The landowner preferred croppers working on the halves to renters owning their own mules and tools, yet, in order to get enough satisfactory labour both kinds of tenants were employed. Renters with their own operating capital furnished the feed of the work animals, the seed, and labour and gave as rent a fourth of the cotton and a third of the corn. They are called "third and fourth renters." The rent paid on the corn land had to be at least ten bushels per acre, this pro vision being made to discourage corn growing on the part of shiftless renters. Third and fourth renters were given ad vances, if they had need of them, and these advances were withheld by the landlord from the tenant's share before set tlement was finally made. If the mules owned by these rent ers became sick or died, they were allowed to rent mules owned by the landlord if unable to secure others when needed." The account of a Negro cropper on a large corpora tion plantation during an exceptionally successful year is here analyzed : In 1921 T. J. Weeks, Sr., cultivated on the halves thirty acres in cotton and two in corn for the Eutaw unit of the great Scott Plantation at Scott, Mississippi. The working force of this family consisted of five males and three females. One small child was classified as a non-worker. Weeks must have been an exceptional farmer for he had saved enough from his Christmas so that he did not begin to draw on the com missary until May 10. Between May the 10 and the date of settlement, December 14, he "traded $367 worth." One hun dred and fifty-two dollars and seventy cents were for ex penses of the crop distributed as follows: For breaking and planting $60.00 For three hoes 3.00 For cotton sacking 7.70 For boll weevil poison 60.00 For fertilizer 22.00 He bought a cow and a calf for $50.00, and spent $134.80 for merchandise and rations in addition to what he grew at home. This included $5.40 in cash. In addition, there was illness in the family, and he paid $18.00 in doctor bills and a $15.00 hospital fee to the plantation hospital. He proved that he was an agriculturist by paying $1.50 for a subscrip tion to the Cotton Farmer.
He produced twenty-four bales of cotton, which sold for 25 and 26 cents, and 21,550 pounds of seed, which sold at $45.00 a ton. In all, Week's crop of cotton brought $3,251.57.
From this was deducted $39.60 levee tax, $152.40 for gin ning charges, and $12.00 for planting, leaving his half of the crop $1,517.78. From this was deducted his store account of $367.00 and $26.00 rent for the two acres of corn, leaving the family of eight a balance of $1,124.78 in cash for the year's work." "The overseer of the old regime has been replaced by the farm manager in the new order," 88 but supervision is none the less present. It is usually understood in advance that the landlord or manager is to direct the tenant's farming activities. On many well-supervised plantations the farm manager makes daily rounds of inspection giv ing instructions on details of field work. On 93 of 144 plantations the bell rings about sunrise, and the work day is from sun to sun. Workers who fail to respond to the bell are questioned and reprimanded. The working week usually consists of five and a half days, Saturday afternoon being taken off for shopping. Much care is taken to see that mules belonging to the plantation are not abused, many planters fearing that the Negroes will ride the animals at night and on Sundays. Tools and im plements are lent for the year and returned to the planta tion stock at the end of the season.
Like its ante helium prototype the plantation has de veloped a social system commensurate with its economic organization. In some cases community and family affairs
are subject to review by plantation managers. Many operators do not allow tenant families living without legal marital relations on their plantations. The landlords determine all the holidays that shall be observed. Planta tion barbecues and picnics are given by the management for all the workers.
Plantations on which the owner and his family live have a strongly paternalistic regime. A not too friendly critic of the modern plantation and its human factors writes : The patience with which a Mississippi planter deals with his dull, irresponsible labor is almost unbelievable to a North erner. If he is harsh in punishing a "runaway," too shrewd in his contracts, quick to take advantage of all his opportuni ties to exploit, the planter is also the long suffering guardian of difficult children. If a hand falls sick, the planter's physi cian is called. The planter purchases the necessary medicines, and he or his wife watches through the night beside the sick person, for no plantation Negro can be depended upon to ad minister medicine regularly. Family or community quarrels are patiently heard and decided. Many planters give an an nual barbecue where all hands are invited to a feast and merry-making. A Negro cheated by another Negro or by a white man can count on his "boss" to safeguard his rights. The planter protects his Negroes from the countless "agents" who are always trying to sell the hands some trifle at an exorbi tant price. The average planter looks upon his hands as responsibilities to be fed, clothed, guarded, and cared for in sickness or disaster. At the same time, he is unalterably op posed to anything that would help these children grow up.' The presence of the plantation system is a unique ex ample of an adjustment of man to land and of race to race accepted from history as a social heritage. The plantation possesses an influence in southern life greater than its extent. It tends to set the mode by which the human factors in cotton shall be regulated. In times of prosperity investment in farms as plantations has tended to draw more workers into tenancy. That plantations should come to be vested more and more in the control of corporations would not surprise one student of history. "Its concentration of labor under skilled management," writes U. B. Phillips, "made the plantation system with its overseers, foremen, blacksmiths, carpenters, hostlers, cooks, nurses, plow-hands, and hoe-hands practically the factory system applied to agriculture." 7° But more than any factory the plantation is devoted to the production of a staple from which it cannot escape. It is this devo tion to cotton which made the plantation in the begin ning, caused its partial break-up after the Civil War, and holds it in hazard today. For the plantation cannot diversify; it never has diversified but once and then under the stress of war. It must have its staple cash crop, and it must produce that crop regardless of the effect on the market. Herein lies the second fact, the menace of the plantation to the whole cotton system. It does not di versify, it does not reduce acreage. The fact that it may produce cotton efficiently does not alter the charge that it produces too much cotton. By depressing cotton prices it not only threatens the human factors in the whole cotton system, it threatens its own existence. The planta tion even more than the average farmer has all its eggs in one basket. And that basket is subject to the hazards of the weather, the weevil, and the market.