Copyright © Hans Högman 2019-12-24
Sharecropping in the USA vs the
Torp (Croft) System in Sweden
Introduction
A few years ago, I had a correspondence with a
Professor in the Political Science department at
Northern Michigan University, David Carlson.
David, who has Swedish ancestry, and knows about
the Swedish torp system (croft system) recommend
not to liken the torp system in Sweden to
sharecropping in the United States.
Sharecropping in the USA
Sharecropping is a form of agriculture in which a
landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return
for a share of the crops produced on their portion of
land. Sharecropping became widespread in the
South as a response to economic upheaval caused
by the end of slavery during and after
Reconstruction.
The landowner provided land, housing, tools and
seed, and perhaps a mule, and a local merchant
provided food and supplies on credit. At harvest
time, the sharecropper received a share of the crop
(from one-third to one-half, with the landowner
taking the rest). The cropper used his share to pay
off his debt to the merchant.
David Carlson’s text about Sharecropping vs
the Torp System in Sweden
Sometimes people liken the croft system in Sweden
to sharecropping in the United States. I would
recommend that you not do that for a number of
reasons.
The first is that sharecropping is widely used to refer
to just those southern states of the United States,
who after the Civil War had ended, instituted a
rapacious landlord-tenant arrangement.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a
sharecropper as especially rooted “in the southern
United States where the tenant is provided with
credit for seed, tools, living quarters, and food, who
works the land, and who receives an agreed share of
the value of the crop minus charges.”
This system in the south was a successor to
slavery, and as such, the land owner was interested
in extracting as much labor from the newly freed
slaves by manipulating the charges for credit, the
prices of seeds, and levying outrageous charges for
the living quarters, which were often the same
shacks Afro-American folk had lived in during
slavery.
For their part, the former slaves were not
sophisticated in negotiating terms, and quickly
ended up owing more money at the end of a year
than they had owed at the beginning of the year.
The sharecropper system perpetuated the
subjugation of Afro-Americans in those southern
states who formerly fostered plantation/slavery
arrangements.
The sharecropping system was a major component
of the “lost century” for Afro-American folk in
America from the end of the Civil War when slaves
were freed until the 1960’s when the Civil Rights era
began, and the word itself congers up all that
shameful past in the United States.
The system was oppressive, and the main way for
Afro-Americans to avoid it was to flee to the
northern states and try to find work where you were
likely to earn a living wage, if they were lucky to find
such a job.
Many ended up in low-wage jobs such as street
sweeping, tending gardens, cleaning buildings, etc.
But some became educated, sent their children to
school, and thus were able to secure better paying
jobs. Others succeed in manual labor jobs that paid
decent wages, such as construction workers.
Ironically, sharecropping did include a stipulation of
having the sharecropper give a share of the crop to
the owner, maybe ½ of the crop. But the attendant
manipulations served to keep Afro-Americans (and a
smattering of poor whites) in a condition nearly as
bad as slavery itself.
Most importantly, if a sharecropper and his family
had not fulfilled all their obligations to the
landowner, they were by law forbidden from leaving
the area until the debt was paid off (though
enforcement was often by the KKK).
But in the rest of the United States, we have long
had a more normal rental/tenant arrangement in
rural, farming areas. And not surprisingly, for a long
time, the rental agreement was often defined in
terms like ¼ of the crop, or 1/3 of the crop or ½ of
the crop – with the higher fraction occurring where
the farm land was more productive and thus more
valuable (today, the rent is often stated as a cash
amount). But these rental agreements were for the
most part honorable arrangements, and one could
farm successfully and provide well for his family.
The relationship to the landowner was typically
businesslike.
Sharecropper
The word incorporates the post-slavery
treatment of Afro-Americans in the South in
highly negative ways, and that makes it
impossible to apply the word to mostly white
farmers who rent on shares in the rest of the
country.
The word “croft” is so English and not American that
when I first heard it, I thought it must be a Swedish
word – which later I found out was not the case.
My great-grandfather and his son were “renter”
farmers, as were most white Americans in the
Midwest, and I would recommend “renter farmers”
as a more accurate translation from the Swedish
torpare (crofter).
The crofter obligation might well have been more
burdensome, but the housing situation in America
and Sweden were similarly rather independent from
the thumb of the land owner, the more bountiful
the crops were from their farming operations on the
rented lands, the better off they would be in both
countries, and the racial subjugation of Afro-
Americans associated with sharecropping in
America is avoided.
David Carlsson
Professor in the Political Science department
Northern Michigan University
Michigan
April 2013
Sharecropping in the
USA
