144 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



are only a few of the many reasons given for the unprofitableness 

 of the small farm. 



The sharing of the expenses of carrying on a farm business 

 between two parties, one furnishing the land factor and the other 

 the labor and equipment, has afforded a successful farm business 

 in the past and still has merits for the future. We find nothing 

 to justify the belief that the landlord's share is to grow larger to 

 the disadvantage of the tenant through the income-absorbing 

 power of land. Landlords will doubtless always secure the re- 

 turns which are possible to them through owning advantageous 

 differentials in land. The differentials tend to become accen- 

 tuated with the increase in price of farm products, but the means 

 have not yet been shown whereby the landlord may wrest away 

 from the renter any share to which this renter is properly 

 entitled. 



Tenancy, it may be said in conclusion, has stood the test of 

 experience. We do not mean by this every tenancy system 

 absentee landlordism, or rack renting, for example but good 

 systems have survived. The greatest system of farming in the 

 world measured by the test of endurance is a tenant system. 

 English farming, where all but 4 or 5 per cent, are tenants, has 

 given us our leading types of livestock, our best farm practices, 

 such as marling, drainage and rotations and the measure in acres 

 of our customary farm. On the other hand, among the farm- 

 owning peasants of Continental Europe (other than the ex- 

 tremely recent notion of cooperation) scarcely a single fruitful 

 farm notion has developed. Few farm animals or practices 

 have been originated. Women customarily do the farm work 

 and the peasant himself is frequently unable to speak the 

 language of the country in which he lives. The test of a system 

 of agriculture is the character of its professional representatives, 

 and without doubt the British farmer, though a tenant, ranks 

 high among farmers everywhere. The constantly enlarging 

 growth in numbers of population in this country makes ever- 

 increasing demands upon the output from the farms. This in- 

 evitably leads to intensive cultivation with all its expensiveness 

 in land, equipment, and labor. It seems almost unthinkable 

 under these circumstances that a normal tenancy system should 

 not develop here as in England. 



