Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2022/Fall/Section093/Maria Gonzales

Biography

Early Life

Maria Gonzales was born in Florida. She believed that she might be of Spanish ancestry; however, she had never heard her parents discuss their heritage and her grandparents had passed away before she was born. She was the fifth child among seven siblings. Gonzales spent her childhood raised on her family’s farmhouse and did not receive schooling because she was taught to do farm work alongside her family.

Adulthood

When Gonzales turned twenty-two, she married her husband, John. During her first two years of marriage, she lived in her family’s farmland with John. After that, they moved miles away to a secluded area in the woods near a swamp. The roof of her remote home was made of palmetto leaves and the shelter was surrounded by wooden fences.

Gonzales had eight children. Her oldest son, Jim, worked near the neighborhood in a chicken farm where he earned fifty cents to a dollar and a quarter a day. Although she was illiterate, Gonzales wanted her children to learn to read and write; however, she did not place much importance towards their education and her oldest daughters stopped schooling as they got older and started working around the home.

Furthermore, Gonzales also lacked interest in politics and voting, stating “it ain’t fer women anyway an’ the lesser we knows about it the better off we is.”

Throughout her marriage with John, Gonzales experienced extreme cases of domestic violence. She describes an instance when she had to hide her children from her husband in the woods all day because he threatened them with a shotgun. Eventually, she separates from John after he gets threatened by the community with jail time and arrest.

Social Context

Economy of the South during the Great Depression

During the 1930s, businesses were failing as fewer goods were produced, resulting in rising unemployment and wage cutbacks. In 1933, Birmingham's largest employer, the Tennessee Coal & Iron Company, had reduced pay by 50 to 75 percent and threatened to fire employees who objected. Companies in Memphis, Tennessee established a uniform thirty-hour work week and prevented women from working within their establishments; between 1929 and 1932, the town’s employers transferred almost 6,000 female-held positions to men. Furthermore, according to a social worker in 1933, the unemployment rate increased 30% across the city of Atlanta, and reached 75% in black communities. Local governments maintained little interference over family relief and unemployment rates. However, strained by the collection of decreased taxes, they attempted to reduce expenditures and prevent unnecessary spending: According to Kenneth B, author of Higher Education and the Great Depression: An Introduction to the Early Thirties, “To guard against boondoggling and extravagant living by those on the relief rolls, the mayor and other high city officials visited the homes and inspected the automobiles of the needy.”

Urban woman in the South during the Great Depression

Role of Women in the 1930s

Women experienced the Depression in varied ways depending on their age, marital position, location, race, ethnicity, and other characteristics. For instance, a housewife in an urban area in the 1930s had access to electricity and running water, whereas a housewife in a rural area typically struggled to manage the responsibilities of homemaking without these contemporary comforts.

While the main role of women living in urban areas was primarily as housewives, the Great Depression propelled them to seek work as thousands of men lost their jobs and one income no longer became sufficient to sustain a household. Women with jobs typically worked in white collar positions or light manufacturing work. The number of employed women increased from about 10.5 million to 13 million from 1930 to 1940. A primary factor of the rise in women employment was that women worked in sectors that were less impacted by the stock market crash. According to Susan Ware, author of Holding their Own: American Women in the 1930s, “Some of the hardest-hit industries like coal mining and manufacturing were where men predominated. Women were more insulated from job loss because they were employed in more stable industries like domestic service, teaching and clerical work.”

For women living in the South in counties such as Boone and Lyman counties, farm life consisted of rough working conditions and harsh environments. They increased the management of their vegetable gardens in small-town regions to encompass as much food production as possible. When farming, they often had to face environmental conditions such as blizzards and droughts. Women were expected to complete domestic tasks: raising poultry, managing eggs, milking, and converting dairy substances, sewing, and textiles. They also made household products such as toothpaste, furniture polish, and soap.

Education and the Great Depression

In 1932, teacher George Strayer wrote about the effects of the Depression in American public schools: “It is in this situation that in cities and in rural areas schools have been closed, terms have been shortened, teachers’ salaries have been reduced… the whole program of education is being curtailed, if not being placed in jeopardy”. Many public schools were being delayed in construction or repair of buildings, had reduced school supplies, limited course offerings, and reduction of school days. However, during the early thirties, there was also a shift towards an increase in higher education at private education universities. For example, there were 502,857 more students enrolled in higher education institutions in 1929–30 than there were in 1919–20. Furthermore, despite the economic downfall and poverty during the 1930s, the success of several institutions in their financial undertakings added to the general sense of well-being among educators. For instance, Swarthmore College started a drive for two million dollars in the spring of 1929. Over four million dollars had been gathered by June of 1930. However, the effects of the Great Depression were felt later for the institutions with colleges and universities accumulating about six and a half million dollars extra in student debt and fees during 1932 than 1930.

References

Biles, Roger. “The Urban South in the Great Depression.” The Journal of Southern History 56, no. 1 (1990): 71–100. https://doi.org/10.2307/2210665.

Ewing, E. Thomas. Education & the Great Depression Lessons from a Global History. New York: Lang, 2006.

Orr, Kenneth B. "Higher Education and the Great Depression: An Introduction to the Early Thirties." The Review of Higher Education 2, no. 3 (1979): 1-10. doi:10.1353/rhe.1979.0004.

Rotondi, Jessica Pearce. “Underpaid, but Employed: How the Great Depression Affected Working Women.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, March 11, 2019. https://www.history.com/news/working-women-great-depression.  

Schwieder, Dorothy, and Deborah Fink. “Plains Women: Rural Life in the 1930s.” Great Plains Quarterly 8, no. 2 (1998).

Ware, Susan. Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s. Farmington Hills, MI: Cengage Gale, 1983.

Ware, Susan. "Women and the Great Depression." History Now 9 (2009): 2009-03.