Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the new edition
- Acknowledgments
- A note to the reader
- Chapter 1 What did freedom mean?
- Chapter 2 The legacy of slavery
- Chapter 3 The myth of the prostrate South
- Chapter 4 The demise of the plantation
- Chapter 5 Agricultural reconstruction
- Chapter 6 Financial reconstruction
- Chapter 7 The emergence of the merchants' territorial monopoly
- Chapter 8 The trap of debt peonage
- Chapter 9 The roots of southern poverty
- STATISTICAL APPENDIXES
- Appendix A Construction of income and welfare estimates: 1859–1899
- Appendix B Occupational distribution of southern blacks: 1860, 1870, 1890
- Appendix C Estimates of labor supplied by slave and free labor
- Appendix D Calculation of interest charged for credit implicit in the dual-price system
- Appendix E Calculation of food residuals on southern farms: 1880
- Appendix F Estimates of per capita gross crop output: 1859–1908
- DATA APPENDIX
- Epilogue
- A Bibliography of Literature on the South after 1977
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Appendix D - Calculation of interest charged for credit implicit in the dual-price system
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the new edition
- Acknowledgments
- A note to the reader
- Chapter 1 What did freedom mean?
- Chapter 2 The legacy of slavery
- Chapter 3 The myth of the prostrate South
- Chapter 4 The demise of the plantation
- Chapter 5 Agricultural reconstruction
- Chapter 6 Financial reconstruction
- Chapter 7 The emergence of the merchants' territorial monopoly
- Chapter 8 The trap of debt peonage
- Chapter 9 The roots of southern poverty
- STATISTICAL APPENDIXES
- Appendix A Construction of income and welfare estimates: 1859–1899
- Appendix B Occupational distribution of southern blacks: 1860, 1870, 1890
- Appendix C Estimates of labor supplied by slave and free labor
- Appendix D Calculation of interest charged for credit implicit in the dual-price system
- Appendix E Calculation of food residuals on southern farms: 1880
- Appendix F Estimates of per capita gross crop output: 1859–1908
- DATA APPENDIX
- Epilogue
- A Bibliography of Literature on the South after 1977
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Rural furnishing merchants of the South provided supplies on credit payable after the harvest. Rather than establishing and calculating credit charges as an annual interest rate applied to the amount borrowed, merchants posted two prices on each item. The cash price was charged if the customer did not request credit; the credit price was charged, but, of course, deferred, when a loan was involved. For example, on July 1, 1878, the average cash price of corn in middle Georgia was 78 cents per bushel according to a survey conducted by the Georgia State Department of Agriculture. On the same date the credit price was $1.04 per bushel payable on November 1, 1878. In effect, the farmer would pay 26 cents in November as interest on a four-month loan of 78 cents. Computed as simple interest, this amounts to 33.3 percent for one-third of a year or 100 percent per annum. ‘“Time is money,’” an official of the Georgia Department of Agriculture remarked after reporting these figures, “in this case time costs much money.”
The Georgia surveys
The 1878 GDA survey was the first to report cash and credit prices for corn on a specific date. The practice of conducting such retail price surveys annually was begun in 1881 and continued through 1889. The day on which price observations were to be collected was changed from July 1 to May 1 of each year. The observations were obtained by means of a questionnaire directed to the department's crop correspondents.
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- One Kind of FreedomThe Economic Consequences of Emancipation, pp. 237 - 243Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001