Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 12/Bill Martin

Overview
Bill Martin was a white, American man born around 1890 who served as an accountant and was passionate about puzzle contests. Douglas Carter interviewed him in 1939 as part of the Federal Writers' Project in order to document the stories of average American people for others to learn about.

Early Life and Education
Bill Martin was born in Piedmont, North Carolina around 1890. He was the oldest of seven children, and his father was a successful cotton factor. Martin's mother took on the responsibility of raising the seven children. His father's successful business allowed Martin and his siblings to attend college. Martin attended a Christian college near his home, majoring in accounting.

Career
In 1910, Martin went to Mexico to work as a bookkeeper for a mining company. The locals were hostile towards Martin and other Americans because of the Mexican Border War. As a result, he traveled around the United States for the next year and got a job for the Bauman Adding Machine Company. He went from place to place helping businesses form financial plans, and after arriving in Oakville, North Carolina, he liked it so much that he stayed. In 1916, Martin became a bank manager before losing his position when the bank merged with another bank. He then became an accountant with a large lumber company.

Hobbies
While Martin worked as an accountant, "he lives, breathes, eats, sleeps, and dreams contests: soap contests, cigarette contests, soft drink contests, all contests." Puzzle contests were word games in which a company would ask people to do various tasks like come up with a new company slogan, or unscramble words in exchange for a cash prize or automobile. Martin never married or had any children, so this was his true passion in life. During the Great Depression, puzzle contests were "designed primarily to boost the circulation of the magazine or newspaper.” The companies hosting the competitions saw them as a way to gain popularity. Some people even relied on these contests as a way to make income, which was very risky as they were hard to win. After playing these contests for over twenty years, Martin won an automobile from one. He had no use for the automobile because he already had one, so he sold it the day he got it for one-hundred dollars under retail. This win inspired Martin to continue participating in puzzle contests. Additionally, all of Martin's siblings married and had kids, so he served as a valuable uncle and helped take care of the kids.

Mexican Border War
Border disputes between Mexico and the United States for hundreds of years boiled over in 1910 when Mexico began attacking American cities near the U.S.-Mexico border. Pancho Villa formed his own militia to try to seize control of Mexico. The U.S. armed forces went down to the border to suppress the violence, and a militia called the Texas Rangers formed to protect the land in Texas. The Texas Rangers "were very much part of violence toward the indigenous Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the 1910s." In turn, the Mexicans showed hostility towards the Americans living in Mexico at the time. The war led to racial tensions between Americans and Mexicans that still exist today. The war finally concluded in 1919 with the U.S. suppressing Pancho Villa and Mexico's movement into America. As a result of the war, the United States formed the Border Patrol in 1924 to stop Mexicans from immigrating into America.

Banking Failures during the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in the summer of 1929 with a decline in consumer spending after the stock market crashed. This led to people rushing to banks to withdraw their deposits. However, banks did not have enough cash reserves on hand to pay everyone, leading to the banks having to close. The economic crisis got so bad that "by 1933, one-fifth of the banks in existence at the start of 1930 had failed.” As a result, many people lost their jobs. People began hoarding their money as they lost trust in depositing their money in banks, which reduced the amount of money that banks could loan out. The economic crisis caused many businesses to go bankrupt, which in turn led to many people losing their jobs. "As much as onefourth of the labour force in industrialized countries was unable to find work in the early 1930s.” The Great Depression left many Americans homeless and facing poverty as the standard of living dramatically decreased. Roosevelt implemented programs under the New Deal such as the Banking Act of 1933 and the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 to revitalize the economy.