Why was it difficult for sharecroppers to prosper?

Answer 1

A Tenant-Farmer, who gave a share to his landlord for rent, was a sharecropper. The landlord was the title-holder on the land. The Tenant-Farmer performed agricultural duties on the land: plowing, seeding, tending, and harvesting. At harvest, a 'share' of the crops went to the landlord, as payment of rent or partial rent. Therefore, the sharecropper and family sometimes (not always) got a house to live in and work. But like many kinds of menial 'employment' (such as coal miners in the mid-1800s), the 'owner' made out better than the 'employer', here the landlord/land owner. Many landlords demanded over 50% of the crops, or higher. Obviously, this meant less crops the shareholder could sell, so their income potential was far less than it could be if the Tenant-Farmer had owned the land he and his family worked.

Even today in the US, some forms of 'sharecropping' arrangements exist. But the 'terms' are often more fair-handed.

Answer 2

People wanted "fields of grain, & patches of cotton instead of fields of cotton & patches of grain".

European textile factories had found suppliers outside the South, & the price of cotton had fallen.

Cotton's appeal & its problems dominated the Southern economy, much as they had before the Civil War.

- All from US History textbook

Answer 3

sharecroppers in 1800's