LAND TENURE AND PLANTATION ORGANIZATION 23 
With wage hands, there is said to be a more efficient and economica 1 
use of plantation equipment. 
Some plantation owners prefer a mixed system of wage laborers 
and tenants. By this combination, the landlord may produce 
diversified crops with wage hands and leave to tenants the production 
of staples. A better utilization of all the labor is thus made possible, 
particularly the extra labor afforded by tenant families. 
The cropper occupies a central position in this combination. 
He may be shifted into the function of wage laborer or tenant at 
the will of the operator. A certain degree of elasticity, therefore, 
comparable to that afforded by wage labor, is obtainable under 
the cropper system, or with the cropper as a part of the mixed system. 
This applies in matters of management and supervision, diversification 
and fertilization. Advances, in the case of the cropper, may be kept 
within more reasonable bounds than is usually the case with tenants. 
On the other hand, there are a number of good reasons for pre- 
ferring tenants to wage hands or croppers. Tenants relieve the 
landlord of some responsibility in supervision and management, 
particularly when tenants of the higher tenant class are employed. 
The tenant system requires less operating equipment and operating 
expense on the part of the landowner. The supply of wage labor has 
been so uncertain, and that which was available has been so unstable 
and unsatisfactory, that in many localities of the Cotton Belt little 
or no wage labor is employed other than the extra wage labor per- 
formed by the cropper and tenant families on the plantation. 
The negro is usually preferred. One of the leading objections to 
plantation labor other than negro is the difficulty of supervision, 
although one class may be as efficient as the other in farming ability. 
WAGE LABOR 
Wage labor on the plantation consists of utility, regular, and 
extra laborers. Utility men are engaged in general work of ad- 
ministration and upkeep about the plantation, such as feeding 
livestock, ditching, repairing buildings and fences. These usually 
do no field work except in emergency. 
The regular workers constitute the force of field hands engaged for 
cultivating and harvesting crops. Extra laborers are ''day" hands 
called in for temporary work during rush seasons, such as chopping 
cotton, hoeing, stripping cane, and picking cotton. They help the 
regular laborers or tenants as needed. 
Utility workers. — Feeders, carpenters, and ditchers, practical 1 y all 
nouwhites, are the principal classes of utility laborers. Such 
employees as gin men, herdsmen (for purebred cattle) , blacksmiths, 
mechanics, and dairymen are usually job specialists, who, although 
they perform services similar to utility workers, are mostly white 
and are properly classed as administrative emplo} T ees. Each utility 
man has usually a single job, for which he is held responsible. Most 
plantations have one or two general-utility men who keep the yard, 
run errands, and do odd jobs. Such laborers received, in 1920, 
$30 to $40 a month, with such perquisites as house and garden. 
With the exception of the yard man, the utility worker is fast dis- 
appearing. Much of the work formerly done by the utility man is 
now either let by contract or done by tenants under the renting 
agreement. 
