CONTRACTS USED IN RENTING FARMS ON SHARES. 3 
the essential features of the lease agreement was 2,907, including 
records from 414 dairy farms, 320 stock farms, 298 general farms in 
the corn belt, 1,113 cotton farms, 453 wheat farms, 176 potato farms, 
100 sugar-beet farms, and 33 bean farms. The lease contract often 
contains minor specific agreements between landowner and tenant 
not definitely indicated in a farm survey record. All available farm 
leases, therefore, have been examined with reference to those points. 
LENGTH OF LEASE PERIOD. 
In a majority of cases the lease runs for only one year, usually 
with privilege of renewal upon one or two months’ notice. Often 
the lease provides more positively that the contract is understood to 
be continuous from year to year unless due notice of intent to dis- 
continue is served by either party. The lease year may coincide 
with the calendar year, or, more commonly, with the crop year 
(March 1 to March 1). 
Contrary to natural expectation and popular belief, annual] lease 
contracts may not mean more frequent moving of the tenant than do 
long-term contracts. In fact, investigations on Wisconsin and IIli- 
nois dairy farms show that tenants remain longer on the same farm 
under an annual renewable lease than under lease contracts of two, 
three, or five years’ duration. On Kansas grain farms tenants often 
have remained 15 to 20 years on the same farm under an annual 
lease. Moreover, in some sections tenants have operated the same 
farm 25 to 50 years under annual leases, in the meantime buying 
farms which they in turn have leased to others. In fact, there are 
leaseholds which have descended from father to son, the present 
tenants having been born on farms then operated by their fathers, 
thus continuing tenant occupancy under annual lease without change 
into the second generation. Formerly farms might be leased in New 
York for as long as 99 years, but in 1846 the New York Legislature 
passed a law prohibiting leasing under longer contracts than 12 
years. The purpose of this law was to check the establishment of a 
tenant class. 7 
England is often incorrectly cited as a country where tenancy 
problems have been solved by the adoption of a system of long-term 
leases. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of leases in England 
are for one year only, and are renewable. The same tendency is seen 
in the United States. 
Most lease contracts with negro tenants on cotton farms, Polish 
tenants on onion farms, Italian tenants on strawberry farms, Portu- 
guese tenants on bean farms, and Japanese and Chinese tenants on 
potato farms are verbal, annual, and renewable. In general, the 
