Sharecropping

=__Sharecropping__= toc Sharecropping means sharing the crop. Under this system the landowner provided the laborers with houses, tools, seeds, and other supplies. The sharecroppers provided the skill and muscle needed to grow the crops. When the harvest was gathered, it was shared, half to two thirds for the landowner, the rest for the sharecropper. Sharecropping's advantages in other situations include enabling access for women to arable land where ownership rights are vested only in men. the system occured extensively in colonial Africa, Scotland, and Ireland, and came into wide use in the Southeastern United States, including Apalachia during the Reconstruction era (1865-1877). Sharecropping typically involves a relatively rich land owner and a less wealthy or poor agricultural worker or farmer.

Benefits for Blacks
The sharecropping system gave black workers to be free of the close daily control they had during slavery. Each black family had their own cabin and prepared its own land as a separate unit. Sharecroppers could at least hope by working hard and saving they might have enough money to buy a farm of their own someday. For them that would be complete freedom. This is the reason most blacks preferred sharecropping instead of working for wages.

Farmers Benefits
Different agreements could be made through bargaining or purchasing to get the best the best deals on seeds, supplies, and equipment. Farmers benefits could also allow groups of small small farmers and dairymen to manage pricing and prevent cutting prices because of competitors. Whites made up two thirds or more of the sharecroppers in Tennessee. In Mississippi, by 1900, 36% of all white farmers were tenants or sharecroppers.

Misfortunes
Time passed before many sharecroppers made enough money to own their farms. Part of this was because most whites tried to keep blacks from gaining land of their own. The landowners wanted to make sure they had enough workers for their own farms also. They had also wanted to keep all the blacks dependent upon them. Some landowners cheated the sharecroppers when the harvest was divided. Local storekeepers also cheated them. Sharecroppers had to buy supplies on credit. They ran up bills at the general store during growing season. When the crop was sold in the autumn, they used the money to pay off the debt they made at the general store. Regularly the merchant added items to the bill the farmers didn't purchase just to make more money. Blacks who opposed this were threatened with the loss of credit in the future at the store, or with violence. It was hard to make it as a sharecropper because prices were high in the stores because the storekeepers also had to borrow to get the goods they sold. They paid high interest rates because money was so low in the south. They had to charge high prices to cover that expense. So it was lack of money more than cheating by whites or racial prejudice that kept black sharecroppers from getting their own farms.

Coming to an end
After time the system seemed bizarrely similar to slavery. Blacks were again always having to work, with little hope of leaving. This time the bonds more economic, but the effects were alike. Southern state courts supported the legality of the new arrangement. THir rulings seemed to undermine the spirit and effect of the Thirteenth Amendment. In 1911 the Supreme Court ruled in //Bailey v. Alabama// that the new system, which was called black peonage, was unconstitutional.