LAND TENUBE AND PLANTATION ORGANIZATION 
57 
in South Carolina where the average has remained about 14 acres. 
In the other leading plantation States, except Texas and Tennessee, 
both of which have a relatively small proportion of plantation acreage 
as compared with the total area of farm land, there were in 1880 from 
13 to 19 improved acres per person and in 1920 from 19 to 23 im- 
proved acres, as shown by Table 2, Appendix E. In the United 
States as a whole, the average for the two periods was 37.2 and 47.3 
acres, respectively. 
Planters usually provide a garden plot for their croppers and 
tenants. In the majority of cases this space is not used or is inade- 
quately used because of the indifference or short-sightedness of the 
cropper or tenant and the lack of close supervision in this respect by 
the landlord. Practically all planters recognize the importance of 
food production as a saving to the laborer, but few have made it 
Fig. 17.— Brahraam cattle (sacred cattle of India) thrive in the warm humid areas of Texas and Louisiana. 
Aside from their sensitiveness in handling, they have proved satisfactory as beef cattle both for range 
and feeding purposes, and may be expected to increase in numbers in this region. 
their responsibility to see to it that the laborer makes his garden 
and cares for it. A few landlords have tried plantation gardens 
with some measure of success, such as turnip patches, to supply 
vegetables to tenants and laborers on the farm. This is considered 
the most practical method of assuring a balanced food supply to the 
less thrifty classes. 
Of the plantations studied, 68 had an average of almost 300 head 
of cattle; and 54 had an average of 90 head of hogs, not including 
livestock owned by croppers and tenants. Many of these animals 
are purebred, and some have been prize winners (figs. 17 and 18). 
Livestock as a secondary enterprise on the plantation, under certain 
conditions, provides a valuable combination for the utilization of 
both land and labor. Livestock enterprises are nearly always 
handled by the landlord with wage labor, although in those sections 
where dairying is becoming important — for example, in the Alabama- 
Mississippi Black Belt — experiments are being tried out in landlord- 
tenant cooperation in dairy farming. 44 When livestock becomes the 
44 The unit system of renting dairy farms to tenants consists, in the main, of the landlord's furnishing 
land, buildings, and cows, and the tenant's furnishing labor and feed, and marketing the products. The 
proceeds are usually shared equally. 
