Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 10/Orrie Robinson

Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 10/Orrie Robinson
Born	1898
Died	Unknown
Occupation	Family Farmer, Distiller, Fisherman

Biography

Overview

Orrie Robinson was one of thousands of individuals across the country interviewed for the Federal Writers' Project, a government project created under The New Deal in 1935 to employ writers during The Great Depression. The purpose was to produce information gathered from individuals all around the United States. Mr. Robinson was interviewed about his life as a farmer, and how it was affected by the Great Depression.

Life and Occupation

Orrie Robinson was born in his family home on the bank of a river just outside of Talladega Springs, Alabama. Robinson, never educated or married, lived in the same house where he grew up for his entire adult life, helping his parents on their farm.

The land they owned for farming was small in comparison to other local farms, so the Robinson family had a smaller supply of the cotton and corn that they grew. In addition, the farmland was dry and barren most of the year, so the crops they did produce were scarce. As a result, the Robinson family had a hard time sustaining themselves. For some time, Robinson looked to other means of providing for his family, such as fishing by the river next to his house. Even though he could catch enough food to get by with feeding his family of five, Robinson was rarely able to make a profit off of the fish he caught in the river. According to Robinson, this meant that since most of his meals would be the same each day, they could get “mighty tiresome” really quickly.

Robinson also tried his hand at selling homemade moonshine. Creating a makeshift distillery of his own, Robinson generated a small income by selling this illicit substance. Robinson made sales in the remote valley of the Cohagie Creek basin area. He was able to keep this up for a while, even during the prohibition era in the United States. Eventually, Robinson was caught by local authorities and placed on probation. From that point on, out of fear of further prosecution, he never returned to his distillery.

Orrie Robinson's life during the Great Depression resembled most other years in his life as well. In fact, even though he was living through it, Robinson was unaware the Great Depression was going on until he was interviewed by the Federal Writers' Project. His only main concerns were feeding his family and providing them with clothes for the winter months. Robinson claimed that despite his simple life, he never wanted to live anywhere else. He felt as if he would be more alone in a larger city than if he were to stay at home. Robinson lived out the rest of his days in his family’s home on the river, until his death many years later.

Social Issues

Farming and The Great Depression

The Great Depression was a worldwide economic depression that occurred after the Stock Market Crash of 1929. It led to individuals losing virtually all of their income and savings, and placed millions unemployed and in debt almost overnight. Families were left without a dollar to their name, and without means to make a stable income to support themselves. It affected individuals globally, but in the field of agriculture, we saw the major impacts the Great Depression had on farmers especially.

Many farmers and landowners had lost a lot of ground economically when the first waves of the Great Depression began to rock the nation following the crash. Even though farmers had personal access to food and crops to sustain their families with, they still had a major issue with debts owed to the bank. Families with smaller plots of land had a harder time cultivating their crops, especially during this time. Banks would often seize their farm if the family could not afford to pay their debts, leaving hundreds without a home.

In southern farming states, especially Alabama, the Stock Market Crash "exacerbated an already existing decline in agriculture that had begun much earlier in the decade".. Thousands of farm-owning families found themselves on the brink of poverty as a result. It wasn't until years after the crash in 1933 that Secretary of Agriculture, Henry A. Wallace, started setting up infrastructure within the government to help out struggling farmers.. Programs like the Agricultural Adjustment Act helped put security measures in place for farmers. This act created a new agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, known as the Agricultural Adjustment Administration.

Prohibition in the United States

The Moonshine Man of Kentucky, an illustration from Harper's Weekly, 1877, showing five scenes from the life of a Kentucky moonshiner

The National Alcohol Prohibition lasted from the early 1920's, with the introduction of the Eighteenth Amendment , until 1933. It was a mandate against the manufacturing, supplying, and selling of alcohol in the United States.. The purpose of this new legislation was to slow the large rate of sales and consummation of intoxicating alcohol in the states. What happened instead was a rampant increase in "underground manufacturing and transportation of alcohol" all across the U.S., otherwise referred as Bootlegging or "Rum-Running." Many organized crime groups also took this as an opportunity to ramp up sales by producing alcohol within their respective groups, exponentially increasing the illicit sales of alcohol during this time period.

In rural areas especially, many individuals in need of some income to support their families turned to making moonshine. This was an alcoholic beverage concocted by individuals in their homemade distilleries, which were often pieced together by old, repurposed parts of machinery, etc. They were able to sell the illegal drink to others in the area at an increased rate, and make a profit off of it as a result. Those who made moonshine had to evade law enforcement officers cracking down on the rise of alcohol consumption in the area. However, despite many being caught and put on probation, production and consumption of moonshine was never fully halted, even after the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed in 1933.