The Life of the Tenant Classes 87 



of the State. Owners and cash tenants also return more 

 pigs and poultry than the share tenants. More than 22,000 

 share tenant farms in the State, or 40 per cent of the total, 

 had no poultry. 14 Share tenants are not only usually 

 without the capital to purchase these animals, but they are, 

 in their very relationship to the farm not in a position advan- 

 tageous for raising animals. Saddled as they are with the 

 cotton crop, they are not in a position to raise the feed crops, 

 as was previously shown by the diversification index. 



Negro share tenants are as backward about cultivating 

 garden products as they are about domestic animals. There 

 is space around almost every house for a small kitchen gar- 

 den, but in t he absence of knowled ge or much encourage- 

 ment to cultivate it, it goes unused, or supports only a few 

 rowsoi ll coiiarq s. J ' UDservers ftave otten noted with sur- 

 prise the purchases of food which Negro tenants make 

 which could easily be grown at home in spare hours. 



During the summer of 1917, when the Negro Migration 

 was at its height, the writer visited many plantations. The 

 landlords who seemed to have been particularly successful 

 in retaining their labor were all questioned as to how they 

 had succeeded. A surprisingly large proportion emphasized 

 the fact that they had encouraged the gardens and domestic 

 animal breeding of their tenants. These items of home 

 grown food add materially to the comfort and satisfaction 

 of the farm dwellers. In this respect owners and cash ten- 

 ants are better off than share tenants. 



In regard to food purchased there is also a distinct limi- 

 tation on a number of share tenants. If they are without 

 capital, as most of them are, they depend on the local mer- 

 chant or the landlord to credit them for their food until 

 *^*4he crop is harvested. In many cases there is an absolute 

 limit beyond which the "one horse" farmer cannot go in 

 book credit. During the plantation investigation of 1911, 

 Brooks noted that in many cases this limit was $100. 

 "Negro Population in the United States. 1790-1915, Table 69, 



