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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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246 An American Dilemma
hedging by spreading the risk over the whole tenant working force whici
has enabled the planters to carry on the cotton crop gamble much more
persistently than otherwise would have been possible. It is true that the
share tenant shares in the benefit of a good crop and favorable market
conditions with the landowner. It is also true that he does not have much
capital of his own. If losses run so high that at the end of the year he
finds himself indebted to the landlord, he may often be able—at least now-
adays—to get rid of this debt simply by moving to another plantation.
But many a time he may find himself having invested a full season’s work
without having received anything near the wages he would have earned
had he been a wage laborer with full employment. On such occasions, at
least, he has to face long months of semi-starvation for himself and his
family. That certainly is a business risk just as much as -any. And should
he have any livestock or other assets, the landlord is always free to take
them to cover possible debts. In nine cotton states “the landlord has the
legal right to sell any and all property the tenant may have to secure
payment of rent and furnishings.”®^
Indeed, any study of the concrete details of the system will reveal that
the sharecropper or share tenant usually has most of the disadvantages of
being an independent entrepreneur without having hardly any of the
rights that ordinarily go with such a position. Only in relatively few cases
are his rights and obligations set down in a written contract.®^ In most
cases he does not sell even his own share in the cotton crop himself.^^
According to the crop lien laws in most states, he has no right to dispose
of it until he has paid to the landlord all the rent due and the advances
he has received during the season. And since he cannot well do that until
the crop has been sold and paid for, the landlord is legally entitled to
handle all the marketing as he sees fit.®^ Seldom is the tenant even con-
sulted about how to sell and when.
Worse than that, however, is the general pattern of making all kinds
of account-keeping a unilateral affair. The tenant usually has to take the
landlord’s word for what price has been obtained for the cotton, for what
is the total amount of advances received from the landlord, and for what
the interest on these advances is, and so on. An attempt on the part of
the Negro tenant to check the accounts against his own itemized annota-
tions—if he should have kept any (which is rarely done)—will not
accomplish much, in most cases, except possibly to infuriate the landlord.®*
The temptation to cheat the tenants at the final settlement for the year,
under such circumstances, must be great. Indeed, Southern plantation
owners would be unlike other human beings if they did not sometimes
misuse the considerable arbitrary power they have over their tenants.®^
In several conversations with white planters—as also with employers of
Negro labor in cities, particularly of domestics—the writer has noticed the
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