Evening star., 1937-12-05
CROP AND LABOR
BIG ISSUE IN SOUTH
Sharing System Challenged
as Tenants Increase.
Day Work Studied.
~ the Associated Press.

~ the Associated Press.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark, Dec. A.
When the South's big plantation own
ers came out Of the war between the
States with much land and no labor
to work it, and farm labor found
itself with hands trained for the soil
and no land to work, they devised a
system.
They pooled their resources and
shared proceeds Of the resulting crops,
and they have been doing it ever
since.
Today, share cropping is still the
dominant system in most of the cot
ton kingdom. Years Of academic con-
troversy over merits of the arrange
ment have not greatly changed its
basic principle, or its chief human
factors.
Operations on Larger Scale.
They function now very much as
they have functioned since recon-
struction days, but with these major
differences:
The operation is on a very much
larger scale the last authoritative sur
vey showing 1,83l.00 tenants and
sharecroppers in the South. constitut-
Ing 81 per cent of all farmers in the
cotton belt
A changing social and economic or
der involving mechanization crop sub
sides, acreage control, casual day la
Dor from the ranks of the unemployed,
have brought new complications into
an already complex tenant-landowne
relationship.
Two schools of thought still wrangle
!. over the basic system One holds
that sharecropping too closely resem-
bles its predecessor slave era The
other contends that the system is
the only one under which many a
Negro, many an illiterate white farm
er. could hope to maintain himself
and his family, the year around, on
the soil.
Much day labor appeared in the
fields this fall as the South picked
its record crop. But there is no
general agreement about what that
might mean in relation to the share
cropping system.
H. L. Mitchell. executive secretary
OF the Southern Tenant Farmers
Union, and one of the chief critics of
the tenancy system. said a wider use
OF day labor was accompanied by evic-
ton notices for tenants and share
troopers.
For the last 10 years there has
been decided shift to mechanized
farm operation on the larger planta-
tions of the cotton belt" he said.
This trend was accelerated by the
crop reduction plans Of the Triple-A,
Tor its payment of huge subsidies to
the owners of land enabled them to
modernize their farms With the sub
sequent wholesale evictionS of ten
ants and choppers caused by the
adoption of crop-control legislation,
those remaining on the land are rap
idly finding their status reduced to
that of the casual day-la borer.
For the tenant and sharecropper,
the winter months of 1878 are
likely to be the hardest since the de-
preston began in 1890: this despite
the bumper crop OF nearly $4,000 600
bales. = Very few tenants and
choppers will come out of debt at
the end Of the year"
Other Conclusions Drawn,
But other conclusions were drawn
oy Harold A. Young, big plantation
operator. Arkansas cotton control
committeeman under Triple-A, now
State chairman of the Soil Conserva-
ton Committee.
With period of cheap cotton in
prospect, the tendency to use wage
labor in the cotton fields will slow up."
SAID Young. so many do not under
stand the close relationship between
tenant and landlord. When work op-
portunlties are curtailed it is the ten
dency Of the owners to give the work
TO the tenant and sharecropper
rather than to casual day labor. I'm
DER acreage retirement, I think it is
tne tendency to spread the active
acreage among sharecroppers. Wage
LABOR is too unsettled This
ois crop year has led many to the
vie" that the tenant operation is
superior to wage labor operation.
Inc opportunity for a decent liy-
ing, IN tenancy, is available to all of
that class If they will take ADVANTAGE
Of it."
The Arkansas w. P. A. looked into
the matter this fall and found no
recent material change" In the farm
tenancy situation
Administrator Floyd Sharp said.
The last few years does indicate a
ueno toward day labor, but planta-
ZION men are experiencing dificulty
IN ootalnng farm hands, particularly
10Y cotton picking under this arrange.
ment 4ee
The prevailing opinion of planta-
tion men seems to be that crop con-
uoi mad a tendency to reduce the
NUMBER OF acres that tenants worked
ana consequently reduced their yearly
income to lower standard of living
ihls was IN cases where tenants were
not displaced outright, due to a con-
troll program"
What Of the sharecropper himself,
Live by Tradition,
NOW that the cotton season is over
you will find him these days sitting
beside his barren field in the slantine
winter sunshine, spectator rather
tlan participant in the hub bub that
goes on about his lot in life.
Because that is his way. 1t was
his fathers way.
ihere are upward of 150, 900 tenants
ano sharecroppers in this State. Thev
make up go per cent of all its farmers
Inc tenancy percentages run higher
IN Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama.
louisiana, South Carolina and Okla
noma, but the Arkansas tenant has
been so frequently surveyed and an
alyzed that he has come to be better
known than his kinsmen elsewhere in
the rnft0n South