To be honestly, I liked all the areas in this sharecropping system, in till the video mentioned that the owner or the store owner can charge any individual an irrational price for goods. I like that the workers got piece of the land for homes, the workers get to sell a 1/3 of the product, they get free tools and animals to help. So as the video hit 3:12 and says provide the workers with this “credit”, it becomes fishy. Like the video said, the worker could make a million dollars in the selling of cotton, yet they be in three million dollars in debt somehow at the end of the year. If I had to revise this act, I would do anyway from the credit system and make everything the same price. But when finishing the film, when the 1930’s came around
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 was the institution in which freed slaves could purchase a plot of land to work themselves and in return they would have to give part of their crop to the landowners. With the Jim Crow Laws, the African Americans were being forced into working for their previous masters again even though they were considered free.
A Sharecropping Contract was a contract between Thomas J. Ross, and the Freedmen. This contract was an agreement for Thomas J. Ross to allow the Freedmen to plant and raise crop on his plantation, so long as the workers followed certain rules and regulations. The background of the parties under the contract were the Freedmen’s desire to be independent from having to work under the authority of Whites, and planters’ desire to have disciplined labor working under them. The contracts intended audience was between planter and labor force. Within the contract, Thomas J. Ross agreed to provide the Freedmen labor workers and their families with provisions, and any expenses that were needed within the plantation, as well as any tools needed for work.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) restricted the production of crops. The AAA encouraged farmers to not only limit, but also to “destroy their crops” in an effort to help the economy (“Farm Relief”, 2002, p. 10). While the government attempted to support unsuccessful farmers, landlords took advantage of the opportunity to make a profit. The AAA’s scarcity program allowed for landlords in the cotton-growing regions of the South to force sharecroppers and tenant farmers off of the land (Watkins, 1970, p. 193). As some landowners were outraged at the thought of ruining their produce, others went through with the
Sharecropping: Sharecropping is when a landowner ‘rents’ out his house or land to freed slaves in return for a share of the crops produced on the land to the landlords.
Free African Americans and whites could be share croppers. In document f it shows a diagram f this system and shows that this system is in a never ending cycle. Which means that it was like slavery for the African Americans. This shows no economic equality because they are indebted to the landowner so they can never leave. This is not fair because if they can never pay off the landowner then they will stay there forever and show no economic justice.
the ruler could not do everything on his own, so he had helpers called hierarchy. they would go to meetings and do other jobs for the ruler.
Fortune Magazine, in July and August of 1936, sent James Agee and Walker Evans to research a story on sharecropping. In the preface of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Agee describes it as “a curious piece of work.” They were to produce “an article on cotton tenantry in the United States, in the form of a photographic and verbal record of the daily living and environment of an average white family of tenant farmers,” (IX). James Agee and Walker Evans set out to write and photograph an article for a magazine, and ended up experimenting with the form of the novel itself.
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
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
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
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.
I can understand both of the arguments presented in these two passages. On one side, we have regular workers trying to establish a stable and reliable source of income, one that they can use to provide for themselves. On the other side we have a business that has to keep the customers, employees, and it's own needs in mind. After considering the information supporting each of these sides, I have come to a position that falls somewhere in the middle.
To build the solid “foundation” in my writing, I spent plenty of time and effort in critical reading exercises. These exercises required us to do the close reading on Chiang’s work, which were necessary preparation for the RA essay. The exercise “Source Mining & Sharing” asked us to find outside sources, which offer me a completed understanding in Si-Fi and the inspiration for the RA essay. By reading different kinds of sources online and others shared by other classmates, I knew that science fiction, instead of being a pure literature, has an impact on culture, science, and sociology, which I used this source in the first main paragraph in my RA to emphasis Chiang’s story introduces new theory. Another meaning exercise was “Fun with Remediation/Genre”:
The grass was greener than ever, the sky was a beautiful shade of blue, a breeze was blowing softly. Crystal sat on the hospital bed and looked out the small window. Her long black hair fell to her chest as she stared at the swaying grass blades. The heart monitor beeped in the quiet room. She silently hugged her blanket and swayed from side to side.