EVOLUTION OF THE COTTON SYSTEM 75 



a fourteenth of the acreage, in cotton. Wage labour was also 

 hired to feed swine, raised to provide part of the pork sold 

 to the negroes, and to care for the mules, kept to farm the 

 land operated by the wage hands and by the share hands or 

 croppers. 



Each of the 130 negro families was provided with a cabin. 

 Less than half of these negro families owned mules and farm- 

 ing implements. The negroes who owned the mules and im- 

 plements with which they worked, farmed only about 40 per 

 cent of the entire cotton acreage and about 30 per cent of 

 the entire corn acreage of the two plantations. Altogether 

 they had 45 of the 130 mules on the entire plantation. The 

 average negro family had about 11 acres in cotton and 4 

 acres in corn, the basis of assigning acreage being to allow 

 about six acres of cotton and two acres in corn for each male 

 adult worker or equivalent in children able to work. Advances 

 were made to the negroes from March first on. These were 

 held down as near as possible to supplies in value not ex- 

 ceeding half a dollar per acre per month, until August first. 

 From then on only half that amount was allowed. Tenants in 

 need of more advances were given a chance to work for wages 

 part time. The mules used by the croppers were kept in cen- 

 tral barns and cared for and used in part by labourers work- 

 ing on a wage basis. These croppers were also furnished with 

 implements. They got half of the cotton and corn raised, for 

 furnishing the labour and for meeting half of the expense of 

 ginning. Advances, made prior to settlement, were deducted 

 from the cropper's half of the receipts from cotton. 



The landowner preferred croppers working on the halves 

 to renters owning their own mules and tools, yet, in order to 

 get enough satisfactory labour both kinds of tenants were 

 employed. Renters with their own operating capital furnished 

 the feed of the work animals, the seed, and labour and gave 

 as rent a fourth of the cotton and a third of the corn. They 

 are called "third and fourth renters." The rent paid on the 

 corn land had to be at least ten bushels per acre, this pro- 



