Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Fall/105/Section071/Luther Jordan

Luther Jordan
Occupation	Painter, Railroad Worker, Farmer
Spouse(s)	Unknown

Overview

Luther Jordan worked as a painter, farmer, and railroad worker during the Great Depression. He was interviewed by Leola T. Bradley and Rudene Hix on September 13 and 29 in 1939 as part of the Federal Writers’ Project. In the interview, he states that he got married at the age of nineteen and has five children.

Biography

Early Life

Luther Jordan was born circa 1904 in Mecklenburg County, NC. He grew up with three sisters and three brothers. Although he came from an impoverished family, he had a happy childhood. His total time spent in school equates to about eighteen months, which was just over a fourth-grade education.

Later Life

As an adult, Jordan worked three different jobs in the painting, railroad, and agricultural industries to care for his five children and wife, who he married at nineteen. Both Jordan and his wife were avid Baptist churchgoers. With lots of hard work, Jordan was able to maintain his income at a level that could sustain both himself and his family, without needing his young children to be employed. As a result, all five of them were able to complete a ninth-grade education. Jordan viewed himself as a “self-made man” because he was able to sufficiently care for himself and his family with minimal wages and an elementary education during the trying times of the Great Depression. Jordan also took pride in the fact that he was able to raise his children better than he was, freeing them from violent cycle of poverty in which he had been born. Jordan later lost his eldest son, who was twenty-six and working in Oklahoma at the time, to tuberculosis after being overexposed to pathogens in the contaminated air. This loss was especially damaging to the Jordan family, as they had lost a source of income needed to care for themselves and the four younger children.

Social Context

The Great Depression

The Great Depression was a worldwide financial and industrial recession that took place between 1929 and 1939. Peter Temin claims that a combination of unrestrained credit expansion, bank failures, and the federal government's unwillingness to abandon the gold standard are some of the major causes of this international calamity.

As many Americans began to buy more than they could afford through unregulated credit, the nation’s economy soon became propped up on borrowed money and loans. This problem got worse as people began margin-buying or borrowing lots of money from banks specifically to invest in the stock market. The stock market crash of 1987, also known as Black Monday, was not the sole factor in contributing to this global economic collapse but still accelerated its effects. In the U.S., banks became unstable due to a lack of lending regulations during the Roaring Twenties. When banks were in danger of failing, people would rush to withdraw their savings; if banks went bankrupt before one could withdraw their money, everything originally deposited will be lost. Because the federal government was afraid of losing some of the purchasing power of the American dollar, political officials were reluctant to remove the gold standard. This standard is a monetary system in which a nation’s paper currency is directly linked to gold and is primarily used to prevent excessive inflation within an economy. Because the supply of gold in the Federal Reserve is limited, a fixed amount of paper currency will flow throughout the economy in correspondence with the value of the gold. Money soon became difficult to obtain, so many Americans stopped buying goods that were not absolute necessities and chose to hold onto the money they already had instead. As consumers stopped buying, businesses started failing, and individuals no longer had the means to pay off credit debts or loans from banks.

Effects on Family Life and the Working Class

Unemployed migrant workers traveling to find work.

Because many different businesses shut down during this time, it became conventional for adults to travel often in search of work. It also became typical for children who grew up during the Great Depression to spend only a few years in school, as many quit to work full-time jobs and help ease the immense financial burden placed on their families. According to author Lindsey Konkel, "Families who had previously enjoyed economic security suddenly faced financial instability, or in some cases, ruin." Many households embraced frugality in daily life, keeping kitchen gardens, patching worn-out clothing, and often living by the slogan: "Use it up, wear it out, make do or do without."

Most adults and older children that are part of large families often were forced to work several jobs at once to maintain a living wage. The average income of American families dropped by 40 percent from 1929 to 1932, falling from about $2,300 to $1,500 per year. This financial hardship continued until President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the New Deal. The New Deal was a series of programs, regulations, public work projects, and financial reforms implemented between 1933 and 1939 designed to help foster wage growth and economic recovery in the United States.

The Dust Bowl

Map of areas subject to severe wind erosion.

The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms during the Great Depression Era, caused by extended droughts, unusually high temperatures, wind erosion, and poor agricultural practices in the Great Plains. During World War I, prices and international military demand for crops, such as corn and wheat, skyrocketed. After the war, demand for crops fell while supply continued to rise. As a result, crop prices declined by 40 percent. Out of desperation, farmers mass-produced crops with unsustainable agricultural techniques to try and compensate for the substantial loss. Extensive prairie grasslands were destroyed by these farms, allowing the loose soil to be easily swept off the ground and into the air. Many people who lived where the dust storms were violent began contracting respiratory diseases caused by inhaling large quantities of concentrated pathogens from this contaminated air. Soon enough, the perception of dust “went from being an unpleasant household nuisance to being a nursery for harmful germs.” The massive dust storms soon forced many farmers out of their livelihoods and families out of their homes. Only until Roosevelt began encouraging the use of sustainable planting and growing methods that conserved the soil with the New Deal did the dust start to settle for good.

Tuberculosis

Chest x-ray of severe tuberculosis in the lungs.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a contagious disease caused by exposure to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) bacteria, which can be transmitted by dust. It is spread through the air as a droplet infection when someone infected with the disease coughs, sneezes, speaks or sings, and those who are nearby inhale the bacteria. Symptoms include coughing, chest pain, fatigue, loss of appetite, fever, and difficulty breathing. Due to the speed of the droplets traveling through the air, they can easily reach someone about six feet away. The droplets are also small enough to linger for a considerable amount of time in the air, meaning that they can infect people who share the same living space. Once coughed up by someone with TB, the bacteria can survive up to six months if protected from direct sunlight, often settling in dark, dusty spaces. TB is often referred to as a "disease of poverty," not because it singles out poor people, but because the circumstances that characterize poverty lead to a rapid spread of the disease. Many people living in damp, ill-lit, often dusty areas allow the bacteria to spread and infect people rapidly. Additionally, poverty usually means that good nutrition is not affordable, which weakens the immune system and can lead to a contraction of the disease.

References

Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “New Deal.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Accessed October 11, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/event/New-Deal.

Holmes, Frederick. "Tuberculosis In The First World War". Kumc.Edu. 2019. Accessed October 11, 2020. http://www.kumc.edu/wwi/medicine/tuberculosis.html.

Jordan, L.L. “A Self Made Man.” Interview by Bradley, Leola T. and Hix, Rudene. September 13 and 29, 1939, Folder 157, Federal Writers Project Papers, Southern Historical Collection, UNC Chapel Hill.

Kochan, Thomas A. “Restoring the American Dream: A Working Families’ Agenda for America.” Google Books. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. Accessed October 11, 2020. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=MO9cQGvrRYsC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=american+dream+family+life&ots=-xH3ReKDhE&sig=OeG7FqO3JuI_Z1OsK_8vhHcRUMg#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Konkel, Lindsey. “Life for the Average Family During the Great Depression.” History.com. A&E Television Networks. Accessed October 11, 2020. https://www.history.com/news/life-for-the-average-family-during-the-great-depression.

Shumsky, N. L. “Dust, Disease, Death and Deity: Constructing and Deconstructing the ‘Dust Bowl’.” The Journal of American Culture 38, no. 3 (2015): 218-231. Accessed October 11, 2020. http://libproxy.lib.unc.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/docview/1852704717?accountid=14244

Temin, Peter. “The Great Depression” NBER Working Paper Series on Historical Factors in Long Run Growth, no. 62 (1994): 3-19. Accessed October 11, 2020. https://www.nber.org/papers/h0062.pdf

Titor, John. "What It Was Like To Go Looking For A Job During The Great Depression". History Daily. 2018. Accessed October 11, 2020. https://historydaily.org/job-hunting-during-the-great-depression.