Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/506

 490 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

of each week or month. Wage-laborers worked under the imme- diate oversight of the farmer or tenant who hired them. They received $8 to $12 a month, and were "found," that is, given their rations. In the white counties the negro hired man was often fed in the farmer's kitchen. The laborer, if hired by the year, had a house, vegetable garden, "truck patch," chickens, a pig perhaps, and always a dog, and he could hunt and fish any- where in the vicinity. Sometimes he was " found ; " sometimes he " found " himself. When he was " found," the allowance for a week was three and a half pounds of bacon, a peck of meal, half a gallon of sirup, and a plug of tobacco; his garden patch fur- nished vegetables. This allowance could be varied and commuted. The system worked out in the few years immediately following the war and has lasted almost without change. In the negro districts the large plantations have not been broken up into small farms, the census statistics to the contrary notwith- standing. 34 The negro tenant or laborer had too many privileges for his own good and for the good of the planter. The negro should have been paid more money or a larger proportion of the crop, and given fewer privileges. He needed more control and supervision, and the result of giving him a vegetable garden, a " truck patch," a pasture, and the right of hunting and fishing was that the negro took less interest in the crop. The farming system was never brought to a real business basis. 35

CREDIT OR SUPPLY SYSTEM

The universal lack of capital after the war forced an exten- sion of the old ante-bellum credit or supply system. The mer- chant, who was also a cotton-buyer, advanced money or supplies until the crop was gathered. Before the war his security was both crop and slaves; after the war the crop was the principal security, for land was a drug on the market. Consequently, the crop was more important to the creditor. Cotton was the only

land he cultivates as a farm. Thus a plantation might be represented in the census statistics by from five to twenty-five farms.
 * In the census each person cultivating a crop is counted as a farmer and the

"See also Otken, Ills of the South; Somers, Southern States since the War, p. 281 ; Harper's Monthly, January, 1874; DeBow's Review, February, 1868.