The Tariff and the Farmer. 25 



mortgages on farms had been largely wiped out. That 

 was talk for political effect. When the census report of 

 1900 came to hand, a year or two later, taken and made 

 up by Republican officials, it was seen that a vast num- 

 ber of farms were either mortgaged or hired. The total 

 number of farms was given as 5,698,901. Of these about 

 3,643,684 were owned by those who tilled them, but 1,094,- 

 573 were mortgaged, something less than a third. Either 

 to defeat comparison, or some other unknown reason, the 

 returns for 1900 were put in such a way that it could not 

 be ascertained whether or not there had been an increase 

 in the number of mortgaged farms. 



The number of hired farms was 2,013,903. That is, 

 more than half the farms in the United States were, by 

 the census returns of 1900, shown to be either mortgaged 

 or hired. Of hired farms there had been an increase in 

 twentv vears, 1880-1900, of 97%, against an increase in 

 ownership of 24%. At that rate of increase in forty 

 years more, tenant farming or landlordism would be well 

 nigh universal. Few men would then own the land they 



tilled. 



But it is in the older portions of the Union, where 

 cheap new land with its virgin fertility has not obscured 

 the situation, that the trend of the times is most surely 

 indicated. In the North Atlantic section there has been 

 an actual loss in ownership of farms by those who tilled 

 them of eight per cent., and of those who owned the 

 farms they tilled thirty-eight per cent, were mortgaged. 

 In the same twenty years there has been an increase 

 in hired farms of twenty-six per cent. Now what is 

 the significance of a great number of mortgaged farms 

 and the rapid increase of hired farms f If the business 

 was profitable why should not the man who hired a farm 



