Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-04-19
The Farm Tenants Child


"A to the economic and to the social well
fare of the South is touched upon with
insight in news letter of the University of
North Carolina on "The Farm Tenants
Child" In that state, it appears, the white
tenants number sixty-three thousand families;
and of these about one-fourth are troopers"
whose households embrace twenty Eight thou
sand children of school age but of the mar
rowest and dismalest prospect for advance
ment. What can be done to uncloud the flu
ture for these bright-faced boys and girls, of
whom there are multitudes throughout the
rural South? GAS long as we have farm ten
ancy,' says the University's letter. 1--WE shall
have illiteracy; neither can be cured without
curing the other. Together they spell farm
poverty White illiteracy Tin this re-
gion) is almost entirely country problem,
and it cannot be cured by schools alone, of
any grade or type. It's cure lies: 1) in bet
ter country schools; CD in re-directed coun-
try churches; and at the same time co in
better chances to rise into farm ownership
these three together. Apart they will fail"
To amplify opportunities whereby the farm
tenant of today can become the farm owner
of tomorrow is to open ways to the solution
of many of the most troublous of Southern
problems. While we have not at hand the
latest official figures on tenancy in Georgia,
it is certain that what is said of North Caro-
lima applies in principle to this state as we'll,
Our prosperity is diminished, our progress
hampered, our highest human interests made
to suffer, because of a system that keeps so
large proportion of the people on the soil
without those incentives and hopes, those re-
sponsibilities and rewards that make for good
citizenship. Leave the colored tenant wholly
out of account, and still Georgia's problem,
like that of her neighbors, remains among
the most serious and most urgent with which
either business or craftsmanship is con-
fronted.
The average term of tenant on Southern
farms is said by authorities to be about eight
cen months. Is it to be wondered that so
shifting an element is shiftless? Or can it be
expected that agriculture, as long as 1t rests
in such hands, will attain to anything like a
due measure of productiveness? These are
the most superficial of the questions to- be
considered. Far deeper, far more important
to the common veal is that propounded by
the University of North Carolina-what car
be done for the thousands of children who
are victims OF the tenancy grind? Student:
of the Georgia State Normal School at Athens
who made a searching inquiry into the sub
ject few years ago. pointed out tie exceed
ing Importance of the attitude of the tenant
toward his leased land as a factor in farm
prosperity "This attitude" they observed
Cannot be good unless the tenant feels thai
he has some certainty of remaining and Is in
terested in farm improvements" If he ha
an ardent and reasonable hope Of some da.
coming into possession of a part, howsoeve
small, of the acres on which he labors, he will
work with a thrift that will rebound to thu
good of the state, as well as to the landlords
profit and his own.
II encourage such hopes, to remove unjus
barriers that stand in their way, to proyld
practical aids to Ieir realization, this is tt
deal rightly with the farm tenants child anc
rightly with the commonwealth.