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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 11. The Southern Plantation Economy and the Negro Farmer - 9. The Plantation Tenant
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Chapter ii. Southern Plantation Economy 249
The last state law against the enticement of labor was passed In Louisiana early
in June, 1935, making it “unlawful for any person to go on the premises or planta-
tion of any citizen between sunset and sunrise and assist in moving any laborers or
tenants therefrom without the consent of the owner of said premises or plantation.”^®
This should be the place for ^^balancing the picture” by looking for
positive aspects of the paternalistic labor relations on the Southern planta-
tions. The system doubtless has some positive sides. Even the outsider will
occasionally find some evidence of them. There are good landlords, who
really try to take care of their tenants to some extent. They are the ones
who get and hold the good tenants. They are rightly proud of this fact
and tell the interviewer about it. Most studies contain some statement from
such a plantation owner who has made the discovery that he can get the
best out of his Negro tenant just by treating him decently and by appealing
to his ambition to get ahead—in other words, by regarding the Negro like
any other human being. Since the general standard is so low, it is not
expensive to be an exceptionally good planter and have the best tenants.
Yet the fact that planters, too, are ordinary human beings, and that
many of them actually are better than the system which they represent, is
not high praise of the plantation system as an economic institution. Every
social institution, in this way, presents a whole range of cases—low
extremes, normal cases and high extremes. Nevertheless, we can talk about
the whole range as being low or high in relation to the corresponding
range for alternative institutions. The benevolence of certain landlords
certainly is a great help for many individual tenants. But it is, in the final
analysis, nothing else than an aspect of the arbitrariness of the whole
system.
It is our impression that the predominant feeling among most Negro
tenants is that they can get more or less out of the landlord depending
upon what kind of landlord he is, and how he is approached. But not often
have they been taught to feel that they have definite rights and definite
obligations, and that it is up to them to make good. Several local Farm
Security officials in the South have informed us of how the inherited
paternalistic attitude on the part of the planters and the corresponding
attitudes of dependence, carelessness, and lack of ambition on the part of
the tenants constitute the toughest problems in their work. The plantation
system, in summary, fails flagrantly to meet the standards of social and
economic efficiency and justice.®®
There is no lack of statements in the literature on the plantation system
of the South to the effect that its survival through generations Is a ^^proof”
that it—compared with other organizations of land, capital, and labor for
agricultural production—is superior and best adapted to the circumstances
of the region. This is, of course, nothing but the application of the liberal-
istic (do-nothing) doctrine that ^Vhat is, must’be”—which from a scientific
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