th Atlantic
states decreased from 352.8 in 1860 to 108.4 in 1900. It was still
not easy for an independent Negro to own land on his own account;
nevertheless by as early a year as 1874 the Negro farmers had acquired
338,769 acres. After the war the planters first tried the wage system
for the Negroes. This was not satisfactory--from the planter's
standpoint because the Negro had not yet developed stability as a
laborer; from the Negro's standpoint because while the planter might
advance rations, he frequently postponed the payment of wages and
sometimes did not pay at all. Then land came to be rented; but
frequently the rental was from 80 to 100 pounds of lint cotton an acre
for land that produced only 200 to 400 pounds. In course of time
the share system came to be most widely used. Under this the tenant
frequently took his whole family into the cotton-field, and when the
crop was gathered and he and the landlord rode together to the nearest
town to sell it, he received one-third, one-half, or two-thirds of the
money according as he had or had not furnished his own food, implements,
and horses or mules. This system might have proved successful if he had
not had to pay exorbitant prices for his rations. As it was, if
the landlord did not directly furnish foodstuffs he might have an
understanding with the keeper of the country store, who frequently
charged for a commodity twice what it was worth in the open market. At
the close of the summer there was regularly a huge bill waiting for the
Negro at the store; this had to be disposed of first, _and he always
came out just a few dollars behind_. However, the landlord did not mind
such a small matter and in the joy of the harvest might even advance a
few dollars; but the understanding was always that the tenant was to
remain on the land the next year. Thus were the chains of peonage forged
about him.

At the same time there developed a still more vicious system.
Immediately after the war legislation enacted in the South made severe
provision with reference to vagrancy. Negroes were arrested on the
slightest pretexts and their labor as that of convicts leased to
landowners or other business men. When, a few years later, Negroes,
dissatisfied with the returns from their labor on the farms, began a
movement to the cities, there arose a tendency to make the vagrancy
legislation still more harsh, so that at last a man could not stop work
without technically committing a crime. T