He paid "one-third of his product for the use of the land, he paid an exorbitant fee for recording the contract by which he paid his pound of flesh; he was charged two or three times as much as he ought to pay for ginning his cotton; and, finally, he turned over his crop to be eaten up in commissions, if any was still left to him."[11] The worst of all results from this iniquitous system was its effect on the Negroes themselves.

It made the Negroes extravagant and unscrupulous.
Convinced that no share of their crop would come to them when harvested, they did not exert themselves to produce what they could.

They often abandoned their crops before harvest, knowing that they had already spent them.

In cases, however, where the Negro tenants had acquired mules, horses or tools upon which the speculator had a mortgage, the blacks were actually bound to their landlords to secure the property.

It was soon evident that in the end the white man himself was the loser by this evil system.