Living on the West End: Cotton-picking time, the 1930s
By Bill Shepard
August had arrived.
This was one of the town’s busiest times of the year. The tobacco warehouses in Darlington would be opening most any day now. Some of the merchants on the town square would be hiring additional help.
Wagonloads of the golden leaf would be moving to warehouses on South Main and nearby locations. The auctioneers would soon be heard as they moved along the floor, pile to pile, offering bids for the tobacco that lay in piles before them.
Something else was happening. The cotton fields around Darlington were beginning to show signs that cotton-picking time was here. This was one of my favorite times of the summer. I looked forward to this time each year and knew where the fields within walking distance of the village were located.
I had visited most of them each year since I was big enough to be hired to pull the white fluff from the boll. I really liked picking cotton and of course it was a way of earning my own spending money.
At the first signs of the fields getting white, I would head to one of the farms nearest to the village.
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Broach were sharecroppers on one of W.P. Law’s farms. The farm was located along the old Hartsville Road and just a mile, give or take a little, from my home on the village.
As soon as the word was spread that Mr. Broach was hiring pickers, the children from the village would go to the farm and apply for work. Mrs. Broach usually did the hiring and would visit the field often each day to make certain that cotton was being picked in a satisfying way.
If a picker was leaving bolls of cotton that were white and ready for harvest, she would call that person back to the spot and have them go over their row again. It was almost impossible to pick a row without leaving some behind, but Mrs. Broach was one hard boss lady!
She would visit the place where the large burlap sheets were spread and look at the cotton that had been spread on the sheets.
Each picker had their own sheet. If Mrs. Broach saw a sheet that had what she thought was too much trash in it, that picker would really be admonished to do better or be sent home.
Sometimes one would see entire families in the field picking cotton. The times of the late 1920s and early to mid-1930s, work was scarce, and farm work was one way that families could help support their needs. The farmers were also glad to have families helping to pick the cotton.
A large family together might pick 500 or 600 pounds a day. That was more than this writer would pick in a week. A family of pickers might earn as much as $5 in a day!
During those hard times, that amount kept the wolf from one’s door, but it didn’t stop him from howling from a distance!
I liked weighing time! Each evening near sundown, Mr. Broach would come to the field to weigh the cotton that had been picked that day. The sheets would have been tied and each picker was standing nearby.
Mr. Broach would have his scales and wooden horse with which he could lift the sheet of cotton.
The cotton being weighed, Mr. Broach would take his little black pad and write the name and the amount beside it. All of the sheets being weighed, the cotton would be loaded on a wagon and hauled to a barn, where it would stay until it was carried to a cotton gin in town.
Saturday was the day we all looked for!
That was payday. Mr. Broach would have all the pickers meet him on the steps of the old courthouse that stood in the center of the square in Darlington. The old courthouse, the one that had the dome on top! Anyone remember?
With his little black pad open, Mr. Broach would call a name and the amount each had earned. He would then count the money into the picker’s hand.
Being Saturday, a Western movie would be playing at the Liberty Theater across the street from the courthouse. After visiting Metropols Ice Cream Parlor, and purchasing a triple dip of cream for a nickel, I would head for the theater, where I would spend another dime of my hard-earned money to see one of my favorite cowboys chase down a whole bunch of cattle thieves and bring them to justice all by himself!
Those were the days of Hoot Gibson, Tim McCoy, Bob Steele, Buck Jones, Hopalong Cassidy and of course, John Wayne and others too many to name!
Cotton-picking time would last until September, and then my vacation would be over. School opened in the second week of September each year. More about that next time!
