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SERF
What is a Serf?
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What is a Serf?
A progenitor of being a share cropper after the War of Northern Aggression in the South. They exist yet never prosper. Kind'a like how your interest rate is in your banking account now. Being in debt is even worst. Unless we go to a negative rate with our funny money that is! [:o)]
serf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharecropping
In the U.S. "tenant" farmers own their own mules and equipment, and "sharecroppers" do not, and thus sharecroppers are poorer and of lower status. Sharecropping occurred extensively in Scotland, Ireland and colonial Africa, and came into wide use in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era (1865?1877). The South had been devastated by war - planters had ample land but little money for wages or taxes. At the same time, most of the former slaves had labor but no money and no land - they rejected the kind of gang labor that typified slavery. A solution was the sharecropping system focused on cotton, which was the only crop that could generate cash for the croppers, landowners, merchants and the tax collector. Poor white farmers, who previously had done little cotton farming, needed cash as well and became sharecroppers.[2]