reage. Nevertheless, during the
period between 1918-1940, about 10-12% of the white farm population and
2% of the black were tenants.[89] Statistical evidence shows over half
of the tenants to be cash croppers in 1925 and 40% in 1940. Many
historians believe this to be the least beneficial system for the tenant
as his obligation was to pay the landlord a fixed rent on the land
regardless of the success of his crop.[90] However, Joseph Beard stated
that most of the tenants with whom he had contact when he was county
agent in the late 1930s were sharecroppers. By this system, the renting
farmer supplied his tools and labor, the landlord furnished the land,
and the crop was split.

Fairfax County never harbored the kind of perpetual tenancy described by
James Agee's _Let Us Now Praise Famous Men_, in which families lived in
squalor and humiliation with little hope of pulling their way out of
debt. This occurred more frequently in the one-crop areas of the deep
South where exhausted soil and crop dependency made for a high debt risk
each year. Beard maintained that the sharecroppers of the late 1930s
were respectable people, merely renting land until they could afford to
purchase their own. In several instances, they were young local couples
who went on to buy their tenured land and to become established members
of the community.[91] Still, at best, any tenure system was a
demoralizing one for the renter because his profits were consistently
skimmed off to the landlord.

PART I--NOTES

_Continuity_

[5] Interview with Joseph Beard by Elizabeth Pryor, Fairfax, Virginia,
January 23, 1979; notes from interview with Margaret Mary Lee by Nan
Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, March 28, 1978. All transcripts and notes
from interviews used in this paper are deposited in the Fairfax County
Library Virginiana Collection (hereafter cited "Virginiana").

[6] Notes on interview with Elizabeth and Emma Ellmore by Nan Netherton,
Herndon, Virginia, March 2, 1978.

[7] Interview with Holden Harrison, Ray Harrison and Virginia Presgraves
Harrison by Elizabeth Pryor, Chantilly, Virginia, February 5, 1979.

[8] Notes on interview with John and Edna Middleton by Nan Netherton,
Herndon, Virginia, February 24, 1978.

[9] Interview with Joseph Beard and Holden Harrison by Elizabeth Pryor,
Floris, Virginia, March 6, 1979; Wilson Day McNair, "What I Remember,"
unpublished manuscript, n.d., copy courtesy of Louise McNair Ryder;
author's con