5o6 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



produced by tenants for the market is still higher. For example, 

 they grow about 2 5 per cent more than their proportion of potatoes, 

 and almost double their proportion of sweet potatoes. Tomatoes 

 and melons are likewise favorite crops among tenants, and in 

 certain districts especially adapted to their growth, as southwestern 

 New Jersey, about half of the total crop is grown by tenants. 

 In making a considerable number of tests on this subject not 

 an exception was found ; the vegetable-growing business seems to 

 be especially adapted to tenant farming. 



Since 1880, the date when tenancy statistics were first gathered, 

 the percentage of tenancy for the North Atlantic states has been 

 low in comparison with that for the whole country in fact, 

 lower than for any other group except the extreme West. In the 

 Western division conditions may properly be considered abnormal 

 on account of the presence of many newly developed farms, and 

 especially because so many of these have been taken recently from 

 the public domain. In the North Atlantic states, however, the 

 term " abnormal " hardly applies, since farm land was long ago 

 brought into use, and the readjustments which have been in 

 progress are no greater than may be expected at any time. 

 Especially is this true in view of the fact that the free land of the 

 West was pretty well gone by the year 1880. For twenty years 

 following 1880 the proportion of tenancy not only increased, but 

 the increase was shared by every one of the five geographical 

 divisions and by almost every state. In New England the propor- 

 tion of tenancy has been low throughout, but in 1900 it could be 

 said that there had been an important increase during each of the 

 preceding two decades. In the North Atlantic group during that 

 time about one farm in twenty had been taken from the category 

 of ownership and added to that of tenancy. The portents were 

 ominous. It was freely predicted that the fifth act of the play 

 would represent the farmer divorced from his land. True a very 

 few states, three New England states, for example, had shown 

 for one or both of the decades preceding a slight tendency down- 

 ward in the rate of tenancy, but only one of them had a smaller 

 proportion than at the beginning of the period, and that an 

 unimportant amount. Now, at the end of another ten years. 



