AND WHERE TO FI1JD ONE. 103 



CHAPTER Y. 



Exhausted Farms always to be had Thriving Tenants Owners 

 anxious to sell Bartering Farms A lucky Beginner City 

 Owners Taking Advice Where to Search Saving a poor 

 Farm Struggling with limited Means A Cry from a Working 

 Man. 



THE discussions quoted in the preceding chapters, 

 though very clear and full, are far from exhausting 

 the subject. There are multitudes of farms in all 

 the Atlantic States whose owners have never con 

 templated working them. Some purchased as an 

 investment, thinking farm land the safest property 

 to hold. They rented them for a succession of years 

 to tenants who skinned them with merciless assidu 

 ity, making them a heavier burthen to their owners 

 the longer they held them. Year by year they thus 

 became poorer and less productive. If rented on 

 shares, as is generally the case, the tenants appro 

 priated most of the product, the owners getting 

 little or nothing. The latter lived away off in some 

 distant city ; they rarely visited their country prop 

 erty ; they had neither taste nor opportunity for 

 seeing whether it was handled wisely or honestly ; 

 the tenants were thus left to exhaust the land as 

 rapidly as they could, and were depended on to 

 make report, at the year s end, of what was 



