TENANCY IN THE SOUTHERN STATES 525 



planters who had lost most of their property were compelled, as 

 the possessors of the plantations, to make a bargain with the 

 freedmen on such terms that both parties would find it tolerable 

 to proceed with the work of tilling the soil. Information on the 

 early experiments is meager, but it is stated on good authority 

 that the first attempt was on the basis of wages. This was not 

 satisfactory, and it became necessary to put responsibility of a 

 more tangible sort upon the negro. The responsibility took the 

 form of an interest in the crop. By this means it became possible 

 to postpone his reward, in large part, to the time of harvest. In 

 other words, the negro became a tenant of the planter ; but not a 

 tenant in the same sense as that implied by the term in the North. 

 The terminology relating to tenancy in the South requires 

 special attention. In the North we speak mainly of two classes of 

 tenants, cash and share. The same words are in use in the 

 South, but by " cash " is meant not alone a money payment, but 

 any form of fixed payment. For example, cash rent in the cotton 

 district ordinarily means the delivery at the end of the season of a 

 specified quantity of cotton. Hence, if the landlord receive fifty or 

 one hundred pounds of cotton for each acre as the payment, he is 

 secure so far as returns in cotton are concerned, though he runs 

 the risk of what it will be worth per pound. The tenant views the 

 payment as cash in the sense that it is a stipulated fixed payment 

 beyond which the whole remaining portion of the crop is his. 

 Another form of cash rent is where a stipulated amount of labor 

 is to be performed by the tenant under the direction of the land- 

 lord as agreed upon. These " cash " tenants, whether paying in 

 money, in product, or in labor, are known as " renters" or 

 "standing renters," in distinction from the "croppers" or the 

 "halvers" who work the land on shares. The share tenants are 

 of two main classes. First, those who furnish little or nothing in 

 the way of equipment and who get a proportionally smaller share 

 of the crops, usually half. Second, those who furnish a consider- 

 able part of the equipment, usually including one or two mules, 

 and who therefore receive a larger share, as two-thirds or three- 

 fourths, of the crop. There is a well-defined caste system among 

 the tenants. The lowest class is represented by those who furnish 



