Share tenants, if they furnish implements, stock and feed, generally give the landlord from one fourth to one third of what they produce; if these are furnished by the landlord, he gets one half the gross product. These proportions sometimes vary in different sections and with different crops. It is simply what in Europe is known as metayer farming.
The status of the renting farmer and his landlord throughout the United States has occasioned some anxiety for the future of the American yeomanry. In the country at large the percentage of owners is appreciably larger than in the south, and both classes of tenants respectively are appreciably smaller; for of the total 5,737,372 American farmers, 54.9 per cent, own the farms they operate, as against 46.9 per cent, in the south. It must be acceded in addition that the tenant system in the south is much more indicative of evil consequences than in other sections. In the northwest, for example, the number of 'tenants' is swelled largely by the sons of aged retired farmers in whom the titles still rest, and by enterprising men who have made the second step in the gradation of hired laborer, tenant, owner. This is true to a much less extent in the south. The tenant class there is composed mainly of shiftless whites who have definitely settled into what has come to be known as the 'tenant class' and of earth-butchering negroes. All the alertness of a landlord close at hand, who is himself strong-willed and a good farmer, is required to save land from deterioration after several years under such tenancy. The safest method has been found to be for the landlord to retain the right to supervise authoritatively every detail of the farming, not only by specific stipulations in the contract, but continually during its execution. Absentee landlordism in the south means, almost inevitably, land butchery.
The Tenant's Outlook.
What is the tenant's chance to attain the ideal of farm life—ownership of the land upon which he works?
The southern farm tenant has the best opportunity of any renter in the world to become an independent proprietor. If, under the improved agricultural conditions which promise to continue, he does not enroll himself among the owners, it will rest as a heavy indictment against his worth of character.
Last year I was driving through one of the richest agricultural sections of the south. A place better fenced and kept than the ordinary impressed me. 'That man was a tenant five years ago,' said my companion. 'He made a small cash payment on that $5,000 cotton and tobacco plantation; he lived hard for four or five years, and now he has paid the last cent of the price.'
A few miles farther on stood a rusty hut of doll house dimensions.
