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by a father and two sons. The sons took the Canadian fever, and with them went so many of his neighbors that the father became discouraged and decided to rent his farm and move to St. Louis. It was the average type of good Missouri farm with comfortable dwellings, good barns, modern machinery always kept in good repair, the crops being rotated and the soil kept up. Plant and land, estimating by other neighborhood sales, easily were worth $30,000. Of the first tenants, one remained three years, two others remained two years and one is still there. Last fall the two sons tired of Canada, sold their holdings and went back to the old farm. Most of the machinery required extensive repairs, the buildings were in bad repair and the land had been skinned, with the exception of that still held by the tenant. This tenant was a young man, a graduate of the Missouri Agricultural College, and he faithfully carried out his contract. He had taken the 63-acre tract previously held by the tenant who farmed it three years. He planted only corn last year but, by proper seed selection, raised, in

spite of the three years of skinning that the land had been subjected to, a larger crop than had ever been raised upon it. By hauling manure from other nearby farms he got enough to cover the field thoroughly with manure last fall. This year he will begin on a crop rotation program, having pleased the owner so well with his results last year that he was given a five-year lease with option. of renewal.

In previous years this farm had paid. a net profit of about 6 per cent. on $30,000. $30,000. Balancing the receipts for four years against interest on the investment and the estimated cost of restoring the land and plant to its original condition the net profit was about 1.4 per cent. on a valuation of $30,000. But that is not all. Peopled largely now by a shifting population of tenant farmers the old community spirit has died out, the roads have deteriorated, the bank deposits in the county seat town have decreased and land values in the whole section are estimated to have decreased ten per cent. in the last four years.

The greatest agricultural evil of the

present day is the tenant farmer. This X
statement is made by President Henry
J. Waters of the Kansas State Agricul-
tural College. The tenant farmer, he
declares, is the highwayman of the soil;
collectively, a vandal horde that has
marched from Maine to the Missouri,
laying waste an agricultural empire with
the fire of its greed and the sword of its
ignorance. His advance guard already
is thrown beyond the Big Muddy. Give
him time and he will overwhelm the
West as he has the East.

The tenant farmer, President Waters says, is the ruination of the country and the menace of the city. He has left in his wake impoverished land, abandoned farms and a train of economic evils that must soon be remedied or grave consequences will follow. The tenant farmer is the man who is chiefly responsible for the increased cost of living, he is the man who has caused American exports to fall off 200 million dollars in three years. He is the man who has reduced our farming area, forced the price of productive land to an abnormal height, and sent droves of sturdy young farmers beyond our borders to the north.

President Waters has been investigating the tenant farmer for a long time and he knows his subject but nothing good of him. He speaks now of the tenant who doesn't farm but merely skins the soil, not the real tenant farmer-the small ten per cent or so of hustling, ambitious young men, long on industry

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ORCHARDS GO UNTRIMMED AND WEEDS SPRING UP.

and short on cash, who rent only until they have saved enough to buy a farm of their own. He speaks of the other ninety per cent., the migratory agricultural vagabonds who follow in the wake of the homeseeker and the homemaker, leaving blight and desolation wherever they tarry.

The nation's greatest source of wealth is in its land, and its farms should be

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able for many years to supply you and me with all we need and leave enough over to sell to the fellow across the water who produces things that we do not. The extent of land area now under cultivation in the United States is easily capable of producing twice the quantity of foodstuffs that is now gathered. In Germany, where conditions are more nearly similar to that of the United States than any other European country, the yield per acre of wheat is more than twice that of the United States, the yield of rye nearly twice as large, and barley and oats one-third larger. Germany's lands have been farmed for a thousand years, most of ours less than a hundred and millions of acres less than fifty years. There is no reason why our yield per acre should not exceed Germany's, but

it is not likely to until we rid the farms of shiftless, land-skinning tenants.

The welfare of the nation requires the scientific and effective usage of the soil, the rotation of crops and fertilization. It is only by such methods that its enduring productivity can be maintained. But the tenant farmer neither fertilizes nor rotates. He is an exploiter. He sows the same crops year after year, taking always but giving nothing in return. He squeezes the fertility from the soil and robs it of its power to produce. For every $25

worth of grain that he grows he takes from the soil a measure of fertility that would cost $12 to replace in the form of commercial fertilizer. Average land will stand such treatment about ten years. Ten years and the tenant farmer has made a portion of the nation's agriculture area a barren waste!

One doesn't need to go into the field of higher mathematics or perform any extraordinary feats of mental gymnastics to trace the increased cost of living to such conditions. The farm no longer contributes its share to the nation's supply of beef, pork, mutton, butter, milk, cream and breadstuffs. Every acre of land laid waste adds an artificial value to land that is still productive, lessens the productive area and consequently com

CALLS THE TENANT FARMER "HIGHWAYMAN OF THE SOIL."

pels-both by the law of supply and demand and the necessity for an adequate return from the land that still produces - a higher price for food products. The law of supply is as immutable as the law of gravitation. When supply does not meet demand prices rise.

Farming as an occupation is steadily growing more profitable, because the number of consumers of foodstuffs and the rate of consumption per capita are increasing more rapidly than production. Right here let it be understood that this does not mean that

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BUT THERE ARE WELL-MANAGED TENANT FARMS, AND THIS IS ONE OF THEM.

there is a call to the city man to go back to the farm. There are enough farmers already. The call is for better farmers and better farming. For several years past the yield per acre of agricultural products in this country has

remained practically stationary, whereas with the revolutionary improvements in farming machinery and farming methods and the wider dissemination of agricultural knowledge, our yield per acre should have increased at least fifteen per cent. That the average yield per acre has not shown an actual decline, is due to the fact that much worn out land has been abandoned while vast areas of virgin land have been opened in the West and Northwest, and great areas and swamp and timber lands in the East have been drained or cleared off and planted.

But we are approaching closely now the limit of our cultivable land. When we reach that limit-and the day is not many years away-either farming methods must undergo a radical change or our yield per acre gradually will decline. If we are to preserve the fertility of the

land, the land skinner must be put out of business.

As a nation we are still the greatest meat eaters in the world, but year by year our per capita consumption of meat. lessens while the per capita consumption of grain and vegetables grows. The per capita of wheat consumption in the United States in 1885 was four and twothirds bushels, while in 1909 it had risen to five and one-half bushels. The exports of breadstuffs, meats, live stock and dairy products fell from 413 million dollars in 1907 to 213 million dollars in 1910. The average farm price of wheat from 1896 to 1900 was 66.4 cents a bushel and from 1906 to 1909 it was 86.5 cents. Corn showed a similar advance. When exports fall off and prices rise at home in the face of a total production of farm crops never exceeded in our history, there can be only one conclusionthat the demand is growing at home faster than the supply. The natural result is that the cost of living goes up.

"It was," as Prof. W. J. Spillman of the Department of Agriculture stated in

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TENANT FARM IN NEW YORK THAT IS PROPERLY LOOKED AFTer.

ABANDONED FARM BUILDINGS IN NEW YORK.

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THE AVERAGE FARM TENANT MAKES NO REPAIRS.

a bulletin on soil conservation, "the abundance and cheapness of food that made possible the marvelous progress in this country in the last century. The production of abundant crops was accomplished at little expense and with a little knowledge of the principles of the conservation of soil fertility. This period of exploitive farming is past. Whether the era of comparatively cheap and abundant food is past depends upon our ability as a people to develop cheaper and better means of production than now prevail. Future increase in production must come from better methods of farming. Whether we, as a nation shall attain these improved methods after a long period of depression, accompanied by

slow adjustment to new conditions, as has been the case in older countries," depends, he says, on how soon we supplant the landskinning tenant and the ignorant, shiftless owner with efficient farmers.

It is a grave economic problem with which the tenant farmer has brought us face to face through his robbery of the soil, and it was tersely stated in a recent speech of Senator Elihu Root of New York, discussing the ship subsidy bill in the Senate. He said:

"We have reached a point in our development where we can see the time when we cannot maintain our balance of trade by exporting food products. We will soon consume all the food products we produce. Where then shall we turn to pay for our purchases abroad? By exporting our own manufactured articles? But where shall we sell them?"

We may or may not agree with Senator Root's stand on the ship subsidy bill but we cannot ignore the fact that unless the land is made to produce as it should produce and is capable of producing, we must become a manufacturing nation in order to keep our balance of trade. Our manufacturers must compete with the manufacturers of the world, our workmen must compete with the cheap labor of the world. Can we maintain against that cheap labor our present standard of wages and living? Or must we come down to the level of our competitors? If our population goes on increasing, as it undoubtedly will, while our food production remains stationary, it will not be many years until, of necessity, we must begin to import foodstuffs to meet the increasing demand. increasing demand. To pay for our foodstuffs imported we must then export manufactures. Is there any reason to

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