DECLINE OF LANDOWNING FARMERS 219 



by owners is farmed by them compulsorily, on account of the 

 failures of tenants and of inabiUty to replace them, and the 

 amount of land thus held by the owners has increased nearly 

 20 per cent in the last ten years. The small landowners have 

 in most instances been compelled to sell their land, and the 

 yeoman of Kent has practically disappeared." ^ 



Today practically all the farmers in England lease the land which 

 they occupy. The young man becomes a tenant farmer with the 

 expectation of remaining such all his life. When money has been 

 saved he looks for a larger farm where he may employ his surplus 

 funds, but very rarely does he even think of investing in land. 

 To an American this seems strange, and one may be tempted to 

 say that it is because there is no land on the market ; but while 

 there is much land which cannot be sold, there is always land for 

 sale in England. 



The writer has talked with many English farmers upon this 

 subject and has been told on every hand that they cannot afford 

 to "lock up their capital in land," they need it all for stocking 

 their farms. And this is not because the farmers are poorer than 

 American farmers but because land has long been worth very 

 much more, and from forty to fifty dollars an acre is required to 

 stock a farm in such a manner as will make it bring profitable 

 returns.^ It would not be far wrong to say that, with conditions as 

 they were before 1875, it required as much wealth to stock a 

 farm in England as it did to own and stock a farm of the same 

 size in most parts of the United States. If the farmer is to own 

 land he must, as a rule, reduce the scale of his operations ; for 

 when he invests in both land and stock the farm must be much 

 smaller than if he invests in the stock only and leases the land. 

 This is very undesirable, not because small farms are less profit- 

 able, though for some purposes they are, but because investments 

 in land do not yield more than 2I or 3 per cent, while good 

 farmers count on making 10 per cent on their investments in stock. 



The farmer who would buy land must not only be willing to 



* " Sketch of the Agriculture of Kent," p. 4, of author's reprint. 



* This is due partly to the fact that stock and machinery cost more ; for 

 example, eighty dollars is the ordinary price for a milk cow of common stock. 



