6o ECONOMICS OF LAND TENURE IN GEORGIA [60 



The benefits coming from the banks inure primarily to 

 the land-owning farmers rather than to the tenants and 

 croppers. The landlords who usually stand security for 

 the mercantile accounts of their tenants, and always of 

 their croppers, have been enabled in recent years to 

 obtain money from the banks, and with it to discount 

 the monthly bills of their tenants and croppers with the 

 merchants. This works to transfer the reward for risk- 

 taking to the farmer. As an outcome of it all, the ele- 

 ment of risk has been lessened, and even the tenants and 

 croppers have reaped some benefits from the improved 

 conditions. Although still suffering under the credit 

 system it does not weigh so heavily upon them as in 

 former times. In some cases credit percentages are fifty 

 per cent and in many cases they are at least twenty-five 

 per cent lower than they were fifteen years ago. 1 



• Witham Banks ' in Georgia more than two-thirds of the money on 

 deposit belongs to the farmers as against all other professions and de- 

 positors." The entire letter may be found in the Atlanta Constitution, 

 December 13, 1904. 



^he writer is well acquainted with an interesting case in Coweta 

 county. It is by no means typical but it does show how the banks have 

 enabled one farmer to display a very benevolent disposition toward his 

 croppers. This farmer employs about fifteen or twenty croppers, some 

 white and some black, agreeing to let them have a given amount of 

 money each month to be used as they see fit, for which they are charged 

 eight per cent interest (previous to 1904 he charged ten per cent). 

 The farmer gets the money from the banks at a rate slightly less than 

 this. He gives personal direction to the work of the croppers and as a 

 consequence they produce at least fifty per cent more than the average 

 croppers. It has been the policy of this farmer never to retain for an- 

 other year a cropper who fails to " pay out " at the end of a given year. 

 They rarely fail to "payout," and usually have considerable cash in 

 hand at the end of the year— results due in large measure to the efficient 

 management under which they work. This is by no means a typical 

 plan. There is in it a large measure of benevolence as is evidenced by 

 the fact that croppers, both white and black, are eager to come to this 

 plantation, and by the further fact that any cropper on the plantation, 



