The "privileges" brought over from slavery, which were included in the share renting, astonished outside observers.To the laborer was usually given a house, a water supply, wood for fuel, pasture for pigs or cows, a "patch" for vegetables and fruit, and the right to hunt and fish.These were all that some needed in order to live.Somers, the English traveler already quoted, pronounced this generous custom "outrageously absurd," for the Negroes had so many privileges that they refused to make use of their opportunities."The soul is often crushed out of labor by penury and oppression," he said, "but here a soul cannot begin to be infused into it through the sheer excess of privilege and license with which it is surrounded." The credit system which was developed beside the share system made a bad condition worse.On the 1st of January, a planter could mortgage his future crop to a merchant or landlord in exchange for subsistence until the harvest.Since, as a rule, neither tenant nor landlord had any surplus funds, the latter would be supplied by the banker or banker merchant, who would then dictate the crops to be planted and the time of sale.As a result of these conditions, the planter or farmer was held to staple crops, high prices for necessities, high interest rate, and frequently unfair bookkeeping.The system was excellent for a thrifty, industrious, and intelligent man, for it enabled him to get a start.It worked to the advantage of a bankrupt landlord, who could in this way get banking facilities.But it had a mischievous effect upon the average tenant, who had too small a share of the crop to feel a strong sense of responsibility as well as too many "privileges" and too little supervision to make him anxious to produce the best results.
The Negroes entered into their freedom with several advantages: they were trained to labor; they were occupying the most fertile soil and could purchase land at low prices; the tenant system was most liberal; cotton, sugar, and rice were bringing high prices; and access to markets was easy.In the white districts, land was cheap and prices of commodities were high, but otherwise the Negroes seemed to have the better position.Yet as early as 1870, keen observers called attention to the fact that the hill and mountain whites were thriving as compared with their former condition, and that the Negroes were no longer their serious competitors.In the white districts, better methods were coming into use, labor was steady, fertilizers were used, and conditions of transportation were improving.The whites were also encroaching on the Black Belt; they were opening new lands in the Southwest; and within the border of the Black Belt they were bringing Negro labor under some control.In the South Carolina rice lands, crowds of Irish were imported to do the ditching which the Negroes refused to do and were carried back North when the job was finished.* President Thach of the Alabama Agricultural College has thus described the situation:
* The Census of 1880 gave proof of the superiority of the whites in cotton production.For purposes of comparison the cotton area may be divided into three regions: first, the Black Belt, in which the farmers were black, the soil fertile, the plantations large, the credit evil at its worst, and the yield of cotton per acre the least; second, the white districts, where the soil was the poorest, the farms small, the workers nearly all white, and the yield per acre better than on the fertile Black Belt lands; third, the regions in which the races were nearly equal in numbers or where the whites were in a slight majority, with soil of medium fertility, good methods of agriculture, and, owing to better controlled labor, the best yield.In ether words, Negroes, fertile soil, and poor crops went together; and on the other hand the whites got better crops on less fertile soil.The Black Belt has never again reached the level of production it had in 1880.But the white district kept improving slowly.
