728 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



cent of farm families are tenants ; in Maine, 7 per cent ; in 

 Connecticut, 17 per cent; and in New Hampshire, 10 per cent. 

 In the single state of Illinois there are nearly four times as many 

 farm tenants as in all New England. In Minnesota the best 

 and most prosperous counties show the largest actual and relative 

 number of tenants. In the counties with the smallest ratio of 

 mortgage foreclosures, the percentage of tenants is greatest ; and 

 relatively few tenants are found in counties where the ratio of 

 mortgage foreclosures is large. Probably no one would den) that 

 the conditions are more favorable to agricultural success in the 

 North Central than in the North Atlantic states. Yet in ten 

 years, 1880-1890, the number of farms cultivated by others 

 than their owners increased 23 per cent in the former and 

 but 9 per cent in the latter. During the same decade the net 

 gain in the number of rented farms in the New England States 

 was but 58, and in each of four of these states the number 

 was less at the end than at the beginning of the period. The 

 obvious explanation of this condition of affairs is that tenants 

 naturally drift to the best farming sections, for it is in the best 

 sections that farmers become prosperous enough to retire and 

 lease their farms. The important fact to which attention is here 

 directed is, then, that farm tenants are most numerous where the 

 conditions are most favorable to their becoming farm owners. 



Not only is it possible for tenants to rise to farm ownership, 

 but there is positive evidence that this is just what is taking 

 place at the present time. For example, in Minnesota one out 

 of every nine farm tenants rises to ownership each year, and one 

 out of every four of the most efficient. That is, of the 17,982 

 tenants in Minnesota, more than 2000 annually rise to owner- 

 ship. Moreover, 94 per cent of those who have lost farms by 

 mortgage foreclosures in that state have been able in a short time 

 to regain their earlier condition as farm owners. In Minnesota, 

 therefore, " The growth of tenancy ... is part of a movement 

 lifting a large number of people by slow and sure stages from 

 small beginnings to independence on the farm." Upon this 

 subject President Beardshear of Iowa Agricultural College writes 

 me as follows : 



