146 RURAL MlCHIGAJs 



vantages. Some preliminary work has been done 

 in this direction, but no definite project has as yet 

 (October, 1920) been undertaken. As yet the idea 

 of exploitation rather than that of reconstruction 

 is the common conception, and the State has done 

 very little to promote a different policy. 



The United States Census of 1910 indicates that 

 the number of farms operated by their owners was 

 172,310; by managers, 1,961 ; and by tenants, 32,689. 

 This signifies that something less than one-fifth of 

 the operators were tenants. Ten years later, before 

 the publication of the results of the fourteenth cen- 

 sus as related to farm tenure, a study made by the 

 ]\[ichigan State Farm Bureau indicated that tenancy 

 of farms in Michigan had increased 2 per cent in 

 the interval. This survey covered 52,561 farms in 

 thirty counties. In these thirty counties the number 

 of rented farms was 9,637, while farms operated 

 by their owners numbered 42,92-1. The increase in 

 farm tenancy the Bureau attributed to the inade- 

 quacy of long-time rural credits which permitted 

 the purchase of farms without assuming intolerable 

 burden of debt, a disproportionate rise in the price 

 of country real estate as compared with economic 

 value, lack of cooperation "which takes .the extreme 

 elements of chance out of farming," and the greater 

 attractiveness of city life. Of the thirty counties, 

 it was found that tenancy was actually increasing 

 in eighteen, unchanged in six and decreasing in six. 

 The counties surveyed were said to be well distributed 

 throughout the State. The survey elicited the fact 



