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Report to Mr. Hopkins on North Carolina
My dear Mr. Hopkins: This report will not be as complete as I would wish; simply because of the time limit in doing the job. I really only saw Charlotte and Gaston County; but I suppose Gaston County is a concentration of all evils, and it would be a wonderful area to use as guinea pig for an experiment in thorough relief work. My sources are the same as those cited in the report on South Carolina: administrators, heads of social work departments, visiting nurses, doctors, mill owners, local judges, unemployed, and Union presidents and workers. The picture is similar to that of South Carolina; varying only in details. To begin with the general criticism of relief is again that the 30 cents work relief hour-wage is too high; and that the relief client won't take a job in private industry when it is offered. This is especially true of the Negroes. (A typical story; a woman offered a Negress some work as laundress; she had formerly employed this Negress. The Negress said: "Lawd, no, Missy, we's on the government now.") This enrages the local gentry, and is probably a justified criticism. The relief is, according to all those connected with its administration, below subsistence level; and, as in S.C., there are the usual dietary diseases; pellagra, colitis, and of course anemia, lowered resistance etc. The social work staffs of ERA are over; case loads as high as 350 families per untrained girl. These girls who are doing the social work are a band of heroes, and work from 12 to 14 hours per day covering a vast and disheartening territory. They earn between $60. and $75 a month; it is easy to see why the trained workers would cut down the relief load; and that maybe with adequate staffing a real job of rehabilitation could be done with our unemployed. As it now is, this is basket-charity--with the curse taken off, slightly, by 6 to 24 hours work relief, per week. The dependence of the unemployed worries the social workers. It is very marked; I see the unemployed literally waiting for the social worker (who--due to overloads, can make infrequent visits only) to ask her advice on any matter, and to ask her help for everything. But I believe this is also due to the low level of education and intelligence. Schooling here is, as an average in the unemployed and low income group, fourth grade. I have also seen the schools and think that whether they had any schooling or not is unimportant; the schools are manned by willing people who are themselves incompetent and uneducated. (Highest rate of pay for a teacher in N.C. is $720 a year). The medical set-up in this area is non-existent; and I think my last report adequately stressed the terrific health conditions. Syphilis uncured and unchecked; spread by ignorant people who have no conception of the disease, and no special interest in getting cured. One doctor in Gastonia, who handles our relief cases, said "syphilis has reached the point of being an epidemic here." The doctors all talk of malnutrition and fear the present and future effects. Birth control is needed here almost more than in any other area I have ever seen; there is one mill village where half the population is pathologic, and reproducing half wits and with alarming vigor. None of this is surprising; Gaston County has one health office and that's all in the way of public medicine. He himself is a total loss. The private doctors do what they can which isn't much. And all are appalled by what the future holds for these people, who are absolutely unequipped for life. As for the employed: mills are shutting down, the majority of the mills here run on part time. The division between employed and unemployed is slight; considering that often workers are living on less than our E.R.A. relief workers make. A sense of insecurity grows; these workers fear hunger and cold; fear the loss of jobs or the shutting down of the mill. The labor troubles add to this state of fear; it is really an extraordinary mess. When I go into workers houses to talk to them, it takes some time before they will trust me; dare to say that they are union men; dare to discuss their problems. They live in terror of being penalized for joining unions; and the employers live in a state of mingled rage and fear against this imported monstrosity; organized labor. A kind of underground warfare which will flare up from time to time, stupidly, doing no one any good. I think this labor business must be considered in our field, if one tries to gauge the mental state of these people. I find all the union presidents eager to maintain order, eager to avoid rioting, bloodshed, which they realize will only react to the detriment of the worker. But the leaders, curiously enough, are more moderate than the led. And the workers, themselves, living in overcrowded houses, nervously overwrought, undernourished, frightened, are apt to strike even though they realize they can only lose. Though I find the mill owners strangely hysterical about unions, I find them very sound by and large on this health problem. They too feel that it is terrible; and must be handled. I think one could get good local co-operation in this area for any health work one wanted to undertake. And I feel that unless we do undertake some health work, we may as well wash our hands of this area. A generation is being born which will be unfit for any work, unfit to take any place in a decent community. Gaston County is my idea of a place to go to acquire melancholia. The only ray of hope is the grand work which our own office is doing; it's a kind of desperate job like getting the wounded off the battlefield so that they can die quietly at a base hospital. But with all this; the employed and unemployed go on hoping. The President stands between them and despair, and all the violence which desperation can produce. This report is brief; but I have covered a good deal of what I saw in North Carolina in an extra report I handed in last week. And the general conditions are a repetition of South Carolina. I wish I had been able to get to the northern part of the state and to Georgia; but it is hard to think that the conditions can be worse than they are in Gaston County and allied pleasure spots. It would make me happy to send in a report, just once, that had something rosy to say. Thus far, in Massachusetts, I find the health conditions infinitely better than in the south (The public medical facilities are pretty good; and the average education of the unemployed and low-income group is higher.) But there seems to be a good deal of dirty work going on, with politics muffing our relief job. Political appointees to administer relief are my idea of the worst news of all. Yours sincerely, Martha Gellhorn Boston, November 19, 1934 |