How did most people in the south earn a living?

In the southern United States, the majority of the population was employed in agricultural and livestock farming tasks, that is, in rural work. Although a large number of landowners had extensive tracts of land and slave labor to exploit them, the majority of the southern population was not in this situation, but had small fields, which they had to cultivate and harvest themselves to be able to subsist.

hey i did something like that before, what is the quesiton?