REGION OF DISCONTENT I? 



cost of threshing and to deliver the grain to the elevator free of charge. 

 Owners who furnished teams or other equipment for their tenants took 

 a correspondingly larger share of the crop. Cash rentals, which were very 

 common, ranged from $2 to $5 or $6 an acre, depending upon the pro- 

 ductiveness of the land. Sometimes land on which crops were raised was 

 rented for a share of the crop, while meadow or pasture land on the same 

 farm was rented at so much per acre. Cash tenants complained bitterly 

 that their rents were raised much more rapidly than the rise in price of 

 farm products justified and that they were certain to get a raise in rent if 

 they exerted themselves to build up a farm in order to make it pay. 26 



While some landlords were benevolent and thoughtful, others cared 

 little for their tenants' welfare. Most landlords insisted on a short-term 

 lease, usually good for only one year. The tenants, landlords held, were 

 an inferior lot as a whole and not to be trusted. The only way an owner 

 could protect his farm was to be able to get rid of a poor tenant in the 

 briefest possible time. The one-year tenant, however, condemned to uncer- 

 tainty of tenure and to frequent moving, tried to get all he could out of 

 the land while he was on it and to give to it the least possible attention in 

 return. Rented farms were often distinguished by their poorly kept build- 

 ings, their deepening gullies, and their infertile acres. Landlords were 

 frequently short-sighted along other lines also. They objected to making 

 the improvements necessary to enable their tenants to farm at a profit. 

 Or, if they consented grudgingly to erect buildings and fences and to lay 

 tile for drainage, they might require the tenant to board the carpenters 

 and other workmen free of charge, not to mention hauling in the needed 

 materials and filling up the ditches after the tile had been laid. 27 



In quality the tenant farmers varied widely. In spite of the handicaps 

 under which they labored, many of them were in reality good farmers. 

 Some had once been farm laborers and by saving their wages had accu- 

 mulated enough capital to start in as tenant farmers. Such persons ex- 

 pected to emerge eventually as farm owners and in many instances did 

 so. A few had fallen in the economic scale, whether from bad luck or bad 

 farming or bad management, and had become tenants where once they 



26. Wallaces' Farmer, XXXIII (November 13, 1908), p. 1388; XXXV (September 

 9, 1910), p. 1184. 



27. Ibid., XXXIII (December 18, 1908), p. 1582. 



