Southern Agriculture After Civil War

Effects of Emancipation

• Emancipation was the most far reaching property right change in United States economic history, perhaps in world economic history– Serfdom in Western Europe disappeared gradually– Emancipation of serfs in Russian Empire only thing

comparable

Important Questions

• What accounts for the slow growth of Southern Income relative to North?

• No evidence for convergence before 1950s

Per Capita Income

1860 1880 1900 1920 1940

US 100 100 100 100 100

NE 139 139 137 132 124

NC 68 68 103 100 103

SA 65 45 45 59 69

ESC 68 51 49 52 55

WSC 115 60 61 72 70

W 190 163 122 125

• Immediate fall in Per capita GDP not hard to explain– Fall from $77 in 1859 to $46 in 1869 to $61.5 in

1879– Decline in labor force participation of slaves– Loss of economies of scale of coercion– Loss of capital assets– 1859 was a above average year for cotton

• What explains continual poor performance?

Important Questions

• What happened to Black standard of living as a result of Civil War?– How much better off were emancipated Blacks

compared to slaves?

• What accounts for slow growth of Black Income relative to White Income?

Mean Male Income by Race 1940-1980 (1984 dollars)

• No census statistics available before 1940, but other work indicates Black income relative to white was about 37% in 1910

Census Year White Men Black Men Ratio1980 25,791$ 18,723$ 73%1970 25,666$ 16,527$ 64%1960 19,959$ 11,483$ 58%1950 14,332$ 7,912$ 55%1940 10,459$ 4,531$ 43%

• Answering the first question does not necessarily answer the second.

• Southern income could not have been as far below Northern income if the income of White Southerners had not been below White Northerners

Important Questions

• What happened to the organization of Southern Agriculture?– Were the same crops grown?– Did the plantations survive operated with wage labor?

What happened to Southern Agriculture after the Civil War?

• Cotton and Tobacco production does not decline– Big change is now Whites as well as Blacks are

growing cotton

• Decrease in both the rice and sugar production

Farm size after Civil war

• In 1860 Plantations with more than 50 slaves made up 4 % of the farms and produced 32 % of cotton

• In 1880 Ransom and Sutch estimate that Farms with more the 200 acres dependent on wage labor made up less than 1% of farms

Farming after Emancipation

• Consider change in ownership of factors of production

• Before the Civil War, plantation owner owned land, labor and capital. Finance was done through factors who loaned money based on the growing crop. Had a personal relation with planters

• After Civil War, plantation owner owned land and capital, had to hire labor.

• In order to pay wages needed credit, but factors are no longer willing or able to lend.

• How do you pay labor? Share of crop (group share or squad)

• Alternative would be to rent land out for fixed rent or share

• Which is best? Consider Transaction costs

Contractual CostsShare Fixed Rent Wage

Negotiating 1 2 2

EnforcementOutput

1 2 2

Landowners input

2 1 3

Workers input

2 3 1

1 highest

• No type of contract is clearly the best, it depends on which input is most important or easiest to specify

• Share looks like the highest • However share is most popular

Tenure Choice in North and South

year own rent share

South

1880 64 12 24

1890 62 14 25

1900 53 18 30

N 1880 81 6 13

1890 78 8 14

1900 75 9 16

Looks different if you look at land area in tenant farms

North South

1880 24 % 24%

1890 27 28

1900 30 31

1910 34 37

Differences

• Farms are smaller in the South.• Census treats a rented farm in the South the

same as North, but were they?• Tenant Plantations

– 5 or more tenant farms owned and operated as one farms

• Special Census of plantations taken at various times

Data for Postbellum Period

• Roger Ransom and Richard Sutch-One Kind of Freedom

• Got a NSF grant and cross referenced the 1880 population and agricultural censuses.

• Published Census records have two problems• Do not report separate data by race until 1900• Do not recognize plantations

• Ransom and Sutch sample has many farms with missing wage data

• Using Ransom and Sutch sample if you keep farms with more than 200 acres with no labor variables, they produce 25% of cotton. If you delete the farms with no wage data they produce 1%

What happened to Black Standard of living after emancipation?

• What was standard of living under slavery?• Estimates by Vedder, Ransom and Sutch,

Fogel and Engerman.• Marginal Revenue product (how much one

more slave contributes to output of plantation) (some disagreement about labors share of output) $85.80 to 62.46

• Value of slave consumption ( $28.95-42.99)• Subtract value of slave consumption give us

expropriated income Equals expropriated income (33.51 to 55.76)

• Rate of expropriation is Expropriated income / Marginal Revenue product 65% to 50%. If you throw out the high and low

estimates, its 54%-59% not much difference

What is the value of Freedom?

• To the extent that labor markets are competitive, no expropriation W=MRP

• MRP could be higher or lower than under slavery

• More leisure• Value to being able to choose consumption

bundle

Computing the Value of Freedom

• Can estimate income by taking value of output and subtracting costs of production and then dividing by the number of people on farm.

• Must adjust income estimates for the effect of increased leisure.– What happened to work hours? Ransom and Sutch estimate slaves

worked 2,052 -1009 hours per year which dropped to 1503-994 hours in 1880

– What is value of leisure? – it’s the wage, but how do you find that?– Most black workers were not paid a fixed wage

The Value of Freedom

Ransom and Sutch

Improved Residual Method

Direct Observation of Wages

Black Income in 1859 $27.66 $27.66 $27.66Black Income in 1879 $35.59 $40.24 $40.24Value of Leisure $13.75-$21.00 $14.82-$23.44 $31.01-$36.78Value of Freedom $22.05-$29.01 $27.40-$36.02 $43.59-$49.36Increase in Income 78-105% 99-130% 158-178%

Free blacks experienced a large annual increase in their material standard of living.

Since emancipation was a once in a lifetime event, it is appropriate to measure effects over lifetime.

In PV terms, blacks received a lump sum payment of 26 to 30 times average income-- about $500,000 in today’s dollars.

Argument that blacks didn’t benefit from freedom is wrong i.e. Civil War wasn’t a waste of time. Emancipation did significantly increase black welfare.

Back to the two big questions

• Why was the South backward?• What explains Black/White Income levels

Possible Explanations

• Flawed institutions• Market Based

– Tenure arrangements especially share cropping– Credit monopoly

• Government imposed– Disenfranchisement – Segregation of public facilities and schools– Limits to mobility of labor

Market based institutions

• Why would Southerners deliberately adopt a set of institutions that made both Whites and Blacks worse off?

• If large landowners were in a monopoly position why would they choose an inefficient tenure arrangement? Expect low wages, high rent.

Sharecropping

• Sharecropping is not exclusively a black institution

• 1880 computed from Ransom and Sample, 1900 from Census.

1900 Owners Renters Share

White 60 11 29

Black 22 38 41

1880 Owners Renters Share

White 74 8 19

Black 32 25 43

1880 computed from Ransom and Sutch sample

White Blacks

Owners 86 14

Renters 42 58

Share Croppers 64 36

White Blacks

Owners 84 16

Renters 36 64

Share Croppers 45 55

1900 Census of Agriculture

• Blacks moving into renting, but not ownership– Suggests lack of protection of property rights

• Number of white renters and sharecroppers are increasing

Alternate explanations of Sharecropping

• Combination of high cost of monitoring labor and owners providing an important input.– Managerial knowledge– High quality cotton

• Evidence to support– Reduction in sharecropping with increase in

mechanization– Persistence of Tenant Plantations

Persistence of Plantation System

State Percent of Improved Acres, 1910

Percent of Crop Acres Harvested,

1945 (All Counties)

Percent of Crop Acres Harvested,

1945 (Counties in 1910 and 1945 Census)

Alabama 31 12 14

12 Georgia 23 18 20 Louisiana 23 20 27 Mississippi 35 41 48 South Carolina 27 21 18 Total 28 23 26 Sources: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Plantation Farming in the United States (Washington DC, 1916); U.S. Bureau of the Census, Special Report of Multiple Unit Operations in Selected Areas of Southern States (Washington, DC, 1947).

Credit Market• How was crop financed?• Crop lien laws

– Used the growing crop as security– Lots of opportunities for opportunistic behvaior

• Few banks, mostly land owners and country store merchants– Lots of country stores – Entry easy– No rich owners

• Interest rates are high (Cash price lower than credit prices

• Lots of stores but may have local monopoly• Evidence suggests tenants move a lot• Not clear if this is due to monopoly or high risk

Crop mix

• Did country stores cause over specialization of cotton?

• Not clear why they would force such a crop mix on farmers

• Small farms were not self-sufficient before the Civil War, but Plantations were.

Black/White income

• Little evidence of discrimination• Labor income per worker is about the same

for blacks as whites• Part of Black/White income gap is due to

different levels of ownership of land and capital

• Nationally Blacks are poorer than whites because most Blacks are in the South where income is lower than the national average.

1880-1900

• We would expect if markets work that Blacks would acquire land and capital (both physical and human) and move to areas where higher income could be earned

• Does not seems to have happened

Southern Southern National Rural Total TotalTotal Income Income

IncomePer Capita 1880 Black $36.78 $38.43 $43.06Income White $62.49 $79.44 $142.64

B/W Ratio 0.59 0.48 0.31900 Black $46.37 $49.96 $56.86

White $91.23 $117.87 $206.70 B/W Ratio 0.51 0.42 0.28

1880-1900 Black 1.17% 1.32% 1.40%Growth Rate White 1.91% 1.99% 1.87%

Per 1880 Black $65.93 $68.90 $77.20Worker White $99.43 $126.38 $226.95Income B/W Ratio 0.66 0.55 0.34

1900 Black $81.31 $87.61 $99.72White $140.04 $180.94 $317.31B/W Ratio 0.58 0.48 0.31

1880-1900 Black 1.05% 1.21% 1.29%Growth Rate White 1.73% 1.81% 1.69%

Real Black and White Income in 1880 and 1900

In the period from 1880 to 1900, blacks increased their incomes in absolute terms.

Relative to whites, blacks in the last portion of the 19th century did not match the progress of whites.

Flawed Government Institutions

• Period 1880-1900, was the period in which there were many adverse historical developments for blacks. – The segregated public school system was created.– Blacks were disenfranchised.– Black Codes were instituted.– Blacks’ property rights were imperfectly enforced.

• Reduces incentive to acquire property

What happened to blacks after emancipation-a summary

• Emancipation had an enormous immediate positive effect on black material welfare. – Part of the increase in material welfare was enjoyed by blacks as in an increase in consumption of material

goods (more income).– Just as important as the increase in material income was the increased consumption of leisure. – Using the prevailing wage rate to value leisure, the increased consumption of leisure was more important

than the increased material income following emancipation.– Equivalent to a $500,000 lump sum payment in today’s dollars.

• Immediately following emancipation, blacks achieved a degree of equity with southern whites. – In the labor markets in which the majority of blacks participated, they earned incomes comparable with

whites. • Any differences in income were probably due to skill differences resulting from recent emancipation.

– The black/white income ratio in 1880 of .37 is attributable:• To blacks being emancipated in a poor region-the South.• Being emancipated in rural rather than urban areas.

• In the period from 1880- 1900, the legal and social environment of blacks deteriorated.– Segregated public schools, Jim Crow Laws, disenfranchisement, etc. – Without reliable income estimates, the question of whether these adverse historical developments

adversely affected black welfare have been unanswered.– During this period, black continued to improve their material condition but not as fast as whites.

Other Source of Southern Backwardness

• Dependence on Cotton– Increase in supply outside of US– Stagnant Demand – Income elasticity low

• Boll Weevil• Cotton is the last major US crop to mechanize

harvesting– Technical difficulty or backwardness of producers?

• Lack of funding for education for both blacks and whites.