682 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



good farmers who do not have the capital, or who do not have the 

 qualities needed for the responsibilities of independent management 

 of a business, and such farmers do well to rent. What we need is to 

 foster such conditions as will facilitate land ownership on the part of 

 those who are really capable and desirous of being owners. 



We need to remember that in the North and in England there is 

 a large percentage of tenancy, but no such tenant problem as ours. 

 The trouble, then, is not in tenancy, but in the kind of tenancy. In 

 the writer's opinion, it is thoroughly ill-judged to try to give to every 

 fajrmer in Texas the independent management of a farm or to do 

 so to even 90 per cent. 



The mention of different degrees of success with tenancy calls to 

 mind another point at which we, the people, are failing to make a 

 necessary distinction. There are tenants and tenants. Also there 

 is tenancy and tenancy. Is it not folly to talk about "the tenant 

 problem" when we are covering things as different as the renting of 

 farms "on the halves" and cash rent? As a matter of fact, the 

 "share-cropper" who furnishes no capital and pays half the crop to 

 the landlord, is not a tenant in the sense that the one who does furnish 

 capital and only pays one-third of the crop is a tenant. The former 

 is, as a rule, virtually a laborer; and often he would be much better 

 off if, instead of being made to go through the motions of real tenancy 

 and run the risks of an independent manager, he were hired as a farm 

 laborer and paid a monthly cash wage. Until we distinguish the 

 problem of the "tenant" working regularly on the halves from the 

 problem of the "tenant" who works on the third and fourth basis or 

 on a cash rental, we are bound to make mistakes. 



Finally, I would call attention to the distinction between acquiring 

 and stealing. It is getting too common on the part of certain radical 

 reformers to imply that, because land values are often not made by 

 landowners, such values are stolen from society. It is one thing, 

 however, to find, acquire, or receive a thing, and quite another to 

 steal, filch, or purloin a thing. We cannot think straight on the land 

 problem if we are going to assume that there is anything morally 

 wrong in owning land. This, that, or the other individual landowner 

 may abuse his power; but the general institution of private property 

 in land is a question of expediency not morals. 



Now undoubtedly there are such things as "grasping landlords"; 

 but there are also such things as inefficient tenants. There is a prob- 

 lem of just rent, though we cannot solve it by any general legislation 



