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Labor for the Picking: the New Deal in the South

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Warren C. Whatley
Warren C. Whatley
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109.
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Abstract

During the Great Depression of the 1930s southern landlords began to replace sharetenants and mules with wage laborers and large-scale preharvest machinery. Informed observers in the 1920s did not expect this to happen until the advent of the mechanical cotton picker, which came after World War I. This paper presents evidence supporting the claim that the AAA policies of the 1930s, and the economic depression they were designed to cure, induced this tenant displacement by increasing the asset value of land rights without securing tenants a share right, and by relaxing the harvest labor constraint that had previously impeded mechanization.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , December 1983 , pp. 905 - 929
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1983

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References

He wishes to thank Paul David, Donald Harris, Glenn Loury, and Gavin Wright for extensive comments on an earlier draft. He also wishes to thank the participants of the Economic History/CCHROME Workshop at the University of Michigan, the 1982 Cliometrics Conference, the 1982 Social Science Historians Association Conference, and the editors and referees of this JOURNAL.Google Scholar

1 For a representative sample of these accounts see The United States Department of Agriculture, Plantation Organization and Operation in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Area, Technical Bulletin no. 1269 (Oct. 1924); Mississippi Agricultural Experimental Station, The Cotton Plantation in Transition, Bulletin no. 508 (Jan. 1954); Mississippi Agricultural Experimental Station, The Plantation Land Tenure System in Mississippi, Bulletin no. 385 (June 1943); USDA, Utilization and Cost of Power on Mississippi and Arkansas Plantations, Technical Bulletin no. 497 (Dec. 1935); Mississippi Agricultural Experimental Station, Farm Power in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, Bulletin no. 295 (Nov. 1931); and the National Research Project,Google ScholarChanges in Technology and Labor Requirements in Crop Production: Cotton, Report no. A-7 (Philadelphia, 09 1938).Google Scholar

2 Alston, Lee J., “Tenure Choice in Southern Agriculture, 1930–1960,” Explorations in Economic History, 18 (07 1981), 211–32;CrossRefGoogle ScholarAiston, Lee J. and Higgs, Robert, “Contractual Mix in Southern Agriculture since the Civil War: Facts, Hypotheses, and Tests,” this JOURNAL, 42 (06 1982),337–38.Google Scholar

3 Newbery, David, “Risk Sharing and Uncertain Labor Markets,” Review of Economic Studies, 44 (09 1977), 585–94;CrossRefGoogle ScholarNewbery, David and Stiglitz, J. E., “Sharecropping, Risk Sharing and Imperfect Information,” in Roumasset, James A., et al. (eds.), Risk, Uncertainty and Agricultural Development (SEARCH-ADA Publication, 1980), pp. 311–39.Google Scholar

4 For example see Street, James H., The New Revolution in the Cotton Economy: Mechanization and its Consequences (Chapel Hill, 1957), pp. 34, 106;Google ScholarMandle, Jay, The Roots of Black Poverty: The Southern Plantation Economy After the Civil War (Durham, 1978), pp. 52–70;Google ScholarPederson, Harold and Raper, Arthur, The Cotton Plantation in Transition, Mississippi Agricultural Experimental Station, Bulletin No. 508 (01 1954); andGoogle ScholarFleisig, Heywood, “Mechanization of the Cotton Harvest in the 19th Century South,” this JOURNAL, 25 (12 1965), 704–06.Google Scholar

5 These issues receive more detailed theoretical, historical, and empirical treatment in Whatley, Warren, Institutional Change and Mechanization in the Cotton South, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Palo Alto, 1983).Google Scholar

6 Alston, “Tenure Choice,” p. 219.Google Scholar

7 Whatley, Institutional Change, chs. 3, 4, and Appendix D.

8 Farm Power in the Mississippi Delta, pp. 28–29. For similar statements see USDA, The Relation of Tenure to Plantation Organization, Department Bulletin no. 1269 (Oct. 1924), p. 26; USDA, Plantation Organization and Operation in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delia Area, pp. 59–60. For a theoretical and empirical analysis of the same phenomena in Indian Agriculture,Google Scholarsee Bardhan, Pranab K., “Wages and Unemployment in a Poor Agrarian Economy: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis,” Journal of Political Economy, 87 (06 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Throughout this paper the “Delta” refers to 23 counties in the states of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana, all of which are completely within the First River Bottom section of the Mississippi River Basin. There are several reasons for choosing the Delta. The present study is concerned with the allocation of land on the southern plantation, but the most extensive data is available only at the county level of disaggregation. Fortunately most of the improved acreage in the Delta was plantation, and most of the tenancies and “large farms” were parts of plantations. Consequently, by concentrating on the Delta region one can avoid the confusion that would have otherwise been introduced in other regions by the presence of varying mixtures of plantation and significant numbers of non-plantation farming units within the county level aggregates. The counties are (1) Mississippi: Bolivar, Coahoma, Humphreys, Issaguena, LeFlore, Quitmen, Sharkey, Sunflower, Tallahachie, Tunica, and Washington; (2) Arkansas: Chicot, Crittenden, Desha, Mississippi, and Phillips; (3) Louisiana: E. Carroll, Franklin, Madison, Morehouse, Richiand, Tensas, and West Carol.Google Scholar

10 See, for example, Frey, Fred C. and Smith, T. Lynn, “The Influence of the AAA Cotton Program Upon the Tenant, Cropper and Laborer,” Rural Sociology, 1 (12 1936);Google ScholarGee, Wilson, “Acreage Reduction and the Displacement of Farm Labor,” Agricultural History, 17 (08 1935); andGoogle ScholarGanger, David Wayne, The Impact of Mechanization and the New Deal's Acreage Reduction Programs on Cotton Farmers During the 1930s, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (University of California at Los Angeles, 1973).Google Scholar

11 Legally there were two AAAs. The first was administered under the Act of 1933 and covered the plow-up and the 1934–1935 contracts. The Supreme Court invalidated this Act on January 6, 1936, by ruling that it unconstitutionally invaded certain rights reserved for states. Less than seven weeks later, however, Congress passed the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act which, in practice, was basically the same as the AAA except it was a permanent policy and rental payments were now called soil-building payments.Google Scholar

12 Nourse, Edwin J., Davis, Joseph, and Black, John, Three Years of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (Washington, D.C., 1937), p. 23.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., p.18.

14 Schultz, Henry, The Theory and Measurement of Demand (Chicago, 1938), pp. 285–332. He estimates an elasticity of 0.51 for the period 1875–1895, 0.25 for the period 1896–1913, and 0.12 for 1914–1929.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., p. 323. Also see Ezekiel, Mordecai and Bean, Louis H., Economic Bases for the Agricultural Adjustment Act (Washington, D.C., 1933).Google Scholar

16 Schultz, The Theory and Measurement of Demand, pp. 285–332.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 323–24.

18 Ibid., p. 324.

19 Richards, Henry, Cotton Under the Agricultural Adjustment Act (Washington, D.C., 1934), p. 17.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., pp. 81–82.

21 Ganger, David Wayne, The Impact of Mechanization, p. 36.Google Scholar

22 Nourse, et al., Three Years of the AAA…, p. 341.Google Scholar

23 In most Deep South states the landlord-cropper relationship was legally one of employer- employee. The landlord owned and controlled the crop, while the cropper held a laborer's lien on a share of it as a piece-rate payment for his labor services. The law was more ambiguous in the case of sharetenants, probably because they owned some wealth that could be used as collateral to secure annual loans to cover production expenses. There is evidence, however, that both classes were closely supervised and in practice the differences were more of degree than substance. See Mangum, Charles S., The Legal Status of the Tenant Farmer in the Southeast (Chapel Hill, 1952);Google ScholarWoodman, Harold D., “Post-Civil War Southern Agriculture and the Law,” Agricultural History, 53 (01 1979), 319–37 andGoogle Scholar“Postbellum Social Change and its Effects on Marketing the South's Cotton Crop,” Agricultural History, 56 (01 1982), 215–30.Google ScholarAlso see the special report by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Plantation Farming in the United States (Washington, D.C., 1916). In the section defining the exact nature of the system of production called a “tenant plantation,” the report was compelled to state that “Beyond question, however, in most instances the plantations for which statistics are hereafter presented are those on which very considerable supervision is exercised over the tenants and on which the position of the tenants is in many respects not far different from that of wage laborers,” p. 13.Google Scholar

24 Nourse, et al., Three Years of the AAA…, p. 343.Google Scholar

25 Richards, Henry, Three Years Under the AAA…, p. 109.Google Scholar

26 The new quota program was imposed in 1938 and was on an average basis. The base year was also changed to 1932–1937. Instead of a penalty tax on excess output, any farmer cultivating more than the alloted acres lost all soil conserving and price adjustment payments and all opportunities to secure a government marketing loan. In addition all excess acreage was penalized at 2¢ per lb. As under the Bankhead quota system, small farms under five acres or growing less than two bales of cotton were exempted.Google Scholar

27 The value function for the entire tenant system is assumed to be a linear combination of the value functions for individual tenancies. This assumption is made to facilitate the exposition and does not alter the qualitative nature of the results.Google Scholar

28 For econometric evidence on this point see Whatley, Institutional Change, pp. 68–73.Google Scholar

29 The use of the word “mean” is not to be interpreted as a value judgment. Much has been written about the existence of a subtle, paternalistic relationship between landlord and tenant in many sectors of the Plantation South. For a very small representative sample of the voluminous literature on just the Depression decade see Davis, , Gardner, , Gardner, , and Warner, , Deep South (Chicago, 1941);Google ScholarDollard, John, Caste and Class in a Southern Town (Garden City, N.J., 1957);Google ScholarJohnson, Guion, “Southern Paternalism Towards Negroes after Emancipation,” Journal of Southern History, 23 (11 1957);Google ScholarMyrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York, 1963);Google ScholarPowdermaker, Hortense, After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South (New York, 1968), andGoogle ScholarDoyle, Bertram, The Etiquette of Race Relations (Chicago, 1937). I am not willing to ignore the vivid pictures painted by these accounts and for that reason refrain from characterizing displacement as merely the termination of a legal contract. Still, a bias is apparent in the choice of vantagepoint; the unprofitable retention of excess tenants for noneconomic reasons imposed an economic cost on such a “fair” landlord! Since most of this study has been concerned with the landlord's net revenue calculations, however, I have chosen this opportunity to give tenants some equal time. In either case a choice would have been made.Google Scholar

30 Even after incorporating the cost economics of large scale mechanization, the shift from sharetenancy to wage labor may have been restricted by the landlord's higher cost of supervising wage laborers. As Alston correctly argues, however, mechanization reduced the amount of required supervision per acre by standardizing output and reducing the amount of labor to be supervised (See Alston, “Tenure Choice”).Google Scholar

31 If we generalize production in the tenant system then will be greater or less than depending on how fast the returns diminish. But will never be zero, and the amount of acreage outside of the tenant system will always increase.Google Scholar

32 There is no mechanical reason for αt + n0/n2 to approximate 1 as it does in this calculation.Google Scholar

33 These estimates assume all landlords followed the displacement strategy. Some landlords, however, probably retained their tenants and shared the government payments. These estimates also assume that . But the AAA induced displacement and unemployment probably reduced the cost of gathering harvest labor. This would generate and more tenant displacement. Apparently these two effects cancelled each other because the difference between the actual and estimated displacement is small.

34 Calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 16th Census of the United States, 1940, Agriculture Vol. III, General Report.Google Scholar

35 Some contemporary accounts refer to these underemployed tenants as “combination cropper- wage families” that emerged during the Depression, and as “one of the most significant changes taking place with reference to the plantation tenancy system …” [Mississippi Agricultural Experimental Station, Bulletin no. 385 (June 1943), p. 49.] Other reports call them “wage-labor families.” (See, for instance, Arkansas Experimental Station, Bulletins no. 384, 397, and 438).Google Scholar

36 Richards, Henry, Three Years Under the AAA …, p. 112. Emphasis added.Google Scholar

37 Ganger, David, The Impact of Mechanization …, p. 106.Google Scholar

38 For a good analysis of the events leading up to the “purge” see Conrad, Eugene, The Forgotten Farmers:The Story of the Sharecropper in the New Deal (Urbana, 1965), Chap. 8, andGoogle ScholarGanger, David, The Impact of Mechanization…, Chap. 9 and 10.Google Scholar

39 Weiher, Kenneth, “The Cotton Industry and Southern Urbanization, 1880–1930,” Exploralions in Economic History, 14 (1977);Google ScholarRubin, Morton, Plantation County (Chapel Hill, 1951).Google Scholar

40 For a discussion of the interaction between the adoption of preharvest and harvest laborsaving techniques in the post war period and its impact on the timing of southern outmigration see Day, Richard, “The Economics of Technological Change and the Demise of the Sharecropper,” The American Economic Review, 57 (06 1967);Google ScholarStreet, James H., The New Revolution in the Cotton Economy: Mechanization and its Consequences (Chapel Hill, 1957).Google Scholar

41 The disenfranchised black vote in a solidly Democratic and racially divided South helped guarantee the political expedience of this decision for Roosevelt, who took care not to alienate southern Congressmen. See Sitkoff, Harvard, A New Deal for Blacks (Oxford, 1978);Google ScholarWolters, Raymond, Negroes and the Great Depression (Westport, 1970).Google Scholar