LAND TENURE AND PLANTATION ORGANIZATION 
25 
ual cropper or tenant, it has proved satisfactory for the plantation as 
a whole, in most cases. This plan has the advantage, among others, 
of reducing the crop acreage to conform to the labor supply, of pro- 
viding for a more elastic adjustment of labor forces, and of avoiding 
the expense and risk of transportation costs necessary in bringing 
labor from a distance. 
Tenants with spare time often help other tenants, for which they are 
paid in cash by the landlord or credited on account. Such work is 
usually assigned arbitrarily by the management. Landlords have 
found it advantageous, both as a means of satisfying the labor and 
reducing the amount of advances, to pay for such work in cash. In 
the Mississippi Valley section, particularly in the sugar area, labor 
drifts in from the hills and from the cities during the harvest season. 
For this reason the sugar-cane belt has suffered less from labor short- 
age than the other sections. 
In the western part of the rice area, Mexicans and negroes furnish 
planters with the common labor required. These are frequently im- 
ported from the cities and from the border. Mexican labor in south- 
western Louisiana gradually gives way to native help. A few rice 
planters with hill land use their cotton tenants for extra labor in the 
rice harvest. In the Mississippi River section of "the rice belt the 
same sources exist as for the sugar-cane belt. 
The importance of extra labor in working the fourth or more of 
acreage of plantations operated by wage labor can be determined only 
roughly by certain deductions in connection with available data. On 
161 cotton plantations, in 1920, there were 47,592 improved acres of 
land worked by extra labor and 1 ,005 regular wage hands, or an aver- 
age per regular wage hand of 47.4 acres. It is estimated that two- 
thirds or less of the 47.4 acres makes a full crop for one wage hand. 
Therefore, according to this rate, the remaining third of the landlord's 
personal crop was worked by extra wage hands. In addition to this, 
an undetermined amount of extra labor is used in the tenants' crops in 
rush seasons. 
Shown by sections, the amount of extra hired labor runs espe- 
cially high in the Mississippi Valley and in the cane belt, where the 
average acreage per regular wage hand is 137 and 179, respectively. 
These figures indicate four or five times as much wage-labor land 
worked by extra as by regular wage hands. 
Table 8. — Estimated percentage of plantation acreage cultivated by women and 
children in 1920 
Plantation areas 
Plan- 
tations 
Total 
culti- 
vated 
acres 
in plan- 
tations 
Part cultivated by- 
women and chil- 
dren 
Veres Per cent 
Texas-Arkansas 
Louisiana 
Mississippi Valley 
Alabama 
Georgia 
North Carolina-South Carolina 
Sugarcane 
Rice 
Tobacco -. 
Total 
61,750 
9,995 
32, 665 
12, 962 
70, 550 
9,493 
25, 630 
9,200 
5,393 
21, 830 
2,851 
11,319 
6,710 
15,353 
4,635 
8,122 
1,065 
3,162 
11(1 
237, 638 
75,047 
29 
