Letter activity one - Tobacco bag stringing: Secondary activity two

The following excerpt is from a letter from Mr. Sherlock Bronson, a lawyer and president of Virginia-Carolina Service Corporation, to the Honorable Graham Braden, a member of the U. S. House of Representatives. It was written March 16, 1939.

The bags when ready for stringing and tagging are delivered to distributors, who place the bags with hundreds of householders in Virginia and North Carolina…

The only implement needed to effect the stringing is a small needle, which costs approximately one penny. The home worker is allowed almost unlimited latitude with respect to the time of return of the finished bags. The rate of compensation which usually prevails is from 50 cents to 75 cents per 1,000 bags.

The actual work of stringing is performed by various members of the family at moments of leisure. The home workers in the vast majority of cases are white and engaged in agricultural pursuits. No one is permitted to work under the age of 18 years in spite of the fact that the work is of such a beneficial nature as to be terms “institutional.” Doctors prescribe it for extreme nervousness. It is so simple a performance that some of the largest producers serving the industry are totally blind. The home is in no respect converted into a factory, the members of the family stringing individually or collectively at their leisure, usually while attending to other duties, such as cooking or nursing or caring for aged parents and relatives. It would be difficult to suggest any economic or humane reason for the discouragement of the stringing of bags in the home, or, under the guise of the regulation of labor, to interfere with the instinctive habits of family industry and thrift.

Why do you think Mr. Bronson is writing to the Congressman?
Why is his position significant?
How does he attempt to support his position?
Are there possible examples of bias in this excerpt? Why might they be bias? Support your answer.

As part of his letter, Mr. Bronson included the following section of the 1938 “Report on Economic Conditions in the South” prepared by the National Emergency Council to the President of the United States.

“Ever since the War Between the States the South has been the poorest section of the nation. The Richest state in the south ranks lower in per capita income than the poorest state outside the region. In 1937, the average income in the south was $314.00. In the rest of the country it was $604.00, or nearly twice as much. Even in prosperous 1929, southern farm people received an average gross income of only $186.00 a year, as compared with $528.00 for farmers elsewhere. Out of that $185.00 southern farmers had to pay all their operating expenses, tools, fertilizers, see, taxes and interest on debt—so that only a fraction of that sum was left for the purchase of food, clothes and the decencies of life. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that such ordinary items as automobiles, radios and books are relatively rare in many southern country areas. For more than half of the South’s farm families—the 54% who are tenants without land of their own—incomes are far lower. Many thousands of them are living in poverty comparable to that of the poorest peasant in Europe. A recent study of southern cotton plantations indicated that the average tenant family received an income of only $73.00 a person for a year’s work. Earnings of share croppers range from $38.00 to $87.00 per person, and an income of $38.00 annually means little more than 10 cents a day… A study of southern farm-operating white families not receiving relief or other assistance shows that those whose income averaged $390.00 spent annually only $49.00 on the food they bought, $31.00 on clothing, $12.00 on medical care, $1.00 on recreation, $1.00 on reading, $2.00 on education.”

Why did Mr. Bronson include this section of the report in his letter to Congressman Barden?
Why was the South in such bad economic shape in 1938? In 1929?
How does this information strengthen the argument he is making to the Congressman?
Does this show the same bias as the previous excerpt? Why or why not?
Which excerpt would you choose to present to the Congress in support of the proposed amendment? Why?