Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Spring/105i/Section 24/Big Bill Binnett

Overview

Big Bill Binnett was a white man born in East Lake, North Carolina on an unknown date. Binnett was interviewed in 1939 by the Federal Writers' Project in East Lake, North Carolina.

Biography

Early Life

Binnett was the son of a preacher. His father drank liquor with breakfast. There were no mentioned siblings. Binnett went to about six months of formal schooling and when he turned fourteen, he became a professional fisherman.

Adult Life

According to the interview with the Federal Writers' Project, Binnett was able to work for Brown Lumber Company for sixteen years, after he finished professionally fishing and traveling for a year. He found a house in East Lake and got married. His wife gave birth to ten of their children and they fostered three. At the time of the interview, Binnett and his wife lived with six children that Binnett said were difficult to feed due to his lack of work. Binnett was diagnosed with dysentery and prescribed liquor because his doctor told him that it would help cure him. He drank gallons of whiskey as treatment. Binnett said he became interested in liquor after this treatment even though he did not previously drink it. Before Prohibition laws were enacted, he became a moonshiner and continued making liquor throughout Prohibition. The tax on alcohol after Prohibition led Binnett to stop moonshining and he started a farm. During the interview with the Federal Writers' Project, Binnett said he was able to sustain his farm for a while before having to sell his livestock and farm equipment in order to feed his family. Binnett worked for the Works Progress Administration, but he said that he did not get many hours or much pay from it. Binnett stated that he was thinking of getting back into the moonshine industry at the time of his interview because he believed he could make more money moonshining and he did not want his family to starve. Binnett died on an unknown date.

Social Issues

Moonshining - Kentucky - Revenue Men - Project Gutenberg 13181

Moonshining in North Carolina

Moonshine is a high-proof alcoholic drink made from distilling corn and sugar. Distilleries are used to make alcohol, and moonshine distilleries were called stills. The name moonshine comes from the need to transport the liquor at night, "by the light of the moon," to not be caught by authorities, as moonshine was illegal. In North Carolina, moonshining was common. There were multiple stills in counties across the state, such as Randolph County, North Carolina , which had 19 distilleries in the 1890s.During the Prohibition, moonshining gained popularity because people were able to evade the law by making their liquor in the woods at night. If a person was caught making or selling moonshine, they could get arrested and serve time in prison. Police raids of stills could be dangerous, some resulting in deaths. After Prohibition, moonshine stills were prominent in North Carolina, and people have recounted large amounts of production of moonshine in the 1940s and 1950s. Moonshine was popular through the 1980s and distilleries continued to be found by authorities into the 1990s.

19th-20th Century Birth Control and Family Size

Birth control rights were not advocated for until after the 1870s. During the late 19th-20th century, more women were advocating for it but it was not popular. Giving women a form of contraception was accepting female sexuality, which had not been done at the time. The only sex education that was taught was to remain abstinent to prevent pregnancy. The lack of birth control and sex education led to average number of births per family being about 8 children in the 18th century and 3 in the 19th century. Family sizes dropped between the 18th and 20th century from 5.7 people to 2.6 people per household. Dropping family sizes did not always mean that birth control was being used or safe sex was being practiced, as women could still gave birth to the average eight children in the 18th century, but the mortality rate caused the average family size to be 5.7, which meant that average family size did not change as largely as people expected, just that women were giving birth less.. Contraception became more widely accepted during the 20th century due to higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases from previous prostitution and people having more sexual partners. World War I also caused a sexual revolution because people were contracting sexually transmitted diseases from prostitution near duty stations. After World War I, a movement to stop prostitution around the country was successful in shifting the way that Americans had sex. Women were having premarital sex and men were not hiring prostitutes, so the need for birth control increased, especially for women who were not prostitutes and did not previously learn about birth control.

Works Progress Administration

During the Great Depression, many people lost their source of income due to the lack of available jobs. People were fearful during this time because of the food insecurity. The inability to provide or feed a family was a prominent problem. Another fear of unemployment was that men, who were the providers of the home up to this point, were feeling a loss of identity and purpose.

WPA workers building stairway at Golden Gardens, 1936

The government decided to enact the Works Progress Administration with the New Deal. The purpose of the Works Progress Administration was to give working class people a place to make money while the economy was recovering. Workers did public works projects, such as building schools and roads. People were meant to work for the Works Progress Administration temporarily, as jobs were supposed to be opening back up with the repairs to the economy. The supposed quick turn-around of the Works Progress Administration is what caused the low wages paid by the government to the people working because the government did not want to give an incentive to stay.

References

• Goldberg, Chad Alan. "Contesting the Status of Relief Workers during the New Deal: The Workers Alliance of America and the Works Progress Administration, 1935-1941." Social Science History 29, no. 3 (2005): 337-71. Accessed March 8, 2021. doi:10.2307/40267880.

• Gordon, Linda. The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America. Baltimore: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Accessed March 8, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central.
• Jacobs, Chick. 2017. “Moonshine in the Carolinas Was Bigger than You Thought.” Fayetteville Observer, The (NC), April 8. Accessed March 8, 2021. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=n5h&AN=2W6721004530&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
• Marsh, John. "Fear Itself: Polio, Unemployment, and Other Things on the Doorstep." In The Emotional Life of the Great Depression. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Oxford Scholarship Online, 2019. Accessed March 8, 2021. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198847731.003.0004.
• "...And Set Me Up a Hell-Buster", in the Federal Writers' Project papers #3709, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
• Walker, J. D. "Spirit of the Past: Finding the Shine in Moonshine." McClatchy - Tribune Business News, Aug 19, 2013. Accessed March 8, 2021. http://libproxy.lib.unc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/wire-feeds/spirit-past-finding-shine-moonshine/docview/1426115712/se-2?accountid=14244