<66 ECONOMICS OF LAND TENURE IN GEORGIA [66 



on their own account in small patches. As the Agricultural Com- 

 missioner, in his report, has lately stated — " The rice planters 

 were driven from the Carolina and Georgia shores during the 

 war, labor was in a disorganized and chaotic state, production 

 had almost ceased, and at its close, dams, flood-gates, canals, 

 mills and houses were either dilapidated or destroyed and 

 power to compel the laborers to go into the rice swamps ut- 

 terly broken. The laborers had scattered, gone into other 

 businesses, and those obtainable would only work for them- 

 selves on a share contract M This picture is by no 



means overdrawn and even now, in our own neighborhood, 

 there is scarcely a planter whose plantation is not mortgaged 

 and whose crop is not the property of his factor who had 

 advanced him money to plant with. They plant on sufferance, 

 and live from hand to mouth as best they can. 1 



Another acute observer of conditions in these counties 

 declared that, immediately after the war, most of the 

 planters were utterly ruined, not having money enough 

 to buy food for their own families, and that most of the 

 finest plantations were lying idle for want of hands to 

 work them. 2 



It was in the midst of this chaotic condition of things 

 that the negroes began to acquire tracts of land. After 

 a few years of experimenting most of the planters who 

 were able to operate their rice farms at all adopted the 

 plan of paying the negroes wages, instead of renting to 

 them on shares. On this point one of these planters 

 writes about 1878: 



We all pay wages either weekly or monthly, finding that the 

 best plan now. It is easy for ourselves and satisfactory for 



1 Frances Butler Leigh, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation since the 

 War, London, 1883, pp. 263, 264. 

 2 Ibid., pp. 15, 24. 



