The «share-compping» system also locked much of the South into a cotton dependency at a time when the price of the cost was pricing. In the 1930s and 1940s, increasing mechanization virtually ended the institution of Sharecropping in the United States. [26] [38] The share-cpping system in the United States increased during the Great Depression with the creation of tenants after the failure of many small farms in the Dustbowl. Traditional share formation declined after the mechanization of agricultural work became economic in the mid-20th century. As a result, many sharecroppers were driven off farms and emigrated to cities to work in factories or to become migrant workers in the Western United States during World War II. Reid (1973), [44] Murrel (1983), [45] Roumasset (1995)[46] and Allen and Lueck (2004)[47] provided theories on the transaction costs of allocating shares, the lease being more of a partnership than an employment contract and the landlord and tenant providing several inputs. It has also been argued that the institution of sharing can be explained by factors such as information asymmetry (Hallagan, 1978; [48] Allen, 1982; [49] Muthoo, 1998), [50] moral hazard (Reid, 1976;[51] Eswaran and Kotwal, 1985; [52] Ghatak and Pandey, 2000),[53] intertemporal revision (Roy and Serfes, 2001),[54] Price variations (Sen, 2011):55] or limited liability (Shetty, 1988;[56] Basu, 1992; [57] Sengupta, 1997; [58] Ray and Singh, 2001). [59] The abolitionist movement was an organized attempt to end the practice of slavery in the United States. The first leaders of the campaign, which took place from about 1830 to 1870, imitated some of the same tactics that British abolitionists had used to … Read more In the Age of Reconstruction In the United States, sharecropping was one of the few ways for the poor to support themselves and their families. Other solutions have been the plant bond system (where the farmer obtained credits from the merchant for seeds and other supplies), a rental work system (where the former slave rents his land but keeps all his crop) and the payroll system (workers earn a fixed wage, but do not keep a crop without harvest).

«Sharecropping» was by far the most economically efficient because it encouraged workers to produce a larger crop. It was a phase beyond just acting work, because the sharecropper had an annual contract. During the reconstruction, the Federal Office for Freedmen ordered the arrangements[27] and wrote and implemented the treaties. Jeffery Paige distinguished between centralized sharing in cotton plantations and decentralized sharing with other crops. The first is marked by political conservatism and a long-standing mandate. The tenants are linked to the owner by the plantation store. This form of mandate tends to be replaced by wages paid when markets enter. Decentralized sharing is of virtual no importance to the landowner: the land is dispersed, farmers manage their own work and landowners do not produce crops.