Barter Research Paper

Year by year the farmers who lived on soil, whose returns were diminished by unrotated crops were offered the virgin soil of the frontier at nominal prices. Their growing families demanded more lands, and these were dear. The competition of the unexhausted, cheap, and easily tilled prairie lands compelled the farmer either to go west and continue the exhaustion of the soil on a new frontier, or to adopt intensive culture.

Some unforeseen issues may include “inaccurate reporting to the Internal Revenue Service, a conflict between the barter arrangement and state wage laws, the possible need for worker’s compensation insurance coverage and unexpected landlord- tenant issues” (Toby 12). While the informality of barter and paying someone “under the table” is what makes these practices so popular it can

In the late nineteenth century, small farmers faced increasing economic insecurities. Millions of tenant farmers were stuck in poverty due to the sharecropping system in the South.Farmers in the south weren't the only ones facing difficult times; farmers in the west had to mortgage their property to purchase seeds, fertilizer, and equipment. Farmers who mortgaged their property faced the chances of losing their farms when they were unable to repay their bank loans. Farmers then sought out to find a solution for their condition by going through the Farmers’ Alliance and the

These types of arrangements were quite common at this time between sharecroppers and their landlords. The sharecroppers had little to no money, so the landlords would charge them for items, or take an extra percentage of their crops.

The land around us provides us with food, water, shelter, and nutrients, but we cannot live in an untouched environment. We must mold the land to meet our physical needs, yet we cannot be too ruthless and overwork the land. In O Pioneers! the farmers settle on the Divide, farming and forcing the land to produce the food they needed to survive, but the majority of the farmers have no luck. After a full twenty years, the tables finally turn and Alexandra explains to Carl how she has become rich from doing almost nothing at all: “We hadn't any of us much to do with it, Carl. The land did it. It had its little joke. It pretended to be poor

Production-based farming has provided small communities a new effective way of farming; however, this type of farming has created more issues than solutions. In "Renewing Husbandry," Wendell Berry discusses the way communities have lost the practice of husbandry in farming to production-based farming. Also, he depicts the side effects production-based farming has on the small communities by demonstrating the loss of connection the farmers now have with the land and community they provide for. Production-based farming destroys the unity of small communities.

Many things have changed in the way in the way people live, the Indians used to trust fully off the land, providing for their daily needs. These days, people depend on technology and other people to supply the food, drinks, and the necessities they need. Living off the land, to “live on whatever food one can obtain by hunting, gathering, or subsistence farming.” (Oxford Dictionary, screen 1), has a different meaning to modern day society than it did back in the days where people made a living and survived by it.

After the compromise of 1877 and after slavery was destroyed a new farming style emerged. This was the agricultural ladder. In said ladder were five “steps.” The first step was the landless laborer. Normally these people were freedmen, poor whites, and (sometimes) immigrants who did not have enough money to buy their own farms to operate. Next was the sharecropper; this person was responsible for a crop but would still borrow what they needed from stores on a crop lien basis. This meaning they would earn one third to one half of their designated crops income. The goal of this person was to gain enough to buy a mule and other equipment so that they could move up in the agricultural ladder; which meant becoming the renter. The renter normally

economy, going from a barter economy to people having to obtain silver from a moneylender in

Farmers needed to produce more and more crops in order to make ends meet (“We Are California” 2). Many sought banks loans to be able to pay for equipment and supplies that they needed that would have been able to help them cultivate more land and plant multiple crops in there land. Yet, when the drought hit, the farmers were already falling far behind on repaying their bank debts. But not only was the drought making it harder for the farmers, but as well as the U.S government also played a part in making it harder for those tenant farmers and farm workers, especially in finding

Also, the new widespread availability of credit from private banks permitted farmers to buy amounts of land that they couldn’t afford at the time. Thus, farmers could buy the land with credit and then use the land to make a profit by selling their crops for cash to pay off their

[Those] who had nothing to offer the land owner, but their labor, worked the owner’s land in return for seed, fertilizer, and supplies, and a share of the crop, generally about half. Tenants farmers, hardly had it better off, might have their own mule, plow, and line of credit with the country store. [Tenants] were

From A.J Cotton’s practice, breaking extra land for cultivation provided for maximum crop output during harvesting, and the proper utilization of farming costs. But for expansion to be realized, the farmer would require extra credit, which meant being indebted at high interest rates. The extra land also increased costs of farming such as additional hired hands for plowing, threshing and harvesting the crop. Furthermore, maintenance of farm implements and equipments could prove disastrous to a new farmer especially if it had to be done during the first few years of the venture. The example of Mr. and Mrs. John Hilsop depicting their experience of farming in Canada explains in detail just how hard it was to raise capital for farming. Only with the assistance of A J. Cotton did they realize growth and prosperity.

The tendency of communities to specialize in some phase of economic activity made it necessary that they maintain commercial contact with other communities and countries in order to secure the things that they did not produce (Hope 16). Some villages, for example, specialized in fishing, others concentrated on metallurgy, while others made weapons, utensils, and so on. Traders traveled from place to place to barter and to purchase. Upon returning they were laden with goods that they sold within their own community (Hope 17).

This Debt Peonage fixing the tenant farmer to the land. By this framework a dark family cultivated the land claimed by whites. The blacks were permitted to keep around 10-15% of the benefit and the rest went to the landowner. The blacks were kept paying off debtors through their buys at a General Store possessed by the landowner. The blacks bought things using a credit card, which kept them owing debtors. The story To Praise Our Bridges, by Fanny Lou Hamer, delineates the life of tenant farmers. It clarifies how the tenant farmers were kept under water, and how they were attacked on the off chance that they began to leave