THE FARM LAND 57 



The tenants of Deerfield moved on to new land when they 

 became completely disgusted with being tenants. Today there 

 is little new land to move to. Farmers who lose their land 

 become and usually remain tenant farmers. A tenant farmer 

 does not have a permanent home. In many cases, particularly 

 among the southern sharecroppers, he must be constantly mov 

 ing, without ever getting really settled. 



When a factory worker moves to a new job or a storekeeper 

 opens a store in a new town, it may not be long before he is 

 well established. With a farmer, it is different. It takes years 

 to understand a piece of ground, how it should be plowed, 

 what will grow best, what fertilisers it needs. A farmer who 

 is constantly on the move has little chance to get the best out 

 of the soil he works. Both the 1925 and the 1930 agricultural 

 censuses showed that less than one-half of the tenant farmers 

 had occupied their places two full years or more. 55 



The share-cropper of the cotton growing South has become 

 a classic example of the American farm tenant. There are 

 many of these people who rarely live on the same land for 

 more than a year. They are given a share of the value of the 

 cotton they produce to pay the costs of their food and lodging 

 while they work in the fields, hence the name, "share-cropper." 

 It is not unusual for the cropper to end a year of work without 

 having earned enough to pay his employer for the food he has 

 had to buy. Here is what one traveler saw when he went 

 through the share-cropper region: 



"We went some miles south and turned off the road toward 

 some tumbledown shacks. The shacks were little more than 

 decayed boards roughly nailed to uprights, with gaps between 

 them covered on the inside with newspapers. You would have 

 kept your pigs in them if you didn't care much for the pigs. 

 They were set in little clearings and were very picturesque at 



55 Yearbook of Agriculture, 1936, United States Department of Agriculture, 

 United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1936, p. 53. 



