Abstract:
In 1940, two government agencies, the Federal Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the Federal-State Agricultural Extension Service, organized the Federal-State mattress-making program. This program allocated 4,600 bales of cotton from North Carolina warehouses to assist low-income farming families. Families applied for the program, and, if they were accepted, they paid a small fee for needles and thread and were then shown how to sew up to three mattresses per family. For most of the families, it was the first mattress they had ever owned. When the program ended two years later, over 220,000 mattresses had been made.