Crop-lien System and more (11/6 Lecture Notes)

Crop-lien System (problem for farmers) lien=loan
  • Victims of crop-lien system: former slaves and poor whites who became sharecroppers (owned nothing), tenant farmers (rent land, own some stuff), and yeoman farmers.
  • Most expensive time for farmers is spring (they need feed and stuff), so they took out loans to buy stuff and had to pay them back where their crop came in. Crop is a really unstable thing due to climate, floods, etc. Families got stuck in a cycle of getting into more and more debt through this. It was a hardship and failure of reconstruction.
  • Social Gospel: A movement of the Protestant Church that was against rugged individualism and called for a socially aware religion. WWJD? Jesus would not ignore the poor! (Kind of the opposite of Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth). Supported by Salvation Army, YMCA, and many churches.
  • Hengry George: Political economist who promoted "single tax" on land. He believed that everyone owns what they create, but nature (most importantly land) belongs equally to everyone. Wrote Progress and Poverty.
  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum could be interpreted as a political allegory...