To-day the following economic classes
are plainly differentiated among these Negroes.
A "submerged tenth" of croppers, with a few paupers;
forty per cent who are metayers and thirty-nine per cent of
semi-metayers and wage-laborers. There are left five per cent
of money-renters and six per cent of freeholders,--the "Up-
per Ten" of the land. The croppers are entirely without
capital, even in the limited sense of food or money to keep
them from seed-time to harvest. All they furnish is their
labor; the land-owner furnishes land, stock, tools, seed, and
house; and at the end of the year the laborer gets from a third
to a half of the crop. Out of his share, however, comes pay
and interest for food and clothing advanced him during the
year. Thus we have a laborer without capital and without
wages, and an employer whose capital is largely his employ-
ees' wages. It is an unsatisfactory arrangement, both for hirer
and hired, and is usually in vogue on poor land with hard-
pressed owners.
Above the croppers come the great mass of the black
population who work the land on their own responsibility,
paying rent in cotton and supported by the crop-mortgage
system.
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