# Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Fall/105/Section068/Betty McCoy

Overview
Betty McCoy was born in 1902 in Charlotte, North Carolina. She began doffing in Louis
Cotton Mill near her home at the age of twelve to help with family expenses after her
mother inherited a house that she could not afford. Working as child labor, McCoy never
had the opportunity to have a formal education. McCoy and her husband met in Louis
Cotton Mill. Like her, her husband started working in the mill as a child. They were
married in a Methodist church, which is McCoy's faith throughout her life. Without
formal education, McCoy and her husband could not move to a better job. Although
McCoy was able to work three times as many machines in 1939, she can only make
fifteen dollars a week due to the Fair Labor Standard Act. She continued working in
Louis Cotton Mill, and there is no accurate information about her death.
Child Labor in the Early 1900s
After the industrial revolution in the US, factory owners started to hire child workers.
Especially in cotton mills, children were hired with their parents and other children in the
same neighborhood. Children had a special disposition to working in factories and mines
as their small statures were useful to fixing machinery and navigating the small areas that
fully grown adults could not (Crosson-Tower 2017). Many families in mill towns
depended on the children's labor to make enough money for necessities (McHugh 1960).
In 1880, 14 percent of all the mill workers in New England were younger than age
sixteen. Laws restricting child labor were taking effect, and by 1890 the percentage
dropped to 7 percent and by 1905, to 6 percent. (Rosenberg 2013, 25)
Some children considered employed life comfortable: "When not working in the mill,
Harriet helped her mother in the boarding house, read books, and tried her hand at writing
stories. She considered herself fortunate, especially when compared with the children
working in English mills, who were treated badly and were whipped by the cruel
overseers." (Rosenberg 2013, 15)
The impact of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 on laborers
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938(FLSA) is a United States labor law that creates the
right to a minimum wage. It was signed by US President Franklin Roosevelt, who called
it one of New Deal legislation's most important pieces. (Samuel 2000)
The life of factory laborers before the FLSA could be described by a letter sent to FDR.
In the letter, a female worker complained about female workers' poor salary: "I wish you
could do something to help us girls....We have been working in a sewing factory,... and
up to a few months ago we were getting our minimum pay of $11 a week... Today the
200 of us girls have been cut down to $4 and $5 and $6 a week."(Grossman)
The FLSA created a safety net for laborers. However, many of them could not get the
salary that suits their workload because of the Act. Since the working hour was cut down,
the factory owner started to accelerate machines and use finer threads in order to make
laborers work more and receive fewer wages.
The impact of the Great Depression on laborers
During the 1930s, great amount of laborers in factories faced unemployment due to the
Great Depression for more than one year. In 1933, one in four workers was unemployed.
To those who were fortunate to have jobs, many experienced cutbacks in hours. Of the
2.5 million workers on the payrolls of the 6,551 firms that responded to a federal
government questionnaire sent to 25,000 firms in March 1932, 56% were employed part-
time. Part-timers were even more prevalent in manufacturing industries in which they
represented 63% of all workers at the companies that responded. The high incidence of
part-time employment was involuntary; that is, people worked fewer hours than they
would have preferred due to the low operating rates at the surveyed firms. Only 26% of
the responding firms were operating on full-time schedules and only 28% were open five
or more days a week. Cutting hours was a strategy by president Hoover which
successfully reemployed many workers who had lost their jobs. He tried to prevent the
widespread unemployment by pursuading industry leaders to lower their factories’
operating rate and cut operating hours. Although many workers were able to secure their
jobs, the involuntarily reduced working hours still greatly influenced workers’ livelihood.
(The Labor 2009)
References
Crosson-Tower, Cynthia. Exploring Child Welfare: A Practice Perspective. New York:
Pearson, 2018.
Jonathan Grossman. "Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a
Minimum Wage." https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/flsa1938.
McHugh, Cathy L. Mill family: the labor system in the Southern cotton textile industry,
1880-1915. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960.
Rosenberg, Chaim M. Child Labor in America. NC: McFarland, 2013.
Samuel, Howard. "Troubled passage: the labor movement and the Fair Labor
Standards Act". Monthly Labor Review. United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.
(2000): 32-37.
"The Labor Market During the Great Depression and the Current Recession."
June 19, 2009.
https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R40655.html#_Toc233450601.