FARM TENANCY 9 1 



of the older States. There was also a decrease in tenancy percen- 

 tages in several of the newer States but the significance of the change 

 in these States is different from that in the older settled part of the 

 country. 



Tenanc}- reaches its highest point in the cotton belt. For instance in 

 Georgia two thirds of all farms are rented. The percentage is also high in 

 the corn belt ; in Illinois over two fifths of the farms are rented, and largely 

 in the best part of the State, 



It is, then, plain that the growth of tenancy in the United vStates has for 

 at least three decades been rapid. Before the year 1880, there had undoubt- 

 edly been a much less rapid growth, yet it had reached important propor- 

 tions nevertheless. The question may very properly be asked why so many 

 farms should be farmed by others than their owners. Especially is this 

 a pertinent question in view of the fact that within a half century the federal 

 government has disposed of immense tracts of public domain on terms 

 so favourable as to make ownership easy and the necessity of renting land 

 of a landlord remote. Several hundred million acres of land have within 

 a half century either been granted free of charge to the settler, or sold at 

 such low prices as to suggest a gift. And this plan of disposing of the land was 

 with the conscious idea of putting land into the hands of the men who 

 should acquire it for their own use. And yet upon much of the land given 

 awa3^ or sold for S 1-25 per acre during the seventies or the eighties, 

 are now to be found tenants, in many instances as man}^ tenants as 

 owners. 



The causes of this remarkable development of a tenant class, if class 

 it may be called, are complex. In the first place it may be remarked that 

 ver\' few American farmers prefer to be tenants rather than owners. So far 

 as the man on the farm is concerned he is either the owner or a prospective 

 owner. The young man expects to rent land, but always with the hope and 

 the expectation that the tenancy will lead to ownership. Farmers remain 

 tenants because they find the price of land high, or sometimes it may mean 

 that the price of the farm is high not so much because of high price per acre 

 as because it requires many acres to make an efficient unit. High price per 

 acre would rule in the case of truck farming land, in fruit land, irrigated 

 districts, or in general farm land near a great city. High cost of the farm 

 as a whole, due primarily to great size, would obtain in the wheat belt and 

 still more in the grazing belt. But whichever the cause, the fact remains 

 that it is no easy matter for a young man to gain possession of a farm worth 

 Sio,ooo to §20,000. Somebody must make a considerable payment on a 

 farm of this kind before the owner is willirg to take a mortgage for the 

 balance, or a bank is willing to advance the funds. 



Kearly two thirds of the farms rented are rented for a share of the pro- 

 duct. Out of each hundred farms, twenty-four are rented in whole or in 

 part on shares, and thirteen are rented for cash. The cash rent as used in 

 the census figures does not always means actual money, but instead signifies 

 some other form of fixed payment, such as a specified quantity of cotton. It 

 cannot be said that one form of rent payment is good and the other bad, 



