726 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



during those ten years 5,246,613 immigrants, or one-third of our 

 total immigration from 1820 to 1890, came to our shores. The 

 average per capita wealth which this great invading army of 

 unskilled workers brought with them was considerably less than 

 $100. Their meager resources rendered it inevitable that so far 

 as they found a place as agriculturists in our industrial organism, 

 they should appear as farm laborers and tenants rather than as 

 farm owners. The natural increase of our native and foreign- 

 born population, at the rate of between a million and a million 

 and a half a year during the last decade, has also tended to swell 

 the number of farm tenants. Instances are exceptional where 

 parents with several children in the family are able to provide each 

 with a farm. In large families some of those who elect farming as 

 a pursuit must therefore start either as hired hands or as farm ten- 

 ants. In connection with the increase of population, the exhaustion 

 of the desirable portion of the public domain and the prosperity 

 of farm owners are pertinent facts. When government land was 

 more abundant, there was but one step from the condition of a hired 

 laborer to farm ownership. Now it is necessary first to become 

 a tenant ; and but for the fact that some farm owners have pros- 

 pered sufficiently to be able to rent their farms, hired laborers de- 

 sirous of rising to tenancy would have no industrial opportunity. 

 3. The increase in the relative number of farm tenants in some 

 states is the result of agricultural disaster. President Fairchild 

 of Kansas Agricultural College writes me as follows : 



There is always a considerable body of young men who first rent farms and 

 afterward come to own them. In this state, however, some peculiar conditions 

 have increased quite beyond the normal the number of tenants. The whole 

 western third of the state was settled by a boom in farm lands. Multitudes of 

 settlers took claims without means of their own, expecting to pay for the land 

 from the immediate profits of farming. Multitudes of them mortgaged the land 

 for improvements, and multitudes more expended the proceeds of mortgages 

 in living. When it was found that the proceeds of farming in that part of the 

 state were very uncertain, at best, the mortgages became due. And in many 

 instances those who had been nominally owners remained upon the farms as 

 tenants after foreclosure. These are but the natural effects in reaction from a 

 tremendous boom. 



Another reason for apparent increase of tenants is found in the general 

 hesitation to accept mortgages following immediately after the panic ; which 



