Final answer:
The workers referred to in the question are known as sharecroppers. This system in the American South involved poor farmers renting land and paying the rent in the form of crops to the landowner, often keeping them in perpetual debt and without land ownership rights.
Step-by-step explanation:
The workers being referred to in the student's question are known as sharecroppers. Sharecropping was a system that emerged predominantly in the Southern United States after the Civil War, where formerly enslaved individuals and poor farmers would farm the land and pay a portion of their crops to the landowner as rent. This system often kept sharecroppers in a cycle of debt, as they incurred high interest payments and bore the risks of farming without the benefits of land ownership. Sharecroppers were legally obligated to purchase seed and supplies, and despite being essential to agricultural production, they were the last to be paid after merchants, mills, banks, brokers, and landowners had taken their shares.
This crop-lien system benefitted the landowners at the expense of the sharecroppers, creating a semi-bound state where the landless workers had little hope for economic progression or independence. The system ensured that landowners and merchants had significant control over the agricultural economy and that sharecroppers remained subject to the will of those who owned the land.