Jackson advocate. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1939-current, 1947-01-18
Government Analyst Says Future Of
Negro Farm Worker None Too BRIGHT
See 100000
Replaced By
Machines By 1850
BY JAMES l.. HICKS
NNPA Staff Writer

w dS1llIlS IOdIy II. ". - [1lluOuSI
the number of colored farm own
ers in the south increased more
than z per cent between 1910 and
the number of colored sharecrop,
pers and tenant farmers decreas-
ed more than 3 per cent during
the same period, the outlook fo1
colored farmers is none too bright
DIR. Arthur F. Raper, social science
analyst Of the Bureau of Agricul-
tural Economics, said last We'd
nesday.
DR.. Raper, author of preface
to Peasantry' and Tenants of
the Almighty" and regarded as
an authority on tenant and share
crop farming, agreed with an
opinion held by the Agriculture
Department that in the current
machine age each tractor bought
by a farmer pushes another fam
lily off a farm, and that by the
end of 1850 100000 sharecroppers
and tenant families will have
been pushed off their farms by
mechanization of the farming in
dustry. DR.. Raper holds that this
is a conservative estimate.
Tractors are spearheading the
drive for Wholesale mechanization
in the South. Closely behind the
tractor are the mechanical cotton
chopper and the cotton picker.
Two years ago on Mississippi
Delta farm, AZ acres of cotton
were planted, cultivated, weeded,
and picked by mechanical equip
ment as an experiment. Sixty-two
bales of cotton were harvested
from the AZ acres. Savings in
picking alone amounted to $24.82
a bale, or $1,538.84 for the 62
bales.
Farmers who used mechanical
choppers this year say that they
were able to chop their cotton at
the rate of about one dollar an
acre as compared with $3.50 an
acre by hand labor. While only
a few farmers now have mechani-
cal cotton pickers, scores of white
and colored farmers are using
two-row tractor drawn cotton
choppers and various other mech
anical devices to weed their cot
ton.
Questioned as to what might
happen to such displaced families,
DR.. Raper said many of them
would drop to the lower status
of day laborers while others would
leave farm life completely. The
Agriculture Department estimates
that there are now approximately
357, 900 tractors in the south and
that by 1850 there will be more
than million.
Figures released by the Census
Bureau tend to indicate that des-
pite the increase in farm owner
ship by colored farmers thousands
Of them have already been forced
off their farms in the past five
years.
In 1910 there were approximate
ly 173,728 colored farm owners in
the South. In 1915 this figure
was 10000. gain of 1922.
This z per cent gain, however, is
not consistent with the % per
cent of the total number of farm
ers in the South which colored
farmers represent.
1t should also be pointed out
that 4,210 of the gain in colored
farm owners represents loans to
colored people buying their farms
through Federal Home Admins
tration mortgages.
The drop in the number of ten
ant farmers and sharecroppers
since 1910 was 1888 from $685.
638 in 1910 to $4,000 in 1915.
Assuming that the 1922 gains
made in farm ownerships by col
ored people came from the ranks
of the sharecroppers and tenant
farmers very unlikely as
sumption there still remains a
loss of more than 1000 colored
tenants and sharecroppers.
On the basis of the Agricultur