The Great Depression and the New Deal: Transient Division Newsletter from Macon, Georgia

Photos of Macon

Pictured here is a rolling store. These stores would travel door to door with “groceries, hardware, drygoods, drugs, and a variety of household and farm supplies."1


This is a cotton field and plantation house in Macon. As a southern community, cotton was an important part of Macon’s economy, especially between 1800-1865. The cotton gin, a tool that made cotton production much more efficient, was invented in 1793 and drastically increased demand for cotton. Southern communities like Macon met this demand by increasing slave labor until the abolition of slavery in 1865. Afterwards, sharecroppers and small tenant farmers farmed the cotton instead. This was the dominant labor system at the time this photo was taken.2

Footnotes

  1. Marion Post Wolcott, Rolling store which goes from door to door selling groceries, hardware, drygoods, drugs, and a variety of household and farm supplies. Near Montezuma, Georgia, June 1939, photograph, Photogrammar, https://photogrammar.org/photo/fsa1998012649/PP/county/G1301930.↵
  2. Dorothea Lange, Cotton field and plantation house. Macon County, Georgia, August 1937, photograph, Photogrammar, https://photogrammar.org/photo/fsa2000001592/PP/county/G1301930.↵

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