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1284 An American Dilemma
These figures, however, are probably slightly too low. While the value of home-use
production was included, certain other items, such as housing, fuel, relief, and wages
earned oflf the plantation, were not. The sample of farm families of the Consumer
Purchases Study for 1935-1936 (see table in this footnote) indicates higher incomes
for Negroes and whites alike, but these data are biased upward.® The reason is that
large groups among the poorest families, such as unemployed workers, wage laborers,
broken families, and farmers who had moved within the year, were completely excluded
from the sample. Almost half the families approached during the survey turned out
to be ineligible for the sample because they were of these types.^ Since the groups studied
must have had much higher average incomes than the excluded groups, the fact that
they included such extremely high proportions of destitute families is remarkable.
Since wage laborers were excluded, it was, of course, the Negro sharecroppers who were
lowest on the scale. A significant number of them had less than $250. White share-
Median Incomes* for Negro and White Farm Families in Three Southeastern Sample
Areas: 1935-^936
State
Owners and Tenants
Except Croppers Croppers
Negro White Negro White
South Carolina >599 >».o.75 $424 >541
Georgia 491 708 409 544
Mississippi 576 1,091 416 574
Source: U. S. Department of ARiiculture. Bureau of Home Economics. Consumer Purchases Study
^
Farm Series^ Family Income and Expenditures, Southeast Region, Miscellaneous Publication No. 462, Part
1 , Family Income (1941), pp. 5 and 77-80.
• The.se as well as all following median income figures are calculated under the assumption that relief
families, for which no complete income data were gathered, had incomes below the median. This assumption
is certainly correct, except for some rare cases.
* The sample for the eastern part of North Carolina (not used in the table) gave income
figures which cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be characterized as typical for the
Southeast. The median income varied between $797 for Negro sharecroppers and $1,587 for
white operators (other tenants and owners). Negro operators and white croppers, as usual,
had about the same position j
they earned $1,046 and $1,023, respectively. Another sample
for North Carolina which included only white operators in the western part of the state
indicated an opposite extreme. The median income was but $611, which is lower than that
for any other group of white operators sampled in the Southeast. (U. S. Department of
Agriculture, Bureau of Home Economics, Consumer Purchases Study, Farm Series, FamHy
Income and Expenditures, Southeast Region, Miscellaneous Publication No. 462, Part
Family Income [i94j]> P- 5-) The figure cited for white operators in eastern North Carolin*’
(11,587) is higher than that for any of the states sampled in farm regions of the North-
east and of the Middle Westj the latter varied between $936 (Iowa) and $1,503 (Illinois)
>
(See U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Home Economics, Consumer Purchases
Study, Farm Series, Family Income and Expenditures, Middle Atlantic, North Central and
New England Regions, Miscellaneous Publication No. 383, Part 1, Family Income [1940],
p. 19.)
* U. S. Department of Agriculture, Miscellaneous Publication No. 462, op. cit,, p. 185.
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