Seventy-Thikd Annual Repokt 1265 



As a result of clieap lands and an inability to apply city 

 methods to the farm, the business of producing crops has gen- 

 erally become the work of the family for v/hich no pay roll or 

 salary sheet is made out. If anything remains over after the 

 necessary cash living expenses are paid it is reckoned as profit. 

 N'o salary is paid to the fanner and his family, if so, he would 

 frequently find himself insolvent. Under this system ^he 

 prudent have paid for fanns and gained a comfortable living. 



The heavy drain upon the country for its best blood to what 

 seemed more attractive in the city has left many fathers and 

 mothers alone at an age when they were no longer fitted to carry 

 the burden of the farm. Hard work in early life had made the 

 diy of yotirement to the local town look bright. And the renter 

 took his place. 'Now the so-called tenant system is in the minds 

 of m.en a symbol of a degenerated agriculture, and I must confess 

 that it has as a rule been true. 



The facts are that farm rental is no more degenerate in 

 principle than the ownership of a building by one man and its 

 occupancy by another; the tenant in some way having paid the 

 owner of the building a fair value for its use. We have deplored 

 tenantry and prayed for the day when prosperity would again 

 come to the open country and the owner would become the occu- 

 pant of the land. 



I venture a prophecy that the millennium will never come and 

 furthennore that tenantry may increase. Tenantry leaves a bad- 

 taste not because the thing itself is wrong but because it has de- 

 veloped through unfortunate causes. Something like this per- 

 haps: The o\vner who had developed his farm himself and paid 

 for it through certain methods all his own, could not endure the 

 methods of another no matter how good, and being forced to leave 

 the farm through sheer lack of strength he had a feeling of 

 antagonism to the situation. The result was therefore one of 

 competition instead of cooperation ending in a degenerate farm, 

 a lack of interest in the church and school and a general disloca- 

 tion of the community. 



The system of tenantry is here because the farm as a business 

 will not pay cash for the labor and leave a balance. The farm 

 units are too small to pay for supervision and so the farmer must 



