FAR}! OWNERSHIP AXD TENANCY IN TEXAS. 
33 
Even at that, more than twice as much time was spent in the share- 
tenant stage as in the owner-operator stage. Operators had been in 
the owner-operator stage on an average longer than they had been 
in any other stage. 
TENUBE STAGES OF PRESENT TENURE GROUPS. 
From the data presented in Table 18. showing the. use of the dif- 
ferent tenure stages by operators in each of the present tenure 
groups, it will be noted that owners and share tenants alike have made 
greater use of the farm-hand stage than they have of the cropper 
stage. This aversion to the cropper stage seems to be general in the 
black land ; it is probably due to class discrimination against crop- 
pers, and to the close and sometimes disagreeable supervision given to 
them by the landlords. 85 
It is to be hoped that these conditions can be remedied, for the 
cropper stage offers the inexperienced young man who has little capi- 
tal a chance to get experience as an operator under the supervision 
of a successful farmer. It offers the further advantage of yielding 
a return over wages which is usually more than enough to cover the 
risk assumed by the new operator in the business. 
It will be noted that 43.1 per cent of all croppers, as compared with 
only 12.8 per cent of all owners, have tried other occupations. This 
is evidence of the fact, noted elsewhere, that the unsuccessful oper- 
ators have not stuck to farming as closely as have the more success- 
ful (see p. '46). 
Table 18. — Relative importance of different tenure and occupational stages in 
tenure history of operators, classified by present tenure of operators. 
Number of 
operator? by 
present 
tenure. 
Percentage distribution of operators by stages passed through, with average years in 
each stage. 
Other 
occupations. 
Farm 
hand. 
Cropper. 
Tenant. 
Owner 
additional. 
Owner 
operator. 
P.ct. 
65 cropper? j 43.1 
194 tenants 24. 5 
109 owners I 12. 8 
Yrs. 
6.9 
6.4 
5.1 
P. ct. 
72.3 
48.3 
55.1 
Yrs. 
P. ct. Yrs. 
7.1 100.0 6.5 
4. 9 32. 7 4. 4 
3.9 21.1 2.4 
P. ct. Yrs. P. ct. 
49.2 5.1 I 1 ) 
100.0 11.5 3.6 
82. 7 S. 6 30. 3 
Yrs. 
2.6 
5.0 
P.ct. 
C 1 ) 
14.0 
88.2 
Yrs. 
4.6 
13.5 
1 Nine croppers have been owners or owners additional for an average of 5.2 years. 
S3 Two examples will illustrate the popular prejudice against the cropper stage: One 
man whose sons were seeking to begin as fanners advised them to go to Dallas and 
seek employment, simply because they were unable to rent land except as croppers, his 
remark being, "If my boys have to farm like ' niggers ' I don't want them to be farmers." 
Another case is that of a young man who had been a cropper on his mother-in-law's place 
for two years and had saved enough to buy farming equipment. He asked his mother-in- 
law for a share-tenant contract, and failing to get it from her he spent two weeks search- 
ing for a farm for rent to a share tenant (this was in 1918), but failed to find a satisfac- 
tory place. He quit farming and began work as a barber, saying that if he couldn't be 
anything but a cropper he wouldn't farm at all. 
