Sharecropping Game

During reconstruction, blacks were no longer forced to work as slaves however they still needed to work to support themselves and their families. Not many blacks had skills outside of farming so most worked the lands of the wealthy white landowners but not as slaves. They had the right to do whatever they wanted and the landowners could do nothing about it. Wealthy landowners still needed work hands and blacks needed an income so former slaveholders established the sharecropping system. Land owned by a white person would be farmed by black families and they shared the crop yield. This often resulted in the white person taking more than their share and the black families struggled to support themselves. Sharecropping did little to help economic advancement for blacks and was a way the white man could prevent blacks from making enough money

Despite the flushed predictions of prosperity that had lured new settlers to the plains, the reality was more difficult. The farmers claimed that they did not have enough land, money, and transportation (Doc C). The farmers went into in a never ending cycle if they did not have a good harvest. As Booker Washington explains the farmers had no money so they had to borrow money from the banks which charged 12 to 30 percent interest. The interest the farmers were hit with was nearly impossible to repay so they had to mortgage everything and if the mortgage wasn’t paid the land was foreclosure which led the yeomen to become tenant farmers (Doc B). With periods of drought growing good crops was hard. Leading Economic Sectors shows how the farmers predicament of not being able to make a very

     After the devastation left from the Civil War, many field owners looked for new ways to replace their former slaves with field hands for farming and production use. From this need for new field hands came sharecroppers, a “response to the destitution and disorganized” agricultural results of the Civil War (Wilson 29). Sharecropping is the working of a piece of land by a tenant in exchange for a portion of the crops that they bring in for their landowners. These farmhands provided their labor, while the landowners provided living accommodations for the worker and his family, along with tools, seeds, fertilizers, and a portion of the crops that they had harvested that season. A sharecropper had “no entitlement

The sharecroppers paid "rent" with a share of the crops that they raised, with roughly one-half of all they produced belonged to the white owner (Ransom and Sutch, 1977). The landowner also advanced money to the farmer to purchase seed and other necessary farming equipment. The problem was the sharecroppers rarely, if ever, made enough money from the sale of their crops to pay back their debt. This often led to what some called "debt peonage," and it effectively bound sharecroppers to the land, and the landowner (Bowles, 2011). This was a veiled form of slavery, much like convict leasing was.

Sharecropping and tenant farming began during the end of the Civil war all through the great depression. Sharecropping is an agreement between a tenant and a landlord in which a tenant farmer is allowed to work and live on a piece of land for free, but in exchange for living there for free, they give the landlord a share of the crop they grow. Sharecropping was mainly big in the southern states where slavery was once legal. The pay for being a tenant farmer was very low and the living itself was not very desirable.

Cotton still played a big part in the growth of farming in the south. There was a high demand for textiles and cotton mills increased production of cotton bales up to 1,479,000 bales per year. While these changes were occurring in the South, many changes in farming were also taking place in other parts of the nation. The government wanted to encourage settlement in the vast areas of the country not yet populated. The Homestead Act helped shape the western landscape. This act allowed farmers to claim up to 160 acres of land. Farmers would stake a claim to a parcel of land and by living on it for five years would be free and clear to take title of the land. Or the farmer could buy

Between the late 1800s and mid-1900s, to help procure land, supplies, and workers, farmers turned to sharecropping. In mostly all instances of sharecropping the croppers would get a percentage of the crops they worked while the rest would go to the landowner. In most situations the croppers got a smaller percentage than the landowners. In this certain contract between a landowner and the Grimes family in North Carolina, there were some unfair condition. One of the unfair conditions was the results of not feeding his team. The cropper was required to feed his team every day in the morning, noon, and night, and if he didn’t he must pay the landowner five cents. The workers were also required to repair the fence if it was blown over or broken

The new technology used in American agriculture made it overall more productive and widespread while creating mixed results for the farmers. The advancement in machines like reapers, threshers, and mowers to harvest grains produced contrasting outcomes. An obvious benefit was some of the ease brought to the farmers. The human labor involved in harvesting grain by hand with a scythe or by a simple, one horse-powered machine was far greater than harvesting with a big, multi-horse powered machine. The devices made work simpler, faster, and more efficient for the farmers by relying on animal energy and technology (Document D). With promises of larger crops with less exertion, the new machines became very desirable to farmers in order to stay in competition with their peers; however, buying these machines also pushed many of them into unfortunate financial situations. Not only was the actual

Pursuing this further, the rich soil of the West was becoming poor, and floods contributed to the problem, and, eventually caused erosion. Beginning in the summer of 1887, a series of droughts forced many people to abandon their farms and towns. As circumstances worsened, farmers were beginning to be controlled by corporations and processors. The farmers were at the mercy of many trusts, which, in turn, could control the productivity and raise prices to high levels. Furthermore, during the late 19th century, many farmers considered monopolies, trusts, railroads, and money shortages as evident threats to their lifestyle. The rise of these monopolies and trusts worried many farmers because they felt that the disappearance of competition would lead to erratic and unreasonable price rises that would harm consumers. Oftentimes, these “robber barons” would prevent competitors from reaching the markets by restricting their ability to transport their goods. In Document E, James B. Weaver wrote of the main weapons of the trust-organized commerce: threats, intimidation, bribery, fraud,

Sharecroppers were affected in the Dust Bowl. They could harvest their crops to pay the owner of that land. The sharecroppers weren’t getting government aid. Instead of their money going to the government it was going to the owners so that they can by machines and new equipment. The sharecropping industry was soon ruled unconstitutional and removed.

4. Because farmers could only afford one machine most times, most farmers specialized in what crop the machine worked best with.

In the late nineteenth century, many American farmers were experiencing economic insecurity. There were various factors that contributed to why farmers were facing financial hardships in this particular time frame. The fundamental factors were the commercialization, overproduction, and mechanization of agriculture. These factors are by no means all of the driving forces that lead to this time of financial insecurity, but they are large contributors to say the least. After the Civil War, subsistence farming was gradually morphing into commercialized farming. Instead of farming to support oneself or one's family at a minimum level, farmers began leaning towards making large profit off of their crops.

The development of sharecropping was associated with the endless debt cycles that afflicted the entire South well into the twentieth century. The freedmen endured an economic status likened to peonage, (Bowles, 2011) in addition to having their hopes for political and social equality dashed. The entire South suffered, it was the freedmen who paid the highest price. Ignorant and impoverished, they were easy targets for exploitation by landlords (Bowles, 2011) and merchants alike; moreover, their options were limited by the overt racism in the South, legal restrictions and partiality. Sharecropping resulted from the intense explicit or implicit desire of white Southerners to keep blacks subservient to them. African Americans possessed few skills, and those they did possess related almost exclusively to agricultural production; they owned no property but the clothes on their backs; (Bowles, 2011) Many dreamed of "forty acres and a mule" with which to begin life anew as an integrated part of American society and the proprietor of one's own land. Inside of a year, however, a different reality became obvious to most. By 1868, land confiscation and redistribution was not in the realm of American political possibility. Desperation, familiarity with people and surroundings at the old places coupled with reunion of many lost loved ones, as well as the urgings of

In the past farming was a way to provide food to the family, but in a growing market economy it was becoming more important in the 1860s and 1870s to have money in order to purchase food, clothing, and supplies for the family. That money could also be used to keep the farm running and producing more goods and making more money. However, farming was as competitive as ever. During the Civil War the demand for crops like cotton was high so farmers started producing even more cotton. After the war, the supply of cotton stayed the same but the demand for it lowered, dropping the prices and putting many farmers in debt. The invention of railroads connected many states together making bigger, interstate markets instead of simple local markets; making it even more difficult

In conclusion, the ultimate goal of a for-profit ShareAll company is to increase the number of players and their activity that will subsequently result in higher profit compared to the one, the company generated prior to gamifying its system.