Farm Ownership and Tenancy

Excerpts from the report: The general attitude toward the subject of land ownership and tenancy in this country has been determined by our very recent emergence from the pioneer stage of agricultural development. In that stage farm land was superabundant and its ownership easily acquired. There was little necessity for farmers to obtain the use of land by renting it from others, and those who continued long as tenants were largely of the less efficient and enterprising class. As land in the older communities became scarce, the more enterprising of the younger generation who were unlikely to inherit land pushed on to new regions where farm ownership could be easily acquired. The competition of the newer areas of virgin soil prevented an abnormal increase in the value of land in the older regions and made it relatively easy to achieve land ownership. Largely as a result of these earlier conditions farm ownership by the farmer has come to be regarded as normal, and tenancy as abnormal. The increase of tenancy has been "viewed with alarm" by many people, and there has been a tendency to attribute in an indiscriminate manner to institutions of tenancy nearly all of the economic and social ills that manifest themselves in the rural community. Now that we have passed beyond the pioneer stage and have entered upon a more mature phase of national development, it is desirable to attempt to get a well-rounded conception of the significance of farm tenancy, which is by no means peculiar to the United States, but is found to some extent in all civilized nations, and particularly in English-speaking countries. Endeavoring, then, to approach the subject with an open mind, let us first take stock of the present extent and relative importance of the different classes of land tenure and trace briefly the recent trends with reference to land ownership and tenancy as shown by census and farm-survey statistics.