After slaves were freed most of the land was farmed by "share croppers." The landlord (also known as farmer or planter) furnished the tenant with the mules, plows, and tools -- everything except the labor. A man and his wife were provided a house to live in and 10 or 12 acres of land for cotton and 1 1/2 to 2 acres for corn. The landlord also furnished a cotton house, about 8 to 10 feet square in which the picked cotton was kept. One-half of the fertilizer was charged to the tenant.

A man and his wife usually had a two-room house. Sometimes there would be a small kitchen added to the back of the two-room house if the family increased in number. If a family had several older children who could help in the field, he was furnished with a four-room house. Children usually started picking cotton when they were 6 or 7 years old.

In the fall of the year they would start breaking the land and get ready for next year's crop. This was done with 4 mules pulling a big middlebuster. It usually took one man to control the mules and another man to hold the plow. This was done by neighbor helping neighbor. After farmers began buying more and more tractors (about 1940) they used them to row up the land. This was charged to the tenant.

The tenant bought his own cotton sacks to use in picking cotton. Grown people used 9 ft. sacks and children 6 to 7 1/2 ft. sacks. After cotton picking time, the women made shirts and jackets out of the 8 oz. duck sacks. In later years five or six ft. of tar was added to the bottom of the sack to make it last longer.

During harvest, when a bale of cotton (1500 lb.) had accumulated in the cotton house, the tenant would go to the lot and get a pair of mules and a wagon. The family would load the cotton from the cotton house into the wagon using a basket about 30 inches in diameter and also that deep. These baskets were woven from oak strips about 1 inch wide and 1/4 inches thick. These were handmade by people that made them for their livelihood. (These baskets were also used to divide the corn crop.) The loaded cotton would then be hauled to the cotton gin to be ginned.

The landlord got one-half of the cotton and one-half of the corn crops. The tenant got the other half. When the cotton picking was over in the fall, the tenant would store his half of the corn in the cotton house and use it to feed his livestock. He would shell some of the corn, take it to the "grist mill," and swap it for corn meal. The cotton was ginned in the landlord's name - who also sold the cotton and got the money. When settlement time came the tenant had no way of knowing whether or not he was getting his share of the cotton money. He did know he got his part of the seed money, because he collected his half when it was ginned. He used this money to live on until settlement time. Sometimes the settlement would upset the tenant if it seemed unfair, and the tenant would move on and try another farmer.

There were quite a number of dishonest landlords who would take more than their half of the proceeds of the crop. There also were some tenants who would secretly take some of their cotton and sell it to small renters. Renters would rent small places from some landlords. The renter furnished his own mules, wagon and plow tools and pay one-fourth of the crop for rent on the land. There was a black woman that rented land out from Blaine, MS. She would buy stolen cotton from sharecroppers. The big farmers (landlords) put some small pieces of "red thread" in some cotton. They got a Negro to sell it to her. When the red thread went through the gin and the many saw blades hit the thread, it was cut into many, many small pieces. The farmers could identify the stolen cotton. My uncle, Walter Scruggs was one of the land owners who caught her. When I worked for Uncle Walker (1937-1940), he had several black farmers who rented from him.

Some of the land was worked with town labor. They were paid $0.75 to $1.00 per day for chopping cotton and $1.00 per hundred lb. for picking cotton in the fall. When a man was paid $1.00 for a days work, this was from sun up to sun down.

In 1937 when I started working for Uncle Walker, he gave me a new 1937 1 1/2 ton truck to drive and $1.00 (1 dollar bill) for my room at a Greenwood hotel. That would let me get an early start the next morning to pick up a load of Negroes to pick cotton on land worked with day labor. There would be hundreds of Negroes who gathered on a certain street and trucks would carry them to the work. If the going price was $0.75 for picking 100 lb. of cotton, occasionally someone would raise the price 10 cents to entice labor off someone else's truck. When your truck was loaded it was necessary to move on and not stop or slow down for fear someone might get all your labor. Small farmers that were anxious to get their crops out were bad about raising the price.

Doctor bills and granny (midwife) fees were paid by the landlord and charged to the tenants account. Granny fees were $15.00 to deliver a baby. Doctor calls in 1938 were usually $2.00 for an office call, and $3.00 for a house call.

Albert Triplette told me a story. He lived on Argus Mae Williams place, which was about 5 or 6 miles from Sunflower. He ahd stayed in town one Saturday night too long and had missed all his rides home. He told Dr. Tindall that his wife, "Pip," was sick and he wanted the doctor to see about her. The weather was cold and sleeting. Albert got in the car with the doctor and when they got to Albert's house, he told the doctor to wait until he told Pip the doctor was there. After he saw Pip, he hollered back to the doctor that Pip was all right and she didn't need to see the doctor. Dr. Tindall charged for the service and Albert got a good ride home and he didn't have to pay for it until the next settlement in the fall.

About this time 1938-1940 there were several different groups that were trying to develop a mechanical cotton picker. Dr. Hugh Gamble, a well known doctor and surgeon in Greenville invested in one of these companies.

Hopson Plantation, south of Clarksdale was used by the International Harvester Company for development of the first mechanical cotton picker. Lots of this work was also done at Stoneville.

Back to the sharecroppers. When the tenant got his settlement in the fall, if the landlord was fair, he would clear enough to buy a few winter clothes and enough groceries to last his family until the "furnish" started again on March 1st. They were furnished living expenses for 6 months and started picking cotton in mid August or the first of September. The tenant got his half of the seed money from each bale of cotton he ginned. This is what he lived on until he got his settlement.

In 1942 when I traveled for Sunflower Wholesale Grocery Company of Drew, I sold one of my good customers, Albert Campbell of Blaine, a truck load of barrels of Peek-a-Boo flour, each weighing 200 lb. A barrel of flour, a 50 lb. can of lard, and 3 or 4 gallons of molasses would be the staples that tenants lived on until furnish started on March 1st.

Some plantations would have a molasses mill and the tenant could have a few rows of sorghum cane for making molasses. In August, after the crop was "laid by", (finished except for picking) they would cut the cane, strip the leaves and take it to the mill where it was crushed and the juice put in a large pan about 4 ft. wide, 8 to 10 ft. long and 6 inches deep. It was cooked until it got as thick as "molasses." It was then put into gallon buckets to keep and use as needed.

When I closed my tractor business in 1954, I started farming 120 acres out from Sunflower. I had about 100 acres of cotton and one day hand. When cotton picking time came, I bought an International one-row "Super C" cotton picker. After picking my crop, I picked for other farmers. I made more than enough to make payments on my picker and carry me through the winter. The next year I rented more land and when cotton picking time came rolling around, I bought another International picker. Some large land owners like Mr. Eugene Fisackerly and Uncle Walker didn't buy pickers. I could pick 6 to 8 bales a day averaging $30.00 per bale. After 2 or 3 years other farmers started buying pickers and it went on from there.

After this, share croppers started fading out and farmers started mechanical farming and Negroes started moving to Chicago and other northern cities. A few loyal Negroes stayed here to drive the tractors, but around 1965-1970 all the sharecroppers were gone. At this time you could get cotton choppers from town if crops had lots of rain and fields were grassy. Big strides were being made with chemical grass and weed control. I forgot about cross plowing. When we were getting away from sharecropping, some farmers cross plowed the cotton to eliminate chopping. Another way was with Toulouse geese. You could put 100 geese in a cotton field and move the water troughs every few days and the geese would eat the grass and not bother the cotton. I tried the geese on a small field one year (1955). This worked fairly well.

They have perfected the chemicals so well that they can control any kind of grass or weeds-either with airplanes or tractor Hi-Boys. The first mechanical pickers were one-row pickers, then later evolved to two-row pickers. Now they make four-row and six-row pickers. The first picker I bought (one row) for about $3,000.00. The next one was on a large tractor and cost about $3,500.00-still a one-row picker!! Now they are selling four-row pickers for $150,000.00 and six-row pickers for $300,000.00. It can cover 75 acres and picks over a hundred bales of cotton in a day.

The spindles on a picker turns and just befor it comes in contact with the cotton it passes over a moisture pad where it is dampened, then it goes into the cotton which gets wrapped around the spindle. Then the spindle is run over a doffer pad that wipes the cotton from the spindle. The cotton is blown up into the picker's basket where it is carried until the basket is filled. The operator then dumps the basket into the bowl buggy. When the buggy is full it is carried to the module builder where it is dumped and packed down (this container can hold up to 15 bales), then it is carried to the gin lot to wait its turn to be ginned. The gins now can gin a bale in 2 minutes. When I was farming it took 15 minutes.

When sharecropping was at its peak, mules were in big demand in the Mississippi Delta. There was a large mule dealer in Memphis-Owens Brothers Livestock Commission Company. Farmers in Missouri, Tennessee and Illinois would raise mules and send them to Memphis to be auctioned off. Colonel M. R. Meals was one auctioneer I was acquainted with. He said that he had sold more mules than any man alive. Most every town had a mule dealer, mostly "gypsies". Some of them that I remember were named Riley, Shurlock, and Shurden. Fall and winter were the peak season for mule dealing. After this time most of the traders would leave the area and move on. After the decline of the mule markets, some of the traders supplemented their income by spraying barns and roofs with aluminum paint.

In 1940 Sunflower County's mule population was 32,280. Good mules sold for $300 to $400 each. When my Uncle Walker traded with a sharecropper, he told him he did not want anybody running his mules. Under no condition should a tenant run the mules. I've seen him charge a Negro $25.00 for disobeying this rule.

Some landowners would ask a family to leave if a tenant was getting too old to work. My uncle had lots of faults but I never saw him beat a family out of anything when settlement time came. (Iwould have known, I was the bookkeeper). He had lots of old Negroes on his place and he never made one move off his land because of his age.

Some croppers would only hoe their crops next to the road where it could be seen from the car. That was the reason for farmers to ride horses so the whole crop could be checked. I've seen Uncle Walker ride one horse in the morning and have a different (fresh) one in the afternoon. When I worked for him, 1937-1940, he had a Negro "straw-boss", Preston Jones, that rode the back roads on horseback inspecting the crops. Uncle Walker was farming 3300 acres of land at that time and had over a hundred sharecroppers. He also used lots of day labor. He grew alflfa hay for his own use and he sometimes sold hay and corn to the other farmers.

While I worked for Uncle Walker he had some woodland cleared. The good trees were cut for lumber--the other worthless trees and bushes were cut and burned. The labor used axes, Kaiser blades, and crosscut saws. Trees were cut down even with the ground so that plows, bush and bog disks could be pulled over them. Clearing the land usually cost about $10.00 per acre. The first year after land was cleared, it was planted in corn.

On a big plantation they usually had a large bell that was rung in the morning at 4 o'clock to awake the tenants so they could walk to the barn to get the mules. Each mule's bridle and gear were hung on a certain peg in the gear room. The same mule's gear was always used on the same mule. The bell was rung again at 12 o'clock. Mules were smart animals and when that bell rang at 12 o'clock you just as well take him out when you get back to the end of the field. He would take the "studs" and you could not make him keep on working, even though you might lack a little finishing the job.

When a man went to get his mule in the morning, his wife would have his breakfast ready when he came back. A man could plow about 5 acres a day with a double shoe plow. Some mules were "broke" to be ridden, otherwise you walked and led them.

On the Scruggs farm, a mule was given about 12 ears of corn and all the hay he wanted to eat by the hostler. Sometimes a mule would get too much bad or rotten corn and would have the colic. Walter Heard was a Negro that Uncle Walker brought from the hills with him. He could doctor the animals and save on vet bills. In fact, Walter could do many jobs on that plantation. He hauled logs from the woods to the sawmill, which he ran. He also ran the grist mill. He was a blacksmith, and shod the horses and mules. I bought a big John Deere trailer and Walter welded and made a big 24 ft. metal bed for it when I was picking cotton for Uncle Walker about 1954. The anvil that I have on my patio belonged to Walter and was given to me by Maury McIntyre after Walter died.

"Red-neck farmers had a harder time finding a home than blacks. The "red neck" would curse you to your face and the black man waited until he got home. Mr. O. B. Lindsey of Doddsville used both white and black sharecroppers which was not always good business. He once had a "red neck" he wanted to get rid of and wondered how was the best way to do it. When he settled with the man the cropper rared back and said, "Mr. Lindsey, if you put "PLUTANE" gas in my house, I'll stay on."

What he wanted was Butane. Of course Mr. Lindsey couldn't do this so the man moved on. In the fall of the year there was a lot of moving around. Some was done with wagons and all kinds of trucks. They usually had a chicken coop on the top of the load. Uncle Walker once passed a mover and a big "Dominique" rooster had gotten out of the coop and was blown through the windshield and onto Uncle Winston's lap. This was before they made shatterproof glass.

If I have bored you and have too much repetition I'm sorry--I studied other things in school instead of Journalism!