56 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



leached and washed away. Tenancy is frequently the result of 

 destroying the fertility of the land. When the land will not 

 produce enough to provide a living, the farmer loses his farm. 

 Usually, if he doesn't drift to the city to look for a job, he goes 

 to work for another farmer as a tenant. Tenancy today is most 

 widely spread in the South, where there are 1,831,000 farm 

 tenants. 50 In Iowa, the foremost agricultural state in the Union, 

 49.6 per cent of the farmers are now tenants. 51 Approximately 

 half of the $770,000,000 which corporations have invested in 

 land mortgages is concentrated in the West North Central 

 States. And a few generations ago this was the promised land 

 to which people flocked to carve out farms of their own. 52 



In 1930, 431,587,424 acres of farm land were leased by 

 tenants. This means that 43.7 per cent of all the farm acreage 

 in the United States was farmed by tenants. 53 To put it an' 

 other way, 52.8 per cent of all the farmers in the United 

 States leased some land to farm in 1930. At the same time, 

 42.4 per cent of all the farmers leased all the land they farmed. 



The early principle of American agriculture was that a 

 man could have land of his own. From the beginning of Ameri' 

 can history, however, there has been a problem of tenancy in 

 the settled regions. In 1678 the people of Deerfield, Massachu' 

 setts, were complaining, "You may be pleased to know that 

 the very principle & best of the land; the best for soile; the 

 best for situation; as lying in y e centre & midle of the town: 

 & as to quantity, nere half, belongs unto eight or 9 proprietors 

 each and every of which, are never like to come to a settle 

 ment amongst us, which we have formerly found grievous & 

 doe Judge for the future will be found intolerable if not 

 altered/ 154 



50 Farm Tenancy, Report of the President's Committee, United States Govern' 

 ment Printing Office, Washington, February, 1937, p. 35. 



51 Ibid., p. 96. 



"National Resources Board Report, op. cit., p. 192. 



58 Ibid., p. 191. 



54 Faulkner, op. cit., pp. 136-137. 



