Tenant farming

“ Instead of farming on a long-time schedule, expecting returns on a system of husbandry reaching through the years, the tenant is inclined to produce such crops as can be disposed of at the close of the year, regardless of the effect of such a form of agriculture upon the fertility of the soil. Tenant contracts as yet offer little inducement for the tenant to remain permanently on a given farm or to keep up needed improvements.
The tenant for the time being may even make larger profits as a tenant than as an owner. ”

“ The landlord who never visits his farms, never thinks of them except on rent day, is blind to his own interest, is forgetting that ownership of land is a partnership in a business. He neglects his own enrichment, and leaves needed resources for the nation unused. The active and intelligent landlord, on the contrary, watches the march of agriculture. He observes where the machine, the soil, requires improvement, he notices the farming qualities of the tenant, he lives on friendly relations with him, and deliberates with him on expanding the productive power of the farm. ”

“ They wish the tenant farmer class to be made a diminishing instead of an increasing class so that tenant farming itself may not be a permanent status, but a step toward farm ownership by the hired man or the son of the small farm owner. ”

“ Otherwise tenant farming will continue to increase and a rural peasantry finally develop on the land, with absentee landlords living in comfort in the more normal social conditions of the villages and towns. ”

“ Satisfactory results in farming cannot be obtained as a general practice if the man is only interested in the results of a single year. For this reason the itinerant tenant system will not be satisfactory unless the landlord has worked out a satisfactory scheme which he requires his tenant to follow.
It is not enough that a man shall grow a single large crop, but it is necessary that he should continue to grow a satisfactory crop at least at regular intervals. For example, a piece of land may be adapted to cabbage, 89 celery, potatoes or hay. ”

“ It is owing to forbearance in this and other matters that the relations between landlord and tenant are generally excellent. Where are the best farm buildings, where the best cottages, where does the owner carry on a home farm often for the assistance of the tenant by letting him have the use of entire horses, well-bred bulls, and rams, if not on the larger estates? The restrictions in leases, so much decried of late years, were nearly always in the interest of good farming, and their abolition will lead to the deterioration of many a holding. ”

“ Many reasons can be given to show that tenant farming is employed mostly on fertile and valuable lands. Owners of the best farms ac- quire a competency sooner than their less favored neighbors, and are enabled to retire from active work and rent their farms. Capitalists invest their money in the better grades of land because it yields the surest and largest returns for the sum invested. ”

“ Another good arrangement is tenant right, which consists in giving the tenant a right to claim the value of any unexhausted improvements, which he may have made in his farm, if he be turned out of it. A farmer can prove without difficulty how much he has spent in building barns, stables, piggeries, &c., in draining the lands, making roads and fences, or in putting lime and costly manures into the soil. Those who are experienced in farming can form a good judgment how long each improvement will continue profitable, so as to calculate how much the tenant loses if he be turned away. ”

“ If tenant farming continues to increase, agricultural effi- ciency will not be as great as it would be under a system of farming where land is tilled by owners. The soil will become less productive because it is being constantly "skinned" by tenant farmers. It has been aptly said that the nation which tills the soil so as to leave it worse than they found it is doomed tO' decay and degradation. Tracts of land have ac- tually been abandoned in the states along the Atlantic Seaboard because the soil has become too unproductive to support both landlord and tenant. ”

“ Moreover, no tenant could have the same ridge for two years running, the ridges having a new cultivator every year. Such a system of allocating arable land, it is very evident, must have been attended with the worst results so far as good farming is concerned. The only recommendation that it is possible to urge in its favour is that, there being no inclosures, it would be the interest of the tenants to join together in protecting the land they thus held in common against the ravages of the cattle which were allowed to roam about the hills, and the depredations of hostile clans. ”

“ Much might be said concerning the use of the premises. If a farm is rented and the lease is silent on the matter, the law presumes that the tenant will use it in a proper and husbandlike manner, like other exemplary farmers in that vicinity. He must cultivate the soil properly, preserve the timber, consume the hay as fodder to the cattle, if such be the custom, and keep the buildings and fences in repair. Manure in the ordinary course of farming belongs to the farm. ”

“ This mode of farming, which requires [Pg v] great confidence on one side, and skill and industry on the other, is not uncommon in America; the landlord usually finding all the necessary implements and stocking the farm, and the tenant, the requisite labour to manage the concern. ”

“ Rent, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. ”

“ The question for the young man to consider is not what effect the tenant system has upon the welfare of the nation or what political ills may be connected with farm mortgages, but how to make use of these necessary and beneficent agencies for the acquirement of a farm. A system of tenancy which leads to absent landlordism and a permanent tenant class is thoroughly vicious, while a practice which enables a man to become, within a reasonable period, a land-owning farmer is a thoroughly approvable and, indeed, necessary method of acquiring land. ”

“ The first, and in many respects the most important, consequence of owning farms is the contentment that it has given to the people. Their minds are at ease. Their anxiety as to their future treatment from their landlord or his agent has vanished, and the misfortunes which often distressed them have disappeared. In their investigations the commissioners and the inspectors employed by them have met very few tenant purchasers who have any fault to find with the conditions under which they are now living. ”

“ Under the plan in which the tenant furnishes everything except the real estate, the tendency of the farm is apt to be downward both as to the improvements and the crop-producing power of the soil. The interests of the landlord and tenant are not mutual. This condition of tenancy leads to growing only those crops which can be readily sold from the farm and to frequent changes of the tenant, with its accompanying auction sales of property. In one region, where this system prevails, it has been facetiously remarked that each tenant has a sale every year to determine how much he is worth. ”

“ This, by itself alone, does not concern the tenant; but it does concern him greatly to learn the actual condition of the farm; and beyond doubt the landlord will be able to demand increased rent, and the tenant will be perfectly willing to pay it, to the extent that the outlay on draining and other improvements has augmented the actual produce of the farm. The tenant looks solely to the working power of the agricultural machine and the results which he may obtain from it ”

“ We suppose the owner must still have the option of keeping his property; and if so, as he will derive no profit from it in the shape of rent, he must either farm it himself, or act as labourer on wages under a farmer. We apprehend there can be little doubt as to the course he will take, when driven to such an extremity. As a body, tenant-farmers will cease to exist. ”

“ The sheriff may seize cattle if he finds them on the farm, or he may seize and sell the tenant’s interest in the farm. A tenant who has his mind made up for the fight will have his cattle turned into money before the judgment comes on. Every tenant who neglects to dispose of them is preparing himself to accept the landlord’s terms, for he will not wish to see the emergency men profit by taking his cattle at some nominal price, and if he buys he is in reality handing the landlord the amount of his demand. Sale of a farm is not of so much consequence. ”

“ If any farm is put up to auction under certain conditions, there is no hardship whatever in exacting the rent from the highest successful competitor. The reservation of the right to kill game is as competent to the proprietor as the fixing the rotation of the crops, or the conditions against scourging the soil. The landlord, when he lets a farm, does not by any means, as Mr Bright and his legal coadjutor appear to suppose, abandon it altogether to the free use of the tenant. ”

“ In some places there are plenty of stones to hedge in a small croft of land where grass might be sown, but nothing is done. That unreclaimed land is made to do duty by keeping life in a few cows-two, or more. During the summer season, the merchant supplies the meal as long as he can, and so things continue its they are. No man who may receive a forty days', or even a six months', warning, is likely to exert himself to bring more ground under crop. The thing wanted is leasehold of the property by the tenant. But I am told the tenants will not take a lease. ”

“ No plans have been made in the American rural economy for a tenantry. The lease, therefore, throughout the United States generally is for only one year. This gives to the landlord the greatest freedom, and to the tenant the least responsibility. Neither is willing to enter into a contract by which the land itself can be benefitted. The landlord is looking for the increase of the values of land, and is ever mindful of a possible buyer. Moreover, he is watchful of the market for the crop and of the size of the crop, so that he desires to be free at the end of the year to make other arrangements. ”

“ In England the detrimental effects of farm tenancy that have been mentioned are in a large degree removed by the long periods which tenants occupy the same lands; father, son and grandson occupy the same farm throughout their lifetime, and the land owners are satisfied with a low per cent. of interest on their investment and have no thought of changing their tenants. Under such conditions there is little chance for a farm tenant to become a farm owner, and, in most cases, little desire. ”

“ Unhappily, in spite of this tendency to the subdivision of the soil, the most usual system of working the land is still that of letting it at a fixed rent, or for a certain proportion of the yield in place of rent, or by a profit-sharing system, under which the tenant receives 50, 40, or 30 per cent, of the harvest. The large land-owners, who are the most numerous, prefer the former method, and often impose on the farmer the obligation of leaving a crop of lucerne on the land in the last year of the tenancy. ”

“ There remain the following alternatives: land may be rented for a fixed sum of 66 money per acre, to be paid when the crops are sold, or for a fixed quantity of produce, so many bushels of corn or so many pounds of cotton being paid for every acre; or, more commonly, land may be rented on some form of share tenancy by which the risk as well as the profit is shared by both tenant and landowner. ”

“ The absentee landlord of the farm enjoys the fruits of the labor of another. We must not forget, however, that the retired farmer has contributed his share toward the development of our nation. He has helped to make his community. The man who actually remains on the soil to produce the food is producing less, and takes less interest in his community, than the man who owns the land and who made a success of production in years gone by. The tenant does not cultivate the land as intensively as it can be cultivated ”

“ In England, speaking generally, agricultural farms are let by the owners fully equipped with buildings, fences, farm roads, and other improvements necessary for the proper working of the holding. The tenant contracts to pay a rent for the farm so equipped, and if he finds that the particular holding does not suit him, he gives it up at the end of his contract term and goes elsewhere. ”

“ But let a non-riding reformer get up after the annual dinner of the local Agricultural Association and suggest that the rights of tenant-farmers have long enough lain at the mercy of their landlord and his fox-hunting friends, with the rabble of idle sports and ruthless ne’er-do-weels who follow at their heels, and that it is time for them to assert themselves and try to secure the prohibition of a costly pastime, which leads to no good practical result, and the burdens of which fall so heavily on the producing classes,—and then see how his brother farmers will second his efforts. ”