28 
BULLETIN 1433, IT. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
More tenants are between the ages of 25 and 35 than between 
any other subsequent 10-year age limit, and of the two classes of 
tenants share tenants exceed cash tenants in the proportion who are 
between 25 and 35. Farmers operating mortgaged farms and farm- 
ers operating land a part of which they own and part of which they 
rent from others are relatively most numerous between the ages of 
35 and 45. Farmers operating unmortgaged farms are relatively 
most numerous between the ages of 55 and 65, as are farm landlords, 
but farm landlords are older on the average than farmers operating 
unmortgaged farms (fig. 11). 
For the purpose of ascertaining the ages at which farmers retire, 
those landlords who indicated by their answers to the* questionnaire 
that they had once farmed for themselves were considered if their 
ages were 40 years or over. Relatively few of the retired landlords 
were under 40 (2.6 per cent), but it was considered desirable to 
PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF SELECTED FARM TENURE CLASSES BY AGE, 
NORTH CENTRAL STATES, 1920 
^ ^ Tenants 
i 
\ 
^ Part Owners, Part Tenants. | 
§ 
% and Owners on Mortgaqed ^^ 
15 
i 
\ 
Farms 
/ \ 
i 
/ 
A 
r*"*» 
i 
\ ••" 
•/I 
••. 
Landlords -Owners Renting 
HO 
f 
f 
X 
f\ 
\ 
\lV 
/ Farms to Tenants 
•* 
y 
\ 
Owners on Unmortgaged 
i 
i 
t 
.•• 
A 
\x 
F 
arms 
i 
V 
\ 
s 
i 
# 
i 
/ 
• 
\ 
V 
\\ 
t 
t 
■ 
V 
*»x 
o 
/••* 
\ 
1- 
1 
>- 
;;^ 
-... 
V. 
20 25 30 35 40 45 
50 55 60 65 
AGE IN YEARS 
70 75 80 85 90 95 100 
Fig. 11.— Ages reported most commonly by tenants were ages something like 10 years less than 
ages reported most commonly by farmers who were part owners, part tenants, or owners on 
mortgaged farms. Farm landlords reported ages between 60 and 65 more commonly than ages 
in any interval of equal period 
eliminate even these in considering the question of age of retirement. 
An average age of 53.7 years at time of retirement from farming was 
shown by the answers of 5,591 male owners of rented farms who 
were over 40 years of age and who had farmed for themselves. The 
ages of these 5,591 landlords averaged 63.4 years, which indicates 
that they were somewhat older than other landlords, taken as a group. 
(Table 24.) 
Evidently the owners of rented farms have, on the whole, but a 
short expectation of life. To most of them their rented farms repre- 
sent the accumulations of their active lifetime. Few of them have 
not been farmers and a large proportion began farming as tenants. 
As years pass they acquired land, then more land, but it is probably 
subject to mortgage in most cases at first. Few find it possible to 
retire as farm landlords before their vital forces have begun to decline. 
