Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Fall/Section018/Mr. and Mrs. Early Dull

Overview


Mr. and Mrs. Early Dull was interviewed by Clalee Dunnagan for the Federal Writers' Project on February 27, 1939. They worked mainly as tenant farmers in Yadkinville, a town in Yadkin County, North Carolina.

Marriage
Early Dull and Nellie Wilson (Mrs. Early Dull) met for the first time in a celebration held in the town for the soldiers coming back from France, and they soon fell in love with each other after it and got married.

Work Life
Early Dull worked in a coal mine in West Virginia before he got married. After his marriage with Nellie, he came back to North Carolina and they began farming on a rented place in Yadkin County. In 1923, Mr.Early quit farming because prices were so low he couldn't make anything from it and went to do carpenter work. However, three years later, in 1926, Mr. Early returned to the farm because house-building was slow. But as most of the family's land was on the river bottom, the farm was not any better, every year the water gets up and ruins the corn.

"Many of our North Carolina farmers are desperately poor, live in wretched houses, and are scantily provided with even the necessities of life."

The Great Depression


The Great Depression refers to the global economic recession that ran between 1929 and 1933.

The Great Depression began in the United States with the stock market decline on October 24, 1929, which further developed to the Wall Street Crash of 1929 on October 29, which swept the world. The Great Depression brought about a devastating blow to both developed and developing countries. The unemployment rate in the United States had increased to 25%, in some countries, it has even reached 33%.

All major cities in the world have been hit hard, especially in areas that relied on heavy industry. Construction projects in many countries were shut down, and the price of agricultural products dropped by about 60%.

==== Unemployment ====

The Great Depression caused persistently high unemployment rates in the United States, where the unemployment rate increased by over 20 percentage points between 1929 and 1933.

The unemployment rate raised so much during the Great Depression due to:
 * 1) People who lost money on the Wall Street Crash (1929) started to spend less
 * 2) Negative multiplier effect
 * 3) Fall in money supply and deflation
 * 4) Agricultural recession
 * 5) Trade war
 * 6) Wrong policies

Tenant Farmers


Before the Great Depression, hard times have already hit North Carolina’s farmers because of overproduction of cash crops, falling crop prices, rising farm costs, poor conservation practices, and other problems. Both cotton and tobacco’s price plummeted, and these crops had damaged the soil, making cultivation even more difficult.

During the Great Depression, with jobs being lost in manufacturing and the service sector, US agriculture was also going through a prolonged downturn for two decades, making the original situation even worse.

Moreover, the number of tenants increased around 1935, the farm tenancy also grew, many farmers were negatively affected by high land prices, low selling prices, natural disasters, etc. "Well somebody told us Wall Street fell. But we were so poor that we couldn’t tell. Cotton was short and the weeds were tall But Mr. Roosevelt’s a gonna save us all."