That the system was a successful adjustment for the times was shown by the ease with which it displaced wage labor on the cotton farm. That it deserved to become a permanent arrangement is doubtful. With a measure of truth share renting has been called "a sys tem whereby labor is secured without wages and loans are made without security." The lack of any security except the crop leads in many cases to close supervision over the activities of the renter. How this may fail is told by a Georgia planter : The plan of dividing crops under the share system is an equitable one, and if it were properly carried out there could be no cause for complaint; but the owner in nine cases out of ten, has not only to furnish his farm, but to supply all the needs of the tenant, without having any control over the time or acts of the tenant, who is often seen idling and loi tering when his crop requires his immediate attention. Ten ants owe the owners for provisions, clothing, tobacco, etc., and in many cases they are indifferent as to whether they produce enough to pay the owners these advances made dur ing the season. Thus the landlords annually lose largely by the system of shares, simply because they have all the risks and no corresponding control." The changes involved in the transition from slavery to free labor are well shown in the history of a planta tion in Middle Georgia : The plantation underwent all of the changes of the tran sition period except that in mobility of labor, for none of the Negroes left. In 1860 the Barrow's plantation of a thousand acres at Oglethorpe, Georgia, contained about 25 Negro families living in the quarters centered around the big house. "For several years following emancipation the force of la borers was divided into two squads, the arrangement and method of cultivation being very much the same" as in the ante bellum days. "Each squad was under the control of a foreman who was in the nature of a general of volunteers." . . . "The laborers were paid a portion of the crop as their wages which made them feel interested in it." After a while, however, even the liberal control of the foremen grew irksome. . . . The two squads split up into smaller and smaller squads, still working for a part of the crop with the owners' teams, until this method of farming came to involve great trouble and loss. The mules were ill treated, the crop was frequently badly worked, and in many cases not honestly divided. It became necessary to reorganize the plantation. The owner sold his mules to the Negroes on credit, thus placing the risk from careless handling upon the tenants. The gang system was abandoned, and the land was divided so as to give each family its individual tract. When some of them had to walk a mile it became impracticable to keep the cabins grouped. One by one the workers moved their house on to their farms, settling in convenient places near springs. The plantation now contained 999 acres as one acre had been given for a schoolhouse and a church.
The system of sharing was abandoned for cash rent in kind, especially cotton. The Negroes planted what they pleased and worked when they liked, except that the land lord required that enough cotton be planted to pay the rent.
"The usual quantity of land planted is between twenty-five and thirty acres, about half of which is in cotton and the rest in corn and patches. An industrious man will raise three times the amount of his rent cotton, besides making a full supply of corn, sirup, and other provisions." The poorer farmers work "sufficiently well to pay their rent, buy their clothes, spend at Christmas, and let the rainy days of the future take care of themselves."
The following is the yearly budget of one Ben Thomas, his wife, a son and a daughter, one of the best farmers on the Barrow place. He made: Valuing cotton seed at 50 cents a bushel it will be seen that the tenant paid less than one-fourth of his crop as rent. Other tenants not so industrious paid a larger proportion.' The plantation was not undergoing internal change in the midst of a static society. The plantation was re organizing but it was also breaking up. The neglected and overlooked small farmers of the South were entering the cotton system. The elevation of the unprivileged natives of the uplands to the rank of landowners pro vided a "remarkable increase in the proportion of whites employed in the cultivation of cotton."' Says Henry W. Grady, "the earth hunger of the poorer classes of whites who had been unable under the slaveholding oligarchy to own land was striking. . . . Never perhaps was there a rural movement which was accomplished without revolu tion or exodus that equalled in extent or swiftness the partition of the plantation of the ex-slaveholder into small farms." 42 The eastern upland areas, inhabited by white farmers, were reclaimed for cotton culture by the use of fertilizers. 'White farmers moved to comparatively undeveloped areas such as the wire grass in Cotton culture was carried to Texas and later to Okla homa by migrations of white farmers. By 1876 the United States Commissioner of Agriculture stated that nearly 40 per cent of the cotton was grown by white farmers." By 1910, although Negro farmers cultivated 52 per cent of the total cotton acreage in the South, the white farm ers produced 67 per cent of the total crop." The southern small farmers' opportunity to buy land came as a result of falling cotton prices after 1871. En couraged by thirty-cent cotton, planters had "refitted their quarters, repaired their fences, summoned hundreds of Negro croppers at high prices, and invested lavishly their borrowed capital in what they felt sure was a veritable bonanza." " When the cotton market fell, crops produced at high prices on borrowed capital brought ruin in their wake. Lands were thrown on the markets at forced sales, and the market sagged under their weight. "Plantations," writes Grady, "that had brought from $100,000 to $150,000 before the war were sold at $6,000 to $10,000 or hung on the hands of the planter and his factor at any price whatever." Many farmers, both black and white, bought small farms and set up as inde pendent operators. For the first time since the beginning of the plantation regime, land owning bid fair to become generally diffused among the southern people. In the dec ade from 1860 to 1870 the total value of farms in ten cotton states had declined from almost $1,479,000,000 to $764,000,000, a fall of 48 per cent.' While a great part of the loss was due to the ravages of war, part of the loss shows that in times of crop or price failure there are likely to be more sellers than buyers. It was this fall in value that gave an opportunity to the small owners. The following table " is arranged to show the break-up of the old regime in the decreasing size of southern farms and farm values as compared with northern farms. In eleven southern states the average size of the farm de creased from 335.4 to 111.4 acres. The greatest single decrease, that from 1860 to 1870, represents the divi sion of plantation into tenant holdings, listed as separate farms by the census.