492 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



Thus it appears that in the matter of farm tenancy this country 

 makes no fine comparison with Europe, notwithstanding the fact 

 that we have had land enough to give us all a farm. 



Although tenancy has reached a high figure in this land- 

 abounding country, there is yet no concentrated landlordism. 

 There is only one millionaire family that is conspicuous as a land- 

 lord, and the large areas owned by individuals and companies are 

 mostly cheap and unimproved land. The possibility of acquiring 

 title to vast tracts of land while the price is cheap has attracted 

 the investments of wealthy foreigners to no great extent ; and, 

 beyond one absentee landlord, owning 40,000 acres of farms in 

 Logan and Sangamon counties, Illinois, no important foreign 

 landlord is known to the public. A newspaper writer has made a 

 list of twenty-four citizens and companies of citizens of the United 

 Kingdom who own 17,000,000 acres of land in the South and 

 West. Hardly any of the land is improved or is occupied by 

 tenants, and the prospect that a considerable portion of it will be 

 occupied by tenants is exceedingly remote. All together, it can be 

 worth scarcely more than $50,000,000 to $75,000,000. 



Since one-half of the families of the United States are landless, 

 it becomes desirable to know whether the fraction is an increasing 

 oneJ> With respect to farm tenancy, it may be said positively that 

 there has been an increase since 1880. The census of that year 

 found 25.56 per cent of the farms cultivated by tenants. In 1890, 

 34.08 per cent of the farm families were tenants. The probability 

 is that the percentage for 1880 was reckoned too small. It is 

 supposed that the enumerators neglected to report many tenant 

 farms as separate farms, as in the case of a tenant farm contiguous 

 to another farm cultivated by the owner of the leased farm, both 

 farms at some time previous having constituted one farm under 

 the cultivation of its owner. The tenant farm being cultivated on 

 shares and the crops being stored in the buildings of the farm 

 cultivated by the owner, it was a natural mistake on the part of the 

 owner and enumerator to return the crops as for one farm, thus 

 losing the tenant farm. The mistake might easily happen in the 

 cotton region of the South. 



