Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T06:12:02.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Southern Tenancy, Machines, and Production Scale on the Eve of the Cotton Picker’s Arrival

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Craig Heinicke
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A fundamental characteristic of the southern United States before World War II was the separate, and lagging, economic path taken by that region relative to the rest of the nation. The South was particularly slow to advance in agricultural science and technology. Both contemporary investigators and recent scholarship have indicted southern institutions for delaying development in southern agriculture (Street 1957; Whatley 1985, 1987). Were sharecropping and tenancy, institutional arrangements that characterized the southern plantation system, responsible for retarding southern economic development? Despite the large amount of scholarly attention that has been focused on these issues, this question remains unanswered.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , Fall 1999 , pp. 435 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station [A1AES] (1951a) Cotton Production Practices in the Limestone Valley Areas of Alabama. Auburn, AL.Google Scholar
Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station [A1AES] (1951b) Cotton Production Practices in the Black Belt Areas of Alabama. Auburn, AL.Google Scholar
Alston, L. (1981) “Tenure choice in Southern agriculture, 1930–60.” Explorations in Economic History 18: 211–32.Google Scholar
Alston, L. (1985) Costs of Contracting and the Decline of Tenancy in the South, 1930–60. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Alston, L., and Ferrie, J. (1993) “Paternalism in agricultural labor contracts in the U.S. South: Implications for the growth of the welfare state.” American Economic Review 83: 852–76.Google Scholar
Alston, L., and Higgs, R. (1982) “Contractual mix in southern agriculture since the civil war: Facts, hypotheses, and tests.” Journal of Economic History 42: 327–53.Google Scholar
Alston, L., Datta, S., and Nugent, J. (1984) “Tenancy choice in a competitive framework with transactions costs.” Journal of Political Economy 92: 1121–33.Google Scholar
Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station [AAES] (1939) Recent Changes in Farm Labor Organization in Three Arkansas Plantation Counties. Preliminary report of the Farm Security Administration, by Barton, G. T and McNeely, J. G.. Fayetteville, AR.Google Scholar
Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station [AAES](1940) “Farmers face economic and social adjustments.” General Survey: 8–11.Google Scholar
Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station [AAES](1943) Land Tenure in Arkansas. Statistical Bulletin 438. Fayetteville, AR.Google Scholar
Binswanger, H. (1986) “Agricultural mechanization: A comparative historical perspective.” World Bank Research Observer 1: 27–56.Google Scholar
Burford, R. L. (1966) “The federal cotton programs and farm labor force adjustments.” Southern Journal of Economics 33: 223–36.Google Scholar
Clarke, S. (1991) “The diffusion of the tractor in the corn belt, 1920–40.” Journal of Economic History 51: 101–24.Google Scholar
Daniel, P. (1985) Breaking the Land. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
David, P. (1975) Technical Choice Innovation and Economic Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Day, R. (1967) “The economics of technological change and the demise of the sharecropper.” American Economic Review 57: 427–49.Google Scholar
Fite, G. (1984) Cotton Fields No More. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.Google Scholar
Fulmer, J. L.(1950) Agricultural Progress in the Cotton Belt since 1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Georgia Agricultural Experiment Station (1948) Cost and Utilization of Tractor Power and Equipment on Farms in the Lower Piedmont. Bulletin 256. Experiment, GA.Google Scholar
Georgia Agricultural Experiment Station(1949) Cost and Utilization of Tractor Power and Equipment on Farms in the Coastal Plain. Bulletin 260. Experiment, GA.Google Scholar
Grove, W. (1996) “The Mexican farm labor program, 1942–64: Government-administered labor market insurance for farmers.” Agricultural History 70: 302–20.Google Scholar
Heinicke, C. (1991) “Black migration from the American South and mechanization in agriculture, 1940–60.” Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Heinicke, C.(1994a) “African American migration and mechanized cotton harvesting in the 1950s.” Explorations in Economic History 31: 501–20.Google Scholar
Heinicke, C.(1994b) “African-American migration and urban labor skills, 1950 and 1960.” Agricultural History 68: 185–98.Google Scholar
Heinicke, C.(1997) “The federal soil bank, the decline of cotton, and the demise of the southern plantation in the 1950s.” Paper presented at the Cliometrics meetings of the Allied Social Sciences Association, New Orleans, LA, January.Google Scholar
Higgs, R. (1974) “Patterns of farm rental in the Georgia cotton belt.” Journal of Economic History 34: 468–82.Google Scholar
Holt, S. (1994) “Making freedom pay: Freedpeople working for themselves, North Carolina, 1865–1900.” Journal of Southern History 60: 229–62.Google Scholar
Irwin, J. R., and O’Brien, A. P. (1998) “Where have all the sharecroppers gone: Black occupations in postbellum Mississippi.” Agricultural History 72: 280–97.Google Scholar
Kirby, J. T. (1987) Rural Worlds Lost. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Kislev, Y, and Peterson Willis, W. (1982) “Prices, technology, and farm size.” Journal of Political Economy 90: 578–95.Google Scholar
Langsford, E. L.(1944) Changes in Cotton Production in War and Piece. U.S. Department of Agriculture. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Station (1941) Cotton Plantation Laborers. Baton Rouge, LA.Google Scholar
Maier, F. (1969) An Economic Analysis of Adoption of the Mechanical Cotton Picker. Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Mandle, J. R.(1992) Not Slave, Not Free. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Mississippi Agricultural Experiment Station [MAES] (1943) The Plantation Land Tenure System in Mississippi. Bulletin 385. State College, MS.Google Scholar
Mississippi Agricultural Experiment Station [MAES](1954) The Cotton Plantation in Transition. Bulletin 508. State College, MS.Google Scholar
Musoke, M. (1796) Technical Change in Cotton Production in the United States, 1925–60. Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Musoke, M.(1981) “Mechanizing cotton production in the American South: The tractor, 1915–1960.” Explorations in Economic History 18: 347–75.Google Scholar
Musoke, M., and Olmstead, A. (1982) “The rise of the cotton industry in California: A comparative perspective.” Journal of Economic History 42: 385–412.Google Scholar
North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station [NCAES] (1946) Opportunities for Adjustments in Farming Systems. Raleigh, NC.Google Scholar
Ransom, R., and Sutch, R. (1977) One Kind of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
South Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station [SCAES] (1950) Cotton Production Practices and Requirements in South Carolina. Bulletin 387. Clemson, SC.Google Scholar
South Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station [SCAES](1954) The Business Side of Producing Beef Calves in the Piedmont Area of South Carolina. Bulletin 426. Clemson, SC.Google Scholar
Southern Agricultural Experiment Station Cooperative Series (1952) Rental Arrangements on Tractor and Non-Tractor Farms in the Southern Piedmont. Bulletin 21. Clemson, SC.Google Scholar
Southern Agricultural Experiment Station Cooperative Series(1957) The New Revolution in the Cotton Economy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census (1935, 1940, 1945, 1946, 1957) United States Census of Agriculture. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture [USDA] (1940) “The sharecropper and wage laborer in cotton production.” Presented before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, United States Senate, pursuant to Senate Resolution 266, May, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture [USDA](1945) United States Census of Agriculture Special Report on Multiple Unit Operations. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture [USDA](1948) Use of Tractor Power and Hand Methods in Crop Production. Bureau of Agricultural Economics FM-69. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture [USDA](1953) Unemployment and Partial Employment of Hired Farm Workers in Four Areas. Bureau of Agricultural Economics and U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Employment Security. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Virts, N. (1991) “The efficiency of Southern tenant plantations, 1900–1945.” Journal of Economic History 51: 385–95.Google Scholar
Whatley, W (1983a) “Institutional change and the mechanization in the cotton South: The tractorization of cotton farming.” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University.Google Scholar
Whatley, W(1983b) “Labor for the picking: The New Deal in the South.” Journal of Economic History 53: 905–29.Google Scholar
Whatley, W (1985) “A history of mechanization in the cotton South: The institutional hypothesis.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 100: 1191–1215.Google Scholar
Whatley, W (1987) “Southern agrarian labor contracts as impediments to cotton mechanization.” Journal of Economic History 46: 45–70.Google Scholar
Woodman, H. (1977) “Sequel to slavery: The new history views of the postbellum South.” Journal of Southern History 43: 523–54.Google Scholar
Wright, G. (1986) Old South, New South. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Wright, G.(1987) “The economic revolution in the American South.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 1: 161–78.Google Scholar