LAND TENUKE AND PLANTATION ORGANIZATION 
21 
of improved land was worked by wage labor and 59 per cent operated 
by tenants. This higher percentage of wage labor is due to the nature 
of the sugar cane and rice industries, which require a concentration 
of labor in certain seasons of the year, possible only through the use 
of wage hands, and which, owing to the requirement of considerable 
capital and superior farm management, do not lend themselves to 
small-scale tenant farming. The high percentage of 48.4 in wage- 
labor land for cotton plantations in Louisiana (3 parishes) is believed 
to be partly due to the influence of the wage system in the adjacent 
sugar-cane and rice belts. 
Table 7. — Cultivated land worked by wage hands, croppers, and tenants, on 207 
plantations, by plantation areas, 1920 
Plantation areas 
Planta- 
tions 
Culti- 
vated 
acreage 
Per cent worked by- 
hSrit Croppers Tenants 
hands 
Texas-Arkansas 
Louisiana 
Mississippi Valley. 
Northern Alabama 
Alabama-Mississippi Black Belt- 
Georgia 
North Carolina-South Carolina. _ 
76, 744 
17, 203 
44, 605 
10, 363 
29, 451 
52, 834 
23, 993 
13.3 
12.7 
9.6 
13.3 
17.4 
34.9 
27.4 
29.2 
25.7 
30.5 
24.6 
24.4 
43.9 
23.2 
57.5 
61.6 
59.9 
62. 1 
58.2 
21.2 
49.4 
Total cotton plantations.. 
Sugar cane (Louisiana) 
Rice (Louisiana and Arkansas) . 
Shade tobacco (Florida) 2 
ir,i 
20 
21 
5 
255, 193 
32, 663 
44,915 
5,993 
18.7 
57.9 
23.1 
99.4 
30.9 
0) 
0) 
0) 
50.4 
42.1 
76.9 
.6 
Grand total . 
207 
338, 764 
24.6 
23.3 
52.1 
1 Cropper labor is seldom used on sugar-cane and rice plantations, except as so-called "subtenants." 
Consequently no account is taken of croppers in connection with sugar-cane, rice, and "shade" tobacco 
plantations. The 23.3 per cent in the grand total only includes land worked by croppers in cotton plan- 
tations. 
2 These "shade" tobacco plantations represent ownerships or organizations with an aggregate of 25 or 
more plantation units. Such plantations produce cigar-wrapper tobacco. The bright-leaf tobacco farms, 
in the Carolinas and Georgia, are counted in with the cotton plantations of this section, shown in Figure 1, 
The proportion of wage, cropper, and tenant labor in the various 
areas correspond in the main to those just shown for 1910 (Table 7). 
The lowest percentage of wage-operated acreage is found in the 
Mississippi Valley (9.6 per cent), which is due doubtless to the high 
percentage of cropper labor, as well as to the recent negro migrations 
from this section. The highest is found in the sugar-cane and 
" shade" tobacco area (57.9 and 99.4 per cent, respectively), for 
reasons already explained. The higher percentages of wage and 
cropper labor (34.9 and 43.9 per cent, respectively) in the Georgia 
area may be accounted for, at least in part, by the adverse effects 
of the boll weevil on cotton farming and its favorable effects upon 
diversified farming, either one of which, under Southern conditions, 
is unfavorable to a high degree of tenancy. 
Labor as to color. — -Since long before the Civil War negro labor 
has predominated on the plantation. While the proportion of negro 
to white labor has been slightly diminishing, at present practically 
all common laborers on typical plantations are negroes and other 
nonwhites. This is particularly true of the older-settled areas where 
the plantation system has long prevailed. 
During the more than 50 years since emancipation the negro farm 
population has continued to be centered in the plantation area of 
the South, with the movement, although slight for several decades, 
