Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/584

574 Under these conditions in these and other States 5,700,000 farmers are now working land either as owners or tenants, the only limit in recent years to a further expansion of crops having been the lack of farm laborers. At the present time (July 9th) farm laborers are in most urgent demand to harvest the great crop of wheat, without any sufficient supply.

During the last decade there has been in these States a small lessening in the average area of the farm, coupled with a moderate increase in the number of tenants. The owners have increased faster than the agricultural population, and the greater increase in the number of tenants has been recruited from former farm laborers or from emigrants. Landlordism in the sense of ownership of very large areas to be worked permanently by tenants, covers a very small part of this whole area. It is inconsistent with the whole spirit of the people and will never assume any great importance.

In the new States, such as Minnesota and the Dakotas, it is still possible to buy cheap land from the railroad, from large timber companies and from the State and general government, and to repeat the old process of a poor man acquiring a good farm free from debt in from three to ten years by the aid of a small mortgage loan or the credit of the land companies. In the older settled communities, with land worth on an average from $40 to $50 per acre and in many cases selling for $100 per acre, the road to farm ownership for the poor man is somewhat different. He must as a laborer have acquired money enough to become a farm tenant and as a tenant have obtained sufficient capital to make a reasonable payment on the purchase price of the farm. This gradual rise of a farm laborer to farm ownership through farm tenancy is being witnessed all over the States to which I have referred. Mortgage assists, as on the frontier, in helping the men with small capital to control farms worth more than their resources over and above their liabilities. These men, rising in the older settled States to farm ownership, through farm tenancy and by the aid of mortgage loans, in a large measure succeed in paying off their debts as does the settler on the frontier. With a large debt due on the more valuable farms, it may require a longer time, but the end is reasonably sure with those of any business sagacity.

Another class of farm tenants in America is composed of the children of the farm owners who cultivate their fathers' lands as tenants until they succeed them as owners. No farm laborer who is not a good farmer succeeds in rising, and the sons of wealthy land owners, without good management, often lose all their inherited wealth. Freedom to buy and sell and manage land kills off the incompetent, and gives the field to the competent, be he poor or rich. This freedom of land sales prevents the tenant or owner