58 LAND TENURE 



land have made the tenant's lot a harder one. Proprietors of large tracts have 

 also used indirect methods of pressure to force smaller owners to sell their 

 holdings. Seasonal depressions of crop prices throw thousands of mortgaged 

 home owners back into the ranks of tenants. Depleted farm life accelerates 

 the trend. 



"The witnesses testified to considerable friction between landlords and 

 tenants in this area. Oppressive tactics of landlords, in the form of unwar- 

 ranted evictions, use of force to intimidate renters, arbitrary requirements 

 in the matter of cropping contracts, threats to raise the rents where land taxes 

 were involved if elections should carry in favor of the tax, and 'keeping the 

 tenants on the move' when their political convictions might differ from the 

 landlord's were among the injustices named. Some of these were considered 

 general; others much less so. 



"Tenants have been known to destroy the landlords' property and to 

 foul the land by sowing Johnson grass, a noxious growth among cotton and 

 grain crops. They have held mass-meetings of protest against rises in rent. 

 They have held meetings for the purpose of declaring moratoriums. Threats 

 of violence, and even the whipping of other tenants who had accepted increases 

 in rents have been resorted to. 



"It was a great day for the radical tenants when their representatives 

 were permitted to take the stand and enter upon the records their side and 

 their story of the renters' movement. From the mass of evidence introduced, 

 some general truths were gleaned. Discontent of the producing classes has 

 been growing in the Southwest for several years. It changed into a class- 

 conscious movement in 1911 when the Renters' Union of America was founded. 

 This organization followed close upon a series of disturbances in Oklahoma 

 and Texas. The cause of the disturbances appeared to he in the movement on 

 the part of the landlords to raise the rents above the traditional one-third of 

 the grain and one-fourth of the cotton for the share of the landlord when he 

 furnishes only land and house. 



"Notwithstanding this effort at resistance the movement to increase the 

 landlord's share of the crops has been steady, and several thousand tenants 

 have been required to pay the landlords as high as one-third of the cotton 

 instead of one-fourth, or to pay cash rent in addition to the share rent. A few 

 landlords have been able to charge as high as 40 per cent of the crop for 

 their share. 



"It was the agitation of the land question by this organization that un- 

 doubtedly made it possible for James E. Ferguson to become the present 

 governor of Texas. He swept aside all opposition and was elected by an over- 

 whelming vote. One of the main planks in the governor's platform was to 

 restrict the landlords' share of the rents by law. The governor testified that 

 the rent plank was of great assistance in making him governor. On the stand 

 he defended this plank, which has since become a law. He maintained that the 

 cash system of renting land in the Southwest is unfair, because it places the 

 burden of risk upon the tenant and often bankrupts him in the attempt to 

 pay the landlord's share . . . 



"It was urged that the holdings of land for speculative purposes handicaps 

 any effort to break the strangle hold of landlordism. It was interesting to 

 note that some witnesses looked to the advent of corporation farming as the 

 most efficient farming of the future. It was shown how the corporation or the 

 large owner tends toward the factory idea of production. Should large farms 

 be conducted on system methods by big capital, undoubtedly many tenant 

 farmers of to-day would become wage hands. 



"The Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company was pointed to as an example 

 of the capital system. This company, which is controlled by the Charles P. 

 Taft interests, is a huge industrial enterprise of 80,000 acres on which lives a 

 population of 4,000 souls. This company, through its associated corporations 



