FARM OWNERSHIP AND TENANCY IN UNITED STATES 261 



It is a matter of common observation that in the northern 

 states, young men start in as laborers, become tenant farmers, 

 and later buy farms and join the ranks of landowning farmers. 

 The above facts show that in the southern states the movement 

 from the wage earners to tenant farmers was abnormally rapid 

 between 1880 and 1900, due to a reorganization of the methods 

 of handling landed estates. To some extent this same move- 

 ment was in evidence in central Illinois and in other northern 

 states, but there are facts which tend to show that the increase 

 in tenancy was due in part to a slowing down of the movement 

 from tenancy to ownership. This is shown in the following table : 



TABLE XX 

 PERCENTAGE OF PERSONS OWNING AND RENTING FARM HOMES- 



This table indicates that nearly three-fourths of the farmers 

 under twenty-five years of age are tenants ; that the percentage 

 of tenant farmers declines, and the percentage of landowning 

 farmers increases, as we pass from the younger to the older age 

 periods, until less than a fifth of the farmers who are fifty-five 

 years of age and over are tenants. 



Statistics of this kind were first collected in 1890, and while 

 they showed the status at that time and suggested a movement 

 from tenancy to landownership, they did not prove the existence 

 of such a movement. By comparing the figures for 1890 with 

 those for 1900, this movement is clearly shown. The occupiers 

 of farm homes who were from 25 to 34 years of age in 1890, were 

 from 35 to 44 in 1900. By comparing these occupiers at the 

 two dates, we find an increase in the percentage of home owners, 



