I
In most ages the working farmer has been the dupe and prey of the rest of mankind. Now by force and now by cajolery, as social customs and political institutions change, he has been made to produce the food by which the race lives, and the share of his product which he has been permitted to keep for himself has always been pitifully small. Whether Roman slave, Frankish serf, or English villein; whether the so-called “independent” farmer of a free democracy or the ryot of a Hindu prince, the general rule holds good. Occasionally, by one means or another, he gains some transitory betterment of condition; the Plague of 1349 and the Peasants’ Rebellion of 1381 won for his class advantages which were retained during three generations. But in the long run he is the race’s martyr. Under a military autocracy his exploitation was inevitable. There is no reason for it now, for the lives and well-being of the rest of mankind are in his hands: were the working farmers organized as the manufacturers and the skilled artisans are organized, and could they lay by for themselves a year’s necessities, they could starve the race into submission to their demands. But the thing is not to be; nor, indeed, is any marked change to their advantage likely to happen, for, so far as current tendencies point, the future is to repeat the past.
In our day and in our land both force and cajolery conspire to keep the peasant farmer securely in his traces. He cannot break through the cordon which the trusts and the railroads put about him; and even if he could he would not, since the influences showered upon him are specifically directed to the end of keeping him passive and contented. Our statisticians assure him of his prosperity; our politicians and our moulders of opinion warn him of the pernicious influence of unions like the Farmers’ Alliance, and further preach to him the comforting doctrine that by “raising more corn and less politics” he will ultimately work out a blissful salvation. Sometimes he must burn his corn for fuel; often he cannot sell his grain for the cost of production, even though many thousands of persons in the great cities may be hungering for it; frequently he cannot afford to send his children to school, and in a steadily increasing number of cases he is forced to abandon his farm and become a tenant or a wanderer. He is puzzled, no doubt, by these things; but they are all carefully and neatly explained to him from the writings and preachments of profound scholars, as “natural” and “inevitable” phenomena. His ethical sense may be somewhat disturbed by the explanations, but he learns that it is useless to protest, and he thereupon acquiesces.
A sort of symposium on the joys of the farmer is to be found in the September number of the American Review of Reviews. Mr. Clarence H. Matson writes of improved conditions due to rural free delivery of mails and a few other reforms; Mr. William R. Draper dilates upon the enormous revenues which have flowed to the farmers during the current year, and Professor Henry C. Adams contributes a symphony on the diffusion of agricultural prosperity. A fourth article, by Mr. Cy Warman, furnishes a rather discordant note to the general harmony, since it shows a large and increasing immigration of our prosperous farmers into Canada. Some 20,000 crossed the border last year, according to Mr. Warman, while during the first four months of 1902, 11,480 followed, and indications pointed to a total of 40,000 emigrants for the present year. The official figures of the Canadian Government, since published, partly confirm these estimates. The number of immigrants from the United States for the year ended June 30, 1902, was 22,000. The number for the current year will probably be larger, for according to a Montreal press despatch of September 17th: “The immigration from the American to the Canadian Northwest has assumed much greater proportions this year than ever before, and land sales to Americans are daily reported. The latest large sale is by the Saskatchewan Valley Land Company, which has sold 100,000 acres in Saskatchewan to an American syndicate for $500,000.”
“The American farmer,” sententiously and truthfully remarks Professor Adams, “does not hoard his cash.” He gives no reason for the fact, and the determination must be left to the reader. “The American farmer,” he further remarks, “is, as a rule, his own landlord.” This statement reveals a very serious misapprehension of the facts. Something more than every third farm in the United States, according to the recent census, is operated by a tenant. Moreover, the proportion of tenants is constantly rising. For the whole country, tenants operated 25.5 per cent of all farms in 1880, 28.4 per cent in 1890, and 35.3 per cent in 1900. Further, the tendency is not confined to particular sections, but is common to the whole country. During the last decade the number of tenant-operated farms increased relatively to the whole number of farms in every State and Territory except Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. In Maine tenantry decreased seven-tenths of 1 per cent, in New Hampshire five-tenths of 1 per cent, and in Vermont one-tenth of 1 per cent. For the twenty-year period, as was pointed out in Chapter II, the only exceptions to the general increase are Arizona, Florida, and New Hampshire.
The recent census, out of its abundant optimism, does not segregate these facts, and makes no general comment other than that tenantry has increased and that salaried management is believed to be “constantly increasing.” The bulletin on “Agriculture: The United States” does not even furnish a general classified summary of the data on tenantry. But the separate reports give the statistics, and out of them the following table is compiled:—
INCREASE OF FARM TENANTRY
| States and Territories | Per Cent of Farms operated by Tenants | |||
| 1880 | 1890 | 1900 | ||
| 1. | Alabama | 46.8 | 48.6 | 57.7 |
| 2. | Arizona | 13.2 | 7.9 | a.8.4[1] |
| b. 11.9[2] | ||||
| 3. | Arkansas | 30.9 | 32.1 | 45.4 |
| 4. | California | 19.8 | 17.8 | 23.1 |
| 5. | Colorado | 13.0 | 11.3 | 22.6 |
| 6. | Connecticut | 10.2 | 11.5 | 12.9 |
| 7. | Delaware | 42.4 | 46.9 | 50.3 |
| 8. | District of Columbia | 38.2 | 36.7 | 43.1 |
| 9. | Florida | 30.9 | 23.6 | 26.5 |
| 10. | Georgia | 44.9 | 53.5 | 59.9 |
| 11. | Idaho | 4.7 | 4.6 | 8.7 |
| 12. | Illinois | 21.4 | 24.0 | 29.3 |
| 13. | Indiana | 23.7 | 25.4 | 28.6 |
| 14. | Iowa | 23.8 | 28.1 | 34.9 |
| 15. | Kansas | 16.3 | 28.2 | 33.2 |
| 16. | Kentucky | 26.4 | 24.9 | 32.8 |
| 17. | Louisiana | 35.2 | 44.4 | 58.0 |
| 18. | Maine | 4.3 | 5.4 | 4.7 |
| 19. | Maryland | 31.0 | 31.0 | 33.6 |
| 20. | Massachusetts | 8.2 | 9.3 | 9.6 |
| 21. | Michigan | 10.0 | 14.0 | 15.9 |
| 22. | Minnesota | 9.2 | 12.9 | 17.3 |
| 23. | Mississippi | 43.8 | 52.8 | 62.4 |
| 24. | Missouri | 27.3 | 26.8 | 30.5 |
| 25. | Montana | 5.3 | 4.8 | 9.2 |
| 26. | Nebraska | 18.0 | 24.7 | 36.9 |
| 27. | Nevada | 9.7 | 7.5 | 11.4 |
| 28. | New Hampshire | 8.1 | 8.0 | 7.5 |
| 29. | New Jersey | 24.6 | 27.2 | 36.9 |
| 30. | New Mexico | 8.1 | 4.5 | 9.4 |
| 31. | New York | 16.5 | 20.2 | 23.9 |
| 32. | North Carolina | 33.5 | 34.1 | 41.4 |
| 33. | North Dakota | 3.9[3] | 6.9 | 8.5 |
| 34. | Ohio | 19.3 | 22.9 | 27.5 |
| 35. | Oklahoma | 0.7 | 21.0 | |
| 36. | Oregon | 14.1 | 12.5 | 17.8 |
| 37. | Pennsylvania | 21.2 | 23.3 | 26.0 |
| 38. | Rhode Island | 19.9 | 18.7 | 20.1 |
| 39. | South Carolina | 50.3 | 55.3 | 61.0 |
| 40. | South Dakota | 3.9[3] | 13.2 | 21.8 |
| 41. | Tennessee | 34.5 | 30.8 | 40.5 |
| 42. | Texas | 37.6 | 41.9 | 49.7 |
| 43. | Utah | 4.6 | 5.2 | 8.8 |
| 44. | Vermont | 13.4 | 14.6 | 14.5 |
| 45. | Virginia | 29.5 | 26.9 | 30.7 |
| 46. | Washington | 7.2 | 8.5 | 14.4 |
| 47. | West Virginia | 19.1 | 17.8 | 21.8 |
| 48. | Wisconsin | 9.1 | 11.4 | 13.5 |
| 49. | Wyoming | 2.8 | 4.2 | 7.6 |