EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 69 



change from slave to free labor 56 involved the substitution 

 of cultivation by tracts or parcels of land instead of 

 cultivation by the whole plantation as in the gang sys- 

 tem; it gave the laborer mobility, legal freedom of con- 

 tract, and wages, or a share of the crop in return for 

 his work. But the outstanding feature of the old planta- 

 tion was supervision, and it remains characteristic of the 

 new. This control, vested in a unified administration, ex- 

 tends to choice of crops, distribution of labor, and mar- 

 keting. To speak of southern and northern tenant farms 

 in the same terms is an anomaly. Tenant farms in the 

 Middle West are usually as large as owner farms, are 

 operated independently by a farmer who employs hired 

 labor and possesses as high a standard of living as his 

 landlords. The census has failed to show the prevalence 

 of the plantation, for it has counted each tenant's or 

 cropper's holding as a separate farm. The presence of 

 these plantation strips was shown in the census by the 

 contrast between northern and southern farms. In 1910 

 the improved acreage of the average southern farm was 

 48.6, its value $2,374 ; the improved acreage for a north- 

 ern farm was 100.3 and its value was $8,182. 



The special census of plantations 57 in 1910 showed the 

 extent of that form of land tenure. There were tabulated 

 39,073 plantations, containing five or more tenants on 

 28,296,815 acres of farm land, of which 15,836,363 acres 

 were in crops. These plantations, as suggested in Chapter 

 II, were localized in areas of fertile land suitable for 

 cotton production and coincided with the black belts as 



56 See also Phillips, "The Plantation with Slave Labor and Free," 

 American Historical Review, CCXIX (July, 1925), 21-29. 



87 "Plantations in the South," 1910 Census, V, 877-90. For census 

 definition of the plantation see Chap. II, p. 31, of the present volume. 



