8 BULLETIN 1432, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
EXTENT OF OWNERSHIP BY LANDLORDS WITH THREE OR MORE RENTED FARMS, 1900 
AND 1920 
To facilitate comparison of degree of concentration of ownership 
of rented farms in 1900 and in 1920, a separation of landlords and of 
rented farms was made accordingly as the owners had one or two 
rented farms or three or more rented farms. 
In 1900, 33.2 per cent of the rented farms, or about a third of the 
number, were owned by persons having three or more rented farms. 
Numerically these were 8.6 per cent of the landlords. Their rented 
farms contained 24 per cent of the rented acreage and were worth 
18.8 per cent of the value of the land and buildings rented to farm 
tenants. Over two-thirds of the rented farms of residents of Missis- 
sippi "and Louisiana were owned by persons having three or more 
rented farms. Inmost of the Southern States resident landlords who 
had three or more rented farms owned more than a fourth of the rented 
farms, but this w T as not true of any Northern or Western State. 
In the five Mississippi counties of the 1920 study, land is mainly 
held in large plantations which are farmed by supervised tenants who 
may each tend 10, 15, or 20 acres in cotton with a small patch of corn. 
The farmers are mostly negro tenants, the farm owners and overseers 
mostly w r hite. The 1920 tabulations show that owners with three 
or more tenants in these counties held about seven-eighths of the 
farms rented to tenants. In the three Alabama counties where condi- 
tions are somewhat similar, over four-fifths of the farms rented to 
tenants were owned by landlords with three or more farm tenants. 
In the four Texas counties studied, most of the farmers are whites; 
and, although the percentage of tenancy is high, the land is usually 
handled as separate farms and not according to the plantation system. 
Three-eighths of the rented farms were owned by persons with three 
or more rented farms in 1920. In Delaware and in the near-by coun- 
ties of eastern Maryland about one-fifth of the rented farms were held 
by persons with three or more rented farms, whereas in eastern Penn- 
sylvania about a tenth and in the New York and New Jersey counties 
less than a twentieth were so owned. (Table 4.) 
