LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE 61 



pioneer of a new industry, an industry which 

 is just beginning to find its feet after a hun- 

 dred years of subsidy. 



^JP 7|? VJC VjC 3fc 



There is no subsidy awaiting the Farmer of 

 To-morrow. And, what is more, he must to- 

 day compete with the Farmer of Yesterday, 

 the pioneers and the sons of pioneers and the 

 late-coming hordes who bought land on the 

 basis of the amount of labor required to subdue 

 it not on the ultimate basis of the producing 

 power of the land itself. It would be idle to 

 attempt to arrive at a definite percentage of 

 the Farmers of Yesterday who are surviving 

 to see the old order changing. It is suggested 

 that with the beginning of the second decade 

 of the present century upward of seventy per 

 cent, of the competitors our modern Jere- 

 miahs must face in the business of producing 

 food have not yet come to the realization of 

 what is meant by the term "rent." Even the 

 item of "tenants" enumerated in the 1910 

 census returns as comprising thirty-seven per 

 cent, of our 6,340,000 farmers, means little 

 or nothing in this connection, because the old 

 system of farming on "shares" is still the rule 

 between landlord and tenant. 



