"We, the undersigned, landowners and laborers... agree to the following terms for the year 1879: The landowner will provide the land, mules, and seed. The laborers will perform all work necessary to plant, cultivate, and harvest the cotton crop. In return, the laborers will receive one-half of the crop, minus any debts incurred for food, clothing, and medicine purchased at the landowner’s store."
— Crop-lien and sharecropping agreement, North Carolina, 1879
Based on this agreement, which of the following was the most direct economic consequence of this system for many post-Civil War Southern laborers?
- It tied them to the land through a cycle of debt that limited their economic mobility.Cevap
- BIt transitioned their legal status to indentured servitude with a guarantee of future land ownership.
- CIt enabled them to quickly accumulate savings and purchase their own independent farms.
- DIt automatically secured their constitutional voting rights as protected by the Fifteenth Amendment.
Cevap
It tied them to the land through a cycle of debt that limited their economic mobility.
The correct answer is correct because sharecropping and the crop-lien system required laborers to buy food, clothing, and farming supplies on credit from the landowner’s store. Because of high interest rates and low crop prices, sharecroppers rarely made enough money from their half-share of the harvest to pay off their debts, trapping them in a cycle of debt peonage and agricultural dependency.
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Anahtar Kavram
Sharecropping and the crop-lien system in the New South