LAND TENURE AND LAND POLICY 671 



see that a constantly increasing proportion of those country boys who 

 remain at home improve their condition by taking up farms. 



These facts are still more clearly brought out by considering the 

 distribution of the three classes of the rural population in the different 

 age groups. Thus in the age group ten to twenty-five, over 92 per 

 cent of all were children or laborers ("others"); and in the age group 

 sixty-five and over, more than 80 per cent were owners. So far, 

 therefore, from the conditions of farm tenure becoming less democratic 

 in the last fifty years, they have steadily improved. There is today a 

 healthy progress upward in the steady advancement of the wage labor- 

 ers and children of farmers, first to tenancy and finally, with advancing 

 age and ability and accumulated capital, to farm ownership. 



Another consideration also may be urged in substantiation of the 

 belief that the real tendency of farm tenure is toward ultimate owner- 

 ship rather than tenantry. As the country grows in population and 

 develops, agriculture will necessarily become more intensive, as it is 

 already in the East. Now it is precisely in those farms which are 

 used for the most intensive cultivation, such as those for flowers and 

 plants, for fruits, and for dairy products, that ownership is most 

 prevalent in each of these cases over three-fourths of the farms being 

 owned while in extensive culture, as hay and grain, the proportion 

 of rented farms is greatest. 



Nor does the existence of mortgage indebtedness warrant any 

 gloomy foreboding; .taken in connection with the other facts it must 

 be held to represent the struggle of the farmer tenant to purchase an 

 equity in the farm he tills, or of the small owner to provide himself 

 with the necessary capital for improvements. As a result of the 

 prosperity of the last few years, the farmers have been paying off 

 these debts, and are today probably in a stronger position than at any 

 earlier time in our history. 



213. FOREBODINGS FOR THE FUTURE 1 

 BY PHILIP R. KELLAR 



It may seem to many to be a far cry from the farm tenure prob- 

 lem of Great Britain to the farm tenure problem of the United States. 

 Americans as a rule will look upon Chancellor David Lloyd-George's 

 campaign "to free British land from landlordism and to get the people 



1 Adapted from the Forum, LII (July, 1914), 81-88. (Copyright by Mitchell 

 Kennerley.) 



