The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1910-12-28

I'LL lllHueHCe W Seuu IlOle idiluo " iiSi :
to the city and leave more farms ir
the tenant land class.
The Tenant Blight in the South.
The farm is unique in that it is both
factory and a home; and it has a
double value, factory or producing
value, and a home value. When, as a
temporary abiding place of the tenant
farmer it ceases to be home, it has
lost part of its value and has effected
the value of farms in the same COM
munity. In Missippi, Georgia and in
Louisiana, where from IS to 62 per
cent of the farmers are tenants, land
may be bought for $25 an acre that is
fully as desirable as land in Kansas
that brings $50 an acre. The FREEDOM
nance of the tenant farmer has i'm
paired the home value of the southern
land.
The corn belt of the middle west, as
we'll as the south, is sorely afflicted
with the tenant farmerN In Illinois,
Iowa and Missouri the number of ten
ant farmers is as high as As per cent;
in Kansas and Nebraska it is less. In
the northern and eastern states 10 to
Is per cent are tenants. The number
of tenants varies for various reasons.
On the impoverished or worn out
farms of the east and north there are
fewer tenant farmers, because the land
will not produce a living for the ten
ant or all income for the landlord. In
the south the comparatively small
number of owner farmers is partly
due to the fact that many of the ten
ant farmers are negroes, and white
landlords do not care to live neighbor
to them. In Kansas, Nebraska and
Oklahoma the low percentage of ten
ants is due to the large area of COM
paratively new land and recent devel-
opment-the original owners have not
yet accumulated fortune and entered
upon a general movement toward the
town, the mecca of the farmer who
has made his pile
But successive years of large crops,
high prices and rapidly advancing
land values are making fortunes rap
idly for middle western farm own
ers, and there is likely to be marked
increase in the number of tenant
farmers in the corn belt in the next
few years. And that rapid advance
in land values throughout the middle
west during the past few years is
one of the contributing causes to the
middle west landlords indifference to
the manner in which his farm is cul
tivated and cared for. He considers
the increasing land prices as so
much earned and does not worry if
his farm improvements run down or
his share Of the crops is not so large
as it might be. He probably does not
consider that the advance in land
prices must stop some time, and that
when he decides to sell he may find
his farm has become so impoverished
that it is worth far less than that of
neighboring properties that have re-
NAMED under the care and cultiva-
ton of their owners.
Soil Robbing and High Prices.
The effect of the tenant farmers
methods upon the cost of living today
has been traced by students of the
subject and without any extraordinary
mental gymnastics. No special acute
ness is necessary to understand that
soil robbing and shiftless farming
means smaller crops: that smaller
crops means shrinking supply and a
shrinking supply means higher prices.
a large majority of the farms that
are passing into the hands OF tenants
today have been stock farms or dairy
farms, or both. The intelligent farm
er owner found out years ago that
the greatest profits from the farm
we're to be had by stock raising or
dairying and feeding the crops grown.
Probably he grew rich enough to move
to town because he used that knowl
edge. But the tenant farmer is not
going to raise stock and that farm
forthwith ceases to contribute share
Of the nations supply of beef pork
and mutton, or butter, milk and
cream. The enormous decrease in the
last few years of packing products in
this country probably is due largely
to the increasing number OF farms
that have ceased to raise stock under
tenant cultivation.
1t of course would be absurd TO as
sumo that all tenant farmers are OF
the soil robbing, land skinning class
Many. perhaps 20 per cent. are young
men, men OF ambition, Intelligence and
energy who are making a start IN life
for themselves and are compelled to
become independent farmers as ten