Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 11. The Southern Plantation Economy and the Negro Farmer - 8. Tenants and Wage Laborers
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
244 An American Dilemma
There has been a “white Infiltration” even on this mainstay of Negro
tenancy, however.®^ It even happens quite frequently that white and Negro
tenants work on the same plantations, although usually not in the same
capacity. White workers tend to be relatively more concentrated in the
outlying districts, or on the least valuable parts of the plantations where
the tenants work more independently and have a higher tenure status;
whereas, Negroes more often make up the bulk of the labor force on the
main part of the plantations, where they can be closely controlled and
supervised by the owners or managers.
Thus, some of the main factors which account for the more rapid rise
in white over Negro tenancy, until about 1930, are:
1. Negro tenants, more than white tenants, are dependent on the unstable cotton
plantation economy.
2. Tenancy has increased more in nonplantation counties than in plantation counties.
3. Cotton culture has been moving toward the Southwest.
4. There has been white “infiltration” into plantation areas. This, however, is not
so much an explanation as a description of the change. It still remains a problem
why the intensity of rural population pressure increased more for white than for
Negro agricultural workers,*^
Also of relevance in this context is the fact that Negroes are “attached
to the soil” much less than whites—that is, they more frequently move
from one farm to another.®^ But this does not, in any way, constitute a
racial or cultural characteristic. In reality, It is nothing but a consequence
of the fact that Negroes, more than whites, are concentrated in the lower
tenure groups; the lower the tenure status, the more frequent are the
farm-to-farm movements.^^ In every given tenure group, Negroes tend to
stay somewhat longer on the same place than do white farmers. In 1935,
38 per cent of the colored, as against 49 per cent of the white, croppers in
the South had stayed less than one year on the farms which they were
operating. The same proportion for other tenants were 27 and 40 per
cent, respectively.
It goes without saying that movements as frequent as those must have
an adverse Influence on the living conditions of the tenants. No tenant who
expects to farm on another place the next year can have much interest in
doing any work on his house or in developing a year-round garden; neither
can he be interested in maintaining the soil. Negligence in these and other
respects naturally tends to become particularly serious in cases of absentee
ownership; 15 per cent of the 646 plantations studied by Woofter in 1934
did not have a resident owner or even a special hired overseen®^
* jScc Chapter ,
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
