Making Choices, Making Do is a comparative study of Black
and white working-class women's survival strategies during the
Great Depression. Based on analysis of employment histories and
Depression-era ...interviews of 1,340 women in Chicago, Cleveland,
Philadelphia, and South Bend and letters from domestic workers,
Lois Helmbold discovered that Black women lost work more rapidly
and in greater proportions. The benefits that white women accrued
because of structural racism meant they avoided the utter
destitution that more commonly swallowed their Black peers. When
let go from a job, a white woman was more successful in securing a
less desirable job, while Black women, especially older Black
women, were pushed out of the labor force entirely. Helmbold found
that working-class women practiced the same strategies, but
institutionalized racism in employment, housing, and relief assured
that Black women worked harder, but fared worse. Making
Choices, Making Do strives to fill the gap in the labor
history of women, both Black and white. The book will challenge the
limits of segregated histories and encourage more comparative
analyses.
Relief LOIS RITA HELMBOLD
Making Choices, Making Do,
10/2022
Book Chapter
Taking charity was a last resort. When employment and family failed, when women exhausted material and human resources, hunger drove them to relief offices, where applications peaked in the coldest ...months. Understanding the mindsets of women who exposed their destitution and asked outsiders for help, and of those who did not entertain such thoughts, or did not act on them, requires knowledge of the relief system and the opprobrium attached to it. The shame that assistance incurred, to say nothing of the scarcity and inadequacy of relief, circled through women’s minds as they mulled over applying for aid. The infrequency
Some women chose independence and circumstances propelled others into self-sufficiency. Familial relations did not constitute the daily worlds of all women. Young single women left home in search of ...autonomy; women whose marriages ended, and unmarried women of all ages, lived on their own. Economic crisis increased the number of “unattached” women by exacerbating tensions and deepening rifts within marriages and families. The newly unattached struggled with economic and emotional losses, while others had long practiced living without a male wage earner’s income. Socially stereo typed or made invisible, as much as 15–20% of adult women in Chicago and
Unemployment and seasonal layoffs had long haunted workers, especially factory operatives, but following the stock market crash of 1929, jobs disappeared abruptly. Joblessness peaked at 24.9% in ...1933, and never claimed less than a seventh of the labor force the rest of the decade.¹ Official figures, however, consistently undercounted lived experience by excluding the underemployed, who earned a dollar or two weekly or a thin pay envelope once every six weeks, and the discouraged, who had ceased looking for work. Whether they served meals, shook sheets, sold notions, sewed brassieres, scrubbed toilets, or answered telephones, working-class women recoiled from plummeting
The Family Economy LOIS RITA HELMBOLD
Making Choices, Making Do,
10/2022
Book Chapter
“Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without.” This aphorism exemplifies how people managed in the Great Depression despite insufficient income. Material and monetary needs, family hierarchies, ...and emotions intertwine intimately, yet a brief artificial separation can promote clarity. This chapter focuses on material, subsistence, and financial strategies; chapter 5 addresses intensified demands for loyalty and increased conflicts. Chapter 6 examines strategies of women “adrift.” I have reframed the typical comparison, between so-called complete and broken families, to contrast women whose tasks facilitated family survival (with or without husbands) with those who struggled alone. I will demonstrate
During the Great Depression, daily survival in the absence of adequate wages depended upon a family’s ability to command the allegiance and deploy the labor of the entire house hold. Collective ...survival was the goal, not the means. Parents asserted authority over children, and men exercised masculine prerogatives. Obligation and coercion generated additional income. Grudging cooperation joined hands with resentment and discord when parents and/or men wielded power. Acquiescence and even commitment to prevailing gender, age, and familial hierarchies did not ensure that children and wives complied with parental or patriarchal plans.
Strategies to sustain faltering family economies required girls
