AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT . 727 



panic, you will remember, began in Kansas real estate long before it was felt 

 in the general commercial world. Under ordinary circumstances a thrifty 

 young man can buy a farm with a very small cash payment. For the past 

 seven years, with property declining, neither the buyer nor the owner will 

 take the risks of such a trade. 



With these various influences working for the development of 

 a tenant class, few questions are of greater interest to the student 

 of social relations than the ultimate destiny of the increasing 

 number of farm tenants. Are they doomed to remain always in 

 a state of relative industrial dependence, or will economic condi- 

 tions permit them to rise to a higher industrial level ? 



Two considerations indicate that it is possible for farm tenants 

 to become landowners. In the first place, the resistance to be 

 overcome in taking such a step is not very much greater than 

 that encountered by the settlers who took up land on the public 

 domain under the homestead laws. The necessary outlay of the 

 early settler, in addition to the cost of transporting himself and 

 his family to the West and of living during the year or perhaps 

 two years which intervened before a regular crop could be raised, 

 has been estimated at $1000. The same amount of money will 

 enable its possessor at the present time to become the owner of 

 a farm fairly well improved in either the eastern or the western 

 division of the Central States. Such a farm owner would enjoy 

 better markets, and would not have to endure the long years of 

 isolation, involving social, educational, and religious deprivation, 

 which it was the lot of the early settler to undergo. It is true, 

 of course, that prices for the products of the farm have very 

 much declined in recent years ; but it is also true that farm land 

 in many of the states referred to above can be had at prices 25 

 to 50 per cent lower than fifteen years ago. 



In the second place, the percentage of farm tenants in the 

 Northern states is frequently greatest where the soil is most 

 fertile and the conditions most favorable to agricultural prosperity, 

 and is often smallest where nature most scantily rewards the 

 labors of the agriculturist. Thus, in Illinois 37 per cent of the 

 farm families hire their farms ; in Iowa, 29 per cent ; and in 

 Missouri, 31 per cent. In Massachusetts, however, but 15 per 



