Sharecropping vs the Gig Economy
By: Vanessa Robinson
Tags: History, Work, Culture, Equality, Race

Sharecropping vs the Gig Economy

They’re not that different…

Walker Evans / Public domain — Cotton Sharecroppers, Hale County, Alabama

After the Civil War, the South was pretty demolished. One of the things that helped that happen — besides the natural destruction of any war — was Sherman's March to the Sea.

Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, one of the deadliest generals in that war, directed not only the burning of Atlanta, he also deployed a path of demolishment all the way to Savannah. Similar actions were performed elsewhere in this conflict, but this? This was something new.

It was brilliant and evil.

Map by Hal Jespersen, www.cwmaps.com / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)

Using the 1860 census (because the Union was the federal government) Sherman planned for the Union Army to travel through the most prosperous areas; after all, they needed corn, rice, vegetables, and cattle for the hungry army to eat. They sent soldiers called “bummers” to forage and take needed resources from civilians, to build bridges, and to burn down any resources (mills, cotton gins, and the like) that could be useful to the Confederacy. All of this was covered under the Special Field Orders № 120.

This was called the “scorched earth” method.

Everything that was useful was destroyed. Everything that could be eaten was eaten by the Union Army. Civilians got what was leftover or hidden. Sometimes they were left starving. This was supposed to give them second thoughts about the war.

And even though the orders from Sherman said, “Soldiers must not enter the dwellings of the inhabitants, or commit any trespass,” the soldiers ignored that part. They trespassed. They tore the houses of the South upside down in their search for silver, other valuables, and even clothes.

The people of the South grew to hate the North even more.

When the war was over the confederate dollar bill was useless.

Some landowners had trunks of it buried in their back yards. It wasn’t worth the labor to dig it up. In fact, in January of 1865, $100 Confederate dollars was worth $1.70 or two cents for each dollar.

Millions of people, White and Black, were homeless. They had no money either. Sharecropping was invented to replace the free labor that had been available under slavery.

A sharecropper who had nothing was provided with animals, tools, and a plot of land. And since they had nothing, the landowners set up a store, a commissary, where the almost destitute could get material for clothing, food, fertilizer, seeds, and even medicine…which would come out of earnings later.

Billy Hathorn / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

Sharecroppers were Black and White.

The sharecroppers owned half of what they grew. The other half went to the Landowner. But here’s the kicker: They had to sell their portion to the Landowner. They didn’t have the option to sell to anyone else even if they offered more.

The Landowners wanted the sharecroppers to be bound to them — and in some cases, this seemed to be even more important than profitability. To some, it looked as if the Landowners were trying to create a new slave system.

At first, it was probably quite fair. The sharecropper ended the year with money in his pocket. He could provide for his family.

But over time, unscrupulous Landowners would increase the expenses and interest rates at the commissary. Discreetly, of course.

Once the expenses were deducted from the crop, Voilà! The illiterate families who didn’t know how to calculate expenses were now in the red. Surprise, surprise…and now they couldn’t leave, you see.

They owed money to the store.

Even if they didn’t owe money to the store, they still couldn’t leave. If caught by the sheriff and his deputies, they would be returned to the Landowner as if slavery still existed. It was sharecropping as slavery.

They were in bondage.

Gig drivers are provided a tool.

The modern app provides the work. It is the tool to get the crop. The crop is equal to the pay per mile the driver receives for each customer trip.

The driver has to provide the vehicle and the cost of maintenance, taxes, insurance, city licensing, physicals, and background checks.

If a gig driver had a vehicle that could hold more people, the terms were better — just like a tenant farmer.

But, due to certain manipulations, one realizes that one is just moving money around.

It wasn’t always like this.

Drivers in Houston in 2015, with a lot of hustle, could pull in $1000, even $1200 a week. Yes, they had expenses. But it was cool. I had a close family member do this work, and a neighbor as well. They showed me the checks.

Then, the dance of a thousand cuts began.

In Houston, from 2015 to 2017, this same gig driver company cut the pay per mile three times. The changes were well-publicized and the pain began. Within two years, a driver could barely eke out $400 doing the same amount of work. For a week! And the expenses had increased. Now, no one I know is doing it any longer. They were paying to drive customers around the city.

To make it worse, their vehicles were losing value; the mileage was making their vehicles unsaleable in the future. The wear and tear reduced the vehicle’s value. It was becoming a lose-lose proposition.

The gig drivers I know, like sharecroppers, were doing it because there was nothing else available. This doesn’t apply to everyone, of course.

Even though some like the personal autonomy of a sharecropper or gig, there is a price to be paid. When there is a failure, it generally comes down on one side alone.

Anything can happen.

In the case of the sharecropper, it might not rain, or it could rain too much. The crop fails. The sharecropper owes even more at the end of the year to the commissary and/or Landowner.

The gig driver must depend on the work doled out by the app. If there are too many drivers, the work is reduced, and so then is the money that can be earned. It’s not unusual for a driver to sit for four, even six hours, and get nothing. There might be a computer glitch that prevents work from being delivered. There could be low demand in that particular area.

So many things could go wrong.

They’re not doing this because of a criminal or drug background — the gig worker has to pass background checks almost as strenuous as a government job. But they can’t find a job. They can’t get the job: The one job that will sustain them and their families. It is what it is.

Most people, if they have to work, and if they are not entrepreneurial, would like a good, stable job with benefits. With a pension. Why is this so hard to understand?

This sharecropper system went on until 1939.

In that year, the United States government changed the way it paid for crops. It was going to give sharecroppers a partial payment for the crops they raised.

The Landowners evicted the sharecroppers off of the land — yes, they did. The Landowners took all of the crop money from the government. If they wanted work performed, they paid wages. (Why didn’t they do that before?)

And as part of the New Deal by President Roosevelt, the Landowners reduced their farmland so that crop prices would go up as designed.

No matter how one looks at it, sharecropping was out. Done. Finished.

The Paycheck Protection Program

The PPP was supposed to save jobs in 2020.

The New Deal program was installed to help Americans come out of the Depression and to live better lives. But it backfired; as we can see, thousands of people were ejected from the land. They didn’t get paid, they got laid off.

This isn’t much different from the Paycheck Protection Program that was started in the wake of the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. Companies were given loans from the Small Business Administration (SBA) so they could keep their employees employed. But many of the businesses were not small. And they took the money and laid off employees anyway. Like the Landowners, they kicked the sharecroppers off the land. They didn’t get paid, they got laid off. Millions are unemployed.

There are some investigations going on, but nothing much will happen. The plan was if employees were kept on and paid, the loan would be forgiven. Odds are good the loans will be forgiven anyway; for those without a heart and moral compass, it was just a cash giveaway. This is how we roll.

The Gig Economy is here.

It’s dressed up in glamour, but the emperor still has no clothes.

When observed at face value, one realizes this is not new; it’s just a sharecropper method reconfigured for modern times. Some people, talented and hardworking, are working as many as three gig jobs. But if they get sick, it’s over. If they can’t afford to take sick time off and/or purchase health insurance, they are one step away from homelessness and financial ruin. That’s no way to live.

Anyone who thinks that they will always be young and nimble is a fool. You need a support system for those times when keeping it real goes wrong. Decent jobs help provide that. Gigs don’t.

The sharecropper system began after the Civil War and continued for at least 70 years. It was a survival technique that allowed people to barely survive. This is one of the reasons I tilt my head in wonder when Americans refer back to the good old days. What good old days?

Just because something has endured does not make it right. Sharecropping vs the Gig Economy? They’re not that different.

If we truly want to be great again, every dedicated American who wants a decent job will have one. Here’s a tip: If you work 40 hours, and still can’t pay for the roof over your head, a car payment (if you must have transportation), food, AND don’t have health coverage, it ain’t a decent job. A gig won’t do.

Until then, we are full of crap.