The Evening critic., 1883-06-27
Increase OF Tenancy i'm the United
Gfnfna-

Mr.. William Goodwin Moody, in re-
Gently published work, entitled Land aud
Labor in the United States" calls atten-
tion to the great increase of tenant farming
that has taken place in this country
within the last decade or two, and, in that
connection, makes the somewhat startling
announcement that there are now more
farms cultivated by tenants in the United
States than in Great Britain and Ireland,
where tenant farming is almost universal. Iu
the general view that land monopoly
is great and growing evil we perfectly
agree with Mr. Moody, aud we hold it to
be one Of tho most urgent duties of Con-
gress to discover and apply remedy at the
earliest possible day Especially is this
the case as regards our Western Territories,
where land monopoly on gigantic scale is
growing up as the direct consequence of
national legislation. The legislation max
ing immense grants of land to railroads has
been particularly vicious, and to con-
siderable extent this might be corrected by
an enforcement of the forfeitures under
which grants, forming an aggregate area
more than half as great as that of the thir-
teen original States, are now liable to be
restored to the public domain whenever
Congress shall see fit to take action in the
matter. This action has been delayed much
too long already, and it is to be hoped that
the next Congress, which owes its election
largely to growing desire for legislation
that shall check the enrichment of the few
at the expense of the many, will make this
needed blow at land monopoly one Of its
first measures, and follow it up with others
equally effective.
But while we are prepared to go quite as
far as the writer above named in support of
any judicious and effective measures for the
repression of monopoly, we are gratifed to
be able to point out that in the matter of
tenant farming we are not so badly off as
that gentleman appears to think. 1t is true
that in 1850, according to the census of that
year, we had over one million farms culti-
farming which this large number may be
supposed to indicate is not entirely of dis
couraging character OF the total number
of tenant farms reported in the census con-
siderably more than one-half are in the late
slave States, and those who farm them are
not men who formerly worked their own
land and have been reduced to the condi-
tion of tenants, but for the most part men
who twenty years ago were slaves and who
have been elepated from slavery to tenancy
1t is true their elevation is by nc
means to the level of the tenant
who furnishes his own capital, since
most Of them are furnished with
stock, implements, fertilizers and ever
seed by the landlord, and though nominally
tenant farmers, are, in fact, little more
than hired laborers, whose wages are made
contingent on their own exertions by thu
arrangement which gives them a share o
the crop as compensation for their labor
Still, it is eminently worthy of note, that
so far as their condition has changed, i
has changed for the better, and not for th
worse, as Mr.. Moody's gloomy view of th'
increase in tenant farming would lead on
to imagine.
As regards tenancy in other States, MI
Moody's view may be nearer the truth
though even there large proportion of tn
tenants are probably men who were fol
merly tenants or laborers in Europe, rathe
than land-owning farmers who have bee
reduced to tenancy. But, however thi
may be, there can be no question tina
American legislation should be SO shaped a
to prevent the development in this coun
try of that system of tenant and hireln
cultivation from which the agriculture
populations Of Great Britain and Irelan
have so terribly suffered.