The times-news., 1937-10-13
NEWSPAPERS OPINIONS
WHO ARE EXPLOITED"


Reading the liberal" or Rooseveltan, maya.
zines one sees numerous references to the miser.
able conditions of the "sharecroppers" and the
farm tenants" in the South.
The insinuation is that these poor people, un-
doubtedly they are poor, are the victims of con,
scienceless, hard-hearted employers and exploters
The careful and constantly repeated effort is to
create the impression in the northern states and
cities that in the south are few hundreds thou
sands of feudal barons to whom the masses of the
farm workers are poems or slaves
We set up to know something about the state
of South Carolina. 1t is state typical of the
south Where is the planter, the employer of farm
labor. sharccroppers or tenants, whose annual in
come is 100000? He does not exist. He has
never been heard Of
Where is the planter the landlord "eXploiter of
labor" whose income is $4,000? He is no more
to be found than is the one hundred thousand dol
lars year landlord
Who are the planter-landlordS in South Carolina
whose incomes are $4,000? There may be five,
but if there be one we do not know his name.
Who are the exploitcrs of sharecroppers and
tenants who have had average incomes of $4,000
a year in South Carolina the last ten years or the
ten years before that period? They may be twenty,
they? We do not suspect their existence.
Can anyone name one man who from planting,
has accumulated fortune of half q million dol
lars in the last ten twenty fifty or seventy-Seven
years since 1860?
BY the census of 1880 South Carolina had l5S-
600 farmers planters sharccroppcrs and tenants
included. In the state now are about 5000 or TO-
600 payers of federal income taxes. Of these tax
, b,b bl,.
The great majority of them are business men,
professional men, salaried men. in
the cities and towns Yet the unceasing endeavor
goes on to picture the south a region inhabited
by Squire Westerns and Simon Legrees.
In the Eastern and Great Lakes states are at
least fifty cities each of which contains twenty
men whose aggregate incomes are more than The
aggregate incomes of all the farmers in South
Carolina having net incomes of $4,000 or more.
Yet magazines are filed with the writings of
uplifting" smug hypocritcal scribes who receive
money for telling ignorant or malicious lies to I'M
press readers that the south is land of Infamous
scoundrels who prey upon the Sharecroppers and
tenants,
The cold truth is that the employing farmers are
poor. They are the exploited. They are the tribute
payers to the subsidized in the govcrnmcnt-favorcd
regions.
In South Carolina are many farmers, thousands,
who manage to get along. to be independent. They
are little fellows" owning 100 to 200 acres. They
"live at home and board at the same place." but
their cash incomes are not $4,000 year (most of
them have not $1,000; they are taxed some hun
dreds of dollars of that though they are not aware
of it. They are so poor and have been poor so
long that when government hands them dole Of
$25 or $75 they think that the year of Jubilee has
begun
For every Sharecropper and tenant farmer eX-
plotted in South Carolina in the last half century
twenty farmers and merchants have been exploit
ed by them.
These farmers and merchants have taken the
risks and borne the losses they have kept the
poor, especially the poor negroes, alive-and what
they get for it is sly and camtng denunciation as
slave-drvers and robbers of the weak and helpless
Charleston News and Courier.