Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Spring/section25/Otis Griffin

Otis Griffin

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Otis Griffin
Nationality	American
Occupation	Cabinet Maker

Otis Griffin (1880 - Unknown) was a cabinet maker who was the owner of “the Bearman shop”. It was a one-story frame structure painted a sickly yellow on the South Front Street in New Bern, North Carolina. Otis Griffin changed his name to Johnson Bearman when he was interviewed by James S. Beaman. for the Federal Writers' Project on May 17th, 1939.

Biography

Early Life

Otis Griffin was born in Kinston, North Carolina in 1880. His parents had three children, Johnnie, Griffin, and Marie, from oldest to youngest. Griffin’s father was a merchant, who supported his family to have a comfortable living condition from his dry goods business. Griffin first came to New Bern, North Carolina when he was seventeen and he worked in a grocery store for five years. Then he decided to go South, but found nothing interesting there. So he went back home, and made his living by producing and selling cabinets from 1921.

Later Life

Griffin had never been married in his life because the girl that he engaged to died. He had not joined any church until he heard an evangelist preaching, being fond of the stories he told. However, Griffin did not like the “unreal” preaching that he usually heard after he became a trader. He wanted to hear some old-fashioned preaching that teaches the love of God and the redemption of sinners through Christ’s love.

In a week of May, 1939, Griffin only sold two kitchen safes. He had no work to do because no dealers had demands for his cabinets. He even did not “sell a dime’s worth” in some weeks during the Great Depression.

Griffin cared less about politics as he thought “politicians are liars”. Although he always voted the Democratic ticket, Griffin thought politicians were corrupted and spent people’s money with liquor and women. Therefore, when some people counted on the national election, hoping it to bring economic development, Griffin did not do so because he thought politicians only made fool laws. He cared about his own business more than politics.

Social Context

Relationship between Marriage Rate and GDP per capita

Declining Marriage Rate During the Great Depression

During the Great Depression, the U.S. marriage rate fell by 22 percent from 1929 to 1933. The marriage propensities and gross domestic product were positively correlated at that time. And places where got hurt heavily by the Depression tended to have the largest decrease of marriage rates. One chief factor of the dropping marriage rate was high male unemployment. Because the cultural norms of the 1930s held that women should leave the labor force upon marriage, women tended to find men with stable jobs in order to form their own household. Therefore with an increase in local male unemployment of ten percentage points, women’s probability of marriage lowered by one fourth.

However, marriages formed in poor economic times were more likely to survive than marriages made in more affluent periods. The divorce rate fell from 1.66 per thousand of population to a low of 1.28 in 1932. That was because individuals got married during tough economic times paid more attention on quality other than economic viability. They also encountered difficulties together, forming stronger bonds between each other. Therefore, although the marriage rate fell dramatically, couples married during the Great Depression time were likely to have more stable and long-lasting marriages.

Unemployment During the Great Depression

In 1928, the final year of the Roaring Twenties, unemployment was 3.2%, which was less than the natural rate of unemployment. However, it rose to 25.2 from 1929 to 1933. A quarter of the country's workforce, about 15 million Americans, was out of work. That’s the highest unemployment rate ever recorded in America. The soaring unemployment rates were caused by a 7% shrink of the economy between 1929 and 1934. Exports and private sector investments plunged by 28 and 25 percent respectively.

During the Great Depression, roughly one third of industrial workers were unemployed. Some of the hardest-hit industries were coal mining and manufacturing. With more than half of workers unemployed, the rate was even higher in the construction sector and persisted longer.

There was neither unemployment insurance nor social assistance programs to provide benefits to people who were without work. Therefore, many people, especially farmers, were in debt. Many banks closed and could not make loans to help businesses with customers lost their savings. The unemployment rate didn't drop below ten percent until after the country entered World War II in December of 1941.