AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



for, with interest, out of the money wages. An- 

 other class of laborers are contract hands i. e., 

 laborers paid by the month or year and fed and 

 supplied by the landowner. Such laborers receive 

 from 30 to 40 cents per day during the working 

 season ; they .are usually unmarried persons, many 

 being women, and when they marry they become 

 metayers, or occasionally, renters. 



"The cropper is entirely without capital, even 

 in the limited sense of food or money to keep him 

 from seed time to harvest; all he furnishes is 

 labor, while the landowner furnishes house, land, 

 stock, tools, and seed. At the end of the year 

 the cropper gets a stipulated portion of the crop ; 

 out of his share, however, comes payment, with 

 interest, for food and clothing advanced him dur- 

 ing the year. Thus we have a laborer without 

 capital and without wages, and an employer 

 whose capital consists largely of food and other 

 supplies advanced to laborers an arrangement 

 unsatisfactory to both parties, and in vogue usu- 

 ally on poor land with hard pressed owners. 



"Above the cropper comes the share tenant who 

 works the land on his own responsibility, paying 

 rent in cotton, and supported by the crop lien sys- 

 tem. The great mass of the negro population is 

 found in this class. After the war this plan at- 

 tracted the freedmen on account of its larger 

 freedom and its possibility for making a surplus. 

 If the rent fixed was reasonable, this was an incen- 

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