Bisbee daily review., 1914-04-15
DECLARES TENANT
 INCREASE ON FARMS
 MENACE TO NATION

quarter million tenant farmers in the 25 states that produce most of the perishable farm products. the grain, and the cotton of America make the organizing and federating of farmers for businesslike marketing stipend ous, if not an almost impossible un. dertaking" Charlie W. Holmon of the University of Wisconsin. secretary of the Second National Conference on Marketing and Farm Credits. made this statement in an adress here this afternoon before that organization and the Western Economic society
 The richest and most productive of American states are today con fronting a problem of absence land lordism that bids fair in the near future to be the all expressing task of statesmen and economies" he said. Within few years the land question will be a national political issue. It has already become a matter of the gravest concern. This very year in the state of Texas, which alone has about 225,000 tenant farmers, enough to control the elections in that state if they were properly organized. peo- pie are alarmed over the imminence of a tenant revolt.
 "This summer Texas will have state election. There are many would be governors in the field. and almost every candidate has been forced to ex- press some kind of view upon the subject. This follows the fact that on the 27th day of last December Gov ernor Colquitt was petitioned by 40.. 900 citizens, mostly renters, to call special session of the legislature for the purpose of considering a change of the state constitution that would islow the legislature Ito tax away the speculative value in farming lands of that state. In the last 10 years in both Texas and Oklahoma the per centage of tenant increase over home owning increase has been two to one. In the States of Alabama. Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana. Texas. Mississippi. South Carolina. North Carolina, Missouri, Kentucky. Indiana, Nebraska, Michigan. Wisconsin. Min nesota. and California. there has been an increase since 1880 of 394,3 ten. ants. while home-owning farmers have increased only 606755
 In the states of Kansas. Illinois. Iowa, Ohio. Pennsylvania and New |. York tenant farmers increased 12l. l67. while there was an actual de- crease of 62,915 home owning farmers in these States. The percentage of ten ant farmers has increased from 56,SS7 while home owning farmers only in creased 35.3O5.
 When we remember that in the United States in 1910 there were g. 354.676 tenants. and these 20 states , furnished 2,1sS,5S6 of them. we have very grave problem The percent. age of tenant farmers in the United States increased from 25.6 in 1880 to . 37 per cent in 1910.
 Tn the mapority of cases the tenant farmer is the left over man of prog ress. His business ability and his in r telligence are not so great as that o his more prosperous nelghbor who owns a farm.
 ftt liNtN III d Sidths lllln AtldhN farmer of the south. An unpainted, un- , sanitary, miserable shack. Ignorance and poverty force him to sad and sog- gy existence, and his little children { labor in the fields with small hope of
 the future. The whole family tolls and when the year is over they survey their hopeless situation. load their
 .I ( C ls. COW to the back of the wagon and drive to another country to try again s their indifferent luck. And who can s blame them? The family has lived through the year on less than s90 a
 piece
 But this great mass of shifting ten |. antry constitutes q menace to agri cultural prosperity and no device has
 yet been found that will organize them O for business-like marketing of their z. products and keep them organized
 Yet their very helplessness and unor
 ganzed state complicates the mar
 keting problem. The harpies of the
 trade" take advantage of them and d there is constantly the danger of a |. vast body of products being dumped upon markets already congested. n We have been taught to believe ir e the landlord as the ruling class whose a duty it is to help solve these prob
 lens, but the landlord Is doing prac 'i tically nothing except to raise tho d rent on every possible occasion. An' ,, in the South the condition is one O
 exploitation by the landlord and yari L. ous suffering for the tenant. Tha
 much of this exploitation is uncon sciOus does not in the least change a' the situation. for the landlord is II n- control
 re Conditions in Texas have causel n, a rural revolution, and that renters
 petition to Governor Colquitt was bn m a sporadic fire of the deeper diseon
 tent For one l believe that between
 the absentee landlord, wherever h ie may be, and the absentee stockholde n, of Lawrence cotton mills there is n is great difference; and between tn
 over-worked, underpaid foreign pop d lation who manned the Lawrence mill m and the poverty-stricken anaemic ter
 ant. of ,I.a -autl thara fa uur.4Il e