Women and children, circa 1920
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The 1920s began with a spirit of optimism for
Texas farm women and their families. The war had brought a huge
demand for Texas cotton and other products, and for a time farmers
enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. The replacement of mules with
the tractor freed most women from having to participate in the
most back-breaking aspects of production. Farm women still spent
their days working hard at cooking, cleaning, sewing, canning,
and gardening, but they enthusiastically looked forward to electrification
and the labor-saving devices enjoyed by town women: sewing machines,
washing machines, gas stoves and ovens, ice boxes and refrigerators,
and small appliances such as vacuum cleaners, mixers, and electric
fans. The isolation of farm life also promised to ease as more
families obtained radios, telephones, and automobiles.
This optimism died early in the decade. Overproduction
led to falling cotton prices. Most farmers were unable to understand
the problem, and there was no means of effectively organizing
to curtail production. Poverty spread across rural Texas well
in advance of the Great Depression, and by 1935, only 2.3 percent
of Texas farms had been electrified. Farm women still lived
the same lives of hard physical labor as their frontier grandmothers.
In spite of continued poverty, political changes
for women did come to rural Texas. Farm women no longer considered
it improper to speak up outside the home. They made full use
of their right to vote and were publicly active in their churches
and in community groups such as the PTA, hospital auxiliaries,
and the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Like their husbands,
they also took advantage of education opportunities presented
through agricultural extension programs. Rural families in the
1920s also benefited from the activism of the women's lobby
in Austin, especially improvements to rural schools and programs
to help expectant mothers and their infants.
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Richard Niles Graham Collection, Prints and Photographs
Collection, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. #1964/306-355.
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