Patterns of Farm Rental in the Georgia Cotton Belt, 1880–1900

The story of the post-bellum reorganization of southern agriculture has been told many times, and the main features of the transition from slave to free labor are well known. Throughout the cotton economy the initial experiments with wage labor gave way to share-rent tenancy; later fixed-rent tenancy became common as well. That these changes resulted from an adjustment process in which both landlords and laborers increasingly recognized different contractual arrangements as mutually beneficial seems clearly established. The existing literature is deficient, however, by failing to account for the continuing diversity of contractual arrangements in southern agriculture. By 1880 the organizational variety that would persist for more than a half century could be clearly discerned: some farms were cultivated by their owners, often with the assistance of wives and children; others by hired workers receiving a fixed wage; some by tenants paying a stipulated amount of products (standing rent) or money (cash rent) for the use of the land; still others by tenants paying a definite share of the crops as rent. The “mix” of these arrangements varied widely from place to place, even within a given state, and changes occurred over time. How can one explain the proportions in which these various arrangements were employed and account for differences over time and space? In particular, what determined the proportion of the farms rented? Of the rented farms, what determined the proportion rented under share contracts? Did the farmer's race influence the form of the rental contract he obtained? This article attempts to answer these questions with reference to the Georgia cotton belt in the late nineteenth century.