TENANCY IN THE UNITED STATES 495 



blacks, who, under such circumstances, work for wages during a part of the 

 year on the plantation cultivated by their landlord. If the white landlords 

 arrive at independence from debt before the black tenants do, as it may be 

 assumed that they will, if either class is to improve, it seems likely that the 

 blacks will see a service for wages encroaching upon the tenant system. . , . 



The plantation owners, most of whom are landlords, often live in towns, 

 having abandoned their plantations to irresponsible tenants, who care to work 

 only indifferently and for a bare subsistence of the poorest sort. A tenant 

 whose crop by chance more than suffices to meet his obligations will pick 

 enough cotton to discharge his debts to the landlord and the merchant, and 

 abandon the remainder, knowing that he can live on the next crop until it is 

 harvested. The merchant who has a lien on his share of the crop pays his 

 taxes, buries his wife or child, buys him a mule if he needs one, and feeds and 

 clothes him and his family. 



Farm tenants would be laborers on farms or elsewhere if they 

 were not such tenants. As far as they are concerned their ten- 

 ancy, outside of the South, is a distinct advantage. The require- 

 ments of tenancy and of self-directed labor are educational, and the 

 tenant is better off as a tenant than he was or would be as a farm 

 laborer. But as compared with ownership, farm tenancy represents 

 a loss to society. Its agriculture is inferior, and the independence 

 of the owner is poorly replaced by the tenant proprietorship. 



Farms are available for tenant proprietorship for various reasons. 

 Some of the older farmers have accumulated sufficient property to 

 enable them to move to towns ; and this they desire to do for the 

 purpose of educating children, and also because they, and espe- 

 cially their wives and children, find town life more agreeable than 

 life on a farm, while it may increase their social standing. This 

 has taken place more or less throughout the entire North. In 

 these cases the farmers leave their farms in the hands of their 

 sons, or persons who have been farm laborers, as tenants. 



The result of inquiries in some quarters is that the increase of 

 farm tenancy is a reaction from the cultivation of too large farms. 

 The older farmers find that the large farms make too great a 

 demand upon them after sons, grown to manhood, have gone to 

 towns or else possess farms of their own ; and if an entire farm 

 is not divided into several tenancies, a portion of it is placed in 

 the possession of a tenant, while the owner continues to work 

 the other portion himself. 



