Original sentence: By the time all the debts owed and proceeds made were tallied up the farmer was lucky to break even.Here’s two pages stuck together.If the most commonly understood attribute of slavery is that one can be bought and sold, sharecroppers were indeed re-enslaved, as they were sometimes “sold” to another planter willing to pay the amount of their debt.In Reconstruction-era United States, sharecropping worked in collaboration with convict lease  to re-employ ex-slaves in similar jobs to those prior to their emancipation.In The Yazoo River Congressman Frank E.I’ll have to add this whole account up again.Just look at that.Often planters were not even that generous, and if it were desired that a sharecropper stay on another season, the books could easily be made to come out with him in debt.Often the planter’s share was 1/3, though sometime it was much higher.PLANTER: No, you don’t owe me a cent.PLANTER: Well, what do you know.PLANTER: You saw the books.Sharecrop farmers were loaned a plot of land to work, and in exchange owed the owner a share of the crop at the end of the season.Smith recounted the story of a shrewd tenant who is told on Settlement day that his cotton proceeds had exactly equaled his debts:.TENANT:  An’ you don’t owe me nuthin'.TENANT: Then I don’t owe you nuthin, Cap’m.TENANT: Then what’s I gonna do with them two bales I ain’t done hauled in yet.The planter set the price of the crop, and all the books were kept and tallied by the planter, such that there was plenty of opportunity to fudge the books, guaranteeing that the sharecropper never made any profit.The sharecropper was required to purchase seed, tools and fertilizer, as well as food and clothing, on credit at the plantation store.Thus the sharecropper was often forced to continue working on the same plantation because of a supposed debt.To avoid the worse situation of becoming convict labourers, famers were forced to enter into extremely disadvantageous sharecrop ageements that generally left them permanently in debt to the landowner.When the harvest came, the sharecrop farmer would harvest the whole crop and sell his or her portion to the planter at a fixed price