The islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1891-1899, 1895-07-25
The Official Paper Of San Juan County,
THURSDAY, JULY 18th 1895.
THE FATE OF THE FARMER.

will have followed the English yoemen
into extinction, and the landlord and
Tenant classes will have superseded.
He maintains that the POpulist move
ment is the beginning of the dying
struggle for political power among that
race who supplied most of the farmers
of the republic. Mr.. Powers argument
seems to be based upon an examination
of statistical reports which show that
during the last decade the number of
farm owners decreased in all the New
England states, and the number of ten
ant farmers increased. This was also
true, according to the writer, in the
four middle states. In the south, farm
tenancy is largely the result of the en-
ancipatiOn of the slaves. "The western
farmers, who many years ago got their
land for little or nothing, are now grow
ing old. They are renting their farms
to men who will live on less than the
full produce of the land rather than
not live at all; and they are moving in
to the large towns and cities to enjoy
life, educate their daughters, and start
their sons in business. Even so far
west as Minnesota and the DakOtas
this is going on. In illinois and Wis
consin it is a common thing. The ten
ants, being obliged to divide the pro-
duce with the landlord, are in state
of poverty, and they will stay so. AS
they do not own the land they will suf-
fer instead of profit as it advances in
value. AS the population increases,
the value of the land will increase, and
the number of persons who can afford
to own land will decrease. There are
already started in the northwest an ag-
ricultural peasantry which has no flu
ture except one of increasing rent
charges. The sharper the competition
for chances to earn living, the great
er rent will the landlord be able to eX-
act"
"The American farmer has long held
O place greatly above that of the peas
ant of continental Europe in his income
and style of living, because he has been
able to possess a larger tract of land;
and greatly above the English farmer
in his independence, because he has
been able to own the ground he tills.
He will not continue another half cen
fury to hold this enviable position.
Sometimes we find the American far
mer slipping away from his acres, and
sometimes we find his acres slipping
away from him. AS result of both
tendencies, there is separation, widen
ing with the lapse of time, between
ownership and cultivation. The Ameri-
can farmer is being detached from the
earth. He is losing his farm, and is
therefore imagining vain things. He is
taking up the most foolish and obvious
ly senseless notions regarding currency
and credit and capital and labor and
property that were ever harbored by
the minds of Intelligent human beings.n
What Mr.. Powers says as to the in
crease of tenant farming in the extreme
east and middle west is doubtless true
but the very facts which he states con-
stitute an admirable argument in favor
of the actual ownership of farm prop
erty. The farmer who is only nomi-
nally the owner of his acres, upon
which he has found it all too easy to
borrow a greater sum than he can pay,
and is therefore under bondage to the
money lender is little better off than
the tenant farmer, who pays as rent
what is considered reasonable interest
upon the value of the land he tIlls.
While rent and interest are two things
in name thay are one thing in fact and
one that the farmer must manage to
avoid before he can become independ-
ent from the profit of his products and
the increase in the value of his land.
The farmer who is free from debt and
whose farm is we'll titled and we'll
stocked is seldom found for a long time
"imagining vain things" or chasing
will-o'thewisp in the field of politics or
finance.
Mr.. Powers says, and perhaps truly,
that "the nearest we have ever come to
an industrial Eden was the New Eng
land farming town of many years ago,
where the population was homogeneous
and constituted the real American Or
der of equities, among whom every
man kept a horse, and no man kept a
coachman. Yet we have got so far
from that now that even a New Eng
land poet, no less distinguished a son
of Massachusetts, than Oliver Wendell
Holmes, in his "Teacups," expressed
his horror of the state of society in
which the dreadful Jewelers. had their
way, and one man was not better or
better off than another. The last of the
great New England bards outlived his
recollection of what made his race and
his state great"
If he had carried his investigations
to an examination of the statistics of
our consular service he might have
been able to add also that the farmers
of this country are better clothed, bet
per housed, better fed, give their chill