COMING TO HIS OWN? 13 



year or less. These figures are for both share and 

 cash tenants. Now the evils of such a situation need 

 no explanation. Poor farming is inevitable; soil de- 

 pletion is unescapable; futile, ineffective lives of farm- 

 ers and their families are unavoidable; and worst of all, 

 the deterioration of rural communities becomes hope- 

 lessly certain. We have reached a point in American 

 agriculture where it is worth while to hold land for its 

 speculative rather than for its true economic value. 

 In some of our most prosperous farming states land is 

 slowly but surely passing into the hands of absentee 

 landlords not merely farmers who can afford to re- 

 tire to the village or county seat, but to an increasing 

 extent men whose main business is banking, mercan- 

 tiling, or the law, and whose investment in farm land 

 is purely speculative. 



4. Perhaps the most menacing tendency in American 

 agriculture is one that curiously enough attracts little 

 attention among the farmers themselves. It may be 

 expressed by saying that in some ways many of our rich- 

 est farming districts are becoming our poorest. The 

 prosperous farmer in his pride says, " I can afford to 

 retire." Retiring means moving away from the farm. 

 He has pulled out by the roots his leadership in his com- 

 munity. His support of local enterprise is no longer 

 felt. If his place be taken by his son or other young 

 man educated, interested, public-spirited, the case is 

 not so bad. But as a rule his place is taken by a man 

 of lesser capacity whose interest in community affairs 

 is transient. The sense of community responsibility, 

 the feeling of local patriotism, the pull and push of 

 loyalty to the common good of the neighborhood has 

 dried up as the rootage of personal attachment to the 

 farming community has been exposed. 



