Page 14 - b reading 일부

Reading Practice 1

Sharecropping: A Second Form of Slavery

After the Civil War, slavery became

illegal in the United States. For hundreds of

years, slavery made Southern farms
profitable because they had free labor. Now

5 Southern landowners* had a problem. They
still needed African-Americans to work on

their farms, but they could not afford to
pay them.
In the South, this led to sharecropping. In sharecropping, landowners

10 rented their land to African-American farmers. They would also sell seeds,

farming equipment, and food to the farmers from a general store. Since most
African-Americans at the time were very poor, they needed loans to buy these
supplies. The landowners also provided loans. At the beginning of the growing

season, the landowners would loan the farmers money for seeds and supplies. At

15 the end of the growing season, the farmers would have to give the landowners a
percentage of the crop to pay back the loan and to pay rent for using the land.
While this may sound like a reasonable business deal, it was actually a very

dishonest system. The landowners made the farmers pay huge interest rates on

their loans, and they often lied about how much money the farmers owed.
20 Unable to pay back their loans, most of the farmers were forced to continue
working for the landowners for lower and lower salaries. In reality, sharecropping

was little better than slavery for many African-Americans.

*landowner: someone who owns a large amount of land

18 b-Reading