LANDLORDS AND TENANTS 



cult for the succeeding generations of farmers to 

 acquire the ownership of land. Hence with the 

 progress of society the tenant problem becomes 

 more general as well as more difficult to solve. 



England is preeminently the land of tenant 

 farmers. Less than fourteen per cent, of the 

 farm land of that country is reported as oper- 

 ated by its owners, and in most cases such land 

 is operated by hired farmers, or bailiffs as they 

 are called. About eighty-six per cent, of the 

 farm land of England is operated by tenants who 

 pay a fixed rent for its use. Share tenancy is 

 not practised in England. 



It was more than a century ago that the prog- 

 ress of English industrial society had reached the 

 stage of development where intensive agriculture 

 was socially desirable, and also profitable to the 

 farmers where their relations to the land were so 

 adjusted as to guarantee to them just returns 

 upon their investments. The earliest attempts at 

 improving the agriculture of the country at once 

 brought forward the tenant problem. In 1649, 

 Walter Blith wrote i 1 "If a tenant be at ever so 

 great pains or cost for improving of his land, he 

 doth thereby but occasion a great rack upon him- 

 self, or else invest his landlord with his cost and 

 labor gratis, or at best lies at his landlord's mercy 

 for requital, which occasions a neglect of good 



^Thorold Rogers, Work and Wages, pp. 458-459. 

 287 



