2 BULLETIN" 1432, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
Among the questions which the results of the present study 
least partly answer are the following: 
Who own the rented farms ? 
What part of them is in the possession of the largest holders ? 
To what extent are owners of rented farm property distant 
absentees ? 
How did present owners acquire their land ? 
What are their occupations, their ages, their farm experience? 
To what extent are farm tenants related by blood or marriage 
farm landlords ? 
METHODS AND AREAS OF STUDY 
■ 
A report on matters relating to the ownership of rented farms was 
made in connection with the Twelfth (1900) Census. 2 That report 
was based on a classification of the rented farms of the country by 
ownership and by residence _pf the owners in relation to the land. 
The information needed to make this classification was obtained by 
the census enumerators when they obtained the answers to questions 
which asked the acreage and value of the rented farms, the kind of 
rent paid by the tenants, and the names and addresses of the owners. 
Answers to the same questions were obtained by the enumerators 
of the fourteenth (1920) census, and these data were analyzed by 
the Bureau of Agricultural Economics in cooperation with the 
Bureau of the Census. 
Methods of studying the questions of concentration and absentee- 
ism in ownership in 1920 were similar to those used in 1900. From 
each rented farm schedule the acreage, the value of the real estate, 
the State and county in which the farm was located, and the name 
and address of the owner were transferred to a slip of paper. The 
slips were assorted according to the counties in which the owners 
resided and then subdivided so that all the owners living in each 
city, town, or village were brought together. These slips were then 
arranged in alphabetical order. This last process brought together 
all of the rented farms which any given landlord owned in the 184 
counties studied in 1920. The 1900 index brought together all of 
the farms which a landlord owned in the United States. 3 
The 184 counties are only 6 per cent of the counties of the country, 
yet they contained in 1920 11.2 per cent of all the rented farms, 
10.9 per cent of all the acreage in rented farms, and 18.6 per cent of 
the total value of land and buildings rented to tenants who owned 
none of the land which they farmed. In the 184 counties, rented 
farms averaged 105 acres and were worth $16,001 each, whereas taking 
the other counties of the country collectively, rented farms averaged 
108 acres and were worth $8,890 each. For purposes of tabulation 
and comparison the 184 counties are handled as 31 groups of counties, 
and these 31 groups are further combined for some comparisons. 
2 Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, Vol. V, Agriculture, Pt. 1, pp. Ixxxv-xciii, and pp. 309-317. 
s Tabulations of the census of 1900 show that 4.5 per cent of the rented farms were not indexed as to owner- 
ship by that census. The number of rented farms in 1920 in the 184 counties indexed was 276,083. The value 
of the land and buildings was $4,417,534,012, and the acreage was 29,120,860. The ownership of 90.7 per cent 
or 250,362, of the 276,083 rented farms was indexed. The 250,362 rented farms indexed were found to con- 
sist of 256,175 farms and parcels of farms, 95.7 per cent of which were farms in themselves and not parcels 
of farms. The occupants of the other farms, 5,214 in number, each rented parcels from two or more land- 
lords, a total of 11,027 parcels. 
