Landownership

“ The land owning farmers are now 35.2 per cent of the working rural population, the tenants are 15.1 per cent (occupying 30 per cent of all the farms) , and the farm hands, farmer's children, etc., equal 49.7 per cent of the tillers of the soil.
With the working population on the farms constituting but 13 per cent of the total population, we have arrived at the point where but little more than 4 1-2 per cent of that total are land owning farmers, a little less than 2 per cent are tenants, and the remainder (6.46 per cent) , are the children of farmers and wage hands. ”

“ The refuse of the town is utilised on the agricultural portions of the estate, which are held by various individuals in large farms, small holdings, allotments, cow pastures, etc.; the natural competition of these various methods of agriculture, tested by the willingness of occupiers to offer the highest rent to the municipality, tending to bring about the best system of husbandry, or, what is more probable, the best systems adapted for various purposes. ”

“ I am going to advise my brethren, the farmers, if they have more land than they can fence, to sell, rent, or throw it out to the commons, and secure one acre at least, and from that to ten, or as much as they can actually enclose as it should be, and then cultivate it in good style. Do not haul off the straw to burn, but save it all, and all the manure you can produce. ”

“ But in broad England, how few are the landlords who know the principles on which their land ought to be cultivated—who feel an enlightened interest in the prosperity and real advancement of agriculture—who understand how to set a useful, and prudent, and enlightened example to their tenantry! If knowledge such as that contained in the book before us require to be diffused among the humble walks of agricultural life, it is no less necessary, we are assured, among those who frequent its highest places. ”

“ However, farmers and ranchers do not live or work in isolation; the labor of many people, both rural and urban Americans, helps provide the agricultural products so vital to our health, our prosperity, and our quality of life. What connects farms and ranches with urban stores and consumers is a network of farmers, ranchers, agribusiness industries, scientists, inspectors, shippers, retail distributors, and others who work together to grow, process, and share the bounty of our great land. ”

“ The land is so rich that it yields three and four crops a year, and the plains north and west of the city are dotted with villages. To one accustomed to the great plantations and stock-farms of the West, it is strange to see these tiny fields and vineyards; yet wealth in grain and fruit pours from them as from a horn of plenty. The villagers are agriculturists, nothing else. ”

“ As good roads invite settlement, so population, the great promoter of the value of land, has come in rapidly, and changed the aspect of every farm-house. Good fences line the roadside, rank hedge-rows have disappeared, new farm-houses have been everywhere built, low lands have been drained, manures have been imported from the cities, wheat is now the staple winter-grain, rye has ceased to be cultivated, and rye bread is now a mere reminiscence of the old dispensation. ”

“ So there are men, each of whom can really farm a township, not merely let a herd of cattle roam over it unfed and unsheltered, living and dying as may chance: the owners expecting to grow rich by their natural increase. This ranching is not properly farming at all, but a very different and far ruder art. I judge that the farmers who can really [Pg 293] till—or even graze—several thousand acres of land, so as to realize a fair interest on its value, are even scarcer than the farms so capacious. ”

“ They served for a time as laborers on the older farms, in town, in the lumber camps, or in railroad construction, saving their money, learning American ways, and acquiring some English, but as soon as money enough was saved, perhaps in a year, to buy forty or eighty acres of government land at the minimum price, a yoke of oxen or a team of horses, and a few necessary farm tools and implements, the prospective farmer moved upon new land and started out for himself. ”

“ Take a man from the Western States, place him on some of our farming lands and tell him, "Here are twenty acres of land, and it is all you can properly farm, unless you have more help than yourself. Now fence and cultivate it, and you can make an abundant living." ”

“ And the importance of the effect of tenancy, or any other economic aspect of agriculture on the life of its people must be recognized as a fundamental consideration in determining rural policies. Well being on the land and not wealth from the land is the final goal of agriculture.
Community life is also affected by the type of farming which is prevalent among its people. Modern agriculture is becoming specialized, and the crops grown are determined both by soil and climate and by the markets available. ”

“ What makes a prosperous farmer? The answer is, industry, knowledge, adaptation of means to ends in such a way that the greatest crops shall be raised from the fewest acres. What makes a prosperous town or village? Evidently the development and judicious application of its forces to production in all departments. If we see a township with a hundred farms, and each farmer managing so that he secures only eight tons of hay from twelve acres, we shall find scraggy and lean cattle, small, inconvenient buildings, poor fences, and all the signs of unthrift, dilapidation, poverty, and decay. ”

“ These various “benefactions” were, as a rule, merely the indirect methods which the great landowners employed in order to absorb the small proprietor. And so well did they succeed, that in the 6th and 7th centuries the provincial hierarchy consisted of the cultivator, the holder of the beneficium and the owner; while this dependence of one man upon another affected the personal liberty of a large section of the community, as well as the condition of the land. The great landowner tended to become not only lord over his tenants, but also himself a vassal of the king. ”

“ The very nature and designation of the classes who originally share among them the produce of the soil, vary not a little in different places. In some, the landowners are a class in themselves, almost entirely separate from the classes engaged in industry: in others, the proprietor of the land is almost universally its cultivator, owning the plough, and often himself holding it. ”

“ Certain landowners procure large areas of agricultural land in the most available location, sometimes by questionable methods, and hold it for speculative purposes. This not only withdraws the land itself from settlement, but in many cases prevents the development of an agricultural community. ”

“ They want to increase the number of small landowners—men who will literally live on the fruits of their toil, and not merely produce something for their master to sell. At present, the land has to bear three charges—it must "pay" the labourer, the farmer and the landlord. We shall never approach the land question with comprehension until we learn to look upon the cultivation of land as intended in the first place to produce Food. ”

“ The soil, the climate, and the productions are superior to those of England, and the husbandry as good, except in one point; that of manure. In England, long leases for twenty-one years, or three lives, to wit, that of the farmer, his wife, and son, renewed by the son as soon as he comes to the possession, for his own life, his wife's and eldest child's, and so on, render the farms there almost hereditary, make it worth the farmer's while to manure the lands highly, and give the landlord an opportunity of occasionally making his rent keep pace with the improved state of the lands. ”

“ At intervals along the Republican bottom we shall find ranches springing up under the auspices of our road; immense grain-fields yellowing toward harvest; great herds of domestic cattle grazing haunch-deep through the boundless swales of billowing wild grass; with all the other indications of a prosperous farming settlement, which, keeping pace with the progress of the road, shall eventually become one of the richest agricultural communities in the world, and continuous for over two hundred miles. ”

“ The fifty-acre farm means a basis for a new agriculture or intensive farming, also sharp, individual responsibility of buyer, plus family life and labour and friendly co-operation of a neighbourhood. The plantation, with its 'quarters' and renters and croppers, who 'stay' to make and pick crops, but have no home—the plantation, the old, before-the-war, economic unit, is transformed into an American neighbourhood of farms and homes, within sound of church and bell. ”

“ How many landowners are there possessing property in fifteen or twenty communes? How many are there who, having by degrees bought ten or twelve lots in the same commune, ever gave themselves the trouble of uniting them in one return? The truth is that in all agricultural countries the peasants have ceased to buy land, and they are selling it wherever they find a great landowner willing to buy it. ”

“ Buley presents of newly made cities humming with industry and business and filled with comfortable homes; great cattle and horse ranches, where every proprietor is a little lord of the manor; sheep farms in the back blocks fifty miles from a neighbor; gold fields where fortunes are made in a day and lost the same night; and wide, dreary stretches of the Never-Never land still awaiting irrigation and the consequent inrush of settlers.”—Pub. ”

“ Now, in this process, the roads, fields and meadows which lie between the giant city and the villages get covered over like a river-bed with a deposit of stone-paving; and consequently the operations of agriculture can no longer be carried on otherwise than in flower-pots in the windows. Where there is no agriculture, I cannot see what the agricultural population can become but unemployed idlers, such as no state allows within its boundaries ”

“ The cultivation and utilization of the soil is a duty of the land-owner toward the community. An increase of the value of land arising without the application of labor or capital to the property shall inure to the benefit of the community as a whole. ”

“ But, here in America with its boundless acres, that great boon seemed within their reach. When allotments of land were finally made to individuals it was found advantageous for the owner to live on his farm, rather than to operate it from a remote village. Freedom, independence, and the importance of the individual, which are characteristics of the American farmers, came into existence. ”

“ Each right gives its possessor the privilege of grazing a certain number of sheep, cattle, geese, and swine on the public pasture; of mowing a certain amount of meadow-land, and of getting stone and clay for building from the village pits, besides a considerable amount of wood each year from the communal forest. Village rights have thus a considerable value, and are sold at prices ranging from two hundred and twenty-five to three hundred dollars each. ”

“ What is needed in agriculture to charm the population back to the fields, and to double the production of the soil, is to substitute suitable buildings at the centre of an agricultural township for unsuitable, straggling farm-houses and barns, and to replace solitary labor on farms by the modern method of organized industry, applied to the cultivation of a domain large enough to permit selection of soils and the use of adequate machinery. ”

“ CHAPTER VII. OUR PIONEER FARM. I.
Of course, all farms are not the same, even in the North. Nevertheless, there is a good deal of similarity in the work that has to be got through at the outset. The modifications in it are various, consisting in the character of the land, the amount of capital available, the labour employed, and so forth. But, generally speaking, most settlers must go through pretty much what we did before they get the wilderness reclaimed into an orderly farm.
People who commence with plenty of capital have naturally a great advantage. ”

“ The most representative farming communities today are those of Scotch or Scotch-Irish people, whose instinctive tenacity, their "clannishness," has perpetuated longer than in other instances the rural economy and the country community.
In using the term land-farmer I am aware of its close resemblance to the term exploiter. The word itself points to exploitation of land. The land farmer has used the raw materials of the country. ”

“ It has been the policy of the Government heretofore to distribute the public land among the people in such quantities as would enable all desiring to engage in agriculture to do so as land-owners, and not as renters. ”

“ The giving of farms, as shown is the General Epistle, was upon the same principle as the apportioning of city lots. The farm of five, ten, or twenty acres was not for the mechanic, nor the manufacturer, nor even for the farmer, as a mere personal property, but for the good of the community at large, to give the substance of the earth to feed the population.... While the farmer was planting and cultivating his farm, the mechanic and tradesman produced his supplies and wrought his daily work for the community. ”

“ Under present conditions, where the worker is forced out fifteen or twenty miles from the town by the high price of land and the large amount of land required, the farmer is as much cut off from the city as the city dweller is cut off from rural life. ”

“ We already have agricultural communities where a score or a hundred small farms have recently been joined together in one estate. What a sign post of our times to see the old farm house made to serve as the dwellings for the immigrant serfs who till the land! ”