John Belk: North Carolina Textile Worker

John Belk was a southern mill worker born into a family of poor farmers. John and his wife Martha lived in Charlotte, North Carolina where he worked in the textile mills. This move was followed by a spate of disease and poverty, which he was unable to overcome. John was interviewed as a part of the Federal Writers Project on December 8, 1938.
Biography
Early life
Mr. John Belk was born into a poor family in Charlotte, NC in the early 1900’s. Out of the six kids born, only John and his brother Luther survived. His father, who also came from poverty, decided to start a farm of his own. His father rented a small farm and started working to make ends meet. Since most of his income from the farm was used to pay for rent, new equipment, feed, and stock, there was not much disposable income left to support his family. John worked on the family farm as a young boy to help out the family and grew up amongst poverty. Later, he too later failed to lift himself out of the same fiscal situation.
Family
John left the family farm to work in textile mills around the Charlotte area. Four years later, on December 22, he married a woman named Martha Payne. Soon after, they started a family and eventually had eleven children, eight of which survived. John and his family lived within the mill village and he worked hard to support his family.
Later years
He was barely able to take care of his family on a salary of $15 a week. When the mill would close down temporarily, John was fortunate enough to continue working because of his mechanical skills. While the mill was closed, they recruited John to work on the machines. During a seven-week stretch in 1930 however, John had to stay home to take care of Martha after the birth of their twins. During this time, they had no source of income except for the occasional work from their oldest daughter Ruby, which barely brought in any money at all. John even trekked four miles to the Associated Charities to ask for food but was denied because of their discovery that Ruby had been working. As a result, many of the children got sick due to the lack of nourishment. The twins, Amos and Hotshot developed whooping cough and were subsequently quarantined on the front porch. During this time, Martha’s father came to live with them, after the death of her mother and his firing from the mill due to his age.
During this time, black-tongue fever was also prevalent. Although the Belk family was fortunate enough not to become affected, they were constantly surrounded by neighbors and coworkers who were dying from this disease. It was completely possible that these diseases could wipe out entire families. In one instance, Martha’s father went to check on their neighbor and found 4 of the children and the father all dead from black-tongue fever. Because of the circumstances of the time, John and his family were never able to rise above the poverty level that he was trapped in his entire life
Living in the mill town posed both positives and negatives for the families. Even though there were certain advantages to living within the mill community, it was not an ideal place to call home. The difference between rich and poor during this time period was a major issue. The poor struggled to make enough to feed themselves, while the rich continued to get richer.
Disease
Disease in the mill communities was also a prevalent problem that was not easy to halt. Since the mill workers lived in close proximity to each other and worked together every day, it was difficult to keep sickness to yourself. Deathly diseases were rampant within these communities as a result of poor living conditions. Black-tongue fever was one of the more common fatal diseases and it plagued mill communities. This disease caused the infected’s tongue to swell up which would result in suffocation if it got advanced enough.
Lack of nutrition contributes extensively to the disease rates, as well as the infant-mortality rates, which is exactly what these mill families were faced with. In an attempt to collect history of people across the United States from 1889-1942, there were many criticisms of how the data was collected, as well as criticisms of the program itself. Daniel Fox presents his own opinion about the Federal Writers Project by saying that “The federal writers often have a somewhat blurred historical perspective”.<ref name"fox" /> Most federal writers would have been more content with making an interesting story, more so than if it was completely historically accurate.<ref name="fox" /> Not only was some information deceptive, the writers would maintain the dialect in which the interviewee spoke in order to create their identity. In this attempt to create an identity, there is a sense that it is also degrading. Using slang, and the stereotypical southern dialect in an attempt to show how John Belk spoke, is insulting and somewhat patronizing to the Belk’s credibility.
Daniel Fox states “The south presents a somewhat different problem…with different values, and social and economic problems”, the southern states presented different themes that needed to be covered.<ref name="fox" /> Painting an image of southern life during the early 1900’s would postulate the awful conditions that workers faced, including John Belk.

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