Curious demands were made by the Negroes: here, farm bells must not ring; there, overseers or managers must be done away with; in some places plantation courts were to settle matters of work, rent, and conduct; elsewhere, agreements were made that on Saturday the laborer should be permitted to go to town and, perhaps, ride a mule or horse.

In South Carolina the Sea Island Negroes demanded that in laying out work the old "tasks" or "stints" of slavery days be retained as the standard.

The farming districts at the edge of the Black Belt, where the races were about equal in numbers, already had a kind of "share system," and in these sections the economic chaos after the war was not so complete.

The former owners worked in the field with their ex-slaves and thus provided steady employment for many.

Farms were rented for a fixed sum of money, or for a part of the crop, or on "shares." * J.D.B.De Bow, the economist, testified before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that, if the Negro would work, free labor would be better for the planters than slave labor.