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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 12. New Blows to Southern Agriculture During the ’Thirties: Trends and Policies - 2. The Disappearing Sharecropper
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254 An American Dilemma
and share tenants seem to have become much more numerous, whereas all
other tenant groups—Negro cash and share tenants as well as Negro and
white croppers—had started to decline. The decrease in number of tenants
during the following five years became much more pronounced and
affected all four color-tenure groups.
The final results, by 1940, of all these changes were that there was a
somewhat larger number of white owners than in 193OJ a slightly lower
number of Negro owners 5
a much lower number of Negro cash and share
tenants, and of Negro and white croppers. The total number of croppers
had declined by almost one-third (somewhat more for whites and some-
what less for Negroes), and the decrease in number of Negro cash and share
tenants was at least of the same relative size.
These rather spectacular changes do not mean, observes Sterner,
. . . that the situation has been ameliorated. By and large it is rather the other way
around. While the limitations in the opportunities in Southern agriculture formerly
caused an increase in tenancy, they now seem to have been aggravated to such an
extent that the^ Negro and white sharecroffing class as well as the Negro cash and
share tenants are in the frocess of being forced out?^
Yet, many of the ex-tenants and ex-croppers may have stayed in agricul-
ture. They have simply been reduced to wage laborers on the farms. This,
of course, means only that their position, in most of the cases, has become
still more marginal.^^
The main reason why the Negro lost out, probably, was the fact that
he, much more than the white operator and worker, was dependent on the
cotton economy which was hit most severely by the depression and by the
falling off of foreign markets. Practically all the increase in number of
farm operators as well as the total increase in farm population during the
period 1930-1935 occurred outside of the cotton regions 5^^ and after that
period there were no further increases of that kind. Yet, the depression
by itself seems to have had much more immediate effects on income condi-
tions than on employment, for the decline in Negro tenancy before 1935
was relatively limited compared with what was to come after that year.
It seems, therefore, that the agricultural ’policies, and particularly the
Agricultural Adjustment program (A.A.A.), which was instituted in May,
1933, factor directly responsible for the drastic curtailment in num~
her of Negro and white sharecroppers and Negro cash and share tenants.
It is true that behind the A.A.A. was the depression and over-production.
If no such thing as the A.A.A. had ever been instituted, the cotton price
would have remained low for so long a time that production and employ-
ment eventually would have been severely curtailed. And A.A.A. certainly
raised the income not only for planters and other owners, but—to an extent
—also for those tenants and croppers who were allowed to stay in employ-
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