422 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



of the farms operated by owners were mortgaged. Without re- 

 sorting to the historical method it would have been impossible 

 to know whether the forces making for tenancy were overbalanc- 

 ing the forces making for ownership, or vice versa. It might 

 be inferred by one viewing these facts without this historical 

 setting that ownership had once been universal and that the 

 owners had lost money, mortgaged their farms, lost their titles 

 to the land, and become tenant farmers. On the other hand, one 

 might infer that farmers were using tenancy and the mortgage 

 as means of making transition from landless laborers to the 

 free ownership of land. This illustration is to the point because 

 inferences were drawn in 1880 when statistics of land tenure 

 were collected for the first time. 



At the present time, with the changes of thirty years recorded 

 at ten-year intervals, it is possible to demonstrate clearly the 

 trend of affairs during that period, and to describe many of the 

 forces which have been operating. The available materials show 

 that young men do very generally rise through the successive 

 stages of tenant farmers and mortgaged owners to the free own- 

 ership of farms, but the data show also that there has been a 

 retardation in this movement and that longer time is required 

 to make this movement recently than in earlier years. The 

 census data for 1890 and for 1900 show that older farmers are 

 generally owners, while tenancy is most common among young 

 farmers. By comparing the data for the two periods, it be- 

 comes clear that some force is retarding the movement from 

 tenancy to ownership, for a smaller percentage of those of the 

 various ages were owners, and a larger percentage were tenants 

 in 1900 than in 1890. This is illustrated in Figure 17. Illinois 

 is used for this illustration because tenancy is more common 

 in that state than in any other part of the North. The illus- 

 tration shows that the percentage of owners among young farm- 

 ers is very small, but that ownership increases with the age 

 of a farmer and that, of the farmers fifty-five years of age and 

 over, about 85 per cent are owners. By comparing the situation 

 in 1890 and 1900 for each age group, it becomes clear that while 

 there is a movement toward land ownership, as the farmers 



