“Tenant farmer” was a term applied to many people in the era before the advent of modern agriculture. It referred to farmers who worked on land owned by others. It included “sure renters” who gained exclusive (sure) use of a farm by paying annual rent on the first of a calendar year. Use of a home and buildings for mules and other livestock was included and the renter had his own mules and farming implements. Neither success nor failure affected the land owner. His income was sure.
Another type of tenant was the sharecropper and this involved a more complex relationship between land owner and worker. Typically, a sharecropper had limited resources, contributing his labor and that of his family. Land owners provided housing, money for food and other necessities (“run bill”), mules and implements, and expenses for seed, fertilizer, etc., until crops were sold. After “settling up time” when run bill and half of the farming expenses were subtracted from profits for the year, sharecroppers received a 50 percent share. Arrangements were more favorable for those who could contribute more than just labor, e.g., their own mules or a large family to work the crops.
Under the best of circumstances, the lot of sharecroppers, like that of all farmers, was not great. Living conditions were poor – small and dilapidated houses, heated with fireplaces and open to flies, mosquitoes and dust. Bad weather, illness or injury often resulted in economic failure.
Some landowners cheated sharecroppers at settling up time. Since most of them were illiterate, they could not keep records of run bills and farm expenses and had to rely on the honesty of the landowner. Broad-based general education was uneven or absent well into the 20th century and many farm children were held out of school to work in the fields for extended periods. In some places, there were local laws that bound those who were in debt at the end of the year to remain in place to work it off the next year. The practice, which Dr. Richard Persico labeled “debt peonage,” was also typical in mining and turpentining.
Overall, there were more white sharecroppers than African American, especially where there were few slaves before the Civil War. However, Black sharecroppers often fared worse, partly due to lack of education, but mostly due to racism. The majority of landowners were fair and honest, but money was only one issue. For example, some people called white sharecroppers “tenant farmers” to infer higher status.
Two major questions demand attention: ”How did tenant farming come to be?” and “What happened to it?”
By the end of the Civil War, farming in the South had been radically disrupted. Thousands of young farmers died on battlefields or in prisons and others were broken in body or mind. Their lands were sold. Confiscatory taxes and land seizure schemes by carpetbagger predators led to other losses. Thus, there were surplus farms and unemployed former farmers and slaves who became sharecroppers. Some large-scale landowners held on to their lands and kept former slaves in place as sharecroppers.
The Great Depression created another upheaval in land ownership. Prices for farm products had been weak throughout the nation. The depredation of the boll weevil had wrecked cotton crops in the South. Then came the Depression and the bottom fell out on sales of farm products. Hundreds -- no thousands – of small farmers gave up and moved to Florida to work as migrant laborers, mostly in the citrus belt, renting out or selling their farms. Many – perhaps most – farmers had bank loans on their farms. As banks failed, solvent institutions and even individuals, bought the loans at a fraction of face-value as rental property investments. It was possible to hire a local manager to oversee sharecroppers for absentee owners.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s farm programs that were part of the New Deal improved conditions for farmers, even sharecroppers, but other forces reshaped farming itself. World War II brought revolutionary change in the economy and provided mobility. Sharecroppers of both races found it possible to break ties to the land and make a living elsewhere. Military service involved learning new skills and how to adapt successfully to new places and people. The G.I. Bill helped veterans buy land and equipment and learn new ways of farming.
The mechanization of agriculture improved productivity and greatly reduced the amount of labor required in farming. Sharecropping faded away. Some labor-intensive crops remain, but the work is seasonal and is performed by migrant laborers.
Quite a bit of sure rent farming remains, but it is not done by people of modest means. Rather, it is the practice of large-scale farmers who cultivate hundreds – even thousands – of acres of land in rational, economy of scale enterprises. Often, it costs less to rent the land than the ad valorem (property) taxes on the land paid by owners, who, for various reasons, wish to hold on to it.
Roger G. Branch Sr. is professor emeritus of sociology at Georgia Southern University and is a retired pastor.