The Effciency of Southern Tenant Plantations, 1900–1945

Virts, Nancy

doi:10.1017/s0022050700039012

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 3 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…We link 1910 IPUMS micro-data to Haines and ICPSR (1910) Decennial Census data and to Plantation Census data (Department of Commerce, 1916). The latter source identifies southern counties with extensive land improvement in plantations, as reconstructed by economic historians (Brannen 1924; Elman et al, 2015, 2019; Mandle 1992; Virts 1991).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Prior to the Civil War, large-scale agriculture (plantations) prevailed in geographic zones with rich (hence, more expensive) soils and crop-friendly climates. Postwar, old plantations were subdivided into tenant farms while new plantations were built as modern, multi-unit farms (Woodruff 2003; see also Aiken 1998;Mandle 1992;Whayne 1992;Virts 1991 1916, p. 16). Other productive modes, both before and after the Civil War, involved basic subsistence or essentially living off the land, and mixed farming as subsistence with some commercialism.…”

Section: Analytic Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Variants of subsistence and plantation farming in Arkansas, as elsewhere in the South, historically differed in terms of farm organization, labor management, and the goals of production (Brannen 1924;U.S. Department of Commerce 1916;Virts 1991). Prior to the Civil War, bondsmen on plantations primarily produced for external markets under planter direction.…”

Section: Analytic Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Prior to the Civil War, large-scale agriculture (plantations) prevailed in geographic zones with rich (hence, more expensive) soils and crop-friendly climates. Postwar, old plantations were subdivided into tenant farms while new plantations were built as modern, multi-unit farms (Woodruff 2003; see also Aiken 1998; Mandle 1992; Whayne 1992; Virts 1991). U.S. Census enumerators in 1910 identified, in a geographic Belt extending from Virginia to Texas, 39,073 plantations holding 398,905 tenant farms in 325 counties of eleven states, including Arkansas (U.S. Department of Commerce 1916, p. 16).…”

Section: Institutional Domains Structured Dis/advantage and The Genmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, productive modes were as much rooted in organizational factors, aligned with federal and state-local political-legal supports, as in topographical factors (Alston and Ferrie, 1999; Jones 2009; Woodman 1979; Wright 2006). Variants of subsistence and plantation farming in Arkansas, as elsewhere in the South, historically differed in terms of farm organization, labor management, and the goals of production (Brannen 1924; U.S. Department of Commerce 1916; Virts 1991). Prior to the Civil War, bondsmen on plantations primarily produced for external markets under planter direction.…”

Section: Institutional Domains Structured Dis/advantage and The Genmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Women in Frontier Arkansas

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Arkansas was a demographic frontier after the U.S. Civil War. Despite marked agricultural land deforestation and development after the 1870s, it remained agrarian well into the twentieth century. We fuse life course and racial state frameworks to examine Black and White women’s settlement in Arkansas over the post-Civil War period (1880-1910). A racial state empowers residents and enacts policies based on race rather than equal citizenship rights. We highlight three institutional domains shaped by racial state policies: productive economies (subsistence, mixed commercialism, and plantation production); stratification on an agricultural ladder (from sharecropping to forms of tenancy to farm ownership); and rules of raced (and gendered) social control. We examine women’s settlement patterns and related outcomes in an institutional context at different life course stages using mixed methods: women’s oral histories and Census data analysis. We find that by 1880 White women and families, less attracted by forces of marketization, had largely migrated to subsistence and mixed commercial subregions. Black women and families, generally desiring to rise on the agricultural ladder to farm ownership, largely migrated to the rich lands found in plantation production counties. Black women in Arkansas could rise but, by 1910, new racial state (Jim Crow) policies more severely limited travel, material resources, and education for tenant farm families, predominantly Black, in the plantation subregion. Commensurate with this, Black women in the plantation subregion had experienced less status mobility on the agricultural ladder, with reduced living standards, by later life.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Analytic Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Analytic Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Prior to the Civil War, large-scale agriculture (plantations) prevailed in geographic zones with rich (hence, more expensive) soils and crop-friendly climates. Postwar, old plantations were subdivided into tenant farms while new plantations were built as modern, multi-unit farms (Woodruff 2003; see also Aiken 1998; Mandle 1992; Whayne 1992; Virts 1991). U.S. Census enumerators in 1910 identified, in a geographic Belt extending from Virginia to Texas, 39,073 plantations holding 398,905 tenant farms in 325 counties of eleven states, including Arkansas (U.S. Department of Commerce 1916, p. 16).…”

Section: Institutional Domains Structured Dis/advantage and The Genmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Institutional Domains Structured Dis/advantage and The Genmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Women in Frontier Arkansas

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Change in the plantation system: American South, 1910–1945

Virts¹

2006

Explorations in Economic History

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Hog-Round Marketing, Seed Quality, and Government Policy: Institutional Change in U.S. Cotton Production, 1920–1960

Olmstead¹,

Rhode²

2003

JEH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Between 1928 and 1960 U.S. cotton production witnessed a revolution with average yields roughly tripling while the quality of the crop increased significantly. This paper analyzes the key institutional and scientific developments that facilitated the revolution in biological technologies, pointing to the importance of two government programs-the one-variety community movement and the Smith-Doxey Act-as catalysts for change. The story displays two phenomena of interest in light of the recent literature: 1. an important real-world example of the workings of Akerlof's lemons model and 2. a case where inventors, during an early phase of the product cycle, actually encouraged consumers to copy and disseminate their intellectual property.

show abstract

The Effciency of Southern Tenant Plantations, 1900–1945

Abstract: The continued importance of tenant plantations in some areas of the South since the Civil War suggests that there was some advantage to large-scale agriculture. One source of economies of scale was in the marketing of high-quality cotton.

Cited by 11 publications

References 3 publications

Women in Frontier Arkansas

Women in Frontier Arkansas

Change in the plantation system: American South, 1910–1945

Hog-Round Marketing, Seed Quality, and Government Policy: Institutional Change in U.S. Cotton Production, 1920–1960

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About