We never went to bed hungry, although lots of people in towns did.
We killed hogs and cured the meat at home and for the lard.
Some of the prices for the farm crops are as follows: wheat 10 cents a bushel, corn 8 cents a bushel. I don’t remember the price of oats as we fed all of them to the mules. We always had a big garden and Moma canned the vegetables in the summer for winter. About all we bought from the store was sugar, coffee and flour.
We belonged to a group that butchered calves in the summer and divided the meat among all members. Cotton sold for 4 3/4 cents a pound. We sold some top hogs once for 3 cents a pound. When the government killed the cows and sheep in 1933 and 1934, they paid $12 for a cow, $10 for a year-old yearling and $8 for a suckling calf, $1 for a sheep and you had to skin them and turn in the hide.
They also had a program to plow the cotton up before harvest, but I don’t remember what they paid per acre.
Wages were $1 a day from sunup to sundown for a man and 75 cents for a boy. When we had the bank holiday in the 1930s after they opened back up, if you were lucky enough to have any money in the bank you could only draw out a certain amount each week or month, and I don’t remember what that amount was.
Times were tough as there was no bailout or unemployment.
