MEANS OF ACQUIRING LAND 



being given to secure the loan. This enables the 

 farmer to buy land much sooner than he could 

 if he were required to save the entire amount be- 

 fore making the purchase. Where too high a 

 rate of interest is not charged, it is often more 

 desirable to pay interest than to pay rent ; for the 

 difficulty of adjusting the relations between land- 

 lord and tenant is in this way removed, and the 

 farmer is free to improve the land as he chooses, 

 knowing the benefits will be his own. 



A study of the mortgage indebtedness of farm- 

 ers in the United States, in 1890, showed that 

 1 8.6 per cent, of all the farm families occupied 

 encumbered farms. The total encumbrance of 

 farm homes amounted to $1,085,995,960, which 

 was thirty-five per cent, of the total value of the 

 encumbered farms, and 8.2 per cent, of the total 

 value of all farms. 1 An investigation of the dis- 

 tribution of farm mortgages 2 showed that 

 throughout the southern states where the percent- 

 age of tenancy was very high, the percentage of 

 encumbered farms was very low; that the six 

 states having the highest encumbrance on farms 

 were New York, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, 

 and Pennsylvania ; the total encumbrance of these 

 states being $553,964,594, or 51 per cent, of the 

 total for the United States; yet with this high 

 total encumbrance, the mortgages represented 



1 Eleventh Census, Report on Farms and Homes, p. 58. 



2 Ibid., pp. 58, 66, C 9 . 



219 



