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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 11. The Southern Plantation Economy and the Negro Farmer - 5. Main Agricultural Classes - 6. The Negro Landowner
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Chapter ii. Southern Plantation Economy 237
and the cash tenants, who rent their farms for a fixed sum of money Cash
tenants usually can be regarded as independent entrepreneurs—or at least
they are not in most cases far removed from such a position. All other
kinds of arrangements entitle the landlord to a certain share of the main
cash crop, for instance, one-fourth, one-third, one-half, sometimes even as
much as three-fourths. Those tenants who receive one-half (or less) of the
crop are the sharecroppers. The cash tenants usually furnish all the work,
stock, feed, fertilizer, and tools themselves. The other groups generally
furnish less and less of these things the lower their tenure status. Those
lowest down on the scale have little or nothing but their labor to offer.^^
They are really nothing but laborers—or rather their position often tends
to be even less independent than that of ordinary wage earners. Before wc
elaborate on this subject, however, it seems appropriate that we inquire
into the reasons why so few of the Negro agricultural workers in the South
have been able to reach a position of ownership.
6. The Negro Landowner
The story of the Negro in agriculture would have been a rather different
one if the Negro farmer had had greater opportunity to establish himself
as an independent owner. In that case he would have become more firmly
attached to the soil. He would have known that he worked for his own
benefit, that he had a real chance to improve his level of living by his own
efforts. “All that is now wanted to make the negro a fixed and conservative
element in American society is to give him encouragement to, and facilities
for, making himself, by his own exertions, a small landowner,” wrote Sir
George Campbell in his survey of the South and the Negro problem in the
late ’seventies.^®
There was a time when it really looked as if the rural Negro had some
chance of eventually getting established on an ownership basis. True, the
development was generally slow, but it seemed to go in the right direction.
The number of Negro farm homes in the United States that were owned
by their occupants had by 1900 reached a figure of 193,000—constituting
about 25 per cent of all Negro farm homes.^^ This percentage marks the
peak of the proportion of landowners in the Negro farm population.
The absolute increase continued for some time, but at a slower rate. The
absolute number of colored farm owners in the South reached, in 1910, a
maximum of about 220,000.“® After 1920 it gradually declined, and it
dropped to 174,000 by 1940.’’* Of all Southern states with any appreciable
Negro farm population, only Virginia and Florida showed a majority of
owners among the Negro farm operators in 1940. But even in the Virginian
stronghold, Negro ownership was weakening, in that the number of
• Sometimes the farm is rented for a fixed quantity of a certain crop, usually lint cotton
(“lint-rental”). Wc shall include them under the term “cash tenants.”
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