6 THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 



agriculture. The overwhelming extravagance and corruption, 

 ignorance and bad management of the negro, " carpet-bag," 

 and " scalawag " governments greatly increased the rate of 

 taxation, and the inefficiency of local government resulted in 

 perpetual disorder and disregard for the rights of property. 1 



Two undesirable features of the agricultural situation in the 

 South were inherited from ante-bellum times: the credit system 

 based upon crop mortgages; and the excessive attention devoted 

 to the production of great staples, especially cotton. Although 

 the credit system was in existence even in colonial times, it 

 received a new lease of life as a result of the general poverty 

 of the agricultural class, both black and white, at the close of 

 the war. Under this system the impecunious farmer purchased 

 all his supplies during a year on credit from a merchant who 

 relied on the sale of the forthcoming crop for payment. Though 

 apparently a plan to help the farmer tide over the hard times, 

 it was really an injury to him in several ways. It put him in 

 the power of the merchant, and thus eliminated all competition 

 in the sale of commodities, the result of which and of the natural 

 risks and inconveniences of the system was a raising of prices 

 far above the normal cash scale; 2 and it led inevitably to care- 

 lessness, waste, and extravagance. As a result when the farmer 

 came to balance up at the end of the year he frequently found 

 himself still in debt to the merchant, after the disposal of his 

 crop. In many cases the annual residue of debt increased year 

 by year until finally crops, stock, farm, and all were absorbed 

 by the ruinous system. 3 



The over-production of cotton, also, was partially a result 

 of the credit system, although the roots went back to the begin- 

 ning of agriculture in the South. The indebted farmer naturally 

 wanted to devote most of his energies to the one crop which 



1 Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, 571-607, 733-771; J. W. 

 Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi; C. W. Howard, " Condition of Agriculture 

 in the Cotton States," in United States Commissioner of Agriculture, Reports, 

 1874, pp. 215-238; J. T. Trowbridge, The South. 



2 It has been estimated that prices were fully twenty-five per cent higher be- 

 cause of the prevailing credit system. Otken, Ills of the South, ch. ii. 



3 M. B. Hammond, The Cotton Industry in the United States, ch. v. 



