing devastation in families during the 1930s and 40s. During the 1930s there were obvious issues with life expectancy and health care including the highest rate of morality in “1936, 4 years after the worst year of the Great Depression.” Many pushed for more affordable health care during this time. increases in medicine such as penicillin, and the increasing needs due to lack of salaries, jobs, and sanitary equipment made it almost impossible to survive. The largest issue was that politics began to be influenced by internal government conflicts over priorities” low life expectancy and mortality rate, were not their concern.

Working in the Textile Mills
The textile mills were created during the industrialization period in factories in order to provide jobs for the increasing population. They also supplied the factories with the necessary labor in order to produce a product. The reason this job appealed to many laborers was because it was claimed to be a “refuge” supporting the working class with jobs that needed no education which was common for the time period. In order to create a group of obedient laborers they formed a “social type compounded of irrationality, individualism, and fatalism. Unable to unite in their own interests, textile workers remained “silence, incoherent, with no agency to express their needs.” These so-called savoir jobs included little pay, long hours with no breaks, and a lack of safety in an unsanitary workplace. Not only were the actual working conditions inadequate, but the units that were associated with the industry hired family units rather than individuals. They “required the labor of at least one worker per room as a condition for residence in the mill-owned house” causing younger children to be forced to workin the mills. These units were also not high-quality bearing giving only enough necessities to live, it was only desirable due to the cheap price during the economic depression. According to a worker in the mills they had “half enough to eat and half enough to keep warm.” One of the biggest changes for laborers in the south was the increasing participation and construction of labor unions. After FDR’s New Deal released the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, workers could “bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees.” Due to the experiences of the workers with less pay and barely liveable circumstances the Roosevelt administration created these additions in order to give more voice to the workers and create more unity across the factories of the nation.