12 BULLETIN 1068, IT. S. DEPARTMENT OE AGRICULTURE. 



cotton have, no doubt, raised land values to levels that prewar prices 

 would not justify, and if cotton prices return permanently to prewar 

 levels, land prices may decline as they did following the Civil War. 



LEGAL PHASES OF THE LAND PROBLEM. 



The landlord's lien law is designed to protect the landlord against 

 unscrupulous tenants who might try to get out of paying their debts 

 to the landlord. It provides that the landlord has a prior lien, 

 whether contractual or not, on the tenant's crop for advances fur- 

 nished the tenant to make the crop, for any rent due on the year's 

 crop, and for teams, tools, and feed furnished the tenant by the 

 landlord. 



The present homestead exemption law is based on a constitutional 

 provision 9 and exempts from forced sale a legally designated home- 

 stead of 200 acres, regardless of the value of the land and the im- 

 provements on it. No lien of any kind on the homestead is valid, 

 except for taxes due on it, for the original purchase price, and for 

 work and material used in putting permanent improvements on the 

 place. Court interpretations of this law have been very rigid, and 

 much opposition to its provisions has developed. However, repeated 

 efforts to repeal or amend it have met with failure. 10 



The amount of value exempt at present is unquestionably much 

 larger than was ever intended by those framing the provision in 

 1875. Two hundred acres of some of the farms surveyed were worth 

 $60,000, including the improvements on them. Yet, under the pres- 

 ent law, every cent of this is exempt from seizure for debt, except 

 as noted, and the land can not be used directly as a basis of credit 

 to the owner. Such conditions are bound to affect- the credit situa- 

 tion in the State, making money for legitimate expansion of the 

 farm business expensive and difficult to obtain. Without doubt, 

 a limitation on the value of the exempted homestead would elimi- 

 nate undesirable results of the present law, without seriously im- 

 pairing the employment of the principle of homestead exemption 

 as a means of protection from injustice and economic oppression. 



There has long been a public sentiment in the State against the 

 ownership of farm land by nonresident aliens and by nonfarming 

 corporations. Land can be acquired by such agencies only by fore- 

 closure, for debt on the land, or as a settlement for other debts, and 

 for judgment granted to the alien or corporation. But this land 



9 See Article XVI, Sees. 50 and 51 of State Constitution, and for the law see The Com- 

 plete Statutes of Texas of 1920, pp. 612-614. 



10 An amendment to the constitutional provision for the exemption of the homestead 

 was submitted to the voters of the State for ratification in 1919, but failed to pass by a 

 small majority, although it had the support of the Farmers' Union, officials, the Texas 

 Farmers' Congress, the Federal Land Bank at Houston, officers of the Extension Depart- 

 ment of the State A. and M. College, and most of the daily papers of the State. 



