378 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



to the laws of the land, and the laws of the land are then made 

 more severe in order to control the " tenant right." 1 



Even where the class antagonism is not carried to this extreme, 

 there is a wasteful expenditure of human energy in the efforts 

 of one class to circumvent the other, and the attractiveness and 

 dignity of rural life are destroyed by the jealousy and rancor 

 thus created. 



In this country we are accustomed to look with disfavor upon 

 any system of tenancy ; but whatever may be said of tenancy 

 as such, there is not the slightest doubt that the worst possible 

 system is that under which the landowner lives at a distance 

 and maintains no connection with the land except as a receiver 

 of rent. Where the landlord lives upon his own estate and takes 

 an interest in it, the worst features of tenancy disappear. The 

 landowner's interest in his own home creates in him an attitude 

 toward the rural neighborhood which is quite different from that 

 of the absentee. 



The resident landlord as leader. Besides, there are some ad- 

 vantages in a system which gives the large landowner a chance 

 to devote his time to broad schemes of improvement while his 

 tenants are completely occupied with the immediate problem 

 of growing crops. This is the one serious disadvantage of the 

 American type of agriculture under which the land is owned by 

 small- or medium-scale farmers who do their own work. No one 

 has the time or the surplus capital to carry on elaborate experi- 

 menting, extensive drainage operations, or similar large-scale 

 improvements. Under the English system the large landed 

 proprietors have led in most of these progressive movements, 



1 In some parts of France, under the old regime, the tenants would combine 

 to fix rents and to prevent newcomers from renting land. The tenant would 

 even sell his " right," or bequeath it to his son, very much as though he owned 

 the land. Any one else who would lease the land so bequeathed, or interfere 

 with the son's possession, would be liable to injury or murder. The laws of the 

 country were ineffective against this determined stand of the tenants. 



