AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



more, and sometimes even less than the face of 

 the mortgage. To pay the interest was a great 

 burden, and many farmers were forced to sell, 

 often for little more than enough to pay the mort- 

 gages. Thus it is seen that while the ultimate 

 result of rising prices is to make it harder to 

 acquire landownership, the immediate result may 

 be the opposite, and again, that while cheap land 

 is conducive to landownership, the immediate 

 effect of a lowering of land values is to reduce 

 many landowning farmers, who have encumbered 

 their lands with mortgages as a means of buying 

 land, to the ranks of the tenant class. 



In the northern states there seems to be some 

 relation at the present time, between the value of 

 farms and the percentage of tenancy. This rela- 

 tion is shown in the following table which gives 

 the average value per farm (of farm land and 

 improvements, including buildings), and the per- 

 centages of tenancy, in the North Atlantic and 

 North Central divisions : 



TABLE n. THE VALUE OF FARMS AND THE PERCENTAGE OF 



TENANCY IN THE NORTHERN DIVISIONS 



AND STATES, IN igoo. 1 



Geographical Divisions Percentage Average Value 



and States of Tenancy of Farms 



North Atlantic 20.8 $3,656 



New Jersey 29.9 4,693 



Pennsylvania 26.0 4,006 



New York 23.9 3,917 



1 Twelfth Census, Vol. V, Tables 5 and 12. 

 246 



