490 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



number of farm families; the home tenants, 63.10 per cent of 

 the entire number of home families. In cities and towns of 8000 

 to 100,000 people the tenants of homes are represented by 64.04 

 per cent; in cities of 100,000 people and more, by 77.17 per 

 cent ; and in the country outside of cities and towns of 8000 

 people and over, by 56.22 per cent. 



The number of occupying owners of farms and homes is nearly 

 large enough to stand for the number of landowners. To make 

 their number complete, there must be added the landowners 

 living in tenant families and the landowners living in the families 

 owning farms and homes, in addition to the owners of these 

 farms and homes. On this account I would not increase the 

 percentage of farm- and home-owners (the percentage of the total 

 families being 47.80) by more than about two. This ought to be 

 enough to account for the landowners who do not own the farms 

 and homes they occupy and who are speculators, old bachelors, 

 widowers, and women whose homes have been broken up and who 

 are boarding in tenant families. It ought to be large enough to 

 include the widowed fathers and mothers living with sons and 

 owning the old farm or home, the brothers and sisters living in 

 the same family and owning land by common inheritance, and 

 other landowners, in addition to those who own the farms and 

 homes which they occupy. If a person owns land, it is a matter 

 of common observation that some or all of it is the site of his 

 home, and that he does not own other land unless he owns the 

 farm or the home that he occupies. The merchant does not own 

 his store and hire his home, nor does the lawyer or physician hire 

 his home if he owns land. It cannot be very wrong, therefore, to 

 regard the landowners of the United States as equal in number 

 to about 50 per cent of the families ; that is to say, there is one 

 landowner in every two families, on the average. 



The proportion of farm and home tenancy in the United States 

 is made high, not only by the South, where most of the colored 

 people are tenants, but quite as much by New England, New York, 

 New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The farm and home tenant families 

 are 58.92 per cent of the entire number of families in the Eastern 

 states (North Atlantic) above mentioned ; 60.63 P er cen t in the 



