Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2023/Fall/Section18/Mary and Augustus DeRoy (Mary Worked in the Mines in Belgium)

Biography

Notes: A wikiversity site already exists for Mary DeRoy: Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Fall/105/Section071/Mary DeRoy; pages 8, 10-12, and 14 are missing from the original life history interview.

Early Life in Belgium

Mary and Augustus DeRoy were born in Belgium, where they both grew up working hard labor in the coal mines from a very young age. As a young female miner, Mary did many different jobs, including pushing carts and turning the wheel that brought carts into the cage to be raised to the surface. Mary became good at turning the wheel, and was one of the only ones who could do it; this job paid her fifteen cents more an hour, so she defended it fiercely. She even got into a physical altercation with a girl who wanted to take her job. It was hard manual labor, but Mary believed that it made her strong. When Mary and Augustus met and wanted to marry, they had to get permission from all four of their parents. Augustus's father was working in America, so once they were able to get permission from him, they married.

Adult Life in Belgium

After she married Augustus, Mary stopped working in the mines for a time. However, five months after she gave birth to their first child, her brother asked her to come back to work with him for a time. Augustus's mother watched the baby while Mary worked, but it was very hard for Mary to be away from her child. After a year, her brother no longer needed her help, so she left the mines and opened a grocery business. She was very successful, even adding a cart and taking her sales around her town; she was clever and cheerful and befriended all of her customers. She also sold sandwiches at events in her town. Throughout this time, Augustus continued working in the mines, and he and Mary both made money to support their family. They had three more children over the next years, but two of them passed away. A year after the loss of their children, Augustus's father wrote to the couple, telling them that America was the "promised land" and if they came to work there, they'd make a fortune. Mary and Augustus immediately sold all of their belongings, and moved with their surviving children to America.

Moving to America

Woman with child

Augustus and Mary moved to America hoping, and believing, that they would have endless opportunities and be able to make a fortune, but this was not the case. They moved to French Town in Pratt City, a mining settlement in Birmingham, Alabama. Augustus was employed in the mines there. They befriended other immigrant families, most from France. Five years after they moved to French Town, the DeRoys suffered a house fire that destroyed all of their belongings. They struggled to find a new home, but eventually found one. While Mary was seven months pregnant, cleaning and setting up their new home, she fell off of a ladder; this caused her to go into early labor, and she gave birth to twin sons that only survived four hours. Suffering from the loss of her children, and with "plenty of milk to spare," Mary found a way to make money by nursing and caring for a friend's sick infant while her friend couldn't. She kept the child for fifteen months until his parents could care for him again, and continued to have a motherly relationship with him throughout their lives. Mary lamented her inability to work and make money in America, finding that the only way she could make money for her family was to do laundry. Augustus continued to work in the mines, but struggled due to poor pay and treatment and the strikes that aimed to address these issues. However, mining was all Augustus knew, so if work got slow in one mine, he'd move to another and follow the pay. Occasionally, the family had to rely on money that Mary saved until Augustus could find work again, especially once the Great Depression began. Because of the hardships in the mines, Mary and Augustus did not want their children to rely on the mines like they'd had to. However, poverty was a vicious cycle, and only one of their four children who survived to adulthood was able to be completely free of the mines. Both of their daughters married coal miners, and one of their sons worked in one of the most dangerous mines in the area. Mary was able to secure an apprenticeship in a machine shop for their other son, and he made a living as a boilermaker. In old age, Mary and Augustus both liked the life they'd made in America, but wished they could afford to return to Belgium for a visit; they hadn't been to their home or seen the family they left there in thirty-five years, and most likely never did again.

Social Context

Coal Mining

Coal miners in the early 1900s

Coal mining in the 18th-19th century was a dangerous, exploitative field that showed no value for human life and kept workers in the cycle of poverty. In Belgium, this extended to men and women; both worked side-by-side in the mines, a practice that had been in place for generations and was a staple of the working-class mining economy in Belgium. In America, however, coal mining was a career reserved solely for men. Poor safety practices caused risks such as natural gas exposure, collapses, and spontaneous explosions. Because of this, every day on the job was potentially deadly. Mining also paid so little that if something were to happen to a man working in the mines, his family would have no savings to survive on. Mining companies used practices including the operation of a "company store" and issuing of company-specific currency to ensure that miners stayed reliant on their businesses to survive, and in this way kept them in poverty. Although some may argue that this was to benefit the miners and keep wages competitive, most agree that companies would find any way they could to bring money back to them. Factors like citizenship, class, and experience made it difficult for miners to change careers, so most miners and their families in the United States stayed dependent on mining work, and lived in poverty, for their whole lives,

Women in the Workforce

In the United States in the early 1800s, women had very limited opportunities to work. Women without education were limited to factory or domestic jobs, hard labor that was often unsafe. Uneducated immigrants especially had even harder times finding work, especially in the South where there weren't many factories or other such manufacturing jobs that more often employed women. However, despite the scarce opportunities, more lower-class women in this time period were being forced to find ways to make an added income for their families, as many men faced low-wage jobs, especially throughout the Great Depression. However, this was not the only reason that many women wished to work. It was also becoming more acceptable for women to value some level of professional and financial independence. This reflects the women's movement of the time period, championing women's autonomy and ability to participate more actively in society. Despite this, it was still not the norm at this time for women to have any sort of consistent professional careers.

Notes & References

References

"Mary Worked in the Mines in Belgium" interview by Nettie S McDonald, date unknown, Folder 54, Federal Writers' Project Papers, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“The Lives of Coal Miners in the Early 20th Century | Britannica.” n.d. Www.britannica.com. https://www.britannica.com/video/213108/Workers-challenges-Midwestern-coal-industry#:~:text=Even%20miners%20who%20had%20been.

Hilden, Patricia J. “The Rhetoric and Iconography of Reform: Women Coal Miners in Belgium, 1840-1914.” The Historical Journal 34, no. 2 (1991): 411–36. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2639505.

Fishback, Price V. “Did Coal Miners ‘Owe Their Souls to the Company Store’? Theory and Evidence from the Early 1900s.” The Journal of Economic History 46, no. 4 (1986): 1011–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2121820.

Yellen, Janet L. 2020. “The History of Women’s Work and Wages and How It Has Created Success for Us All.” Brookings. May 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-history-of-womens-work-and-wages-and-how-it-has-created-success-for-us-all/.

Goldin, Claudia. “Life-Cycle Labor-Force Participation of Married Women: Historical Evidence and Implications.” Journal of Labor Economics 7, no. 1 (1989): 20–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2534988