98 UNITED STATES - AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY IX GENERAL 



cause so often he is forced to sell almost immediately. In the South the cot- 

 ton tenant is nearly always in debt for the supplies of the 3'ear, and his obli- 

 gations are due i October, or i November. This means that he must sell 

 his cotton almost at the earliest possible moment after it is harvested. In 

 farmers' organizations the tenants are very poorly represented. An inves- 

 tigation made a 3'ear ago showed that in sections of the grain belt, where 

 tenants are almost as numerous as owners and substantially always 

 grain sellers, the membership in co-operative companies was but one fourth 

 tenants. This means that only half as high a proportion of tenants as 

 owners belonged to the marketing organizations. In other words while ten- 

 ants seU more grain than owners, there are three owners to one tenant in 

 the selling company. 



Tenants as a class are seldom found in organizations. They do not 

 join since they are so likely to move, or on account of lack of mone}', or 

 again on account of indifference. 



Tenants are poor community members. It is not their fault alto- 

 gether but rather the fault of the system. They cannot be good community 

 members in very solid ways since that implies investment, and for a tenant 

 to invest in schools, roads or churches means an investment for which he 

 gets no title. When a farm owner sells out, he sells his right to community 

 investments along with the farm. When a tenant moves he takes his per- 

 sonal property along with him, and if he has any interest in community 

 property he leaves it behind. As a result he is usually careful that little 

 is created to be so left. 



§ 6. The outlook. 



What then is the outlook ? Is America doomed to become a nation of 

 landlords and tenants ? True, the proportion of tenants is on the increase, but 

 not in quite all sections. Neither is there an increase in tenancy in all 

 kinds of farming. Another fact that is fairly encouraging is that along with 

 the increase in tenancy there is little tendency toward centralization in land 

 ownership. In about 60 per Cent, of the instances of tenanc}^ the owner of 

 the farm owns but the one. And moreover the tenant farms differ little 

 in size from owned farms. Thus landlords own but little more land than is 

 owned by an equal number of landowning farmers. Of course there are 

 many important and unfortunate exceptions to this. Such exceptions 

 are found oftener than an^'where else in the cotton belt, where the owner- 

 ship of several farms by one man is not uncommon. 



Tenancy has often been called a step in the agricultural ladder. The 

 figure of speech is a ver\' good one, since the majorit}' of tenants rise 

 to owrership. However the step is a more difficult one to take now than it 

 was a decade or a quarter century ago. Should it continue to become more 

 difficult for another generation, we must eventually face the fact of a tenant 



