138 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



owners to sell out and go to newer regions in the United States 

 and Canada where several times the amount they owned can be 

 purchased for what they received. In the Southeastern States 

 it is the outcome of the dependency of agriculture on an ignorant, 

 colored, labor population. 



Further, it is likely that when the possibility of procuring 

 cheap land in the United States and Canada has passed farmers 

 in the improved agricultural regions will cease to sell to neigh- 

 boring farmers. When this point is reached, and when, also, 

 estates begin to be divided among the descendants of present 

 farmers, we may expect to see the cessation of the consolidation 

 tendency and the development of small and intensive farming. 



Farms are almost always leased in Great Britain. In France 

 77.6 per cent., and in Germany 83.6 per cent, of the farmers own 

 all or a part of their farms, while in the United States 35.3 per 

 cent, are tenants. 



There are two opposing views as to the effects of tenant farm- 

 ing and small proprietorship. 



1. Young and Mill held that small proprietors form the basis 

 of individual prosperity, independence, and well being. Young, 

 who traveled through Europe in 1787-8, and who believed in 

 large agriculture, testified that while there was much poor farm- 

 ing on small properties, "yet the industry of the possessors was 

 so conspicuous and meritorious that no commendation would be 

 too great for it. It was sufficient to prove that property in land 

 is, of all others, the most active instigator to severe and incessant 

 labor. ' ' He thinks the way to get mountains farmed to the very 

 top is to let them out as property to small owners. 



Mill reviewed the facts and literature of the continental method 

 of small holdings as opposed to the English practice of large 

 estates in his attempt to get England to see the mistake and loss 

 incident to its practice. He believed the evidence proved that 

 peasant properties conduced to the moral and social welfare of 

 the laboring class by increasing their industry to what a Swiss 

 statistical writer described as "almost superhuman industry"; 

 that territorial arrangement is "an instrument of popular edu- 

 cation." "The mental faculties will be most developed where 

 they are most exercised; and what gives more exercise to them 

 than the having multitudes of interests, none of which can be 



