Sharecropping Research Paper

When the civil war ended, the freedmen of the south needed a way to get back into the fields and rebuild the southern economy. The Congress tried to give freed slaves their own little farm, but they were not ready to run one after working only in the fields all their lives. The way this problem was solved was with tenant farms. Freemen and former slaves were allowed to work in the fields of a landowner, and in return, they were supplied with food, shelter, clothes, seeds, and equipment. I don’t think tenant farms and sharecropping was a wise way to run the farming industry after the civil war. Though sharecropping was bad for many, it did benefit some people. It benefitted landowners for several reasons. Reason number one being they didn’t
If there was a bad harvest, they would lose lots of money. In sharecropping if there is a bad harvest, the tenant would have to pay the landowner for the food, shelter, seeds, and equipment. There are many reasons that tenant farms were not good for a family after the civil war. A big reason being that if a harvest did not go well, the tenant would have to pay back the landowner for all the food, clothes, seeds, etc. One bad harvest could put a family in debt. Another reason tenant farming and sharecropping was bad is that by 1935 nearly 77% of black farmers and 50% of white farmers were landless. Tenant farming was really unreliable and this caused many families to be in debt. Crop failure, low cotton prices, exhaustion of the soil, poor health, and the weather could all hurt a family. Without their own land, they owe money to the landowner for a small harvest. During the great depression, the New Deal's agricultural program did not help tenants and landowners but harm them. The landowners had to reduce their land by 40 to 50% so they would not be in debt. Since the acreage had to be reduced, so did the workers. Many workers were without a home, and job since they lived on the land they