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• 1 media/Cotton_planter_and_pickers1908-small.jpg media/Cotton_planter_and_pickers1908-small.jpg 2018-03-14T17:25:30-07:00 Peonage 7 image_header 2018-03-27T04:01:56-07:00 Freed slaves faced enormous obstacles in order to survive. Out of desperation, they turned to a unique version of bondage known as tenant farming or sharecropping. Since they no longer had the necessities of life provided by their owners, they had to provide for themselves. They had no money for food, they had no capital to start a business nor the knowledge to run it, nor did their former masters have money to hire them. Since farming was the most common skill among slaves and landowners desperately needed someone to farm the fallow fields, former masters parceled their land between tenants and established a modern day fiefdom. The freedman would work the land for his former master in exchange for a share of the crop. The cost of seed, rent of mule and plow and any other necessities would be taken out as a “deduct” when the tenant brought in the harvest. The arrangement was legalized with a contract in which the tenant could negotiate for a third or a fourth of the crop’s value. The problem was, most freedmen couldn’t read the contract nor compute the figures potentially enabling the landowner to cheat the tenant. Black codes prevented tenants from transferring to a different landowner thus Negroes traded slavery for peonage. The situation bound the freedman to the landowner again, this time without the responsibility of care.