Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2023/Fall/Section33/Mrs. D.B. Stone

= Life History of Mrs. D.B. Stone =

Overview
Mrs. D.B. Stone was a widow living in Marian, South Carolina, in the 1930s. She grew up working on her family's farm and never received a high school education. After she had children and her husband died, she did what she could to make money to provide for her family.

Early Life
Mrs. D.B. Stone grew up working on her family’s farm. She had eight siblings, and her mother died when she was young. She never received an education as a child despite desperately wanting one. When Mrs. D.B. Stone first married her husband Dave, they lived in St. Pauls, North Carolina, where Dave worked as a mail carrier. Dave had a hard time finding work, as he lost his arm in an accident while working in a factory when he was fourteen. He took work where he could. This resulted in him and Mrs. D.B. Stone moving around a lot in their early marriage life before settling in Marian, South Carolina.

Adult Life
After moving to Marion, South Carolina, Dave worked as a sewing machine agent. He made a living off the commission he received by selling sewing machines but eventually died from the flu. As a widow, Mrs. D.B. Stone made money by doing hemstitching when she could but struggled to make ends meet. She had five children, one of whom died at a young age. She never received a high school education as she had to work on her family's farm, so she badly wanted her children to have one. Her son Jake paved streets for the W.P.A., and the paycheck he received from that kept their family fed. Mrs. Stone and several of her children had medical issues over the years, leading to her having to take bigger mortgages on her homes in order to pay the expenses. She also had to use most of the insurance money she got from her husband's death to pay off debts.

Health and Medical Care
When the Great Depression hit in 1929, many families lost everything they had. Parents struggled to put food on the table, resulting in a substantial number of children being malnourished. During this time period, “diets were particularly deficient in the protective foods- milk, citrus fruits and fresh vegetables.” These foods contain vitamins and nutrients that “growing children need to thrive.” Many families also could not afford medical expenses, resulting in them avoiding the doctor, even when women gave birth. If they did have to see a doctor, they would end up in debt because health insurance was practically nonexistent during this time. This meant they would be expected to pay the full costs of medical appointments, procedures, and medications. People avoiding seeing the doctor led to hospitals shutting down because they couldn’t make any money. The Great Depression eventually led to the use of insurance as a method to pay medical expenses.

Child Labor and Lack of Education
The Great Depression was a difficult time for children to grow up in. Many “desolate families often had no choice but to put their children to work to help earn money” and had to prioritize putting food on the table over anything else. These children were not able to receive an education because they instead had to get jobs to support their families. They also tended to fall victim to “the less desirable, less well paid, and less well regulated types of employment” because they had to take the jobs adults did not want. These jobs were oftentimes dangerous and resulted in injury to the children who worked them. On top of many children having to work instead of going to school, lack of funding led to schools shutting down, and “over two hundred and eighty thousand were unable to attend schools because of school closings.” There were so many children without the opportunity of an education because they either had to work or because their schools closed down.

Working-Class Women
When the Depression hit, many women had to step up for their families. They started seeking employment outside of the home. So many women began working jobs that “from 1930 to 1940, the number of employed women in the United States rose 24 percent from 10.5 million to 13 million.” It was common for them to work as cooks, maids, nurses, teachers, and beauticians. Women who did not seek employment did what they could from their homes, like helping with farm work, so “women’s economic significance was central to their family’s survival.” Men in this time period tended to feel threatened by women’s involvement in the workforce. “26 states had laws prohibiting the employment of married women” because men believed women were stealing the role of breadwinner from them. These men viewed women’s employment as women stealing jobs from men.