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Sharecropping: Bad or Not? The farming system in U.S is the most development in the world because of the harmonious relationship between the people. U.S.A is the most developed international country; it has the most developed cities: Washington, D.C. New York and Los Angeles. Foreign population and the local live together in harmony. However, 150 years ago, America was a country which had sharp disagreements on race and with the chaotic farming system in such troubled times. After the Civil War, great changes have taken place in the farming system in the U.S., especially in the North and South because of the totally different system in economy busted into a civil war.

At Southern most labors the slaves were freed, the following new issues were different with the antebellum U.S. As the winner, the changes between the Northern which promoted the industrial capitalism and the freed slavery south was embedded after the Civil War was ended. The most popular questions were: would the Black people go or stay? Where should the 4 million go or stay? Under the wave of abolishing the slavery, the capitalism creates a special group: The Sharecropper. What influence did sharecropping have, and was it good or bad for the black people?

Who started sharecropping? Was the situation the same as the president Lincoln had suggested? What influenced the U.S. and what was different between sharecropping and slavery? My opinion on this is that sharecropping did not change the black people’s situation and it did not lead the African Americans to an economic independence and autonomy fundamentally “All facts suggest that black sharecropper’s income was less than white sharecropper’s income. This is not astonishing given the history of slavery, which was bestowed to the blacks” (Federico 261).

So, what is sharecropping? Sharecropping is a way of agriculture in which a landowner allows their tenant to utilize their land in return for a split of the crops produced on the land. The tenant signs a contract for such arrangements. Somehow this seemed like freedom for the blacks, but it was not. “Sharecroppers compensated their lease to the landlord as portions of their crop yield; this gave room for exploitation by the landlords” (Roumasset and James 640). Sharecropping, along with tenant farming, was a dominant form in the cotton and especially in the South from the period between 1870s to the 1950s, among both whites and blacks, but it is largely disappearing since 1966 when Civil Rights and the Workers Union abolished Peonage (Forced Labor).

The word, peonage, was borrowed from Spanish and pronounced as a peon, among both the blacks and whites. In fact, the peonage and the sharecroppers can be defined as almost in the same system, but with different names. The term “peonage” refers to a debt, labor system whereby laborers are attached to a landowner because of their debts. Peonage is well thought-out as a form of slavery since the worker is basically forbidden from being independent (Hughes, Langston, and Rubel 67). It was not easy to replace slavery as it had existed for a long time.

The Post Civil War in the U.S. was totally depressed. Seeing the desolate and bleak prospects of broken tiles, collapsed walls, and clusters of weeds, the northern had the mission to reconstruct the country because of the catastrophe to the land and the economy, not to mention the battlefield of the Southern. As a result, the black people were to a great extent needed. The argument over the outcome of racism will never come to an end; Stiglitz and Joseph suggest that racism affected the capability of black sharecroppers reaching the landowning class. The U.S.

government also enacted three changes in the constitution: the 13th, 14th and 15th chapters of the constitution. They protected the black people using the legal tools on the 13th, 1865, Amendment to the U.S constitution in which end of slavery was approved "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, nor any place subject to their jurisdiction." With these words, the single greatest change brought by the Civil War was officially noted in the Constitution (history.com). Lincoln believed that a constitutional amendment was necessary to ensure the end of slavery.

However, the Amendment could not be implemented immediately. The black people fought for freedom until the 1960s. It seemed that the sharecropping became a common choice of the black people. Furthermore, what is interesting is that most black people went back to their previous owner and made a contract with them to become their sharecropper. The U.S. freed slaves after the Civil War was ended, and then came the issue of settlement of these freed slaves. The freed slaves had minimal chance to get employed, thus they could only engage in the very low-salary jobs.

This made them desperate and thus they had to engage in low income generating labor. Despite giving African Americans the rights to be American citizens, the federal government (and the Republican-controlled state governments formed during this phase of Reconstruction) took little interest to help the freed blacks in the quest to own their own land. The structure governing worker-employer accord showed a multifaceted mixture of local laws, local customs and debt servitude. Sharecroppers, both white, and African American were normally poor, and landless (Stiglitz, Joseph 219).

The freed slaves preferred to work rather than get paid for their labor, thus they opted for sharecropping rather than receiving payment. In the 1870s, sharecropping had come to dominate agriculture across the cotton-planting South. Under this system, black families would rent small plots of land, or shares, to cultivate; in return, they would give a part of their harvest to the property-owner at the end of the year (Wilkison and Grant 221). Rules and regulations. In this section we shall look at some of the external factors that prevented black people from acquiring true freedom, thus retaining their status as sharecropping for most countries.

Sharecropping was recognized between the Northern and the Southern; despite giving African Americans the rights of citizenship, the federal government had little interest helping freed blacks in the quest to own their land. By the year 1870, the system of sharecropping had become the dominant agriculture practice across the cotton-planting South. Black families would rent small pieces of land, to cultivate for themselves; in return, they would offer a portion of their crop to the property-owner at the end of the year.

“Sharecroppers, similar to salary workers, had little or no physical capital, though they had more work experience. Lawfully, a sharecropper was a salary worker who paid with a part of the crop.” (Willis and John 654). This kind of system restricted the black people from the autonomy of the economy, freedom and the basically civil rights. The sharecroppers were not conversant with the law or any alternative they would use to battle the unlawful acts that might be forced on them by the landowners (Roumasset and James 640).

The Ku Klux Klan: an organization that inflicted both mental and physical harm to the Black people and the black sharecroppers. Established in the 1866, this outlawed group expanded into the southern states by the year 1870 and became a medium for white southern opposition to the policies that aimed at creating political and economic equality for blacks. Its affiliate used violence and intimidation against the white and black Republican leaders. Although legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism had been passed, the group was determined to reestablish white supremacy.

Following an era of decline, the white Protestant inhabitant group revitalized the Klan in the early 20th century; they staged demonstrations against blacks, Jews and organized labor (history.com). Another external factor also includes the “White Sharecropper “or the white labors, by the early 1930s there were about 5.5 million white sharecroppers in the United States, and 3 million blacks. In Tennessee white people made up about two thirds of the sharecroppers. In Mississippi, by the year 1900, 36% of white farmers were sharecroppers, while 85 percent of black farmers were tenants.

This continued to be an important institution in the Tennessee agriculture for more than sixty years past the Civil War, in the early 1930s, sharecroppers operated approximately one-third of all farm units in the state. But here are the results; although the white occupied a great amount of it, but it just took 4% of the total which was different with the black people’s 23% just about a quarter (wikipedia.com). Now let us make a counter argument to oppose this thesis statement. Sharecropping had a good beginning for the black people.

They began to accumulate the money, although it was not enough. The system was not viewed as slavery and the blacks were not used as tools anymore, they shifted from slavery to the free citizens of the U.S. Forced labor was abolished and this was a step for them. Despite them being considered as free citizens, they had no choice but becoming the sharecropper for the landowners. Sharecroppers paid the landowners a portion of the crop in order to farm. (Wilkison and Grant 234). This understanding suppressed the moral hazard problem for the landowners; the only monitoring necessary was to preserve their piece of land (Roumasset and James 640).

To oppose the counter argument and support my thesis statement, I’m going to provide the information that sharecropping cannot help black people to accumulate wealth; on the contrary, it restricts their freedom. How does it restrict their freedom? It is an unfair contract; the sharecropping system also locked much of the South into a reliance on cotton, just at the time when the price for cotton was falling. In addition, while sharecropping gave African Americans autonomy in their daily work and social lives, and freed them from the forced labor system that had dominated during the slavery era, it often resulted in sharecroppers owing more to the landowner (for the use of tools and their supplies, for example, some sharecroppers could not pay their debts).

Some blacks managed to acquire enough money to move from sharecropping to renting or owning land by the end of the 1860s, more went into debt or were forced by poverty to sign unjust and manipulative labor contracts that left them little hope of improving their condition. “Workers are attached to a landowner due to unpaid debt to the landowner by the.” (Alston, Lee, and Kauffman 188). Thus we may finish by stating that, sharecropping was not a fair deal for the black as they fought it for a long time.

Most of this practice largely disappeared in the 1966 when Civil Rights and the Workers Union had abolished Peonage (Forced Labor). After the system collapsed, the sharecroppers engage in other jobs, factory, butcher shop, texture industry, etc. It was not only bad for the black people, but also bad for the poor white people, the immigration and the peonage. It was a kind of continuation of the slavery and an immature capitalism, thus we may say sharecropping was not the best option for U.S at that period; it was sort of development lag at that Age.

Works CitedAlston, Lee, and Kyle Kauffman. "Competition and the Compensation of Sharecroppers by Race: A View from Plantations in the Early Twentieth Century." Explorations in Economic History 38 (2001): 181-194. Academic Press. Web. 7 Dec. 2014. .Federico, Giovanni. "The ‘real’ Puzzle of Sharecropping: Why Is It Disappearing?" Continuity and Change 27.9 (2010): 261. Print.Fifteenth Amendment. http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fifteenth-amendment.2009Fourteenth Amendment. amendmenthttp://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fourteenth-amendment.

2009Hughes, Langston, and Joseph Rubel. Sharecroppers. New York: Transcontinental Music, 1939. Print.Roumasset, James. "Sharecropping, Production Externalities, and the Theory of Contracts." American Journal of Agricultural Economics 57.2 (2007): 640. Print.Sharecropping. history.com.2010Stiglitz, Joseph E. "Incentives and Risk Sharing in Sharecropping." The Review of Economic Studies 36.4 (2010): 219. Print.The 13th Amendment is ratified. 2014. The History Channel website. Dec. 8, 2014, 12:21, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/13th-amendment-ratified.

Wilkinson, Kyle Grant. Yeomen, Sharecroppers, and Socialists Plain Folk Protest in Texas, 1870-1914. College Station: Texas A & M UP, 2008. Print.Willis, John C. Forgotten Time: The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta after the Civil War. Charlottesville: U of Virginia, 2000. Print.