The system of management to be described is followed in the main by all plantations but is best developed in those owned by larger corporations. The owner or general manager has the difficult task of supervision. It is the own er's task to look after the financing of the plantation by keeping up connections with credit institutions, to look after purchasing supplies, marketing products, and with the aid of a bookkeeper to oversee the accounts of all the different tenants. The man next in authority is called the farm manager. The successor to the ante bellum over seer has risen in intelligence, social status, and managerial ability. He directs the planting and cultivating of crops and the operation of the gin and supply store. A gin me chanic is kept only during the active ginning season, but if the plantation is fairly large a store manager is em ployed the year around. It is the business of the farm manager to look after the work of tenant farmers and the wage hands whom he delegates to the charge of an overseer. In addition the hired white labor in care of stock, blacksmith shops, and grist mills must be appor tioned." The modern cotton plantation is a unified organiza tion, but because of the very nature of agriculture there are many difficulties in the way of centralized supervision. The work, stock, tools, and the crop, whether belonging to landlord or tenant, are looked after. In order to avoid loss, the manager supervises the tenant's financial dealing so that his living expenses advanced do not exceed his productive capacity. Tenants may desert at critical times, leaving debts unpaid and crops untended. These contingencies require in the plantation manager a skill ful blend of tact and firmness in dealing with the human elements on the Men of such qualities are hard to find and when found often work up to other busi ness opportunities or become plantation owners them selves. The average salary for plantation managers in 1920 was $2,100 a year and included free house rent, food for the family, and privileges of pasture for live stock.' Assistant managers and overseers received $1,550 and $1,000 with perquisites. The average cost of manage ment on cotton plantations was approximately $1.83 per acre in crops.
The labor on plantations is divided between wage hands, croppers, and share tenants. The terms as to ten ure are the same as those on rented farms in the South not in the plantation area but, as suggested, the workers are more closely supervised. A greater per cent of the workers are wage hands than in other tenancy areas. At least 25 per cent of the work is done by utility hands who feed stock, dig ditches, and do carpenter work, extra day hands called in for the emergencies of chopping and pick ing, and regular hired hands who raise feedstuff for live stock and work the landlord's crop through and through on the old gang system. In 1913 such hands received $18 to $25 per month without board or $12 to $16 per month with board and rations. By 1920 wages had increased al most 100 per cent. Day hands who had received $1.25 per day received $3.00. The landlord is relieved of the risk of advancing supplies to the wage hand for he pays as he goes. The monthly rations resemble those of the old plantation: 16 pounds of salt pork, a bushel of meal, and one or two gallons of molasses." The position of the cropper is about half way be tween that of a tenant and a hired servant. The landlord furnishes the land, a house, tools, and work animals to the cropper who furnishes the labor for half the crop. Ex penses of fertilizer and ginning are usually divided equally. In addition, the plantation owner furnishes sup
plies for which he takes a lien on the crop. If the cropper needs extra money he may work on the plantation as a day laborer, and his acreage is sometimes kept low in order that he may work the landlord's crop.
After the wage laborer has advanced to the cropper stage, he may save money and become a share tenant. He reaches this stage by investing in his own work ani mals and implements of cultivation. He still receives his house and land from the plantation and pays usually "a third and a fourth" of corn and cotton respectively, as rent. "Standing rent" of so many bales of cotton regard less of the crop has developed in regions like Georgia, where crop failures are not so common. On an average, the share tenants make up about 54 per cent of all rent ers on plantations.' It is the tendency in good cotton years for the plantation workers to advance in status ; wage hands become croppers, and croppers become share tenants. It is virtually impossible, because of the high price of land, for Negroes to work up into land owner ship in a plantation area such as the Delta. Regions affected by the Negro migration, however, have seen com petition for the services of laborers result in a general raising of the tenure status of the hands and croppers.
The following description is of a plantation of 4,200 acres with 130 Negro families in one of the Delta counties of Mississippi: Although the acreage in the holding was contiguous, it was considered large enough to handle as two quite distinct plan tations, the owner hiring an overseer for each. The landowner owned and operated the cotton gin, the store, and the sawmill that served both the plantations. A considerable acreage was operated by wage labour, the owner hiring labour to farm all of the 222 acres in crops cut for hay, 283 acres, or about three-eighths of the acreage, in maize, and 108 acres, or about a fourteenth of the acreage, in cotton. Wage labour was also hired to feed swine, raised to provide part of the pork sold to the negroes, and to care for the mules, kept to farm the land operated by the wage hands and by the share hands or croppers.
Each of the 130 negro families was provided with a cabin. Less than half of these negro families owned mules and farm ing implements. The negroes who owned the mules and im plements with which they worked, farmed only about 40 per cent of the entire cotton acreage and about 30 per cent of the entire corn acreage of the two plantations. Altogether they had 45 of the 130 mules on the entire plantation. The average negro family had about 11 acres in cotton and 4 acres in corn, the basis of assigning acreage being to allow about six acres of cotton and two acres in corn for each male adult worker or equivalent in children able to work. Advances were made to the negroes from March first on. These were held down as near as possible to supplies in value not ex ceeding half a dollar per acre per month, until August first. From then on only half that amount was allowed. Tenants in need of more advances were given a chance to work for wages part time. The mules used by the croppers were kept in cen tral barns and cared for and used in part by labourers work ing on a wage basis. These croppers were also furnished with implements. They got half of the cotton and corn raised, for furnishing the labour and for meeting half of the expense of ginning. Advances, made prior to settlement, were deducted from the cropper's half of the receipts from cotton.