74 HUMAN FACTOES IN COTTON CULTURE 



day laborer, and his acreage is sometimes kept low in 

 order that he may work the landlord's crop. 



After the wage laborer has advanced to the cropper 

 stage, he may save money and become a share tenant. 

 He reaches this stage by investing in his own work ani- 

 mals and implements of cultivation. He still receives his 

 house and land from the plantation and pays usually "a 

 third and a fourth" of corn and cotton respectively, as 

 rent. "Standing rent" of so many bales of cotton regard- 

 less of the crop has developed in regions like Georgia, 

 where crop failures are not so common. On an average, 

 the share tenants make up about 54 per cent of all rent- 

 ers on plantations. 65 It is the tendency in good cotton 

 years for the plantation workers to advance in status ; 

 wage hands become croppers, and croppers become share 

 tenants. It is virtually impossible, because of the high 

 price of land, for Negroes to work up into land owner- 

 ship in a plantation area such as the Delta. Regions 

 affected by the Negro migration, however, have seen com- 

 petition for the services of laborers result in a general 

 raising of the tenure status of the hands and croppers. 



The following description is of a plantation of 4,200 

 acres with 130 Negro families in one of the Delta counties 

 of Mississippi: 



Although the acreage in the holding was contiguous, it was 

 considered large enough to handle as two quite distinct plan- 

 tations, the owner hiring an overseer for each. The landowner 

 owned and operated the cotton gin, the store, and the sawmill 

 that served both the plantations. A considerable acreage was 

 operated by wage labour, the owner hiring labour to farm all 

 of the 222 acres in crops cut for hay, 283 acres, or about 

 three-eighths of the acreage, in maize, and 108 acres, or about 



es Ibid., pp. 29-38. 



