94 UNITED STATES - MISCEl,I.ANEOUS 



The quality of the work could not but be improved in this way : the 

 labourer being directly interested and jointly ^.Tcsponsible for the 'progress 

 of the farm. The system, in the end, benefited the farmers in ^another 

 way as, while the risks were divided, they were spared the necessity of 

 paying wages in cash. 



Of the forms of share tenancy then devised, some have now fallen into 

 disuse, others have been modified, while some still remain. Thus, a form of 

 contract has been almost completely abandoned, though it was very wide- 

 spread in the years immediately following the emancipation of the slaves, by 

 which the negro had to work for a certain number of days a week on the 

 employer's farm, receiving in return the right to cultivate a piece of ground 

 for his own account, together with the necessary stock and sometimes also 

 wages in money. According to other contracts, the labourer received some 

 of his wages in money and the rest as a specified share of the harvest. 



Evidently we have here intermediate steps between simple hire of 

 labour and share tenancies. The latter in their pure form only appeared later. 

 At first the portion of the crop assigned to the negro tenants {share croppers) 

 was very small — one third, a fourth and even a fifth of the produce — 

 varying with the fertility of the soil and the proportion in which the 

 employer had contributed by provision of the seed, stock etc. Certainly 

 such a proportion of the produce, though small, must have yet seemed 

 reasonable to those who up to a short time before could claim no reward 

 for their labour and whose requirements were so limited. However, the 

 position of the share croppers was generally far from happy : since the 

 risk assumed by them was not compensated by a corresponding share 

 in the profits ; so that one inferior harvest was enough to involve them 

 in debt to the landov/ner or the local storekeeper who had supplied them 

 with seed, farm implements or the articles of first necessity to enable 

 them to live until harvest time. 



Their debts to the landlord and the storekeeper were secured on a crop 

 lien : the landlord having the first claim. In this way it often happened 

 that at the end of the season when the harvest was bad, the whole share of 

 the share cropper went to pay his debts. Indeed, it often was not sufficient 

 to pay them : and in that case the tenant had no chance of seeking better 

 conditions, hence the law in man}^ of the Southern States forbade his leav- 

 ing the farm till he had paid his debts. That he was unable to do so was 

 frequently enough the case, owing to the hard conditions of the contract 

 (as almost always the least infringement of it gave the landlord a right to 

 the whole crop) ; so under various aspects there was a renewal of condi- 

 tions resembhng slavery. 



To day the conditions of the negro share tenants are in many ways im- 

 proved. There is an inferior form of tenancy, various famiUes of ten- 

 nants working on large plantations under the supervision of the master 

 who assigns the lots, distributes the labour and settles the crops to be 

 cultivated aud a superior form in which the tenant cultivates a piece 

 of ground for his own account, specially allotted to him, managing it 

 on his own responsibihty. 



