Carnegie Commission, The Poor White Problem¶


Kind	commission or official report
Producer	Carnegie Commission
Coverage	1929-1932
Works using it	6

Debates¶

Debate	Works
Agricultural policy, productivity, farm size and land reform	3
Origins, coherence and ideology of apartheid and Afrikaner nationalism	2
Agrarian transition to capitalism and the fate of the African peasantry	1
The job colour bar, white labour and its erosion	1
Why apartheid ended: reform, transition and elite bargaining	1
Farm labour: mechanisation, labour shedding, wages and labour control	1
Homelands, separate development, decentralisation and removals	1
Industrialisation, protection and industrial structure	1
Liberal vs revisionist: was apartheid functional or dysfunctional for capitalist growth?	1
The mine migrant labour system: origins, recruitment, foreign labour and stabilisation	1
Racial wage gaps, wage convergence and wage determination	1
Living standards, health and social policy	1

Work	As cited	Period	How used
Atkinson (2007)	Grosskopf (1932) Carnegie Commission report, Plattelandsverarming en plaasverlating	1932	Evidence on poor whites and the disappearance of white farm workers.
Author not named in text (MSc candidate (2012)	Journal of the Department of Agriculture (SA, 1920); Carnegie Commission (1932)	1920, 1932	Provide context on co-operative promotion and poor whiteism.
Houghton and Dagut (1973)	Carnegie Commission, The Poor White Problem in South Africa, Part I: Economic Report (Grosskopf chapter; Joint Findings)	1932	Provides estimates of rural impoverishment, farm mortgage debt and numbers of poor whites based on school questionnaires and census occupations.
Keegan (1985)	Carnegie Commission, Poor White Problem (Grosskopf, Rural Impoverishment and Rural Exodus, vol. 1)	1929-1930	Shows that sharecropping persisted illegally and evasion of the law continued into the 1920s-30s.
Schirmer (1999)	Carnegie Commission, The Poor White Problem in South Africa (Grosskopf report), Vol. 1, 1932	1932	Quoted as contemporary evidence that farmers preferred consumption or security to investment and that small farmers lacked capital.
Verhoef (2009)	Carnegie Commission report on the Poor White Problem (Grosskopf, Economic Report, 1932)	1932	Background on Afrikaner rural impoverishment and the poor white problem.