The decline in home ownership both in the cities and in the rural districts of the United States has been observed with considerable anxiety because of the effect upon our national welfare and upon the citizenship of the country. One writer says:
Farming is a permanent business; it is no "fly by night" occupation. … No man can pull up stakes and leave a farm at the close of the year without sacrificing the results of labor which he has done … The renter who ends harvest knowing that he will move in the spring, will not do as good a job of hauling manure and fall plowing as he would were he to stay; nor does he take as good care of the buildings and other improvements …
The cost to the farming business of the country each year for this annual farm moving-week mounts into the millions of dollars. And the pity of it all is that practically no one is the winner thereby … The renter loses, the landlord loses, the general community and the nation at large lose. [Footnote: W.D. Boyce, in an editorial in THE FARMING BUSINESS, February 26, 1916, quoted in Nourse, AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, p. 651.]
Tenant farming also places obstacles in the way of community progress in other ways.
The tenant takes little interest in community affairs. The questions of schools, churches, or roads are of little moment to him. He does not wish to invest in enterprises which will of necessity be left wholly … to his successor. In short, he is in the community, but hardly of it. [Footnote: B.H. Hibbard, "Farm Tenancy in the United States," in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March, 1912, p. 39.]
A family that owns its home feels a sense of proprietorship in a part of the community land. The money value of a home increases in proportion to the prosperity of the community as a whole; its owner will therefore be inclined to do all he can to promote the welfare of the community. A community that is made up largely of homes owned by their occupants is likely to be more prosperous and more progressive, and its citizens more loyal to it, than a community whose families are tenants.
THE TENANT AS A CITIZEN
While all that has been said in the preceding paragraph is true, it must not be thought that tenancy is necessarily a bad thing in all cases, nor that a man who does not own his home cannot be a thoroughly good citizen. There are circumstances that make it necessary for many families to live in dwellings that they do not own. Tenancy may be a step toward home ownership. A citizen may have insufficient money to buy a farm, but enough to enable him to rent one. By industry, economy, and intelligence, he may soon accumulate means with which to buy the farm he occupies or some other. The increase in the number of tenants in the Southern States is due in large part to the breaking up of many larger plantations into small farms which are occupied by tenants, many of them negroes. That many of these tenants are on the road to home ownership is indicated by the facts stated on page 117.
It is as much the duty of the home renter as it is of the home owner to take an interest in the community life in which he and his family share, and to cooperate with his neighbors for the common good. While he lives in the community he is largely dependent upon it, like any other citizen, for the satisfaction of his wants. Its markets and its roads are his for the transportation and disposal of his produce and stock. He gets the benefit of its schools for the education of his children. He may share in its social life if he cares to do so. His property is protected by the same agencies that protect that of his neighbors. He cannot, therefore, escape the responsibility of contributing to the progress of his community to the extent of his ability.