4o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



FARM TENANCY A PROBLEM IN AMERICAN 



AGRICULTURE 



By Professor HOMER C. PRICE 



OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY 



THE per cent, of American farms operated by owners is constantly 

 decreasing. The census for 1900 shows that over one third of 

 the farms are operated by tenants and that in the last twenty years the 

 per cent, has risen from 25.5 in 1880 to 35.3 in 1900. 



This tendency toward tenancy has been and is viewed with alarm 

 by the thoughtful American farmer. One of the boasts of American 

 life has been the independence of ownership of its people. American 

 agriculture in particular has been made up of a class owning their 

 own farms. Land has been in greater abundance than labor or capital 

 and has been dealt out with a lavish hand by the government. Since 

 1863, 233,043,939 acres of land have been given away in homesteads 

 of 160 acres each, under the " Homestead Act" of 1862. For the man 

 who wanted a farm there has been an opportunity to get one for taking 

 it up and establishing a home. And the distribution of this land has 

 not been confined to any one year, but quite uniformly distributed 

 throughout the last forty years, and since 1900 more land has been 

 given away by the homestead entries than ever before, as shown by 

 the following statistics : 



Public Lands of the United States taken up in Homestead Grants 



since 1900 

 Year Acres 



1900 8,478,400 



1901 9,479,275 



1902 14,033,246 



1903 11,193,120 



1904 10,171,266 



With these large areas of public lands being given away each year, 

 and with a farming population that is constantly decreasing as com- 

 pared with the population engaged in other occupations, why should 

 the farmers of our country be losing the titles to their farms? Is it 

 a harbinger of an American peasantry, and are we drifting toward 

 landlordism? When compared with European countries, the United 

 States is neither first nor last in the matter of tenancy of her farm 

 lands. In Germany 12.38 of the farm lands are cultivated by tenants, 

 in England 86 per cent., in France 47.2 per cent, and in the United 

 States 23.3 per cent, of the total farm lands. 



The distribution of this tenancy in the United States varies greatly, 

 depending upon geographical location. 



