Sharecropping
Sharecropping
!A [Farm Security Administration photo of a cropper family chopping the weeds from cotton near White Plains, in Georgia, US (1941)](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/GreeneCoGa1941Delano.jpg/250px-GreeneCoGa1941Delano.jpg)
Overview
A new system of credit, the crop lien, became closely associated with sharecropping. Under this system, a planter or merchant extended a line of credit to the sharecropper while taking the year's crop as collateral. The sharecropper could then draw food and supplies all year long. When the crop was harvested, the planter or merchants who held the lien sold the harvest for the sharecropper and settled the debt.
Overview
Farmers who farmed land belonging to others but owned their own mule and plow were called tenant farmers; they owed the landowner a smaller share of their crops, as the landowner did not have to provide them with as much in the way of supplies.
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