30 BULLETIN 650, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
necessary investment in work stock, productive stock, implements, 
farm machinery, and other operating capital, and should also share 
equally all expenses connected with the operation of the farm. In 
several individual instances this plan has been used as a basis of 
a half-and-half share lease and has apparently given good satis- 
faction to both tenant and landowner. Under such a contract the 
extra labor involved in the production of special or intensive crops 
should naturally be considered as a part of the expense. This would 
apply to such crops as berries, tobacco, hops, cotton, onions, sugar 
beets, celery, and also to potatoes and apples. 
It is obviously desirable that farm leases should be based on a plan 
which will not only give the tenant an elastic value for his labor 
and managerial ability to compensate for the possible rise of land 
values under the influence of speculative expectation and of com- 
petition of tenants, but will also give the tenant an equal personal 
interest with the landowner in the use of the most businesslike and 
scientific methods of farming to increase production, and also in 
economy with reference to all expenses connected with farm opera- 
tions. These desirable features of a satisfactory form of lease would 
seem to be largely supplied by the contract in question. In one of 
the few individual instances in which essentially this form of con- 
tract is now in operation it is provided in the contract not only that 
all working capital shall be furnished in equal shares and that all 
expenses shall be shared equally, but also that all farm products 
used for family purposes by either the tenant or landowner shall 
be paid for by the respective party to the agreement. In cases where 
it is not convenient for landowner and tenant to furnish exactly 
equal shares of the working capital, all requirements of justice and 
fairness would be served by allowing each party the interest on his 
share of the working capital, to be taken out of the gross proceeds 
before the final division into equal shares. Where the landowner 
and tenant do not contribute equal shares of the working capital, 
it would be necessary to take out not only the interest on the unlike 
shares, but also all expense of the farm operations, before dividing 
the net proceeds into equal parts. If, however, the sharing of the 
working capital were equal, the amount of farm income to be shared 
equally could readily be determined by subtracting the total expense 
from the gross returns. 
The great variation which is to be noted in the shares of the land- 
owner and tenant in different systems of share leasing is evidence of 
the long struggle which has been undergone in attempts to devise 
methods of division satisfactory to both parties. It is apparent, 
nowever, from the variation in the shares for landowner and tenant 
proposed in leases, that the method of division has come about as a 
