FARM OWNERSHIP AND TENANCY IN TEXAS. 17 
that owing to advanced age, many owner operators are gradually 
decreasing the size of their farms as they approach retirement time. 
This class of farmers has been called " retreating farmers." 19 
The average size of share croppers' farms is small as a result of 
the fact that probably half of them had less land than they needed 
in order to utilize their entire time. 20 Owners additional as a class 
are successful farmers who are stri\ r ing to expand their farm busi- 
ness, and do so by renting additional land. 
The average total value of the farm and its equipment for all ten- 
ure classes was $18,981 ; and the relative values of farms for different 
forms of tenure have the same order as the order of the sizes of farms 
for the different tenure classes (see Table 9). However, it will be 
noted that owner-operator farms have relatively a much higher value 
in proportion to size than do the farms of owners additional. 
That the average value of farms of owner operators is relatively 
large is due in part to the fact that they have more than twice the 
wealth of owners additional (see Table 22) and can have and do 
have better houses and farm equipment. Furthermore, many of the 
owner operators are decreasing the size of their farms as they ap- 
proach retirement age without reducing proportionately their build- 
ing and equipment value. 
An interesting fact brought out in connection with equipment 
value per acre is that share tenants are almost as well supplied with 
equipment as are owner operators. One of the serious drawbacks 
of the one-crop system practiced in the region is that the tenant can 
not profitably invest all his surplus savings in his farm business, 
and the resultant tendency for some tenants to overinvest in equip- 
ment probably explains the relatively high average equipment value 
for them as a class. 
The data on value of buildings show strikingly one of the evils 
of tenancy in this area. The average value of buildings on share- 
tenant farms is about one-half, and on share-cropper farms less than 
one-third of the average value of buildings on the farms of owner 
operators. Most of this difference is accounted for in the difference 
in value of dwellings (see Table 29). 
However, there is a lack of buildings for housing machinery on 
the farms of all tenure classes. Investigation on this question re- 
vealed the facts that (of those reporting) 120 tenants had no build- 
ings for the protection of machinery from the weather, 10 had part 
of their machinery under shed, and 16 had all machinery under shed. 
Forty-five owners had no machinery under shed, 9 had part of it 
30 See Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin No. 44, p. 6. 
20 Eighteen of the 65 croppers had 30 acres or less. 
90872—22 3 
