84 THE UPrER PINE BELT. 



very successful, and the second year a number of laborers proposed to 

 work only four days, feed themselves and take double the land and mule 

 work, without the money. The third year three-day hands came in, fur- 

 nishing in part their own work stock ; and as some hands paid the rent 

 for a house and an acre of land by giving two days work a week, there 

 were found various classes of hands on the same places, working from two 

 to six days in the week. The share system is practiced more largely in 

 Barnwell than in Hampton, and still more in Darlington and Marlboro. 

 The terms are generally the same, the employer furnishing land, teams 

 and implements, the laborer feeding himself and getting one-third to one- 

 half, after paying for his pro rata of bagging, ties, and fertilizers. Chan- 

 cellor Johnson says (Marlboro county) : " I have a good many tenants, 

 white and black. I furnish the stock, food for it, pay one-half the black- 

 smith, fertilizer, bagging and ties account, and furnish ginning facilities ; 

 the tenant (has his garden and potato patch free) does all the work, from 

 repairing fences and ditches to preparing the crop for market, my ad- 

 vances are repaid and the crop is equally divided. The tenants generally 

 get at the rate of eight to ten bales for each mule they work, grain for their 

 family supplies and enough to make their meat. I get the same amount of 

 cotton and more than grain enough for the next year's crop. I have had 

 some tenants over ten years." He prefers hired labor where the planta- 

 tion is not too large, that is about eight plows. The advantage of 

 either system depends upon the character of the individual, good tenants 

 being sometimes poor laborers, and vice versa. Each locality reports 

 favorably of the system pursued there. 



In Hampton, the wages system is preferred, the laborers run no risks, 

 the soil is improving, the condition of the laborers good, very few of them 

 own house or land. Lands sell from one dollar to twenty-five dollars per 

 acre, and rent for one dollar to three dollars in small patches ; little land 

 is rented. 



In Barnwell, the laborer decides under which system he will work. 

 Share hands and renters pick cleaner cotton than wage hands. The 

 wages system is preferred, by the planters, the laborer runs no risks, his 

 pay is net money, he spends it and lives and works better, and land im- 

 proves. The condition of the laborer is good and improving, cjuite a 

 number own houses and lands. The market value of land is three dollars 

 to ten dollars an acre, including imi)roved and unimproved. The rent 

 is from one dollar to three dollars in money ; in kind it is seventy- 

 five pounds of lint cotton per acre, or one thousand pounds of lint 

 for a forty acre farm, or a five hundred pound bale for fifteen to twenty 

 acres. 



In the lower part of Orangeburg, year hands receive monthly six dol- 



