Unnamed Tenant Farmers

This group of "nameless tenants and croppers" is referred to by Gavin Stevens in his account of Flem Snopes' desire to undermine Manfred de Spain. Although the context is a long way from their actual lives, these people who farm land they do not own are described as "unfutured, barely-solvent one-bale tenant farmers [who] pervaded, covered thinly the whole county and on [whom] in fact the entire cotton economy of the county was founded and supported" (293). The phrase "one-bale" is explained by what Gavin says a few pages earlier: the "sole cash value" of each "share-cropper" is "the October or November sale of the single bale of cotton which was his tithe of his year's work" (291).