FROM THE COTTON PLANTATION TO COTTON TENANCY From all accounts the plantation withstood the shock of war and the loss of its great staple remarkably well." Where unaffected by the actual struggle, its organiza tion not only remained intact, but the cultivation of corn, cowpeas, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, and fruits in the place of much of the cotton was efficiently car ried on. The plantation came to diversify through neces sity. More and more the able-bodied white men were drawn away from the great plantation areas, but the system, except where touched by war, went on under feminine direction. Fleming says that one could ride for days through the Alabama Black Belt without seeing an able-bodied white man, but the production of the plantation was never higher." The managerial ability of the women of the plantation, the resourcefulness of the Negro artisans, and the faithfulness of slaves in the fields have been deemed equally worthy of comment. The difficulty in feeding the Confederate Army was not one of production but one of commerce and transporta tion. Sherman's march through the hinterland was well advised as a military measure in that he found an abun dance of stores and supplies, products of the plantation, to destroy.
It is useless to ask what would have been the social and economic readjustments in the plantation forced by the abolition of slavery without war and reconstruc tion. Economic disorganization and social demoralization were bound to occur, but they were doubly accentuated by the shock of war and the deadly conflict of recon struction. In the combatant areas slavery was destroyed by the friction of the struggle itself, and in the presence of the Union armies the plantation system went down like a house of cards. Its bonds were dissolved; its la borers deserted "when freedom cried out," and became hangers-on around army posts and camp followers of Union armies." A period of readjustment, a brief hiatus in the cotton system, followed emancipation. The cotton laborer had been given a free status but no higher economic or social standing. He had acquired mobility but no more security.
Many Negroes expected the illusionary forty acres and a mule; some met with swindlers who took their money in return for fraudulent deeds. Much has been made of the Negro's refusal to work after emancipation. Some of them no doubt spent their days hanging about the towns to return to their cabins at night. The plantation had inculcated habits of industry and hard work but had linked these responses to the stimulus of personal compulsion rather than economic competition. Such in dustry was a matter of obedience, not a matter of fore thought. Thrift had not been taught because the worker had nothing that he might save. But, as has been sug gested, the plantation itself had broken down, and no doubt many laborers did not stay on the plantations simply because their master could not give them work."
The plantations had been returned to the planters, and the high prices for cotton encouraged them to rees tablish its culture. There was a gradual return of labor ers to the plantations under the wage contract system. This system met with varying success in different local ities, but as a general thing it was abandoned.. There were no banks left solvent after the war ; the planters were land-poor, and it was almoit impossible for them to pay a weekly or monthly wage. Attempts to bind Negroes by contract failed, because they did not under stand contracts and refused to wait for yearly wages." In cases of crop or price failure the whole loss thrown on the planter might result in his inability to meet the wages. The superior profitableness of cotton production and the scarcity of labor created higher wages notably in the western cotton states. This caused some Negro migration with consequent breaking of contracts." The loss thrown on the planter by crop failures, and the mobility of workers resulted first in a reduction of yearly wages which ranged from $100 to $150 for men in 1867 to a scale of from $90 to $110 in 1868." The result was the share system, adopted after a period of trial and error, to govern the division of the prod uct between landlord and tenant. The share given the landlord came to range from a half to a "third and fourth." If the worker owns no stock or implements, he lives in the landlord's house, works his farm, pays half of the crop expenses as fertilizer and ginning, and re ceives half the crop for the labor of himself and family. The term usually applied to such a farmer is cropper rather than tenant, and his status is that of "a servant whose wages depend upon the amount of profit." s7A tenant has possession in his own right, but the landlord may direct and control the operations of a cropper. The Georgia Supreme Court has declared, "The case of the cropper is rather a mode of paying wages than a ten ancy." " The share tenant owns his mules and implements of cultivation and pays, for the rent of the land, a third of the corn and a fourth of the cotton. Another system of payment which grew up was called cash or "standing rent." The rental was standing in that a fixed amount was to be paid from the fruits of the soil regardless of how much was produced. This usually means the delivery of cotton amounting to a specified cash value at harvest time. Laborers who had worked up to the dignity of standing renters owned their animals and work tools. Since the renters possessed no capital the landlord often found it necessary either to stand for his supplies at the merchant's or to furnish them himself. Thus grew up the crop lien system as will be shown later.