56 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



in the western cotton states. This caused some Negro 

 migration with consequent breaking of contracts. 35 The 

 loss thrown on the planter by crop failures, and the 

 mobility of workers resulted first in a reduction of yearly 

 wages which ranged from $100 to $150 for men in 1867 

 to a scale of from $90 to $110 in 1868. 36 



The result was the share system, adopted after a period 

 of trial and error, to govern the division of the prod- 

 uct between landlord and tenant. The share given 

 the landlord came to range from a half to a "third and 

 fourth." If the worker owns no stock or implements, he 

 lives in the landlord's house, works his farm, pays half 

 of the crop expenses as fertilizer and ginning, and re- 

 ceives half the crop for the labor of himself and family. 

 The term usually applied to such a farmer is cropper 

 rather than tenant, and his status is that of "a servant 

 whose wages depend upon the amount of profit." 7 A 

 tenant has possession in his own right, but the landlord 

 may direct and control the operations of a cropper. The 

 Georgia Supreme Court has declared, "The case of the 

 cropper is rather a mode of paying wages than a ten- 

 ancy." t8 The share tenant owns his mules and implements 

 of cultivation and pays, for the rent of the land, a third 

 of the corn and a fourth of the cotton. Another system of 

 payment which grew up was called cash or "standing 

 rent." The rental was standing in that a fixed amount 

 was to be paid from the fruits of the soil regardless of 

 how much was produced. This usually means the delivery 



35 T. J. Woofter, Jr., Negro Migration, pp. 92-122. 

 30 Report of Department of Agriculture 1868, cited by Hammond, 

 op. cit., p. 124. 



37 12 Iredell 3 ; 123 North Carolina, p. 749. 



38 Appling v. Odum, 1872, Georgia Reports, p. 584-85. 



