Twentieth-Century Texas: A Social and Cultural History

From Farm to Future: Women’s Journey through Twentieth-Century Texas

105 ALTHOUGH THE TWENTIETH CENTURY would bring dramatic changes in the lives and roles of women in Texas, in 1900 most women could not see the slightest glimmer of what was to come. At the dawn of the twentieth century, 83 percent of Texans still lived in rural areas where women spent their lives much like their nineteenth-century mothers and grandmothers. Some of these rural women were practically pioneers in remote places of west Texas, but by 1900 most rural families were producing for the market not just subsistence. Whether growing citrus in the Rio Grande Valley, ranching in west or south Texas, or growing cotton in the eastern and central areas of the state, women were crucial not only to the physical well-being of the family but also to its financial stability. Most rural women lived in families tied to the struggling cotton agriculture that dominated the Texas and southern economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many AfricanAmerican women had grandmothers who had worked in the cotton fields as slaves, but twentieth-century blacks faced a labor system that exploited women’s labor in a different way. Although some African-American families owned land, most black families in ruFrom Farm to Future Women’s Journey through Twentieth-Century Texas Angela Boswell ★ 20centtxtext.indd 105 20centtxtext.indd 105 1/18/08 1:45:08 PM 1/18/08 1:45:08 PM 106 TWENTIETH-CENTURY TEXAS ral eastern and central Texas were sharecroppers or tenant farmers. Most land in these cotton-growing regions was still owned by white families, but the percentage of white families had decreased significantly since the Civil War. Whereas perhaps two-thirds or more of the white families had owned and worked their own land before the Civil War, by 1900 three-quarters of the farms were worked by sharecroppers. Falling cotton prices along with the crop-lien system had caused many farmers to lose their land to debt and made it nearly impossible for sharecroppers to save enough money to buy their own land.1 Whether landowners, sharecroppers, tenant farmers, or wage laborers, women’s labor within a family played an important role in paying the debts, feeding the family, and holding onto the family property. Women of sharecropping and tenant families often found themselves helping with field work, and women of families working for wages—especially migrant workers who primarily worked during cotton-picking season—could not avoid it. While often directly contributing labor to the main support of the family, women’s principal work remained housework and household production, an exclusively female domain.2 A woman bore the responsibility for making sure her family was clothed. Women often obtained cloth from peddlers either by trading eggs, butter, and the other produce from their gardens or paying for the cloth with money made from selling such goods. Because general stores were still male domains and women’s work in the household did not allow much time for travel, wives often sent instructions with their husbands concerning the type, color, and quantity of fabric to purchase. Additional sources of cloth were feed sacks and flour sacks. In fact, in the 1920s flour companies began printing their sacks with designs to capitalize on this widespread use.3 Once they had acquired the cloth, women made clothing for their large and constantly growing families—rural Texas families still 20centtxtext.indd 106 20centtxtext.indd 106 1/18/08 1:45:10 PM 1/18/08 1:45:10 PM FROM FARM TO FUTURE 107 averaged one to three more members than urban families. Women also sewed and stuffed their own mattresses and pillows, as well as made the sheets and curtains for doors and windows. For winter, women made quilts and other bedding. The economic contribution of homemade clothing and bedding was so immense that it often made sense even for sharecropping families to purchase a sewing machine. Those without machines borrowed or shared them with others. Treadle machines were a great improvement over hand stitching even though almost no rural women had electric sewing machines until mid-century. Only those closest to urban areas had electricity before the 1930s.4 Clothing had to be constantly mended, and clothes that were completely worn out could be made into something else. Clothing had to be washed, one of the largest and most difficult chores of all—and the first household chore to...