During Reconstruction, a new system of farming was developed. The neo-peonage method of using tenant farmers on farms came to be known as sharecropping. The economic devastation of the south led to most of the land being used for cash crops rather than subsistence farming. Cash crops were the traditional antebellum ones like tobacco, cotton, sugar and rice.
They did not have enough money to pay for supplies from the company store.
tenant farming
Transportation systems were more developed in the North than in the South.
The South was dependent on the North and other outside resources. It was more decentralized and was not as developed as the North, which could sustain itself.
Debt peonage (wage slavery) is when an employer compels a worker to pay off a debt with work.
Debt peonage
The system of sharecropping is similar to debt peonage. In sharecropping, farmers work the land in exchange for a share of the crops, often leading to cycles of debt and dependency similar to debt peonage. Both systems exploited individuals by trapping them in cycles of debt and labor.
Sharecropping developed after the slavery system had been abolished. In exchange for labor, the worker received a portion of the crop to sell and use as he wished. In reality, it was another form of slavery. The landlord deducted the rent from the portion of the crop due to the laborer, which very often left the worker with a bare subsistence living.
Debt Peonage was practiced in Peru from the 16th century until 1950. This was the practice wherein workers has to meet a required working time in a week and that they are not allowed to go beyond the land assigned to them.
African Americans labored in a system that was nearly the same as slavery.
Having to stay at one job just to pay what you owe
Debt Peonage was practiced in Peru from the 16th century until 1950. This was the practice wherein workers has to meet a required working time in a week and that they are not allowed to go beyond the land assigned to them.
The peonage system is a system of involuntary servitude used to pay off debt to creditors. The peonage system affected Latin America by encouraging slavery in Latin American countries.
Pay off debts through labor
A system of involuntary servitude n which the laborer is forced to work off a debt. This was mostly used on Mexicans and African Americans.
In peonage, free workers were not much better off than the slaves. Since wages were low and prices were high, workers were in debt. Their debt accumulated and passed from one generation to the next.