The Ownership of Tenant Farms in the United States

Excerpts from the report: Statistics on the tenure of farms have been gathered and published every 10 years beginning with the census of 1880. Concerning the ownership of rented farms, however, little of a statistical nature is available except as regards the degree of concentration of ownership and of absenteeism on the part of owners, as reported by the census of 1900. The present study was undertaken with a view to increasing the available information about the ownership of rented farm land, a very important phase of the farm-tenancy question. The extent to which farms are operated by persons other than the owners is indicated by the fact that the census of 1920 reported 47.9 per cent of the farms to be operated by managers or by tenants who rented all or part of the land which they farmed. That the importance of farm tenancy and therefore of farm landlordism is increasing is indicated by the fact that, in 1920, 43.6 per cent of the value of the farm land and buildings of the country is estimated to have been rented from the owners by the farmers, whereas the corresponding percentages were 39.5 in 1910 and 35.4 in 1900.