Independent Farmer Becoming Tenant. 109 



seems to be left in the agricultural community. They 

 endure wrongs without a murmur, -compared to which 

 those of 1776 were mere shadows. 



Mr. W. J. Ghent does not see with Mr. Boutwell's 

 eyes. In his book, ''Our Benevolent Feudalism," occur 

 these sentences: "The subject of the changing status of 

 the farmer — a change which involves his ultimate reduc- 

 tion to the sixteenth century level— is too large to receive 

 adecjuate treatment in these pages." 



"In most ages the working farmer has been the dupe 

 and prey of the rest of mankind. Now by force and now 

 by cajolery, as social customs and political institutions 

 change, he has been made to produce the food by which 

 the race lives, and the share of his product which he has 

 been permitted to keep for himself has always been piti- 

 fullv small. Whether Roman slave, Frankish serf or 

 English villain; whether the so-called 'independent' 

 farmer of a free democracy or the ryot of a Hindu 

 prince, the general rule holds good." 



"Xeither do small holdings in agriculture mean eco- 

 nomic independence. As the late census reveals, they 

 mean tenantry. The proportion of farms operated by 

 owners is decreasing; tenantry is becoming more and 

 more common, and so is salaried management of great 

 estates. Of the 5,739,657 farms of the nation, tenants 

 now operate 2,026,286. Owners operated 74.5% of all 

 farms in 1880; 76.6% in 1890; 64.7% in 1900. The ten- 

 dency is general, and applies to all sections." 



' ' This remarkable growth of tenantry would be consid- 

 ered in any other than our own complacent days as an 

 alarming, even an appalling fact." 



How far the process of reducing the farmer to the 

 position of mere tenant has gone in twenty years we show 

 by computations from census figures. We present the 



