THE TENANT FARMS. 77 



in our manufacturing towns and cities, swarming in 

 poverty and wretchedness in tenement houses and 

 hovels, and in the tramps that fill the country. 



There is another stupendous evil that has grown 

 out of the developments of the last half century. In- 

 stead of being able to boast, as could our fathers, that 

 every man who tilled the soil was lord of the manor 

 he occupied, owning no master, the last census report 

 made a return of 1,024,701 tenant farms in our coun- 

 try in 1880. Since the taking of the census the in- 

 crease can not have been less than twenty-five per 

 cent., giving at this time not less than one and a 

 quarter millions of tenant farms in the United States. 



A comparison of this showing with the land hold- 

 ings of Great Britain and Ireland will help to a bet- 

 ter understanding of what these things import. The 

 very latest statistics give the total number of hold- 

 ings in England and Wales at 414,804 ; in Ireland, 

 at 574,222 ; in Scotland, at 80,101 : total, 1,069,127. 

 Showing, that in the whole of Great Britain and Ire- 

 land, counting all the holdings as tenant occupations, 

 which they are not, there are 200,000 less tenant 

 farms than in the United States. 



Among the owners of the tenant farms in our coun- 

 try are English, French, anti German capitalists, non- 

 residents, who have bought immense tracts of the rail- 

 road lands, and seized upon the alternate government 

 sections lying within their railroad purchases, and on 

 those tracts have commenced their bonanza opera- 

 tions, or planted their tenants on the American sys- 

 tem. Among others mentioned in the chapter on 

 bonanza farms, will be found the great German 



