Tenant Farming

Tenant Farming

I was reminded of my mother's family's background this weekend when we visited the Southern Tenant Farmers Union Museum in Tyronza Arkansas. They, the family of Will and Jessie Daffron, moved about central and northern Alabama farming lands as they went. They had no union. They often struggled and they moved regularly. 

I wish they had had a union. They had the close-knit family, but I mean something more than that. Such as 


My Granddaddy Daffron wrote all his life. Here is something that has come down to me in typescript (one of the daughters began typing up Granddaddy's "poems" years later and unless somebody else in the family has the original handwritten copy then I am afraid it has disappeared.) 

I will date it to 1934 because of the reference to the Bankhead law. 

And by the way, "dope" was a term that Granddaddy used for "medicine".


 

The Hayseeder’s Lament

By Will Daffron, Millport Alabama


What do you think 

About the gink

And all this high-brow clan

Who congregate

And advocate

Bankhead’s reduction plan


We raise our cotton

For markets rotten

We freely will admit

But it’s a fact

This Bankhead Act

Don’t help a doggon bit


We plant the seed

And tend the weed

Side dress with guano

We plow and hoe

Keep on the go

No rest so help us Hannah 


We work and sweat

Just fume and fret

And worry every day

Haul it to town

And with a frown

Give half the stuff away


We have to sign

On dotted line

At every turn we make

Then buy permits

And send remits

With that we can rake


We pay the ginner

The real winner

In this old game of chance

His biz is brisk

He takes no risk

Your see that at a glance


We count our dough

And hope to go

Right out and buy a shirt

Some calico

And thread you know

To make the wife a skirt


We heave a sigh

And almost cry

To find we’re in a pickle

A note past due

For 10-2-2

Don’t leave a blessed nickel 


No shoes, no socks

No calico frocks

Nor just an old straw lid

Not even a hope

To buy a dope

Or candy for the kid


Can’t sell a cow

A pig or sow

A turkey, goose or guinea

Everyone broke

Their stuff in soak

Nobody’s got a penny


No money to spend

No one to lend

A penny on our note

All of us busted

No one trusted

To lead a billy goat


Everybody knows

We have no clothes

Our children underfed

So tell us quick

What stunt or trick

We’ll pull to get some bread


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