The Great Depression, mechanization, and other factors lead sharecropping to fade away in
the 1940s
.
Sharecropping is an arrangement in which property owners allow tenants to farm a piece of land in exchange for a share of the crop. … It was a way landowners could still command labor, often by African Americans, to keep their farms profitable. It had faded in most places by the 1940s. But
not everywhere
.
Sharecropping is an arrangement in which property owners allow tenants to farm a piece of land in exchange for a share of the crop. … It was a way landowners could still command labor, often by African Americans, to keep their farms profitable. It had faded in most places by the 1940s. But
not everywhere
.
Sharecropping, form of tenant farming in which the landowner furnished all the capital and most other inputs and the tenants contributed their labour. Depending on the arrangement, the landowner may have
provided the food, clothing, and medical expenses of the tenants
and may have also supervised the work.
Although the sharecropping system was primarily a post-Civil War development, it did exist in antebellum
Mississippi
, especially in the northeastern part of the state, an area with few slaves or plantations, and most likely existed in Tennessee.
Sharecropping was bad
because it increased the amount of debt that poor people owed the plantation owners
. Sharecropping was similar to slavery because after a while, the sharecroppers owed so much money to the plantation owners they had to give them all of the money they made from cotton.
The difference between sharecropping and slavery is
freedom
. While slaves work without pay, sharecroppers get payed with crops. Sharecroppers can also choose to quit their jobs whenever they want. Even though sharecropper are free they are mostly treated as slave since the were former slaves.
What problem did many farmers have under the sharecropping system?
They were forced to grow cash crops instead of food
. They often were trapped in a cycle or circle of debt. Many sharecroppers were forced to buy goods on credit.
Tenant farmers usually paid the landowner rent for farmland and a house. They owned the crops they planted and made their own decisions about them. …
Sharecroppers had no control over which crops were planted or how they were sold
.
What was most likely to happen if a sharecropper did not like the contract the landowner offered?
The landowner would force the sharecropper to sign. The landowner would ask a lawyer to review it.
freedom to achieve whatever your slave ancestors
could not O a stepping stone to owning land and beginning your own business a destitute existence where it was nearly impossible to make money a time of quiet contemplation while working with family members.
After harvesting the crop, the tenant sold it and received income from it
. From that income, he paid the landowner the amount of rent owed. Sharecroppers seldom owned anything. Instead, they borrowed practically everything — not only the land and a house but also supplies, draft-animal, tools, equipment, and seeds.
Mississippi was among the last Southern states to integrate the schools and allow blacks to vote. Mechanization and migration put an end to the sharecropping system by the 1960s, though
some forms of tenant farming still exist in the 21st century
.
The sharecropper is already giving the landowner half of his crop. … The landowner treated the sharecropper unfairly,
charging the sharecropper more than he needs to pay
. Until the sharecropper pays off this debt, he needs to keep working, which is why the system is so difficult to overcome.
The cutting in half of cotton prices virtually guaranteed
that sharecroppers got stuck in the “vicious circle” of poverty. The amount of debt that sharecroppers amassed kept them tied to the land trying to have enough good years to pay off the landowner, which frequently never occurred.
Sharecropping is a term for
when one person farms another person’s land, and then the two share what is produced
. Sharecroppers are almost always poor, and are often in debt to landowners or other people.
