322 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



In speaking of the condition of landowning farmers in general, 

 the final report of the Royal Commission states that " As a 

 rule their properties, whether inherited or purchased by the 

 present proprietors, are charged with mortgages, and the 

 mortgagee makes no remission of the interest due to him. 

 In consequence of the shrinkage in the value of land, the interest 

 on the mortgage has become in many cases a burden, which the 

 owner has been unable to bear, and frequently where the yeoman 

 farmer has succeeded in paying the interest due from him it 

 has been a heavier rent than he would have paid to a landlord." 



Thus it has come to pass that landowning farmers are rare 

 and the tenant farmer employing a considerable number of 

 agricultural laborers is typical in England to-day. Under 

 conditions as they exist in England landownership is not eco- 

 nomically profitable to the farmer. Whether tenant farmers 

 are equally desirable citizens, and whether the nation which 

 leaves the problem of landownership to the free play of forces 

 which eliminate the small landowner and establish tenant 

 farming on a larger scale with a large agricultural laboring class 

 will prove to be as strong a nation as where the landowning 

 farmer is established and protected is one of the great questions 

 that should receive consideration by American statesmen to-day. 



