No. 4.] EASTERN AND WESTERN FARMING. 1G7 



the expenses of buildings, appliances and the debts of original 

 purchase. 



Many farmers of the west have accumulated capital and 

 are using it in village life, giving rise to the class of men 

 known as renters. This class of men has increased in the 

 last decade or two, and constitutes the heaviest incubus 

 upon the heels of progressive farming in the west and the 

 hope of a sudden and high type of recuperative farming. 

 Thus in Indiana twenty-nine per cent of the farmers are 

 renters ; in Illinois thirty-seven per cent hire their farms. 

 This is an increasing ratio. These men do not rent on the 

 long tenure of the English system, and have but a temporary 

 interest in the farm. This is not the class who will lay the 

 foundation of renewed fertility. It is not the class who will 

 feed cattle for the purpose of the manure, and is the class 

 that will feed them only when there is a direct profit in the 

 transaction. This is the class that sell the crops from the 

 farm. 



I deeply regret to see the pledge of national security and 

 the perpetuity of republican institutions, founded in the 

 homestead act, which made the tiller of the soil its owner, 

 and thus every tiller of the soil a pledge of peace and security, 

 impaired to any degree by a class whose interests are less 

 deeply rooted in the soil and the perpetuity of our institu- 

 tions. While New England in this movement will have to 

 meet a less vital competitor, I regret to see an equality of 

 condition that arises from the distribution of land amons: the 

 masses in any degree giving place to inequality and the envy 

 and unrest that follows when poverty daily looks with envy 

 upon the face of wealth. 



I have run thus rapidly over some of the primary con- 

 ditions that exist in the west, because the great subject that 

 I am attempting to handle will not permit of detailing. I 

 therefore turn from this phase of my subject to the New Eng- 

 land farmer and his methods, contrasted with the western 

 farmer. 



We have not found the misfortunes of the west, as some 

 have supposed, in an enervating climate nor in the lack of a 

 virile race of men and women. Its embarrassments are 

 found in a sparse po[)ulation, necessitating the sale of its 



