W.A. Caplinger, Oral History
Files
Date
1996-03-08
Description
This is an audio recording of an oral history interview with W.A. Caplinger. It was conducted on March 8, 1996. The interviewer is Dr. James Conrad. Caplinger discusses cotton farming, beginning around 1940. His father owned twenty to thirty acres of land that they farmed themselves, and after a crop was harvested and ginned, they went to work for other cotton farmers for extra money. A typical day of picking started with the men tending to the livestock on their farm, while the women prepared lunches that they carried to the field. They would then drive to the farm where they had been hired to work. Pickers earned one penny for every pound of cotton they picked. According to Caplinger, a good picker could pick about 200 pounds of cotton per day. One field was usually picked two to three times per crop, to make sure that no cotton was overlooked. Caplinger said that the extra money earned working for other cotton farmers was often used to buy needed school supplies and a few extra things, for example, a $26 Hawthorne bicycle, which took about two to three weeks of picking cotton to earn. The school year was structured around harvesting the cotton crop. School started during the summer and went on break for a month or two when it was time to harvest the crop. When cotton season ended, school would start again. Caplinger remembered that heat and fatigue were two of the biggest hazards of working in the cotton fields. He said it was common to pick cotton for four to six hours at a time, and the sack that a picker carried may end up weighing sixty pounds or more. When picking was done for the day, it was necessary to go home to tend to livestock. Caplinger’s father served in World War I, and he learned the importance of diversifying crops by talking to farmers he met in Europe. When he returned home, he applied what he learned to his own farm. Caplinger stated that diversifying crops helped them weather the Great Depression better than those who grew only cotton.
Type
Sound
Format
mp4
Language
eng
Department
Special Collections and University Archives
Identifier
2008-032_OH_00295_interview
Note
Audio enhanced with Adobe Creative Cloud AI tool
Recommended Citation
Caplinger, W. A. and Conrad, James, "W.A. Caplinger, Oral History" (1996-03-08). All Oral Histories. 131.
https://digitalcommons.tamuc.edu/scua-oral-history-all/131
Subject
Cotton growing; Hunt County (Tex.)
Keywords
crop diversity
Rights Statement
