Cotton Picking Time: Cotton Grown by Otis Waiters

Cotton Grown by Otis Waiters

Figure 133. Cotton grown by Otis Waiters

Both Archie Waiters and his father, Otis Waiters, worked on the landowner’s crops and were paid for their labor, but both also worked as sharecroppers. As sharecroppers, they raised cotton and tobacco with the landowner furnishing the land, equipment, and fertilizer, and taking two-thirds of the sale price, giving the sharecropper one-third. Their families picked their cotton and it went to the gin separate from the landowner’s cotton. Here is a page from a 1926 gin-house book showing that Otis Waiters (spelled Odus here) brought 1,370 pounds of cotton to the gin. After it was ginned, the cotton weighed 885 pounds and the seed weighed 485 pounds. (Wallace family papers, J. W. Wallace, Sr., 1926 gin record book, page September 7, 1926. Arundel Room, Rogers Library, Francis Marion University.)

Book pages recording cotton grown by Otis Waiters