But not all the farm exploiters retired from the farm. The stronger and more successful have become absentee landlords. These men have invested their cash in farm lands. Distrusting the investments of the city market, and fearing Wall Street, they have purchased increased acreage in the country, and when the local market was exhausted, they have invested in the Southwest and the far West, buying ever more and more land. They have proven that "It is possible to maintain a vicious economic method on a rising market."[10]
These landlords have leased their land in accordance with mere expediency. 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.
The tenant on his part is somewhat eager to do as he pleases for a year. He expects to be himself an owner, and he does not expect to remain permanently as a tenant on that farm. He reckons that he can get a good deal out of the land in the year, and is unwilling to bind himself for a long period. "The American system of farm tenantry is the worst of which I have knowledge in any country."[11]
It is true that in some parts of the country leases of three and five years are granted to tenants by the landlords. At Penn Yan, New York, a reliable class of Danes secure such leases from the owners. I am aware, also, that in Delaware, in an old section dependent upon fertilization for its crops, where the land is in the hands of a few representatives of the old farmer type who have held it for generations, that the tillage of the soil shows specialization. The landlord and the tenant co-operate. The leases, while they are for but a year, specify how the land shall be tilled, how fertilized. They require the rotation of crops and the keeping of a certain number of cattle by the tenants. The landlord personally oversees the tillage of several farms. This seems the beginning of husbandry, instead of exploitation of the land.
Another instance of the landlord who is more than a mere exploiter is that of David Rankin, recently deceased. In the last years of his life Mr. Rankin owned about thirty thousand acres of land in Missouri. It was said in 1910 that he had seventeen thousand acres of corn. He had a genius for estimating the values of land, the expensiveness of drainage, and the possibilities of the market. He was an expert buyer of cattle, and a master of the problems entering into progressive farming on a large scale.
From his vast acreage Mr. Rankin sold not one bushel of corn. All his crops "went off on four legs." "He drove his corn to market," as they say in the Middle West. He bought cattle from the ranches, for none were bred on his own land. He fattened them for the market, translating corn into beef and he was well aware of the values of pork in the economy of such a farm. Nothing went to waste. According to the formula in Nebraska, "For every cow keep a sow, that's the how." Mr. Rankin made large profits from his cattle and hogs.
It is true that he cared nothing for the community or its institutions. On his wide acres family life was replaced by boarding-houses. Schools and churches were closed, and many farmhouses built by the homesteaders rotted down to their foundations. But David Rankin was a husbandman, if not a humanist. His tillage of the soil was successful in that it maintained the fertility of the soil, that it produced large quantities of food for the consumer, and that it was profitable.
The following is a description of community life under the influence of such great landlords, by a Western observer:—
"The city of Casselton, North Dakota, was originally started about the year 1879. Thirty years ago the first settlers came to this great prairie region from the New England and Central States. It was shortly before this or about this time that the Northern Pacific Railroad was built across this western prairie. The government gave to the road every other section of land on each side of the railroad for thirty miles as a bonus. That land was sold in the early days by the railroad to purchasers for fifty cents an acre. It was some of the finest farming land in the wide world. Out of those sales grew some of the immense farms that have been so famous over the country and while they are great business concerns managed with fine business ability, yet they are not much of a help in the settling of the country. Here within one mile of Casselton is the famous Dalrymple farm of twenty-eight thousand acres. This farm employs during the busy season what men it needs from the drifting classes and puts no families on its broad acres. These men are here a short season in the summer, then are gone. They are rushed with work for that season, Sundays as well as other days from early morning to late at night, making it almost impossible to touch their religious life or even to count them a part of the community life.
"Another farm is the Chaffee farm of thirty-five thousand acres. Mr. Chaffee is a thorough business man but is a fine Christian and places a good family on each section of land. He allows no Sunday work. Has a little city kept up in beautiful condition in the center of his land where he lives with his clerks and immediate helpers. Here they have a neat little Congregational church and support their own minister. His fine influence is felt all over the country. The partners in this farm also have a land and loan corporation and also a large flour mill in Casselton which employs about twenty-eight men, running day and night during the busy season.