260 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



a record of production and a record of sale. The system must be 

 within the comprehension of the hired man if it is to enlist his interest 

 at every step hi the business process. Such a system might likewise 

 be applied to the hired girl in the house. The English and Scotch 

 plan of giving premiums and medals at agricultural fairs, to those 

 who tend and fit the prize cattle, should be introduced into our county 

 and state fairs. 



76. TENANCY AS A CAUSE OF INEFFICIENT LABOR 1 

 BY C. E. ALLEN 



In ante-bellum days the industrial system of the Black Belt was 

 made up of the big plantations as the industrial units, and the domi- 

 nant feature of these units was organization and management, which 

 made this the region of supremacy in Alabama. In the adjustment 

 of labor to the new conditions of freedom, however, this industrial 

 organization was shattered. The negro was employed largely under 

 two forms of tenancy: the renting system and the share system. 

 Since the beginning of the system the renting negro has been without 

 supervision and control. By the lien law he was able to obtain 

 supplies from merchants of near-by towns, and being obligated for only 

 so much rent, he farmed according to his own pleasure, with the result 

 that the farm on which he worked consistently deteriorated. The 

 ditches grew up with grass, the soil washed away, fences and houses 

 decayed, roads went unkept, and there arose in the land the saying, 

 "The negro renter's foot is poison to the soil." On the other hand, 

 the share system has involved a degree of control by white men, close 

 in some instances, indifferent in others. The white planters who 

 remained on the plantation after the war employed largely the share 

 system, sometimes a combination of share and renting. Under this 

 system close supervision was necessary, else failure and ruin were 

 certain. 



77. THE STIMULUS OF FARM OWNERSHIP 



It has long been a settled tenet of our agricultural philosophy that 

 farm ownership has a beneficial effect upon the character of work 

 done by the farmer. Our public-land policy has had this as one of its 

 principal arguments, and much of the rural-credits discussion has run 



1 Adapted from "Greater Agricultural Efficiency for the Black Belt of Ala- 

 bama," The Annals, LXI (September, 1915, on "America's Interests after the 

 European War"), 193-94. 



