60 BULLETIN 12(d!J, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
forage, for he may not find pasture or accommodations at the next 
place to which he moves. Another serious obstacle to diversification 
is found in the credit system, which is based on staple commodities. 
To bring about a different system of crop rotation on the planta- 
tion employing croppers and tenants, the planter can resort to one of 
several alternatives. He may adopt the wage system and operate 
the same as on a smaller farm. However, by this plan, owing to 
wholesale reversion of the tenants' status, he would probably lose most 
of his present supply of labor. He may attempt to diversify and bring 
about rotation in connection with each of the tenants' crops, which, 
however, would require a more capable class of tenants than is usually 
found on plantations. A final alternative, the one most commonly 
employed where diversification and rotation are seriously attempted, 
is the use of the mixed system of labor. Nonstaple crops can be 
produced largely by wage hands, and the staple crops left to croppers 
and tenants. By this means, tenant farms can be shifted to the lands 
previously worked by wage hands, rotation being thus effected for 
the plantation as a whole. Such an arrangement aids in the success 
of the tenant classes and improves the condition of the land for the 
benefit of the plantation owner. 
CREDIT 
The problem of plantation credit, in the main, is twofold. It 
must be considered from the standpoint of both landlord and cropper, 
or tenant. The former is concerned primarily with operating credit 
for the plantation as a whole, which can be referred to only briefly here, 
and the latter is an essential feature of the landlord-tenant relations 
on the plantation. 
The source of credit from the operator's point of view, until the 
rise of our modern banking system, was largely the factor merchant, 
who formerly supplied practically all the necessities of the planter. 45 
At present, plantation operators rely for their credit almost entirely 
on the local banking institutions. In most cases, if the loan is rela- 
tively large, a mortgage on real estate and personal property is 
required. There is nothing peculiar in the planter's case as com- 
pared with credit to other classes of business. The local merchant, 
at present, is a means rather than a source of plantation credit, as 
explained later. If the planter obtains a loan to hold his product, or, 
as too frequently has been the case, for speculating in cotton, the 
use of cotton as collateral is general. 
The landlord is the source of credit of plantation croppers and 
tenants, and advances of such credit may be made either directly by 
the landlord or on his indorsement. The credit system on planta- 
tions is not identical with that involving small farms. A brief 
discussion of the statutory landlord's hen in Southern States will 
help t<> interpret prevailing practices. 
All Southern States have provided the landlord with a statutory 
preference hen on the tenant's crop for rent, 46 and for advances to 
tenants, provided such advances are made for strictly agricultural 
bone, Alfred Holt, I orage System of the Southern States. American Bistorial Review, 
Vol.20, April, I91f [them Agriculture, Plantation System and the Negro Problem, 
da of the Amer. Acad, of Pol. and Boc. Science, March, ID 
415 Thi lion in some States— North Carolina and Louisiana— takes precedence over the land- 
lord's hen. 
